What do all of these things have in common? They are all made of protein. In this video, we're going to discuss the structure and uses of protein molecules. Proteins are long chain molecules made of strings of amino acids joined together. All amino acids are compounds with a similar basic structure. They have an amino group, a carboxyl group and a side chain or R group that is specific to each amino acid. There are 20 different amino acids. All of the different proteins are made from these 20 amino acids. The variation in proteins is caused by the order of amino acids, the chain length, and by folding the chain in distinct ways. As part of a balanced diet, roughly how much of it do you think should be protein? About 14%. Sources of protein in our diets include meat, fish, eggs, cheese, beans and nuts. But did you know that proteins are large molecules, too large for our bodies to absorb? That's why enzymes in our digestive system break down proteins into amino acids, which are small enough to pass from our digestive system into our blood to be assimilated by the body. When we absorb these amino acids, they are then built back up into proteins and used in a variety of ways. To test food for protein, you need to use copper sulfate solution and sodium hydroxide solution. These two liquids together may be called biret solution, which is a pale blue liquid. To begin the first experiment, first make a solution of the food sample by dissolving it in some water. You may need to grind this up first with a pestle and mortar. Next, add a few drops of sodium hydroxide solution to your food solution, then a few drops of copper sulfate solution. If the solution turns lilac or purple, the food contains protein. If the food solution remains blue, no protein is present. But how does our body build proteins from amino acids? Our DNA acts as a set of instructions for how to build proteins. Each individual's DNA is made of slightly different genes, which explains some of the differences between people. For example, hair color and eye color, a change in the DNA called a mutation, can lead to a protein with a different structure being produced. This can lead to albinism for example. To learn more about mutations, you can watch this video. So what are proteins used for in the body? The answer is they are used in thousands of ways. Our hair, nails, skin and muscles are all examples of structures made of protein. Many hormones including insulin are made of protein. Antibodies made by white blood cells to protect us from diseases are also made of protein. Enzymes, biological catalysts found inside our body, are made of proteins too. You can learn more about enzymes in this video. And last but not least, proteins are also used to move some substances across cell membranes in active transport. For example, to absorb glucose in the small intestine. So now you can see just how important proteins are. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up. Please, I can share our videos with your friends. If you have any questions, comment below. If you have any questions, why not check out our Fuse School app as well. Until next time.


Hello and welcome to another lecture in the course on computer programming. I am Dr. Aviram Ranade and I am the guest lecturer today. I will be talking about advanced graphics events. Let me quickly do a recap. In the last session, we saw the get click function for waiting for clicks. Today, we are going to see how to wait for other kinds of events. The reference for this lecture is Chapter 20 of an Introduction to Programming through C++ written by me and published by McGraw Hill education earlier this year. The term event in simple CPP is used to denote a number of different things. For example, pressing of a button of the mouse is an event. Releasing of a button of the mouse is also an event. So when you press, it becomes one event and then when you release, it becomes another event. So we think of clicks as an event. So far, we have been thinking of clicks as an event. But now we can actually separate things into pressing a button and releasing a button. After pressing a button, you can move the mouse as you are familiar with, I am sure. And this operation of moving the mouse is called dragging. So dragging a mouse is also an event. If you are dragging for a long time, then it will generate several events. Essentially, a dragging event is generated every 30 milliseconds or something like that, some short amount of time. So when you drag, you will generate several drag events. Pressing a key on the keyboard is also an event. A C++ program can choose to wait for all of these events. Once such event happens, then the program resumes and then the program can find out what event has happened and accordingly take action. Instead of waiting for an event, a C++ program can also merely query has any event happened. If an event has indeed happened, then the program can again find out what event happened and accordingly perform operations. Notice that checking does not involve any waiting whatsoever. It is really asking at the point at which I am checking has some event already happened. So the event must have really happened before I do the checking. Now, if you have several windows on the screen, then you may be interacting with different windows. So if you press a mouse button, then that event may go to one of those windows. You do not know which one. If you click on a certain window, then that window is set to get the focus and subsequent mouse events or subsequent keyboard events as you know will be sent to the program running in that window. So when we talk about events like the ones listed here, we are assuming that your canvas has the focus. In simple CPP, events are represented by objects. So we have objects of class X event which is built in and they are used for holding information about events. You do not really need to know all the details of the class X event. You can look at some of its data members which we will see shortly and you have functions available by which you can extract information out of an X event object. So let us now look at how do we wait for an event. For this simple CPP provides you the function next event. Next event takes as argument a reference to an X event object. Here is a typical use. We have created an instance of an X event object called event and then we pass that event to our function next event. This call causes the program to wait for an event to happen. Indeed calling next event is like waiting for the user to type in data. So if you execute C in greater than greater than something, then just as your program waits, when you execute next event also your program waits until any of our specified events happens. When an event finally happens, the information about that event is put by simple CPP into the event object passed to next event. In this case, that would be the event object E1. After this the execution continues. So when the call next event even finishes, even will contain information about what event has happened. Now you can get the information about what event has happened by executing functions on that event object. For example, if you call mouse button press event on our event E1 and by the way the event even is to be passed by reference. So you do not have to do anything, but this is just to let you know that we do not really ever copy these event objects, but we just pass them by reference. So that event object when operated upon the mouse button press event function call will reveal whether that event is in fact a mouse button press. If it is indeed a mouse button press then this function will return true. So this function returns true if even involves some mouse button being pressed. Likewise you have a function mouse button release event. It also takes as argument an event and this will return true if even involves some mouse button being released. You also have a mouse drag event function. Again it takes as an argument an event object and this returns true if even involves the mouse being dragged. You also have a function key press event which also takes as argument an event object and it also returns true if and only if this event E1 involves some key being pressed. Of course if you know that a certain event involves a key being pressed you would like to get more information. Similarly if you