I'm Cat Rodriguez, co-dramaturg of Carnaval. I'm Isaac Gomez, co-dramaturg of Carnaval. That's 4. A morning of excerpts by 4 amazingly talented playwrights. As you know, the call was for a feature of 8 plays showcasing Latino-Latina voices and a range of styles, aesthetics, and storytelling. And the steering committee and the selection committee were just so amazed and just wanted to show just more and more that we couldn't really whittle it down to 8. So... 12! 12. And the 4 playwrights with whom you'll be experiencing this morning. Also, as I'm sure you've noticed from the last few days that you've seen, the level of stories, of form, of structure that this play has presented really demonstrate the level of breadth and depth that a play that are being written by Latino playwrights in the American theater today. And these 4 excerpts are no exception. Our Latino and Latina community is very diverse, and it's very true of the writing that you're going to be experiencing all through Carnaval and today as well as Isaac is saying. We have today writings by Midalia Cruz, by Virginia Grace, by Amparo Garcia-Cruz, and by Diane Rodriguez. So, I think we're ready to start it off. I think we're ready. Rock and roll, y'all. All right. Pull onto your chairs and let's get started. Which is a wonderful adaptation by Midalia Cruz of Satyikong and Fellini's film by the same name. Also inspired by different proverbs, quips, cultural references, news items, perhaps a modern-day politician or two. And it takes place both on the island of disenchantment, Puerto Rico, and on the mainland in the capital. So, I'm going to just let the work kind of speak for itself. We have Midalia in the house and we'll have a brief conversation afterwards just so you know, following each excerpt there will be a brief conversation with the playwright to kind of get a little bit more of the taste. But without further ado, Satyikong. Satyikong by Midalia Cruz. Enko, the president, scribe and speech writer, in love with his servant assistant, Junior. Silvio, Enko's best friend, also in love with Junior.  A servant for now, but his star is rising. A master of reggaeton, rap, and hip-hop. Musically and sexually, he does it all. Foderosa, Junior's mother. A matriarch with big ambitions, takes only younger lovers. Arroz con gandules. Gandules is soft. Twenty-four years. Empilomena, Octavio's wife. First lady of the Republic, a hermaphrodite. Seen sixty-four. Enko's plexiglass bathtub. The water is pink with blood.  A dying heart is biblical fit. That should not take your own life in vain. But who cares about him? With the world so insane. Living in the biblical brain. I maintain. There's something going on in my brain. Nobody cares about us. Here on the downer, there's them and theirs. And that's the show. Junior gets up, lights a match. The walls begin to burn. Fire! Junior's bedroom. The morning of the nightclub opening. He speaks to a poster of Octavio. There's something I need to tell you. I'm gonna make you explode. Whoosh! You got that! Like a tick on crack. You'll be up hard until you're shattered into tiny shards of black glass. I know that you know what I'm here to do. And you owe me. I should just take it. But I'm gonna wait a little to see if you do right by me. You know, some people don't. And those are the people you don't see for long. They disappear. They vanish. Like white girls in wedding dresses. Now why don't white nana? There's not what we aim for. Now we aim to be seen in all colors. And you know what I'm saying? All that interstellar like galaxy colors where there's nothing but darkness so complete that earth looks like blue. Dark blue, like my heart. That you abandoned to misery. Oh, whoa. Why are you keeping up on me all the time? Damn, trying to catch me with my pants and my ankles?  Just wanted to do what you wanted for dinner. For show. I was going to scramble up some eggs with spinach. Or maybe kale. My greens. Temperature. Get out. I only let them do that so I could buy new things.  Mr. Arroz and Mr. Gondules are having something they even got sick. Mother, you make me sick. Sick? Sick is a good thing. Like, you should see this beautiful new car. It's sick. I keep you alive. I gave you everything I had.  Nothing. You. This town is making you sass.  Polarosa exits. Yeah, I can't even talk to myself alone. That's why I keep this. He takes out a tape recorder. It's old school, but I like it. I like how I can see the tape and see my voice. See how it gets turned into plastic ribbons. And when it gets all filled up, I can just tape over and then it has layers of me all in there. And then I can rewind and unwind and rewind. I can point to my own voice and see where I've been. It's proof that I'm going to set myself on fire one day. Tape burns fast. It turns to liquid. And that'll be me. The puddle on the floor, flowing into the ocean, all of me and all of that, all of me is water. I found some tangerine juice. Do this with it. That's the old way to stop sperm from taking. Sperm hates citrus.  You didn't used to. This is what happens to mothers and sons in new places. They end up fighting about nothing and stabbing each other in the eye. My friend Mina told me about it. She knows everything. That girl could be a dentist or something. You know the best people, mother? I know, right?  Maybe you should marry her. I think she's got money too. Damn. Maybe I'll marry her myself. Well, you should right now, tonight. I have to open the club first. You sure you don't want some? It's good for your blood sugar. Junior, jump some further or I'll stop choking her. This is what happens when you don't drink your juice. I thought you were going to make us some chow chow boogie.  Okay, backup dancers should never get between a man and his mother. Come on. Were you threatening us? Or is that more like a saying, that the anus but agile by way of the mouth like that? Marry and quits. You think that makes you so smart? You think this is funny? That I'm joking here? I will end her.  They won't, but I will. I do.  That's how we show how much we love each other. It's such darkness to keep our love real. I know what you want from me, and maybe one day you'll get it and you'll leave me alone. I need a new life.   Okay, what's with you two in the Sumerians? They understood the importance of backup. They wrote things down. We're keeping a record of all this. One day we'll be a part of history. Everything repeats. That's how the will gets reinvented. Let it go powder my nose. Enko is looking in his bathroom mirror.  He watches himself bleed. Enko, what is it to be mean? I just keep doing this. I can make myself into a patchwork quilt and start all over again. You could sew those pieces so you would.  And you say it so often it has no meaning. You could make a suit of me wear me once a year on my birthday. It could work this time. Just let me. I didn't know you could kick like that. Type O. Is that still a thing? I think it was a person. Who could kick? Who could kick really hard? My dears. I won't be here someday. They will really bleed to death. What are you saying? Are you ill? Yes. That's enough about that. A new virus? It must be since we cured the old stuff. How did you contract that disease? Never mind. Oh, please give it to me. It doesn't work that fast.  Just take the plane. Get lost. Get lost. Flying over the Java Sea. Go to Nicaragua. Go to Bermuda. No one looks there.   I think you'll lose.  I'd like to help you, Inko. I would, but your attitude has been bad for a long time. There's no way, no way for you to escape your fate without hope. Thank you, Dr. Settle. That was gratuitous and sentimental. I have hope. I hope I die without being murdered. I'm sorry, Settle. I didn't mean to yell. Settle your boat and go into a headlock choking camera. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. Is this what you want? Huh? Too much hope. It keeps me from ending your self-concerned blather. I think Shirley, he'll hear himself one day. He'll hear, and Shirley, he'll see that there are people who love him. And then stop hurting them. In Octavia's closet, the white palace. My suits ring. I'll make sure our dear republics stay for faith and want to be conservatists. Listen, dear hearts, I don't have much time. My station is closing in. I won't be able to give you many more pep talk. Warnings are whimsical song stylings. So help me, there's a storm coming over Greater Antilles. It will vortex over the isthmus of my tassel. They say that is where the Spartans defeated the Roman legion just by digging to the water and flooding the lawn where the Romans tried to cross. Know where that is? Then you're butt-fucked by a beaver's fur. What are precautions? Lock your basins. Something is coming up from below. Danger, this bit can't be kept behind walls and under concrete floors anymore. It has to come to your house, under your bed. Be afraid, my darling. Keep your third eye open to change and it will take you to the future. You follow that third eye into the seventh chakra of the world and sleep with it inside you. Shhh. Go to sleep now. I won't bother you anymore. Shhh. Go to sleep. And then go listen to some music and the truth will be in the song. I'll do it. I'll close my eyes. I'll listen, Mina. Why don't you have a stay? I'll make room for you right here in my... Why don't you come out and we can get ready? Wearing my Alexandra McQueen. The one you love with the cutouts that matches your sandals. You want to go out tonight? It's the full worm moon. Birds will be back soon and all those earthworms will love me again. I can smell it in the cold air. Please come out. You always know where to find me. The scent of your bathwater. Lavender in time. Hurts my eyes sometimes. I'll try to remember that. Our chariot awaits. Will you let me hold it in a color? You want, but I've answered it all up so it wouldn't show through the dress, so... Can you just cup it? We'll see. It cuts through such things. You'll be careful. Always. They exit to go to the nightclub. End of excerpt. These are very important things to you. So in this adaptation, how did you integrate that and then what was your impetus in looking towards the island of Puerto Rico? That's a big question, but how did you infuse the original source material with your specific Hidalya Cruz style of writing? I think that's what I do. If you have a go-to Hidalya Cruz play, it's a beautiful Hidalya Cruz rhythm. You know, I'm New Yorker from the Bronx and my parents were Cubanos from Puerto Rico. So I think all my language, all my criticism about trying to show and find a home. Where is home? And I started this play after the election of George Bush, the first one, at the end of the world coming. I didn't have this idea to do the impossible things. I want to adapt. The movie is impossible and it's an adaptation of an impossible book. Everything's fragmented. But I wanted it to be about what would happen if the bastard son of the president decides to kill him and make it very Julius Caesar, make it very Roman. This actually scenes with a vacation because he wants to see where Nero came from. And so the satirica is about Nero. It's about how his scribe, the person who wrote his speeches and also planned his parties, Arbitr Elegantai, who was what Julius was, wrote the play in response right before he committed suicide. Because he could see the end coming and he was tired working for a tyrant.  