to his mother died, so we've got more to do. We've got to get the kid on the scene of the marriage. Well, yeah, I think so, but we've got to stop him there. So, of course, in 1992, I'm a lawyer, so it's still new.  Well, it's very much like, oh, she knows it. So, I'm there, and then we'll go on to the next one. Let's go, let's go on to the next one. So, speaking of the day, I think she's in the top. And then, she's in the top. So, she's in the top. Yeah, it's been a while. She was in the top. No, I'm not. I'm just going to turn it down the way I'm going to. Let's see if it's not the right one. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. Let's join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn which you'll find inside your order of service. One more time. It was so short I thought we should do it twice. Well good morning everybody. Welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing, and very sunny environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud but slightly imperfect member of this congregation. And I'd like to extend a special FUS welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we'll be conducting a guided tour of the buildings after the service. Just gather over here by the windows and we'll take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this should be the perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that we just will not need during the service. And if you're accompanied today by a youngster, and you think that youngster might enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer a couple alternatives. Our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons. As is the case every weekend, our service is brought to us by a wonderful group of people whom we call volunteers. And I'm going to read their names and please have a few warm thoughts in your heart for these people because they're making the service a lot smoother and more enjoyable today. Warm thoughts go to Tom Boykoff, who's serving as our lay minister, and also to Corinne Perrin, who greeted us upstairs as we arrived. Our ushers today, Nancy Daly, Ann Ostrom, and Tom Dalmage. And Biz Nitschke is handling the hospitality and coffee. John Powell is our tour guide. Just a couple brief announcements. One very important and that is that if you're the owner of a white sonata, your doors are open. And I know it's getting warmer today, but you might want to close those car doors of the white sonata in the parking lot. Okay. And who knows, how many days until cabaret, who knows? The number of days. 47 is correct. Thank you, Michael May. And yes, in 47 days on Friday evening, May 20th, we are going to Italy. Yes. And you don't even your passport or airline ticket, but you do need a little bit of money because cabaret is our annual fundraising party. It's an auction. It's an opportunity to hear an Italian strolling minstrel. Actually, he's not Italian, but the music he'll be playing as he strolls around is Italian. And we have some other entertainment for you of the Italian theme, as well as food of the Italian menu. And again, the auction items, however, will be unitarian, not Italian. So if you'd like to help put this together, organize it. If you have items you would like to donate for the all-important auction and you have any questions, check with Rhiannon on the FUS staff or go to the FUS website for a little bit more information. Again, how many days, Michael? Thank you. 47 days until a night in Italy, an evening in Italy, right here at FUS for our annual cabaret party. So end of the announcements. I invite you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know that it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. You who are brokenhearted, who woke today with the winds of despair whistling through your mind, welcome and come in. You who are brave but wounded, limping through life and hurting with every step, come in. You who are fearful, who live with shadows hovering over your shoulders, come in. This place is sanctuary and it is for you.    Here we offer in love. Here we receive in gratitude. Here we make a circle from the great gifts of breath, attention, and purpose. Welcome and come in. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join in the words of chalice lighting printed in your order of service, may the light of this chalice give light and warmth to our community when we are joyful and when we despair. And may we feel the warmth spread from our circle to wider and wider circles until all know they belong to the one circle of life. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor, please be seated. This morning our youngest ones are over in children's chapel, but I know that we've got some middle schoolers with us, and I know that we have some beyond middle schoolers who also enjoy a story. So we're going to have a story anyway. And this is the story of old turtle and the broken truth. Once in a beautiful faraway land that was somehow not so very far. A land where every stone was a teacher and every breeze a language, where every lake was a mirror and a tree, a ladder to the stars. Into this far and lovely land there fell a truth. It streaked down from the stars trailing a tale as long as the sky. But as it fell, it broke. One of the pieces blazed off through the night sky and the other fell to earth in this beautiful land. In the morning, Crow found the fallen piece. It seemed to be a sort of stone, shiny and pleasing to the eye. He picked it up. This is a lovely truth, said Crow. I will keep it. And he carried it away. But after he had held it for a while and examined it closely, he said, this truth doesn't feel quite right. A part of it is missing. I will look for a whole one. And as he flew off, he dropped it to the ground. Other creatures who liked shiny things soon noticed the truth as well. Fox, coyotee, raccoon, bear, butterfly, each picked it up, carried it a while. But they, too, found that it had rough edges and was difficult to carry. And its sparkle soon lost its appeal. We do not need this broken truth, they said. We will find a whole one. After a while, none of