know that a mouse is being dragged you might want to get more information say where is the mouse when it is being dragged. So how to do all this we will describe next. So to get more information about an event E1 you are allowed to access the data members of event E1 some of the data members. For example you can write even.xbutton.button. So this is a data member and this equals one or two or three depending upon which button was pressed or released. So if the left button was pressed or released then even.xbutton.button would equal one. If the middle button is pressed and then released then that would or released then it would equal two and three for the right button. You can also get the coordinate where the pressing or releasing happen. For this you just look at the member even.xbutton.x. So this member tells you the coordinate. Even.xbutton.y likewise tells you the y coordinate of where even happened. If you are dragging you need to use x motion.x. Actually you can also use xbutton.y but I guess the more official thing is x motion.x. This will equal the x coordinate of where the dragging happened in case even was a mouse track event. Similarly even.xmotion.y equals the y coordinate of where the dragging happened in case even was a mouse track event. So I have written in this example even.xbutton.button or even.xmotion.x. Obviously if you are dealing with an event E2 or some event of some other name then you would have to write name.xbutton.button and so on. You are also provided the function care from event which takes as argument and event E1 and returns a character. The character returns the character return is the as key value of the key pressed. So if you press the key A then this would return the as key value of that key. Of course for this even had better be a key pressed event and you should check whether it was a key pressed event by calling the functions listed in the previous slide. The following data members can also be used even.xkey.x equals the x coordinate of the cursor position when even happened. Even.xkey.y equals the y coordinate of the cursor position when even happened. And again here it is assumed that even is of type key pressed event. Here is an important note key pressed events may not be detected properly by your program if the caps lock key or the pneum lock mode rather is on. So if you have pressed the caps lock key then the caps lock mode becomes on or if you have pressed the pneum lock key if you have it on your keyboard then that mode becomes on. So you need to press these keys again so that these modes are not active. So you have to remove these modes you cannot have the caps lock mode on or the pneum lock mode on if you want to run programs which use the care from event function. We have said that you can wait for events but you can also check for events without waiting. The function check event allows you to do this. It takes as argument like next event it takes an argument as an argument. This function takes as argument reference to an x event object. The function returns true if an event has happened after the last call to next event but an event which has not yet been reported in any check event call. So this will return true only if an event has happened after the last call to x event but if an event has happened and it was already reported in check event then this will return false. So the same event will not be reported again and again if you execute consecutive check events, check event calls. Here is a typical use. You declare an event x event object E1 then you call check event with that object as an argument. The function returns true if an event happened and in that case the code named A gets executed otherwise the code named B gets executed. Notice that in this call there is no waiting. Immediately the function returns and either the code named A or the code named B gets executed. What event has happened? That information can be obtained as before by looking at the data members of the event or executing appropriate calls on that event. So now I am going to show you an example program. This is a very simple program but I will remark later how you can build upon it. So we are going to write a program that allows you to draw on the canvas in a very simple manner. So you take your cursor to the position where you want to start drawing a line and you press a mouse button. Then you drag the mouse in the path along which you want the line to be drawn. When you want to stop the line drawing you release the mouse button. That is it. After that you can again move your mouse to another position and draw another line and so on. In other words if you merely move the mouse without pressing any button no line is drawn. To stop the program you just have to press the escape key. So now I will show you the demo. So here is the program. First we are going to create the canvas and here we are using the three argument version. So in this we are supplying a title for the canvas. The title says drawing using the mouse. We are getting a canvas of width 800 and height 500. Now to denote the escape key I have created a constant character which contains the as key value of the escape key. Then we need an event object. So in this case I have given it the name event and this statement will create it. Last x and last y are going to be the coordinates of the last point from which you need a line to be drawn. So we will see how they get used. Now there is this infinite loop and in this loop we merely wait for events to happen. So this is the call which waits for an event to happen. Next we check has a mouse button been pressed. If a mouse button has been pressed that means the user will start a line drawing. Now our variable last x is set to event.xbutton.x and last y is set to event.xbutton.y because once the mouse is dragged we want a line to be drawn from this position last x last y from the current mouse position. If on the other hand a mouse drag event happened then that means earlier a mouse pressed event must have happened. In which case we want a line drawn from the previous mouse position to the current mouse position.  Finally we check whether a key press event has happened. So this is done by the call key press event of event and if this has happened then we want to know whether that key happens to be the escape key. If it is then the user is signaling us that the program should stop and so we break and after breaking there is nothing else so the program will terminate. So let us run this program. So this is our canvas and we can start drawing.  I can maybe even write a title here maybe I can write a title here say sun okay and then I am done I am tired of drawing so I am going to hit escape okay so that is it. So that is the end of the demo and let us get back to the slides okay. So basically what did we do in this lecture? So we discussed how to handle mouse and keyboard events just to remind you next event enables waiting for mouse and keyboard events check event enables whether a mouse or keyboard event has already happened. Information about events can be obtained by calling functions on the event object or examining its members by that I mean examining its data members. Chapter 20 of the book gives an example of a snake game that can be developed. You should look at it and you will see that you should be able to draw you should be able to develop many fun games. Here is another suggestion take the drawing program that we developed and extended to recognize what is drawn. For example is the user writing something we wrote the name SUN your program should be able to look at the coordinates of the lines drawn so for this you should take the coordinates and store them in a vector and then examine them and see whether they look like the letter s the letter u and things like that. So this will allow you to do some ambitious I mean you will have to think about this a little and maybe you should be able to write a program at least a preliminary program which will recognize whether what you are writing is a letter or a number or things like that or you may want to recognize things like well I drew the sun so maybe if I had drawn a full circle maybe you should print a nice circle there rather than the jagged circle that I had. In any case I hope you see that there are many many possibilities for doing interesting projects. Thank you.


