Yeah, so they turned out good enough. Yes, we're working on all sorts of new stuff But we wanted to get some older projects out the door and so the scd-40 You know we actually designed this if you remember people watch desk lady We designed this month ago. We finally got the sensors in and this is pretty scary because this is a panel That's a thousand dollars worth of chips. These chips are very expensive the scd's So this is what it looks like before you put in the oven, and I checked it over very carefully But turns out they all passed tests, so it was a successful win And we're gonna go put them in the store. You can pick them up tomorrow That's not secret this week


my autumn winter coats and jackets for 2021. I've got something old, something new, something borrowed, and even something blue. So I thought you might enjoy seeing all my favorite coats and jackets, how I style them, and what I look out for when I'm buying a new one. I'll also be sharing my edit of the best picks from the high street and beyond as we go along. So don't forget to let me know your favorites in the comments section below. So let's start with something new and a piece that I procrastinated over for quite a long time, one beautiful camel coat. So I finally decided on this gorgeous version from Cos that's just arrived. I wanted that robe-style shape, something I could wrap myself up in once the weather got really cold. I was also searching for that deep camel tone that felt rich and sumptuous. To say I'm chuffed to have finally found one would be an understatement. Essentially, I just adore this coat. I think it's perfect and it's exactly what I was looking for. The cut, the shade, the fabric content even, having been made from a blend of wool and tensile, it's like it was made for me. Autumn winter coats would definitely be one area I would always invest in. I also try and choose pieces that I would envisage having for life. I try and stay away from anything too untrend and instead I try and search out those really timeless pieces that I don't think will date. But the new and noteworthy camel coats I found along the way would be this one I found from the designer Totem. From the high street I also like this one at Mango. I thought this looked really original at Nordstrom and of course 12 stories have a beautiful collection of winter coats. Another new piece in my wardrobe that arrived the other day would be this beautiful accrued blazer done in 100% wool. Now it's pretty heavy weight, nicely sewed for winter. So I think both aesthetically but also practically it's a piece that I will probably be styling an awful lot this season. Now you might have seen over on my Instagram account that I've been styling it in lots of different ways already. So today I wanted to show you something a little bit different that hopefully you will love as much as me. I love the boxy fit, that slightly longer length, the winter white tone which I just love, the feel of the wool is absolutely stunning. And a really nice point of difference with this one is that it actually comes with a matching belt too. Should you wish to change it up and it's quite nice to have that as another option. I personally never save white just for summer. I just love the look of a crisp white or beige jacket to brighten up a cold winter morning. And it always gives your outfits that sprinkle of effortless polish that we're all after. As always I shall link everything featured in the description box below. But I would highly recommend taking a look at this brand at the end of this video. I could very happily add just about every piece they have into my own wardrobe. Other wool blazers that I found recently would be this lovely oversized wool blazer and other stories. I love this dark brown shade at Kos. I have this easy blazer at Evelyn in play, but you could go classic with black. And our kit are always great for high quality wool blazers too. Next up to a winter coat that I bought quite a while ago now from Devinum's done in this beautiful, deep shade of navy. I do find having a navy coat in my autumn winter wardrobe really helpful, as I seem to style them most often with all those lovely brown or tunnel tones. I wear it with black, I love it against a crew, and even a pop of red from time to time. The only slight downside about this particular coat is that I went for it true to size rather than sizing up. I do prefer to have a little more room in my winter coats these days, both because I like the look, but also it then means I can layer to my heart's content underneath. So if you're looking for a new one for your own wardrobe, I would seriously consider sizing up, or at the very least, trying the next size up and seeing how it looks. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but when you find one that does, it can make a really effortlessly chic look. I shall link below some of my favorite navy coats that I found recently across the high street and with a few independence. I also have this navy blazer in my wardrobe, but although it's slightly lighter and it won't necessarily work for the height of winter, it is something I'm reaching for a lot at the moment. Perhaps an alternative in wool would work perfectly as it gets really, really cold. Or again, you could size up in this one and do a bit of layering as well. Now to another blazer that I just bought down from the attic to style for another season. This blazer came from a brand called Poco and has been made from 100% wool in this really lovely light shade of gray. I'm particularly loving gray at the moment and there's some beautiful options across the high street and with the designers. I find it a really soft neutral tone that seems to integrate with virtually my entire wardrobe, which is no mean feat. And depending on the shade of gray you go for, it can give outfits an edge that might otherwise feel a little bit boring. Even adding a gray scarf into the mix like this one that I got from a brand called Edward Brown really elevates the entire look. I'm actually on the hunt for a gray or possibly herringbone with a bit of charcoal, wool winter coat. Strangely, it's harder than you'd think to find so if anyone spotted a good one, please do let me know in the comments section. I found this one at Cars Again, which I think is beautiful, but I have shocked there so much recently that I feel like I should do something different. Love this herringbone or wool version at Marsella London again. How amazing are those shoulders? I think this two-tone version at Jigsaw is really original and 12 stories again, always have one or two in each shade that I would be more than happy to add to basket. I actually do have this gray herringbone blazer that I got quite a while ago now from Everlane, and that has been invaluable in my wardrobe, so I'm really hoping to emulate this kind of style but with a winter coat.  It's really elegant, it feels sophisticated, it always manages to elevate my outfits, and if you choose the right one, you should have it for life. Now it's not exactly a winter coat as such, but I always have, and I would always recommend, having at least one beautiful camel trench coat in your capsule wardrobe. I wear mine a lot, as you've probably seen, but I just find them so incredibly versatile for all wet and windy English weather, and I would say it's probably one of my hardest working pieces. This version is very much a classic with Cezanne that they tend to bring back in stock all throughout the year, and I seem to wear mine all year round. Only with the height of summer, say two weeks when it's boiling hot in this country, would I probably not reach for it. You can either go full-on Parisian style, introducing stripes and tan details, or keep it really simple with your styling underneath and let the coat do all the talking for you. The thing I love about a camel trench coat is when you find a good one, minimal effort is required elsewhere. I could throw mine on for the school run with virtually any concoction underneath, and it still makes me feel put together. The sign of a great piece. Tips for choosing the best trench coat, I would say choose your fabric content wisely. Too thick and it won't work year round, which it absolutely should. Too thin and you'll never reach for it in winter. I often size up to let me layer whatever the weather, but I still like mine to sit nicely on the shoulders so I retain that elegant finish. Staying with Suzanne now, but to something a little bit different with my winter green cropped coat. Now this was quite different for me on lots of different levels. One, because lengthwise it's a bit shorter than I would usually go for, and two, obviously because of that green shade. This is actually the only item I've got in green in my entire wardrobe, but that's probably why I love it so much, because it's very original for me, and surprisingly I can style it into so many more outfits than I ever thought possible. So I really would advise trying to step out of your comfort zone just from time to time when it comes to your winter coats. You can still keep the cuts and the shape really timeless so you know you'll have it forever, but there's no harm in trying just a few different shades. What's the worst that will happen? You might just come across something that really suits you and feels really original at the same time. A big favorite for me when it comes to my autumn winter coats would be this beauty that I got from Mango's current season. It's double-breasted and I sized up to get that oversized fit, and to say it's had its cost per wear already would be an understatement. I've styled it like this, like this, like this, and like this, and they're just the outfit ideas that I took pictures of.  I actually just realized, and I don't know how I missed this before, but Mango have actually got this exact same coat in a lovely shade of grey. So I think that might now be a contender for my grey coat wish list, water space. And now to something borrowed. I actually bought this wool winter coat for my mum many years ago, and as daughters do, I borrowed it for something and it stayed with me. Obviously for nostalgic reasons, it's nice to have it on my rail. I can remember her quite vividly in certain places wearing it. But also from a style and outfit perspective, I really like to have it too. It's more of a tailored coat than say the Mango one that I showed you before, and it works in a different way for my outfit ideas. The tailoring makes it feel really smart and elegant, and that's something I tend to look out for too when I'm shopping for new winter coats. Is the tailoring particularly on trend or is it classic that will stand the test of time for years to come? These are the kind of questions I ask myself and I think really carefully about actually before I buy anything. I really hope you've enjoyed taking a look at all my winter coats and jackets for Autumn Winter 2021. And I'd love to hear in the comment section below if you've got a favourite, or maybe you've got a favourite from the new pieces that I found across the High Street and with the designers. It's always really lovely to hear from you all, so do let me know. Thank you as always for all your support for my channel and what I do on here. Hopefully you know by now that I'm always very appreciative. I just hope my videos give you a little bit of inspiration and lots of outfit ideas along the way. Big hugs everyone and I will see you next Sunday. Take care.


