You are about to hear a story based on actual events to protect the innocent names and places have been changed Auto light and its ninety-six thousand dealers bring you mr. Ray Milan in a story taken from life tonight's presentation of Suspends Tonight auto light presents the log of the Marne a true story concerning a British gun boat trapped by communist fire 140 miles from help starring mr. Ray Milan Hi, Harlow, what's that? Oh, I have that's my auto light stay full battery the battery that needs water only three times a year in normal car use Looks like a sure starter Harlow Dependable as a die have and what's more it's famous among car owners everywhere Because the auto light stay full needs water only three times a year in normal car use and it gives longer life, too As proved by tests conducted according to accepted life cycle standards sounds like a winning combination to me Harlow Right you are happy and you can get one at your nearest auto light battery dealer He services all makes of batteries to quickly find his name. Just call Western Union by number and ask for operator 25 That's me and I'll gladly tell you the location of your nearest auto light battery dealer where you can have your battery check this week And remember from bumper to tail light. You're always right with auto light And now with the log of the Marne and the performance of mr. Ray Milan auto light hopes once again to keep you in South Spence Log entry HMS Marne entered this day by the tenant commander James G. Harland officer in command According to statements by surviving officers and men The situation of the vessel during the morning 20th of June 1949 was as follows Marne was proceeding west in the Mingkian River on a routine supply mission from Fuchao to Yenping According to edicts issued by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Marne had more than 14 hours of grace In which to reach her destination But at 20 minutes past nine the communist Open fire The second shell struck the wheelhouse three of the five men there were killed All communication to and from the wheelhouse was destroyed in the Marne immediately went off course Meanwhile to consecutive direct hits were suffered by the bridge All personnel there including the captain either killed or wounded Second in command lieutenant Bennett Moore in spite of shell fragments in his right lung and side alone on the bridge Had control of his faculties until the arrival of lieutenant Hugh Fraser Fraser reporting sir Good log more. I'm all right. I was shouldn't come on Not yet how about the others some of them yet we're off course Fraser I can't contact the wheelhouse signal engine room when you full speed of stern Full speed of stern both get a bearing on the battery. We'll return fire No response on the engine room. I can try again quickly. We're on a ground No use for they don't answer Why is this happening? Why did they fire on us? I'll try the transmitting station bridge TS Bridge transmitting station Nothing no communication at all. Everything's gone. We haven't fired one round back. I'll try to get down to the engine room That's okay. It's no use Fraser. No use. We're going aground 15 minutes after the attack was opened Marne was aground Neither a guns nor be guns were able to bear on target since her stern was toward the battery Consequently X gun was ordered in a local control There was no care for the wounded the sick bait been hit the medical officer and his assistant killed X gun got all three rounds then it was hit the entire gun crew being killed Small arms are issued since they were the only remaining weapons When sir you see the person yes, I think he's just fired. Thank you What oh yes Fraser I'm all right. Oh, it's 50 caliber I wish they would send borders and they'd stop firing. I don't expect them now They would have sent them they seem to have decided to reduce us to wreckage Think we can abandon ship of the wounded get to the national side of the river. No, there aren't enough life boats left They've seen to that the rotten Said they've stopped. Oh, I shouldn't they look what they've done to us June 21st the following day I received orders in Hong Kong to proceed by air to Marne as they take along medical supplies and the medical officer Lieutenant Robert Lamb Our Sunderland was fired upon as we landed Although we sustained enough damage to make it impossible to transfer all of the supplies We considered ourselves fortunate to have half aboard when the flying boat was forced to leave It was put to immediate use by the MO when I was taken to the officer in command In here sir. Oh, yes, we've had to use the radar room as a command center, sir Almost everything else has been knocked out. I see I should want a complete report in the condition of the ship after I speak to more Yes, sir. Do you think he's fit to carry on Fraser? Oh, no, sir. No, I'm surprised that he's still alive. He's not able to stand now demo Here we are sir Who is it? It's Fraser Bennett. Oh, I heard a plane tonight. I'm sure I did. Yes Sunderland brought a doctor and medicine Bennett. This is Lieutenant Commander Harland. Lieutenant Moore. Oh, I don't try more Thank you, sir. The C&C asked me to Convey his admiration for what you've done more. Oh, thank you, sir Do I understand that I'm being relieved of my command? Good Lord. You've done all you can. You're in no condition to go on I'm all right, sir. I Feel much better than I did yesterday. I I'm sorry more my orders are to assume command. I can't do anything else Yes, now Fraser. I should like to meet with the other executive officers. There's only one now, sir Oh Phil's died this morning. There's only Alden and myself now sir. I see and I should want to meet him if you could suggest a place This is Lieutenant Alden, sir. How do you do, sir? Oh, how do you do sit down? Thank you, sir You've had quite a go. Yes, sir And I don't think any of us would mind if we knew the reason behind it We were told that the Communist had promised us 14 hours to reach Yenping. They had so we were entirely within our right But they fired on us. There's been no explanation Dispatches were sent to the headquarters immediately. We received your message When were you shelled last morning and we were sending some of the wounded ashore to the nationalists. Oh, I Didn't know that. Yes, sir They sent a junk out last night and we asked them to come back at dawn with some more boats They told us they'd see them safely to food child But the men who really need help couldn't go they were too torn up to live through the journey. How many did you send 42 sir? How many seriously wounded are there 35 sir and how many dead 31 sir Your original compliment was 149. Yes, sir. There are 41 of us left. I see But we still have power. Oh, yes, sir They fared quite well below decks, but the communication between the bridge and the engine room was knocked out Is there anyone aboard who can repair it? I'm not sure yet. Yes Fraser. Liliths is left. Oh, I wasn't sure so he can do it Are you gonna try to reflota sir make a run for it reflota if possible? Yes I'd like to be ready to make a run for it if we ordered to what about the guns? They're all gone, sir What about fuel depends on how long we stay sir we were to refuel and in pink I'm afraid navigation will be a bit of a problem, sir. The charts were burned Well, we still have to do with what we have won't we yes, sir And I'd like every available man put to work at once on the foredeck I'd like everything that is heavy and can be broken loose moved out In the meantime, I want any water ballast and all the fuel oil in the forward tanks pumped out over the side So yes, I think the loss of fuel oil at the moment is not as important as getting more on a float again June 22nd 3rd 4th and 5th were required to repair communications enlightened the bow Small arms fire raked the decks occasionally and reminded us that the communists were watching our every move Hoping to put them off guard. I therefore halted all activity until the 2nd of July and then shortly after midnight Assisted by a moonless night. We raise steam and backed off to anchor without incident morale improved immediately July 15th an attempt to shift our berth was answered by a 30-minute barrage It was obvious that the communists were destroyers if we tried to leave July 18th Shortly after midday communist forces were seen crossing the river below us against no nationalist resistance of any kind Later that same day they crossed above us as well and we realized that we were completely cut off. I Ordered all ventilation shut off to conserve fuel July 20th after a month had passed We had our first direct contact with the communists a major kong requested me to come ashore to talk with him I accepted his invitation met him in a hut a short distance from the river I wish to make it clear that your ship will not be molested if she does not move and That there is no more trouble from your ship trouble You realize that this would not have happened if you had not fired first I think you're mistaken you fired first and I would appreciate safe passage down the river. I cannot grant you a safe passage It is up to my superiors But first you must admit that you fired first July 26th to conserve our already meager food stores offices and men were put on half rations One refrigerator was put out of service to save more fuel on July 28th.  Oh Well, I'm happy to hear that you are not too unhappy aboard your ship No, not at all, but you would like to go down the river. Yes, especially since you have absolutely no reason to hold us here I Can give you a safe passage if the British side will acknowledge that they invaded Chinese waters Without the authority of the Chinese people's liberation army This will be a document The word invaded cannot be used. It is the most serious word to use There may be some difference between the Chinese wording and the English wording.  It was not a guilty act and you cannot use the word invade It means that we are at war and we are not we are a friendly nation and always have been if you do not wish to cooperate I Suggest that we leave this until a later meeting. I insist that we continue this discussion Then you are ready to admit the British guilt. I Think the subject at hand is your guilt You are holding a British ship and British subjects under the threat of destruction You are causing great suffering lack of fuel oil has caused me to stop the ventilation system in mid-summer My food is spoiling because I can't run the refrigerators There's a danger that even drinking water will be unavailable You are responsible for the condition of that ship and the welfare of the offices and men Then you do admit the British guilt. I do not Then I suggest that we leave this for a later meeting. I warn you too if you move the ship Every effort will be made to destroy it Auto light is bringing you mr. Ray Milan in the log of the Marne tonight production in radio's outstanding theater of thrills suspense Say hap, what's the surest thing in the world? You got me Harlow Why starting your car if you've got an auto lights day full battery hap its tops Independable starting power and it needs water only three times a year and Harlow right only three times a year in normal car use That's because the auto lights day full has three times the liquid reserve of ordinary batteries And the auto lights day full gives longer life as proved by tests conducted according to accepted life cycle standards Is not a better battery built and it's carried by your neighborhood auto light battery dealer He services all makes of batteries and has special test equipment if a new battery is needed He also has