Thank you very much for having me today. So my name is Dan and today we're going to talk about a little bit of our Kubernetes I've got 20 minutes the original talk was 40 to an hour We have plenty of demos and and stuff. So I had to cram everything into into 20 minutes, which means Yeah, we I'm good. I have a demo hopefully it works But it's it's a much shorter version that what I usually run. Okay. Who am I? My name is Daniela very hard to pronounce so people call me down Daniela whatever and people make fun of me because I do quite a Lot of Kubernetes, so they shorten my name to D5e That's me. I spoke at KubeCon twice I'm a certified oops That's very quick. I'm not sure why what's going on. I'm a certified community administrator So I spent I spent quite a lot of time Just researching and playing with with Kubernetes. That's that's also part of my job. I work for a company called learn Kubernetes That's it. They basically teach Kubernetes and that's why I spend I spend a lot of time with it and today the talk of today is basically We have these Kubernetes clusters. How do we connect them together? If they are in different regions in different cloud providers Now before we tackle this this challenge, it's worth doing a very short recap of how Kubernetes works So generally we Kubernetes what we do as developers or just you know somewhat interesting in deploying We have like a single unit and we say hey Kubernetes, please deploy some deploy some workloads for me That's basically how it works. We don't really care. What's happening under the hood? I mean most of the time we don't but in reality what happens Is Kubernetes will basically figure out where these deployments needs to be placed inside your infrastructure? So we don't care but human is does because we still have to rely on service and we still have to rely on machines deploying these workloads Okay, oh good so far. What's next so? Kubernetes the way the way Decides how to place these workloads is decided by what we call the control plane and control plane is this basically a collection of Different controllers that work in tandem that work Work together and most of the time that I'm for big blocks. I mean that I'm way more than four but we're interested in four of them which are the API server which ingests your requests and then we've got a database called at CD Then we've got a controller manager, which is brain of the operation and then we've got the scheduler Which basically assigns workloads to nodes. That's that's basic So what happens when you deploy an application in Kubernetes? Well that that request you say I want to deploy something that request goes inside the API server goes through several steps of authorization authentication and just changing also The request on the fly and then eventually it gets stored in in database in at CD Once is inside at CD then it's picked up by what we call the controller manager the controller manager is one of these systems It basically just syncs the state So if you ask for something it's going to check that you got what you asked for in this case Let's ask for the deployment and the manager notices that there are four miss three missing pods It's going to create them. Oops. They're very quick. I'm not sure what's going on So these parts are created and creating in pending inside the database Those are you're reaching down to disk and then since they're pending the scheduler It's notified of the change and it will pick them up and then try to allocate those workloads to particular nodes that's basically the end of Of the scheduling of port is worthless What's important to notice that at this point in time all you've done is basically just changing values inside the database There is nothing actually going on inside your infrastructure Right, so who creates this workflow the inside inside your servers? Well, we need something which is going to do the work and that's something is called the cubelet So the cubelet is basically like an agent that lays inside your nodes and they basically what it does. It just pulls down all sort of information about the node right and tries to reconcile the state of the node with the control plane and If there is a workload, then it's going to create it All right, or if there is a request to delete that workload that is also also going to delete it Whoa Okay, so we got we got this cube we got we got a cubelet. We know how the control plane works another things that it's important to mention oops is Is that the traffic does not flow Through the control plane when you deploy this application these applications are serving web traffic like production traffic Then this is not the kind of scenario. We are looking at I'm not sure what's going on. So I'm gonna stick to The seriousness of my clicker. Yeah, sure sure. That's a good idea so what's going on is is that The traffic doesn't doesn't flow like this instead of what we see is Most of the time the traffic flows directly through the nodes and these nodes are fronted by a load balancer And then what basically means is that this this control plane could go down and can still serve traffic, right? Which is quite quite convenient for us, right? And this nobody know the basic let's let's have a look at how the basics apply when we when we scale this cluster from One single region. So one single cluster to multiple clusters, right? So the first idea is okay I've got I've got an application I've got an e-commerce website or a financial application that needs to be deployed into different regions for availability, for example So one, you know, the first idea you might have is okay I'm gonna have a single control plane and then several nodes spread across regions That's perfectly fine. There is You know all the all the traffic will of course will be ingested by the nodes, which is great But reality is that some of the communication that you have between the control plane and the rest of the nodes will be slow Right because of course getting different regions You might say okay, and that's you know, I can I can bear the cost I can bear the trade-offs Let's do this Then the same sort of problem you will sort of face when you deploy your applications, right? Because Kubernetes trees those nodes as equals, right? So it's gonna deploy you're gonna deploy these microservices and then they start talking to each other, right? So you might have cases where some of the traffic which is distributed inside the cluster is a little bit slower Because cuban is essentially doesn't doesn't know that this traffic is going to be the redirector somewhere else Now there are changes in the community Kubernetes API to make it that a little bit better But but the default this is what you get which is you know, sometimes everything works fine and then suddenly everything is super slow Okay, so how do we fix this? Well, what if Right, we use one of these cuban 80s features to fix it So instead of having a single control plane, right? Kubernetes can be designed can be deployed to have multiple control planes So the idea is if I can have multiple control planes and each control plane has got a database and all these database synchronized between each other Who is stopping me from deploying? Multiple control planes and then eventually one for each region that I'm that I'm that I'm using in my infrastructure No one is stopping me. I can do that. Does it solve the problem that we have before well sort of yes, because These nodes they can talk directly to to to the control plane in the same region. So that sort of communication should be solved However, this introduces another issue, which is which is replication, right? So we talked about how this database needs to be replicated between between instances and The issue is that the database will write to disk only three squarer, right? So if the majority of the nodes agree on a value in this particular case It will take ages to a green value because they are in different region and latest is very high So this design is even worse than what we had before So we know we can't we can't really do a single cluster with multiple with multiple nodes in multiple regions We know it's very tricky to do a single a single cluster with multiple control planes and multiple nodes in multiple regions So what can we do? Well, the reality is that we can have a single cluster per region and that generally the better approach That that you might take when designing this sort of stuff However, when what we do this there are a few issues the first issue is how do we decide? How to place these workloads in which cluster we're going to place these workloads? This is issue number one second issue is if I route the traffic to the u.s Cluster or the u cluster of the South Asia Pacific Pacific cluster, and there is no app or it's overloaded How do I route the traffic to the other cluster? All right And third one is if I've got storage in one cluster and that application needs to move Do I need to move the storage on the other cluster as well? I don't know so what I played with this sort of Examples then that I found a fun a quite interesting tool called Kermada and basically the way it works is it's an orchestrator of clusters and you install a Cluster you install this the software in one cluster which becomes the manager and then the rest of your cluster will become workers And the way Kermada works is basically we just send the request to the manager and the manager will basically Distribute these workloads across across the entire fleet and why was it is it good? It is quite good I think it's quite clever in a way it basically creates a mirror of your control plane But this control plane is basically cluster aware so it's aware that there are several other cluster that needs to be orchestrated and and What happens is you have an agent which is similar to the cuba in a way and then it's the agent Which is basically going to send the commands to the individual cluster So you have a single cluster which is basically sends all of these commands to the agent and the agent will send the commands to the cluster themselves So that's basically how it works, but the interesting things is this Kermada, which is basically a glorified control plane for clusters can have something called policies So you can basically say I want to create a deployment and I want to go to just Deployment us cluster. So if you do that and you submit the policy will basically have a deployment just in the u.s But go back to my policy and I change it to the yield so Europe then this part will be moved to Europe, right and There are also many other ways to Describe how you want the state of the cluster to be in this particular case I say I want to deploy two pods and if I say Duplicated then Kermada will deploy two for each cluster who got in my fleet Or I could say something like Divided, you know, I could I could put different weights or I can say aggregated So filling one cluster first and then move on to the next one and Then there are way more ways to configure however you want this to be to look like This is a good and when you deploy Kamada, the networking for Kamada is isolated to this to the cluster itself Which basically means that if the traffic is rooted inside Surface your precipice or in Singapore then it stays in Singapore. There is no way to share this traffic with the rest of the clusters So what do we do? I Want I want to be able to share this data. I want to be able to share this traffic with the rest of the fleet I can do that if if somehow I find a way to share this IP address and this information about workloads that have been deployed in my infrastructure and And the way we do this is basically by intercepting the traffic Proxying it to the other cluster and then rewriting it when