the creatures even noticed the broken truth anymore. And it lay on the ground, forgotten. Then a human being found it. He was walking slowly, listening to the breezes, gazing at the beauty above and below when he found the broken truth. On it was writing, and the writing said, you are loved. The man held it carefully, thinking it was the loveliest thing he had ever seen. He tucked the broken truth into a safe place and kept it. Sometimes he would take it out and admire it, and the truth sparkled just for him and whispered its message to him alone. And the man thought he had never felt so proud and so happy. The man took the wonderful truth to his people, those who lived with him, spoke as he spoke, dressed as he dressed, and whose faces looked like his. And together they cherished their newfound truth and believed in it. They hugged it to themselves and it became their most important possession. After a while, the man and his people did not hear the language of breezes and stones, but heard only their truth. They did not see the mirrored beauty in the lakes or the ladders to the stars, but saw only their sparkling truth. And for them, it was enough. And they called it the truth. The truth made the people feel good and proud and strong, but soon they also began to feel fear and anger toward those who were not like themselves and did not share this truth. The other beings and other people of the lovely land seemed to be a threat. And the people with the truth said they were not important and they were less than because they did not have the truth. And the language of the breezes was hardly heard anymore. Time passed and other people said, we must have this great truth for ourselves, for with it comes happiness and power. Many battles were fought and the broken truth was won and lost over and over again. But such was its power and beauty that no one ever doubted it. And when they were without it, they felt a great emptiness. The stones and the trees suffered. The breezes and the water suffered. The animals and the earth and most of all, the people suffered. Finally, the animals went to old turtle, ancient and wise as the mountains and seas themselves. Crow and fox went, coyote went, raccoon, butterfly, bear, many others all went to see old turtle. The truth, these people quarrel over, they said, we've held it. It's broken and it doesn't work. Please tell the people. I'm sorry, said old turtle, but the people will not listen. They aren't ready and the suffering continued. Until one day, a little girl came to find old turtle. She had traveled very far, had crossed the mountains of imagining the river of wondering why, had found her way through the forest of finding out. And when she had grown tired, she had ridden on the backs of the animals or the wings of the birds, and they helped her find her way. Finally, they came to a great hill in the very center of the world. And from there, the little girl thought she had never seen so far or seen so much beauty. But when she saw old turtle, she could hardly speak. She simply looked with eyes full of wonder. Why have you come so far to find me? Asked old turtle. Her voice rumbled like far away thunder, but was as soft as the breeze through a caterpillar's whiskers. I wanted to ask you a question, answered the little girl. Where I live, the earth is sore and the people are suffering. Battles are fought over and over again. People say it's always been this way and will never change. Can it change? Old turtle said, the world you describe is not as it always has been. An old turtle told her of how the people had found the broken truth and the suffering that it had caused. It is because it is so close to a great whole truth, that it has such beauty and that the people love it so. But it is the lost portion of the truth that the people need, if the world is to be made whole. But where is the missing piece? Can we put it back together again? First, my child, you need to remember that there are truths all around us and within us. They fall upon us every day. The people clutching their one truth forgot that it is a part of all the small and lovely truths of life. The broken truth and life itself will be mended only when one person meets another, someone from a different place or with a different face or a different way and sees and hears themselves. Only then will the people know that every person, every being is important and the world was made for us to be together. Now, little one, it is time for you to go, to help the people mend their broken truth. Old Turtle placed something in the little girl's hand. I've saved it for a very, very long time for someone just like you. The little girl looked at what Old Turtle had given her. It was a kind of stone, mysterious and beautiful. It was lovely to touch and made her feel good to hold it. She squeezed it tightly and tucked it away. Now, when she returned home, at first the people didn't recognize her or understand what she was talking about. She told them of her journey and of the broken truth and the need to make it whole, but they didn't believe her. Crow, watching all that happened, flew to the place high above the village where the great truth was kept in a place where all could see it. He brought the broken truth to the little girl and she took the stone from her pocket and carefully added the missing piece to the old broken one. The fit was perfect. It now read, you are loved and so are they. The people looked. Some frowned, some smiled, some laughed, some cried. And they began to understand. Time passed and upon the beautiful land the trees climbed like ladders to the stars. The water shone like mirrors and the people saw their beauty. A breeze stirred and they heard its music. Tiny truths fell by day and night and the people found them and kept them in their hearts. And slowly as the people met other people different from themselves, they began to see themselves and far away on a hill in the very center of the world, old turtle smiled. Rise and body or spirit for our next hymn number 338. Any kids who are here with us may leave for classes. Please be seated. Our reading today from Elizabeth Gilbert.  