What's up? How are you guys today? It's actually been over a year now since we've spoken about air quality in this video So if you haven't seen that definitely check it out and today We're going to go over what I'm currently doing in my apartment. I decided to do this video today because Last week I was having some migraine headaches couldn't figure out what it was. I Hypothesized it was the air quality maybe the radiation and all I really had to do was open a window and Within a few hours. I was feeling a lot better So despite knowing all these things about health sometimes I do overlook certain aspects and It is really important To be on top of things. It's also unfortunate that in our modern world you have to pay so much attention to things that you would consider pretty insignificant and crazy and stuff and I guess we'll start with the Most surprising thing at least to me that plants aren't actually a great air quality solution And I'm not sure how accurate that is, you know, what the percentage of oxygen versus co2 is in their Breathing cycle and most people know oh plants suck up co2. They release oxygen They filter the air they increase the quality and that's true however at night Plants actually use oxygen and release co2 So when there's UVB on the plant, it's releasing oxygen. However at night It's the opposite so from a co2 versus oxygen perspective our plants really helping that much I'm not so certain, but I will say I think they are Filtering the air recycling things almost like some type of You know air filtration system, so they're definitely helpful However, it is kind of overstated in that in that sense of the oxygen versus co2 and I have a few plants here. I have a few plants in the other room and You also have to pay attention to how healthy the plant is Because I was feeling really good, you know, even without opening my window for a while But you know when the plants started to wilt when I was being lazy not watering them as much not using the the grow lights I purchased on the plants. I Notice like a slight decrease in the air quality for sure So not only do you have to have a pretty large amount of plants in each room basically looking like a jungle You have to be really on top of the maintenance with the plants use grow lights use UVB bulbs Water them frequently with high quality water and then you'll notice a pretty big change in air quality but it's to my understanding not 100% because of the oxygen and co2 thing and Some of you guys are like Frank. What are you doing spending all that money on bottled water to water the plants guys? I use the chlorinated tap water one time use the tap water one time that I have here It almost killed like a hundred fifty dollars worth of plants So I'd rather spend a few dollars every time I water these plants Then completely kill them within a week and have to buy all new plants So the chlorine in the tap water and if you don't have a good filtration system on your tap The water will actually like kill the microbes in the soil and actually cause the plants to wilt so that's My understanding of kind of the plant side of things ideally Yeah, you still want them because they still filter the air to some degree and they still do produce What I'm guessing is a net increase in oxygen and air quality It's just not as significant as I had thought initially so before we talk about the air filter I did want to tell you guys where I got the plants Just Home Depot and Lowe's any home improvement store And you want to pick out the ones that have the highest amount of foliage leaves because you know The more leaves the plant has the more it's going to filter the air So just pay attention see which ones are more voluminous and it's not too expensive you spend like a hundred fifty two hundred bucks You should have your whole apartment outfitted But if you want to go really crazy you could probably like contact a nursery Or like someone that sells wholesale plants and then spend a larger amount of money just to just put so much in your whole house But in that case you would definitely want like a good filtration system So it's not so expensive to water the plants every day So this is Honeywell air filter. I actually got these on sale I will put them on my Amazon shop or some type of filter on my Amazon shop if you guys do want to get them Amazon comm slash Frank Tifano This uses a HEPA air filter I think it stands for a high efficiency particular air filter and that simply means it removes like over 99% of dust mold bacteria and pollen So you're not breathing in like all the physical particulates and and all of the crap It's still not going to filter out like some chemicals and gases and certain things that can be in the environment But overall this does significantly improve the air quality in the room So this combined with the plants are two things that most people should be doing. I Have three of these. I run them on turbo in each room Probably not necessary in a lot of rural areas But you know if you have the expense if you can spend a hundred two hundred three hundred on an air filter At least putting it in your bedroom or where you're spending most of your time is definitely worth it. I Just keep this on turbo and because I do have the people smoking in the other part of the house I I think this is a more significant and more impactful thing in my circumstance So I've been running this for a month and a half now And I mean it does look like the the filter has picked up a decent amount of particles which is supposed to be replaced I think every six months So it's definitely helping to some degree, but you know not enough that This is the sole thing you could just pop in your room and not have to get any plants or not have to open any Windows which we'll talk about now. Now these two things we've been talking about the plants and the air filter They're helpful. They definitely make a difference, but they are not the most important or significant thing Which is simply opening a window now depending on the era you live in This is not as simple as it sounds Yeah, if you're rural on the farm that you could just leave the window open all day if there's no air pollution concerns if you're not by a highway if there's not a lot of fumes and gases and You're you know being in a city or a heavily populated area That would cause air quality issues where at certain times of the day You know if you open up your window and someone's doing your work and blowing gasoline, you know, it's it's actually worse It's a bad thing to open the window in certain circumstances depending on the location So you have to be mindful of that and one of my viewers Brought something up, which I never really thought about You know when people aren't driving when there's not that much activity, you know, like three four five in the morning It is when there's gonna be the least amount of pollution in the air So if you can time it, you know before people start that morning rush hour commute, you know Four and morning ish and open your window then for an hour kind of air your house out Let that quality air come in That's really the best thing you can do. So Most people might not have to do that, you know, just opening the window is already going to significantly increase the air quality but if you're in a really bad circumstance where, you know, your New York City for instance, I mean that might not make much of a difference in that case But there are times of the day where there is much less pollution than other portions of the day And when you're trying to optimize aspects of your lifestyle like this You don't want to overlook silly stuff, you know Like if you just leave the whole house closed and the windows sealed for like four or five days a week then Opening the window in general regardless is going to refresh the air and it's something you definitely need to do So, you know, if you notice you're getting headaches or something less severe like your energy levels are low You're not feeling that good.  