we are on the other side And to do that we use something called service matches. So one one way to solve it It's not the only way but one way to solve it is to use something like service matches So you might have this name So Istio, which is what I use in the tool as well. So what are these service matches and how they work? So essentially you have Services you have deployments inside your cluster and then they all talk to each other So when you install the service match what happens is Each of these applications will be fronted by a proxy. So all incoming and outgoing traffic will be filtered by the proxy But this proxy is not just like a regular NGDX proxy. It's actually a programmable proxy That can be reconfigured on the fly. So the way it works is we have got another control plane Which is the Istio control plane which on the fly will basically reconfigure the routes and the end points For this for these proxies which gives us quite quite a lot of flexibility for saying how I change my mind I don't want these two services talking to each other anymore Or I could say something like hey when you do the log balancing Can you please do a different split than 50-50 or run-robbing right? All these information is something we ask we send the control plane the control plane will reconfigure this proxies on the fly So that's that's how it works What can we do with this? Well if we can reconfigure on the fly we could also say hey this traffic We also have multiple pods in multiple clusters. So route this traffic somewhere else and That somewhere else is is basically The service match so this is basically how the service match multi cluster works. So we've got cluster one and cluster two and And what when we store Istio you see the proxy there the programmable proxy becomes part of your application is a single unit and Then when you install what we call the gateway Which is basically a way to connect this to serve these two clusters together and then if you will basically start Sharing and discovering endpoints from the other clusters, right? So this is basically where we share. This is my workload. This is yours, you know, and we keep this information In in the cluster now when the traffic comes in and it goes to the proxy Then we have the ability to say actually, you know what I will send this through the gateway to the other side And that's basically how we share We share the traffic So what does it look like? So we've got a deployment We know we can spread this pod across the cluster We know we have policy we can decide how to how to spread it in in our fleet and now we have These service mesh which is also able to decide where the traffic should be placed now We've done we've done something basic. We just basically Install the service machine connect to the cluster, but we also do clever things such as always send a traffic the local cluster And if you're overloaded go somewhere else, right? So in this particular case, it's just just a basic configuration But at the end we are basically able to ingest traffic in one cluster and then if we want to forward it to the others Do you believe me? Someone say no No Anyone else? Okay, I've got four minutes to make it work Let's see, okay Okay, so what I've got Hopefully it works. So what I have is a small small script and what it does is basically just Send the request of the cluster and sees and basically check the response now hopefully the Wi-Fi works. I have no clue What's going on? Or how slow it is? Maybe maybe we'll wait a little bit longer, okay And so this is a dashboard that I built so this is I deployed three clusters today and before I came this is why I was late Just deploy the cluster, but what this dashboard is is basically just pulling the data from the free cluster I've done and then there What happens is I've got here Some some radio buttons at the top where I can select where the traffic is going So I make a request to the London cluster or I make a request to the US cluster And then I basically have a small application that replies with Let me see if the script works. No, of course not that replies with a flag with with the region where the cluster is deployed So this you can see here that when I send the traffic to the US takes ages But most of the time it goes to the US and now it's going to London All right, so I send the request to the cluster in the US It travels all the way to London and then comes back All right, and if I switch to to Singapore Then it goes to Singapore and then it goes back to London and then it comes back So basically this is Istio deciding there's some of the endpoints that we've got inside a cluster needs to be rooted elsewhere Before they go back as a response Here we go Okay, got it so two minutes. Let me wrap up So I think so what we what we discussed today, so We had a look at how to keep an egg's work. So that was important So so we don't understand how scheduling works in Kamada. So how do we? Manage to have policies that can spread cluster can spread where it goes across We had a look at how you know different options that we have to deploy cubanates So we could have a single control plane multiple nodes in multiple regions But we sort of discover that the better way to do it sort of easier way to do it Is to have a single cluster per region We had a look at Kamada. So these two.  I was just interested in and this one for for my my research We sort of have a look what how Istio shares IP addresses between clusters and And and how this traffic is forwarded in in the network using using gateways We also look at them when he actually worked this time, which is excellent news. So I just Everyone for for joining me today This is me. I Don't know how much time I've got Maybe 30 seconds for questions One is link ID, which is the second most popular service match and then the third one is called kuma from from the Kong Kong guys Yeah, I think yeah, those are those are the most popular I guess but there are many more options So the question is why do I need to multiple multiple control planes? So the reason why you need multiple control planes is because cubanates Stores what we called endpoints so endpoint is basically the IP address of the pod and that IP address of the pod is used by Several several components in the cluster. So the components are core DNS So the DNS system the ingress and what they do is that we basically make an API request to the control plane and say Can I have back a list of nodes, please with this list of list of IP addresses, please with this list of IP addresses? They basically reconfigure on the fly the DNS the ingress and several other components to make the cluster work So when when you grab a control plane and you shut it down if you don't do anything at all Your cluster will work But as soon as you have the new workload then first of all, I don't know how you're gonna schedule that workload But assuming that one of your workloads goes down and that IP address is not available anymore There is no way to update the control plane saying hey this IP address is gone So your DNS your ingress will still have a stale list of IP addresses It will still route traffic to those even if you don't want to now. This is not great This is but your cluster still works. So you don't have a hundred percent on time. You will have Depending on what's going on. You will have the graded service But but it's not like fully percent, you know a hundred percent down. So yes We won't have we want to have multiple control planes because we want to make sure that these endpoints are propagated correctly But again, it's it's trade-offs It goes back to how at CD works and how replication and databases work So the more the more a control plane you ask the slower it gets And the last consequences to that Oh, this is a last talk before lunch Yeah, okay, yeah, I think Google answers is a collection collection of tools come out It's just like open source tool focused on on scheduling and you know multiple classes. I think I'm not I'm not an expert in answers by anyway But I think answers is is a color is way More unified collection of tools that help you to deploy Kubernetes on on-prem or in the cloud. So I think you know, you can have Istio in answers. That's for sure I don't know how you would do multi-cluster. I'm pretty sure Google has got like a Lot balancer that can distribute traffic across multiple clusters. That says for sure So I think they are quite different isn't you know different different sort of Aim for for the project Cool any other question I Guess the question is where is lunch? It's basically just a collection of tools like even in the same way you would install Prometheus So you stay the same way you would install Istio Then you install this in one cluster and that cluster become becomes cluster manager will basically become like This this entity that can manage other clusters and then it's a little bit weird because then your Qube CTL Then the same cluster will have two two Qube CTLs like two Qube companies one for the normal cluster Then if you do Qube CTL get pods you will see Kermada and then there is the Kermada Qube CTL Same Qube CTL different Qube config and if you do Qube CTL get deployments They show you that it shows you the deployment across clusters, which is like a control plane for The entire fleet you've got and and basically Kermada what it does it basically aggregates all of it all of the Qube config from all of the other Cluster, which is quite cool. Are you see a unified view of whatever is going on in your fleet? Yeah, it's it's on top. It's turtles all the way down. Oh, yeah All the code for the demo is open source and it's all line So I can share I can share the the Github repo not not an issue at all Yeah, but this this sort of stuff breaks quite easily, so I spent this morning As you can imagine, there are so many moving moving parts I was like, okay, can I do it? No, maybe and then eventually I figure out how to do I Don't I don't think that's that's the case because the the service match will basically do that work for you So I think there are like several ways you can connect multiple clusters together And then some of those will be like similar to what we do in in AWS like VPC peering where you need to be Careful about how you assign IP addresses like an example of that. I think I'm not I never use it But I think it's called it's a product called seal use selium service match So this this will be like a lower level. So we're talking about probably L2 connecting clusters, right and then if you say so the very top right most of the time layers seven So so in that in that particular case, we don't need any any precaution when it comes to networking but There are consequences on running a lot of proxies in your cluster when it comes to Yeah, I'm managing them resources. It is not three. It is not free for sure But but it is it is an option if you if you've got these kind of problems cool No one is asking where lunch is Excellent. Cool. Thank you. Thank you very much