an auto lights day full for your car So take a tip from me see your auto light battery dealer this week to quickly find his name Just telephone Western Union by number and ask for operator 25 That's me and I'll gladly tell you the location of your nearest auto light battery dealer and remember from bumper to tail light You're always right with auto light And now auto light brings back to our Hollywood soundstage mr. Ray Milan in Elliott Lewis's production of the log of the Marne a dramatic report well-calculated to keep you in suspense The entire months of July and August were taken up with trying to maintain life in an all-but-dead ship and in pointless Decisionless meetings with the communists. I over and over again repeated my demands for oil They repeated their demands that I admit British guilt By September 9th conditions abroad were quite serious Officers and men were without any of the conveniences afforded by a modern ship and they were almost without food Morale was at its lowest ebb when I heard a shout from the deck It was Admiralty fuel seized by the communists when they took yin ping They'd charged more than 400 pounds for his delivery, but it put life into the man The drums were brought aboard by hand pulling an empty denormous dried tanks Everyone offices and men buckled down to the job It took 11 hours and when it was finished every man on the ship was exhausted, but happier than they'd been for 100 days Good morning, sir. You sent for me. Yes. Come in Fraser. Yes, sir How much fuel oil did we take aboard last night at 296 drums? That's approximately 56 tons. Yes That should do us nicely. Oh, yes, sir. It already has Ventilation's running again. It reached a hundred and thirty six degrees in the engine room yesterday. Yes Yes, I know it's uncomfortable. Uh Fraser, I'd like to have you arrange a working party. Yes, sir I want the anchor cable lashed with bedding But first I want the bedding to be soaked thoroughly in soft soap and grease the anchor cables Yes, every time the ship swings at her moorings the cable screeches and scrapes. It's rather getting on my nerves After more than three months. It's getting on your nerves.  Yes, sir. When you've put your men to work bring Alden Lillis Lam and Nisbet I'll explain the reasons for my decision At three o'clock in the afternoon of 30th of July I conferred with the two executive officers the medical officer Engine room artificer Lillis and the senior telegraphist Nisbet. I want to break out tonight at 10 I've asked you here, so I could tell you my reasons why we should and I want you to give me any reasons why we should not I think all of us have had enough of this sir. Yes The delivery of fuel last night was important for two reasons one At least 47 tons of fuel will be needed to drive us to the open sea They gave us 56 tons which really leaves little to spare. That's right, sir Tonight will be the last one for a month with the phase of the moon right for a breakout The moon is due to set at 11 o'clock So I've decided to slip away at 10 accepting one hour of the waning moon is an unavoidable handicap Now we'll need every minute of time if we hope to get past the big guns at liangkong before dawn Now rain's farther inland have raised the river and traveling by night without a river pilot We'll need all the water there is to get us over the mudflats Lillis. Yes, sir. If we come under fire, I shall ask for smoke. Understand? Yes, sir I think everything's in tip-top shape below decks. We'll do the best we can sir. Good Nisbet. Yes, sir. Wireless silence will be enforced until I'm ready to send a message. Then only flash procedure will be used Yes, sir. Lamb and Fraser. Yes, sir. I want to make ma on a splinter proof as possible Now seated with that the wireless office the bridge and the habitable mess decks are sandbagged If we haven't enough sand use mattresses or cushion covers or canvas kit bags anything Yes, now make your preparations as soon as possible, but do no work on deck until after dark I don't want you to be seen Grease all the bright work to cut reflection Now you can do that during daylight after dark break out canvas and stretch it from the superstructure for and after change our silhouette Very good, sir. Now then If we are hit and sinking I will beach the ship if it's possible to save lives The ship's company will get ashore then I will blow up man If disaster does come your main object is to reach Fuchao or escape in junks to the open sea Any questions? Just one sir. I wonder what old Major Kung will say tomorrow when he's dipped to private Well, don't underestimate our Major Kung Fraser It's entirely possible that he arranged the oil delivery so the week would break out So they'd have a chance to destroy us However, pass the word along to the ship's company And good luck to you all. I hope we make it At least we'll have a devil of a good shot at it At seven I ordered steel helmets to be issued to the men who would be stationed on the upper deck At nine I climbed to the bridge to accustom my eyes to the darkness At three minutes past ten we prepared to leave Engine room reports are ready, sir Good. Order them to obey telegraphs Yes, sir Engine room obey telegraphs Rutter amidships, Winston Amidships, sir Half a head port Half a head port, sir Slip anchor cable Slip cable, sir Slip cable Not a sign, sir Not a splash Half a stern starboard Half a stern starboard, sir Harder starboard Harder starboard Harder starboard Harder starboard it is, sir Steady as she goes Steady as she goes Sir, yes, Fraser The funnel, sir Spewing sparks Oh, blast it Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. We've started They'll see that if they aren't blind, sir Shall I order alarm? Not yet. Port fifteen Port fifteen, sir Steady now Steady, sir Well, we've got round Half a head, both ten knots Half a head, both ten knots, sir I don't think they see us I don't think they do It did seem that our departure had gone unnoticed We passed downstream quietly and without trouble for fifteen minutes But then a flare illuminated the river It went up from shore, sir Yes, should we count? Probably control point Another battery, too There, sir Of the port power Is that a vessel? Yes Yes, it's a patrol craft Keep it fifteen port winster Yes, sir Read the depth reports, Alden We're closing the beach Yes, sir Control vessel, Fraser No, sir Land battery There, sir See the flash? Yes, full ahead, both Full ahead, both, sir What's the depth, Alden? Give me the readings Six volumes Six volumes Five and a half volumes What's the patrol vessel going to do? Set a crash course in that ship and steer him into her Into what, sir? I want to pass as close to as possible We'll smother her guns One thing, Fraser Our trip is no longer a secret No, sir, the gas is blown, all right I wish a hundred and forty miles lay behind us Instead of ahead But it's better than sitting still, sir Just a bit of starboard wheel now, winster Aye, sir We passed Xuikao without sustaining damage Shortly before one in the morning Still at full speed We passed Kaining Under much the same conditions At three o'clock, Lanxia But from the outset I had dreaded the final problem Of passing under the nine inch guns at Liangkang Searchlights probing the darkness Told us before we reached it That they knew we were coming And were waiting Our only advantage was the breath of the river At its mouth and we used it Hugging the North Bank And chancing free for the mortar I remember that the cool air of the open seas Seemed almost tenderizing and unreal We reached a point Directly across from the fort And one of their searchlights found us Give me smoke Make as much black smoke as you can Right, sir Make black smoke as much as you can Starboard 20, winster Starboard 20 Starboard 20, sir Zigzag Keep us from getting a fix on us Five seconds to starboard Five seconds to port Count them yourself Count them aloud if you like Aye, aye, sir Give me the depth olden Yes, sir One, two, three Eight and a half Five, starboard Eight and a half One, two, three One, two, three Give us that and I think we'll be safe Five, starboard Make more smoke Make more smoke Seven, one It's that course for Hong Kong, sir Half speed ahead boats Yes, sir Half speed ahead boats I'm going to the wireless room Yes, sir Hello, Nisbet Hello, sir Congratulations, sir Thank you It is good to feel her role to the sea again Nisbet I want to send a signal to Commander-in-Chief Yes, sir Have rejoined The fleet Yes, sir God save the king I think that's all, Nisbet Suspense Presented by Auto-Light Tonightstar Mr. Ray Milland Hey, Hap Did you hear about the meeting? What meeting, Harlow? Why the meeting of our American truckers This week in Chicago You know, Hap Trucking is one of our most important industries And it's the lifeline of the more than 25,000 American communities Which depend on trucks alone For the delivery of their necessities And that's not all Right, you are, Hap For those careful and competent cargo conveyors Can claim an unequaled highway safety record For sure With millions of accident-free miles every year And that great record is largely due To the American Trucking Association's Never-Ending Safety Campaign Which Auto-Light is proud to have assisted For over a decade Auto-Light salutes the members Of the American Trucking Associations And wishes them continued success As the world's finest drivers Next week on Suspense Our star will be Mr. Richard Widmark In a dramatization of the most famous Of all Texas feuds A dramatic report we call The Hunting of Bob Lee In weeks to come we shall also present Mr. John Hodiak, Mr. Joseph Cotton And Mr. John Lund All on Suspense Suspense is produced and directed by Elliot Lewis With music composed by Lucian Morrowick And conducted by Ludbloskin The log of the mar Was based on the book by Lauren Searle And was adapted for suspense by Gil Dowd In tonight's story, Ben Wright was heard as Fraser And featured in the cast were Joseph Curran's Charles Davis Anthony Ellis Jack Prussian Raymond Lawrence And William Johnstone Ray Maland is currently being seen In the Paramount comedy, Rhubarb And remember next week On Suspense, Mr. Richard Widmark In another story based on Actual events A dramatic report we call The Hunting of Bob Lee For the location of your nearest Auto-Lite battery or spark plug dealer Or your nearest authorized Auto-Lite service station Found Western Union by number And asked for Operator 25 Switch to Auto-Lite. Good night Friends, contributing your well-earned Dollars to any cause is never easy But when you give to Red Feather You know that your money will help all Your community health and welfare services October is Red Feather month So give the United Way To your local Red Feather This is the CBS Radio Network


And pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may also do so in the following manner. This will be posted later to the town's website. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can be adequate, that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we will post on the town website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. So now to do a roll call and to assure that everyone has audio that is working. Christy. Yeah. Very good. Eleanor. Here. Rachel. Here. Matt. I'm here, thank you. Very good. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate it. And Robin did confirm that she cannot attend.  And Leia is going to be late. I saw that email come in, but I didn't get a chance to look at it while I was in transit. So I'm not quite sure how late. So we are here to begin our deliberation meeting. Has anyone reviewed or have we all reviewed the minutes from the prior meeting? And if so, can anyone make a motion to approve those please? Motion to approve the minutes. These are from. Thank you. Okay, I'll take the roll call now, Christy. Yes. Okay. Rachel, you have to unmute. Rachel. Sorry, I couldn't find you all for a second. Yes. I approve also. I'm also a yes. And you two already first and seconded. So that is approved. And now we will start going through the grants deliberation. So on Monday, I sent out the scoring for this. And I'm sorry, I'm a bit lost, guys. Let me share my screen with the scoring that we did collectively. So this is a file that's dated the 14th. Is that correct, Julianne? I'm sorry, say that again. This is the file that is dated the 14th of November. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's not it. Okay. So I sent this out to everyone sorted in two ways. So one is by the book order, if we were having the book printed, which basically goes alphabetically by the applicant name. And then the other one is compiled or sorted by the scores. So in this case, it starts from anything that was collectively averaging a perfect score, which there was one down to those that were much, much lower. But we did give credit to everything. And I believe Matt and I agreed that we were going to still proceed by going grant by grant. And we're going to do this this year by setting a time clock, if you will. So who wants to volunteer to be timekeeper for us? Thank you, Rachel. Okay. So what we're going to do is I'm going to just kind of see how this goes as we do it. But since we have 91 grants, I'm going to set this for seven minutes per grant. So we'll just start here with the time and talk about what's entailed in this grant. And what we're going to be looking for is in the discussion to start with, is there anyone who particularly champions this particular grant and to come to an agreement roughly about whether we won, whether this meets our guidelines, right? And then two, and we're not running the clock yet. Two, if we're all in agreement that it does meet our guidelines, you know, would we fully support this, partially support this, and why? And I apologize, I'm not more high energy tonight. I'm really wanted to bring so much more to this when we set up the new system. So Rachel, can you, could you start the clock now? Sorry, before you get started with that, I was going to ask you, okay, so we're going to go through all of that first, the discussion first, right? Because I had the question for you and Matt before as to whether we, as a council, want to talk about on the, any amount of money you want to set aside for activities? Yes, thank you for reminding us. I made it earlier. I'm open to doing either or both. So, do you happen to have the email with those numbers, Rachel, as far as? Yeah, I can pull it up, the one that... That would be great. If you could pull that up and share with us. I don't want to like take up, you know, time from the meeting. No, no, this is important. And yet, as you're pulling it up, I would add that first and foremost thing with the grants themselves is do they meet our guidelines or not, right? And the process that we're attempting to adopt here is going to be to get the sentiment of where the council members are on each grant as far as how strongly we support it based on public benefit. And also this year, we've amended the guidelines so that we can add in to be able to sort for a variety of different kinds of events. So previously, we couldn't say, look at, you know, vocal, classical music performances and say, okay, well, we can rank these against each other. It really just had to adhere to the guidelines. We've added in new guidelines this year that lets us also assure that we have different kinds of events, right? So, but at the very end of this, as far as how much we might hold back to do something that the council is sponsoring can really kind of be taken either at the beginning or the end because we can just look at it as a percent to total either way. That makes sense. So, but please, do you have those numbers? I do, do you want me to read it or do you want me to screen share? Yeah, so what is the total number that we have for grants? We have a total of 71,083 available for direct granting of that. 53,800 is our allocation for this year. We can at our discretion 20% of the 53,800 allocation which would be 10,760 to fund local initiatives. And then as far as local initiatives that can be everything from things like we're doing with Amherst media for the disability awareness video. It can be things like Pecha Kucha. Can anyone else recall some of the things we discussed that might be of interest? For the like extra funding? I'm sorry, I forgot. Yeah, so as Rachel was saying, we can take, was it 10% Rachel? 20% based on the 20%, although I can't, I can't imagine we would ever vote to take 20%, you know? So generally, you know, we're trying to balance one it's in our charter or mission to get funds into the hands of people producing culture, right? Yeah. But on the other hand, we can use up to 20% of funds to kind of seed culture and activities as well. And for instance, when we looked at doing Pecha Kucha before, I think we had somewhere between $600 and $800 set aside from that and the intent with that was always that we were going to request donations and worst case, we expected to break even, but the intent was to actually raise additional funds through that. So that was, you know, the council changes year to year. So as to where this council is this year, but that would still be my sentiment that if we're taking on and doing something additional, it really is either to benefit culture in the way that the accessibility pieces that we're doing with Amherst media highlights a key initiative that we think is important to the, you know, not just the local community, but, you know, larger community or if we were to take funds out, I would like to see that be something that actually brings additional funds in. But it's all something that we can discuss and vote on. But first and foremost, I think we feel pretty strongly about getting the funds out to the people producing the culture. So Rachel. Hey, Julian. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry, I'm super multi-tasking with kids here. I apologize to everybody in advance and thank you for, I know everybody's gonna stretch thin right this time of year. I just wanted to put the reminder out there. I know that Eleanor and others are thinking about it, but, you know, this big block party for the arts and culture for the spring that we discussed with Gabrielle a couple of meetings ago and then we've discussed it sort of ongoing sense. That would be an area that is gonna need additional funding. And so I think I would like to advocate to maintain that on our radar and just make sure we don't lose sight of that. Okay. And was there an additional grant that we were able to apply for as the cultural council where we may get some additional funds from another source for that? Yeah, yeah, there's a small $2,500 grant that we have voted, this council voted on and we did apply for Eleanor and I for the 2,500. But, you know, this is like a $2,500 undertaking. So it's worth us bearing in mind and it would be a venue for our grantees, many of them to sell their products if they are artisans of that sort to show off their work. So I think it's something that would have a lot of synergy for the arts and culture of our community. And I don't know, I thought we had a lot of good ideas and energy around it when we discussed it before. And so, you know, I agree with you that we don't have to make a bottom line decision tonight, certainly. And we really don't need a bottom line number yet. We really need to just start looking at these grant applications. But I just want to make sure everybody has that in mind. And if you'd like to know a little bit more about it, Eleanor or I would be happy to share. Actually, we can share out the application that we submitted for the 2,500 to this group. So folks can see it's a, you know, we've been looking at drawing funds from the cultural district, the business improvement district, us, and then, you know, other kind of local community partners like banks and stuff to try to fund this thing and pull it off and throw it like an arts and culture themed block party parallel to the fall, you know, sort of regular block party. Okay, so two quick questions. Didn't we say this one would be in the spring? That's the parallel, spring parallel to fall, late spring. No? Matt might be. Yes, May, it'd be in May. Okay, perfect. And then the other big number you threw out there was 25,000. Is that the total anticipated budget for this event or what they're hoping somehow we can bring to the table? No, we wouldn't be able to generate 25,000. That's the overall budget for the event. Okay, Eleanor, do you have anything you'd like to add about this? No, I appreciate that, Matt. Yeah, sorry to put you out there. Thank you, Matt. I was going to say that, but I wasn't even positive that that was coming. Anything was coming from us. So thank you. I appreciate you stepping in there. So with the 2,500, that's the grant. Is that the grant that for like festivals and that the Mass Cultural Council has under a separate pocket of, right? Okay. This is, it's money we requested via a grant. So just like people come to us and request grant money, you know, it can come back as a goose egg. It can come back as partial, back that's full, but it's a total unknown and we really appreciate that Eleanor and Matt did the work to support this. And it's something that absolutely we should be doing. You know, if we can apply for grant money to create additional opportunities for our grantees and our community, that's great. Really, really glad we're thinking this way and executing this way now. Okay. Is there any other? Yes. Any time. Okay. I was gonna say let's go. All right. Go ahead and start the clock. So the first grant that we're going to review tonight is from the 1794 meeting house titled Quabban Valley Pro Musica season. And I'm going to go from the description here. So Quabban Valley Pro Musica is returning second year hiatus after the pandemic and they want to celebrate their return to singing, three songs about joy and making music together. So this is six English songs by Haydn, four Elizabethan madrigals on the perils of love and a mass by Stefan Stoker. And it will be, and then another lesser known Austrian composer and this will be presented in Orange, Massachusetts on December 4th. And then they also have a spring program that's being developed. That will be presented in June at the 17, I think they mean the 1794 meeting house in New Salem. Although 1974 was a fine year as well. So this is open to any singers who are interested and even extended to those of just whatever musical experience they can bring. And they're basically trying to just provide everyone with the opportunity to sing great music. Now, I believe there were notes from several folks about both there is a pay to participate. So I'd like to open the floor to folks for discussion and who would like to discuss some of the details of this about some of the funding versus paying to participate? Any volunteers? Yeah, I was definitely curious about that. And I wasn't, I don't know if I can really speak to it because I wasn't exactly sure what our protocol is there, that was a little, yeah. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to go back to my notes. So pardon me while I can stop the share for just a minute here. So the notes that I saw come in, which I will keep anonymous here, one noted that it was $15 to attend $80 to sing and that there was a large honor area. Another said that costs for performers versus audience. And another wanted to know, are they waiving participation cost as needed? And that orange was local, but quite the drive. And it is one event at this point while they're mentioning a spring event, the December 4th date was the one date that was confirmed. And there was another comment that, as far as just, there's a lot of music when we get into all of these. So my first question is, is there anyone who truly champions this event and thinks that it's very important that it be fully supported? No, no, yeah. I think the location in orange is it doesn't put it outside of us supporting it, not at all, but it does perhaps decrease the public benefit significantly, would everyone agree with that? Okay. And the ask for this is $500 out of a $12,515 budget. Wow, that does seem like a really large budget to produce a vocal, I'm really tired guys, performance, especially when people are being charged to participate. I'm a little confused about that. Does anyone have any questions as to whether this meets our guidelines or do we all believe it meets our guidelines? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Or do we all believe it meets our guidelines? I think it meets the guidelines, Julie, and I was the one who commented on the size of the honor area, which is what drives that budget. I don't think it's something that we would deny outright just because it does seem like a very positive cultural event, but I would advise towards a lower end of a partial fund from. Yeah, I would fully support that, absolutely. Okay. So this one, it had a two for the rating, which is kind of getting up at like 75%, I think. But I think as far as what we would fund, I'm thinking it's in the neighborhood of maybe 50% of their ask. If that, that's mine. If that, okay. I'll be the way. Anyone else have some thoughts there? Yeah, I think I probably gave us a two. And I think that the comment about the location also does make me want to scale my 75% back a little bit. So I think I would agree with both of you and with Rachel. Okay. So how does everyone feel roughly about and we'll be adjusting these numbers further, or 150 or would that be enough to show support? Yes. Are we all agreed? Hello, Lea, welcome. Christy was starting the notes for you. Yes, I was going to ask, are they in the... Hold just a sec, Rachel, how are we for time? 30 seconds left on this one. All right, thanks for stopping the clock. Go ahead, Lea. Are they in the drive? I started one, but I didn't email about it. Did Christy start? Well, I think Christy didn't have access to the drive. So Christy, if you just want to email Lea, what do you... Oh, okay. Are you doing it on paper? Yeah. But do you... Hey, guys. I'm just a little note-taker. I mean, do you... I can type... If you give me Lea, send me the link. I can type these in and then you could... Oh, thank you so much. And then Lea, you can just... Can I just clarify something about the notes for these meetings? So the deliberation meetings, we do not intentionally include notes on all of our deliberations or rationale back and forth. So really the notes, the minutes for the deliberation meetings really only need to reflect that we deliberated on the grants. And then the packet of minutes that we post includes the cover sheet of our grants. That's the advice that we got from MCC this year because there was quite a bit of discussion about how much of the minutes should actually be recording all the ins and outs of this stuff. And MCC has advised us, and I think they've taken legal counsel on this, that the minutes should just basically just say, tonight we talk about any actions we took, like approving previous minutes, or if we do come to a vote on our local activities, like those things do need to be recorded. But the deliberation discussion itself, the various pros and cons of each grant, MCC actually advises to not take detailed minutes on that because it's such a dynamic process. And to instead just say, we deliberated on the grant applications we received and include the full cover sheet of all the grant, that whole list of grants in our minutes packet. And what we usually do is we put all of the minutes for all the deliberation meetings up at once as a single packet of the minutes. So I just wanna give that feedback in case folks are thinking that we need to capture every last thought. No, that's perfect and thank you. So I'm not gonna be, do I need to keep track of like the time spent? Like am I keeping track of we deliberated about like Amherst media project or am I just like deliberation of all? You'll wanna have a list of all that we deliberated. So far we've only done the first one in the book, the 1794 meeting house. Got it. And then the other thing Lea, just to get you up to speed is that because we have so many to go through, something like 91, although there are some that are eliminated as duplicates and other things, but we're time stamping the initial deliberation to seven minutes for each one. So we can try to move through these. Okay. Got it. All right. Thank you. So thank you, I'm so glad you could join. So moving on to the next. And actually you all have this in the chart. So I'm not going to share my screen unless someone finds that really particularly useful. So the next grant, Rachel, did you start the clock? Yeah. Thank you. Is from Amherst Cinema. It's a two-part grant that is set up to cover. And first of all, everyone's familiar with Amherst Cinema, right? I need to have like picture in picture here so I can be on two things. But all right. I'm just going to assume you all said yes. So they are planning to continue pandemic-related protocols for immunocompromised moviegoers. And so they will be having masked mornings on Saturdays and Sundays during these first screenings of the day face covering are required for all guests. And audience capacity is going to be capped at 25%. No concessions are sold. So clearly there's an economic impact when they have to limit the audience size and not sell concessions, right? And then the other part of this is the June 2023 presentation of a program with a film that's in honor of Juneteenth day and the event will correspond with the town of Amherst Juneteenth celebration. And this will be free to the entire community. So as far as the notes that I had come in around this there was strong support for the Juneteenth part. Others said that it's a lot of money but over the course of the year and that the cost of movie tickets might be around $6.50. So it's kind of an interesting topic to discuss. One, we tend to be very supportive of Amherst Cinema. They do a lot of great work in the community. And yet we can't always fully fund each group and there are two parts to discuss. There's the immunocompromised kind of help them offset the cost of continuing that for those members of the community along with their plans to support Juneteenth with free access to meaningful cinema around that topic. So I will open this up to everyone to discuss. Is there anyone who champions fully funding Amherst Cinema? Oh, come on. This is the only one that got scored at a perfect 3.0. One of us must feel somewhat strongly about it. I think that's a future one. Sorry, Christy, say that again. Well, I was just gonna say I will speak up as to fully fund it. I think it's just think it's a great service. It's local. It brings in so much business into town as the art house cinema. I mean, I just, it seems like this is the kind of thing we should be funding, both of them. And so I, it's our own thing. It's not music. I mean, so I would support fully funding, but I'm fine with whatever. So thank you, Christy. Do you have anyone? All right, I was just gonna say the only one that had the 3.0, I thought was the one with the Pechakucha model. Like I said at the beginning of the call, I'm super tired. So thank you for keeping me in line. It was a 2.0. You're correct, Rachel. So maybe it sounds like we would be in favor of funding more than 50% anyway, right? Maybe closer. Oh, I would think so. Even more than that. So it's a change. It's the budget for all of this is over $76,000 and they're asking for 3,000 and 3,000, I'd have to look back at prior years, but it's probably in line with kinds of funding that we've given them before. So. I would support at least 2,000, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think we could all agree that we would fully support fully funding it if we had the funds across the board to do it. Right, right. So I was a little surprised at the 2.0 kind of rating. At least on mine, it doesn't show up as 2.0, I think. Well, that's the average. That's the average. I see. Okay. Leah, you're muted. I was gonna say, I think coming back to this one, once we've allotted some money to see like starting at 2,000 and then if we have leftover, this could be a project where we're put leftover funds into. I would support that, but I'd like to go a little higher at a 2,500. Yeah. Are we all agreed with 2,500? Yeah, I mean, these are not final, but I mean, I think the sentiment is there to support them. Is everyone okay with that? Yes. All right, and Rachel. And it might be great. Go ahead, Leah. Well, I was gonna say it might be quickly, it might be great to strengthen kind of like how we strengthen their relationship with Amherst Media. We could have maybe talk about having like a short advertisement at the beginning, like these things we're doing with Amherst Media, we could see if they could be shown at Amherst Cinema or something like that. We can always ask that, but we can't make the grant distort. Yeah, no, of course. It just depends on that, yeah. All right. 50 seconds left. 50 or 15? 50. How many? 50. Well, let's move to the next. We are now discussing for Amherst Community Theater. They would like to have theater access tickets for the Little Mermaid Musical. So every January, Community Theater stages a musical and balker auditorium on the UMass campus. And they do nine performances over two weeks, drawing an audience of 5,000 theater guards. And this year, they're doing the Little Mermaid. And they specifically want funding to support ticket access. This program provides no cost tickets to local low-income families. And the way this is administered is they are able to go out to the schools and have the teachers who are aware of those students that are in the low-income situation that would like to be able to attend. And they're able to have a private conversation to offer those tickets to those elementary and middle school students and their families and who wouldn't be able to pay otherwise. And I think one of the really special parts of this is it brings a family together for theater. So it's not just the kids going as part of a field trip or something like that. It's their whole family experiencing theater together, which might be something that wouldn't happen otherwise. So as far as the questions presented, some question is how is this available to everyone? And as far as our guidelines, I do believe as far as for this, because it's in the public schools and the public schools are for the community, the fact that it is offered to those who have economic conditions. I don't think that that limits us because the performance is truly available to everyone, but these particular audience members it's cost prohibitive for them. So this is very much part of our mission that we want to be able to have everyone experience the arts. And this one, what was the compiled rating? I'm not sure. Does anyone see that at the moment? 