on the Latino Collection and Resource Center. My name is Amanda, I'm the LCR Superordinator and I'm very happy to join us here to talk about it. With two women that honestly need no introduction, we'll be having our event today with Dr. Kamilapoy and internationally acclaimed Chicana writer from San Antonio. She served as a co-allorate of San Antonio between 2012 and 2014 and was named the co-allorated justice and became a community in 2016. She's joined with Dr. Ellen Yohes-Clarke, UTSA Professor of America. And the one thing I thought was very cool is that she served as a Educational Content Director of the TVS series Maya and Miguel, which I love and I used to send them to. So I was happy to learn that you were involved in that. I'm a boy that can say that, yeah. And Dr. Ellen Yohes-Clarke is part of the L3 committee that was intervaled to opening the Latino Collection and Resource Center and if you haven't seen, Carmen Zahoy is one of our champion authors who's featured on our bookends that you can see when you go to the collection. So that's our short introduction, Elle.  We're gonna be talking Tamales, a little bit about the history of the Tamalaba and reading some excerpts from their book. We're gonna make this rather informal, okay? So, I'm way older than that man. So, I'm the Mera Mera Tamarea. That's the name that I was given because I've been making Tamales, I just realized for 56 years, that's longer than she's been alive. No, so it's a long, long time, a long, long time. And the reason why is my mother never made Tamales. She came from the Fort Worth Dallas area and I don't know, they don't make Tamales in that area. But my dad's family would make them and never not to help. But anyway, once I established my own household decided to make Tamales, so every year would have a big Tamalaba at the house. So for those 50 years, I would get ready to have, all my friends come in, writers and artists and politicians, everybody went through my kitchen. It was a big job because I would make 150 pounds of masas, 150 pounds of masas. So you have to think about that. I have oyas or pots that are huge. And then, I'm kind of sure that being all that masa like this was a big job. And to do all of the oyas that were required to do all that many Tamales was huge. So, I do have a PhD, so I got it smart. And I figured out one thing, it's about culture. The minus is our culture, it's our history. And God wasn't going to tell you the history in a while. But the other thing I also understood was that it was about the process of making Tamales. And I said, not about the product. So it really didn't matter what that product tasted like or looked like, it was just important to get together and make them, you made them, you really think of the best Tamales in the world. So God meant that her husband, Ernie Goodenough, would come over with her children. I would tell people, just bring a pot and then you can take it to Mama's home and cook it. But here's my secret. Because nothing to do with, she didn't tell you what the history of Tamales is. This is 1980s, whatever year I started or earlier than that, you have the 60s making Tamales. So, that's how hard, if you ever did it as a child, you know you had to put them into soap, because corn shacks are very, very important. You have to soak them overnight, very hot water. So your hands end up being chapped and just not, I mean, it's hard on your skin. So I have a top coat, wash it, the top of the machine, you put the clothes on like that. So, I wash them, wash your sheen with vinegar twice, get rid of all of the soap residue. You put that on last time, because you need very hot water, put all the ojas in there, put the top on it and then pull out the stopper so it doesn't agitate. You don't want it to agitate. When my mother did it, she'd call me, she'd go, what do I do with all those pieces? Because they'd come apart. Mom, you weren't supposed to let it wash. So you let it, if you pull out the stopper and it just sumps. So the next morning, what do you do? You put on a spin, spins out all the water, fill it up with water again, and I had lovely hands, and I had very, very soft ojas, which would do my job on this. So that was the ojas. Then I got smart about doing all the masa, right? I mean, I wasn't gonna do this. That's how you do it. You have to be air into the masa. That's how you get fluffy tomatoes. And I did not want to look like Marilyn Monroe, you know, doing all of this all the time. So I got out my big, big mix master or the KitchenAid, that big KitchenAid. The same one I've had it for 50, something years. And I beat up all the masa. And remember I said it's all about process. So you want it to look good. So as soon as everybody would count, I would put all of that masa in a big pot. And when people would walk in, would gather in the bucket, I'd be like this. But I had already done it in all of them. And then when it's time to do all the spices, you do it with a macaque ente. A macaque ente is a mortar or pestle. And she's going to tell you about it that comes from the aspect times. So you have to grind them all the cominos, the chivas, and all of the garlic. But to make that make the malesia, you can imagine how many spices that need it. So what do y'all think I got? What did you get used to? That's an idea.  Yeah, so you're grinding up all the spices, using that. And then just push it back. As soon as the coffee comes, you get out the macaque ente, and you put all the spices in it, and then you grind it. So remember, it's about process and looks. And it's really getting together with all your familia, your friends, and everybody to make it the malesia. So yes, I tell people how to make them, show them how. And I still do it. I just did it the way they use them. And I just did it down the belgado. The belgado, and I just did it a little. Some days will go by so fast. So I teach people how to do it in the right side of the ohain, and how much you put in there, and how to fold it. But it doesn't matter. Sometimes the malesias are that big, and you cook it right next to one, because it's really easy to do. So those are the grand damaladas that I used to do. And then I decided I'm not doing them at home anymore. And I went to the one alufa 10 years ago. I went to the one alufa, and I said, can I do the damaladas for a community? So I did it for 10 years teaching 300 people how to do the damaladas. It was so much fun. And it had a lot of graduates in there. And then I turned it over to Garino Cortez, who's been great donors to the Latino Resource Center. And they're doing it grand. So we did it, I guess it was Sunday, right? Yeah, it was Sunday. Sunday. And there was like 700 people. And it was incredible. So for me to see this thing that I started 10 years ago, blossom into this huge thing was really incredible. Along the way, and he said to people, a lot of hecky, I think you should write all this down on it and put a book together. I said, amen, I do academic stuff. I don't do, you know, folks about damaladas. And she said, no, no, no. Anyway, in a short time, we put out the book. Three weeks, I think it was something like that. It was three weeks before we turned it over to the publisher for the book. What? Why? You couldn't imagine that. My last book took me 10 years on the one I started. But we were working overtime. And we had all the damaladas pitching in this. See, one of the things about the damaladas is that they just set off one person all by themselves and build a building or invent a way to grow a circle. As she starts to say, she did this, well, actually, we have another collaboration around the clock because not only did she create this beautiful cover. My other friends, a lot of them, we said, had done this piece of artwork. I think I'll say this, she was gonna be great. You've got to dig in, you've got to dig in, you've got to dig in. The thing that we thought was so important for my work and my identity is, who are we? You know, who are our groups? What is our history? And what we found was that the damalas are some of the damalas, some of the maíz. So learning about the history. And then we asked Antonio Castaneda, who is a very, very noted historian, to write a short piece for us on the history of damalas, and the history of 7,000 years of people of color. So this is something that was invented through communism. Yeah, I'm telling this article called Art, Labor, and the Genius of Women, a Short History of Damalas. She talks about these cultures of the Americas. And historically, bands of human beings didn't have a chance to bury a leopard.  You don't have to gather berries or herbs or you ate this kind of thing. But making food that combined things was really an invention called mixtamalizacion, which is a delightful word. Coming from the word mixtamal, the masa of the damalas. The mixtamal is not fast to make, but once it's made, you pick it up and you go out and you take it, you don't have that corn and one can only meet the other. The very important thing about that was the corn gods. So there's a corn god and a corn goddess, and both of them made us, according to mythology, in a corner that a masa can create and does a scan lens. And one of the daughters had five daughters, and each one reflected the color. White corn, yellow corn, blue corn, red corn, and the one that's multi-colored. So you can still see those different colored corn in the grocery store. And so from that, they created a new concept and an indigenous group. So we, our children, we're children of corn. And if you look back, it's the very earliest in Europe where dirt is what we're made of. This animal, he tries mud and I mean something firm on it. What is firm, and it's strong, but it doesn't smile, and it doesn't move, and it doesn't have any emotions.  And unmoving 7,000 in the Americas. So it's the most incredible food. And I make the modest, I think, I'm using the same recipe that my indigenous ancestors made. Masa, spices, either medicine, or pork, or sweet ones with basa, which means that these are all kind of just such an organic food of who we are. So that's why we love the modest. And we know that the modest reflect who we are and that the instruments we use such as what we have. I don't even know what a modest is. Let me ask that first. Because it's made out of volcanic rock and I know you've got a treat. It's a water pistol. It's a watering pistol object made out of... It's a three. I've noticed that you said... I mean, a friend gave me a wonderful little garlic press for Christmas.  And I put it aside and I grab it and then I did my garlic because it does it very well. But also, today it's still probably the most effective way to grind spices without turning them apart. I don't do long grinding. I don't do blenders for a long time. It's just right. It's just enough but not that we emphasize. One of the things that is so delightful about going from Dallas or from Africa who are coming at me and by grinding or tasting they are having all the fun that everybody gets. I don't know if it's 7000 or 7000. Probably pushing it to 8000 or 9000 doing their food itself. It's an amazing thing. One of the things we did with the pool because it's one of the things that both of us had done separately I met in the 1970s when we were hosting our doctoral program to UT Austin. I didn't know I did know that my future husband had met her in the 1960s when she was his doctoral student. No, a master's student at UT Austin. So, one of the things that we were each doing and I think it was kind of the emotion and the sensation she was doing a tamales at home and writing parts of it and making tamales I was doing a multimedia tamales because I was a writer and I was into the arts and a friend who was missing tamales and she said, I made tamales come on, I would invite everybody over we invited all the poets so everybody brought the poetry books and the poetry while they're assembling and the reading poetry while they're in the rondo and then at the end the best part was when everything was ready pretty red honk got cleaned up showered off all the masa came back to eat tamales and then big boys and so we had coins artwork that was brought and it was a lot of fun and I was doing the same but also we had in Austin because the grad student almost was family and friends and my my great aunt, that in 1996 said you have to honor the food you honor the making of food and that was a huge lesson for me because I always thought you make a lot of food and everybody sits down and you enjoy the product and that's what I'm saying it doesn't matter about the product we never got dirty like that because my aunt would get all dressed up when it was time to do the tamales she would say you have to put on your beautiful, dainty earrings in pongan se liki stick so we all had to be well dressed with our lipstick and without all earrings and a beautiful apron not a dirty apron so it was all about the humanness to make have something to loss of fun so then when we get to Diego the skin was great yeah, beautiful skin again remember that this process probably happened because two kid women sat down and started to chat and it probably went something like this when one of the kid women was bragging about all the