Now, this is where we left off. We had this example. We had x prime equals 8 times x, x prime equals 8 times x. Now, we need to solve for x. x would be, let's just make sure, what is that saying to us? That it's going to be x prime, y prime equals, well it is this going to be this one times x plus 3 times y and 5 times x plus 3 times y. That's what we're saying to ourselves. So we have this linear set. x prime equals x plus 3y and y prime equals 5x plus 3y. That's what we're trying to solve. And now we need to get x. Now remember this from in the algebra, I can multiply both sides by, I can multiply both sides by a inverse, so that's going to lead me, a inverse times a times x and I've solved for x. The only problem is, well, I can definitely get the inverse of a, but what is the, what is x prime? I'm not given x prime. I'm not given x prime explicitly. I'm giving it, I'm given it in terms of x's and y's. I've been giving it in terms of x's and y's. So I've got to think of another way to solve this problem here. Okay, so let's just remind ourselves of something. These were the two solutions that we, that we saw in the previous example. But look at it. It's e to the power something times t, e to the power something times t. And I have these. Let's just call this x sub i, which i would be 1, 2, many of the words. Yes, it's 2, so I would just have k1, k sub 1 and k sub 2, k sub 1, k sub 2, k sub 1, k sub 2, e to the power something specific times t. Or if I just write it generally, I have this x equals this vector k, column vector, times e to the power lambda t. So what would x prime be? Well, that is just going to be, I'll bring the lambda forward, lambda k, e to the power lambda t. That would be x prime. But remember, we said that that x prime equals 8 times x. 8 times x. So what is x prime? Although we have x prime, it's k, lambda times k, e to the power lambda t. And that equals a times x. And there's that. That's a times x is there. That's k, e to the power lambda t. I can take lambda t after both sides. And this is what I'm left with. I'm left with lambda k equals 8k. I can just bring this to the other side. Let's just have that. We have 8k minus lambda k equals 0. Watch out now. Lambda, there, this is the scalar. It's not a vector in there. That's a scalar. So that is a scalar times a vector. This is a vector times a vector. Let me say scalar times a matrix and a matrix times a matrix. I've got to change this before I can take k out. It's very easy to do. I'm going to have 8 minus a lambda i k equals 0. So I've multiplied the scalar by the unit matrix. And if I do that, it just remains what it is. Now it is a matrix minus a matrix. I can't have a matrix minus a scalar. Okay, so I've had to have put that in. Now the only time remember when you can have a matrix times a matrix equals 0 is the determinant of this one. The determinant of this A minus lambda i has got to equal 0. A minus lambda i has got to equal 0. So what do we have here? So A is this 1, 3, 5, 3 minus lambda times pi. So remember what is lambda and then i is going to be 1, 0, 0, 1. If I multiply that, that's lambda 0, 0, lambda. So minus lambda 0, 0, lambda. So I'm left with 1 minus lambda 3, 5, 3 minus lambda. And what I need to do now is to get the determinant of that. Now let's wipe the board quickly. C4. Right, let's get the determinant of this. And the determinant of that is going to be 1 minus lambda and 3 minus lambda. And we're going to subtract from that 15. And that's going to equal 0. And that's going to equal 0. In other words, 3, we have minus 3 lambda. We have another minus lambda. And we have a lambda squared, negative 15. That's going to equal 0. So we have lambda squared minus 4 times lambda. And we have negative 12. It seems negative 12 is going to equal 0. And that means lambda. Let's have a lambda minus 6 and a lambda plus 2 is going to equal 0. Is that right? So we'll have a lambda sub 1 equals 2 and a lambda sub 2 equals 6. And those are called the characteristic values or the eigenvalues of the linear set that we're dealing with here. Good.


Hey, I'm Chanatastic, welcome back to React Holiday, date number 12, we're talking about React Fragments, a super cool feature, and we'll talk about my favorite way to use them. Yesterday, we made this really cool addition to our component where we can say what we want our Pokemon list component to render as. In this case, we want it to be an ordered list, but we can also change that to an unordered list, and that changes the root element that it's rendered as. Now, unfortunately, the way this works by default is if I delete that, the whole thing breaks, that's not a good experience. It'd be nice if it was a little bit more robust and knew how to render a sensible default. Now, we can solve that inside of our component when we destructure this, providing a default, and we could make that decision, say we want it to be an unordered list by default, and you can replace that if you want. But I really prefer to use Fragments in a place like this, so react.fragment. The cool thing about React Fragments is they return just the child elements. So it's just returning an array of the elements, no root container. I'll show you what that looks like here. If we inspect, go to our list. We can see that these items are actually being added as siblings next to this H1. So in the default case, if someone wanted to use this, they could just use that to render the items and then provide their own markup around it. Pretty cool. Change that to an ordered list. Awesome. Or my preferred way, if they actually know the API, I actually do that with an as-prop as before. So that's it. That's how React Fragments work. They're just gonna return everything inside of them as an array.


I hope you're having as good a time as we are. What an extraordinary set of talks already and we're just getting started so remember this afternoon there'll be the statue unveiling on the lawn the new plaza of the Stark County courthouse this evening this extraordinary symphony written by Chris Brubeck the son of the great jazz musician Dave Brubeck. Chris Brubeck has previously done historically based symphonic pieces on Iwo Jima on Ansel Adams and on Samuel Clemens Mark Twain. We commissioned him to write this piece on Theodore Roosevelt from the Badlands years. Its world premiere was last week Saturday night in Bismarck and it was an extraordinary experience and you're absolutely going to love it so if you if you weren't planning to come do plan to come we expect a packed house here tonight in this very space but now let me move on and we will we will not ask Ted White to reduce his talk at all we'll just get back on schedule during the noon hour. As Elliot West said last night this is one of those books that changes the way you think about some really important things the Eastern establishment and the Western experience I'm going to read the last passage from it here in just a moment. You have a long biography of G. Edward White in your brochure I won't go through all of it but it's fair to say that he's written a slew of books 14 already this one 1968 he's Harvard and Yale educated he's the David and Mary Harrison distinguished professor of law at the University of Virginia he clerked for Earl Warren I mean it's an amazing biography of accomplishments in a range of fields and Roosevelt Remington and Wister is just one area of his immense area addition I remember reading this book about five or six years ago and thinking this should be a foundation book for anyone who's doing anything involving Roosevelt or anyone interested in the in the in the origins of the mythos of the cowboy in the American West and the the open range here's a passage the last passage in the book from page 202 it was the Roosevelt generation that first called attention to a dilemma in American culture which is still present how to come to terms with metropolitan living while demonstrating the relevancy of alternative existences the search for freedom from a corporate and technological world still manifests itself in the arena of national politics as went in the flush of Barry Goldwater's triumph in 1964 pride filled delegates rose to denounce the eastern establishment whose yoke they had momentarily cast off perhaps perhaps such attempts to resist the tide of corporate professionalism are as fallacious as earlier desires to implant the yeoman farmer in the midst of technocratic America takes you right back to last night but they represent the same reluctance on the part of Americans to wholly embrace an urban and industrial society without positing alternatives to it perfect perfect analysis G. Edward White please welcome thank you clay and it's nice to be here and and I should say it's a little unusual experience for me because although my father was born in my not North Dakota this is the first time I've been in the state and and he ended up living in New England and in New York where I grew up and I only came to write the eastern establishment because as a graduate student in American Studies at Yale I wanted to write a biography of Owen Wister who his papers had just been released and were available at the Library of Congress and so I consulted people in the American Studies Department and was told pointedly that graduate students didn't do biographies at that point I one of the people that was important to me as a graduate student was Howard Lamar the famous Western historian and he suggested that I might be able to integrate my interest in Wister in a in a work on the American West because he had noted that in addition to Wister Theodore Roosevelt had grown up in the East and and gone out to the West at the same time so I went ahead I discovered that Frederick Remington although mainly known as an artist had also done some writings on the West so I decided to go ahead and write the dissertation and having done that I thought well gosh you know I I really don't see myself as a Western historian and so maybe I ought to try to find something else to do so I went to law school talk about not resisting the tide of corporate professionalism and and then found my way back into into legal academics and really haven't done any writing on Western history since I wrote a preface when the Eastern establishment was reissued in 1987 but that was just a way of thanking Howard Lamar and I didn't really add and I'm painfully aware on on preparing for this talk of how much has gone on and how much I failed to take into account when I was writing the Eastern establishment but I do agree with much of what Elliot West said last night that if we broaden the lens we can see Roosevelt's expedition to the Badlands and the ramifications of it for thinking about the figure of the cowboy in American culture we can see that perhaps in a different way so what I want to do this morning is to is to put three questions and see if we can explore them the the first question is why was cowboy life depicted by the principal persons who wrote about it in the way it was what why was it why was the representation of the cowboy so inaccurate in so many respects and why was cowboy why were cowboys chosen to be heroic figures when so much of their lives were were much more mundane secondly why did it take nearly a decade perhaps even over a decade from when ranching first got established in the years right after the Civil War for this myth of as I'm putting it of the cowboy to appear in in popular consciousness and why was the myth fashioned not by contemporaries contemporary residents of the ranching areas but by persons who lived in the east who journeyed out who experienced some intermittent excursions in the west Roosevelt being one of those and then who went back to the east and beginning in the 1880s developed this myth why didn't it happen right away why why were the people fashioning it not actually residents full-time residents of the of the west and then finally and and Elliot alluded to this last night as well finally what why does the idea of a western featuring cowboys featuring stock figures the occasional lawman the saloon keeper the desperado the vigilante the the native Americans in the background why does that western as we think of it why is that emerged as an important genre in American life when we can't say the same thing comparably about any other region if I if I employ the term western it has it has recognition in both in both books and films if I say the term eastern meaning a genre or southern or northern we're hard-pressed