2.64 or something? Yeah, lots of support. So with that, is there anyone who champions to the extent that we can fully supporting this? Sorry, they're asking for $1,000 with a $74,000 total budget. Yes, I would if we have the funds. Yes. Yes. I would fund this. Okay, I would too. Everyone, I think would be great. Yes. Yes, yes. I agree. And I think that that's kind of just for the purpose of comparison like too, you know, since we just talked about the Amherst Cinema one because I think in principle, we will like to fund both fully if we can, but given what the amounts respectively they're asking for and how many projected are being served versus like, do you all feel like it'd be fair to talk about a percentage that we are comfortable funding and then come back to the actual numbers? I guess it's the same thing, whether we're talking about percentage or the dollar amount. But I guess, I know we're going to come back to percentages, but I think what we're trying to do right now is to gauge our alignment, right? So to the extent that we have those that we all agree we would fully fund versus those that were, it's all fair game to tweak in the end, but you know, how much more discussion do we need at the moment if we all think that it's a worthy cause and it meets all of our guidelines and it's not an outrageous ask, would be the other thing, right? That the costs that they're of their total budget and for what they're providing the community, that seems very reasonable unless someone disagrees. Okay. And Rachel, where is our time now? So we can move to the next. Yeah, we had two minutes left. So should we go to the next one? All right, let's go. Yep. I mean, you can't complain if we're coming out and say we fully support you, just leave it alone, right? So starting the next, the Amherst Historical Society, I'm sorry, I said the H and Amherst. The Amherst Historical Society, in all due respect would like support for strings at strong. So this is an ongoing series of chamber concerts in their garden space outside the museum. They are Saturday afternoons and feature a variety of local musicians. It could be anyone from a soloist quartets quintets and they will have a minimum of four concerts. Oh no, they're talking about, they did present four concerts in summer of 2022 and their audience has been growing. It went from 35 to over 100. So that's great that they're demonstrating that they're getting the word out and that people are responding and interested in participating. And they are also using this as a way to introduce people to the Historical Society Museum and to get them interested in local culture. The museums are open both before and after. So the only comments that we've had here is just there's a lot of classical music and we might need to adjust for classical music. I was gonna say when I was looking at kind of the breakdown of all of the music performances, one of the things I was looking for was the cost of tickets because we had a few that were like $25 a ticket and then we had some that were $10 a ticket and then some that were free. And kind of the ones in my mind that I had been prioritizing when we compare all these concerts was the ones that are free because those meet our accessibility goals more. But I guess if we do have to look at budgets because some people might just not have the budgets to have free tickets, but this was one of the concerts that was free. So I would definitely at least, it is a big ask, but that is a need to point out about this in specific. Sorry, how do you feel about when they're asking us for the entire budget? Well, in this case, it is Amherst Historical Society in Amherst with the event happening in Amherst for people of Amherst. But I get where you're coming from, yeah. But whether or not they're saying, we're going to go and try to get one business partner to give us some community partner. You know, I didn't look to see if there was any in-kind type. They didn't, they didn't have any kind. I mean, well, sorry, they say sponsorship from local businesses in addition to grant funding. In addition to grant funding, we'll seek sponsorship from local businesses. So then you're kind of like, well, they get, I think this should be because it is an Amherst thing, it's free, it's in the garden. There's all this energy that's going into the garden right now that would be also nice to support. So I am very strong on this, but I could see not funding them to the full, you know, over 50%, but not 100%. So wherever that falls. Thanks for that. To add on to that, when I look at the budget, it's the bulk of the budget, I'm fully agreeing with you, is $2,500 goes to artist fees to musicians. And yet we don't quite know how many stipends are included there. By the time you have quartets, quintets, soloists, but over four or five. So, you know, there is kind of, let's say it's 15 musicians for five performances. So three on average. So what that's, I'm not doing math in my head today. It's roughly $166 per musician for that aspect of it. For that aspect of it. I don't, I think percent to total and classical music, we're gonna be scaling some of it back. So what's a number that folks would feel comfortable with that shows strong support, but also reserves some additional funds for other events. Can't hear you, Christy.  Yeah. I was thinking, you know, 2021, 22, yeah. Sorry, I'm gonna come on the end of below all that because I think I agree while it is in Amherst. And at the same time, I think given the numbers that it's serving, like what the, I guess, overall anticipated participants or audience. And I feel like this is a typo for proposal where depending on how much money they or grants they actually get, they could scale the performances accordingly, right? So they could just do fewer performances. Yeah. And I think their numbers serve are perhaps inaccurate. You know, if they had over a hundred people attending, now while we can't assume that 400 people would attend, but if we did, if we said four performances, 400 people, that's $7 per person per ticket, that's maybe a little high as far as for a free event. It is free, you know, and so we're covering that. But also realistically, how much, how many people can that venue accommodate? I don't know for sure. So that's, I'm just putting that out there. I don't know. Probably no more than a hundred. You know, that's, yeah. So are we all good with Christy's number of 2100? I know Rachel, we could still end up lower. I don't know that it, you know, it is Amherst. It is local. That's 75% of their ask, right? Which I think is something that we can support. Yeah. I think I really do see Rachel's point there, but I would be okay with putting down 2100 for now and maybe coming back to that. So early on in discussion with 10 seconds to go on this one. Yeah. Buzzer beater. Okay. Was there additional comment? No. Okay, moving on. Thank you. The next is for Amherst Regional High School. It's a transformative performing arts experience for all. And this is about introducing middle and high school students to performing arts culture outside the dominant one. And they want to invite guest artists from surrounding metropolitan areas, Boston, Holyoke, Springfield to teach in Amherst schools. It not only allows the adolescent children opportunity to embody new moves, tunes. I'm sorry, I feel a little dumb for reading this to you guys cause you all can read, but they want to provide testimony to BIPOC communities that their background is an asset in our schools. So by having these guest artists perform art forms that originate Afrocentric and Latinx culture traditions, they can provide a richer and both broader perspectives. I'm sorry, my contacts are really sticking in liberatory practices, wow, within performing arts and culture languages and race. I'm bungling this, I'm sorry. So it's, there's no more engaging place for BIPOC students to witness their culture and heritage come to life than in the performing arts. Sorry, I know what I said. As someone who's in the high school, like sometimes I've witnessed some, I don't think I've attended one of these, but I know sometimes like every year, like we have one or two of these, but like not really the scale. And every time it's like really seen as like very, people like really love it and respond to it, especially BIPOC people, it's just like people really love these. I feel like in the high school, it's like there's sometimes people are brought in and people are like, oh, this is lame, whatever, but like these art things, especially when they connect to people's cultures, these are very beloved events. Halea, I'm so glad you're here because in reading the description, I really don't understand what the event is. Can you tell us what it's like? So is it like a assembly thing? Is it during school hours? I, the one I think I heard about, so the chorus teacher, Todd Fruth brings in, like usually brings in like someone once a year, kind of during, it's usually during school hours and will like coordinate with a class, but it's also like open to the public. So like it'll be advertised and you can like use it as a field trip and leave one of your classes to join this. And a lot of people do. It happens sometimes with like chorus trying to do songs from different cultures and that kind of thing. And then also with the dance program, I know last year there was like, I think a hip hop dancer came and I had a friend who was in the class and she just like loved it and it was just great. And there was huge turnout. I forget if it was after school or during school, but it's like, it's like a master class. It's kind of what the dance term for it is, but it's usually just like a professional that comes in and teaches their style or song to a class and then more. So it's open to the community. So it says here, I'm just gonna read from the application. This one is. Both the dance and choral department, choral departments will invite their families and friends to engage with their mutual work in the auditorium at the high school. So I'm imagining this probably is after hours because most of the movie. Yeah, maybe. And we're hopeful that the guest artists will invite our students to their communities for further exchanges. I'd also like to add that as far as the budget, it's basically all stipends. It's anywhere from it's either a $150 stipend for one artist to a $200 stipend for the other artists and then multiplied by the number of sessions that they're doing is how they get to the $2,500 number. I think it's a really lean project. It seems great. It has cohesion in terms of what they're doing. Yeah.  So that's great. It's a pay it forward as far as it's culture now but it's culture that stays with you. I mean, I would say fund as much as we can. If we don't fund the whole thing then they have one fewer person. I mean, it's not the end of the world. They can still do something. So I guess I'm saying if we had to fund it at 2,200 or something like that, if that was our initial decision on it and... I'm comfortable with leaving it at the 2,500 for now. I mean, I would leave it when I look at the stipends, it's directly to BIPOC artists who are coming into our schools and inspiring our students. Like what, and bring their families in as well to enjoy it. Like what more could we want? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say one of the biggest things that I don't even think they really talked to they talked a little bit about like introduction to cultures, but I think one of the strongest things these have is like representation of cultures. Like for a lot of students having their culture like represented and celebrated and having a connection to that is just like such an amazing experience. And I think it would be just very great to fund that. Okay. All right. So I think we are all set. Is there any additional comment here? Rachel, where are we with time? 30 seconds. All right. Let's keep moving. Okay. So the next grant is for Amherst regional public schools, but I believe for the middle school. And this is, well, no, it's the prior one was for the high school. This entity is ARPS. So the entire school system for the Multilingual Parent Advisory Council is the applicant. And it's a linguistic heritage celebration that will occur in April in 2023, April 29th and it will happen on the town common. And they've applied solely to us for $1,320. And this is a celebration of the great quantities of languages spoken in our school district in the wider community. It's going to include music, dance, spoken word performances, workshops, games and food and drink all promoting involvement with multidisciplinary languages cultures in the community. So they had a celebration last year. It was a great success. They want to expand participation from the wider community in their seeking funds for stipends for their performers, workshop leaders and staff members and to fund publicity materials. And they also plan to have a multilingual poetry workshop. Last year it was held at the Jones Library which will feature local multilingual poets of all ages. And just to kind of add on to this, I can recall, well, my son, my youngest was in the middle school. I think that these kind of events were held at the school maybe on a Wednesday night specific to the school. And I'm just so pleased to see this particular group in the community saying, no, we can do this on a larger scale, right? And that's exactly what we exist for, for them to apply to us for funds to spread culture. So I will lead this thing. I will champion fully funding this. I would agree with that because this is just kind of like follow up to the last rant as well in the same spirit. Yeah, okay. I have one question about the budget. I was wondering do, if it's a public school, they have money aside to hire a police officer as security. Do you have to hire that or is that? So this is not the public school itself. Well, let me, it is ARPS's Multilingual Parent Advisory Council. So the way I read that, that's not the school itself. So the prior grant was ARHS. It was the high school applying. This is the Multilingual Parent Advisory Council to ARPS. So as far as policing, it's a great question. I don't know, but I certainly myself wouldn't withhold funds to them for that. Also because this event is not going to be happened at the high school or at any of the schools. It's going to be on the town. So that is under... Oh, God, I got it, got it. Pretty detail would be additional and separate is how I read it. Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Thank you. Okay. Are we all all good? Any further comments? I was just going to say that, you know, kind of as we're going through these, because in the ideal world, we all would like to fund all the projects that we think, you know, benefit the town and it's done by people in the town. And I think just kind of putting these last two in perspective with the strings at the strong, you know, kind of like how would we allocate limited funds to these respectively? That was just going to be my question. And we have two minutes and 45 seconds left. All right. Well, let's, let's keep going unless there's any other questions we can keep going unless there's anything else. Okay. All right. So moving to the next, we have an application from antenna cloud farm. And it is the antenna cloud farm 2023 season that they are applying for. And this will be, the event will be summer to early fall 2023. So this group plans to expand offerings each year and breath vision and reach. And it's offered over the course of several months. They want to curate produce and host and present a rich and diverse array of live performances, workshops and community engagements and gatherings. This will include antenna cloud farm music walk town takeover. And this is in Turner's falls, great falls. And includes a day long, completely free. Multi space event and musical walk. And they plan to host world class artists in residence and present concerts at our home space. Which is in Gil. And to expand upon the first year's experimental institute with opportunities for public engagement. And is also similar to performances and green filled town common hosted by stone soups, harvest dinner. They're also planning on hosting at least one virtual event featuring a live performance and interactive workshopping components. Which is free and open to the public. So comments around this. Were that it really. Is not that focused on Amherst. And another person mentioned that it's, it's good to be bringing talent to the area, but it seems like the only free event was the, the virtual event. It is a small ask. It's a 20, it's over $26,000 for the budget. Excuse me, just a minute. So it's a $26,000 budget and they're asking us for 200. So. I'm sure there's much to be discussed, but you know, certainly the public benefit. And how, how this relates to Amherst, I think is, is something that we need to understand better. Is there anyone that champions fully supporting the $200. They're requesting from us. I do Julian. This is a group that I followed all through last year. They just started up last year and I wasn't able to make. I just had conflicts with all the dates that they had, but I think this is an example of a really cool, really cool, really cool, really cool, really cool, really cool, really cool, really cool. So it's a locally grown underground arts movement type thing that has a lot of pop up activities all around the region. It's true. It's mostly Franklin County, less than Hampshire County, but, you know, personally we go up to gray falls, Greenfield, that area a lot for cultural stuff. And I would like to support it. It's a very small ask. And to me, it's more of a symbolic gesture that just says that, you know, this isn't what we had in mind maybe, but I think this is a good example of a kind of regional, regional activities groups that, that I'd like to support. I think folks should look up this intended cloud farm. It's, you know, it's pretty decentralized. I'm not sure that all of it is, you know, I think it's a pretty wide range of different artists and talent and things like that. But, but I think it's an interesting movement and really strengthens the artistic culture of, of our, you know, just Western mass region in general. So I, I definitely support the full 200. And I agree with you, Matt. I voted also to fully fund the $200 for similar reasons as, as you just cited. And also I think when, when I was looking at a lot of these applications, I'm looking at who else they're applying to. And in this case, they also applied it to multiple LCC's and, you know, as part of our guidelines is like Amherst and surrounding communities. So I think definitely for me, that what they're applying for asking for us is quite reasonable. And I'm personally quite happy to support fully funding them. And I'm also in agreement.  And, you know, when you look at that and then the perspective of how ambitious they are with all the different events, they're putting it on in different locations, but that the ask is simply $200. I don't see how we don't fully fund this. Yeah, Eleanor. Sorry, that was a thumbs up. There's a thumbs up. Okay. Any other comments? Thank you. Okay. Starting the clock on the next this, we will be discussing the Arcadia players and their 33 season, 33rd season, there's some gravitas there. They have a budget of $58,000 a little over that. They'd like 2004 from us. And they are very pleased to have their first complete set of musical offerings since the beginning of the pandemic. And they have a new artistic director. And there are five programs and dates and venues confirmed so far where they will have, I'm not going to read them off. You can all read here as far as the different works. It's quite an impressive lineup. One will be at Smith College. Another will be at the resident resident. I'm so sorry. This is out there. Renaissance center in Amherst. And another at Mount Holyoke college, another at the Wesley method, Methodist church in Hadley and bombic center in Florence. So they're really doing a quite, quite a nice regional tour and spreading. There are around the, the area. So some of the comments were that they are charging for tickets. So to, and to Leia's point earlier, it is nice to prioritize those that are at no cost. Another person noted that there are many program dates, which, which really helps as far as there's, they're, they're reaching a pretty broad audience. I think they're 1000 people served with the five performances is, is probably pretty, pretty accurate. Did anyone happen to look at the, the budget of this one and have any specific comments? As far as the budget, again, it was a large budget of $58,000 and looking to 2000 for 2000 from us. So is there anyone that champions fully funding the 2000 for this? Christie, you do. You're muted. I do, I do because, you know, and I feel like I'm saying yes to everything. I mean, the quality of this is really high. I mean, and I, and I feel like it's a small portion of the budget. You know, I would be on the upper end of funding it. I guess is what I'm saying. I think that's a good point as far as like, there's Tanglewood and people travel to Tanglewood. Yeah. But having high caliber work right here is equally important. I just want to support that. I think they're, they're extraordinary. And, you know, it may, maybe it's not the full hundred percent, but maybe it's an 80%, but, but yeah, I just think it's, it's really excellent work. We went to three other productions this summer. It was great. And so much of it really is, is local. There isn't anything here where, I don't know if in contrast, where I'm driving to orange in the middle of a snowstorm, you know, I think it's, it's really doable for anybody who's in Amherst, who wants to make all of the events. So. All right. I keep just gesturing, but they're just affirming. I will stop the hand raising. Go ahead, Rachel. I know it's just going to say that in light, I know I keep raising this as we're going along, but in terms of how we want to, yes, because we can, you know, we have our opinions maybe about this grant and this grant, this grant, but we look at the total number of money that is being requested versus how much we have to give. I'm just curious, we don't have to answer this now, it's, I'm just curious in terms of Arcadia players versus other classical music, whatever performance is, how do we want to prioritize or doubt, you know, like divvy up the available funds among them, because I think looking at what they're asking for versus their budget is, I don't know if that's necessarily how we're going to be informing our final decisions, because the reality is reality is that we have a certain amount of money to give and whether their budget is 10,000 or a thousand. And does that really impact our decision in terms of how much we want to give in terms based on what they're asking for? Do you see my question? I fully agree that especially the nuance here is when you get into a group that's charging admission, they have a larger budget because they're charging admission, which is great. It's great that they're of a quality that they can ask for admission. It's great when we can see that there's some sliding scale, so people who don't have the funds can also go. But as far as simply put, they're only asking us for 2,000 out of 60,000 is somewhat meaningless. The burden on us is to assure public benefit. And I think what we're discussing here is we see that 33 seasons, well, 32 in the past, and this is 33rd, we have high confidence that they can deliver public benefit. Now to circle back to percent to total of classical music and how we're going to determine how much classical music programming we're going to support and which ones we're going to prioritize, I just don't see any way to get to that concept till we get through to the end. And that's one of the reasons we're time boxing this is to be sure that everything is at least introduced and discussed. We're all familiar with it. And because we are going to need that additional time reserved so that we can prioritize those things that we think bring the greatest value, but we can't do that till we go through all of them. And some of these, some of these have already fallen out. We're going to get to some as we go down in this list where the same applicant has applied more than once. So just keep in mind that the total number at the bottom right from the get go, it's not accurate. And there are others that will fall out because they don't meet our guidelines. And we really just need to look at the merit and how we collectively feel right now. And I think as far as would we fully fund this, you know, as far as public benefit, Rachel, I guess you're saying perhaps, perhaps not, you wouldn't know. But I mean, if you didn't bring all of those other considerations in. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, I couldn't hear you. The timer. The time we're at the timer. All right. Well, I'm going with the bold stroke and leaving it as 2000 to be later adjusted. I think I heard that support here. And there's no more time. So we'll have to come back. So the next one is Jeffrey Baker is applying for Conway Fine Arts Concert Series season two. It's an interdisciplinary music program. It runs January through September of 2023. It's at venues in western Massachusetts. The total budget is $6,900 of which they're requesting all of that from us. It's interdisciplinary program of three concerts of classical music with drama, dance and visual arts and professionals that are local to creative to western Massachusetts and creative venues. They want to foster a meeting place for ideas and to build community through art. And in 2022, they presented. Dvorak Cypresses, which was a string quartet interwoven with adapted plays and performances by musicians and actors in a Barnon Conway to retirement community and Amherst and at Hawks and Reeds in Greenfield. And they're citing that their 2022 season was six programs over 11 concerts in eight different venues in towns with 17 professional musicians on violin, cello, guitar and voice. And they had about 50 attend each concert. So they're also talking about in June, they had a world premiere quintet in blues guitars and strings and other programs. And they did feature works by women and minority composers. So going into the comments, I'm going to start with a comment from the audience. Going into the comments, I'm going to start with a comment from me, which is that this is all citing 2022 and not really telling me what we're doing in 2023. One of the comments was that they had eight towns and and if we were to take the number, say, and divide by eight, why are they asking for the full budget from us? Right. So if they want roughly $7,000 for eight towns, we should be paying less than $1,000. Another is saying that they only applied to the ACC. Exactly. And yet it's not here. They're not speaking to the benefit to the Amherst community. Another person said positively that, you know, this is some different kinds of music. It isn't necessarily classical music. And another one said lots of money. It's a lot of money. And we want to know why we're the only ones paying. And there is no concert occurring in Amherst. So is there anyone that champions funding the full $6,900 budget? Is there anyone that champion, is there anyone that doesn't want to fund it at all? Okay. For those that do think it's of interest to fund, I don't know. I don't know if that's a strong stance. Please speak up. I actually, sorry. I'm switching. I might be tentatively on, on Rachel's side there. For no more funding. I guess I don't really know how, how often we do that. I don't know. I guess it's my first time. I don't know if that's like a very strong stance. You're not. It's, hey, it's fine to take a strong stance. Yeah. I'm right there and I'm going to switch over to Matt here. What is the public benefit? It says that it's going to occur at venues in Western Massachusetts. I don't believe anything's confirmed. I think it doesn't necessarily meet our guidelines because it's not here and it's not confirmed. Matt. I just want, I know we talked about this a couple of meetings ago, but I just wanted to read again, the list of reasons that we decline in the letter. And of course our conversations are more nuanced than the letters are sometimes. But you know, obviously number one is, well, not obviously your application was denied because a, your project is not clearly related to arts, humanities or science. B, your project did not provide enough public benefit for our community compared to other proposals. C, your project did not meet additional requirements outlined in our council priorities. Insert the specific priority here. So I'm not saying here nor there in terms of this grant. I personally, I would fund it at a, at a one eight, you know, one eighth of what they're asking for based on the number of towns. I also can get behind zero funding based on, you know, kind of reduced public benefit, but I, I think that might be a little harsh. I think there is, you know, I think there is good, there is some public benefit to this. I just don't think it's reasonable to ask us for the entire funding. And also boils down to at the end, how much money we have to go around and what our priorities are in terms of how much you want to give to whom. So. Yeah, I'm just speaking maybe on the more extreme side at this point. I don't know. So sorry, Christy, you were going to say something. I just, I agree with math's point. And I could go either way, like one eighth, which seems so token. Nothing, but that's my thought. Yeah, I'm really good actually with a token. Support here from the point of view that it is a pretty big offering. They're doing a lot of music. It is, it is different. It sounds kind of like Americana and bluegrass and, but also the, I wouldn't want to go more than a token support. And I think one eighth, frankly, is too much in this case because they didn't tell us what they're doing in 2023. You know, it's, it's just, hey, trust us. We did this last year. Give us the money and. And it's 450 people supposed to do the target. Thank you for bringing that up because that's, that's really low. I would, I would hope to extend it to more than. The target serves as 150. And their tickets were $10 in 2022. And then they had local business ads in 20. It's all about what happened in 2022. They have no in-kind support, you know. So would a token be, sorry, would that be like a couple hundred or anything? I would a token amount or even that. Honestly, I would. I don't even know if we should fund it. At all. Because they didn't. Like to say, like venues in Western Massachusetts is just like. Yeah. Like West, it's not even like in the valley, like Western Massachusetts could mean like an hour drive. I mean, actually, I don't know, but like. We don't know that they're accessible. Yeah, we just, I feel like. We could be funding like this entire project that's taking place like an hour. Like I feel like it's just like, I don't know. It seems really weird that they wouldn't specify anything about Amherst and then ask us for the entire budget. Time's up. I'm so sorry to interject. I just, I have to run off to rehearsal right now. I guess I had written down wrong in general. These go like an hour and a half. Yeah, in general, we're trying to shoot for an hour and a half. Okay. I don't really necessarily have any more. I don't energy as Matt said at the beginning, we're all stress proof and so thank you so much. Go to your rehearsal. We'll see if we can maybe get through one, one more of these. Hi. Thank you. And good to see, see you Cody. I'm going to go with a bold stroke here and, and put this down as a zero funding and let someone come back strongly later to basically lobby for why we're going to support it. I want to, I want to true champion to come in. With a strong perspective about how we can fund. An event that's not been described for 2023 has, has no venues has no letters of support for venues, et cetera. So continuing on and we're going to, you can set the timer, Rachel, but we're going to do two at once because they're the same. It's the Emma and belly little detectives bilingual book. The applicant name is Cynthia Barrett. Sorry. I'm hearing an echo. Cody, you might need to mute. Yeah. So they are requesting $300 for one of these and $350 out of a $1,000 budget. They could only put one of these through. And this is, they want to finish a book that they started last year. And you can all read the, the, the description. For those of us that were here last year. When we evaluated last year, it was because it's basically, they're asking us to fund a self-published book. And, and, and while it's, you know, perhaps delightful and interesting. It's basically a self-funded book that has commercial benefit to them. And just I'm scanning through here as far as, as how it serves the community. And one of the things we were looking for last year was, were they going to donate books to the schools. Or libraries or anything like that. And I'm not seeing that. I don't know if anyone else who read over the grant saw any kind of support that would benefit the community specifically. So I will open this up to discussion. Oh, it says here, they'll, they'll once published, they'll donate one copy of the book to the library. So the entire community can enjoy this adventure for all ages. And this, this to me was a great disappointment last year. You know, you're going to make this self-published book. Why aren't you giving so many copies to the libraries at the regional schools and, and libraries beyond that. So. Yeah. And also to follow up with that. I think, because we did see this last time with me and, and I think the other thing too is they mentioned wanting to work with local partners, but it doesn't seem like there's been proof of any, having, you know, connected with anyone to do that. And it seems like it had been plenty of time to do so, right? Between last year and now. So not seeing evidence of that was what gave me pause about funding this. Yeah. Like you say, it's basically to cover the publishing costs, which is that really our role too, to do. Right. Yeah. So moving this along, is there anyone who strongly supports funding this at all? Does it. Do we all agree it does not meet our guidelines. Correct. Yes. I would definitely just tell them, search for. Communities. All agree. That support. Yes. And we, we fully agreed and. And we actually did. Well, I'd have to go back to the letter last year, but somehow they, they didn't get the message as to why we didn't support and fund last year. So, but this really does not meet, meet our guidelines as far as. Really to, to access to the public. And so moving on, I would like to end at seven 30. I'd be willing to go over just a few minutes if we could try to do one more, especially since we missed Monday. If anybody needs to drop