So, this afternoon, we'll continue expanding on the histories of plastics and we have two more panelists that will expand our understanding on plastics and their effects in urbanizing, in the urbanizing of Hong Kong or in the constructions of cheapness embedded in Victorian plastic substitutions. In this panel, we have one online, so it'll go a little differently. I'll introduce our first speaker. Take a little pause. We'll get the Zoom on and then we'll start again with a second. So I'll start by introducing Hoy Tsé, who's the 2022 Curatorial Fellow at the Royal College of Art. And her talk today is Plastic Prosperity in Growing Hong Kong. And Hoy is a social art historian with degrees from UCL and the University of Amsterdam. And her dissertation really focused on contemporary museum collecting practices in relation to art, history, and design collections. And she's currently in London looking at digital platforms to create community-engaged spaces for co-curating and collecting contemporary design objects in London and Hong Kong. And she also participates in projects that digitally reproduce cultural artifacts and historical sites. And today, her work looks at the relations between prosperity and plastics. So, welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Jessica. Today, I want to talk about the relationship between plastic as manufacturing material and the British colonial past of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, we always say that even the richest man of the city, also one of the richest man in the world, Li Ka-shing, owns his wealth to plastic. The prosperity of the city and the plastic industry in colonial Hong Kong formed a tight connection in the 20th century. The bloomed of the factories manufacturing plastic products in the 1950s and 60s was the heyday of Hong Kong's economic and social development. Based on this association of plastic as an industrial material with the development of Hong Kong, I'm going to discuss the ways in which the plastic products represented the prosperity of Hong Kong colonial past and how these objects created the collective memories of this past. I will also refer to some of these plastic objects produced by Hong Kong companies in the M-plus museum collection and show why these objects are important for recalling local memories about the prosperity of the city in the past. First, I think it could be useful to contextualize this growth of the Hong Kong plastic industry a little bit. It was in the post-war period that Hong Kong began its industrialization and commercialization. Such a transformation was caused by status as a British colony during a series of major international and transnational political events. After the online victory in the Second World War, the fall of European imperialism led the Chinese nationalist government to request the return of Hong Kong from Britain. But the defeat of the nationalist government in the Chinese Civil War allowed Britain to defer this request. With the communist regime's rise in power in 1949 and the Cultural Revolution, Hong Kong the capitalist colony became a hotspot of immigration for the mainland Chinese. There were an estimate of 1.3 million of refugees from different parts of China and these immigrants include the industrialists from Shanghai who had the capital and leading knowledge of industrial production in Asia. Moreover, the embargo on China imposed by the US further challenged Hong Kong's role as China's entry port at that time. The unbridled capitalism promoted by the British colonial government also facilitated the local industrial base to dramatically expand and produce an economic miracle. The plastic industry was undoubtedly one of the key light manufacturing industry that contributed to this miracle. The unique circumstances allow Hong Kong's rapid industrialization within just three to four decades. As you can see here, the changes is exactly the same place, but within this around four decades, that's how the harbor friends become after that. So to valorize the industrial heritage of Hong Kong, Magi Leung and the Detroit Sui proposed a rethinking of the Eurocentric notion of industrial heritage. They call for stretching the existing cultural heritage concept and developing more inclusive and dynamic context-sensitive approaches. Specifically about the heritage, like the industrial heritage in Hong Kong, they emphasize on the importance of appreciating the multiplicity of the heritage itself. The city's identity was represented by the different stories and cultures of the diverse local communities who contribute to the industrial and economic prosperity. In other words, to understand the significance of the plastic industrial objects to the local culture and memories, we must look from a local perspective and examine how the experiences related to these objects divide the identity of Hong Kong during its post-war colonial period. So the development of the light manufacturing industry in Hong Kong began with the import of foreign technologies and industrial knowledge through the existing network of the Shanghai industrialists, as I just mentioned. Cliff Sun, the current chairman and the son of the founder of Kid Him, Metal and Plastic Factory, said it was with the assistance from Europe that the industrial and technological capability of Hong Kong advance at that time. This includes not only the import of European plastic making machines, but also the knowledge of repair and development of more efficient production technology. Kenneth Tang, the current chairman of Kidah Industrial Company, also based in Hong Kong, recalled that when they're molding the plastic, the mold after long-term use will have cracks. So they would usually send it back to the US for repairment, but it would take more than a year to sustain the production of their company. They start expanding itself and begin to produce the plastic mold themselves by learning from the western plastic mold making technology. Apart from manufacturing the products, the plastic products in the small-scale labor-intensive factories, another characteristic of Hong Kong plastic production was its residential production sites. The density of Hong Kong plastic production was intertwined with the social and urban processes. As I mentioned earlier, the large influx of mainland Chinese immigrants had provided a large supply of cheap labor, which include child labor, female workers, and undocumented immigrants. From a process-oriented perspective and perhaps like cost and benefit perspective, this low-skilled yet low-cost labor offered favorable conditions for manufacturing like consumer goods like plastic toys, flowers, and daily utensils. Manufactories at that time subcontracted simple painting, sewing, and assembling tasks that require no help or machine to hundreds of thousands of local individuals and households. The willingness to spend the time on taking this subcontract, possibly making tasks at home, was probably due to the unpleasant living conditions at that time, as you can see here, this quarter, next to the factory. And also partly because of this mentality of making some extra money. So Feng Jishun, a retired medical pathologist and crime writer, in his memoir talked about the mindset of earning some extra money for the family. Living in the Squatter Village in Diamond Hill in the 1950s, he described the reason why he would take teenage summer jobs as a domestic piece worker in the plastic file industry. He said that it was just this very idea of having some extra cash that motivated him to work during his summer holidays. He knew that it was not to make his family rich, but to improve their living conditions in whatever way he could. The former colonial governor of the city, Alexander Grantham, labeled this mindset of earning extra money as the hot-working nature of Chinese, which of course was not limited to only the male workers. Shelley Zey, a Hong Kong-born American contemporary artist, also talked about her own experience as a woman worker in the plastic flower industry. Before the colonial government subsidized primary and secondary education, many low-income families in Hong Kong work in the plastic and garment industries, or took subcontracted tasks from the factories to make extra money for their living. A division of labor that emerged with a majority of female workers working in the plastic flower factories because women were regarded as more skillful at manual craft work and delicate manual assembly. The experience of manufacturing plastic products of these young workers, the time and energy they spent on making plastic products as well as the presence of plastic making at their home, as you can see here. These are not factory at all.  So all this contributed to the stories of how Hong Kong became a prosperous industrial city at that time. So that behind all this experience, there was also the British colonial government's policy of accepting a large number of Chinese immigrants before depending on how to support this huge growth of population with social security and benefits. Other than the experiences of being part of the plastic manufacturing process, the experiences of using and consuming fabrics locally produced plastic products also contributed to the memories about the prosperity of Hong Kong plastic industry. Jessica Lern, the current brand development director and the granddaughter of the founder of Star Industrial Corporation, explained how the company evolved from a small brand specialized in producing brushes to an enterprise producing a wide variety of plastic household products in the 50s. The most known brand of the company was the Red A brand, which was familiar and popular among the local Hong Kong families for their cheap household items. In the Amplus collection, however, there are also 16 items of a particular series. These are some of the items called the plastic crystal series of the Red A brand. About the development of this product series, Lerns explained the inspiration came from the fashionable, expensive glass products in the 60s. So her father created a cheaper alternative with plastics and test it in the local market before exporting it to other countries. A major event for the Red A brand to open up new export market was the Hong Kong brands and products exposition. The exposition was inaugurated in the 1930s as the first Chinese product exhibition organized by the Chinese Manufacturers Association of Hong Kong in Singapore in order to explore the Southeast Asian market. With the growing popularity of Hong Kong industrial products, the association starts staging the exhibition locally to promote Hong Kong factories and industrial production. The exposition offered foreign and local businesses to network with each other and promote Hong Kong industrial products to the overseas and local consumers. The growth of the plastic product exported to the foreign market through this event then turned May in Hong Kong into a brand. Rather than household products, plastic toys and flowers were some of the most popular manufacturing products that Hong Kong plastic factory exported to the West, particularly to Britain and the US. Although the features attributed by the British media to Hong Kong toys were not as positive as the Hong Kong industrialists intended, they often mentioned about the possible toxic material they use and or the low qualities they have in terms of the graphics