there may be representative novels or films of those regions but we can't think of anything stock why is it then that the western has occupied the central place well let's take them in order first the the mythical representation of the cowboy portrays him of course he's a male figure as independent self-reliant and somehow acquiring a virtue from being apart from civilization casting off the trappings of civilization and and occupying a more independent space secondly that the cowboy is a a self-sufficient figure living off the land foraging for himself finally that he has his own codes of law and justice which transcend the sort of more formal codes of civilization so on the range one settles things man-to-man and somehow the settlement is is virtuous if you look at the virginian a best-selling novel published by Owen Worcester a classmate of Roosevelt said Harvard in nineteen three the the the figure of the virginian embodies all of these sorts of virtues and and if you look at high noon the movie that is an adaptation of the virginian the gary cooper figure is is comparable well so much is left out in this portrait indeed almost everything important arguably about ranch life is left out now to understand that a little let's back up a little bit and and consider how ranching actually got started it is as Elliott said last night it is a product of the years after the United States acquires a huge amount of territory in not just the Louisiana purchase but the Mexican session you may remember that the Mexican session was the result of our war on Mexico and a number of people who were concerned about the spread of slavery opposed the war in Mexico because they felt that some of the areas which they thought that we would certainly acquire territory if we were successful in the Mexican war which we did and that that territory might be amenable for slavery and so since the major issue of the eighteen fifties is the interaction of slavery with westward expansion the Mexican war was a controversial episode but by eighteen sixty six that settled there is not going to be slavery in the territories and the territories have been acquired and they're opening up and so ranch life begins as part of this process there are also some other features of the process that are not portrayed in the so-called cowboy myth works one of them is the dispossession the displacement of the the forcible removal of Native American tribes when the Mexican secession is acquired and indeed when the Louisiana purchase before it is acquired most of the inhabitants of the territory that becomes the United States are Native American tribes and little by little they are driven from roots that settlers covet onto reservations and and sometimes with the through armed expeditions so part of the first step in establishing ranching is the dispersal of the tribes that inhabited the areas of the the next step is the discovery that longhorn cattle which had become popular for livestock in in the Texas area the southwest are capable of enduring the northern plains winters and so it's possible to move herds north into the area of the trans Mississippi west but because the land is arid in a fashion that it's not in the east of the Mississippi River because the land is arid the character of farming has to take different shape and so instead of large-scale farming with with plentiful access to water we get ranching which is which you can do in an arid area so once you get ranching and once you get the displacement of American tribes you create a need on at ranch as an enterprise you create a need for people to work on ranches to herd cattle and that's how the ranch hand emerges and a cowboy is really a hired ranch hand and cowboys are overwhelmingly young males and they are at this point in the 1870s many of them are civil war former participants in the civil war some of them are deserters from both the Union and and Confederate sides others are people who for domestic reasons decided that they didn't want to be accountable to the jurisdictions in which they lived and so they lit out for the territory forming the forming the basis of cowboy cowboys are quite in contrast to the idea of living sufficiently on the range cowboys come into town and stock up on provisions that are paid for by the people that hire them they go out and they stay with the cattle there is no particular evidence that they are to the extent that there are are records from cowboys describing their experiences it seems to be far from heroic and and so their life the the life of a cowboy is is quite in contrast to the to the myth and finally there's another development that goes on and is is extremely important in who fashions the myth right before right right after Theodore Roosevelt publishes a a book on the naval war of 1812 which he'd started as an undergraduate at Harvard College the same publisher that publishes that book publishes a book on the northern and Pacific Railroad and the northern Pacific Railroad first begins to extend its radius into Dakota territory in the early 1880s and Roosevelt gets extremely enthusiastic about riding out on the railroad and the reason he wants to ride out on the railroad and go into Dakota territory is because he wants to shoot big game he isn't he feels that the big game isn't going to be available anymore in the east and and he wants to get out and get a get a get trophies while they're still there so he becomes one of the early representatives of affluent Easterners who ride out on trains on hunting expeditions as the railroad gets established the railroad cultivates this sort of clientele and resorts spring up along the the lines from from the east coast cities to Chicago and west and people go out on expeditions and shoot or hunt and stay briefly and then come back and it is this group of people that fashions that ends up fashioning the myth one of the interesting features of the principal contributors to this myth fashioning is that they all have contacts with eastern publishers and some of their ventures are actually commissioned in advance Roosevelt's ranch life in the hunting trail is commissioned he he's actually making a living being a popular author at this point Frederick Remington who originally goes out himself comes into a New York office with some illustrations and from then on the the the the magazine commissions Remington to go out and paint and connections are drawn between Roosevelt's books and Remington's paintings Owen Worcester has a career as a nister novelist relatively unsuccessful career but ends up going out to Jackson Hole Wyoming and there develops the idea of of writing becoming a writing of on on the cowboy and and his life and and Worcester writes the Virginian when he's living in Savannah Georgia and and turns the Virginian into a kind of amalgamation of northern and southern romantic chivalric figures so this is a this is a depiction of a slice of American life that is significantly at odds with the experience of that life by the residents of it and the full-time those who full-time and our full-time inhabitants of the Trans Mississippi West and yet it becomes the basis for a kind of conception of the West though the Wild West if you will that becomes extremely popular and so Roosevelt is actually able to identify himself as a cowboy as a political figure he if one thinks about Roosevelt's political career he really is a what I would call a gentry reformer he he's interested in politics in New York State at a time when the municipal politics has been taken over by patronage and by urban machines such as boss tweed and Roosevelt is one of an unusual number of his social contemporaries mugwumps if you will who consider re-entering politics to clean it up to to to serve as a counterweight to the urban machines that are based on large numbers of immigrants to replace corruption with good government and although Roosevelt is in many respects in the 1880s a conventional Republican politician he's always on the the gentry reform side now in that sense his romanticization of the West goes hand-in-hand with his political goals in the East because both can be seen as critiques of commercial industrial patronage dominated immigrant influenced civilization that's grown up in urban and industrial centers in the East so although Roosevelt doesn't self-consciously link this up in a programmatic fashion he does link it up in a in what might be called a kind of mass appeal he presents himself simultaneously as a gentleman reformer and as a cowboy now the the cowboy part doesn't really take shape in politics until the Rough Riders episode and this introduces another theme that is part of one of the puzzles that when when one encounters this literature for the first time one is confronted with and that is why is there so much emphasis among the writers on how this experience in the West adds to one sense of masculinity why is why are people talking about how going out West makes one a real man or going out going out West is as as Remington put it the beat of hearty life and and the experiences of the West are pictured as often physical trials in which one shows one's physical prowess as a man why is why is there so much of that why does the congregationalist magazine in reviewing Roosevelt's the wilderness hunter in 1893 say the following the wilderness hunter by the way for those of you who don't know it is another collection of short stories short stories there some of them may be in fact stories episodes accounts of adventures that Roosevelt had shooting game and and and living in ranch territory it's very much like ranch life in the hunting trail and and here's what the congregationalist magazine says the man of social position and culture who can tramp for days at a time in the uninhabited mountains sleeping in the open air and depending for food solely upon his rifle sets an example of simple wholesome living which is of high value in counteracting the tendency toward effeminate effeminate nests so prevalent upon many of the young men of the present so look what's linked together in that excerpt first of all the man is a man of social position and culture but not withstanding that he can tramp for days at a time in the uninhabited mountains and sleep in the open air and depend for food solely on his rifle and in doing that he sets an example of simple wholesome living and that example is of high value why because it counteracts the tendency toward effeminate nests so prevalent upon many of the young men of the present so what you have here is a kind of rebel act by someone of social privilege living in the midst of effeminate corruption in the east who strikes out for himself and and shoots game with his rifle and lives in the open air and therefore sets a wholesome example now why it why especially because it's very unlikely that many of these people of social position and privilege did that basically they went out and hired people to help them shoot game and got trophies and came back at displayed them in metropolitan clubs or houses so why does congregationalist which has no particular dog in this fight why do they capture this particular image well at this point it looks as if what's going on is that the idea of going west in this fashion the idea of the cowboy and living the cowboy experience has gotten connected up to a sense of unease and disquiet and maybe critique that's emerging alongside living in an industrializing and urbanizing east and and and midwest cities that somehow this experience is is being portrayed as a as an escape from this now at this point the time frame the 1880s to the to the early 20th century becomes relevant because what's going on in in this period well first of all the civil war is over and there's an attempt to