immediately as I'm 30, please alert me, but I'm going to go ahead with one more. If I don't hear anything. So the, the next one is. From a Zeheel Baskin for poetry in the barn. It occurs April to June of 2023. And they are asking us for $1,500. For an event in Belcher town. It's a series of three free public poetry readings. At the barn and studios in Belcher town. It features local poets and will offer a chance for Q&A and community conversation following each reading. The series will feature one reading per month for April, May and June. And if there's demonstrated interest and available funding, readings may be added in late summer and early fall. It's going to feature a wide style of. Poets and explore a range of themes in their work. Some of their readings will take place during. Hours that are served by the. Connector so that they will be accessible for residents who don't own or have access to cars. It, it, this is following their sold out readings of Jenna Rose. Nethercotts debut novel thistle foot, which took place in this venue, September of 2022. So comments here were basically it's $250 per poet times six. Another person said that it seems to be, you know, quite expensive for, for an event for, for spoken verse. I'm not sure. And another person mentioned the Belcher town locations. So, so with that, I'll, I'll open it up for folks to discuss. And in the back of my mind, I'm. Just wondering if anyone has. Experience with this venue and if it's accessible. I think we're all muted or we're speechless. I don't have experience with this venue. Go ahead. Oh yeah, I don't have experience with the venue. I liked it because it was. You're muted. Let's see Christie, you're trying to be not muted. Sorry. I was going to say I liked it because I like the project because it's poetry. It's different. It's not another music thing. You know, somehow Belcher town, it seems like. You know, sometimes I feel like I treat it as though it's. The back of beyond, and it's really not that far away. So it feels like anything, you know, we tend to keep going. In the other direction rather than going to Belcher town. So I thought that was kind of nice. I think it should be funded. I didn't think that this, the administrative, I didn't think that the salaries for the poets was high. But I don't know. I mean, that's, I would, I would fund it at some level. I would fund it at some level, maybe 50%. And they did ask for money from. Belcher town, Palom, Palmer, Luglow, New Salem. So I think that was good. And just say I did about the. How about we. Do. Have. For that. And to fit me. Yeah, I think I could support, you know, I support funding it. Belcher town, it, you know, it's just over, over the line here from Amherst. Yeah. There might be another. Town in the middle, but I would think we'd want to, to fund it. Maybe, maybe at a minimum 50% across. So they've asked for 1750. 1,500, but how do we all feel about 750? Yeah. I would go higher personally, but I'm fine with 50% too. Anyone else want to go higher? I mean, it is true that it's, it's, it's poetry. It's different. It's, they do have BIPOC references in the application as well. I'd be happy to put it on the books as the thousand. Yeah. That's not too high. Well, none of these numbers are final. Right. So they'll be adjusting. So for instance, the self-published book. I'd be happy to put it on the books as the thousand. Yeah. That's not too high. Well, none of these numbers are final. Right. So they'll be adjusting. So for instance, the self-published book that we just said does not meet our criteria, you know, now, now when we look at the total number, those that's taken out of the total, there was another grant earlier for 6,900 that we may not fund at all. So, but in the end, we're just really trying to see how we actively feel and we'll be, we'll be adjusting these numbers further once we know really how much we have. And we'll be doing things like assuring that the, if we're, we have $70,000 to fund that 50% of that isn't going to slowly classical music events. And if, and for the classical music events that, you know, we're funding those appropriately for the community. We're good with rough numbers tonight. So folks, we are two minutes over. And I want to just check and look at the agenda. Is there any, any new business that is, yes, Lea. You're muted. I was going to quickly say kind of in response to some of the things Rachel was bringing up. I was wondering what it might look like if I transferred some of the data and like made a, um, like a Google slide sheet with just like all of the classical music with like some of the criteria. So we could compare it just to compare it to other things to make it more fair. If that might be helpful or like looking at like all of the things. I don't know. Another thing was like things. Yeah. I think we'll need to do that towards, towards the end, but to conserve efforts, I think we should do that. Um, once we've gotten through the first pass and we know what's in what's out and, um, You know, what's the total ask, right? Because some of these are falling out. They're no longer part of the total ask unless we have, we vote them back in. So we will need that, but it's probably too soon. Okay. I can start working on a good idea. I would wait to do it. I was going to say, would I be allowed to do it outside of meeting time? Or is that, because I know sometimes you're allowed to write things outside of. That would have to be done outside of meeting time. And the thing is, is that we'd have to be very careful how we share it. Um, but I need to give it a bit more thought. I think we're going to, I think we're going to need that when we do, do the refinement of the numbers, but we've got to get through everything in a first pass. Certainly before, before we're ready to start bringing that nuance in. For sure. So. Thanks. Thank you for running the meeting. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. Um, If there is, is nothing else for tonight. Uh, Would someone like to motion to adjourn? Sure. A motion to adjourn. All in favor. Yeah. Yes. Wow. Thank you. Thank you all. I don't know the, the date for the next one. It's your, you, you should all have it in your calendar. So we will, we'll see you soon. And, um, Good night, everybody. Great progress tonight. Thanks everyone. Yeah. Take care. Good night. Yeah. Thanks for clockkeeping and notes. Bye.


Hi, I am Daniel Solis. I'm our director by day, game designer by night. I'm going to be talking to you about very, very old games. I mean, like really super old games that are at least 1,000 years old. And when you think about old games, you may think of stuff like chess, for example. But chess is actually, in its modern form, only about 800 years old. So it's kind of like a toddler a little bit when you think about ancient games. And the funny thing is, when you're hanging around game designers, there's this common refrain you'll hear sometimes when a subject of chess comes up. Let's say that chess could never be published today. Why? The box isn't big enough. The box doesn't make enough noise when you shake it. You can't just pick up off a game shelf and feel the weight of it. Because that's what sells. This is the short-term market drive that drives game design right now. But it wasn't always the case. In ancient times, games really survived by their minimalism, by their elegance, by their ability to be played across language barriers, and transported very easily. And when you think about this kind of minimalist aesthetic, one of the older games that still exist today is Go. But again, it's actually pretty young. It's only about 2,000 years old. And compared to some games that have not fared as well, it's actually pretty young. So when you think about some really old games, you've got to look way back to Babylon. This game was founded in the tunes of ancient Babylon just, I don't know how many thousands of years ago. But no one knows how to play it. You kind of look at it as software obsolescence a little bit. But the language just wasn't backwards compatible, you know? And there have been attempts to try to make it playable to my modern players. But it's really just a guess. We don't really know. And it's a shame, I thought, that some games that, whether or not they may be good, we don't know just because we can't play them now. And so I thought, well, what if there were more of a long-term market drive? A way to get game designers to start thinking about long-term games, less about short-term quarterly profits. So I started the 1,000-year game design challenge. I offered a $1,000 prize for a contest that lasted about a year for game designers to create new games that they believe would still be played 1,000 years from now. And you may wonder how I judge this. Well, first, I judge by access. Can you play this game with as many people as possible with as few materials as possible and as many places as possible? And I looked at some games like Moncala, which can be played with pits in dirt. And I also looked at elegance. Can the game be played with few rules that are easily understood but take a long time to master? So it's kind of an old chestnut that's the key to elegance, that you can learn it in just a couple of minutes. But it's still fun every time you play. And that was the third game I played. And that was the third criteria that I used. And I measured fun basically by the amount of public play I saw whenever a submission came in. I was just like, right, how many people are actually playing this because in order to be played 1,000 years from now, it has to be played today. And what was nice is that I got a lot of coverage from the contest. The Long Now Foundation even took notice of it. And if you know anything about them, they're very, very much concerned about things that are going to still be here 10,000 years from now. And Jay McGonigal said a little thing. But ultimately, the winner was Take Back Toe by James Ernest, who is kind of a popular game designer. And this is a lovely game, and I can teach it to you after the talk. Happy to teach anyone. But really, what set this entry apart was the little note that James added to his rules at the end. Mass-producing entertainment is a gamble. It's a convoluted way for creators to protect their intellectual property by selling it in a way that is prohibitively expensive to counterfeit. I've decided to try a different gamble. His gamble was to release his game on the Creative Commons license. So you can go to his site, CheapAss.com, and for free, as the name suggests, get these rules. And you can play this game without even a board. You don't even need any of the components that you see, which is one of the nice things about it. But it's really just the first step in letting a game last 1,000 years. Because right now, we have the means to preserve the hardware of games. But if you look at either of these displays, do you really know how to play any of these things? Do you really get a sense of the gameplay experience just by looking at this hardware? And you really don't. The Museum of Modern Art just had this challenge dealt to them when they accepted, for the first time, 14 video games into their collection. And how do you really translate the experience of an 8-hour, 10-hour, 12-hour game into a museum display? And it had some interesting solutions I can tell you about it after the talk. But really, the way you keep games alive is by play. Find games that are on the Creative Commons license right now. Seek them out. Have a list of links coming up in a second. Play them. Keep them alive. Teach them to other people, learn them, and share them. Thanks.