You're probably not getting enough fresh air So go outside see how you feel and this would happen to me a lot too Especially in the wintertime when you forget to do that I'd step outside. I'd feel so much better That that's a very very good Indicator that the air quality in your house isn't that great and you have to really air it out and get on top of that So, thank you guys for joining me today. Hopefully this has helped you have to some degree As I said the home improvement stores or nursery you can get plenty of plants I will be doing more of that when I have like a more permanent living situation and As well as the air filtration systems I'll put some of them online and you can probably find them near you too. It's it's very common standard stuff Have the filter. I don't think it's that big of a deal But it's definitely something you want to try out and see if it makes a difference Outside of that you guys can go to frank-to-found.com to support me through all of my businesses Please drop a like on the video leave a comment down below Subscribe so that YouTube can unsubscribe you next week and be sure to check that notification bell so they don't notify you of my videos Thanks again for joining guys, and I'll see you for the next video


Bandits have killed six security operatives in communities in Cardona state between Tuesday and Wednesday. Twenty-three other residents were abducted by the bandits. Those killed included five vigilantes and a mobile police officer. The bandits attacked three communities – Udawa, Ungwari, Saori and Adanyita in Jiji area, all in Chikun local government area of the state. At Ungwari, Saori and Adanyita in Jiji, it was learned that the bandits in large numbers invaded the communities in the early hours of Wednesday, shooting indiscriminately and in the process killed the police officer. The state police command public relations officer Mohamed Jalige confirmed the attack adding that operatives of the command had since been deployed to the community. Don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Today I'm joining us Bruce Jackson along with the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Stephen Gregorius, Daniel Carnes, and of course our special musical guest today, the Solstice Harp Ensemble. We're so grateful you're with us this weekend. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community, and in our world. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us. And if you would like more information about First Unitarian Society, our programs and activities, you can stop by the welcome table after service, which is through these doors and to my left, your right. Our Healthy Congregation team has begun hosting small group conversations during coffee hour on the first weekend of the month. So that is today. If you would like to join them during coffee hour for a smaller facilitated conversation, please do so in the library directly across from the center doors. And for those of you joining us virtually today, we're glad you are with us as well. We hope you'll be able to take a moment and watch the announcement slides after today's service to learn more about our upcoming programs and activities. And our holiday decorating party is later today at 1 p.m. here in the commons. Are you guys coming? Yes. Yay. Are you coming? Cookies, cocoa, music, crafts for all ages, decorating the tree, we're going to have so much fun. So we hope you can come back. It's from 1 to 3 this afternoon right out here in the commons. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. Out of depths unknown, the spark of life ignites and we are born. We enter a world, a universe not of our making. Our lives unfold in mystery and wonder, questions abound for which there are no definite answers. And so we gather in community to seek in one another assurance and recognition, compassion and strength. We gather in community to be reminded of what is most ultimate and what is most sacred in this spirit of searching and of reverence. Let us worship together this morning. And we invite you now to rise in all the ways we do joining together in the words of affirmation as we light our chalice. We light this flame reminding ourselves to treasure the magic in the mundane. The wonders of carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, rapid oxidation into light, heat and the dance of a flame. We light this chalice kindling remembering our innate sense of wonder at the very real magic of our world. So nice to see you today. I have a story for you today about a little green parrot. See there's two pictures on the screen. There's the picture of the eagles and then over in the corner, maybe you can't quite see it because it's so small, there's a picture of a green parrot, yes. So this green parrot lived in the jungle and she liked to fly all over the jungle and spend time with her other friends who lived in the jungle like the anteater and the snake and the frog and the monkey. What about the tiger in the other story? Yeah, there was a tiger in this jungle too, sure. And they were all friends. Yeah. And the chihuahua? Okay. And there was a chihuahua. We've just added to the story. And an orangutan. That's a very busy jungle. In conclusion, there were a lot of animals in the jungle and the parrot was friends with all of them. She was a very social animal, even the gorillas, all right, but she could fly unlike many of the other animals. Not there are animals in the jungle who could fly, but parrot was one of the ones that could. So sometimes she would hang out in the jungle and sometimes she would fly above the jungle and over the river and all. And she just looked at the beautiful place that was her home. And one day she did that. She flew up to the mountains where there were some eagles who were resting on the rocks, just kind of hanging out there. And she came down to rest beside one of the eagles. And she looked back down to the jungle and she saw a great pillar of smoke rising up out of the jungle because there was a fire. A fire. Well, you know, some of the trees were on, they were burning, they were on fire. So, so she was very concerned. And the eagle that was next to her said, yeah, it's a real shame, a lot of trees are going to burn, a lot of animals are going to lose their homes. But what are you going to do? Well, the parrot thought about how she was friends with all those animals who were going to lose their homes and she loved the forest very much. So she thought, well, what can I do? Well, what she could do, she figured out, was that she could fly down to the river and dunk herself in the river very fast, like swoop down and then back up. And there was just a little bit of water caught on her green feathers and she flew over to where the fire was and just sort of shook herself a little bit and a few droplets of water fell down on the fire. Now, do you think that did much of anything? No. No, it didn't. It didn't. The fire was