reconcile north and south by sort of bringing back by bringing back southerners into the union the the election of 1876 has settled the issue of reconstruction we're beginning we're for the first time a justice from the south is named as the Supreme Court of the United States Woodrow Wilson will be a southern president and so there's a sort of reintegration of of north and south and north and south northerners and southerners are in a sense both invited to consider what it's like to develop this new United States the trans Mississippi west out to the Pacific coast so there's both sides then have a stake in this and the experience seems to be one in which everybody can share now what exactly is that experience by the late 1890s the frontier the so-called frontier is closing by that is meant that as the territory of federal territories become developed there's fewer and fewer land areas that are described of as unsettled or unoccupied meaning that there's still largely areas in which American Indian tribes exist that are not allocated under reservations so the the idea of people occupying a space in between civilization and the frontier is vanishing and so this mythic space that the cowboy occupies becomes elevated becomes simultaneously a nostalgic and and romantic in addition the the historical representation of the actual process of how Americans went west from the 1780s on is beginning to be fashioned and indeed Roosevelt will be one of the fashioners in his multi-volume series of winning of the winning of the west so the winning of the west going west comes to be depicted as a kind of universalistic ritual of how of how American society has progressed from east to west from frontier to civilization conquering space building institutions like the railroad to help and the telegraph to help conquer that space turning vacant by vacant meaning occupied by Native American tribes land into profitable enterprises such as ranching and so it becomes a kind of elemental American experience so you appeal to sort of the the you'd appeal to a process that many Americans can look back to and say well that really is what developing America was all about and at the same time you ingest it with this idea of of a romantic escape from the east now how does masculinity factor in with the end of the Civil War is the end of the last armed conflict in which young males growing up can participate Roosevelt is born too late to fight in the Civil War and there is no war for the United States for another more than 30 years and and so a group of young male Americans whose fathers and whose grandfathers had the experience of fighting in a war are deprived of that option and so Roosevelt when when we have a a relatively minor skirmish with Spain which is escalated primarily by the United States into the Spanish American War Roosevelt just can't wait to fight he's been wanting to fight ever since he went to the Badlands somehow he's been wanting to have the experience now his his father did not serve in the Civil War but bought a substitute one could still do that and many Americans with means did it but you have at at one point over there's one statistic from Philadelphia that is particularly remarkable notwithstanding the the buying of substitutes half the adult population between the ages of 18 and 45 in the city of Philadelphia was participating in the Civil War so this is a experience that so many of Roosevelt's age contemporaries have had their fathers participated or at least were affected by it they didn't get the opportunity so it it somehow as if they need another experience to demonstrate their virility and so they escalate this idea of going out west and shooting game and and living off the land and acting as if they were a cowboy into that so it's it's a fascinating episode in the in American cultural history where a group of publicists craft a particular image which leaves out most of the significance of what's actually going on in the ranch experience of the Trans Mississippi West creates another image the image of displacing Indians and building railroads and and bringing cattle up for from Texas to to the plains it is largely ignored and in its place is put this romantic portrait of cowboy life and it is the romantic portrait of cowboy life that has endured now why is that what why is this sort of affinity for the Wild West genre well I again I think we have to go back to the fact that for so many of American families part of their heritage is the movement of their family from east to west either from Europe as immigrants settling or from staking out of claim initially in the east and moving west and moving further west and and what that has meant over time so when you see portraits that glamorize and dramatize the experience of doing that and at the same time experiences experiencing the kind of older vision of American of a wilderness society populated by strange beings where one had to forage off the land it it is an overwhelmingly attractive vision for readers who are for the most part not experiencing it so in the end it's it's it all starts the idea of the Western as special and having cultural significance that the other regional genres don't all starts with this particular episode and the fascinating thing about it for me it is that the people who fashion it and and the people who communicate messages that have cultural resonance are not the people who actually accurately observe what's going on thanks thank you Ted we're just about out of time and we want to catch up with me let's take nine or ten minutes for questions I have one that was sort of I think implicit in something you said so the Civil War is this cataclysmic national event in the mid-century and in binding the north and south back together culturally by creating is it is it true that by developing this myth of the cowboy it leaves out the actual reality of the Western movement which was a prolonged struggle over the advancement of slavery you've sort of replaced the narrative with a much more agreeable one yeah the the virginian in in Owen Wister's novel never talks about that never talks about the this I mean the it it it may be misunderstood or not fully appreciated by histories of popular histories of the Civil War how the crucial concern of when the when north and south were deteriorating in the 1840s and 50s the crucial concern was not with slavery but with the expansion of slavery because slavery changed from a position where it was expected to die out to a position after our purchase of Louisiana where it was expected to flourish in some regions and so all of a sudden north and south is confronted with not this well this is maybe a slightly embarrassing but after all awkward and and and and temporarily contingent experiment to one that could could continue to define America into the 20th century and so that issue not so much slavery itself is what makes who settles these territories so fraught and and basically the political parties cannot solve the issue and that's why in effect we there's a breakdown we have the Civil War after that is removed it's kind of like there's a release and so and and we can forget ultimately and by the 1880s people are making a big effort to forget there's a kind of a rehabilitation of Southerners and and the cowboy in an indirect way the cowboy myth literature is part of that question yes here hold looking back at the magazines cartoons and seeing the articles of the century and Harvard and Schridner's mission they sent writers and artists out to this area to do stories but there were also stories had geographic almost about missionaries and gold prospectors and the soldiers of course and others towards them do you think let me just quickly try to paraphrase that they're competing other narratives that could have been assumed as the central myth of the West gold-seeking and so on why did this one compete with those and so effective a fashion well of course you can't be you can't be Natty Bumpo in North Dakota because it's too arid Natty Bumpo is a hunter and a trapper and a in a tracker and I think aridity is part of the story I think that the one of the reasons that cowboys become so fascinating is because for many Easterners going out and seeing this landscape is exotic and they just think it's not like seeing the woods in the Adirondacks or the woods in in Southeast Georgia that this is a different sort of landscape and it's much harder to live on at least it's perceived as much harder to live on so you have to be much more of a man to survive this inhospitable climate something I can understand after coming to this careful yeah it's a Connecticut Yankee question I mean is this a way to un-Americanize popular stories from the European tradition you know I I've done some work on Holmes and one of the fascinating things I found out about when Holmes went to the civil went into the Civil War he enlisted he was a very enthusiastic participant and then he gets wounded three times and and he thinks about leaving and he writes a letter to one of his friends and he says if I didn't think that this war was part of the great chivalric crusade for mankind I would think twice about staying in and he and his Harvard contemporaries think of themselves as a species of knights going out to do battle so in a way this is a kind of revival of it revival of that sort of she got the again the Virginian is an emblematic figure he's he's got all the chivalric virtues he's he's loyal to women and and he he does battle for their cause he's honest and upright and true and and so that's drawing on a myth but it's fashioning it in a distinct way minus a one yes I was Two years before that, I nearly died, nothing wrong with it. Then I got seriously ill, and my attorney said, oh, there's so much complications. I said, I'm not ready to move again ever, minister. I've been in Davidson, and you know what? Look at me, I'm absolutely in excellent health. I'm nice to my mom. And there are all these two fine men around. And it's all true. Eda, thank you. A personal memoir restored by the West. That could be just natural selection, of course. Let me ask you one last question. I'm so tempted to get into Jefferson. You're at Mr. Jefferson's University. I'd love to know what he would have thought of all of this. But let me ask you a different sort of question. You know, you didn't have time to go into too much about Remington and Wister and exactly the way in which they fashioned this mythos. But we know that it happened, and we're the beneficiaries of it. It didn't happen instantly. I mean, Mark Hanna could say that damned cowboy is now the president of this country. To what extent did they know what they were creating? You know, we've had several discussions about Roosevelt's self-consciousness. I really don't think he was a very self-conscious person. I think he was a strategic politician and certainly aware of the publicity angles. But I don't think he thinks this is mythic at all. He may dress up as a cowboy for political reasons. But I think he thinks his portraits of the West are true. And that's the way it really was. And I think he thinks that he got better for being in Dakota and he undoubtedly did get better. But whether that was going to be true across the board for all people who read Roosevelt was perhaps another matter. Let me just say, and I wish we had more time, but you'll be able to talk with Mr. White at lunch. And later, unfortunately, the book, The Eastern Establishment of the Western Experiences, not here, but there's a sign-up form out at the bookstore. And you can sign up for it and the book will be sent to you. But your short book on Oliver Wendell Holmes is here and you'd be happy to sign it, I'm sure. Thank you very much for that great lecture.