And I was like, that's a nice goal. So that's where it came from. What you saw here is really I just completed the first draft during a beautiful New Works project workshop of Unit 52 at Intar. We ran for only three days and this play is big. It's like you saw it and it wasn't presented linearly at all. It was like we gave you like highlights. But the play is bigger and deeper and it's about how the poor people will rise but it's also about even what the poor people will rise will they also get corrupted by power. Beautiful and important. Thank you so much. You can find the play together. It's all about process here at the Cannava. What does it mean to be found in a place and at a time where it feels that no one can be found? And Vicky Greis is always late always lost. We explore a deeply personal profoundly potent story of a young woman the people that she meets along the way as she transitions into life in a big city. That is from an external point of view the things that are happening around her but in the piece itself we're wrestling with these deep ideas of feeling lost in a place where no one wants her to be. And so that's kind of it. I'm going to let the rest of it speak for itself. Always late, always lost at Virginia Greis. Time New York City right now. Scene one, blue corn of radio crackles static skips between stations and a woman's voice. A piñata flies into the space Siembrana Piada enters sounds of pejas follow her she has a big purse and a cheap suitcase on wheels she is looking for the sky but can't seem to find it. She is lost it starts to rain. Where's your umbrella girl? I've never needed one. Need one now? There's always a drop in Texas. Aren't in Texas anymore honey. You need an umbrella here. And waterproof boots You can't wear chocolate on the street in the dirty. Here let me help you with your bags.  Don't look lost even if you are. Stop looking out, there's nothing to see up there. Keep your hands out of the clouds girl. Where are you going? Nowhere, really. You gotta be going somewhere. You know that right? What's in your bag? Siembrana Piada opens her suitcase huge planks of cactus and pideo and corn husk boxes and boxes and boxes of lard and cacao beans fill everywhere. What are those? Chocolate from the cacao. Oh, and she dumps out her purse. What is that? Well, how can blue corn to help her dream? You're leaving a mess on the streets. She picks up the blue corn, holds it in the palm of her hand and blows it all over Siembrana Piada's feet. You are Yo-Yoon Siem. Take your chocolate flower of the cacao tree, make you drink all of it. Come on girl, do the dance. Do the song. Siem 3, two suitcases. I went to New York City with two suitcases, $300 and nowhere to go. I kept following the work from San Antonio to Austin back to San Antonio, then Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, back to LA, now here. New York can be a very lonely place. So I called my friend from home. She puts the suitcases down, lights up on local, local, local carrying two suitcases. I create large-scale, conceptually based art dealing with the construction of identity and identification. I collect strength of associations around notions of artifice, accessibility and performativity. A gay boy-girl conceptual artist from South Texas. I was going nowhere fast so I went to New York with two suitcases after traveling two days on the Greyhunt bus. I'm gonna live with my best friend. She is an artist too. At least I have somewhere to go. He puts the two suitcases down and puts on red lipstick. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Do you think New York City is the cultural center of the world? The center. The world is a very big place on the outskirts. I've been asked to write a story about a place I don't know. In a city I'm always lost in. Where is the city center? The center. The city is a very big place. Very far from San Antonio. Hey, is this our train? Loco Loco rushes into the crowded subway platform, leaving Siam-Renofiada on the platform. You can't get on the train just because the door is open. It might be taking you in the wrong direction. Scene four, hope is nowhere. Blood music rises. Siam-Renofiada dances. My first spot in New York was a fifth floor walk-up in the East Village. The bathtub was in the kitchen under the cabinets next to the sink. Look at that. The street is dressed in a suit wearing red lipstick. The suit does not quite fit. He is blindfolded. He turns in circles, getting ready to hit the piñata. Three, seven, eight. Now, I live in an apartment in Bedside with my friend from home. But I never see him much. She's always working. He doesn't work? I like the library. I go there sometimes to read books about how to live in Manhattan. But Bedside... is not Manhattan. It is very hard from the magic, the heat, the money, the city center. Locoloca begins swinging the stick wildly in the air. He can't break the piñata. He stumbles around, blindfolded. The piñata flies out of the space. He takes off his blindfolds, oriented. I close my eyes and try to imagine home. But if they go and burst through her door, home is a or letter word. A concept created by capitalism to keep the working class trapped in an ideology of family that supports patriarchy, capital, and empire. An idealized notion that doesn't really exist and was never really of our choosing to talk about this already.  You better... You better learn to hustle real fast. If not, you're going to get hustled and trust. I don't want the city to turn you out. Here. Nowhere is the only place that feels like home. I told you. You've got to be going somewhere. Don't you listen? I'm not trying to keep away. I used to live around the corner, two blocks. Nowhere. You mean the gay bar on East Village? It's my favorite gay bar.  They play bad music. There's something about nowhere dark and shady, low ceilings, no windows shaped like a long cantina in Texas. The Butch Bouncer at the door. Who doesn't like a cute Butch? Who doesn't like a cute Butch? Who doesn't like a cute Butch? Who doesn't like a cute Butch? Who doesn't like a cute Butch? But there's something about nowhere. Everyone's coming from somewhere. Going somewhere, watching something. But in a joint like that, it feels like the whole world slows down and you can find yourself. The faces of all the strangers. There's something about nowhere that feels like, like, like home. Home? The truth is, the world don't want us. It never did. Never really want to be free. You have got to let go of the idea that if you don't belong to somewhere, you are nowhere. Wherever you go, there you are. You know that, right? Seen AIDS. Loco Loco on the train platform, suitcase in hand. Sound of the doors opening. The train intercom crackles. Static, then. San Tewan no pizzin. San Yeti yo yonzin. Masho konkwa enkakawat. Enkakawat mayo on iwa in. Maya netotilo. Ma nekwikatilo. Anikantosham. Anikantinamiske. Tonias yeyukan. Yaw awaya yaw. Wiya yaw. Wiya yaw. He begins slowly spinning. Ends up in his apartment. Opens up his suitcase. It is full of strips of cut pieces of paper and handmade miniature piñatas. I will make piñatas. I'll make miniature piñatas. I'll make them from trash. The Basura of New York City. Saw them at the park. That's how I'll survive. Do not bring trash. Things from the street into this apartment. That's how people get bed bugs and you can't get rid of them. They don't want to go away. No, my skin is changing. My skin is changing. I keep my black market estrogen in a clear plastic baggie so that the mice won't need it.  They've made a nest behind the refrigerator. I think they live inside the stove. Trapped. I hear them at night trying to escape. Don't bring things in from the streets. Close that window.  You're sitting right there. I can't. Why not? I'm scared of men. With the windows closed, there's just silence. I'm scared of the men on the street in this neighborhood. I'm scared of black men. I know I'm not supposed to say that, but it's true. The ones that run up and down the stairs in this building up and down the stairs up and down the stairs up and down the stairs they have too much life and not enough space to live in. I think about it sometimes. Leaving the silence. Getting a job like she says I have to in order to live here in New York City. My friends tell me about jobs but they are meant to scary queens and communists. I think about leaving my room and going someplace other than the library and the trash bins. But there's people everywhere constantly at all times in your face, in your face bombardment. Always. There's a pulsing rhythm. It's dizzying. Never a breath. I can't breathe. I can't. The streets tire you out. Navigating through people. You have to make your path or be prepared to get out of the way. Go away! Go away! It's spinning out of control. I just got tired of it all. The city will do that to you, you know. I tried to leave. To get away. But you can't escape the skin you're in even when it's changing. Here you go. There you are. I don't recommend coming here. Unless you live in a dream on top of Manhattan high-rise. Loco Loka Costume 101. What's your name? Loco Loka. Where do you live? I just died in an apartment. My building has seven floors. I live on the fifth floor. You do know it would be cheaper for you just to walk to the hospital. With our stairs to our outside. Second floor. It's just around the corner. Are you sure you really need an ambulance? Yes, please. Do you have health insurance? Seem 15. Lil Kim is dead. In the sidewalk. A sterile institutional light slicker on an office. I count things when I'm scared. It's a trick I came up with when I was little. Gets my mind off of what's bothering me. Helps me with being young. I'm scared of hospitals.  A site board is a lot like a prison. Is a lot like New York City. As an artist. My biggest fear. Is going crazy. And an excerpt. An exploration of moving to places where we can't quite see where we are. And yet wherever I am I will always be. So those are hard lessons to learn. And as a almost two year Chicago transplant.  So thank you for your gift. Vicki, let's talk a bit about the piece. You know, your bodies of work are circuitous in general. Much like the lives that we live. And that was something that you articulated very beautifully in the rehearsal earlier this week. I wanted you to touch a bit about that. Especially in context of this play. How and why are we present in this manner? Well I've never arrived at a location in a straight line. And so I feel like I don't know how to tell a story in that way. And so oftentimes the story that I'm telling has already been told before. And I feel like I'm repeating something. And it moves like this. And in Texas, we dance in a circle clockwise. And when I went to LA it was the first time that I realized that not everybody does that. And for me that's always been the movement of story. It's that it picks up, it continues, it will continue after I'm gone. And so in terms of finding a place, I certainly feel that as a tajana, I also feel that as a queer woman, as a woman it doesn't have children. You know, as an artist that grew up in a working class family, I feel finding a place has always been a very difficult thing for me. Because I feel like I've always been on the outside of a lot of circles. And I think that as a queer artist, one of the things that I've learned to do as a queer person, one of the things I've learned to do is how do we make something, even when we're not asked to be at the table. And sometimes we actually don't want to be at certain tables. When I moved to New York I had a very difficult time writing and I started doing all these lucid dreaming exercises. And what I actually really believe that Simpano Gala is about is how do we stay in the dream? How do we keep staying in the dream? Even if the world is telling us something different, even if we elected George Bush twice, how do we stay in the dream? Thank, that's real. And you know, making this piece itself, I mean almost all of your works are very deep and personal, but this one feels almost semi-autobiographical because of sort of the circumstances we see Simpano Gala in and the people that she surrounds herself with. Can you talk a little bit about the intersection of this place specifically? You know, again, I think it came from that place of not knowing, not being able to write, trying to find the familiarity. I have a good big one in my life. I have lots of yajitas in my life of all different races, especially Chinese and African American that like to hit me, push me, you know, push me to go stronger and go harder. I have a lot of yajitas in my life, and I have to always have a sauna in my life. And so I feel like those types of people are always circling in my world.  