modern art that they had in their kid days and the other one was concerned it just wasn't enough so, should we give them a little taste of what 2K art is not like? now where did you see these drawings? all of them were wonderful they had that stick stickers they were inside the cave walls all of them was the best art exhibit we ever saw cave art and our civilization we had fire and then so the drawings were about cooking? no, but they were about buffalo the I got this one too what did that guy draw? at least four different colors on the walls, one was red one was blue, one I don't know the name for but it was good art we had sticks we had fire we had a good time all the last week what more could we possibly have in our civilization? well, but you know what I hate cooking by myself I invited a mother to come over to her she didn't know how to cook anything so I told her about doing the pasta and I said, you know how to cook the pasta she must be a civilized what kind of kid woman is that? she must be a civilized so man, what did you do first? well, you know we were kind of tired of just even working at the point I mean, she wanted to eat pasta and I wanted to eat the now good tasty deer I was like, which one is it gonna be? because we can eat both of them because if we have the pasta in one hand and deer in the other, who's gonna grab the chip? I have to keep them from getting too close to the fire you know? and she grabbed the orcas that I follow now on your corner and she grabs from my side and I say, what are you doing? I said, I'm not even gonna come over I'm gonna cook the orcas and I said, orcas, I'm gonna taste good come on here what the orcas are you kidding me? well, I'm not even kidding because that man of mine is bugging me always he got me he was gonna make five dishes no this was all in the middle in the middle isn't it gonna fall? no they put it in the pasta and then on this one I'm gonna put beans and I'm gonna make it double the amount and on this one I'm gonna put beans and on this one I'm gonna put la carne and I'm gonna have a two for one and I'm gonna call it Don means what that means pour and then I'm gonna put it on the fire and I'm gonna cook it okay, good one but you know what I'm gonna put on mine? oh yes, that was good I'm putting rabbit I'm gonna try this one and a Halloween I'm gonna put it this way it's gonna fall down oh wait a minute maybe we should fold it hold up I got it stick it in let's put some more those guys move and then I'm gonna put some of those seeds some of those seeds in there chili I am chili those are good seeds spice is so good well that is the invention of a tamale and a couple of days later when the guys got back in there and they were given this key wipe out all the food tamales we've made they shut up and this key flap says to them hey, can I take some of those what you call them? tamales? we can go with them instead oh I just think we made them and so he picks up a whole bunch of them he sticks them in his house and he heads off with them and he says hey, we're gonna have a good expedition and he says hey, don't eat too much you'll be too fat to kill the deer he didn't listen so we had to wait a couple of months before we could go to the deer but we're not going to the same thing we're still saying the same thing we want some more so people have to keep taking them tamales away I wanted to share with you guys a point that a friend of mine wrote about tamales and I think he kind of captures a modern perspective on the traditional tamales and she's from Humboldt, California so the point is called recipe hinterland tamales here in Humboldt we have one Mexican market El Cueblo and as the proprietor Maria says in Christmas the whole world comes to get masa for tamales but I didn't mean it I don't want to drive to the other side of Eureka to get masa trucked all the way from San Jose before daylight I make my own masa all the same way the old ladies before me have done you can do this too go to the market the hinterlands of our slime will have masa in their bags don't be a baby follow the directions on the back of the bag behind the bags there's a viebo cano so the old white-haired man was no clue as to the contents of that bag there's no excuse honey they even print the directions in the English the trick though is in the machine don't whine about authenticity if your grandma had had a food processor you know to what it used to be deep down it's the twin sister of the old lady that means whenever the diaspora has flung you and yours does the food processor make tamales with masa but it's specific once you have masa your possibilities are endless traditional tamales de cuerpo de pollo chile verde de musical raisins or even if you're dairy and tamales so a little peace of our God experience one of the things we feel proud about is that we were able to reach out across San Antonio really across the nation and get commentaries for different individuals about their favorite tamales because once these started turning into favorite tamales a few of them did say tamales de cuerpo or de lote dulce or pollo porrajas de chile but most of them started to recognize so we're going to share a few of these because we got everybody from Vicky Karr and we're James Solomons we got Dan Nair, Kujen Castro the Cabaret, Fernan Eloise Maria Eloise from the columnist Eloise columnist and even and even and even Mayor made your city of the U.S. she said the best ones were always made by wives and you know and Ellen you finally did get Senator Yeah some of the status as you well know is a very famous author and translated into 47 languages at least but anyway, I love her she's a very concise boy fat tamales are my favorite I mean the ones made in central Mexico and shaped like Mexican feet not the little sardine shaped ones folksy and northern Mexico in places so she like big square like big feet we have other commenters from people who talk to all about the beautiful and sardine shaped ones from northern Mexico like North Magadu but some of you may remember the late great women champion fantastic flamenco guitars performed throughout the world and he had one of the most magical statements that we got he said my favorite is that my father would hunt the deer and my mother would turn it into tamales the tamales were always a mystery to me almost a gathering of brujas witches I remember the boys and men were asked to leave the house and only the women were gathering their own selective own boys would play at other neighbors' homes and the men sat and talked and had their say but when we got home the tamales would emanate an aroma that I could still smell after so many years now I realize those women alone have left their problems and their dreams and their hopes inside those tamales this is some of these different words they just don't understand that's neat, it's very effective hey you're still your normal that's the one they used to collect on your money because she knew the facts she said my amelita made the best tamales ever she was small, strong and independent she was also perfectionist when she died my sister and I attempted to duplicate her tamales but we were going high tech we purchased a mechanical tamale maker that had two cylinders one for the masa and one for the me the entire family was relying on us to have an amelita like tamales for our chakras was gathered the meat and masa were prepared according to amelita specifications and the aroma of the tamale meat filled the kitchen we were so proud of ourselves and hoped that our amelita would also be proud of us we stuffed the meat and the masa into the cylinders and cranked it cranked away to our horrible surprise instead of getting nice and neat tamales the meat turned it up towards the ceiling and ended up on the walls floor and everywhere else you can imagine the amelita the kitchen looked like a disaster compared to it covered with red spongey substance the following year we decided to go the old fashioned way sometimes tradition just can't be replaced okay let's look at the amelitas from a little kids perspective how many of you know David my amelita used to be with the Crayolas or still is they call themselves the spectabecta beetles very very talented fans here in town and he talked about one of his thermal experiences when he was 9 or 10 he says I guess I've never seen how the amas were made but I've walked into the kitchen and there was my yes eyes and my grandma's up to their wrists in grass they were smiling and their hands were glistening of grease and there was a head it looked gruesome enough to traumatize me I still eat them but that image will be etched in my memory forever young member Joe Vannell a senator Joe Vannell was young in 1991 and he was the first Mexican American senator in Texas and he just said that definitely definitely the macho tamales when in the tamales ceremony line you run out of meat then you add jricotas and then when you run out of jricotas beans you add pasas for raisins then you have tamales with pasas until you run out of raisins then you add sugar to the masalas you make them sweet tamales you add all the ingredients except for the masalas and you end up wrapping up the masalas all by itself so the man made a jazz masalas is called a macho yeah right there you have it Terry Binance artist, teacher has illustrated numerous books she's just an amazing human being and she says I'm from a family of tamales makers I have several good memories but the funniest one is when I tried picking tamales on my own my mother gave me the recipe for preparing the dough and the carame and the meat came out perfectly and the masa I thought was very good I steamed my tamales and they smelled delicious but when I tried one it was as hard as a rock I hadn't followed the part of my love-ish recipe that said I had the whole box of manteca because I thought we would be healthier I had to throw my tamales into a reel and suddenly I found my apartment and then even the fish couldn't eat and really if you use real lard now I'm talking with the one in the box real lard from one of the Kitakana that is the best and healthiest but they got the name oh no never anyway there used to be a coffee house called Timo's coffee house and he says when I was 17 a man made me a friend of mine invited me to her house for tamales I thought I knew what we were going to be but when the plates were served there was only one tamale on mine and it was huge you had to cut through the thick banana leaves to find that the mine made it shrimp, rice plantain, chicken grandmas, veggies and who knows what else but then they said fad yeah you know, Franco Maldini the artist back and forth between Florence Italy and San Antonio he said one of the nicest compliments I ever got in New York City asked by a fancy potential art client where I like to keep Mexican food in New York City I hesitated knowing how many New Yorkers resented the Puebla sensation of New York City where all these people were Puebla were moving in to New York in fact those who don't know the Puebla immigration to New York has become so significant New York now called it Puebla York but we call it Puebla sensation then I had to fess up half expecting her to roll her eyes in dismay I said I love to buy the tamales from the street vendor ladies from Puebla she then gently responded that she felt with its growing Mexican population New York can become a conduit and more and then I had a good friend Rebecca Amazan who is actually Vicky Carr's sister-in-law because by the way when you make the money you have to achieve them you have to toss them so do you know that Rebecca was her brother her brother is married to Vicky Carr and her brother is Rebecca's brother and she divided him as a visual fabulous visual artist so I couldn't see that she's not doing too well but anyway she said the rules for my mama you cannot embalada as hojas until you master washing and draining so that said you have to learn how to wash them and the job of the kids will do I'll be the one to decide when and if you're worthy to graduate to embalada embalada means to put the masa hojas I will fill them I will fill them, roll them and only I will stack them in the bucket my other sister Esperanza was her taster as well as my brother Pepo shortly before she died in 1983 Esperanza and I took over as Pamaleras Mama tasted all of the fillings Cajunet, chicken, beans beans and cheese and jalapenos aren't you getting hungry when the first tamalas were done we would give her the tamalas to taste and she said tears in her eyes ya no me necesita ustedes ya son las tamaleras so she was so sad that they didn't need her anymore because they hadn't done a good job she died before the next tamalada and Esperanza took over I continued to come to San Antonio you're a christmas to help her we laugh a lot now we think of Mama as we tackle 60 pounds of masa for Christmas Eve I cannot schedule going back to Maryland to be with our daughters for the holidays until my sister gives me the new tamalada non-stop 3 day marathon a 12 hour days some time ago I bought restaurant papers I hand painted them with flowers and hand letter the tamalera for my two sisters and myself Jen her husband early pointed the phrase no healthy, no