Hello everyone, I'm Alicia Anderson and welcome to the Fort Report. Today on Fort Report, we are going to talk about Grease, my favorite musical of all time. With John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and all of those great songs.  Well, cooking grease can cause sewer pipes to clog, so we should probably find out how to properly dispose of it. What people should do is they should let their grease or their cooking oil cool down to room temperature and if it's cooking oil, the best thing they can do is actually put it back in the original container and then they can seal that up. And then what we would prefer they do is to take it to our ECC, our Environmental Collection Center and then turn that in and that will be used to create biofuel. With grease, they can also do a similar thing, they can scrape that off, put that in any kind of a container, preferably a glass container or something with some sort of a screw top lid and then also recycle that as well. If for some reason they're not able to recycle either of these and bring it to the ECC, they can actually put it in their trash. If you put cooking oil or grease down the drain, it will get hardened and clog your pipes. When your drain is clogged, the sewer water could back up into your home, your shower and toilet. Our sewer pipes are actually gravity-fed and they're not under pressure. So the water actually just trickles down. So because of that, it doesn't move very fast and so it allows buildups to easily occur. So as that cooking oil and grease hardens as it gets cold, it can actually back up and slowly cause a huge clog.  If it's on the city side, then that's something that we would have to come in and fix as well. We're talking possibly having to block off a road, the inconvenience to you, needless to say it costs the city money as well, which kind of back in kind of comes back to the consumer. So it's just really better if we just properly dispose of cooking oil and grease. The second annual holiday grease roundup is from November 30th through December 11th. Various cities throughout DFW are having different events. We ourselves, since we have the Environmental Collection Center, it's going to be open during its normal hours during that time. But it's just again, just to kind of highlight that as we're cooking, as we're creating all this grease, it's really best that we don't send it down the drain. Let's do something positive with it and recycle it and then have it used for biofuels. So don't pour your Thanksgiving grease down the drain. Visit the Cease the Grease website to learn more. Here's a look at other events happening in and around Fort Worth in the next few weeks. If you're listening to more events and city meetings, you always can check the calendar at the city's website.


Of course his C-Route just f**king dominated me, didn't it? Holy f**k, I like, the hot rod C-Route's nasty until W runs it, watch, lunch, watch. Yeah, look at James Harden. I mean, James Harden and Mike Trout are similar. What's the difference between James Harden and Mike Trout? Right? What's the difference? Trout doesn't behave like a f**k's hole. At least Harden makes the playoffs facts, right? And Harden lost to the Warriors a couple years, you know what I'm saying? Like, I feel like that's a good comp. Harden suits up. He don't be injured. Facts, like, that's real s**t. Yeah, I'm starting to make hella sense now, bro. How do you get a... How do you get a throwaway on that, boys, am I trippin'? I mean, dawg, there's just no f**king way that's a completed pass, man.  Exceptions! Knockout? Come on, man. Oh my god, dawg! Oh! It's just like, dawg, I got a piss. I got a piss. dawg, I just don't understand, like, how can you throw this many interceptions and just be cool? Like, just shuck and sh**. Just literally... I'ma come in the game and just jump. I just wanna shuck. Everything I got is into a shuck. Like, there's just no f**king way, dawg.  Never again will I ever do that. Yep, I learned enough. All I had to say, never again will I ever do that. Never again will I ever do that. I'll never rush and audible down to a random a** run. Never again.   In game, like, I swear to god, the lot, I just cannot, I just can't play this f**king dawg, dude. Can we please block here, boys, just a little bit here? I'm just getting f**king f**ked, dawg. Three people just absolutely eating my f**king a**, dawg. Like, and how, I double-team the left end and somehow they let the right end get the running back one-on-one. It's a three-man f**king rush! And somehow they let the, dawg, the running back is in charge of, like, how does this f**king make any sense, dawg? It makes no f**king sense, dude. None. Like, damn, I wish we had an offensive lineman that could control the f**king game, you know? That made the game. That would be f**king... Look at this s**t. Then it happens for me. Five people running in the line. Nice throw, bro. Like, dawg. Like, yo, did y'all see this white guy was going f**king dawg? Like, y'all got it, bro. I cannot block three f**king... Oh! Oh! Oh my god! He was so a**. How did M2 do his drop this s**t?  I really can't, bro. I don't know what y'all wanted me to do.  Bro, that's why we have 50-50 Raiders, dude. They have full moss. Pick that s**t off, bro. Oh my god, man. Another fourth down. Here we go. All you want to score four, that's a crazy cover four beater. But normally he backs up the corner when I'm... But he forgot to try to snap before he could do it right there. So I caught him lacking. I'm pushing right there, too. I thought... I thought I had a crazy position. Like, I really did. I really thought I was in a crazy position right there, bro. Ricky run. Superbowl action, boys. Superbowl action. No bets? We've seen no bets? Yo, that's fun. That spin move gave me hella momentum. Y'all seen it? Bro, my left bumper jizz is so... Yo, he went through the whole f**king team, bro. Oh my god, we got a touchdown in the detackle. One person went through f**king everybody.  He's... But he doesn't even do that. Like, what happened right there? Come on. It's no way you got bagged on that, bro. Stretch. That might be a L. One sats of beef. Of course, this C-Route just f**king dominated me. It ain't it? Holy f**k. I like... These kids know something. Oh, y'all got it, bro. Y'all got this game, dude. Y'all got it. I got a block right there. Something else, something more. That hot rod C-Route's nasty until W runs it. Watch. Lynch, watch. Swive side of the field, too. Look, the way y'all got... The way y'all on the ground and s**t. Like, we just had... It's just a dot and I can't... dawg, like... Oh, my God. I'm really about to put 700 offensive linemen abilities. There's no way, Ricky. Oh, my God, bro. I'm all stuffed up. Yeah, you tried that play. That was cute, bro. That was cute. It was. Ah, he switched up his defense. Love to see it. Actually, this is better defense. I'm so upset that he went from... It's honestly sad how afraid I am of this. That was the best pass protection I ever got. You just better just play cover for everything. You just can't block three people. With six people, you can't block two people. With six people, you can't block three people. Maybe I need to go back to post-up. Maybe that's what I need. All right, so I'm going to go back to that C-Route. He does. Come on, Macalester. You got to get through that, kid. The one time he passed, he closed his eyes and chucked to the C-Route. The only way he doesn't do that again is literally sitting in the stream looking at it. He'll put a slant and throw a slant. Watch. That's how you know they're in the stream. Oh, sticking nod. Oh, my God. That was nasty. I really thought he was going to throw a slant. Justin Fields was out there, huh? Short knockout. There you go. Nice. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Got attention. Let's go. Niners get a double, Jimmy G. Yay or nay, boys. That dude Trey. Trey, what's the name? Trey Leung? Trey Lance? Bro, he look lost. Why did they draft him, dog? Why would they draft Trey Lance? Who the f*** is that guy, bro? He don't even look like a quarterback. Dude, I guess you just can't throw that for a completion, huh, boys? Dog, you can't throw this. Not a touchdown. How do we drop the ball, bro? Hold him, boys. At the end. Dog, who the f*** got through him? Oh, my God, man. There's just no way that you got shitted that f*** fast to throw it out wrong. It's just no way. That's Trey? Oh, you got short f***. You got medium. Spin. Earl knows something. I mean, Moss, we got to get some separation there, right, boys? Dog, like Randy. Like, bro, the n***a normal f*** is nuts, bro. That's behind this old P. Packs, packs, packs, packs. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Suckers. Suckers.