She said, we all spend our 20s and 30s trying so hard to be perfect because we're so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our 40s and 50s and we finally start to be free because we decide that we don't really give a darn what anyone thinks of us. But you won't be completely free until you reach your 60s and 70s when you finally realize this liberating truth. Nobody was ever thinking about you anyhow. They aren't, they weren't, they never were. People are mostly just thinking about themselves. People don't have time to worry about what you're doing or how well you're doing it because they're all caught up in their own dramas. People's attention may be drawn to you for a moment if you succeed or fail spectacularly. But that attention will soon enough revert right back to where it's always been on themselves. While it may seem lonely and horrible at first to imagine that you aren't anyone else's first order of business, there is also a great release to be found in this idea.   Go do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life. Create whatever you want to create and let it be stupendously imperfect because it's exceedingly likely that no one will even notice. And that is awesome. Thank you, Trevor. Hi, everybody. One of my favorite British comedies is called Keeping Up Appearances. It features Mrs. Hyacinth Bouquet, spelled B-U-C-K-E-T. But it is Bouquet, a feisty woman who lives to impress.  A shirt of her own eminence, she spends her days trying to make sure everyone else is aware of it as well. Her inferior sisters Rose and Daisy, along with Daisy's undershirt wearing beer drinking husband Anzlo, are a challenge. But she is always willing to talk about her rich sister Violet, who married the turf accountant and has a new Mercedes and a house big enough for a sauna and a pony. She wonders why her roses aren't as big as those next door and worries that the guests at her candlelight suppers will not be impressed. Episode after episode shows Hyacinth's determination to climb the social ladder in spite of her family's working class connections all to the constant chagrin of Richard, her long-suffering husband. I wonder sometimes at the appeal of this show and why I find it so hysterical. I watch it over and over and I crack up. Each time Hyacinth's snobbery leads her to ruin, whether it's being stuck in the back of a truck where she was hiding because she didn't want the important church ladies to know that she was waiting outside a pub, or if it's falling in a river after trying to host the vicar at an impressive waterside picnic with riparian entertainment. One reason I think it resonates so is that we live in a culture of comparison. We do it all the time. Someone drives their new car to work and suddenly our car that we loved a minute ago seems old, dented and tired. The people next door have a new living room set delivered and our house now needs a complete overhaul. And it isn't just things that we compare. We compare jobs, promotions, clothes, kids. We even compare ourselves against our own expectations and dreams and most of the time we find that we don't measure up. Paul Angoni, author of a book called 101 Secrets for Your 20s, calls comparison the smallpox of the millennial generation. He writes, what is obsessive comparison disorder, you ask? It's the new OCD. I've coined to describe our compulsion to constantly compare ourselves with others, producing unwanted thoughts and feelings that drive us into depression, consumption, anxiety and all around discontent. It encourages us to stay up late on Facebook, pouring through all 348 pictures of our friends. My life is better than yours album. And then it sends us to bed wondering why we suddenly feel so anxious. Obsessively comparing yourself to others, becoming more and more frustrated that your life doesn't look like theirs is the absolute most effective way to take your crisis to unhealthy eating raw cookie dough with a serving spoon levels. Like having to run outside to light up a cigarette, our comparison addiction is uncontrollable and it is killing us. I would add that this disorder isn't limited to any one generation and social media is not our only culprit. We live in a society in which we measure ourselves against other people who are measuring themselves against other people and there's no objective measure for how high is enough. We always need to stretch just a little more in the hopes of reaching the ever-changing goal. And what are we really hoping for in all of this? Contentment. We don't really want to live our lives day after day obsessively comparing ourselves to the achievements and the status of others. We want contentment to be content with who we are, what we have, where we are in our lives at this moment, to know that we belong, to know that we are enough exactly as we are. When comparison isn't involved, we are content. But once we start measuring our lives against others, against what we could have, against what we think we should have, what we have disappears from our sight and what we seem to lack take center stage. I will admit that I have had to stop watching HGTV when I am at the gym. At first it was great fun. Seeing all these shows with gorgeous renovation ideas, big beautiful kitchens, professionally designed living rooms that open right up onto the perfectly manicured lawn, kids' rooms that are organized and clean, and each decorating item in exactly the right place. But I had to stop. Not because the shows did anything wrong, but because the messages in my head got ugly. And I became overly critical of our less than beautiful home whose current decorating style I describe as fraternity house meets Toys R Us with a little petting zoo thrown in for good measure. It's not pretty. It's not shiny. It is not perfectly manicured in any way. But it's home.  