eating tamales and now the official taster and on the simple bad issue we want to close with a very short story from a little quote from a woman that used to be the executive director of the cultural arts center because we live in a modern world we're not everybody understands Spanish anymore and some want to kind of translate so this word about vaga has a very interesting mistranslation she says on one of my family's annual holiday tamaladas as my sisters and I were first learning this tradition we asked my dad what he was doing as he was in vaga Rambo the masa on the corn plasters he answered the cure I'm embarrassing the tamalas to this day every holiday we make the tamalas feel as self conscious and then as easy as we can I personally like the tamalas and they're lightly embarrassed more than the heavily embarrassed so that's our book and Gavin and I still do tamaladas but now we're the tasters we're the tasters we're the supervisors so we still propose our lipstick and their adepts and to be ready but I'm going to be making my tamalas in fact when I go home tonight I just got into Dallas I'll go home tonight the meat's cooked so I'm going to chop it up put it in the refrigerator cook it tomorrow I'll do videotaping and so forth to get ready for my tamalada that will be very small just enough to make tamalas for my family when they all play in so I hope you enjoy making tamalas and you know what and you know what I'm going to make them you know who wants a good idea this is great the other person said go buy a bunch of them but before you invite anybody over take them as a photo get one of your good pops stick them in there and let the water boil a little bit you know what put the water in put some cominos in and some garlic and let it boil so the smell goes to the whole house then put the tamales in there and then get a little sweat on your face and be ready to serve them and act like which is fast forwarded to end of the day any questions or comments? comments or stories to share yeah it's uh I uh was hoping to go to the town a lot over here but I guess because you know first of all I'm not paying attention this time of the year because I'm not paying attention and things happen and I go wow what's he like to do that so fortunately I walk into the water and I'm looking for something else and I see the little there you go well I don't know what that's gonna be but I'm going with that so I tell him okay I'm not going home I'm going with this and oh it was a surprise but a fantastic thing fantastic and we got our book in the back so if you need recipes the recipes people love to give up for ideas and their cousins are not in love so it's not just a recipe but it's got the fun and the flavor and the jokes and the real anecdotes that have happened like when Gerald Ford came to San Francisco he was like I can't know and you really say I went to something with my grandmother who was here and I went to something when I was maybe eight or nine or so and they had tamales as part of whatever it was and so I think did you want to go down for those because I don't even know and at eight I was like can I have a little nickel to get a little jambalic she had a whole bag of nickels I don't know there's a story there's a story about politics and there was a lady in San Antonio that used to she would fix the elections you would tell her what the election was and put her up against and how high the post was and she'd tell you how many dozens of tamales you needed to win and then everybody was invited over to come eat tamales for the candidate and ended up winning and in fact when Henry D. Botelus first ran for office Henry D. Botelus Convention was named after a real old person ten years he was our representative and he ran against a guy called Charlie Good and Good would do it all politicians used to do in San Antonio then go around there the Mexicans in the neighborhood bring him over, give him a beer in the alas have him vote, then put him back on the bus take him back and drop him in the neighborhood forget about him until the next time they weren't for election and they would service the community at all so Henry D. Botelus right in the place it was drink Good's beer and eat good's tamales and go to the tolls of four ones out and that was for real anybody got a good story or a memory? nobody's made, how many of you made tamales? alright what's your favorite let me know well I wanted to my mom always made the tamales in my early desk so my siblings never really participated so about three years ago I suggested we should continue the tradition my mother's 95 years old she could continue so about three years ago we started one of the holidays and we got about a month it's a lot of work to get it all but we also experimented with different made tamales those were delicious I didn't know you could do that but we were having fun drinking tamales in bed my sisters were drinking wine and there were some tamales in the refrigerator it was made by Brandon they were really good I was with a cactus and you just sauteed it with tomato and put it in the middle and I just loved it I made sweet ones also and every year I invented the new one so last year I invented one with and you make sweet ones sweet ones are very small so I did it with the masa but you mix everything together lots of it comes from Texas so I made my tree and then chocolate was also from the Americas and then tequila mix it all up so what's your favorite you have a favorite we have a question if I may the cooking process because I've seen pots being used so what's the ideal process if you're going to make how many pounds of masa did you make if you're going to make 15 pounds of masa investment in a tamale pot from each other they cost about 30 bucks but they're really neat because it tells exactly how much water to put on there and it's got a little span 15 pounds of masa and they love that big container and they don't fall into the water now when I read that part about the mother saying I'm the one that puts them in the pot one of the old lifestyle is but it's true I think is that one person should put stacked tamales and I'm sure your mother tells you that not everybody should be putting tamales in there it takes one person I cannot put them in the pot nicely I just don't know how to stack them so somebody that is very meticulous to put them in there and let that person put all the tamales in the pot and then you boil them for about an hour that big pot and steam them much nicer than a roaster and now we just reserve that pot for tomorrow and we've heard all kinds of interesting commentary from a manager one woman said she would all put a penny because when the water was boiling you could strip it with a penny and then we don't hear anything it's like uh oh we're out of water because penny didn't have anything to throw away so that's a very handy idea but if you use this pot you never run out of water the new pot it's really high whereas if you're doing it the old fashioned way my mother would say take the mano from the mocha and then you took the vessel from the mortar and pestle and you put it in the center of the pot that you were cooking in and then all the tamales went on like this but you always have to worry about raising them the golden part goes down so every time you make a tamale your heart is out again this is the way I make it I don't put masa I don't put masa oh that's a rectangle so I put it like in a a rectangle right here leave a space at the bottom a space on the top and a space on the sides and then I get the oha like this and then you throw it over and then you hope you have an open front here and that's the way you put it that's the way you put it down and when you open it it's magical because it's never stuck to the open and then it goes up and we have to mention one of the neat things that you can think about unless you're really working with an item a lot really studies the shock of the corn you know you pull out and build the trash can but if you feel a shock of the corn definitely the kind you use but the corn is the right one one side is smoother the other side has more distant ridges the ridge part goes out the spoon part goes in and now oha'sas are nice so that when you buy them they just naturally curl so put the curl part in your hand and you can use a knife or a spoon just right there and I'm a corn addict I love the mothers the real corn flavor for instance the white what they call the green corn in Arizona why they call it green corn? because they make it for what they call the white corn which is not normal corn not what you think of as white corn but anyway we have to wait until the white corn gets here and when the white corn would come they would mix real corn in terms of curls in the masa that corn flavor and they would put variations on it but the white corn does not have any the green corn the mothers do not carry they have cheese white cheese but they're very mild they're not the very very mild so this was typical this was if you go to Arizona and you ask for green corn the mothers you're probably going to get white cheese a little in the chili in there and sometimes they go right in the green cheese would you guys in a different way? it's a fresh corn flavor and I have my absolute favorite the mothers I'm torn between the green corn mother between a family recipe that the two of us used to make years and years ago we called it chaos theory the mothers when everything is going on and the women are taking care of the babies and the baby is sick and this one is doing this and the men are out in the fields and they're having to bring the milk in from the cows everything is chaos we want to have to do two of them like this we have no way we have time to make fun of us and so they threw in the meat they threw in the kernels they made a big queso of masa and corn and corn kernels and meat and they got green shucks because they could go to the certified driver because they had to save it they just picked the corn off the stock so they took the green shucks and they put this mixture through it or fast they put it in a pot steamed it something which they invented in 1940 but it was an afternoon and they said what are your favorite films love or and how would you use this big tomato do you like it yeah my favorite and yours I would say that I could tell two years ago I had never made tomatoes so I fell under the uncivilized classification that you talked about a couple of well again a couple of years ago a group of us got together I think you all know we all got together at her house and there was still that I know how to do all this stuff going in and then just sprinkle and I really think this thing doesn't stay on you know so I struggled for a few minutes they kind of said you know maybe you should try separating the I'll go I'll go so I'm over here doing it all because they needed a lot of trying to version of this process but you know what there's just so many of us I need something else they assigned me the job of putting them in the and I did pretty good I did them exactly like you were saying and I was the only one putting them nice indeed very well organized by the time the whole thing was over those tomatoes were very good but here I am a novice candlelight and all these other ladies have been making them for years and they just assume that everybody knows that well what I really like is every time I go to these places people say I love making tomatoes from it and we've been making them every year so that's really heartwarming to know you know that you want to go back and honor your mother because you're not going to be thrilled that you're making them and then that you're going to get together with them and it really is a lot of process she's been laughing trying you know storytelling and then you're making some food and it's really fun and with that to give don't forget when you do the pot to always get a cicado or a dishcloth and you wet the dishcloth and you put it on top now my aunt always said it has to be your best dishcloth the one that's really embroidered is that really ours? you really have to embroider it so far that you wet it and you put it on top and that keeps the steam in there so make sure that you do that at my house we also crown a queen or a king we have a crown that was made and you're crowned in all the things you put on the crown made out of all hats that a friend's man made for me and I've had it for about 30 years and my daughter now is 54 years old and when she was 10 she did not like to eat them others oh there's Peter, there's Peter there's also Peter and I was a great father great father and she made she made an angel out of the corn husk when she was 10 so it was 44 years ago that spill is on our tree our Christmas tree kind of falling apart but it's a signature piece so you can make anything out of the whole husk should I answer it? how about y'all over there? all we did was with osciles in it and a fork you don't ever make a fork and fossils that's good if you've been raisins and you've been with a fork yeah that's good how about you? I love the choreo how about oh yeah those bones those you have yeah those are good I've never liked beans but now I'm starting to like beat the modest