o Raj Raj reaching out to you know i can see that kind of process it's a great idea for a clerk it's a five person phone tree yeah the practice thus far is if something's going on i have alerted andrew and then he has taken the communication from there for the rest of you folks um but certainly i think again next agenda item in terms of thinking through some of these policies and how this stuff can work we're really you know we're at a time in the city where lots of things can work differently than how it's been set up so um but that certainly has been workable from my perspective thus far um okay uh just so you know these uh four particular um uh folks are um required and directed by state statute in their own way um so a direction or a policy from the council can't send these folks in a different direction that is not in line with um the state statute um okay organizational chart this is probably a little there or slash very hard to read um but essentially we have about 50 to 55 full-time employees um we've got public works uh water quality superintendent this is chelsea for the wastewater treatment facility uh director of human resources the library the police is under the town um and we contract with them for those services uh finance director uh recreation parks uh we also contract with the assessor that is through the reappraisal um that contract is through the reappraisal the police contract is 10-year contract um uh communications and strategic initiatives director um fire chief our fire are all um uh paid on-call volunteers we have no full-time fire department members um and then we've got the clerk then also we have other contracts we have uh the city engineer contract with hamlin engineering our city attorney is moinehan safar um and then also right now as you know we've got the it managed service provider with open approach that will start in july um these appointments will also be on near term future agendas coming your way um for the ones that have uh uh council input on that um facilities uh these are the facilities that we've got um in the city uh the sx dog park has an asterisk on it only because that is not city-owned property that's state-owned property um that we use for that dog park um and the budget just a couple of slides in here but i think we're all fairly familiar with this at this point um this is the um 20 f y 24 budget um is 11.4 million um revenues of that the biggest chunk of this is from residential properties the gray is from um um commercial properties global foundries is here in blue and the yellow is miscellaneous revenues um and then this is how the expenditure expenditures play out um streets is this uh large one in green that's 14 percent the largest chunk is the health and human services for us that's where we put the police department sx rescue and a number of other services under there purchasing policy we've got a purchasing policy that was done in 2018 um essentially this helps guide us and lets us know who has the authority to make purchases based on a certain price point um for uh the most part if it's over 40 000 it comes to the city council um also for grants if there's any um financial obligation of the city in a match that those will always come to um the council instead of me um a tiny selection of a very very long list of um projects that are on the list um and separation is in caps at the top just to really let you know that this uh as a project and an effort is not anywhere done in terms of operational perspective there is a lot that's still on our plate from a day-to-day basis on on doing that and so um it certainly has uh limits our capacity for other things that we can be doing right now um but we will get through it um then uh we've got the two link in renovation um so the strategic planning initiative so that's really um you'll you folks will have soon on your a future agenda what that full rfp will look like so you can take a look at that and guide us on any changes that you want with that before we put that rfp out to get a facilitator to help us with that strategic planning effort um we've got the construction projects um hopefully you have all seen that information already but we've got it on the uh next coming up on the agenda as well um and then of course we've got a number of different things happening from the housing perspective um I think really thinking through ordinance enforcement and how that should happen and um what are what things are already in place now and how to address that properly um as we figure out how to develop and set up that um that job description going forward uh we've got project uh for the amtrak station uh one main street park there's uh the revenue structure idea for setting up a stormwater utility um we have a 10-year assessment at the wastewater treatment facility to figure out what the big um needs and focus should be going forward you've got a governance committee that is required in the charter to look at so for the most part the charter was set up somewhat to mimic what the village was set up as and so um we'll need to be looking at that uh we have an association and the uh city it is not a union it's an association um and that contract um we will start negotiating that contract in the fall so we have an rfp out right now for a salary study that's uh in place to help us prepare for that negotiation um future facility needs um you guys will soon see this if you haven't so far when we we will set up some tours um public works is in real need um of a new facility really um and then fire and recreation have some real needs too but public works is um uh really really necessary to figure out um and of course small topic um just focus on uh being more equitable and inclusive um and everything that we're that we're doing um so this is a short list of everything that is sort of going on and in the works right now there is a lot more on this list and then there's an excessively long list in terms of uh future ideas and things that we want to be working on and i think in the strategic planning process we'll very much be bringing all of that to the forefront and really hoping to try to help prioritize and figure out where the city wants to go um with some of that work can i ask a question in regards to destruction projects i know i know it's in down the agenda above those three projects yeah but if the public is interested in what else public works is working on i know there's a discussion recently concerning sidewalks for instance they want to see where that work is being done is our place that they can see that yeah that's a great question so really a lot of that is dealt with through the capital um the capital plan and we do have a capital um review plan committee that we are going to be pulling together in june for the first time in a long time um and amber is on that committee um and uh it's a really great effort where we can bring all of these west street sidewalks certainly will be brought to the table um and uh it's helpful to see all of these items together because this committee can then help prioritize those and then it helps inform your next year's budget in terms of what kind of starts rising to the top um the other thing that we do have that's a little bit harder to find because it's not really as well defined um is we do have a strategy for prioritizing the individual paving projects um and this year we also are getting some support from cc r p c to do an inventory of the sidewalks so then we can also get the sidewalks in a plan in terms of figuring out how to do that um because what will get it what will make its way into the capital plan is really the what's at the top of those more specific individualized plans so yeah okay hiring we like others have vacant positions that we would love uh people to come for so uh this is pulled off of the website last week um this changes quite a bit um and so maybe not the most up-to-date list but uh and then we will also be advertising for um two new positions the assistant clerk and the administrative assistant um uh any day night if not posted already um so please spread the word um yeah so if i were sitting at home and watching this right now and i thought to myself hey i'm interested in being a shelver in s-extinction how would i become that you would go to city of s-extinction dot apply to job dot com slash apply that's awesome okay some upcoming events just to let folks know about the memorial day parade saturday may 27th 9 30 pre-program and 10 a.m parade begins that's the route um i don't know that mind also the library is hosting a community fair on saturday june 17th from one to four so they really um have invited a number of different organizations and we'll be highlighting folks of um so if anybody wants to been looking to get involved in stuff or thinking about different things um uh great think go check it out uh we have offered um sent that invitation to them um and so if folks want to go they can uh we were also originally thinking that we would have sort of an overall table to highlight them because we would maybe still have open positions but i'm hoping as the timeline works out we won't actually have any open positions by the time this um this event happens um then uh juneteenth uh will uh voices for inclusion in sx and westford is hosting an event on saturday june sunday june 18th from one to three at the sx experience and then we've got the fourth of july event okay so we've got some resources hyperlinked in here there are other good ones that are not in here yet um like the uh vlct and secretary of states um open meeting law sections of their website and the code of ethics that i am uh subject to so we'll add to that list and get it out to you folks um any questions thoughts thank you for doing this together all right thank you very much will this be available on our website anywhere yeah i think we should probably so um what when you ski does which andrew found is they keep this on the city council's website so it's always right there as a helpful resource and then some of these links that you see here are kind of also put there as well um so i think we can definitely do that so it can just be um a quick frame of reference um for everybody so yeah we can do that and as the segue to the next but um agenda item um they and a couple other towns i've seen also put what will be our result from the strategic planning process on the city council site and in winterski's case it's a pdf of a spreadsheet with how it relates to their maybe comprehensive plan and diversity goals and other things and i think it's it's a great goal for us to kind of emulate and improve on yeah and i think i had it in the slide but i didn't really touch on it but i think the hope and the goal is that we do this strategic planning effort that looks a few years out and then we use that as the sort of starting place for an annual process where we really are taking a look at that um and reporting back on where we are um what any other you know pressing needs might be um and taking some time to get council input on that list and let's say the springish time and then that every year we do this and that helps uh guide the development of the budget for the following year in the fall and helps us report out when we're proposing the budget you know how do we do last year what are we thinking about doing this year yeah yeah great okay i think that's it on this agenda item the ethics policy is in here just for your knowledge all right so the next um next agenda item just talking about city council policy updates um many of these are really old you want to introduce this for me too uh yeah so i mentioned these in the presentation so you've got a communication policy from 2019 um there's a policy regarding trustees meetings from 2009 um other communities also have a rules of procedure for the council um that could be probably pretty helpful to put together and not necessarily a policy that requires that you know it can be a little bit more nimble with it if you want to change some things along the way um and you know we i think it would be good and logical for folks to sort of just take a look at those documents see um what we could do in the rules of procedure and um just get those updated and and refreshed um so the thinking was that if there's two council members who sort of want to take a stab at this and then bring some concepts back to the full council that