It is not perfect, but it's home. Our chronic concern about how we measure up is surely not in our lives appreciating people or ourselves for their own unique qualities, our thoughts raised to assess whether our qualities are enough or maybe better than theirs. Andy Stanley, senior pastor at North Point Community Church, calls it living in the land of Ur. We are daily engaging, he says, in a lose, lose activity, and we may not even realize how destructive it is. Being rich or or smart or or funnier may feel like a short term win, but for ourselves, our families and our relationships, comparison is a game with no winners. Among other things, comparison has been famously described as the thief of joy, an act of violence against the self, and the surest route to breeding jealousy. Even Homer weighed in. Nothing shall I, while sane, compare with a friend. Can I be satisfied? Am I okay? Do I measure up? The answer is yes. Yes, we can be satisfied. Yes, we are okay. And yes, we do measure up just fine. The poet Martin Price wrote this piece titled, Comparing Yourself to Others. I find it staggering how often people compare themselves to others. People who, in my eyes, are already pretty fantastic. Looking at other pretty fantastic people and seeing all the types of fantastic that they are not, or at least are not yet. Sometimes I find myself daydreaming about corrective eye surgery, not because I am a corrective eye surgeon, but because too many people have warped vision that makes the fantastic in the people around them shine and blurs the fantastic in themselves. Of course, people are different. Some are really funny and some are really handsome. Some are really clever. Some are really friendly. Some are really lucky in that they tick multiple boxes. But I think the really lucky ones are the content ones that may not tick any box at all, but don't mind being average, because that's all anyone is in comparison to everyone else, because that's how averages work. I once heard a friend say that the only time you should compare yourself to another is to make sure that they have enough. But I put it in Google, and I can't find who said it. So either I should write down quotes more often, or my friends understand the world on a much deeper level, or I understand the world on a much deeper level, but I think it's the first one, and I need to write down quotes more often. You have to remember that if everyone compared themselves to others too much, then nobody would do anything, because they would all think somebody else could do it better or quicker. So nobody after Oscar Peterson would play the piano, nobody after Timothy Dalton would play James Bond, and nobody after Michael Johnson would run 400 meters, or the 200 meters, or the four by 400 meters apart from the other three people on his team. And that last line I think is crucial, apart from the other three people on his team. How do we move from a culture of comparison to a culture of contentment? We get there, I think, by creating a culture of compassion within community.  All too often, our minds fool us into thinking that we can and in fact should be other than we are. Perfectionism is defined as the compulsive need to achieve and accomplish one's goals with no allowance for falling short of one's ideals. Yet we know that if we were perfect, we wouldn't be human. Warm breathing human life is constantly unfolding wonder, not a static state of flawless sameness. Being alive involves struggle and despair as well as glory and joy. To demand perfection is to turn our backs on real life and the full range of human experience. Why, when we know that there's no such thing as perfect, do most of us spend an incredible amount of time and energy trying to be everything to everyone? Ask the writer and researcher, Brene Brown. Is it really that we admire perfection? No. The truth is that we are actually drawn to people who are real and down to earth. We love authenticity and we know that life, everybody's life, is messy and imperfect. So if the perfect home and the perfect job and the perfect person are all illusion, what is the reality? The reality is that we are all in this together. We need to transform our relationships with one another and with ourselves, from comparison to compassion. And we do this by recognizing our inherent interconnectedness. According to the Centers for Disease Control, a sense of belonging and being connected is crucial to our mental health. Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist, argued that needs for individual growth and happiness cannot be met without first satisfying the basic need for human connection. Without bonds of love and affection with others, he said, we cannot go on to achieve our full potential as human beings. Similarly, the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut proposed that belonging is a core need of the self. Belonging, he said, is the feeling of being human among humans, a feeling that allows us to be connected to one another. If we can compassionately remind ourselves in moments of falling down, that failure is part of the shared human experience, then that moment becomes one of togetherness, rather than isolation. When our troubled, painful experiences are framed by the recognition that countless others have undergone similar hardships, the blow is softened, the pain still hurts, but it doesn't become compounded by the feeling of separation. We need to call out and name the voices in our culture to tell us to notice how others are more, do more, have more, strive more than we do, and say enough. Enough with the comparison because we know we are enough. All of us are. Our connections with one another help us to move from comparison to contentment with compassion being key. We are groomed to believe that the best way to live is looking out for our own interest. But in reality, lasting satisfaction rarely accompanies that approach. What if instead of looking at others as a measure of our own value, we looked at them simply to appreciate and celebrate their successes? What if instead of racing against them, we viewed ourselves as racing alongside each of us trying to do our best? It's compassion. Life is satisfying when we celebrate and cry together, genuinely talking and opening ourselves to one another to the whole person. With all their beauty and all the broken places that we may