with the jalapeño and the queso blanco I know it's not the modest or the tight I don't know why is that? the sweet ones you tie up both ends you make them small but sometimes sometimes you make them odd it's just special it's so pretty and this is the comment I get back from a lot of people who say it's tight and it's tight but there's one more manuelita who spoke the other day manuelita was an immigrant to San Antonio at the age of 18 she worked hard for her life but she talked about growing up in Christmas and for the other little friends who make them odd make one for love regular but she would make that one demand soon the strips of the corn shell that come out of the tall part she would take it she would tie it and sweet and the child would eat it it would taste better the only person who nurtures and sustains something that was eight of one person a lot of times you're going through a big pile and there's a bunch of demand but also the practical reason because you want to identify the purple ones usually look red but the chicken ones look white and the bean ones look white so you want to tie a row tie a bow around the bean ones are the chicken and there's a third to keep the identified because you might put them all in the same pond so you might tie a different way but there's a third reason that is that they come from a culture and so you're not just like oh I want those and I want those but you use it everything so at the end when Yolk and I saw how she took it and there's just strips you might have to use like three little strips to get what my junkie called they walk out so you lay those three strips out you fold them out so that's a way of making sure that it is a pond but pick your way these are the bean ones and when I tie the bean ones to the top I'm going to tie the chicken ones to the middle for the ones I love and the pork ones you don't tie the other question is do they come always and there's just a bunch of regional variations you probably figure this out in Mexico and in fact certain parts of the rest of Lebanon have their own style so you can give banana leaves tropical areas and you're going to get them wrapped in other kinds of leaves but there's styles and there's spices and there's flavors that go for it and if you go back historically we were the Spanish priests that arrived in New World and some time come on he was down in Mexico he found a village where they served a falalon this one and this one and you put one and the whole town comes and eats they put entire chickens in the middle and so these are regional variations and it's not like there's a right way along to make them in some areas we have this great big talales here in North Mexico and San Antonio we kind of tend towards the little ones so we get to say oh I have four talales for you it's a big trouble if you're in certain parts of Arizona or in Mexico and you say you want four talales you're going to get four things this big you're going to get all this big so we have pond holders here what are those for? oh so they're free so we have we have all of them if you want we're also selling our books in the back but let's all grab the pond holders any other comments or questions any other recipes? I would just say thank you for doing this thank you I got your book and I saw you a couple of weeks ago and I started reading and it's so funny some of the years are so funny it's amazing how you can capture all of these details within a free free incredible but you have to understand that no one had already written up the recipes from previous and she also had the and so we just put it together and filled in a YouTube they did a filming last year from the Texas Beef Council you'll see me at my house when you go up there okay let's go sign the key


Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member, FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm producer-director Scott Knudson. In this episode, we travel to the White Earth Nation and the Leech Lake Nation to learn about, process and harvest minimum. Well, earlier this winter, my friend and cousin Tim Holm passed away, and many people knew Tim Holm as the guy who sold smoked whitefish beside the road on Highway 2. And people would come from a long way away, and they wanted to know his phone number and always follow up, and my own family has been like that. And when he passed away, we lost that valuable product being produced in our community and that ability to earn some income in our community. And Tim also was doing wild rice. So he did the smoked fish, I would say, for at least two decades, 20 years, and wild rice, I would say, was close to 30 years. And so both of those are important cultural and even financial or income-wise resources for the community and for other people to earn money. We got the smoke operation here in Ball Club, Minnesota. What we do, first of all, is, well, my name is Bill. Nice to meet you. We come over here, maple wood. And we like to use maple or oak. That's the best for smoking. We take the bark off, then we split it in parts like this. Sometimes we split it more to have it chips to start the fire easier. And then we come over here, and we usually use birch bark, and we put it down in there.  We usually let that burn for a good about 15 to 20 minutes to get all the clear set off. And then we come in here and we scrape it. And this is where we put the smoked white fish. And this is the shack that where I clean the fish and prepare the fish. So then we come in here after the fire has been started for 20 minutes. Then I go to one of these grates and I put one of these grates on top of the smoker. So then that cures the grate. And so then after that, I let that sit there for about 10 minutes on the hot fire. So then I come to my brine bucket. And this is where I flay the fish. And then we come over here after done flaying and we're getting them ready.  And then we move them from the sink to the brine. What's your brine made out of? There's a few things that I can't tell you, and there's a few things that I can't tell you. One of the things is pickling salt. And then sugar. That's about what I can tell you. So you have some secret spices in there too? Yeah, we have some secret stuff in there. And it is Tim's recipe. So we'll take another one like this. This is where I put my fish and my brine. And we'll have another blue bin. And we'll put an ice cube on top of it inside the other bin. And then we'll put this on there. And then we'll put our fish in there, our brine in there. We'll soak it for about 12 to 16 hours. And then the next day I will start the fire process. What do they look like? Now this is a white fish and we get them from Red Lake Fishery. So we try to keep it all involved with the nations. Because you can smoke any kind of fish that you really want to.  A lot of people like to can northern. A lot of people like to fry up walleye or make walleye nuggets or stuff like that. It just matters how you like it. And smoked white fish is a very good fish for your body. And the oils and stuff in the white fish is very good for your skin and your hair. And all around good for your soul and stuff too. So what you got there? After we're all done, set and done, brining and cooking it and taking it off the smoker. We come back over here and make sure the table is clean. And then I grab my trays and strand wrap. I put them on the scale and wrap it up. That is the white fish after it's been done and cooked. For us, many of the foods are medicine. So that's what helps us live in a more healthy way. And whether it's fresh fish, fresh game, fresh berries, those things truly are medicines. They're finding out now with these antioxidants, your raspberries and things like that. Those are natural to us. I eat a lot of dried cranberries myself and that's what grows here naturally is the cranberry. The white fish itself is one of like three or four fish in the salmonoid family that has the right kind of fish oil in it. And it's a freshwater fish. It's right here. So the medicines for the people are here. I don't know if he was the poor or what. Yes. I think both those guys are four foot tall together. I don't think they could see over the rice either. Yeah. It's not a funny one, Rob said he had to rescue them. You've just taken the extra heads out. Yeah, that's how he does all the cleaning part of it. Yeah. Yeah, if you look hard and you'll see more heads along the side where they could pull that out of the boat and stuff like that. Oh, my name is Judith Van Wilson. I'm from Bokell, Minnesota, which they call the River Minnesota now. And I was out rice and manoman today, which was called wild rice manoman. It's an Ojibwe language and me glitches for thank you. Thank you, Great Spirit, for this rice that you put out into our waters for all of us. And this is my son I'm riceing with and he's been out for a few years now. But we all got to learn how to rice and I had my brother learn me how to rice. Since I was nine years old, his name was James Wilson, and I've been at it ever since. Otherwise, I used to babysit a lot for all the children for everybody to go out rice. And when they wanted to go out and fulfill their boats and get their needs and manoman and I stayed home and watched the kids and fed them. Super. When you pick this rice, are you picking it for yourself or your own consumption? Today I'm going to sell it, then after we go picking for our own. How do you guys finish your rice? We used to get Tim Homes to finish our rice all the time. I've got his plant now. Oh, do you? Yeah. That's why I'm trying to work with boys and girls to get some young people taking it over. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I've been talking with people in the community because that's right. Oh, I like it. I like it. I feel great. Menongiji God today is a nice day. I like it out there. And every time rice and season comes up, I enjoy it every year. We just stay busy and do our work and Zamy doing a little bit talk. That means talking Ojibwe, Zamy doing. And then we had to find our way back to land and we didn't get started out until a little bit late this morning. But we made it out here. But this is where he wanted to come today. So this is the first time I rice this year at this lake here, Stemple, White Oak, what we call White Oak. Wow. Right for Donut. Well, the color doesn't always mean anything. Yeah, I feel it's a tradition for me that I once started out and I've always wanted to do it for many years because that's one of the things I did. It's something I like to do every year and got good at it and took me all those many years to get good at it and go out there and whoever wants to go out there and rice, find a partner and look for somebody. Yeah, we got Tim Holmes' smoked fish. My cousin's been doing his smoked fish by the roadway again now, too. Oh, really? All seems like he's been getting business there. He has. Yeah. Same recipe. People missed that, please. Oh, man. Tim did such a great job on that. I know I was surprised about Tim passing on. Yeah, he caught us all up there. My first day or first start for this year, we only got about 89 pounds, but we still didn't stay out there for all the six hours that you can stay out there. My significant others went out and did that and they went to S Lake this year and got some rice. So they got it finished there, but I'm not for sure. He didn't say how many pounds, but he left me two pounds of it and it's nice big rice from S Lake there. We make sure that we save up enough for the whole winter season, enough to last, and then just have doings for when we bring our dishes out to make for food and if somebody passes on or something, that's what we use our rice for. We bring that manoman out there at a feast and share with the people for everybody. But I'm glad that somebody was around to interview about wild rice and going on to the lakes and stuff and seeing how this is done. That was the rice and I think I was 19, but it took me all that while, six years or so till I got to go to that pole and I didn't know how to use the duck bill to put on the rice or anything but I just had to use to turn with my might and stuff until I got to know how to turn the canoe around and everything. Right, almost everyone seems to start like a polar. It seems like so you can see what's going on or whatever. Six years, huh? I've pulled for a long, long time.  I didn't do a lot of rice since I was 19. You grab them by the beard, that's because of the carpet that you're seeing. This is what it looks like underneath that carpet.  And so those tails help these kernels when they fly and then when they hit the water, just like you're seeing in the boat, it helps them land straight down in and they dig right into the sand and the soil so they can get buried. They say that the kernel of rice can lay dormant on the bottom of the lake for up to 17 years and still be rejuvenated and grow again. And part of that ability of wild rice is part of what they're trying to do with the genome. They're trying to figure out how to extract the characteristic that allows rice to lay on the bottom of a lake for so long and then germinate and they want to shoot that into like green tomatoes so that they can pick tomatoes green and then store them in large warehouses and then like do the trick to start ripening them and bring them out just in time to start ripening. But they don't want to talk to us about wild rice. They don't want to see if it's okay. They don't want to see if we should have any right to any of the patent or any of the commodity even though it's you know our kind of a real religious kind of a centerpiece. My name is Nathan Gochi. I was picking out rice. I was a knocker today. My uncle Mike was on the polar. We've been doing it for about three years now.  