or the face. The toys were still some of the most popular goods brought by the British people even though. David Cannondine, the British art historian, the biggest historian, sorry, remembered his childhood with the toys, as he said, which were identified as empire made, often in euphemism for made in Hong Kong at that time. During the Cold War, the US supported British imperial claimed with Hong Kong as a base for monitoring the communist China. The US government set up its largest consulate in Hong Kong and then hence its trade engagement with Hong Kong factories. In fact, Hong Kong's plastic industry was begun with Qin Hanqiu, the Shanghai industrialists who opened the China plastic company by importing the ingestion-moting machine from the US. This business relationship between Hong Kong plastic industrialists and American plastic machine suppliers then changed in the late 1950s again. Hong Kong plastic factories start to take over the American plastic consumption market. By 1958, 99% of Hong Kong produced plastic flowers were exported to the US. By the 60, Hong Kong exports of plastic flowers account for five million US dollars, which is approximately 44 million US dollars nowadays. This prosperity of plastic firemen and fetching and export could bring us back to Li Ka-shing, as you can see him here when he was young. The Hong Kong tycoon who started his business empire with a plastic flower factory. In a Bloomberg television interview in 2016 when he was announcing his retirement, he mentioned that he bought a copy of an American trade magazine called More Than Plastic. At that time, every month to keep himself updated with the latest plastic making technologies and products. So as a conclusion of my discussion today, the interconnection between the Hong Kong manufacturing industry and its products were complex, certainly, because of how it relates to Hong Kong people, not just to the industrialists, but as I show you some of the situation like people are making plastic goods at home. So it's connected to Hong Kong people of different social class from different Chinese origins. So looking at the plastic objects collected by the M Plus Museum, I think this object could serve as a good starting point for the museum to diversify the stories about the local cultural identity and industrial heritage. But as I mentioned, Maggie Lerng and Dietrich Suwaii also suggest that the relevant stakeholders in the preservation of this local heritage are extremely diverse. There are still plenty of engagement opportunities that a local museum like M Plus could use to localize the knowledge about the Made in Hong Kong brand. To end my presentation, I want to end it with this quotation from, again, Jessica Lerng, the granddaughter of the founder of Star Industrial Corporation, talking about the human touch of all this plastic for the produce in the 50s and 60s. Thank you. Thank you, Hoi. And now we'll go online, but I'll start with an introduction and hopefully the Zoom will pop up as I'm chatting. So today we have Amy Woodson Bolton, next, who is a professor of British and Irish history and past chair of the Department of History at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, California. We're switching places. I'm generally normally in LA. So today her talk is Design Plasticity Before Plastic, Victorian Substitutions, Truths of Materials, and the Deceptions of Cheapness. Amy is widely published, including the book Transformative Beauty, Art Museums, Industrial Britain from Stanford University Press. And she's currently working on a book-length study of 19th century anthropology and the social role of supposed primitive art, tentatively titled Explaining Art, Nature, Authentic Culture, and the Search for Origins in the Age of Empire. So welcome, Amy. Can you hear us? You're on whenever you're ready. I think you're muted. There you go. Can you hear me? Yes.  Thank you so much. And again, I just want to thank all the people behind the scenes who made it possible for us to join in a hybrid way. Sorry, that was a necessary little cat walk by. It's really fantastic to be able to join you from Santa Monica, where I am on Gabrielle Neo Tongue by the Lands. So today, I want to think about some of the continuities in the logic of industrial production over the last 200 years, from cast iron to plastics, material substitutions, mass production, the push for raw materials, the unequal distribution of both wealth and toxic effects, and pervasive and destructive ideas about toxic cities and pristine wilderness. Art and social critic John Ruskin's writings are especially helpful here, along with some specific examples from the 1862 London International Exhibition, which celebrated industrial production and colonial extraction with trophies of gold and timber, for example, that I'll be using to illustrate this design plasticity before plastic. John Ruskin was one of the 19th century thinkers who helped craft a popular language of natural theology, of sacred nature, and the artists and writers whom he championed and inspired spread the conception far and wide. Back in the first volume of Modern Painters in 1843, the work that first brought him prominence, he urged accomplished painters to take on the challenge of painting the Alps. We do not want chalets and three-legged stools, cowbells and buttermilk. We want the pure and holy hills, treated as a link between heaven and earth. The need for pure and holy hills could seem desperate during the rapid urbanization of the 19th century. Reformers in multiple industrializing countries set aside areas of particular beauty, organized trips from cities into the countryside, and set up institutions and infrastructure for bringing nature into cities. And even art museums found a justification this way. What historian Joaquin Radclow calls the modern religion of nature, but hand in hand with nationalism, and even with aspects of industrial development, as railroads could bring people more efficiently from cities into countryside escapes. The division between city and countryside then, as old as cities themselves, took on a new meaning, a new mass audience, and new technologies and symbolism in the 19th and 20th centuries. As urban pollution became a feature of modern life and leaders either moved out into leafy suburbs or moved industry out of leafy centers, the real and symbolic differences between industrial and natural terrain even started. The legacies of slavery, colonialism, and segregation left these racialized as well as the media class, social class, and politics. And finally, however, wrestling called the pension in provocative ways. Amy, we're having trouble hearing you. Can you hear me? You're muted at the moment. It wouldn't be a Zoom hybrid event if there wasn't one of these. Can you try talking? Yeah, I think it's the headphone switch and the cat. It gets really the cat. I'll give you a second. Hello, I think it was your AirPods that you took off after my phone. I think yeah, your AirPods. We can only hear your lips, see your lips moving, we can't hear a word. Yep, try talking again. Okay, can you hear me now? Yep. Okay, my AirPods is telling me that it's dying. So even though it's also saying it's at 99%, it's never happened before. So I'm so sorry about this. So you can hear me now.  Okay, thank you. I'm so sorry, what, okay. So I'm not quite sure where you lost me. But I was saying that John Ruskin's famous design ethos of truth and materials shows us that the economic logic of plastic was already at play in the 19th century. In the seven lamps of architecture of 1849, he railed against the substitution of wood for marble or plaster for stone, laying out three types of what he called architectural deceits. First, suggesting a false structure. Second, the painting of surfaces to represent some other material than that of which they actually consist as in the marbling of wood or the deceptive representation of sculptured ornament upon them. And third, quote, the use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind. As Ruskin wrote about painting wood to look like marble or mass-produced ornaments meant to look made by hand or molding stucco to look like carved stone, he described the architecture of the new cities, the increasingly mass-produced decoration for homes, churches, shops, train stations, hotels, offices and factories built in a proliferation of historical styles. Mass-produced design meant taking shortcuts. It also meant treating certain people, being enslaved, colonized subjects, industrial workers and landscapes, colonies, industrial cities as disposable. 10 years later in 1859, Ruskin gave an address called Modern Manufacture and Design to the Bradford Mechanics Institute published in The Two Paths later that year. This lecture raised questions closely connected to our own time and the plastic crisis, particularly in terms of the purpose and limitations on economic growth and the potential loss of any unchanged natural spaces. In addressing the possibility of making art and in being careful to say that, quote, all art may be decorative and that the greatest art yet produced has been decorative, Ruskin made the point that it was becoming the essence of his social criticism. That is that art is a product of its society. What, Ruskin asks, can art, design or life mean in an economy based on constant expansion? If you will tell me what you ultimately intend Bradford to be, perhaps I can tell you what Bradford can ultimately produce. As matters stand all over England, as soon as one mill is at work occupying 200 hands, we try by means of it to set another mill at work occupying 400. That's all simple and comprehensive enough, but what is it to come to? How many mills do we want? Or do we indeed want no end of mills? This image of Bradford in 17, sorry, 18, 73, gives us a taste of what he meant and how much his predictions turned out to be true. After imagining all the uses that might be put to the various regions of Scotland, England and Wales, he continues, is this then what you want? You're going straight added at present and I have only to ask under what limitations I am to conceive or describe your final success or shall there be no limitations? There are none to your powers. Every day puts new machinery at your disposal and increases with your capital, the vastness of your undertakings. Therefore I must necessarily ask how much of it do you seriously intend within the next 50 years to be coal pit, brick field or quarry? After suggesting the picturesque lake and mountain landscapes of the island to development, he imagines a future nightmare industrial landscape, a vision of a fully industrialized world, a vast continuous megalopolis. Ruskin's thought experiment of a fully industrial and urban England, a land where there's no area deemed sacred and all land is equally available to defilement, we can see both the similarities and differences with our own moment. His thought experiment of draining all British lakes and turning the mountains into quarries was likewise meant to shock, contrasting, beloved and beautiful areas with accepted industrial expansion. Like Ruskin's iron and coal economy, we now see a plastic country emerging, visibly covering the land and invisibly invading our air, water and bodies. But we can also see that some of this literal and symbolic pollution is widely understood as socially acceptable at the cost of doing