never see, the person standing right in front of us. When you feel the obsessive comparison disorder welling up within you, you don't have to let it steal your joy. Try these words instead. I'm happy for you. When I say I'm happy for you, I'm realizing that your joy, your good fortune, is not about me. It's about you. And your joy, your new thing, your child's amazing achievement does not take away the reality that we are all in this together. And with compassion for myself and for all the other imperfect and messy beings that I share life with, I can realize that I am enough. I am content. I am okay. You are enough. You can be content. We are okay. So these last words come from a prayer written by my colleague, Mark Bellatini. Let's set it all down, you and me. The disappointments little in large, the frustrations. Let's open our fists and drop them. The useless waiting, the obsession with what we cannot have, the focus on foolish things, the pinwheeling worry which wears us out, the fretting. Let's throw them down. The comparisons of ourselves with others, the competition, as if domination was the best name we could give to the holy. The cynical assumptions, the unspoken shelved anger. Let's toss them. The inarticulate suspicions, the self-doubt, the preemptive self-hatred, the numbing bouts of self-pity. Sink them all like stones. Let's drop them like hot rocks into a cool pond. And when they're gone, let's lay back gently and float, float on the calm surface of enough. Let's be supported in the still cradle of the world, messy, imperfect, beautiful, and waiting for us. And I now invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering. You can see in your order of service that it'll be shared with the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. You can find out more about them in your order of service, and we thank you for your generosity. We join together each week, a community who gathers with joys and sorrows written on our hearts. We come together to find strength and common purpose, turning our minds and our hearts toward one another, and bring all into our hearts who need our love and concern. This week, as we join together in a moment of silence, may we hold in our hearts all of those joys and sorrows that live within us. Here in this place of peace, may we find hope. Here in this place of connection, may we find life-giving community. Here in this place of rest, may we let the unrest of our hearts turn us toward justice. Here in this space made sacred by memories of connection, may we each feel ourselves part of the new that grows from the old in the spiraling unity of our years. And now if you will rise in body or spirit for our closing hymn, which is number 151, as we take our leave before we gather again, may each of us bring happiness into the life of another. May we each be surprised by the gifts that surround us, and by the light, the goodness, and the love that flows from within us. May each of us be enlivened by constant curiosity, and may we remain together in spirit until we meet again. Blessed be, and go in peace, and please be seated for the postlude.


Alright, so you guys, I think that this might be one of the shortest videos that I've ever done, but it's because the answer is pretty simple. And I get this question asked a whole lot, and the question is, like, what's the best major for PA school or some variants of that, that question? Like, who can become a PA? And so that is what I'm going to be answering in today's video. What's up, you guys? This is Zidane, and welcome back to my channel. So I just wanted to kind of just jump out here and, like, really do this really quick video for you guys. I think it might be one of the shortest videos I've ever done, but I get to ask this question so much, you guys. And so I think I'll probably have to do this video again in another, like, three or so months because I'm getting a lot of new people who are subscribing, so thank you guys so much for subscribing to my channel. If you are new and you have not already done so, go ahead and subscribe. Help my YouTube algorithm out a lot. But I'm getting a lot of new subscribers and new viewers, and, you know, they don't know exactly, like, what the answer to this question is. And so this question was posed by Lord Kashan, and it was asked, so can an English major become a PA? And Lord Kashan, the answer to that question is, yes, absolutely an English major can be a PA. Honestly, any major can be a PA. It doesn't matter what you're majoring in, you can major in, you know, the sciences, you can major in the arts, be it music, you can major in, you know, the social sciences, like a psychology or sociology, you can major in, I don't know, like anything, history, it does not matter, okay? The only thing that matters is that you want to be a PA, you have worked on getting your patient care experience, and you have done all of the prerequisite courses that are required to become a PA. So that is where it might get a little bit murky, because are you taking all of the prerequisite courses that are required for PA school, like general bio and chem and organic chem and micro or genetics or, you know, abnormal psych or developmental psych and general psych and all of those other like medical terminology, are you taking these courses? Because those are the prerequisite requirements. So if you're not taking those courses, then you have to add them onto your regular course load that is in your English major scope. But the answer still remains, yes, you absolutely can become a PA if you're an English major, if you have the desire to be in the medical field and be a practitioner of medicine and, you know, deal with patients, go for it, okay? All right, thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you, Lord Kishan, for that question. If you have any comments or questions, leave them in the comment section below for me. Go ahead and like this video and subscribe to my channel. Follow me on Instagram at on the PA and on Instagram and get that to university. Thank you guys so much for watching. I will talk to you guys next time. Bye.