would be great yeah the only other thing i'd add to that is it'd be um it'd be great for those two i love that idea for those two to reach out to individual counselors the other three and do this for themselves you know what thoughts do you have are there any resources or any examples that you have so a you're not doing this in a vacuum and be when it does come back to the whole board that input has already been sought and kind of with the process along i don't think that that necessarily violates anything we talked about half an hour ago um it's no decisions are being made it's more of a consultative kind of process where it's like an interview um and i really encourage especially with the meeting procedures to really you know push the envelope a little bit um and an example of that is are some of the things we have to decide able to be decided in the background enabling what will eventually become more time to communicate with the community in these meetings or more workshopping and it's like pie in the sky stuff but i really do want to like think about over the next couple years how do we engage more and have people more better informed being of of that connection with the community so are there ways that we can still follow statute but we imagine how our meetings flow and um it's kind of a cool opportunity to just to see how it works are there are there times periodically where we hold the meetings at different times you know to to reach other people and take different pressure off staff so anyway those kind of those kind of things and really thinking outside the box and seeing what other what other communities have managed to do is we don't necessarily have to do this from scratch ourselves but with that in mind are there any council members that want to take this on before that goes too far down that path when Virginia and I were putting or talking about presentation and and we were talking about this in particular uh with the meeting policy personally that is something that's as a person who would be running the the meetings i would highly recommend if you would like to and have the time that you be one of the committee members or one of the council members to be a part of this process since you ultimately need to be comfortable in the way the meetings run since that's your defined role so if you have the time and the interest i think it would be good for you too um how many of these are we doing he's hesitant he's hesitant yet he completely appreciates the same um this is a new role um yeah i'd be happy to work on that we can't do three um i'd be happy to work on that as well just like we just talked about these two at the moment yeah yeah oh you want to do that together okay great let's decide unless anybody else amber marcus okay great all right so we're looking at just to make sure i understand meetings and because it's late and i'm starting yeah communication policy and and meeting policy to start with yeah great yeah thank you um and a nice handy dandy guide for the community so that they know what to expect and i'm not on this committee so i got ideas that used to be on our website we used to have a thing about like what to do when you came to the city and the middle of trustee to the capitol to the city of trustee and used to be on loves well hopefully that we can do something like like a companion or um yes yeah the building do you do we need a motion for this i don't think so i don't think so great awesome all right oh i included these old policies in here i think um just wanted to make this the longest packet of all packets um okay uh so construction projects uh so we have put out a press release um on the three construction projects the pressing connector the main street waterline and the culvert replacement on brickyard um this is just some uh information generally in terms of the timelines of those three projects um and uh really want to make sure folks are aware that if you do want to get on the um list for the daily emails um uh the information here is how you uh who you reach out to in order to get that sorry i'm just trying to zoom in on that um so the daily emails so folks know our will happen for the crescent connector project and the main street waterline project we're not intending to do that for the brickyard culvert because that project is basically the road is closed once the road is closed and there are many updates to be had until the project is done um so uh that is it on that agenda item there's uh no business to do but just wanted to try to elevate that information um question in relation to it yeah um when the railroad work was getting done i did talk to a number of business owners along that route expressed a lot of concern because of the lack of signage and lack of awareness for for drivers and they're still concerned with this new upcoming connector project that these businesses are going to suffer because people are not going to be driving up the road swear i just got it scratching it through um so i'm i'm curious to hear what is going on to make sure that there's ample signage and access for cars because the last time there was a sign that the businesses are open but it was put up in such a way that it really kind of blocked the roadway and wasn't inviting at all so i'm i would like to hear what what the plans are yeah so um the specific plan i think is a little bit different in terms of where we are in each in each section um but um we have heard that question from um Karen's closet already um and rick hamlin is the resident engineer on this project and is going out there and talking with everybody along the the stretches for each of those um and we will um you know have a specific answer for you right now other than we'll try to just do as best as we can to make sure that it's clear and apparent that who's open and how you get to those to those folks yeah and for those at home listed on here are other ways you can find out which is looking for updates on the city website um reports forum and social let's see participates at which is currently facebook yep all right that's it that's it for the agenda for the evening um scent agenda do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second great all those in favor of approving the consent agenda let's say hi hi hi i'm supposed to be sent to gentle passes um reading file board member comments any question from the reading file sure um reading the uh note from the Howard center i'm curious as to what the primary drivers are for sx junction to have such a high percentage of contacts in comparison to communities like holchester and south burlington have higher populations than we do which seem to have half as many i think those numbers are both sx town and junction so it is the full 22 000 okay i just want to be clear i mean i'm not the police too famous but obviously but it is the full 22 000 person community then in in still in that regard south burlington is i i'm not looking at the at right now i'm just trying to get to that page but i believe it's still half of ours and they're even with the town that's less or what is it you know it's close it's it's it's 70 for south burlington in 86 i'm unable and it does fluctuate i have and you can see you know services by town at the very bottom of that graphic you know it does fluctuate among the towns um that said there is a interesting conversation to be had around funding for this program and what communities do and don't pay for it and get used it um and so that's just something that chief hogan management of the community is very aware of and it does come up um 56 hours i think it was a police interaction saved which means um police spent 56 hours doing actual police work and there were 56 hours and i don't know how many fewer encounters that weren't escalated because it's incredible program and i worry that um those employees are now going to get pilfered as burlington creates its own program with burlington city benefits and pay and are is very likely that a lot of these employees will probably leave an agency that is already struggling to keep them so it's a fantastic program and um it's a little worrisome to see how this is going to stay up for the next six months here especially given the documentation requirements that these uh workers are required to do from department of mental health right then with uh city of burlington they would not need to do right because i'm out of da yep nope um but it's it's interesting to know too um to the police department's credit um they're huge fans of this program um and big supporters and that's worth noting yeah and i'll just add that they also i was able to participate in a training that they did for the library um where they just came in and really helped talk through how to deescalate and they're really it's an amazing resource because you can everybody even business owners can contact them directly for assistance it doesn't need to be through the police department so it's really pretty awesome i am not tonight but i'd be curious to hear and this is the only thing i have to be curious to hear later on what the status is if the conversation started maybe a year ago around traffic calming i think there was like folks from pleasant street neighborhood and rick hamlin and some others that were going to get together and and talk about novel approaches to um the traffic calming i'll just be curious to see if anything came of that um since then i have a comment sure um given the the comments recently about the sidewalks and hearing today about the uh the study that's going to be done with cc rpc to help do an inventory of our sidewalks in the conditions would the timing be would the timing uh align well where could the capital committee possibly talk about ways to utilize some local option tax funding to create a sidewalk replacement program similar to our paving program where there's a portion of funds that go directly to sidewalks uh to help whether it be 10 feet 100 feet a thousand feet in a year to continuously replace and update our sidewalks so that that way what's currently on west street as an example does not continue and or be repeated on others yeah um and that's just that's another one of those another one of those um scoring mechanisms and processes that would really i think benefit from some re-evaluation over the next period of time and that's on the for giant list that virginia has been she keeps telling me mailing me back out of the list it's gulk off one more thing in the list but it does beg the question now because some of those calculations are rather odd you know if a lot of people show up at a particular meeting it can speed the score for no other reason and um so how do we i'm not familiar with it as it should be amber i mean definitely you and andrew spend time on that committee but um it's another one of those things that could use a another look um all right well without uh anything else i have some updates sorry i can get through it quick no it's um so uh ejrp just took 76 eighth graders to washington dc it had a really great time um walked over 25 miles had great weather a busy schedule and got to meet with representative ballant which was really cool i understand she took a good amount of time with the kids and that's great um they also at home here provided vacation camp for 120 kids um from 730 to 530 um at maple street and adl which was great this week uh finance and public works have uh worked together at the next step of the water utility billing process and they've got shut off notices and door hangers out and distributed this week um today all staff had a respectful workforce training um with karen stockwell which is stockwell which is really really great um we have i mentioned this already i think at some point in the agenda today that uh we have the committee appointment advertisements going out um so yeah that's why we won't have any open positions for the um community fair day um cv e is going to be hosting champlain college's graduation on saturday so expect heavy traffic on pearl street from 8 to 10 a.m and then again when they leave around 12 to 12 30 later on they have the graduates which will be less impact their thinking um and yeah that's it sorry about that no bro it's a new it's a new section of the agenda i know i've been here before anything else then we turn second all second all those in favor say aye hi hi amber thanks for staying up good night amber