business and some pollution causes public outrage for its rupture of our current illusions. That is, if we are in positions of global North privilege, we imagine that we can outsource toxicity to others. Meanwhile, we can fantasize that there are still regions of the world outside human influence, wild and pure, and that a consumer economy built on exploitation and unlimited growth with little or no regulation can somehow confine the toxic effects and waste produced. That is, in the wealthy parts of the world, the dominant discourse establishes that there are meaningful differences between a national park and a landfill and between the people in those spaces. In thinking about the theme of today's conference and as Professor Liwan and others have taught us, we can see plastic pollution as a demarcation of colonial geographies. There are many, many examples of 19th century design that could illustrate design plasticity and the logic of deceptive materials and material substitutions. Here are just a few from the 1862 International Exhibition in London. For instance, these artificial stone garden ornaments. The 1862 catalog also has many examples of what you see here, an illustration of Cartain-Pierre, enrichment for architectural purposes. Cartain-Pierre was paper pulp resin and glue molded to resemble wood, stone, or marble, an excellent option for cheap, quickly made new suburbs. Ruskin's rule against cast iron reacted to the mass production of work that used to be handmade, giving the worker, as Ruskin imagined at least, joy in the satisfaction of producing beautiful original work. The 1862 exhibition included this extraordinary example, a cast iron church. This made me think of the doomed glass and iron church in Peter Carey's novel, Oscar and Lucinda, about the brutal colonization of Australia. These kinds of mass produced, molded objects combining new types of materials put appearance and superficiality over substance and put short-term profit over the experience or health of the workers or the longevity of the object itself. Their similarity to the original objects they mimic is only in their appearance, like Dickens's Nouveau-Riche couple, the veneerings from our mutual friend, which appeared 1864, 65. Simulating other materials molded by new combinations of ingredients or chemicals is also, of course, the logic of plastic. Its plasticity is that it can mimic shapes, textures, and colors. Chemistry has been at work over the last century, creating the ability through numerous additives that make this possible. How often have we picked up an object wondering and judging mostly by weight, whether it is wood, stone, or plastic? We've gotten used to laminate polyvinyl flooring and furniture and plastic architectural ornamentation of all kinds. Here in Los Angeles, people cover their yards and sports fields in plastic fake lawns. These deceits spawned a whole movement in opposition around truth to materials, a concern not just with good design, but with the conditions of production and, of course, wealth and status. Concerned for workers turned into a style. And arts and crafts exponents rarely considered the global connections and injustices of imperialism or legacies of slavery or the conditions of workers beyond the industrial hands at home. The arts and crafts became a style connected with the moral critique, but that style also remained only accessible to the few, despite the hopes of radical and innovative designers like William Morris. In looking for an arts and crafts example, I came across this wonderful illustration of the pull and cachet this still has, Morris and company now at Harrods. That said, the very multiplication of movements that combined an aesthetic and moral critique of the conditions of product production or the authenticity of materials tells us a great deal about the sense of disconnect that a growing consumer and mass production-based society created between producers and users, access to reel as opposed to airsats or simulated goods has been a sign of privilege for a long time. As he battled his own bouts of mental illness, Ruskin wrote about the storm cloud of the 19th century as both visible and invisible, a fretful wind and anxious fluttering of leaves, but also a darkened sky and a changed dull gray light. He linked it with the soot of the coal-fired mills all around him as he wrote, even as he saw it as a kind of haunting. So too now I suggest we are also haunted now by the persistent chemicals and for some mothers I know the fear that their exposures harmed their children. We have visible and invisible storm clouds of fossil fuel particulates this time in the ocean and in our own blood, the visible gyrs and the invisible swirling storm of microplastics now in our water, air, soil, in our breast milk, blood and lungs and in the deepest ocean. The same operations of industrial capitalism that Ruskin identified in the 19th century and which the arts and crafts movement apparently stood against would drive chemists of the 20th century to develop synthetic polymers applicable to numerous uses and available through the apparently endless supply of fossil fuels. It can be helpful to think of the logics of exploration and exploitation that we see in 19th century European imperialism and so bombastically trumpeted at the world's fairs as continuing through and around and next to the cast iron, the artificial stone, the carton pierre and the new synthetics of the late 19th and then the 20th centuries, new opportunities for material substitutions and new design possibilities opened with late 19th century celluloid and then as we've heard early 20th century Bakelite propelled by and proliferating alongside combustion engines and the technological innovations of the world wars, disposable fossil fuel-based plastics and synthetics supplemented and made cheap imitations of whalebone ivory, silk, tortoise shell, wood, leather, fur and wool. Plastic has now reached such a global saturation that some geologists consider it a measure or evidence of the Anthropocene, its presence in the rock strata, a golden spike marking the beginning of a new geological epoch. This omnipresence embodies multiple aspects of our own current crises, our disposable economy, reliance on fossil fuels, rapidly changing climate and the unevenly distributed toxic effects at all stages of plastics extraction, production, use and disposal. These negative externalities fall along historically constructed racialized lines of inequality and such disparities continue to make plastics seem deceptively inexpensive, hailed for its cheapness and its adaptability to extraordinarily varied uses. Plastic is the perfected logic of industrial capitalism. It's triumph and as we're increasingly aware, it's toxic trap. Thanks so much. Okay, we'll see if we can master this Q&A online. Amy, just holler if you can see us or if you can't but wave if you have any issues, okay? Otherwise, I have no idea. Okay, so thanks both Hoey and Amy for really, I think pulling to charge these questions that design history is really reach into issues of labor or exposure and that art, architecture and design histories are not a part of, but a part of, not apart from, but a part of colonial geographies. And so I have a question, I'm gonna start with a question for Hoey and then expand from beyond that. I thought what was really important about your work is that it really unflattens this big question of plastic and really humanizes further this conversation on plastics in Hong Kong of economy and interest, but mostly labor. And so I'm interested in the case studies. I think so often plastic is depicted in these humanless environments beyond the extraction zone and sacrifice cities that we know of. But the case that you have in the 1950s and 60s where plastic comes home in terms of labor and painting, I wanna hear a little bit more about how that is an exceptional case in Hong Kong or how you see it relating and what are those stories? How did you recuperate the sort of painting objects at home? I think just it's such a different story than we hear. I think for me, the first time I heard about that was from my parents. So they were born in the 50s, 60s and when they talk about when they're kids they are very poor because basically most of the immigrants from mainland China, they had nothing when they came to Hong Kong. So it's also the era of the baby boomers. So they have seven, eight children to feed like my grandparents. So most of the time I remember like my mother talked about her older sister might work in one of the plastic flower factories and then they will have like large orders from the US, from the Britain all the time. So how this kind of small factories can cope with all these orders is to ask around basically as simple as that. It's like, for example, my aunts will say like, yeah, maybe I'll just bring up, I don't know how many pounds or like kilos of plastic flower material back home and say that like my mom at that time could be five years old, six years old. It's like, okay, we just do it at home. After I left work, we came back, I teach you how to do it and we start showing all this plastic flower petals together at home before and after dinner, something like that. So that's how I start learning about all these kinds of stories. And I think as Jessica just said, it's so different perhaps from what we think about plastic nowadays. We think about the factories, we think about all these mechanical actions which were done by human at that time in Hong Kong because of how small the city itself was. I mean, right now it's not much bigger but at the time it's even smaller before all this land reclamation. And it has been like an issue for Hong Kong forever because when we think about industrial facilities, we think about large scale. But for Hong Kong itself, it doesn't have that land resources to do it. So at that time, it become all this kind of manual labor at home and home-making plastic products happen. Great, thanks. And I'll ask a question of Amy, can you hear me? No. Yes, I can. Just making sure. To sort of expand on that industrial question, that really the work that you presented brings forth this question of Bradford and the effects of industrialization, not just plastics as like a monolith, but the replacement and production writ large much bigger, right? So this process of industrialization being implicated in about a larger project of production and industrialization was really part of a larger problem. Like plastics is one part, but project processes and steel cast iron and beyond just sort of the replication and production of more products at faster speeds. And so I'm interested in just how you think this fits in the plastics conversation. Is it just one part of a larger critique of industrialization or something beyond that? Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think for me, one of the things that I love about, I mean, Ruskin is very problematic in many ways, but one of the things he does show us is this conversation over economic growth. And I think you really see that in the speech you gave to Bradford, right? When he's talking about, okay, so the goal seems to be you have one mill, then you have 200, then you have 400, where does it stop? And why are we, like, what is the point of it? Like, what are we aiming for? And I think that plastic for me is the perfect embodiment in its disposability and in the fantasy, right, that you can use it and that there is a place you can dispose it to of economic growth, of endless economic growth. And I think in the discipline of history and in economics right now and in the climate movement and in environmental justice spaces, people are, you know, talking about like, how is it that economic growth has become the only way that we can conceive of being in the world? And this is absolutely, as people have said already, you know, this is settler colonial logic, that there's always somewhere else you can go. I mean, right now, the most extreme vision is, okay, well, we're done with Earth, we have to go to Mars. But these are connected ideas, right? That there is a place you can go and that the goal is endless growth. So for me, plastic is part of that logic. And I think as somebody who specialized in the 19th century, but teaches really broadly, right? Like, teaches modern global environmental history 1500 to the present. You can see the operations of these logic and they go back further, they go to colonization initially in the Americas, they go back to slavery, but I think we then see them in industry and plastic. Yeah, absolutely goes. I'd love to open it up to the audience to make it a little bit more of a conversation. And also feel free to ask questions. I feel like the last panel got a little bit shortchanged, but as larger questions of what is our architecture history and design history's role in this larger question of the ethics of plastics. And if there's no question, I can always pull forward, but I'm gonna leave a little bit of awkward silence. There you go, thanks. And say your name too, it helps. Hi, my name is Clémence. I've got a question for Amy. Well, I could have a question for both of you and we could be there all afternoon, but I'll start with Amy. So you talked a lot about Ruskin. It was really interesting and quite daunting actually to see that today some people have the exact same discourses and he did, and we are not much advanced. So I was mainly wondering how, what he said was received at the time, what answer he got from Bradford or from other people that maybe made that, you know, it did not progress or did he get some positive feedbacks as well? That's such a great question. I think the people in Bradford were a little bemused because they had specifically asked him to kind of like advise them on how they should build their city. Like they put some very specific architectural advice and he was like, you need to like rethink everything you're doing here. One of the things that I found, I didn't mean to write about Ruskin. I've ended up dealing with Ruskin a lot more than I ever wanted to. I started trying to write the histories of art museums in industrial cities. As Jessica said, that was my first book project and what I found was that people, there was a subset of reformers who were super into Ruskin. They loved what he was saying. He inspired all kinds of people. And I think, and this is, I think a really interesting question that Jessica's raising for people who do architecture history, art history, sign history, et cetera, the people took his ideas to mean, we need to make the world more beautiful and we need support to support art. And so they started like building art museums in industrial cities and taking working people out to the countryside and kind of wanting to, like a very liberal idea of like, we can reform at the edges. And Ruskin's response was like, you've totally misunderstood what I'm saying. I am against this entire system where, and this is nearly a quote, but he's like, we're one out of every thousand people in Britain has a decent life. And he says, like give people clean air, clean water, good housing, and then worry about art. Like art can't happen in this complete, this system of radical inequality. So, he became much more radical as he went on, whereas they kind of took his ideas as, oh, let's build a city art museum. But that's all we can do. So I think a lot of the issues are still really pertinent today. Structural change, not just beauty. Right, right. Great, another question there in the center. Thanks so much. Hello to both of you. What a fascinating talk about craftsmanship in a way and changing the notion of what craftsmanship is. And I like the problem, the way that you, in a way, challenged us to rethink plastic, 50s and 60s. And I just wondered whether you might want to say something about also beauty and Ruskin, but his notion of beauty in the dignity of labor. Yeah, I mean, I think the part of what's, part of what's so interesting actually, and thinking about the other talk and the way that plastic could be involved in and can be involved. And as we've heard, plastic can be a basis of art and kind of what that means for the experience of the worker in terms of expression, right? Like are the people sewing flowers, like, you know, is that a sense to, and I'd love to hear like, did they have a sense of this is a creative endeavor? Did it have any kind of sense of creativity for Ruskin and Morris and, you know, the many people that they inspired artists and craftspeople? The essence of the critique was so much about not just the creation of beauty, but the experience of the worker, the experience of the artisan, their ability to express themselves. And the logic of something like cast iron is exactly that you just have a mold and you just make many, many, many of them, right? This is mass production as opposed, and then you can treat the workers as disposable in doing that. So I think it's like the thing that is still so compelling about Ruskin's analysis and the kind of this reaction that we see in the 19th century is that sense of a combination of the product and the conditions of production. But I'd love to hear about, I don't know if you have thought about it. Also, I think whether Hoey's work really talks a lot, I'll just speak just because I wanna frame this question a little differently is that, you know, there's something in a hard day's work that's not always, you're receiving the money or the pay, but plastics, it's not always a choice, right? It's an economic means to an end. So something that might be, you might feel pride in bringing home a good day's labor. And I think that's the problem with the economics of plastics which is attached to the economics of the pesticide industry and beyond. These are situated in economies where people need a job. And so this is sort of one of the big problems. I think that your work highlights is that some, yeah. Yeah, I think so definitely because particularly like what Amy said about, there's supposed to be some kind of artisanal skills behind it but at the same time the laborers are disposable because I think it's definitely related to the cheapness of the product itself as well because for example, Hong Kong product at that time are known to be cheap. Like what I said, like the British media described some of the products might be toxic, they have inferior quality, maybe dangerous for children to play with toys like this but at the same time they still import a massive amount of toys from Hong Kong. So it's because I think definitely this kind of capitalist values behind all these products make the artisanal kind of absence or people just simply didn't think about who are the people spending time drawing all these features on the toys or like all these flowers, how are they sewed up? Because I don't know if you remember sometimes when I was a kid in the 90s, I can still remember sometimes when you look at some toys, you can see like they're supposed to be the same product but you can definitely see the differences between the quality in terms of how it was paint or it was assembled. So yeah, I think that's definitely. Any questions online or in the room? Sort of slightly out of time. Is that a direction to stop? One more. From the powers to be. Yeah, one online. Thanks. Sorry, one more just came in. So good doing the hybrid. I can barely follow chats on these things. So yeah, so one that just arrived is how should we contextualize the social value of plastic objects like those of imitated molded glass against maybe more bespoke and artisanal pieces which might be seen as less acceptable. Yeah, the value question, Amy, is probably directed to you how to contextualize this. Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting question because I think, I mean, we saw it. It was really interesting to see the, I love the way, I mean, I'm thinking about papers we've heard already from Elizabeth Darling and Charlotte's Matter, was it? The question of like, is a, I think this idea that everyone should have access to beauty that became so much a part of the arts and crafts movement and that you could, but the reality was that that only happened with mass production, which is I think so much the problem that we're facing now, the issue like we, like how do we imagine a world where we could all have enough and we could all have access to beautiful objects and where we are living within the limits of our world and kind of understand that it's a bounded world. But in so many ways, the reality of bringing beautiful objects to people and in terms of like whether they thought they were beautiful and enjoyed and gave them pleasure only really became possible with mass production. So I think that's where you see the line to like Bauhaus and the modernist movements to embrace design and with those bakelight radios, right? But suddenly modernism can come beautiful objects and can come to everybody. So I think in the question of value, I mean, we're so awash in mass produced objects, but and yet that's also how so for so many people they've achieved a standard of living that allows them to make, to have choices. The question is, do we like the illusion of living in a world of infinite choice? I mean, that is an illusion, right? Because sooner or later we run out of places where we can be safely. And I think more and more we're realizing that we've lived in an illusion of safety, whether it's gas stoves or the fact that we're breathing air that's dangerous or drinking water with microplastics, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, big questions of value and what we need and what we don't. So we have a couple minutes for a comfort break. Is that right? And then we'll come back and start the next in I think we have about five minutes. We might extend that just a little bit, but it's up to you. Thank you all for your questions today and thank you for all of the panelists over the last two panels for really complicating this question of what can architecture and design history really do with plastics? Thank you.


Today we stand at the new dawn in our relationship that will not only shape the destiny of our two nations but also that of the world. At the young American poet, Amanda Gorman has expressed, when day comes we step out of the shell, a flame and an upgrade. The new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we are brave enough to see it. Our trusted partnership is like the sun in this new dawn that will spread light all around. I am reminded of a poem that I once wrote, if I were to say it in English, it would be rising its head in the skies, piercing through the dense clouds with the promise of light, the sun has just risen armed with a deep resolve, overcoming all the odds to dispel the forces of darkness, the sun has just risen.