still happening. All right. So the solution you think is an empty coconut shell, she's going to pick up the water. It's a very Gilligan's Island style solution because we're solving problems with coconuts. Ask your grandparents. It's all right. They'll explain it to you. So she did this and nothing happened. So she did it again and really nothing much happened. And she did it a third time and it still didn't seem to make much of a difference and eventually that eagle she'd been chatting with before swooped down to where she was and said, look, you're not going to change anything. You just waste your time. Why are you doing this? And she said, well, I'm doing what I can do. Is there anything that you can do? And the eagle thought about that. He thought, well, if the parrot could do it, then the eagle could too. And so the eagle started going back and forth with the parrot. Back to the river, back to the fire, back to the river, back to the fire. And eventually all those other eagles that were hanging out on the rocks far away, they were watching all that happen and at first they thought it was strange and then they thought it was silly and then they thought, well, I guess we could do it too. So they all swooped down to the river and back to the fire, down to the river and back to the fire. And eventually all of them working together, they were able to put out the forest fire. So the reason why I'm telling you this story is because each of us can't necessarily change everything but we do have it in our power to do something to change something. So does anyone know what this is? It's a box. You got that right. Absolutely. Does anyone recognize this box? It is a donation box. That's true. It's a donation box for a program called Guest at Your Table. I used to do this when I was your age with my family, the congregation that I grew up in. Guest at Your Table is a program from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. They are the organization that is charged with doing good work in the world on behalf of our faith, on behalf of our religion. And they work by, oh, open it, well, currently it's empty. But that's fixable, right? Because they work by forming partnerships with people all over the world and in this country. Not to tell them what to do or to say, here's some money, we want you to do this with it. But to say, what do you need? What does your community already need help with? And then to help them and support them in doing what they already know needs doing. So this program works like this. I have one of these at home myself.  So each time that I sit down for a meal, I put a little bit of money in there. I'll be honest with you, not necessarily a lot, but a little bit. And that reminds me that I'm not eating alone, that I have some guests who are there with me in spirit, some guests all over the world, that I haven't necessarily met, but I do want to be in partnership with. I do want to help in the way that I can. So I put a little money in this box each time that I eat and then at the end of this month, I'm going to bring it back here and turn it in and we're going to send that money on to the service committee and to the people that they work with and help. So there are boxes, everyone take note, there are boxes at the social justice table out in the commons if you are interested in taking part in this program this year. And now, I hope you have a good time at your classes. You can make the world and to share your gifts and strength. A time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community here and also our outreach offering recipient who this week is Urban Triage Incorporated, a black led organization that was founded and rooted in the idea of for the people, by the people. They work to empower black families and children by developing and managing life changing programming and mobilizing community resources to distribute them to those most in need. There are multiple ways to share your gifts this morning. There are baskets at the exit to this room in which you may place cash or checks. And you'll also see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fusmattison.org, and find the text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. And Joshua Heschel, the activist philosopher once wrote that we can never sneer at the stars. Mock the dawn or scoff at the totality of being. Sublime grandeur evokes unhesitating, unflinching awe. Away from the immense cloistered in our own concepts, we may scorn and revile everything. But standing between earth and sky, we are silenced by the sight, the sky. And in particular, the sky at night with its view of the moon and the stars, planets, comets, and other such lights is one of the oldest and most dependable sources of awe in the realm of human experience. Since long before our species could write and perhaps even before we could speak, human beings have been gazing upwards in wonder at the starry sky. It is an almost universally agreed upon example of sublime grandeur to use Heschel's phrase. Almost universally. But not quite. You see, on December 21, 1968, a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. For only the third time ever, a Saturn V rocket, the most powerful means of explosive propulsion ever devised up to that point, sent a small capsule hurtling upwards into the sky and out into the space beyond it. And for the first time, the capsule had people inside it. The launch of NASA's Apollo 8 mission was a dramatic gamble, as all human spaceflight had been and to some degree still is. The first Apollo crew was tragically lost in a fire during pre-flight testing. Apollo missions two through six were all sent up as tests without any human crew members at all. Now Apollo 8 was sending three people to do something that no human being had ever done before. To leave behind the immediate orbit of the Earth and circle the Moon. Just going out beyond the limits of the atmosphere was still a new experience shared by only a handful of human beings. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gurgarin had become the first person in space less than eight years before. And for most people who did get to share that particular experience, it was a wondrous thing. In interviews given beforehand and accounts written soon and long afterwards, astronauts talked about the wonder and majesty of the starry sky. They spoke with awe and reverence about the experience of space, the humbling vastness of it and the like. But the Apollo 8 mission was led by Commander Frank Borman, an astronaut with an unusual distinction. Frank, who is still alive today, has been in space twice. Apollo 8 was his second trip. And other than that already very select qualification, he is noteworthy for being one of the only people to have experienced going up into space and then to have pronounced it no big deal. Interviewed following the 50th anniversary of the flight in 2018, he expressed no wonder or even nostalgia for the experience or for nearly any of what he saw while on it. He was asked how he described the mission to his wife and children. He replied that they'd never really talked about it very much. In fact, he didn't recall them ever having asked. As he explained to the interviewer, all that science fiction stuff like Star Trek and the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey, always just bored him. It seemed as though he was including his own very real personal experience of circling the moon on his list of uninteresting