And I think that for me, writing is always about trying to understand something. And I think that question of what New York means or symbolizes, it's less like little girl in a big city and it's more like, what does it mean to be in this belly of the beast? And I think that that was the beginning of it for me. Thank you. And then my last question for you. I've got a lot of questions. Sure, I think so. But everyone's given the same amount of time. If you were to sum up in a series of five to seven words of what you call people take away from San Diego, what would those be? And it can be a phrase too, but they also can't be answered. Dad, do that dance, do that song, girl. Well, it's the only musical we're featuring here at Cardinabelle. But music is obviously very, very important to our culture. And significantly what Appeal does in telling the story of Gustavo Garcia, who was a civil rights activist, who was born in 1915, who argued before the Supreme Court the first case brought by Mexican-Americans to the Supreme Court to actually be heard. In telling his story, his life story, she also has integrated the story of Macarra Garcia, which is the first political kind of tent theater from our Chicano-Chicano Tejano communities. So very, very significant case, time in our history, and one that's not often told, right? This is during the civil rights movement, Quednandes versus Texas. Sure, we all know Brown versus Board of Education, but this is a contemporary and also a very, very significant case that's of that time. So without further ado, Appeal. Appeal, the new American musical of Mexican descent by Amparo Garcia Crow. Act two, scene three, Mama's Boy. At Gus Garcia's home in San Antonio, Texas, 1949, Gus approaches the front door. He checks his mailbox, which is stopped. He opens one letter. It's obvious he's been drinking. If I only had a life for every death thread I get. Save to you, buddy. He tries to open the front door. The key does not work. He has been sleeping. She checks the clock. Gus keeps knocking. She doesn't move. Another light comes on. It's Maria Teresa. Goddamn door! Don't want him here. Maria Teresa goes to the door to open it for Gus. Edenin follows her. She tries to stop Maria Teresa from opening the door. He's gonna dull her, Amma. Pregnant. He's bringing in children into this world in sin. And you slap me. I thought it's better to bring something than nothing at all. Oh, Maria Teresa opens the door. Mama. I blame you. Oh, of course you do. He can do no wrong. Irene. Other of you are welcome here any longer. I know this. He tries to physically lead his mother out of the room. Please, for once, let me handle this. You cannot handle anything. You are drunk! Perhaps. But right now.  For once. Gus, when he stops her, he pushes her into her room and closes the door. He spots a wooden chair at the end of the hallway. Irene has also spotted it. And she hurries to grab it and hands it to him. He places the chair underneath the doorknob to hold his mother in her room. Gus, stop! Just leave, please. I felt the divorce. She's very overwhelmed. Mexican American is a United States citizen. Granted that privilege on February 2nd, 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which adopted the Rio Grande as the Texas border, guaranteeing that the Mexicans living in the lost territories in the southwest were granted. And I quote, the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the U.S. Constitution. Bill Bow. The justices grant Gus an additional 16 minutes to present his case. Historically, this remains unprecedented. Mr. Garcia, do Mexican immigrants speak enough English to serve on juries? Your Honor, my people were in Texas 100 years before San Houston arrived. San Houston was just a wetback from Tennessee to the real citizens of Texas. Wetback is a derogatory term that originated with those who entered Texas illegally by crossing the Rio Grande, presumably by swimming and wading across and getting their backs wet in the process. Historically, for the record, San Houston was the original wetback when he crossed the river under Mexican rule to acquire a land grant. And although Mr. Houston considered the native Mexicans already living there, the intruders, the reality was the Mexican inhabitants who would soon after become Texans never crossed the river. The river crossed them. He's right. The status quo is not an option. I heed on my own. In our history that it's free to them, the first time I heard about Gus's story, I was not a writer yet, but I was amazed because it's got such a Greek tragic hero art in that he dies homeless on a park mansion center. And if you actually do the research, you gotta wonder as that was, you know, because he had FBI, CIA, and they were really afraid that he was going to start a revolution, sort of. He did have an alcohol problem, but it was, I think, his bipolar, bipolar and ideas like ability. And it was our own community in a way that neither party did anything because there was so much shame to have lost the rising sun in such a tragic way. And so it's about class structure, because he was actually a very privileged man. They had money coming from a little but he fought for the young, for the people that did not. In many ways, his rebellion was just his mother's story. Because she was a little freaky when I was young, yellow. And so I really loved how could that happen. So I've been living this story, it's like a nine-life story. I have the one-moment show. I have the short two-person show. Any which way to get the story told, but really, and I was like, I had to write a film script for it, but that didn't write it small because it's a Spielberg-level story, a huge proportion, because it starts in a session all the way to the sixth week. And we and JFK were buddies. They saw each other as, hey, you're my other me, basically.  So again, I don't know what I'm hearing. I think something that's also, thank you for bringing up these other historical happenings. Something that's really beautiful in what you've done here. And you should check out the script again, just another little plug for it. It's a trap, hey? What did it happen? But in telling the story of Gus Garcia, not only is it telling his story, is it telling the story of, you know, another side of the civil rights movement. It's also telling the legacy, you know, the history of Latino-Latina storytelling and theater movements, right, like Africa Garcia, but also our greater American history, right? You see, you know, he's born in 1915. We get the Great Depression. We have World War II in there. We have, you know, all the way up through the civil rights movement. Just think that's really kind of a remarkable thing that you've done. Thank you. And I guess one of the significant things that I wanted to tell in this story, again, people aren't aware, is that the Brown versus Board of Education case and this case were decided at the same time. And why this one fell by the wayside and when you do the history, they lost the transcript. Yeah. How do you lose the transcript of its landmark case again, subversive and of real fears about McCarthyism at that point and some significant hiding story. But yeah, there's a lot here. But La Carta, its birthday was 1915. And I guess it's birthday. And maybe went away about 1947. But this is San Antonio and Los Ranchitos. And so I love the metaphor of the Cascacias attention to do the undersigned story. And of course, I should just mention that the Hernandez versus Texas case is the trial by peers. Which, you know, yeah. Oh, yes, yes. That's a reminder. I just want to put this up. Rare. And that is, in the Brown versus Board of Education, every single case that made that case possible was present was Mexican. All the precedent cases were Mexican. Because Mexicans have been trying to go to white school and have that privilege. Interestingly, all the precedent cases were the Hernandez case for black. So that's another story in this case where the Thurgood Marshall had him freed up and the whole black and Chicano and how so many of the professional Chicano, never Chicano, were Spanish. They did not really want to be associated with the black cause. They wanted to remain white on the census. So it's kind of like, it pushes all these issues about inner racism in any class. And intro racism, too. Right, yeah. And how our communities are actually, you know, I think kind of thematically if I could drama her at the festival. It's how we can lift each other up. Right. And how our stories are all the same, you know, story. And how, in looking to our communities, looking to the black community, looking at, you know, how are we mobilizing in this corner of the country or here. Knowing our stories is so important. So I'm so grateful to you for telling Gus Garcia's story, for telling the story of La Carta Garcia, and for telling all those other stories which are interwoven. Just really quickly, if there's a thought, a last thought, or a takeaway that you have here, or something that people would glean from reading the full script that we didn't get from this excerpt. And I think we have this conversation before because you've been on Broadway, you know. The idea of creating a big story that describes a big-ass musical. You know, it's a white genre. I mean, and thank God for Hamilton, but even, you know, the musical before and behind, you have to kind of do the well-made play, sort of.  You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So that's been the challenge, but to still stay in integrity, the magic field is still there, but not to make it un-cycle while we have another translator. Or, you know, the charter buses are coming from Idaho or whatever. There's no... Okay, down here, boy. It is with great pleasure and, for me, a personal honor to introduce our final selection for the morning. It is 1970, and Cesar Chavez has just wrangled up. We're at the peak of what is probably considered one of the most pivotal moments in the Chicano social movement of the century. And we're following the journey of a young couple as they work their way to volunteer for El Macriado, which is an underground newspaper affiliated with the United Farm Workers Union.  