All right. Well, seeing that it is 630 and everybody's here, let's get this party started. I will go ahead and call the Village of Estix Junction Board of Trustees meeting for Tuesday, December 21st to order. Do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? No, sir. Um, I have one or one question and that's the discussion and possible action about contracts. I don't know if this is. What's that? I have no idea what that is. The contracts, the 2nd item. Discussion of the action. Is that a placeholder or is that? I think it was a placeholder. So if you're not ready to go, I think that was. Uh, all right, go wait. Uh, well, I see now here's Greg with the same. Go ahead, Greg. Everybody, that's the, um, the same issue you talked about at the meeting last week, same contract issue. Boy, that's embarrassing. Uh, you guys were in executive session with the select card. Okay, that's helpful. Um, I was under the impression that your attorney had given you advice. Yes. And it was something that could be taken care of quickly. Yes. Yep. Oh, I wasn't sure what it was. Yes, it needs to be done. You will keep that on then. Yeah, okay. Thank you for that. So, uh, any other additions or changes or actual additions or changes? All right. No, I will say I didn't see any material for that in the uh, in the. I will take care of that when we get to the executive session. Okay, great. So with no, with no changes, we will go into public to be heard. So this is a portion for tonight's meeting, but if there are members of the public who wish to address the board about something that is not on the agenda, now is the time to do so. So for those of you who are using Microsoft Teams, please go ahead and raise your hand or tag into the chat feature. For those of you at to Lincoln, please go ahead and raise your hand. And Raj, I would look to you. Is there anybody in the room with their hand up who wishes to address the board? No. We, everybody wishing to speak. We have a couple of guests here for I believe the next item. Yeah. So then I see Microsoft Teams, Harlan, we have your hand up. Floor is yours. Yeah, I do. Thank you. And to be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure if this is appropriate to bring up here. It's, so we're, we're all village employees or village residents, but we're also town residents. And there was, I've got a concern with a mutual aid agreement for fire departments. And I was wondering if it was okay to bring it up here. There's a mutual aid that and I'm, I'm more concerned that it kind of gotten forgotten. But when COVID came out, there was a concern about possibly mutual aid calls together. And some of the automatic mutual aid services were stopped. And I would like to know if the mutual aid service could be reinstated for the fire departments. And my largest concern is the Susie Wilson corridor and route 15 out in front of the forts. There have been several bad accidents over the years in those locations. And with the automatic mutual aid not being active at the moment because of where the town border falls, you would literally have to wait for the town fire department to re to get out to you on Susie Wilson road. And I believe there's at least two others, the village and potentially St. Michael's that could respond quicker. And we all know that second saves lives. So I don't know if it's a, if the village has something to do with the mutual aid, or if it's just an automatic mutual aid that the town no longer participates in. But it would be great if some attention could be brought to it. Thank you for that, Harlan. I know Evan has heard that and I can chat with him when he and I talk next outside of the meetings. Just so that way, I can also get the input from our fire chief. Thank you. I see no other hands up in Microsoft teams, nothing in the chat. So we'll go ahead and move out with public to be heard and into agenda, our business item 5a tribute and approval of resolution of appreciation for Jim Jutris. Can't say that this is a joy, but certainly a well deserved, more than well deserved appreciation, to say the least. And George, did you want to kick this off? Certainly, Andrew. Thank you. And Jim, I'm about to say a lot of words, but I think in a lot of words, but I don't think this could be many times longer and there aren't adequate words to express and fully capture what you've provided for this community for so many years in so many ways with leadership, your technical skill, your dedication to the job. I could go on and on, but I'll read the resolution of appreciation for James Jutris and some of it will be captured there. So here's a resolution by the trustees, whereas James Jutris was hired by the village of Essex Junction as wastewater director, chief operator on December 12, 1990. And whereas since that time, James has also held roles as Essex Junction Public Works Superintendent and Water Quality Superintendent. And whereas James will retire on January 7, 2022, concluding more than 31 years of dedicated service and leadership to the village of Essex Junction, as well as the towns of Essex and Williston. And whereas James is a highly respected and highly competent water quality industry leader in the community in the state of Vermont and parentheses, I can certainly attest to that because I've been at meetings in Montpelier with James and I can attest to the respect that all the other water quality people folks at the state level and from around the state gave him. And in all of New England and regularly provides guidance to other facilities. And whereas James has been an excellent mentor who helped staff develop personally and professionally. And whereas James maintained positive working relationships with the towns of Essex and Williston with respect to the wastewater tri-town agreement and always demonstrated an ability to find common ground on issues. And whereas James's selfless approach ensured efficient cost effective operations at the wastewater treatment facility and whereas James oversaw and led a $15 million facility maintenance upgrade at the wastewater treatment facility from 2011 to 2014, as well as numerous smaller improvement projects. And whereas James created a successful biosolids land application program with North Williston Cattle Company that is one of the only remaining programs in Vermont and has been recognized by national trade magazines, including treatment plant operator. And whereas James obtained grant money to help the village purchase the combination sewer cleaning truck more affectionately known as the Super Sucker 5000. And whereas James was at the forefront of technical advances in the wastewater and stormwater fields throughout his career, mitigating energy use at the wastewater treatment facility and improving nutrient removal from wastewater, including a partnership with Dr. Apala Raju Badiradi at the University of Vermont in the Vermont Phosphorus Innovation Challenge to remove and recover phosphorus from sidestream wastewater. And whereas James has remained passionate throughout his career about water quality and regularly reminds others that wastewater treatment is the first defense of public health. And okay, I'm going to take a deep breath now. Everybody, hang on. This is a big paragraph. Whereas James James's expertise and dedication have been recognized through many individual awards, including the Green Mountain Water Environment Association's contribution to Association Award 1997 Green Mountain Water Environment Association's Elizabeth A. Walker Meritorious Service Award 2016 New England Water Environment Association's Alfred E. Pellequin Award 1995 New England Water Works Association's Water Works Leadership Award 2001 New England Water Environment Association's E. Sherman Chase Award 2004 in the Environmental Protection Agency New England Region 1's Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator Excellence Award 2013 and awards for the Wastewater Treatment Facility, including the American Council of Engineering Company's Grand Award to Aldrich and Elliott P.C. in association with the Village of Essex Junction for Engineering Excellence on the Project Essex Junction Wastewater Treatment Refurbishment 2016 Efficiency Vermont's Energy Management Award 2016 The Efficiency Vermont Best Practices Innovation Energy Leadership Award 2021 The Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence 2018 The Environmental Protection Agency New England Region 1 Wastewater Treatment Plant Excellence Award 2009 The New England Water Environment Association's Energy Management Achievement Award 2017 The New England Water Environment Association Residuals Management Achievement Award 2021 And The Vermont Governors Award for Environmental Excellence and Pollution Prevention 2003 Now, therefore, be it. Hang on. Resolved that the Board of Trustees on behalf of the staff and citizens of the Village of Essex Junction hereby extend our most sincere appreciation to James for his dedicated career in making Essex Junction and the region a better, healthier place to live and work. Adopted this day, 21st Day of December 2021 by the Essex Junction Board of Trustees. And Jim, you and I had a coffee a while back, and Jim is going to go off the grid for a while. And after reading all that and all you've done, you deserve to get off the grid for a while, my friend. But I'm going to now introduce an old friend of yours and kind of an esteemed member of the audience. Everyone is esteemed, but this individual is particularly esteemed. Someone you know from the past, former Village Manager Charles Stafford. Charles? Hey Jim, good to see you. I just want to stop by and honor your service and pay my respects. Jim was always willing to step up, and he was the public works director when I was here. We needed him desperately to fill a hole. And he took that on and this into his other responsibilities. He was always there for his peers. Harry Shepard, my Public Works Director, sends his regards. When he first started in the profession, he was wondering what to do. I said, call Jim. And Jim was always there for his peers and was a leader and environmental stewardship with biosolids. And I'm going to tell you my favorite story with Jim is not only was he smart and conscientious, but he was willing to do what it takes to get the job done. One day I thought I had something very important on my mind and I went down to the wastewater plant to go see Jim. And I asked where he was and he said, well, he's in the pump room or some some room and Jim was in hip faders, hip deep literally. And I said, wow, yeah, whatever I thought was important at that moment that was no longer so important to me. And I said, Jim, when you get a chance, come visit me in the office. And so anyways, Jim, I wish you the best in your retirement. Thanks for all you've done for Essex Junction and the Tritown communities. Thank you, Jerry. And I remember that day quite well. Appreciate that story a few times. Thanks for allowing me to speak and keep smart. Thank you. And you know what? I think it happened. I haven't heard the actual live sound of people applauding, but how about it right now? You're going to say something? Thank you. George, thank you so much for reading that. Really appreciate that. You've certainly encapsulated more than anything that I could say. Jim, I certainly do remember. I believe you were the second staff member I met with shortly after becoming elected and quite frankly took advantage of the facility that you've overseen for so many years and truly did not comprehend just how important that facility is and has been to our community. Can you show me the path of just how important that is? And frankly, I appreciated over the years how every time you've come to the board with some highly technical scientific concern that still goes over my head, you're able to bring it down to a level that I can understand, at least enough to know what we need to do, have completely appreciated and thoroughly appreciated your leadership for the water quality in our community beyond just the village of course, the entire Tritown. So I appreciate that. Thank you, Jim. Thank you very much. And I knew Ricky Jones would get the super sucker in there somehow. We're very proud of the super sucker, Jim. Yes. Andrew, if I might, Jim, I can echo all this stuff. I've been here four years. You were one of the first people I met. I know just enough about wastewater treatment plants to be dangerous, but I knew right off the bat, you knew everything there was to know about a treatment plant and beyond that. You really have an excellence quality to yourself, your profession, your staff and what you're trying to achieve down at the plant. And this will get a little bit gross, but you know what's going on at the plant. And when you deal with COVID, we