science fiction stuff. The television series Star Trek, now a series of series as well as movies and books and numerous other things, is responsible for the well-famous phrase, space, the final frontier. That opening sentence at the beginning of the voiceover that started almost every episode was an acknowledgement of sorts. When the program first aired in 1966, Westerns still made up a large portion of the television market. Star Trek was originally pitched to studio executives as wagon trade. In space, a frontier is a place out beyond the boundaries of what is known, what is well understood, and often what is safe. In Western culture, there exists a tendency to pronounce many of our most problematic behaviors as universal human qualities. So I want to say clearly that the impulse to explore and then subsequently to dominate a frontier is absolutely not universal. There are plenty of people and plenty of societies for whom a frontier forms an important and accepted barrier. But the drive to conquer the frontier is also not unique to Christian Europeans and the nations that they made by colonizing lands and peoples they considered to belong to various frontiers over the last 500 years. It is much older than that. The ancient Romans pushed their frontier over the Alps through France, across the Channel to England, and all the way to the southern reaches of Scotland. Imperial China built walls to keep out the nomads on their frontier and then crossed those walls in years when they felt strong enough to claim more territory. And the Umayyad Caliphate, the first major Muslim political order, started out centered in Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iraq and expanded its frontiers both west and east until it stretched from Pakistan to Portugal. There is an awe and majesty associated with the frontier. Again, perhaps not everywhere where what is familiar to a given culture gives way to what is not, but in many of those places. In ancient Israel, the sea was the frontier. It was regarded with a reverent sort of fear for all the calamities it could bring, both in terms of storms and the arrival of invading ships. The western half of this country, the place probably most closely associated with the word frontier, is the site of terrible loss, suffering, death, and injustice precisely because of that association. The taming of the west was a rolling process of theft from native peoples by white settlers and our government through mass killings, forced migrations, and cultural annihilation. Nearly every physical frontier ever envisioned by any human culture has had other people on the other side of that invisible line. And however awestruck a spectator might be by the grandeur of an unfamiliar landscape or the differences of its little understood inhabitants, the wonderment of the colonizer never saved the colonized. The frontier of the stars is different if only in that so far as we have yet discovered it has no native inhabitants. Like any other frontier, human beings have long wondered at it, imagined things about it, and thought of what it might be like to cross the invisible line between here and there. The Pawnee people of what is now the state of Nebraska tell the story of the creator God Tirawa, setting the stars in the sky in order to hold it up. The largest ones he gave power over the winds and the rains in order to keep the earth fertile and green. The lesser lights resented this and when they tried to steal that power, they accidentally released all the storms into the world that Tirawa had meant to keep sealed up in a bag. In Hindu myth, the seven stars of the Big Dipper were seven sages, each of them married to one of seven sisters. But the sages were deceived and believed false rumors against their wives. Six of the seven divorced, and those six sisters left their original place in the sky and moved to become the stars of the Pleiades. The 19th Psalm describes the sky as constantly proclaiming the glory of God, set with a wedding tent for the sun who possesses one end of it to the other like a groom at his wedding. And in the early silent film, A Trip to the Moon, a band of travelers reached the earth's satellite riding a gigantic bullet which strikes the eye of the man in the moon and there confront the strange insect creatures that lived there before returning home by crash-landing in the ocean. Frank Borman found nothing so wondrous or memorable in the course of being propelled by the largest rocket then in existence to get closer to the moon than anyone else had ever gone before. He remembered his two fellow crew members being very excited and mesmerized as he put it, but in the two days spent journeying through nothingness to reach the moon. The most significant detail Borman could remember was that he was sick and didn't quite manage to catch all of it in the bag. Waitlessness was interesting, he said, for about 30 seconds. Then it became accepted and the moon was just barren, cratered devastation. No color, just shades of gray. But there was one moment, one image from the trip that Frank Borman spoke of with appreciation and something that might be called wonder. The astronauts had been sent to take countless photographs of the moon's surface, in part so that NASA could pick out a place to land a lunar module later in the Apollo program. But while they were circling the moon and taking pictures out the window of their little capsule, Borman and his crewmates, James Lovell and William Anders, saw something else entirely, they saw the Earth. From their perspective, it was rising up over the surface of the moon. It seemed so obviously important that they all began taking pictures. The most famous of those images is called Earthrise. It shows the blue-white marble of the Earth, its lower third in shadow, hanging over the gray waste of a lunar surface against the inky blackness of space. In that interview, so much later in his life, this is what Frank Borman had to say about viewing the Earth from a distance greater than any human eye had ever seen it before. It's 240,000 miles away. It was small enough you could cover it with your thumbnail. The dearest things in life that were back on the Earth, my family, my wife, my parents, they were still alive then. That was for me the high point of the flight from an emotional standpoint. Because the capsule had an audio recorder that was constantly running, we know that the initial sighting of the Earth ran like this. William Anders, who went on to take that one incredibly famous picture, spotted it first and pointed out how beautiful it was, what a good image it would make. And Borman jokingly pointed out the limits of their instructions, hey, don't take pictures of that. It's not scheduled before they all started clicking away anyway. All rarely arrives on a set timetable, according to rules or regulations, and fitting neatly into clear parameters. In the 1960s, the American space program was laser focused on the moon. Before his death, President Kennedy had set a goal of sending human beings to the moon and returning them safely home by the end of the decade. He famously said, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. It has now been approximately 50 years since the last human being stood on the surface of the moon. There is some talk of going back again. Even more though, there is talk of going further onto the next most logical destination in our solar system, the planet Mars. Mars fever may not be able to