And it is through two forms of storytelling, both dramatic realism and the use of actos, which is a sort of sketch, political performance piece created and fostered by Luis Valdez as a casino to explore the journey of these two characters and the people around them. And then Dan's beautiful stage directions articulate everything else that you should know. So we're just going to jump into it. The Sweet Heart Deal by Dan Rodriguez. The characters and story in this play are fictional. What is not fictional is that Cesar Chavez Valores Huerta and Larry Edelon founded the United Farm Workers Union and changed the course of history. Throughout, various characters are played by the ensemble. There are two playing areas. The story unfolds primarily in the Office of El Macriado, the voice of the farm worker, the underground newspaper of the United Farm Workers Union in Delano, California. There is also a playing space outside of both offices that is neutral and transformative. The play is vital. Cesar Chavez is never seen only heard in snippets during the soundscape of rallies. And finally, a note about the company and the actos. The piece functions within two realities, the play and the acto. The actos are performed by a theater company or also the actors in the play. We see the company change costumes, help each other set up for subsequent scenes, change set pieces, etc. There are four agit-prop sketches created by Luis Valdez and Teatro Capacino and used to educate the farm workers on the issues of the strike. The farm workers and the organizers performed them in a Brechtian style. Think Brecht crossed with Comedia Verante, performed by Quentin Flas. The villains wore masks, the farm workers and the SCAD characters did not. All characters wore signs around their next character, boss, SCAD, farm worker, etc. Highly theatrical in style, the actos should be approached with the skill it takes to do Comedia Verante and the soul it takes to perform Brecht. As the play progresses, the acto and the play merge. Scene eight, acto, grower and teamster, a teamster sweetheart enter arm-in-arm real lovebirds. Both wore masks and signs around their neck the grower and teamster sweetheart. Teamster sweetheart wears a wedding veil. Oh cupcakes! It's been five years since we tied the knot and I'm still so looopsy-woopsy. My darling has been so quiet here and Selina is our honeymoon valley where we do naughty things together. Strug those naughty things to me and make it dirty. We can undercut farm worker wages over and over and over again. We beat it into them harder and harder that we're the only union of choice and we make it so hard for them and we make it so hard for them to do anything else and there's beatings and fashions and burnings and oh yeah. Oh girl you're speaking my language. Yes. After who is playing the UFW enters with a tiny wake-up flag and a long pudding poll as if in the distance the UFW starts chanting The UFW and the ability to flag as if it is a pesky fly wasn't around. Pesky little bugger swatted for me honey.  Turns this time with a larger flag on a pole does the same thing this time we hear the chanting louder and closer. Wake up, wake up, wake up Swat that thing. I just did.  Gora whistles and Teamster Goon enters wearing a mask and a sign that reads Goon. UFW now enters full-sized with a normal-sized well that flag. Teamster raids are an act of treason against the aspirations of farm workers, traders, traders, traders. What's he saying about us? In a choreographed move the Teamster Goon with a prop baton or baseball bat begins to hit the UFW as the grower and sweeper, Ekman. Hit a barter. Hit a barter. The move goes to Realistic. As this transition happens the actors throw off their costume pieces and acto props as the lights ship to a realistic scene. It has turned dark and real. The actors start kicking the actor who has been playing the UFW. Hit a barter. Hit a barter. Hit a barter. The actual character's scatter leaving will on the ground. Lights up on Maddie dealing over will in the Salinas' Field Office. Oh my god, who did this? What happened to him? We found him outside. He must have driven him south back here. Charlie and Charlie enter from outside. Someone drove him back and carried his body to the front door of the office. There's blood on the passenger side. The truck looks pretty beat up. He doesn't make a statement. Don't move. An ambulance! I'm fine. You look pretty worked over. Do you remember anything? Charlie, not now, please. The Ramirez brothers. They were at the Tiamati Ranch when I went to serve papers to their two foremen. Court talks, they've been hiring scabs illegally. The old Filipino volunteer. Juan. Yeah, Juan, he wasn't feeling well, so I volunteered to deliver the paper. I thought you were going to have a beer with Mac. I never made it. It seems simple enough. Just serve the papers, get the hell out of it. You had no business there. So what happened? I drove my truck onto the ranch and then I saw a cloud of dust behind me and someone following me. When I stopped and got out, they squirred around me and stopped it and then started to back up and I, like, they're gonna hit me.  I went to the driver's side to get in the truck but the impact must have made the door stick because I couldn't get it open which gave them time to grab me and knock me to the ground. Oh wow.  How?  And it's all out there for all to see. No one knows us here. It was the two older Ramirez brothers, Jesus. Once they threw me to the ground the Tiamatis showed up and it looked like irritation piping. They brought a couple of scabs back up. They put a match to the cork docks and threw them at me. I felt the hits from the pipes on my arms, my back, my side, everywhere. They stepped on my hands. They hit me. I blacked out. I can't believe you moved here. No, we didn't think about it. Okay, the ambulance will be here soon. Meanwhile, I'll call the main office and let them know what happened. This isn't an isolated incident. It's been happening all over. We don't have any control over how the grovers or even the teamsters conduct themselves. It's going to the hospital. It may not be as bad as it looks. My, I saw a truck parked in the distance with a guy and sitting stone faced. Just watching the pipes swinging with blood spurting. Where's your brother, Matt? Sound of an ambulance siren louder and louder as Marty holds will. Lights shift slowly, end of scene. I love how interesting we're examining an older form of theater used to her political sketch to create a message, pulling new contemporary forms of theater in this traumatic realism, merged into one place in one time so that we can gain a deeper understanding of not only how hard the realistic circumstances were then, but how a lot of this is still very relevant today. Can you talk a bit about the inception of the piece? What is your idea? Well, a couple of reasons. My aunt and uncle Frank and Liz Rodriguez were very, very glamorous. And to live in San Jose in the 60s, I had two Mercedes parked in a driveway, lived in a two story house and my uncle would watch on television what was happening in Delano.  And he convinced her to sell everything, close their house and move to Delano to volunteer for a love triangle. And they took their four children with them. And they lasted for two years. So the emphasis of the story was that. I said that aside, but that's the general and everything beyond that is fiction. The second is that my husband, as you know, all of us in Delano, was a very, very funny octo actor. And kind of a master at it. And he, so it was like, I have a master octo actor and conceiving was great. I mean, obviously, Luis was the impotentist and we all trained under him, but you know, Luis and Socorro Valdes, Luis's sister, really took the form to another place. And they were very skilled and they never really overacted. And so I thought, look, that's the kind of genre that I want to explore. That it is a kind of American genre, very indigenous to California, theatrical. And it's ours. And how can I explore that? Let everyone know that it was something that we did in the 70s and that we can claim as our legacy. I love that. It's out of it. It's not as dramatic a festival as we had to be a few moments ago. They say, do you have claiming our stories? It's a thing that's pretty pulling throughout the weekend. And one that is also obviously kidney resonance, we've heard, we all. Have you shared the play with Luis? No, Luis is not, Luis Valdez? Yes. No, Luis has not played it. You're not gonna play it? But a now walk and if you don't have. Oh, okay. So now I'm thinking on, you know, read the play. I've read it for me many, many times in an afternoon that I was just developing it. So yeah, they haven't read it yet. Well. Maybe it just hasn't been. Yeah. I'm gonna play it home. Just play it in. So Dan, I'd love for you to talk about the merging of the forms. How and why was it important? I mean, we're talking about reclaiming that form of theater, but why not? You could have gone either way. You could have isolated it and not go. Right. Right. Because I was interested in writing a play. Yeah. And interested in the dramatic form of how to tell a story through playwriting. I mean, I make a living developing the work of ensembles and non-linear plays. And so I thought it would be interesting for me and scary to try to write a play. And I've been trying to do the, you know, write a play for about the last eight years. And so I thought it was important to do that. And to not take it so broadly that people couldn't connect to the story and find an emotional resonance to the work. So those transitions into the, from the octo into the play are very important. And I think, you know, it's something that I would continue to work on like that. Yeah. And I think that was pretty resonant in the evenness in the excerpt we saw. Right. I think sometimes, I think Lois Moffio said this so beautifully. She said, reality is so wrapped that we have to use highly forms of theatrical devices in order to access it sometimes. And for those of us with moments like this are so still deeply personal. And it's, I mean, sure, a lot of time it's passed between them now, but not really. And even still, again, we're seeing it happen again and again and again in various forms in various ways. So thank you for that. And I think the other thing is that, I mean, my parents were both farm workers when they were moved. And I think by the time they were both 17 they were out of the fields and trying to go to school, both dropped out of school. And so finished school after. But then a generation later I had much more privilege than they have. I went to college. And I had a professional career. And so I thought it was interesting to explore how so many of us who were raised in middle class but our parents were not. And how we can move between both. I can go and to my, visit my cousins in India where working class and feel very comfortable there and go that, that. And so it's also the story about the middle class and how we struggle to either continue to feel of belonging there or some trying to reject it. So it's also about that. And then the other is that it's a story about the troops of volunteers who create who support a movement. And what, and they're faceless, generally faceless individuals who we don't really know. And so this story about Mady and Will who go to volunteer for the UFW, you never know them. And yet their story, which is fiction but based on many people who volunteered are an important pillar to any social movement. And so that's also what I'm trying to explore. Thank you, Dan. My last question for you, Dan, is so we're leaving, thank you, Leigh. Milwaukee downstairs, we're getting ready to embrace the genetic estuary suite. And as we're, you know, getting some coffee, some water going to the bathroom. What is the one question people here will be asking themselves about what we just saw? Continue to live in a personal world live in a personal world as well as a community world. And what is that space in the middle that connects us? So it's personal, it's community, and we live in a space in the middle in which we are intertwined. Woo! Yes.