Being a family member. Being a younger generation. But he teaches me ways to do it. Uncle teaches younger kids how to do it now. It affects the culture a lot of people going out picking out rice and keeping it going. And showing the young kids how to do it and stuff. Get out and do it. Hard labor. Not sitting at home and sitting on the coach. Playing video games. Going out and picking up on wild rice. You feel it in your body after working all day pulling and knocking. I said in your fingers playing the video game. Teach your young kids how to harvest wild rice when they're young. Take them a long ways in life. It's like meditation. It gets mined off everything else. It's good meditation to get out on the lake and do what you like doing best on your culture. Picking out rice. Going out on the lake. Knowing what you did after the day is done. I feel relieved after coming out of the lake. Going before you're stressed out after you come out of the lake you're relieved of everything. How much rice do you try to save for over the year until next season for you to eat and stuff with your family? 80 pounds finished. That gets you by? Yep, gets you by until next year. Ceremonies and family and gifts and everything? Well, 80 pounds gets you through the winter and everything. And that's probably typical for almost everybody we try to get 80 or 100 pounds. 80 pounds to 100 pounds. And so for me, I love the wild rice that comes out of here and I love the fish that comes out of here. But I'm not of the age to do that. You know, I can't just start smoking fish and I can't try to make a living off of that or off of wild rice per se. But everybody else who's young here and needs something else to earn from should be able to. How much rice do you think you got today? A couple hundred maybe? Hopefully. I'm going to go get my scale. Normally we have the scale set up where that little stick is. That's just, normally I have my little trailer and normally I've got a bunch of things going on. I told Tim on several occasions that as me being a treaty rights attorney that he was kind of one of my heroes because he was living treaty rights. The state nor the federal government could tell him what to do with the making of wild rice, the sale of wild rice, the trade of wild rice or of the white fish because it's not a game fish and it was prepared. And so while there were people who attempted to tax and people who attempted to say, hey you're on the road, hey your signs are in the wrong place, ultimately you can't tell us those things on the reservation. And so Tim was an obvious standard for people to go out and make a living. The story of how we have had our things taken or pushed away or made us to try to be different through assimilation and things like that. Well then you have World War I and things are, you know, the way they are. We're not even citizens until 1924. We're still living on reservations. You know, you have the depression that comes in in the 20s and then from what I can see they used a lot of our resources to help out with the CCC and WPA and things like that with these projects. And then our money was gone around 1939, right at the beginning of World War II and that's when they had a lot of your rationing. And so when I asked my dad a long time ago I said well what happened to the treaty rights? He says well I don't know. He says all I know is it came along and they told us we couldn't do it anymore. We couldn't hunt and fish like that anymore. He says I thought we could always hunt and fish all over northern Minnesota. Well that is what our treaty rights are. But in the 1940s, around 1941 the United States government started squeezing all of the people for rationing and so they were squeezing on the Indians' rights also and they said you're going to have to start coming under state regulation. Well there was nothing that said that we could do it but because we were under the control of the federal government and they had the right to sign our name essentially, our identity, we became pushed under and then you have Public Law 280 in 1953 where they got some civil jurisdiction over us. You have the McCarthy era and so forth. You know you look at World War II I know people who were in an all Indian army battalion or infantry group. You know they had all the groups separated. The Japanese were separated. The Germans were separated. The Germans had to fight in Asia. The Japanese had to fight in Europe. So they didn't trust anybody but they said okay you can come in and fight and wear our uniform but you know we're going to keep you separate and we're going to keep a real close eye on you. And so really it probably wasn't until the 60s where we started having a change in the federal policy and groups like AIM came out and started standing up for our rights. We've just been through it a long time ago and we've kind of given up after 150 years of this oppression and occupation. So it's really kind of a weird thing and oddly because of my work Justice also has grants for this kind of a program to help us revitalize our old customs and traditions because it gives us something to do and make some money. Right. Uh oh this one's wet. 68 this is more on target of sorts where we are. Because I think it is important to have an economic engine. When you're in just idle it has to start and run which is our problem with the Thresher coincidentally. Our economic engine. How symbolic. Well this is a 170 inline six cylinder Ford motor from a 1970 or so Ford Maverick and unfortunately it needs a new carburetor or carburetor repair and so this is where it would be it wasn't running right and this is what powers the Thresher. The Thresher is what separates the hulls from the kernels of wild rice like the Indians would do with the dancing or jigging in the kettle or in the ground with a lined leather skin with new moccasins so that the leather against each other and all would rub off the chaff then you'd have to winnow it or fan it away. Put your handles when you get in there so don't stomp on it little bitty pieces the goal is you put your foot down put your foot down and bring your heel into it so you kind of twist but make sure your whole foot is doing it not just the back, there you go. So when you're doing it you want to be happy, you want to think good things it's always when we're doing stuff like this, we're always wanting to be thinking about our families thinking about good things so when you start getting crabby and tired, let me know how something else is good things, good thoughts going on. And so I'm working with Boys and Girls Club to create what I call the Ball Club Living Cultural Resource Center so that there's a place where you can have the tools that you need seasonally I heard about an expert So what this does is with these paddles can you see the paddles, okay? This knocks those hulls off you know when you're eating the rice and getting the hull off, that's what this does and so what it looks like when it first comes out of here is a lot like this this is after it's all been turned for about 10 minutes in here, okay?  Ultimately, if I'm able to I would like to create more like a food locker where people could pick berries and that fish, they could get deer they could get duck, whatever it is because we have, you know, slightly different laws and so forth so that you could come here trade in raspberries and maybe take out some duck meat or something like that you know, amongst ourselves Okay, need a couple of people to help out here See that gray tray over there? Let's put some wild rice in there I don't need no more than half of them to have some We'll see if it gets hot One more, one more Let's see if it's starting to get hot over here We'll put it up here You can smell it a little bit, see it's starting to see that smoke So it's hot on the backside It's just not as hot down here But then you look at the ability to have that passed on You know the other night, Blaine came over with his granddaughter and two other kids and they were five and six in terms of preparing food and they could hear the noise they could see the machinery they understood what it was as far as wild rice and then they were able to to hold it and feel the heat from the fire and they knew that that colonel was food and that one little boy he was so excited he wanted to take that colonel to his mom you know, because he had discovered all this Join us again on Common Ground If you have an idea for Common Ground in North Central Minnesota email us at legacy at lptv.org or call<PHONE_NUMBER> To watch Common Ground online visit lptv.org and click local shows episodes or segments of Common Ground call<PHONE_NUMBER> Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community a partnership for generations member FDIC Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008 If you enjoy watching Common Ground online please consider making a tax deductible donation at lptv.org


This pattern looks like it was the work of a clever artist. But it wasn't made by an artist. It wasn't even made by a person. This pattern is the work of a squid. Here's a long finned inshore squid caught off the shores of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. When I approach him, he turns red, signaling his aggression. His brain has total control over what his skin is doing. Inside the squid's skin are small pouches of pigment called chromatophores. Each chromatophore is pulled open by tiny muscles. So in order to turn red, neurons from the squid's brain send signals to these muscles, which pull open all of his chromatophores at the same time. Here we've cut the nerves that would normally go to the small area on the squid's side. Right after we do this, the chromatophores go quiet, which you'd expect since we've basically disconnected the skin from the brain. But they don't stay quiet. A few days later, this happens. This squid has control over his skin. This one doesn't. But somehow, these chromatophores are opening and closing anyway. Let's take a closer look under the microscope. The chromatophores open and close in beautiful waves of color. These patterns can seem pretty complicated. Some people even think octopuses use patterns like these to mesmerize their prey. But these intricate displays emerge on the squid's skin even after it's been disconnected from the brain. So what's going on? First, I wanted to measure how the chromatophores grow and shrink. So I wrote a program that measures the size of each chromatophore over time. Let's add some color to get a clearer picture of what's happening. In this program, I've colored the open chromatophores red and the closed ones blue. Look at what this chromatophore's neighbors do right before it opens. Right before it opens, its neighbors open. Let's see that again. What rule could govern this behavior? You might say a chromatophore opens after its neighbors open, but is it really that simple? I'm going to write a program to simulate the squid's skin using just that one rule. Here it is. The small dots represent closed chromatophores, and the larger dots represent open chromatophores. Let's run the program. This doesn't look right. In the real squid's skin, the chromatophores open and close over and over again. But in this simulation, they just open once and stay open. What if we add another rule? Let's look at the squid again. What about this? After a chromatophore opens, it needs to wait a bit before it can open again. This need for pause is pretty common in many cells, including neurons. It's called a refractory period. Here's take two of the simulation. First of all, the chromatophore opens after its neighbors open, and I've added an extra rule, which is that right after the chromatophore opens, it needs to take a break. I'm starting with a line of open chromatophores and a line of chromatophores that are refractory underneath, so they need to take a break before they can open. Let's run it and see what happens. This looks even more like the real squid's skin. Here's another simulation where I included three different colors of chromatophores. I've made the gray ones expand randomly, and the yellow and red ones respond to their neighbors with different sensitivities. As you can see, the simulated patterns look very complex, even though they are governed by such simple rules. When we cut the nerves to a patch of the squid's skin, the chromatophores acted like they had a mind of their own, but they were really just following two simple rules. Listen to their neighbors and take a break after they open. From these simple rules, mesmerizing patterns emerge. Even in our complex biological world, some of the most beautiful things can be explained by the simplest concepts.