had even talked about how the science is that you could detect COVID in your community through the waste streams. You can't necessarily know where exactly, but you know it exists. And then we talked about phosphorus and the phosphorus challenge and working with UVM to patent something to remove phosphorus, I think is going to be dynamite for the environment. So it has been an absolute pleasure and a privilege to work beside you. Thank you, my friend. Enjoy your retirement. Well deserved. Thank you very much. Go ahead, Amber. I just wanted to echo Andrew's comments, Jim. You have always explained things to the level where I can understand them, like the cliff note version, which I really need. You've got quite, you've had quite a career and I'm glad you could spend it with us here in the village. And I wish you the best of luck in retirement. And I hope you hope you do something real fun. Roger, Dan. Yeah. Anything else? Good. Well, all I say is that just as with you, Andrew, Jim was one of the first village staff members I met when I was elected to the board. What was it, 11 years ago, I guess, or about almost? Anyhow, no, I was very impressed with the operation down there. And just in the last 10, 11 years, how much the changes that have come and very much so related to your involvement and pushing for these things. And like Andrew said, that I never question anything when you brought it forward. In fact, there may be a time in the future when we reach out to you with questions, who knows, you know? But thank you very much. And I'm very happy to see you retiring and enjoy it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan. Jim, I'm really excited for you, for your retirement. I'll just say that to keep this brief, everybody's pretty much said everything. The one thing I think we all have, though, is just the experience of that tour. I didn't get my tour for the wastewater treatment facility until well into my first year as a trustee and as one of the newbies here. I haven't had that long to work with you. But I came out of that and my friends still pick on me because for a few months when I saw them, I was like, oh, you could only get down there and see what we're doing down there, see how cool it is. It is just immensely impressive. Your knowledge of everything regarding water quality and the environment blows my mind. It's very much appreciated, like everybody else has said. I just know when there's something coming forward from you and your crew, it's going to be well documented, well researched, and very much the path that we need to follow. We'll miss you and wish you the best. George, was there anything else you wanted to add? Yeah, I will add one last thing. Jim, after everything has been said, I would say it took me a long time to understand that what you are in real life terms in my mind is you are a frontline environmentalist. It's great and lots of people talk about improving the environment on a philosophical or theoretical level, but few people really get into the front lines, the technical components of that, and take the time to study and to learn and to take on all of the responsibility that comes with that. And you are, I hope you have been an inspiration to so many people and hopefully some younger people who really want to get into improving the environment and addressing environmental concerns could learn a lot from you, and I hope they follow you in your footsteps. So thank you. Well, thank you, George. And being a frontline environmentalist is why I got into this field. It was part of my original intent because you can do something about the environment every day, but it's the supportive environment of the board of trustees, the management, the staff, and the progressive view that the community has about learning and doing well. And it's the support of the board that provided the successes for the facility and for its staff. And I'm happy to be a part of that. And I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Jim. Are there any members of the public who, Greg Morgan, if you don't mind, I'm just going to go ahead and read what you wrote into the chat here of Greg Morgan former trustee. I was on the board that hired Jim. I have told many people this action may have been my most significant contribution to the village. Thank you, Jim. So thank you for that, Greg. Thank you, Greg. Harley Smith or yours. I would like to echo what George pointed out is being a frontline environmentalist. Obviously anything that goes through that plant goes into our rivers and into our lakes. And the accomplishments that I am now aware of, and I was aware of some of them before is pretty outstanding and amazing. And I really think that you set the bar high for anybody to follow in your footsteps. And I appreciate every you've done for this village. So enjoy the retirement very well deserved. You've left us in a really great position. And I really appreciate it. So thanks, Jim. Thank you, Arlen. Thank you, Arlen. Gabrielle Smith, go right ahead. Hi, Jim. My name is Gabrielle Smith, and I live here in the village and I've been here 16 years. I don't know you and anything about wastewater treatment except enough to know that you've made such a significant difference for our communities and for our environment. And that we've been very fortunate to have you for 30 years, your dedication to what you do to your crafts, to your staff and to our communities is a precious thing. And I just wanted to thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So with that, George, would you like to go ahead and make a motion? The motion is that we it's to adopt this resolution for James Jutris. And I will make the motion that the trustee, the board of trustees adopt the resolution and appreciation of James Jutris this date December 21st, 2021. Second. Thank you, George. Thank you, Dan. Any other comments from the trustees? I've got lots of comments, but I think for now we'll save them until Jim comes back and visits us again and talks about it. He tells us all about the north coast of Maine and looking north up into beyond the caribou up into Canada. I think that sounds great. All right. So hearing none, all those in favor of the resolution, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Great. I pass unanimously. Jim, can't thank you enough. Thank you. Thank you very much. So our next agenda item is a discussion and a possible action about contracts. We will have that in executive session. Moving off from that, we will go into the consent agenda. Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Thank you, Amber. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? I pass unanimously. Thank you. That brings us into the reading file and board member comments. One thing I wanted to point out in that reading file, get another award for the wastewater treatment facility under Jim's leadership from efficiency Vermont. It comes quite that regular occurrence of having that recognition. The other thing, as many of us may have heard from the select board meeting last night about their potential desire to take a position on separation, we have no, this was not an agenda item, so we cannot take any action. But are there any questions, any comments, anything anybody wanted to air at this point? Andrew, I would, if you wouldn't mind. It's George. I would like us to consider over the holiday inviting the select board to please take no position and to just join us in supporting of the charter initiative as it will be introduced into the legislature with the new session. I can get into my reasons why, but I think that in my mind, the votes of this past year have been overwhelming, conclusive and very, very clear about the direction that the two, our two communities now are headed in. And I would like to suggest that we start our new relationship, at least proposed to the select board that we start our new relationship on a positive note where we stop seeking to put one side or the other to try to get some advantage and we try to approach this with mutual respect. So I would like us to consider that and inviting the select board to ask what exactly did they think they will gain by talking about their increase in the tax rate? What would they hope to win by that? And is that, is any small gain they get from that worth jeopardizing our very good and very cordial relationship that we've developed over the last few months working with them on these contracts? So I'm just putting that out there. It's my own thought. I'd like to explore it and develop it a little bit more with the rest of you at some point. Thanks. Thank you, George. I'll heartily agree. That's fairly similar to what I had mentioned at the meeting last night. You know, I'll just add, I completely agree with George's comment and I was going to have some to say, but I'm going to leave it to what George said. And the only thing I'd add to that is, you know, one of the other reasons that would be nice to move on is that in many cases we're still going to have co-located staff working side by side. If we've heard anything over the past couple of years, it's been very heartfelt and serious feedback from staff on how this process has impacted them in their work life. And I think another good reason why it would be nice to to see this through as a pair of boards together would be to honor that feedback and understand what we're looking forward to for the people that work for us and what that means. So that's the only thing I'd add. That was great. Dan or Amber, is there anything else that you'd like to mention on that? Any other trustee comments in general? Well, so completely different note and it sounds really petty at this point. So it's been so serious tonight, but there's been a couple front porch forums and I've noticed myself, you know, we recently passed a restriction at 7 a.m. on garbage pickup. We can't mechanize garbage pickup and it seems that there's a that's not necessarily being followed yet and I imagine that's just a communication issue. So I don't know if we have someone that has time to kind of reach out to the companies again. I think it was the Red Can family in this case that I've noticed at 545 on main on Pearl Street and I think was mentioned in Summit Street just to kind of give them a friendly reminder. But that's kind of what I noticed at the front porch forum and I was driving somewhere the other morning early. I noticed it as well. So but it's all very new. So maybe they just didn't get the information. So to piggyback off of that, if I may, I believe it was Saturday morning around 415 when our dog needed to use the outdoor facilities and coming down countryside or coming down Brickyard Road, turning onto Mansfield Avenue was a trash truck, which if there's trash truck driving around at 415 in the morning, pretty sure I know what they're doing and it's not, you know, a firefighter drill to make sure they can get around the community. And it's more than likely not driver training. So yes, would greatly appreciate the follow-up to the haulers to remind them of the ordinance, which I believe, Amber, you may have brought this up in our last meeting. That's exactly what I was going to say. I did bring it up and asked that staff give us some, the first question is, when did the ordinance go into effect? Because we had the 60 day period. And then the second question, what kind of communication was delivered to those haulers? So I did ask for that. And I think Marguerite took note of that. They're planning on doing the next meeting after this. So the 11th? Okay, if that's the date. Great. Thank you, Evan. Anything else? With nothing else? Just trying to find the motion language. We'll go ahead and make the motion. The trustees make specific finding that general public knowledge of contract negotiations with an employee would place the village at a substantial disadvantage. And I would further move that the trustees enter into exactly the session to discuss contract negotiations with an employee pursuant to one VSA, section 313A1A. Second. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none. All in favour, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Great. Passing in. See, thank you. Whether we take action or not, town meeting TV, don't stick around. We'll take care of it from here. Thank you. Mr. President, this is the last meeting before Christmas. So Merry Christmas everybody, all of our fans watching at home and New Year, please be safe. I know that you would have remembered that too. So I'll let you finish that thought. Happy holidays. See you next year. Same to you, Evan. Thank you for bringing it up. Thanks. Thanks. Merry Christmas. Thank you all. Trustees, I'll assume it'll take a few minutes to transition. Yeah. So say five or so. Yeah. See you in a bit. See you then.