thing. There's always an education hurdle with a new product. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams and we have a great show lined up for you today. We have Sean Collins, who's the Chief Vision Officer at Premier Outdoor Living, as well as the host of the hardworking happy hour on the show with us today. Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Zach. I appreciate it.  And this is just one of your channels. I watched, I don't know how many hours of like time lapse videos of you on a construction site, which was very cool. But for our listeners, give us a little bit of background on your business, what you do, and on your different social media and content channels. I started out with Premier Outdoor Living in 2015. Previous to that, I was doing a landscaping business, kind of just, you know, something to get by mowing some lawns and had the opportunity to do a backyard project with a deck and a patio. Really didn't have much experience in it, but kind of talked my way into it and just absolutely loved the creative aspect of it. And the project turned out pretty good. And immediately after that, I got rid of my lawn and landscape business and jumped right into creating these unique outdoor living spaces with no prospects for work, no reputation, no portfolio. But just kind of felt this passion that this is what I want to do and I'm going to figure it out. So that was 2015. For the first couple years, I decided, well, you know, we just want to build these very unique spaces. So I'm not going to worry about money for the first two years. I'm just going to worry about developing a portfolio and showcasing that through social media. So after those first two years, they were a little bit rough, not making a whole lot of money, but I was super passionate about it. I was having the time of my life working 80 hours a week, probably, but loving every minute of it. And after about those first two years, it worked. We had developed this online reputation, a great portfolio. And now, eight years later, we are just continuing that. And for the last four years, we've really been trying to maximize our audience online. So that's kind of a separate part of our business now creating the content about what we're building. But it's another way that I get to be creative and do something fun with the backyards that we're building. Is your biggest following on YouTube or is it Instagram? YouTube's our biggest audience. We just hit 300,000 subscribers two or three days ago, which was pretty cool. We're just about 800,000 followers across our main five platforms. So we try to be everywhere. We don't want to be too reliant on one platform because you never know, they can come and go like MySpace did many years ago. So we want to be everywhere and all of our different platforms have a slightly different audience. So it's good to just be everywhere that we can. Did you know when you started doing this in 2015 that YouTube was going to be this big for you? If I think back to 2015, YouTube was big for sure, probably not to the extent that it is right now, in terms of the ability for monetization, getting deals with manufacturers from your standpoint, things like that. Like talk me through that progression of maybe when the light bulb went off for you. I started out in 2015, all of the social media stuff was really just to get leads locally. We were doing it in a somewhat traditional format, but doing it on social media, that was kind of a little bit of a advantage I had as being somebody that was a little bit younger than most of my competitors in the area. So we did that for a couple of years and that kind of grew organically. We probably had about 10,000 followers total. But then in 2019, I decided I didn't want to go down the road of trying to scale the construction side of the business. It didn't really fit my skill set and it wasn't something I was super passionate about. I wanted to just do all the things I love doing, building, creating, designing, and I thought that there was a very unique opportunity with the expanding market that outdoor living was becoming and not a lot of people really focusing the business on creating content on what they're doing. So in 2019, I decided again, we're going to go all in and kind of like I did with the jobs in the beginning, I was like, I'm not going to worry about followers or return on investment for at least a year. I'm just going to make as many videos as I possibly can. And again, it was a lot of fun and a lot of work, but that first year we went from nothing on YouTube to about 3,000 subscribers and made about a hundred videos. So it was a lot of work and didn't make anything off of it that first year for many over thousands of hours it took, but the snowball kind of started rolling and by early 2021, we hit 100,000 subscribers. So two years later, we're just at 300,000 and almost had 100 million views on YouTube, which just blows my mind when I think of that number for just building backyards. Did you have a snowball moment where one piece of content just started to pick up steam for you? It was a series of multiple. So the thing that really catapulted the channel was right around the beginning of COVID. A lot of people were searching for how to build a deck, backyard inspiration, all of those things. Everybody was doing home projects. So the search traffic was through the roof and luckily we were in a position where we had already started that snowball. So we had a good library of content and we had a couple videos at that point that really just shot up. There was one day and I can still go back and look at our YouTube analytics. There's a huge spike. One day it was like May of 2020 and we got almost a million views just in one day. You hit the algorithm. I hit the algorithm and one of our videos just shot up and that started it from there on. It continued to grow and that was the biggest thing for me was I knew I had to stick with it because one of them will go off, but you can't expect the first one or the second one or the tenth or the twentieth. You just have to keep making them and as long as you feel like it's good content, eventually it's going to get found and YouTube's going to find your audience that enjoys it and that happened and it was super exciting. Especially that first YouTube video that hit a million views was super exciting for me.  A lot of manufacturers out there, maybe they've worked with an influencer in some capacity. Maybe they haven't. If you're a manufacturer or you're working on marketing side of one of these companies, what are the things that you would look out for in terms of working with an influencer and what would you stay away from? Like I want to hear like, okay, if someone says this, like don't believe them. If they say this, this is a good opportunity. Be as real with me as possible if you can. I think there's a lot of different ways to look at it. It's a very trendy thing that manufacturers want to get involved with this influencer culture and want to grow their social media presence. And there's a few different ways to look at an influencer. You have an influencer that can just give you eyeballs, so impressions. They can represent a whole bunch of different things that are direct competitors to you. They might just do one video for you and they might want a certain premium for it, but I look at that, like you can buy impressions, you can buy Instagram ads, you can buy Facebook ads, you can advertise on Google. The thing that really starts to bring value is their full, confident recommendation of your product. And that can only come with an exclusive relationship with that person. So we work with a few brands that we absolutely love and we've been with since the beginning of this because we really felt like they were the best products for us. So that authenticity and that exclusivity is the most valuable thing. That's the thing that's kind of hard to quantify. You can quantify impressions and views and all of that because if it's just giving you exposure and it's not coming with that full recommendation from that influencer, it's not worth as much. So that's the thing that I would really look out for as a manufacturer. Make sure that you're partnering with somebody that is super authentic, that doesn't necessarily have to have the biggest following, but really fits what your brand is trying to do and fits that brand messaging. And make sure that they're exclusive to you because if they represent you and then next month they're doing a video for a direct competitor, it's really all you did was pay for those impressions. You're not paying for any sort of exclusive recommendation from that person. What manufacturers out there are doing this the right way? Who should I be following to go, man, these guys are doing it from a strategic standpoint the way that you're talking about? Decorators. We work with decorators in the decking space and we've worked with them since 2019. And it was a very organic relationship that started. We were making content, we were using the product, we loved it. And I was very, very slow to make any partnerships in the beginning because I know as soon as I partner with somebody and I say it's the greatest, we love it, we just can't get enough of it. And then the next year maybe that deal fizzles out and the relationship expires and you go on to the next one. You can only do that one or two times before everyone knows that you're a phony and you're just at it for the money. So I knew from the very beginning it had to be a long term partnership that both sides see a future together and it has to be authentic. At the end of the day, I believed in what we were doing and that the right deal or right partnership would come along. I wanted to make sure that I fully believed in the product and I could say without hesitation, we love using it, you should use it too. And we think that you're going to love it when you use it. Where do you see the creator and influencer space going, Sean? I want to specifically know what channels do you see that there's opportunity in and tactics do you see as opportunity in? If I look at what Twitter now X is doing, they're now paying their creators. I think MrBeast I saw posted something like he got however many tens of thousands of dollars paid out from Twitter recently. Where are you pushing into and where do you see that there's opportunity? I think there's opportunity everywhere that there's users. That's why we always tried to be everywhere. We don't want to focus all of our efforts on one platform. A lot of people you'll see do that, especially on Instagram. There's a lot of Instagram influencers that really don't have much of a following outside of Instagram. And I always felt like I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. I want to spread it out and you do hit different demographics there. So I think there's an opportunity on all the platforms. I think the biggest opportunity from a creator standpoint and from a manufacturer partnership standpoint is YouTube. YouTube is really the only platform that you can garner people's attention for an extended period of time. Things in the building industry. There's brand recognition. There is all these little things that you can get across in a five second Instagram video or a TikTok or just a picture on Facebook. But a lot of things in the building materials industry are education based. So you have to have your audience's attention. You have to teach them something. There's always an education hurdle with a new product that that a manufacturer is trying to push. So YouTube is the place where you have your audience's attention. An average view for us on Instagram is probably 10 to 15 seconds because most videos are only 30 seconds or so. On YouTube our average watch time on the video that we just posted is almost 10 minutes. So it's a huge difference of audience and attention. And if somebody's watching you for 10 minutes and they're choosing to watch you for 10 minutes, that in itself just blows my mind because nobody can pay attention to anything for 10 minutes, let alone me talk about building a deck in a patio. So that's where I think the most value is for the creator, for the partner, for everybody involved. That's the space I think holds the most opportunity. I don't think we have short attention spans. I think we have short evaluation spans. That's why a lot of YouTube creators focus a lot on the hook or what's the beginning thing that I'm looking at or what's my thumbnail because we want to bring people in. And what you're doing, Sean, is you've already won the evaluation period of your viewers. They already trust you. So that leans back on, if you were to rep a product in some capacity, I really love this manufacturer product, you should check it out. You're kind of doing the same thing but in a purchase scenario, not just a watch scenario. So I think you've garnered the trust of your audience base, which is why they're willing to watch for that length of time. And your videos are great. Yes, thank you. We've always tried to tread that balance between education and entertainment. That was always really important from the beginning. People are going to search for how to build a deck. And they're going to watch one of those videos, but we wanted to create something where people just tune in every week. Every Sunday at 8 a.m., a new premier outdoor living video is going to come out on YouTube. And we want to gain that audience that looks forward to it. And they're going to watch it no matter what we're building to get a couple of tips to just laugh a couple of times and just to see what we're building. So for our listeners, if they want to connect with you, Sean, if they want to reach out, what's the best way for them to do that? Best way is on any of our socials for manufacturers and dealers. The place that I connect with them most of the time is LinkedIn. So it's just my name, Sean Collins, Guru, Instagram, TikTok, Premier Outdoor, YouTube, Facebook, Premier Outdoor Living. If you just type Premier Outdoor into Google, one of our channels will definitely come up and you can see what we're all about. Sean, man, thank you so much for being generous with your time and sharing about your journey as well as some strategies. This has been awesome. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, check us out at venue.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams. Thanks, everybody.