My name is Simon and I'm an undergrad in statistics and sociology at Reed College I'm also currently interning with our studio working on the tiny models our packages all the source code for the analyses the full paper in These slides is on my github at Simon p couch So imagine that a data set appears in the wild whatever that looks like for you and there's a column called gender in it What would you expect the most common entries to be? Let's suppose instead that the title of that data column was actually sex. Does that change your answer? In my experience those columns are almost inevitably filled with entries along the lines of male and female Regardless of column name this project tried to quantify how our conceptions of social difference are reflected in the data structures We choose as data scientists and package maintainers I'm just going to share results related to sex and gender here, but I discuss other social categories in the paper So this first figure I'll show gets at the question. I asked a minute or two ago Is there a relationship between the name of the data column and the entries inside of it?  I might hope to see entries like non-binary woman and man To address this question I downloaded 2,500 packages from CRAN and searched for columns Describing sex and gender effects inside of the data they export Regardless of column name the entries in those columns are nearly exactly the same entries along the lines of male and female are dominant It turns out to that even though the entries in those columns are the same regardless of the discipline a data set comes out of Datasets intended for use in biological applications were more likely to refer to columns measuring sex and gender effects as Sex as compared to data sets not tagged as for use in biological applications Illuminating the supposed separability of sex and gender in the heart sciences. I know this was incredibly brief But I only have a couple minutes So I want to end with a quote from one of the many intersectional feminists whose work formed the theoretical foundation of this project Given the elevated social status of the fields we engage with as statisticians and data scientists It's especially important in the heart sciences that we're clear about what we mean when we refer to social categorizations We can't claim objectivity in our research if our practices as foundational and elementary as data structures do not reflect this nuance This is a quote from whiteness's property by Cheryl Harris When handling the complex issue of group identity, we should look to purposes and effects consequences and functions What must be addressed is who is defining? How is the definition constructed and why is the definition being propounded? If you're interested in learning more or wondering how on earth the data Underline that graph could have been generated. I encourage you to read the link to paper. Thank you


People, especially the local communities have to have the buy-in to be able to make the buy-economy work because they're closest to their natural resources and they're highly dependent on natural resources. So we need the participation of the local communities in partnership with the local governments, with the academe and the private sector, and to be able to bring those synergies together and scale it up from the local to the national and the regional. We also have to take into account the sustainable development goals and how they all interrelate in order to make a buy-economy business sustainable for the long term. I think one way to make a buy-economy sustainable or a driving factor would be for government to help small business or indigenous or marginalized groups have access to finance. Buy-economy is mean that it's not only technical things related to the buy-o thing for buy-o energy and also buy-o products, but we have to consider the benefits of the buy-o products just like the economic perspective of buy-o economy. So in order to transform to the sustainable way of the buy-o economy, we have to consider many, many things. For example, we have to consider a social aspect. What I can see, it can be applicable in the energy sector is we need to map like each community indigenous value and their indigenous resources to be able to extract and drive this small-scale community towards adopting the buy-o economy. The development of buy-economy is driven by manufacturers and one of the most important driver is of course the active participation of the government and also government agencies. Why? Why government and government agencies? This is because they are the ones who actually develop the policy.


My name is Sam Baknil and I am the author of Malignancy Love, Narcissism Revisited. The diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 about to be published next year constitute a major advance over the text revision of the DSM-4 published 12 years ago. The DSM-5 redefines personality disorders this way. Quote, the essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality functioning, both self and interpersonal, and the presence of pathological personality traits. According to the June 2011 text of the DSM-5, following criteria must be met to diagnose Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Start with significant impairments in personality functioning in either identity or self-direction. In my view, it should have been in both identity and self-direction. Narcissists suffer impairments in both areas. Start with identity. The Narcissist keeps referring to others excessively in order to regulate his self-esteem according to the DSM-5. Actually, this should be to regulate his sense of self-worth