We were kind of called into duty on this day to go help with the march itself. It was a nice day, so I grabbed my regular bike helmet and threw it on and I was good to go. And my partner for several years now, Robbie, kind of looked at me and gave me that look of, hey, we're not all in uniform right now. We got to look good when we go out there. And he was already wearing his burn helmet. So I gave in and I changed the helmet that day, probably within, you know, 20 minutes of the accident.  You know, like some of the other injuries that you've had, you're recovering from them, you're coming back from them. You know, you can fix those injuries, you can work hard in your rehab to come back from them.  You know, Burn Unlimited is a very passionate company focused on one goal, and that is to provide the best head protection in the world for action sport athletes. And with Burn Unlimited, you know, I'm doing what I do because I'm passionate about saving lives. We go at great lengths to find the highest impact plastic that we can find. And it's a big deal. The value of the plastic is that it can withstand like what happened to you. Whereas if you look at normal plastic out there, it would have just ripped it to shreds right away. And then gone into the impact management of the helmet, which is the EPS, which would have just torn it right away. And then it would have gone into your head immediately. So it's really good to see in a real life situation that this plastic was able to sustain what happened in this accident. Yeah, I'm very grateful for that extra work that you guys have put into it. My whole family is grateful. And I truly thank you and your company for putting all the extras into this helmet because I truly believe that it had a significant, you know, it was significant in saving my life. And at the very least, my mind and my head, very, very grateful for both my partner who gave me the push to wear it that day and also to your company and the department again for being willing to kind of listen to the bike riders that are out there all the time and kind of need specialized gear to be able to ride in some of these interesting conditions that we have in Colorado. Been told that I'm a quick healer and hopefully that continues and I'd like to be stronger than I was before it happened. I want to get to a point where I'm healthier in my mid-40s than I was in my early 30s. I'd love to be back on a bike and, you know, doing the things that I've been doing for the last almost 10 years. You're absolutely going to. There's no question about it. It's overwhelming that not only the support but the people coming and saying how much it's motivated them in whatever situations they've been going through. Absolutely. Would you realize how close you were to not being here? It makes it even more overwhelming. I'm psyched that you're doing well. Thank you very much. Yeah, you look great. Thank you. It's got a lot of good support around me. It's going to be good, man.


Hello, I'm John Russell. Imagine that language is like this ball. The ball can go up or the ball can fall down. Intonation, the pitch of the voice, can rise or go down, much like the up and down motion of the ball. Americans use different kinds of intonation in different situations. Let's explore some ways that Americans use falling intonation. Falling intonation is common in simple statements. You know, the kind of statements you first learn about when you study English. For example, My name is John. It's nice to meet you. Have a nice afternoon. Have a nice afternoon. In each of these statements, my intonation fell toward the end of the sentence. Listen again. My name is John. My name is John. It's nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you. Similarly, Americans often use falling intonation in questions that involve words such as why, who, when, where, or how. For example, someone might ask, what's your name, what's your name, how are you doing, how are you doing, where do you come from, where do you come from. In all of these cases, I used falling intonation.  In future episodes, we will explore rising intonation. That's all for today. Keep up the good work.


Hello everybody. I hope you're having a wonderful day. If you're new here, my name's Habiba. I'm a full-time adventure traveler, and this is my YouTube channel, Checking Pels, where I share my adventures around the world. Today, I'm coming to you from the beautiful medieval city of Rabat, the capital of Morocco after I had a wonderful adventure in the city of El Jidida. And I'm coming to you exactly from Hassan Tower. This tower right behind me was supposed to be the minaret of a mosque that was supposed to be the largest mosque in the Islamic world. Unfortunately, the sponsor of this project, yeah, Kubel Mansour, died in the 12th century before completing the construction of this mosque. But it's still standing right here at 44 meters high surrounded by walls from centuries ago, and there are about 348 columns right here. This is a must-see if you are adventuring in Rabat. I'm so happy to start my adventure out here, and I cannot wait to show you more of the beautiful city of Rabat. Right next to Hassan Tower is the Moslem of Muhammad Fit. It's right there, right behind me, and right there is where King Muhammad Fit is buried alongside with his two sons, late King Hassan II and Moulay Abdullah. It's closed right now. It's under construction. You can usually go inside and take a look, but it's unfortunately closed right now, but it's a beautiful building. There is another building right next to it. I'm not sure what it is, but the architecture right here is top notch. It's so very captivating. There's a really neat view as you cross Hassan Tower, as you cross the street. You get a wonderful view overlooking the river, some of the highways. There's some construction going on. I'm not sure what that building is, but it looks pretty neat. It looks like the Salesforce building in San Francisco. I have to check what that building is about, but the view from out here is so incredible. You can also get some really neat spots if you are into photography of the tower. You can see it right there. You can really take some cool photos of the tower from across the street. Wow, this exceeded my expectations. I've been to Rabat so many times, but I never had the chance to come to Hassan Tower. I am so impressed by the architecture, the design, the engineering of all of these highways and gardens surrounding the site right here. Good morning from Marina Burgrig. This is the Marina between Rabat and Saleh. Saleh is an adjacent city to Rabat, so we made our way here earlier for breakfast. There are so many wonderful restaurants, neatly decorated, so many options to choose from for breakfast, brunch, or for lunch. So we had breakfast in one of them, and then we just walked around the Marina. I love the view from out here.  As you can see, there are so many boats behind me. We got here from Rabat earlier using Indrive, which is a rideshare application here in Morocco because you can't use Uber. Honestly, I've been so pleased using it here in Rabat and in El Jidida. What I like the most about the Marina right here is the view of Hassan Tower, which is really neat. This building behind me is under construction. We're going to wander around for a little bit, and then we're going to make our way to catch boats so that we can traverse from Saleh back to Rabat, which is something that I've been really, really excited to try. We're just catching a ride from the Marina in Saleh to cross to the other side. We're leaving Saleh behind us, and we're crossing to Rabat. It's a pretty short ride, two and a half dirhams, which is very reasonably priced, but a fun short ride nonetheless. And just like that, we are back to Rabat. That was a pretty short ride, but if you want to take a longer ride, they range from 50 dirhams, 80 dirhams, and I think 120 dirhams. You can catch a ride all the way to Udaya. This wooden ship behind me has been there for years, and it's a restaurant with a really neat view on Bur Greg, the river right here. I've never been there, but I'll probably try it at some point. Let's see. We just walked by Qasbah Udaya behind me, but we're not going to go in yet. We're going to make our way to the old market of Rabat. We're going to stroll around for a little bit, and then we'll leave Qasbah for later in the day. Maybe we'll be here for the sunset. I was told that the sunsets from Qasbah are pretty incredible, but we'll see if that's going to work out. But for right now, let's go to the old markets of Rabat. We're inside the old markets in Rabat. This is pretty typical in pretty much every city in Morocco. You would find a market like this or an old Medina with a lot of vendors of Moroccan artwork. But what I like about the Medina here in Rabat, or the old market here in Rabat, is the fact that it's not as overwhelming as other cities, especially Marrakech comes to my mind. You feel like everyone is trying to make you buy stuff while it's pretty chill right here in Rabat. No one is after you. You can just buy whatever you want or just stroll around peacefully, which is pretty nice. I stopped by the store to get myself a pair of travel pants. I've been wanting to get one for a bit now. This is what I'm trying right now. Super comfortable. What do you guys think? I think I'm going to go for it. Lunch today is at the Albeya restaurant near Marche Central for the tramway station for the Medina. We just found this restaurant randomly, but I'm really happy with how everything looks like so far. They have a nice seating area inside and out. And we're starting off with a salad of the with a lot of vegetables. And then we're going to dig in and enjoy some grilled meat, fries, fries and vegetables. So excited to eat. It's been a long morning. I am so excited today. I'm joining the community of Le Voyageuse in Rabat. This is a community of female travelers, mostly Moroccans, but also travelers from all around the world. This is Nadia. She is the founder of Le Voyageuse and she invited me to this event. So I'm going to join them for yoga today. And I'm going to leave more information about this community. This has been a wonderful community of travelers. Really, really helpful. You guys should check it out. I'm going to start the yoga session and I'm super excited. We're out here in Ibnussina forest in Rabat. Yay, let's go. I just had a wonderful session with Le Voyageuse and I got a free hat. It felt so good to practice yoga again. It's been a long while and we followed with some meditation. There are a lot of kids just playing soccer right there in the field. I'm going to make my way back to my Airbnb to relax for the rest of the day and I will see you guys tomorrow. Good morning from Rabat. I'm getting ready this morning to check out of the Airbnb where I've been staying for the past four days. And I was really happy with the location. We were lucky to find this cute small Airbnb near the train station of Medina, Rabat. So we literally got dropped off by the train and walked to our Airbnb, which is pretty convenient. Unfortunately, I have to check out today and move to a different one. But before I do that, I want to give you a tour of this cozy little Airbnb. This is the room. They've got a king-size bed. There's some storage over there and some drawers. And this is the entrance of the door. This is the bathroom. The shower over there was really tidy and neatly decorated. That's another view of the room. And on the other side, there's the living room. I really love the turquoise blue with the black and white. That's a little flower that I bought yesterday. I'm going to leave it out there. That's the view from the window. It gets a lot of light. And this is the kitchenette, which was pretty well equipped. We cooked a lot during this trip to be honest. Or at least we're striking a balance between eating it out and cooking. That's been really nice and my mom's been really helpful. And that's a mini fridge. So cute. And from the window, you can literally see the train station right there. You can literally walk to it. And that's been super convenient. But for right now, I'm going to move to the next Airbnb and continue our adventure in Rabat. Hello from Rabat. I've been a little bit quiet the past few days. We took a few days to just relax and unwind, but I'm out again exploring and at least following and sharing with you some of the places I'm visiting here in Rabat. We are at Kasbah Udaya. And behind me is the main door of the Kasbah. I've been wanting to make my way to this monument for a very long time. It's a UNESCO World Heritage alongside with many other sites here in Rabat. So I'm really, really excited to go inside and show you what the Kasbah looks like. This is the view from the Kasbah from up top. You can see where river Burgrat connects with the ocean. The view from up here is pretty neat. There's also a small beach on the other side. I can see some people, I think, surfing right there. The sun is going down and I'm pretty sure that the sun sets from up here are pretty neat. This view is so special. From this other side, you can pretty much see every other monument that we've been to over the past few days. You can see Hassan Tower. You can see the Mosul-e-Muhammad fit. You can see the bridge. You can see the boat that takes you to Traverse from Rabat to Saleh and vice versa. The view is so neat from here. And there's also the building that's still under construction. This is incredible.