In today's lecture, I wish to talk about the application of industrial byproducts. This is becoming a very contemporary topic, though a lot of research has been done in the past also, but the main thrust area is how to deal with the industrial byproducts, how to utilize them, how to handle them, how to dispose them, how to transport them and so on. So, in this quest of dealing with the industrial byproducts, I have created a memorandum of understanding with CII and our lab has been converted into a laboratory for geo-environmental research innovations. The main theme is that to appraise the industries, what are their issues, how they should be dealing with and having done a lot of research in this context, the focus is to create policies for the country through the central government. So, I am sure you will realize that based on my discussions in the earlier class, people are aware of the problem, but the main question is who will build the cat. So, this is where my endeavor is, those of you who are interested in learning about what is happening in this context, you can visit the website. Now, the sub topics which I intend to cover here are what are the applications of industrial waste or byproducts. As I said in the previous lecture, we do not use the word waste anymore, these are the byproducts. We talk about fly ash, silica fumes, rubber tires, glass aggregates, dredged material and from here the question would come before I start utilizing these materials, how would I understand what their potential is, how they can be utilized in the modern day concept, how value can be added to these materials that is the valorization and this is where our lab has been working in the, pursuing the concept of manmade soils also which I was talking about sometime back. Now, how to decide whether a certain industrial byproduct is useful for a certain application or not, this is based on a series of tests which are done and this is where I will be discussing in details from next lecture onwards, the ways of characterizing the materials, geomaterials and these materials could be manmade or these could be naturally occurring. So, the characterization schemes remain same and from this point onwards, the idea is to create value addition to the geomaterials. So, first we start talking about the industrial byproducts, the question is that what are the major issues which are bothering us and before I start using the industrial byproducts as a geomaterial, manmade geomaterial. The first thing is that identification of the application is not very clear. So, we have to create this, we have to create the applications for a certain industrial byproduct. You must have realized that I have been talking about mine tailings, I have been talking about the mill tailings, I have been talking about the slags which are coming out of the industries, red mud, I think I discussed about one of the lectures which is coming out from the refineries where the alumina is being extracted from the box site. Similarly, the minerals which are being processed from the mines, these are major issues like the volumes of industrial byproducts must be in trillions of tons all over the world. And humanity is facing a big issue, what do with this and this is where the identification of the application becomes very, very important. Second is I would be requiring the key properties of the geomaterials before I can use it. In conventional geomechanics, we talked about post grain material, fine grain materials and we differentiated between the soils. So something of this sort has to be done in case of industrial byproducts also that we have to understand their key properties. What are the key properties and how to use that property as a positive of the material strength of the material. And at the same time I have to understand what are the negatives or the weaknesses of the material. As far as weakness is concerned, this could be a threat to environment, geoenvironment alright. So we have to make sure that the material when it is utilized for any application should not be contaminating the geoenvironment. That is the main thing to discuss. We here also talk about the environmental sustainability. Sustainability is the key word in today's society contemporary world. You know we want sustainable solutions. We are discussing about this in the previous lecture also how to make a sustainable situation and talk about this in details today. And then what are the testing protocols which can be developed in the laboratory. So when you are treating a material as a new material you have to understand how this system is going to behave under a given circumstances. What will be the response of this material to different energy fields. So we have to perform laboratory experiments to develop the protocols. Sometimes from laboratory we might have to take these results to the field also. Then we have to model the engineering behavior and this engineering behavior can be modeled in the by conducting suitable laboratory experiments. Shear strength is a good example of you know what is the engineering behavior of a geomaterial. Compressibility would be another. Consolidation characteristics would be third one. Compactibility would be another. Permeability could be another engineering behavior. Plasticity index could be another engineering behavior. Heat migration through the material could be another engineering behavior alright and so on. Then the question is that when I am selecting a material major issue is the constructability issues and how the system is going to perform. You remember long term monitoring which you are talking about sometime back. Whether the system can be constructed or not. It may so happen that the industrial byproducts which you are using are lighter than the native soil or at the same time they could be heavier also. So when we talk about let us say slags where the specific gravity is are extremely high 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 as compared to the soils which are of 2.6, 2.7. Then the question is how to balance these two systems you know the industrial byproduct setting on the soils. And this is where the geomechanics of the contacts interaction again starts. So field performance is a big issue. Constructability is a big issue. Long term performance is another question. How the system is going to perform in the long run alright. So if I am utilizing the dredge materials for making the roads I was talking about in the previous lecture. There are beautiful examples of land creation in the country and we discussed about some of the projects in the last class. So the question is that if a system which is with the geomaterial which are not similar to the naturally occurring geomaterials if I am using them for doing some engineering how would they behave in the long run particularly their decay, decomposition, deformation alright, disintegration. So all these terms become very very important when we talk about the long term performance. So this is a big challenge I am sure you must be realizing that I have opened up a Pandora box and these questions have to be answered by scientists and by the industry guys, by the planning commission guys in the country and you know each and every one in the society. Then comes the regulatory constraints. Sir my question is like can we accommodate decay like can we allow decaying of the material or we always have to shield against decaying. See previous lecture I gave an example where I wanted to shield the material again decaying by cutting off the oxygen supply but there could be a lot of situations like MSW, municipal solid waste landfill where you want them to get decayed. If I have to use this for an engineering purpose let us say for a road construction or a railway embankment then that I cannot afford like my question is I cannot afford to. Correct. So then I think you have to do something of the sort which I told you in the previous lecture that you have to shield it against the environmental actions and decay which is induced because of environmental activities. So regulatory constraints become very important before you do a planning of how you are going to use the material and most of the time the regulatory constraints are from the pollution control boards or from international atomic energy if you are dealing with the nuclear waste IAEA International Atomic Energy Association. So when you are talking about the nuclear waste these type of agencies are there otherwise domestic waste, industrial waste, CPCB, MOEFCC in India these are the organizations that take care of this. There are a lot of NGOs which are taking care of the activities of the government and the industries and they are trying to put them on the right track. So regulatory constraints could be of different types. Then comes the question of sustainability which is very big issue how the system which you are trying to develop is going to be sustainable or not. So I am sure you can add lot of other issues here in this list and make it more robust alright. The volumes of the industrial byproducts whether they are available or not for a particular application their transportability is another question and so on. So when I was dealing with the airports design and the reclamation in the sea particularly in bombacity I wanted always to bring this material from other parts of the country but then there are issues related to the economics time and so on. So the huge reclamation which has been done to create a Navi Mumbai International Airport and I was the consultant. So if you look at the sustainability cycle this is how the sustainable development looks like and on this concept some of my students have already worked. So please check out the thesis by Pratusha Jayanti Ghanaraj who is still working on this but he has published papers where we have talked about the utilisation of K Ghanaraj. So where he is talking about how to utilise the mill tailings, mine tailings for sustainable development. Read these papers which have been published in very good journals. So if we talk about the sustainable development what it is we have geo-environment and basically this is the soils rocks, groundwater and mining activity is number one it leads the entire issues associated with what we are talking about. So when you do extraction of minerals by mining you do processing of the minerals, mineral activities and you produce end products, byproducts these are known as industrial byproducts which you are talking about. These industrial byproducts are unsafe when you leave them unattended we have discussed about several issues, stability is an issue, leaching is an issue, fire is an issue, mosquito breeding is an issue and so on. So what you have to do is you have to process these byproducts and if you can utilise their potential you know and you can activate them, you can use them sometimes for ground modification and improvement also. And then what I can do is this type of an activity is a sort of a replacement of the material which you mind out and whatever left over again it is going back to the geo-environment. So this becomes a complete cycle of sustainable development. Now this concept seems to be very interesting right now and in our lab we are actively working on rejuvenation of you know soils which are barren or which have low fertility. The idea is by utilising the industrial byproducts you can create a situation which could be a win-win situation for everybody, however lot of research is required in this area. So if you go back to the history of civil engineering, pozzolana is something which is known to everybody, mostly pozzolana is the material which has come from a place in Italy called pozzoli and the property is that if you add few drops of water it sets, it becomes hard, cement is a pozzolana alright, fly ash is also a pozzolonic material depending upon its fineness, its activity and so on and the percentage of lime in it. In Hindi in the northern belt we call it surki, I do not know what about the local language which you use in other parts of the country. So if you compare the activities of the natural volcano and the manmade volcano, I think you will realise that this process are quite similar, therefore yesterday I was talking about the industry which are emitting a lot of dust, ash alright fumes in the environment and what volcano does, volcano also does the same thing, there is a lot of similarity between what nature does and what we are doing as far as the influence to the geo environment is concerned. The issue is simple, the sediments which come out of volcanic activity which get deposited after the lava is formed or before the lava is formed, could be rocks or could be the fine dust which is very fertile and here whatever we are creating in these industries is the sort of a fly ash slags, they could also be nutritious and if you go through the published literature you will realise that lot of work has been done to show that fly ash have lot of nutritional value and there is no surprise because our villagers and the farmers are quite intelligent and they have been using ash for rejuvenating the lands if you remember. This is a common practice, after every crop they incinerate the residues, they mix it with the soil, they make it more fertile because after incineration NPK gets balanced in the soil nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and all sorts of minerals, so this happens to be a interesting material on which people are doing research, of course this becomes interdisciplinary area where lot of bio geotechnics and material science, geotechnical engineering applications, concrete technology, you know process engineering is being thought about. I am sure you must have come across different types of application of the fly ash, so normally people have used the fly ash for stabilisation of roads increasing their CBR, pavement and sub bases their properties, people have used fly ash for reducing the soil pressure of the soils. So by addition of the ash into clays and particularly if the clays are swelling type you are neutralising the swelling effect as well as very high liquid limit and plasticity index. So this is a very interesting application people have been practicing since long and once you do the plasticity modification the material becomes better for compaction. CBR modification is one of the good examples of how the fly ash has been used for creation of pavements and nowadays they are using this material as the fill material for embankments particularly RE wall. So in the absence of the granular material what people have been doing is they take the granular fraction of the fly ash which is lying either in the ponds which are known as lagoons or they filter out the coarse fractions which is sandy silty fraction or sometime the bottom ash which is available in the hoppers is utilised for this purpose. So I have been associated with the big business houses of the country where we have established that the fly ash which is lying unattended can be utilised as a sustainable construction material for different applications. And good example was I got a project from B.S.C.S. house reliance energy and the question imposed was that can we decant the fly ash ponds to accommodate the fresh ash which is coming out of the units alright. So these type of discussions and these type of engineering practices are being done in the country. These are good examples of the applications which you are talking about. People have used fly ash for creating different types of cement mix also and fly ash is used in creating the PPC also, Portland Pozolona cement by blending it with the OPC. So this is prehistoric a lot of research has been done nothing new but subsequently when I talk about the material characterization I will show you what type of chemical processes which we have given to the fly ash to convert it into much more value added material. And this is where we will be talking about the cation exchange capacity enhancement of the fly ash by hydrothermal treatment.