which comprises self-esteem but also other components. The DSM also says that Narcissists refer to other people for self-definition to define their identity. The Narcissist's self-appraisal is exaggerated whether it is inflated, deflated or fluctuating between these two points, and his emotional regulation reflects these vacillations. Well, finally, the DSM-5 accepted what I've been saying for decades, that Narcissists can have an inferiority complex and they can feel worthless and bad and deficient, that they go through cycles of ups and downs in their self-evaluation, and that this cycling influences their mood and their affect. The DSM-5 proceeds to tackle self-direction. The DSM says that the Narcissist sets goals in order to gain approval from others, what I call Narcissistic Supply. The DSM-5 ignores the fact that the Narcissist finds disapproval equally rewarding as long as it places him firmly in the limelight. The DSM says that the Narcissist lacks self-awareness as far as his motivation goes, but actually the Narcissist is not self-aware regarding any area of his life, not only motivation. These personal standards and benchmarks are either too high, says the DSM, which supports his grandiosity, or too low, which buttresses his sense of entitlement, entitlement which is incommensurate with his real-life performance. Next is the field of impairments in interpersonal functioning, functioning with other people, and there the Narcissist lacks either empathy or intimacy. Again, the language is wrong. It shouldn't be empathy or intimacy. It should be empathy and intimacy. Start with empathy. The Narcissist finds it difficult to identify with the emotions and needs of others, says the DSM, but is very attuned to their reactions when they are relevant to himself. And this is precisely what I called years back called empathy. This is called empathy. The ability to empathize with other people, to be attuned to their needs, reactions, feelings, and so on, but only in order to make use of this knowledge for self-gain and self-purposes. Consequently, says the DSM, the Narcissist overestimates the effect that he has on others or underestimates it. Well, in my view, the classic Narcissist never underestimates the effect that he has on others, but the inverted Narcissist does. Intimacy. The DSM says that the Narcissist, the DSM5 says that the Narcissist's relationships are self-serving, and therefore shallow and superficial. These relationships are centered around and geared at the regulation of the Narcissist's self-esteem. In other words, obtaining Narcissist's supply for the regulation of the Narcissist's labile sense of self-worth. The Narcissist says the DSM5 is not genuinely interested in his intimate partner's experiences, implying that the Narcissist fakes such interests convincingly. The Narcissist emphasizes his needs for personal gain, and by using the word need, the DSM5 acknowledges the compulsive and addictive nature of Narcissist's supply. These twin fixtures of the Narcissist's relationships render them one-sided. There is no mutuality, no reciprocity, and obviously, and consequently, no intimacy. The DSM5 then moves on to concentrate on pathological personality traits of the Narcissist, and he lumps them together under the category of antagonism. DSM5 says that Narcissists antagonize other people with their grandiosity and attention-seeking. Grandiosity. Grandiosity has to do with the aforementioned feeling of entitlement. The DSM5 just adds that it can be... grandiosity can be either overt or covert, which corresponds, of course, to my taxonomy of classic versus inverted Narcissists. Grandiosity says the DSM5 is characterized by surf-centeredness, a firmly held conviction of superiority, arrogance, haughtiness, and contescending and patronizing attitudes. And then there is attention-seeking. The Narcissist puts inordinate effort, time, and resources into attracting other people, says the DSM5, and these are what I call sources of Narcissist's supply. The Narcissist places himself at the focus and center of attention. He seeks admiration, says the DSM5, but there it gets it wrong. The Narcissist does prefer to be admired and adulated, of course, who doesn't, but failing that any kind of attention would do, even if it is negative. Even negative attention, of variety, being feared, being hated, constitutes Narcissistic supply. That's when the DSM5 is completely wrong, completely off the map. The diagnostic criteria in the DSM5 end with disclaimers and differential diagnosis, which reflect years of accumulated research and newly gained knowledge. The above enumerated impairments, says the DSM5, should be stable across time, consistent across situations, not better understood as normative for the individual's developmental stage, adolescence, for instance, or for the individual's socioeconomic environment. There are some environments, countries or societies, which encourage Narcissism, actually. And these impairments, says the DSM5, are not solely due to direct physiological effects of a substance, drug, medication, or to a general medical condition, for instance, severe head trauma. Indeed, brain injury, as I've indicated in the past, does change the personality of the injured person and makes him temporarily a psychopathic Narcissist. So, this is outside the diagnostic criteria. Brain injuries that induce psychopathic Narcissism should not be diagnosed with Narcissistic personality. All in all, the DSM5 is a major improvement over the DSM4 text revision. I'm looking forward towards the final version, which will be published somewhere in the middle of 2013. So, I'll see you there.