compete with the obsession with the moon that raged in the United States in the late 60s, but it is still a powerful force. And more than just visiting there, major voices in science and industry openly dream of settling there permanently, creating a lasting human presence on another planet from our own. The grandeur of bold, ambitious ideas can inspire people and groups and whole societies to do amazing things. But the barriers to actually colonizing Mars, to creating large, lasting, self-sustaining human settlements there, are enormous. It's not just the distance involved or the fact that the air is too thin to breathe, even if it were composed of something that human beings found breathable, it is also impossibly cold, with Antarctic caliber temperatures even in the warmest climes. And while there is water, there may not be enough of it, at least that is possible to access in the right areas. And the soil's toxic. And there's constant threat from radiation. And the lower gravity would slowly destroy human bones over time and might make it impossible for anyone to become pregnant or give birth there. Still, there are knowledgeable, talented people working towards this staggering ambition right now, despite not just long odds, but the literal reality that it is truly impossible as a project within the limits of our current scientific understandings. Wonder can drive the human will to attempt things it would never and could never do within any standard of reason or even of sanity. So the ways in which we channel our awe and our wonder into action matter very deeply. Beautiful things may be accomplished by people untethered from what is normal or reasonable or expected and terrible things as well. Augustine of Hippo, one of the early Christian luminaries given the title of Doctor of the Church, wrote, Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and then pass by themselves without wonder. It is possible to become lost in our awe and wonderment, lost from the immediacy of the here and now, from the mundane needs of the moment or of those around us, or simply lost from ourselves. In that interview again, the person recording Frank Borman had a particular curiosity about something. Why did he quit? Apollo 8 was Borman's last mission as an astronaut. He could have stayed on, provided that he remained healthy. He was almost guaranteed to be scheduled for another flight, this time perhaps getting to walk on the moon itself. Instead, he left the program entirely. As he explained, once the first Americans actually reached the moon, fulfilling Kennedy's promise and beating the Soviet Union there, something that mattered a lot to Borman at the time, him and countless other Americans, once that race was won, he didn't feel a need to contribute to it any longer. He had other priorities. He said, somebody else wanted to do it. Let them take my place. I love my family more than anything in the world. I would have never subjected them to the dangers simply for me to be an explorer. Forgoing those risks, Frank survived to be today the oldest living astronaut. He was able to raise his children and then into their 90s, he was present to care for his wife, Susan, who lived with Alzheimer's disease for roughly a dozen years until her death in 2021. In their last years together, she could not walk or feed herself, so he was the one who took care of those things for her as best he could. When I look up at the night sky, I think about the complex physical facts that make up what I am seeing, how the earth I am standing on spins and circles a gigantic nuclear furnace, how the points of light above me are mostly more of those same sorts of furnaces, burning so bright that I can see them with my unassisted eye, across a gulf so vast that I am just now seeing the light they first cast years ago. I feel ennobled by these thoughts, a fragment of a fragment of a fragment, but connected to something impossibly beautiful and enormous beyond my ability to truly comprehend. One of my best friends thinks the same thoughts and has exactly the opposite reaction. He feels small, inconsequential, arbitrary. As a result, he doesn't like to think about it much. Two people may not necessarily find the same awe in the same thing or in the same way, but it abides in us and in the world. And the surest sign of it is in the good we do, the love that wonder engenders in us for each other, for the universe, and for ourselves. Richard Feynman, the theoretical physicist, once remarked, the vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination. Stuck on this carousel, my little eye can catch one million-year-old light, a vast pattern of which I am apart. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to mystery to know a little bit about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent, you and I, and all of us, reside on a spinning sphere of mostly oxygen and nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, aluminum, and iron. The same sphere that Frank Borman saw out the window of his capsule so small and distant that he could have covered it with his thumb and some little specks of the matter of this earth long ago gained the power to look out on the distant fires that dot the universe and to wonder about them. Yet, for all our wondering and searching, one conclusion remains so far repeating. We have a home, and it is here. We gather, carrying in our hearts the joys and the losses of our days. We hold our own pains and celebrations as well as those of the ones we love. We share these here knowing they are held gently in care and in support and in love. This morning we light a candle of love and memory for Jeremy Jenke, whose father passed away from Louis-Body dementia. We send our love and prayers for healing to Jeremy as he grieves his father's passing and honors his life. And we light a candle in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, both in their suffering and in their struggle. Together we yearn for peace, for them and for all people, for an end to all wars of conquest anywhere and everywhere on earth. And if you'll join me now in a moment of meditation with these words from Leif Seligman. We pause in the stillness to rest for a moment, to quiet ourselves so that we can feel what stirs within us. Each breath draws us closer to the pulse of life, and with each exhalation we make room for something new. May we find in this gathering the comfort of those who care. May we encounter patience along our growing edges and compassion for our most tender spots. Here may we find the inspiration and encouragement we need to face our challenges and nurture ourselves. And in the presence of suffering across the globe, may we redouble our efforts to practice kindness where we are. With the hope that the light of our actions travels like the light of far away stars. May our gestures of compassion and generosity cede possibility. May we travel humbly with one another, choosing reconciliation over resentment as we try to live right sized.  May we rest for a moment together, holding all that lives within our hearts. Blessed be and amen. Celestial voices, the beloved is full of rapture, dancing into being, passion and filling the heavens with song. Do not sit alone in the dark while creation sings three part harmony. Dance my friends, dance wildly, sing joyfully, fill your heart with the beauty of the beloved as the beloved turns your soul into light. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude.