It's Thursday night, the opportunity for us to be able to get together and pray is an important thing and I want you to be able to be a part of it and to express to others and hope that others will join in as well. So if you'll take time, please to share this out on your platform wherever you may be watching from tonight. We're coming to you on our boxcast device through the app and of course simulcasting on YouTube and Facebook so you can pick it up there. So we thank you for being able to be a part. So we'll wait just a few moments for folks to get logged in and be a part of what's taking place here tonight in prayer. As we go to the Lord in prayer, we want you to be a part of it. We don't want you to miss what's taking place. And so as we're waiting on some folks to come on, please take time to share the broadcast that's taking place with others and hopefully there'll be some more that we'll be joining on. If you miss it on the first, then it will be available for you to rebroadcast and be a part of this time of prayer. And we thank you for taking time to do that tonight. If we ever needed prayer, it is now. If we ever need to get together in prayer, it's now. The Bible says, if two of us agree as touching any one thing, it shall be done. And so that's the reason why we're taking time nightly to pray together. And we'll be back with you tomorrow night as well as Saturday night. So we want you to make sure that you're here with us at prayer and share it out on your social media platform. We thank you for doing that. It really helps for others to be able to be connected as well. And I believe it will be a blessing to you. We are seeing how that prayer is being answered. As a matter of fact, I got a report in today from last night at Wednesday night service. We were praying for all of our friends out in Texas who desperately needed rain. And I got the report earlier today that let me see if I can find it here real quick. Just to be able to let you know. Hopefully it's right here. I can put my hand on it. Yeah. We prayed last night. It had been 84 days out in Brazos Valley, Texas, that area that they have not had rain and they desperately needed rain. Well, we prayed last night in the sanctuary air pace joining you with our friends and others to ask the Lord to send rain. And the report came in last night at 10 o'clock, the report came in that they were shocked for the first time in 84 days in Brazos Valley in central Texas, we will see rain. And it started raining and they have a forecast of rain for the next seven days. Isn't that just like God? Now, you may not appreciate it until you're in a place where you need the rain, but we thank God for all answers to prayer and for all the opportunities that we have to pray knowing and believing that God hears us when we pray. So thank all of you for joining us right now. And as we get ready to go to the Lord in prayer, I want to share with you a passage of scripture that comes from the book of Jeremiah 33 and three. It is one of the most infamous passages of scripture concerning prayer. And this is what it says. It says, call upon me. This is Jeremiah 33 and three. You might want to underline it yourself. It says, call upon me and I will answer thee and show you, show the great and mighty things which thou knowest not. That simple few words is a confirmation to Jeremiah that if he would call upon the Lord, that the Lord would hear him and show him great and mighty things, even things that he doesn't know is going to take place. So tonight as we go to the Lord in prayer, there's a lot of things in this one passage of scripture that I just want to bring out really quick. First of all, he says, call upon me. He didn't say call upon your neighbor. He didn't say call upon a religious organization. He didn't say call upon a group of people or a government official or the pastor. God said, call upon me. That's the first order of business.  Think about it.  Now, part of prayer is being able to help us to pray correctly and in the will of God. And the fact is there may be sometimes when you're praying that you're expecting a certain answer and God comes with another one.  He said, I will answer you. I will answer you. So the promise is, God doesn't let prayers, sincere prayers from the heart go unanswered. He just says, call upon me and I will answer you. So there should be an expectation in your heart tonight as we go to the Lord in prayer for you to pray, call upon God and then expect an answer to your prayers. There's nothing worse than praying a lot and not seeing the answers come back. But just like I've showed you right here tonight already, as we prayed last night, there's rain in Texas tonight. And we praise God for that answer to prayer. Then he says this, this is so powerful. He says, if you'll call upon me, I will answer you and show you great and mighty things. Only in the mind of God can things be great and things be mighty. And the fact is, God said, I'm gonna reveal myself to you in great and mighty things. Here's my question. And we could go in a great explanation about it, but this is the thing that comes up in my heart. I wonder what God has in store with those great and mighty things for my life and for yours. Think about it. He said, I will show you great and mighty things. I won't just speak it to you. I won't just let you believe in something and then we'll see it sometime someday. But he said, I'm going to show you.  And then he closes that entire verse out by saying, which thou knowest not. So there are some things that we're calling upon the Lord for and we're expecting an answer for. And we believe that they're great and mighty things because we serve a great and a mighty God. But consider the fact that God is going to show us great and mighty things that we don't know. I wonder what God has in store for those who love him. The Bible says there's great and mighty things that we can expect and things that we might be expecting but God has even a greater thought in his mind about what it's going to be. Things that we've not even thought about. God has already been thinking about in our behalf. That's why we're here tonight in prayer. That's why we're seeking the face of God throughout this week. That's the reason why that we're seeking the God of all gods, not just any God and not the superficial gods of this earth. The God who sits high and looks low, the God who is on the throne, he is the king of kings and the Lord of lords. And the Bible says when we call upon him, in the powerful authoritative name of Jesus Christ, he not only hears us, but he will answer us and show us great and mighty things. Don't you believe that tonight? I do. I believe that God is a God of his word and he will bring it to pass just like he said. Now for those of you that are joining us right now and you're sharing it out, many of you that are joining us may have prayer requests on your heart and our director will put up there on the screen for you so that you can be able to know where to send in your most urgent prayer requests at info at paceassembly.org. We'll add that to the prayer list.  I truly believe that we're in a day when God is wanting to show himself great and mighty. The fact is, when we pray, God steps into our life, into this arena, into this environment, and we're inviting him in prayer to take charge of the situation. You say, well, Pastor God can do whatever he wants to when he wants to. Well, that's very, very true. But there is the permissive will. There is the providential will of God. The providential will of God said, I'm gonna do it even if I don't have other people involved. But there is that opportunity where we invite God by his spirit to intervene into situations for miracles, signs, and wonders to reveal the word of God to us, to answer our prayer.  I don't just need you in this, but I need you in that. And the other thing, whatever that it may be, when you believe, when you call upon the Lord, the promise is He will hear us and He will answer us when we pray. So I'm glad tonight that you're joining me in prayer. And this evening, we're gonna be praying specifically for our nation. I believe that it is so important that we call upon the Lord for our nation right now. There's certainly a lot of things that are going on and of course, inflation and everything that's happening that's affecting the lives of people. But we're gonna pray for our leaders this evening and we're gonna pray for our nation. We're in a position now in America where we are, quite frankly, post-Christian. That is to say, we're seeing more and more of the entrance of sin and the broadness of it and just worldly activity like we have never seen before. Even demonic spirits and oppressive spirits and depression, all kinds of things that are taking place. But I want you to know this, God is not under the circumstances. He is not underneath the world's power. He sits high, He puts His foot on the earth, everything. All principalities and powers are up underneath His feet. And He tells us that we can do the same thing. When we place our faith exclusively in the cross of Christ, that's where our faith is bonded with God's and God will do what He said He will do. So let's pray for our nation this evening and then as the spirit of God leads, we're gonna migrate from that into praying for the needs of people that are watching. So if you have a need and you wanna post that up there for others to be able to know or send it to info at paceassembly.org, we will be happy to pray with you about your need, believing God to minister to you. But will you join me right now in prayer for our nation and for our leaders? Let's do that right now. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we come before you in the powerful and mighty name of Jesus. We believe that tonight that all governments and all powers and principalities up underneath your feet, you're the God of all gods, the king of all kings and the Lord of all lords. There is no one higher than you are.  