Live from the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference 2016. Brought to you by Nutanix. Now here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. We're back, this is theCUBE. So SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE goes out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. We've been here for two days, wall-to-wall coverage of Nutanix.NEXT. We did the inaugural .NEXT. Stu and I, Stu Miniman, my co-host. Last year at the Fontainebleau in Miami, great venue. We're here now at the Wynn, another great venue, nice hotel, small, intimate. The size of the conference nearly tripled from last year. If they do that again, they'll be up over 7,000. They will not be at the Wynn next year, I would predict. Yeah, Dave, last night at the party that they had, I mean, it's 100 degrees outside, but the event guys were like, yeah, Dublin would be great, but you know Howard Ting, so Howard's probably going to try to triple it again. But yeah, it's doubling at this size, would still be impressive. Just like the growth of Nutanix is still going on at a good clip. So seven years ago, Stu, I was in an office conference room in Hopkinson with Chad, and he laid out this awesome vision of where infrastructure was going. And fundamental to the premise that he put forth was infrastructure must become invisible. And that's the messaging that Nutanix is taking on. So two questions, is infrastructure invisible today? Let me start there. Yeah, not yet. It's getting better. Don't need to touch as much. You talked to the Nutanix customers. It's simpler, I can drop it in. It was good to hear a number of the end users that we talked to this week say that, I can give my kid an iPad and they could really like manage this, but that still means somebody's managing it. It's not, there's certain environments out there that just say, oh, well, I do the application and I don't worry about it all. If I deploy public cloud, I don't touch anything. If it's on-prem, there's still something I need to do with it. It was funny, what was the term? They used humanizing IT, almost runs counter a little bit to what we hear about with pets versus cattle. But yes, the simplicity is core to what Nutanix is doing. They're doing a good job there. Hyperconvergence in general, remove some of the major pain points that we've heard from years, Dave.  It's over 30% of the total cost of ownership of storage because you spend so much time setting it up, so much time migrating off of it. And when I have a pool of resources that's a software distributed network, like what Nutanix does, it solves some major pain points. But I don't think we're there yet, but that's okay that the messaging's a little bit ahead of where we are today. So not invisible yet, but less visible, right? And then the second part of my question is, does Nutanix have a lead? And how big is that lead? Yeah, so first of all, as an analyst, we say from the number standpoint, absolutely. We will have our updated market revenue and forecast coming soon. If you read the Nutanix S1, last year they did over $300 million worth of revenue, and that's actually not counting most of the deferred revenue that they had from Dell. My number ahead, it's in the 330, the 340 million price for a dollar range. Behind them, there's nobody over 250. As a matter of fact, even if you add the hardware drag, I'm not sure that anybody is trying to remember the numbers, maybe 200, but they do have a significant lead. And despite EMC saying they're gonna take them down this year, David Golden from EMC actually said, oh, it's 2017 when we look to take the lead. So the big guys have huge marketing and sales initiatives to try to push in there. I think Nutanix has definitely thought leadership in this space, they have revenue lead in this space, and they do have differentiation that I think can keep them going and ahead, they expect an IPO sometime soon and helping to propel them. And obviously this show, you've got 2,500 people that are excited about what they're doing, excited about some of the barriers that Nutanix is helping to knock down. Well, and you see, that's why software is a capital efficient business and you figure, okay, you can start software companies for not a lot of money and you can, but you can't thrive, you can't become a dominant software company, which I consider Nutanix a software company, but you can't become a dominant software company without spending gobs of money to thwart the efforts of the big guys to freeze the market. And you're seeing that certainly with EMC and VMware, Oracle to a certain extent, certainly HPE in a big way, really basically trying to freeze the market on Nutanix saying, we have all that too, we're doing hyperconverged, they're talking hyperconverged, hyperconverged, hyperconverged. Nutanix challenge in my opinion is to, and they're doing this is they're pivoting, I'm using the word pivot, it's really not a pivot, they're evolving their TAM into what they call enterprise hybrid cloud, that's what the Acropolis hypervisor is all about, extending beyond VMware into other hypervisors. And in doing so, they're going to make a lot of waves, right, so a lot of arrows are going to be pointed at those guys, but the point I'm making is that the big guys are going to say, okay, we're doing what they're doing, it's really important for Nutanix to demonstrate the business impact of going beyond hyperconverged infrastructure. They're really at hyperconverged infrastructure today, their messaging is going beyond, everybody else's messaging is at hyperconverged infrastructure and they don't have as many proof points, but it's going to happen, it's coming, these big guys eventually will get there, right, look at Microsoft, I mean everybody's very similar with the big guys, right, the one dot oh, man that's so great, the two dot oh is okay, and then the three dot oh is pretty good.  Nutanix is almost going beyond it and it's just we're going to build a platform, we're going to make it simpler, we're going to use that, so I think they've already moved beyond, Dave, kind of hyperconvergence, you know, we've heard discontent from some of the old VMware partners as to, you know, how they're playing in those environments, but there are, you know, progress beyond, you know, where VMware has a hold and for me, one of the really interesting things they'll be to look at is Nutanix and that VMware relationship, of course, they'll be at VMworld, the Microsoft relationship they announced here, how much does HyperV and Azure play into what they're doing, you know, where does AWS fit into it and how much does the software portfolio of Nutanix grow, you know, they are still a relatively young company, you know, they're in the, you know, second inning, we heard one of their executives said, you know, from the total growth of the company, they've got tons of headroom for TAM, tons of headroom for growth and you talk, it's not a pivot, Mark Leslie said, it's these, you know, kind of arching transformations to build up, so they've got a journey that they've baked out to go to be from hyperconverged to kind of cloud-like to the AWS your way and they're starting to deliver and give some good visibility into where they're going. So we're talking about a company that is approaching a billion dollars, right, in billings. Yeah, the Dell loan said that they've got a billion dollar of, you know, pipeline, you know, with Nutanix, Lenovo's come on and, you know, we'll be adding to that plus the Nutanix sales force themselves, so, you know, yeah, they're not that far off from getting to that run rate and...  He went after Nutanix very hard as an icebreaker for VSAN and VxRail and, you know, all those V-hyperconverged products, right, and so VMware kind of laid down the gun. Now it's been much quieter since, you know, Chuck has a pretty prolific, you know, blog platform that he utilized, but I think it underscored sort of where VMware and EMC were coming from. Really interesting now with the Dell acquisition, you know, we heard today that Dell and Nutanix have extended their relationship. If they can figure out, you know, the right compensation models for the channel, you know, it could be really nice for Nutanix. Yeah, a great point there. It's funny, I wish I could actually stop in Chicago on the way home tomorrow because Dheeraj Fandy and Chad Sackage are gonna be on a stage together at the Think Ahead event. So we'll be head to head and, but both of them are gonna have, you know, close ties to Dell. I do wanna highlight, Dave, you know, we talked a lot about Dell, but Dell is still, it's a really small piece of what Nutanix is doing. It's a strategically important partner for them, but, you know, there's still just the general channel that they're doing, they're expanding. There were rumors coming into this as to, you know, hey, what about Cisco and maybe even HPE servers being supported and, you know, it would not surprise us to see Nutanix supported on, you know, most compute platforms in the future. Because as you said, fundamentally in their core, there are software companies, so, you know, there's integration and testing work that's very important, but they're above that and trying to move even higher in the stack. So, you know, the individual components, they do want to give their customers choice. So as they do that, Stu, as they begin to support Lenovo and SuperMicro, of course, there's always been SuperMicro, but Lenovo, Dell, how does that affect their value proposition? Is it just a function of, okay, they got to do the engineering and make sure it all works right? Or is it a little bit V-specs-like, if you know what I mean by that? Or it becomes more reference architecture than it does integrated systems? Well, right, so today, both the Dell and Lenovo are, you know, full on, you know, not just integrations, but they're different. If you take, you know, the NX, the HX and the XC and line them up, you know, there are technical specification differences because the server manufacturers all do make things a little bit different. You know, Dell, we talked to them about, you know, some of the VDI special things that they did in there. You know, Lenovo has some, you know, really strong SAP solutions that they're doing there. So, of