Abstract soils near oil and natural gas drilling sites have been found to contain elevated levels of heavy metals, which can pose a threat to human health and the environment. This study examined the distribution of six heavy metals in 139 top soil samples collected in and around these sites. The results showed that the concentrations of the metals varied widely, with some being more than 10 times higher than the background levels. Based on the findings, the authors concluded that the drilling sites could potentially cause adverse effects on the environment and public health if not properly managed.


If Siren Head were an SCP, which it isn't. But if it were, how would the SCP Foundation contain it? For those rushing to the comments to correct me about Siren Head actually being an SCP, hear me out for a second. Siren Head was created by Trevor Henderson in 2018. From there, somebody made an SCP document about Siren Head titled SCP-6789. This document was never on the official SCP Wiki. Instead, it was posted to one of our draft pages, known as a sandbox page. Eventually, the amount of people mistaking Siren Head for one of our creatures was to the point that SCP Wiki staff and Henderson together decided to delete that SCP-6789 draft page. You may also notice that SCP-5987 is titled Siren Head. What's the deal with that? Well, the author wrote a story about a ship's figurehead that could control other ships with a Siren-like song. Siren Head that's also a Siren, Siren Head, you see where this is going. The author named it Siren Head as a meme slash joke about the controversy of Siren Head being mistaken for an SCP. Funny? Yes. Confusing to a lot of people who just read the title and neglected to read the actual article? Also, yes. The reason that this is such a big deal? The SCP Wiki only allows submission of original stories and creatures, and Trevor did not submit Siren Head to us, nor did he want Siren Head associated with the SCP Foundation. Also, legally speaking, SCP creations are subject to the Creative Commons license, which allows reuse with attribution, and if Trevor wanted to hold on to his creature's copyright, he definitely wouldn't want to release it to us. Alright, so with the history lesson out of the way, what would it be like if Siren Head were in the SCP universe? I see this as being very similar to SCP-1000, which is Bigfoot, a similar cryptid creature. The main containment procedures, regardless of any other factor, would be making sure that people who saw the entity would be amnesticized or discredited, or both. And news reports would be similarly taken down or painted as ridiculous. If there were multiple Siren Head entities, or if the singular entity is nomadic and uncontainable, that is the extent of our efforts. Now, Trevor has tweeted that Siren Head is a singular entity. So the question is, can we contain it? Siren Head stories don't often talk about Siren Head's durability, because no one is really trying to take it down. But we do know that it is organic, except for the metal of its eponymous Sirens. Some sort of powerful tranquilizer could be used to knock out the creature and transport it to a secure location where it couldn't break out. If the entity can't be trekked, and can't be held in a building, there is hope that we could isolate it so it didn't interact with people. If it stays in one specific area, the Foundation could create a perimeter, falsely registering it as a national park, or saying there's environmental hazards or some such cover story, turn people away when they approach, and contain the Siren Head entity in its habitat. And that sums up our hypotheticals. Siren Head is not an SCP, but if it were, that's a couple of ways the SCP Foundation would attempt to contain it.  Leave it in the comments. And don't forget to support the channel, like, share, subscribe, hit the bell, and become a patron at patreon.com.site42.


If we take an oxygen molecule, we know that's an oxygen attached to another oxygen. There's some unshared pairs of electrons that you're going to be able to put in later. And we have a linear geometry. So that affects its behavior. We have boron tetrachloride. In this molecule, boron trifluoride. We have three fluorines attached to the boron. And in this case, the angle is 120 degrees and it's planar. So that geometry is going to tell us something about the way this molecule will behave. We have a tetrahedron, which is a very common molecular structure. We have four things attached to the center and they're equal distance apart. So the angle from here to here is 109. Here to here is 109. And if I rotate this over, you can see that it looks the same. No matter how I turn it, it's symmetrical.


So my beautiful people, I am back with another out of the ring video and today guys I'm going to show you this amazing method in earning 42,000 runes in literally guys 15 seconds. If that it's so simple it's so easy you don't have to fight anything and you earn a ton of runes which are definitely going to give you quite a few easier levels. How's it going guys? My name is DPJ and if you do enjoy the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more be sure to subscribe. Ok so click to my power, my life crisis for showcasing this to me, you'll find his channel link below if you do want to check him out and show him some love, just post that beautiful daily out of ring content too. Also shout out to my power xghunter on my discord who also showed this to me. Ok so this is where you need to come to, you need to come to where I'm at here. And as wise as that sounds I'm not even sure. So you start basically here, you basically start here. Now as soon as you've got your mount you can do this. So as soon as you've got that mount which I got mine from the church of Ella which is there, there's a Milena NPC here which gives you your mount, Turrent. Once you've got him what you want to do is come up to this path right here and just follow the road all the way around. Follow the road, follow the road until you end up here.  There's things in your way, things block in progress, just follow the path guys and you'll come here. Now you'll see there's a big bridge, there's a dragon on it, avoid that bridge, you want to go to the one down to your right and to do this guys you need to come here. Now I'm just testing things out here and what we're going to do, I'll explain in a second but it's all good. But yeah you need to come down to here where I'm at right now. So once you are here guys you can see the bridge right in front of me. Now when it changes to night time and we get like an enemy spawn on there. This is the guy we need to kite so we need to get him to chase us. So he chases us and we run past Paws up the hill behind him, see him there?  So just run normal, you can probably do one boost and that's if he's really up yes but if he ain't guys don't boost so we're going to kite him up this hill.  So you see now, letting him follow me sees how far at the bottom, a nice cavalry and get him to follow you up this hill through these poison spores and you'll notice you see guys ignore the other enemies as well, do not stop to fight any of them. Like I said if he comes up you ask him to sprint but try to avoid that and you'll see once you come up here turn left and you'll notice he's half bar guys, just vanish and there we go, watch the runes we get, bam simple as that and we also get that guys, a new ash of war, blood hand step and there we have it, 42,000 runes, 42,000 runes as simple as that, now you can fast travel back to where you want, do whatever you want, level up all that good stuff people, there's a 3, 42,000 runes and it is guys as simple as that so I hope it helps you out, if it does leave a like really helps me out, if you're new around here and want to see more out on the ring be sure to subscribe and hopefully people I will see you on that next one