You are the power above all other powers. And that's the reason we're calling upon you tonight. And I pray God Almighty for our nation right here in the United States of America. We're not the only nation, we're not the only country, God, but we are a nation in need of you tonight. We have lost our way. And so tonight, Lord, as we call upon you, the first thing we do, Lord, is repent for the very sins of our nation. We've turned our back towards you in so many different ways through our laws and legislations and leadership that has thumbed its nose at the word of God and refused to obey the word of God. And we understand, Almighty God, that there are consequences to decisions that we make against your word. So tonight we repent before you and we ask you, oh God, have mercy upon us and forgive us of our sins, forgive us of our backsliding and the things, Lord Jesus, that we have neglected to do, the sins of commission and the sins of omission, the things that we should be doing but we're not doing. Help us as believers and Christians that are joining together in prayer tonight, oh God, to be able to join our hearts in this agreement, Lord, that we pray for the leadership of our nation that is desperately in need of your guidance and your direction and righteousness to rule in the very leadership of our nation. God, we see that there is corruption and there is sin and there is, Lord, all kinds of activities that are taking place that are tearing down and, Lord, eroding the foundation of this United States of America. But as believers, we follow the command of the Lord to pray for our leaders, Lord, from every capacity of their leadership, every area of their leadership. I pray right now, Spirit of God, that you would send sweeping revivals into the churches, encourage the pastors across our land, around our nation. I pray that you would give them strength to be bold in the word of God, to speak truth, to power, and to not compromise. And, Lord, we pray that you would heal the brokenness of America and show yourself mighty in great and mighty things that we don't even recognize that you're doing right now. Lord, intervene in this coming election. Help us, oh God, as believers, to vote as believers. Voting, Lord, the Bible and the principles of your word. Help us to find righteous leaders that will serve as statesmen and stateswomen in the offices of leadership in our nation. And we believe tonight, God, that you hear us when we pray. Send the revival to America. Send the revival and let it start inside of the churches of America and sweep across the United States of America.  Lord, now we pray for those that are joining us who have specific needs, God, inside of their lives, family members that are hurting this evening and God may be in the hospitals, wherever they are. We pray for those that are sick in their body, people that are needing the touch of God. Lord, we believe that your stripes that you took on your back, the ones that were laid upon your back that, Lord, opened your very flesh that through the stripes that were laid on your back that we are healed by the power of God. Those stripes are evidence, God, of not only your desire to be our healer, but Lord, it is the very physical and practical act of allowing yourself to be beaten and bruised and wounded for every wound, every disease and every brokenness of our life. Lord, heal, I pray.  We pray, God, right now that you would release your healing power into their life right now. Heal them by the power of Christ. We come into agreement with every believer that's watching this broadcast right now and we ask you, God, to just let your spirit, Lord, just reach through hospital rooms and into the homes wherever that may be watching. Let your spirit now take charge in every way, healing their bodies. We pray for people that are God emotionally and mentally under the pressures and stress and anxious about the situations of the world, anxious about their work or their finances, whatever that it may be. We speak peace into their life tonight, mighty God. Let the peace of God that rules and reigns be theirs right now in the mighty name of Jesus. As they look into your word and call upon your name, you said, Lord, when we pray, we can cast all of our cares upon you because you care for us, all of our anxieties, all of our stresses, all of our pressures. You are the answer to the stress, the pressure and the anxiety of this world. Even now, Lord, you're releasing the burdens from the lives of people as they are simply calling upon your name and coming into agreement right now. I thank you, Lord Jesus. You said if one can put 1,000 to fly to 10,000, Lord, all of the people that are joining us right now and will join us, coming together as one, you're able to push back the darkness and cause the light to be turned on in the lives of people. God, for those, we pray right now for people that are listening to this and watching this that are dealing with depression. I pray, mighty God, that they would release that heavy coat of depression off of their life and begin to praise you with a garment of praise. Lord, let them find a praise on the inside. You said in your word that we should look for the praise and find their praise. If there be any praise to think upon these things, let that happen right now. We pray in the lives of people that are watching, putting on that garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. And Lord, we pray tonight that you would just lift them up in the name of Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you right now that you hear us when we pray. We have confidence to know that you said that if we'll call upon you, you will answer us and show us great and mighty things that we do not know. That's your word. You did it for Jeremiah. You did it for the children of Israel. And you will do it for those who will earnestly and fervently pray with all of their heart. That's your word. That's your promise. And we give you praise for that because you've never broken one promise. Oh God, to us, to those that are watching right now, you've never broken a promise. You've always been the God who is faithful to your word. And when you said it, you bring it to pass. We declare that tonight in the mighty name of Jesus. We believe, Lord Jesus, that no weapon formed against your people will prosper. We believe right now that all fear and God fear of their future, fear of Lord what's happening in their life right now would just be released in the name of Jesus Christ and let the peace of God just come sweeping into their soul right now. We pray for those, oh God, that have lost loved ones in recent days. Would you let the comforter come and just wrap them up and let them know beyond the shadow of any doubt that they're not forgotten and they're not forsaken, that you're the Lord who will be with them and you'll give them comfort and strength just like you always have. We give you praise for that tonight, mighty God. We thank you, Lord, because we know that you hold our future in the very palm of your hand and your word declares that our future is better than our past, that what's up ahead for us in your design and in your plan and in your providence and in the purpose of God is better than anything we've ever experienced in our past. We reach forward by faith, God, and we ask you to keep our eyes and our vision upon you and upon the things of God. Help us not to be distracted by what's going on in this world or the things that may come into our lives, God, that are sent to pull us off of our mission, off of our assignment. Tonight, our mission and our assignment is to call upon you in this period of time and just seek your face in prayer. Lord, we draw near to you tonight. Let the presence of God just come upon every viewer that is watching right now and those that will.  And let this night, Lord, last night was so filled with lightning and thunder all around our area, but let this night be one of peace and calm and Lord, a restful sleep and peaceful sleep for people, rejuvenating their soul even in the middle of the night. Let angels camp around about the houses of those that fear you this evening, Lord and just keep the guard, I pray, in every way in the life of every individual. We thank you for that tonight, mighty God. Thank you for the privilege we have of this time together in prayer. We counted an honor, we counted a privilege because we're not calling upon someone who was only lifted to a human level, but we reach way beyond that into the very throne room of God to call upon your name to seek your face because we know you, God. We know you to be a good God, a merciful God, a faithful God and a God who hears us when we pray. Thank you, Lord. We commit all of these things into the name that is above every other name, the name of Jesus Christ that lives and reigns forever. Lord, release your presence now into the lives of people we pray and we give you glory for it. In the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, amen and amen. Praise God. Well, I trust that you've enjoyed this time of prayer together. It is certainly a joy for me to be able to be here with you and I wanna thank all of you that are joining us right now. And if you'll just, again, just make sure that you share this out, many of you already have, but if you'll just share this out because the one thing about it, and I'll close with this tonight, the Bible says in the book of Revelation chapter number five that he holds the prayers of the saints in golden vials. And when the time has come, he's going to declare to the angel, open those vials of prayer and pour them out. So I want you to know that prayer lasts much longer than this very moment of prayer. It will go out into eternity. Our words will never be retrieved. They're out there. And God bottles up the prayers of the saints to be poured out at the appropriate time. I truly believe that those that have prayed prayers that have already gone on to heaven, their prayers are in those golden vials. And when God gets ready, he's gonna have the angel pour those prayers out, not only upon the earth, but upon your loved ones and those that are left behind. So what you're doing right now is not only of great value, but it is putting forth the word of God into your future to be able to bring forth the harvest. God bless you for that. Thank you so much for being here. Again, share it out and we'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow night. At this same time for prayer. We'll look forward to seeing you then. Until then, may God bless you.


Hello, this is Laptop Media, and today, we will show you how to open the Lenovo Ideapad 115 and what's inside of it. To take this laptop apart, you first need to undo 10 Philips head screws. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool, and remove it from the chassis. Remember, it would be of great help to us if you just hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. That would motivate us to make even more and better videos for you. This device comes with a 42Wh battery pack. It lasts for 9 hours and 30 minutes of web browsing, or about 9 hours of video playback. To remove it, unplug the battery connector and undo 6 Philips head screws. There is only one Sodium slot for DDR4 RAM, working at 2933 MHz. Some units will come with 4GB of memory from the same type and speed, soldered to the motherboard. Storage wise, you get 1 M.2 PCIe slot for Gen3 SSDs. In terms of cooling, this model comes with a single heat pipe, which leads to a rather large heat spreader put in place of a fan. If you'd like to see more disassembly videos of the latest notebooks we would highly appreciate if you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.