course, there's plenty of overlap and you can get something that's pretty close, but, you know, there's lots of environments out there and those are three distinct product lines and we'll put a strain on really the engineering efforts as to how many of these can you keep up. Interoperability is a big cost. You know, when we talk to Dave about companies shifting the operational expense to the vendors, you know, that has to be paid somewhere in Nutanix as they grow and they have, you know, dozens of product lines that they need to test and keep up with, you know, that's something that will be an expense that they'll need to have going forward. So, great event, a lot of good momentum coming off of last year, 2,500 plus people. I've often said it's, you know, reminds me of the early days of the early service now. I wasn't at the really early service now ones down in San Diego, but the ones, you know, since they've come to Las Vegas, Splunk.conf show, Tableau, similar kind of vibe. Although those events were much more, are more software oriented. They are, even though this is a software company, it's an infrastructure software company. So, a lot of storage people here, right? So it's a different crowd than those other venues that I mentioned. However, there's a similar vibe, a lot of enthusiasm around what they're doing, a lot of passion leading the whole DevOps charge, a lot of innovation. So that's, you know, sort of one observation. The other, the messaging very strong. You know, this whole enterprise cloud piece is I think right on, you're seeing a lot of business momentum. I think very clearly from talking to people here, the customers, Nutanix has a lead relative to some of the other competitive offerings that they've been testing. I think that there are some blind spots, you know, they're expanding now into new solutions areas. I think Oracle is a challenge for them because of Oracle licensing, Oracle is going to use that as a weapon. You recently wrote about that. I think there's a lot of uncertainty or just a lot of lack of knowledge in the customer base about how to deal with that. So we'll see how that plays out. But that's a niche, it's a big niche, you know, but it's a niche. It's not the whole market. There's plenty of opportunity there. So on balance, you know, sitting in a pretty good position, have to evolve the ecosystem, continue to evolve the channel partnerships and execute obviously on that roadmap that they've put forth, which is a pretty aggressive roadmap. But what's your summary? Yeah, Dave, you saw some really good points there. We talked about with D-Raj that, you know, Nutanix doesn't own the application piece of things.  Microsoft's interesting partnership, but of course, I mean, Microsoft's going to partner with, you know, other parts of Dell with HPE, you know, where does Nutanix fit? They're a really small company in there. AWS, you know, Nutanix has a hybrid cloud solution, yet, you know, we know that partnering with AWS is difficult. AWS is going to try to capture that value. So, you know, there's some interesting challenges up ahead, but they've got plenty of growth. Think, Dave, I want to, you know, ask you from a financial standpoint, we came in looking at the IPO. Twilio is going to IPO tomorrow. Just saw it, you know, breaking on the wire.  You think we're going to see an IPO this year? And, you know, did you believe kind of the messaging from Nutanix as to the bridge loan and everything else that they're doing? Oh, no, I definitely believe the bridge loan message. I mean, they needed the money. I mean, I, you know, basically said, we don't need it, that's why we're taking it. But you, even if it's insurance, you need that insurance. So, you know, you don't want to go sort of without that safety net. And so, and the IPO obviously would have provided that. And then some, I would say, you know, if the market condition, if we get a summer rally, no question, you're going to see that IPO happen.  Numbers still look really good. Very high growth, gross margins up ticked substantially in the first half of 2016. I mean, talking from 56, 57 up to 62%, you know, four or five point increase in gross margins. And of course Nutanix is downplaying that. You know, they don't, you know, I was asking a lot of questions about that. Like, what's driving that? I mean, that's really impressive. Like, we're trying to keep gross margins up. You can't manage, I mean, you can, but generally speaking, good companies don't manage, don't try to manage gross margin.  And the gross margin is a calculation that takes care of itself. But it's a, to me, a very strong indicator that Nutanix is able to convey its value proposition and get premium pricing for that value that they're creating. So I thought that was a very good sign. I think if Trilio goes well and, you know, the market stabilizes, there's still a lot of, you know, skepticism in the market. People aren't buying this little rally here. We'll see what happens with Brexit. I think that's going to have a big impact. I think if, in my personal take, if, you know, the UK stays, that's a positive thing. If it doesn't, that's yet more uncertainty. You know, I think, most people would say there's going to be choppy market through the election. You know, so, you know, maybe once we have visibility on that, you know, we'll see it in the fall. Yeah, so I mean, Dave, you know, Nutanix is not an open source company. It's a premium brand, you know, in some ways it goes against some of the things that we talk about. When I hear them position it, it sounds a lot like what we talk about with AWS and even with Azure, but it's bringing it on-prem. So it's interesting to see the kind of the business model matching some of the technology. We talked a little bit about just organizationally how Nutanix is trying to grow. I mean, 1,700 people, you know, it's tough at that size to keep growing at a decent pace and getting good quality people and retaining them. They've got high NPS scores, so, you know, Nutanix. They've got a good thing going.  Well, I think there's two, I think that you're bringing up some good points too about, especially about AWS. That may be another blind spot.  You know, they'll end up at 30 billion, whatever. What if AWS gets to 100 billion? That could be a change, you know. To me, that's not out of the question. We've talked a lot in theCUBE, Wikibon, SiliconANGLE Media, about the marginal economics that AWS is driving. I think people still don't understand how powerful the AWS business model is. Go dig into their operating profits, compare those to the likes of EMC, for example, which is an incredibly profitable infrastructure company. And Amazon's numbers are below them away, right? So we're talking 10 billion this year. They'll probably exceed that in a very, very profitable business that Amazon can use as a weapon. And I think it will. It is on that flywheel, more so than any other company. We saw it with Microsoft in the 80s and 90s, how it used that advantage. And I think AWS is going to do the same. And you know, at the end of the day, everybody kind of poof poofs the economics. Oh, it's not about economics, not about economics. And I understand there are other factors, but economics rule. And if Amazon is significantly more cost-effective than everybody else, that's going to have greater disruption of market. And frankly, I think we're seeing that already. I think that's one of the reasons why Amazon is doing so well and it's so profitable. You know, one of the future-looking things that was talked about here is, can I have application mobility? Can I, you know, put it in the public cloud and bring it back? Applications that are spread between locations? Of course, we had John Furrier, Brian Gracely and theCUBE out at DockerCon this week. And it's simplifying that application deployment. The Docker data center, the new version of 1.1.2 of Docker integrates orchestration into that. And here, we had Nutanix talking about how containers fit in, they're going to have Docker support, they're going to put into the persistent storage piece. So, you know, Nutanix is aware and trying to, you know, skate to the puck of that new piece. So bare metal, virtualized machines and containers manage those within a single environment, their prism tool. So it's an interesting way to go. It's in a place they need to go. But, you know, there's technical challenges, there's customer adoption that we need to get there. But it's been impressive to see. Okay, all this content that we've been creating over the last couple of days, of course, is up on siliconangle.tv. Check that out. Follow theCUBE at theCUBE. Check out on Twitter, hashtag cube gems to see the snippets that we produced. Kristen Nicole's team has been cranking on live blogging. As I say, Patrick's been going nuts on the cube gems, awesome job. Jay, always good to see you, local Vegas boy. Alex, welcome aboard, you know, right out of college. Throw him right to the fire. Greg has always great job. So appreciate it. Jeff Frick also, you know, giving us air cover remotely. And Stu, really a pleasure. Great job by you this week. You really know this marketplace, this ecosystem.  There's Stu, and so thanks for all your insights. Thank you so much, Dave. It's always a pleasure to come do an event with you and the team. And yeah, the Nutanix ones, as you've said, there's some of these shows where the, there's the reality distortion field a little bit because everybody loves what's going on here. Like, you know, as I said, Service Now Splunk, some of those. So these are fun shows to do, even in, you know, what would, to quote, you know, YY, the CEO of Lenovo. You know, boring old infrastructure, which is, of course, our bread and butter, at least, you know, the stuff I cover. All right, so that's a wrap. Next week, we're at Red Hat Summit. And what am I missing? The Hadoop Summit. And Hadoop Summit, of course, in San Jose. You know, the big Hortonworks event. And of course, Red Hat, Red Hat Summit is an awesome show. Two great shows next week. So look for that on siliconangle.tv. Check out wikibon.com for all the research. Siliconangle.com for all the blog. And as always, check out crowdchat, crowdchat.net. Thanks for watching, everybody. That's a wrap. The Cube, signing off.