There's one thing we can always count on in the spring, water, and lots of it. In some years we'll have flooding no matter what we do, but if our ditches and culverts are clean, damage can be held to a minimum, even in the worst years. So in this program we'll look at the procedures covered in the maintenance activity, remove minor slides, and clean cut ditch. The procedures for maintaining culverts are covered in another program. So let's get started. The whole purpose of any ditch is to provide a pathway for water, and when a ditch gets obstructed will not only have flooding problems, we can also expect severe damage to the road. So the point is we have to keep the ditches clear. Basically cleaning cut ditch involves setting up all the necessary traffic control devices, piling up the excess material, loading the trucks, maintaining the ditches original grade and slope, and cleaning up. So let's look at each step, beginning with traffic control. This activity almost always requires flaggers, because in most cases traffic has to be stopped when the trucks enter and leave the work site. So all flaggers and the required traffic control devices have to be in possession before the work begins. The next step is to pile up the excess material. On this job the rocks are scattered all over, so a grater is used to put the rocks in a windrow. That way the loader operator can pile up the material quickly. There's one important thing to keep in mind here. There aren't many jobs that are as hard on tires as this one. So don't worry about keeping the grater going in a straight line. Look out for the rocks. The whole purpose here is to move the rocks to one place. The shape of the ditch will be maintained later. The same goes for the loader, but with a loader you really only have to look out for rocks when you're backing up. The bucket will push the rocks out of your way when you're going forward. I should point out here that the grater isn't required. A good loader operator is quite capable of handling the job alone, but if a grater is available it can really speed up the operation. Once the loader is piled up enough material, the trucks can be loaded. The best way to alert the flaggers that you're going to cross the roadway is to sound your horn. When you can see that both flaggers have stopped traffic, you can move safely into position. Always back in. That way the loader can fill the truck easily and without having to drive on the roadway. After you've set the emergency break, get out of the truck. As you've seen, there were a lot of rocks in the ditch, and it's entirely possible that more will come down while you're working. So it's a good idea to act as a spotter for the loader operator while you're waiting. As for loading the truck, go slow. If anything will damage the body and the suspension, it's a bucket full of rocks. So always dump from as low a height as possible and dump the bucket slowly. Keep in mind that it's the truck driver who's responsible for the load. So before leaving, always check to see that you're not overloaded. Again, sound your horn to alert the flaggers that you're entering the roadway. And when traffic has been stopped, you can proceed safely across. One more thing about the trucks. As I said, there aren't many things hotter on them than being loaded with rocks. But this crew protects the dump box with an old tank cut in half and hooked up the same way as the sander. It's certainly not required, but it does save wear. Okay, when all the excess material has been removed, the ditch can be shaped. The main thing to keep in mind here is that you want to maintain the ditch's original grade and slope. That way the ditch will drain water the way it's supposed to. Be especially careful not to undercut the back slope. Undercutting will make the slope weak and you'll end up with a ditch full of material. In fact, undercutting can cause a slide. So when you shape the ditch, work from the bottom toward the road. That way the ditch will be smooth and you can work the excess material toward the road to fill in any edge ruts. The last step of the operation is to make sure that the road surface and the shoulder are clear. If necessary, broom the surface to avoid any damage to passing vehicles. When you're through, this is what the ditch should look like. Clear and smooth and the shoulder flush with the ditch. And that's the procedure for cleaning cut ditch. To review, all the necessary traffic control devices and flaggers have to be in position before the work begins. Pile up the material with a loader or with a greater in the loader, always looking out for rocks to avoid blowing a tire. Truck drivers should always back in and act as spotters while waiting for their trucks to be loaded. Loading has to be done from as low a height as possible and by dumping the bucket slowly. You should always sound the horn before entering or leaving the work site. Avoid undercutting the backslope and move material toward the road. And finally, broom the roadway and shoulder if necessary to avoid damage to passing vehicles. Now let's look at the procedures for removing minor slides. This operation is very similar to cleaning cut ditch. The obvious difference is that there's a whole lot more material to clear. And the fact that there's so much material to remove makes this job especially challenging for two reasons. First, it's difficult to see where the backslope begins. And second, it's hard to tell what the ditches original grade and slope were. So let's take a look at the procedures. As I said earlier, if the backslope gets undercut, there's a good chance that it will cause a slide. And that's the last thing you need. So when you pile up the material, travel along the ditch working toward the slope. That way you can see the backslope better after each pass you make. This same procedure allows you to get a good idea of the ditches original grade and slope. As a general rule, you'll end up with a good foreslope if you place the bucket just on the edge of the pavement as you move the material along. As you can see, there's not a whole lot of room to work. And that's always the case with removing slides. So even with all the traffic control devices in place, you still need to watch out for traffic 100% of the time. You never know when someone's going to run a flagger stop sign. And that's the procedure for cleaning cut ditch and removing minor slides. The operations are largely the same, even though the amount of material to clear varies considerably. Try to keep the points you've seen here in mind. Remember, we not only want to keep the ditches clean, we have to be careful not to create more slides by undercutting. Oh, just in case you were wondering what a major slide looks like, this is what's left of a little town named Thistle. Virtually every maintenance and construction activity was required to clear this slide and to restore the roadways.