On the Sports Mac Zone, Haley Matthews again led from the front but it was not enough to secure a historic series win as Weston's woman went down to Australia by 47 runs in the third and final T20 International on Thursday morning, Caribbean time in Brisbane. An injured Matthews struck 79 in the Wendy's pursuit of 191 for victory while the Caribbean woman never recovered from her dismissal and were eventually bowled out for 143 with one ball remaining. Aliyah Alain was the only other Wendy's batter to pass 20, stroking 4-4 in her knock of 26. Darcy Brown and Ashley Gardner were the pick of the Aussie bowlers with three wickets each. Early in the match, Talia McGrath and Elise Perry with 65 and 40 respectively pushed the host to 190 for nine. Chamele Connell was the best Wendy's bowler with three for 25. Let's hear now from Matt Hughes who secured her eighth consecutive playoff the match award. It was a bit tougher to start out there today, I think the wicket was a bit slower and probably had to kind of change the areas of the field I was accessing today and go a bit more leg side. I think the last five overs we bowled probably went for a few too many. I think we did a really good job in the middle to get a couple of wickets and slowed only scoring rate and then obviously that last 10 overs and we were batting, we kind of crumbled and fell apart there. All right team, so something to smile about, we'll start on a positive note. Team Matthews continues to entertain us and I'm in awe of her performances. She walked away from these matches against Australia as playoff the series and you know what bothers me is the fact that she was able to do this with an injury. We have other bats woman on the team and they're fit and they're doing well and what's going on? Well here's what I think first of all. I think today's knot from Haley Matthews was a greater demonstration of her quality than the 99 or the 132. Part of the reason for this, she had the quad issue and it was clear that that was hampering her movement at the crease. Still she was able to take it to the Australian bowlers. The other aspect of it is that the Australians were a lot better this time around than they were when she scored 132. Clearly they made the adjustments in terms of not giving Haley Matthews as much room on or outside the line of the oast dump and they tried to get the ball swinging back into her forcing her to play more leg side and as soon as she got her eye in earlier she had a few massive strikes and missed completely but as soon as she got her eye in she was able to find the boundary with some amount of regularity. This was a high quality knock and I continue to say it Lance and Mariah and I don't think a lot of people understand the quality of Haley Matthews as a women's international batter and I've said it before she is not yet well overall career wise performing at the level that her talent suggests that she can. She has gone a long way in 2023 in improving on that and definitely in this Australia series demonstrating a lot closer to what she is capable of but I don't think she is quite there yet. Believe it or not. Yeah and as a track and field man yourself Ricardo I want to highlight the fact that we're talking here about a two sport international. She won two silver medals in the Javelin at the Corrifta Games for Barbados and then a gold medal and that gold medal coming just the year before she was a top performer for the West Indies in their World Cup triumph in 2016. So this is a genuine athlete and I agree with you 100 percent Ricardo that her career statistics at the moment don't show what her real ability is because her batting average in T20s is still in the mid 20s I think and we see what she can deliver. Australia are the undisputed world number one in women's cricket the reigning world champions in women's T20 cricket and the fact that they had no answer for three consecutive matches to Haley Matthews tells you that this is a batter that is genuinely world class and the fact that she was player of the match twice three times three times and player of the series in a series that her team lost says mountains for her performance in this series. And team I want to get your views on this because earlier today Haley Matthews in the post match press conference was asked about this and to me it really stood out and I feel that's the reason why we're not seeing the best of her yet. She was asked if she always feels as if the result is dependent on how she performs if she feels pressured that you know she really has to go out there and deliver else. The team has no chance right. She responded you know she said yes she understands that she has to make a big impact. It can get stressful but that's what she has to do as a leader. And I find when I watch Haley Matthews in her club competitions when you know she can just go and be free and be herself. I see a different Haley Matthews versus the one that has the title of captain and has to ensure that she puts up solid scores in order to make her team competitive and help them get over the line. I think that's an area she's improved on significantly actually since she has become captain. I think before she became captain I find that there would be a lot of reckless strokes in a lot of her innings and she wouldn't be performing at the level but since she's taken on the responsibility I've seen a marked difference in how she approaches a lot of these knocks. But I also want to make the point Lance and Mariah this is important for me because I also want our viewers to understand the significance of what Haley Matthews did in this three match series. First of all she is the first player in women's T20 internationals to score over 300 runs in a three match series. So that in itself a record and a significant but that for me has to be one of the greatest performances by any West Indies butter man or woman in any series and I'm going to compare across formats now because I am rivaling this performance with what Brian Lara did in Sri Lanka in 2001 when he scored 688 runs in a three match test series. What Richard did in 1976 when the West Indies went to England and he scored 829 runs in that five match test series. That's the level that I think this three match performance of Haley Matthews is equivalent to or certainly without a doubt is in the discussion because as you pointed out Lance you are talking about undisputed number one ranked Australia in T20 cricket. We're talking about an Australian lineup full of depth. They probably have the most depth in all of women's cricket which is part of the reason they are number one in the world. And for Haley Matthews to go to Australia score over 300 runs when player of the series in every single player of the match in all three games and then get player of the series. And I think has to rank as one of the greatest batting performances in a series by any West Indian player man or woman. And now that you've referenced the brand Laura effort in Sri Lanka and the IVA Richard's effort in England back in 1976 we have to remember that Muralitha run during that series was unplayable to almost every batsman in the world. And the Sri Lankans completely dominated the series and for B.C. Lara to have scored over 600 runs in that series tells you that he was in a significantly higher class than any of his teammates for sure. But on the strength of his performance you know it was something special and memorable even to this day. And I think I agree with you Ricardo that what we've seen Haley Matthews achieve in this series 310 runs in a T20 series against the world's best teams is in that is in that class. If you put it on a scale yes it will the weight will be similar. I know the Aussies bowling may have been hampered a bit because Elise Perry who is an outstanding old rounder has an injury and hasn't bowled. She's playing in the series as a batter. But even without her the Australian bowling lineup is very very outstanding. Best in the world. I think it was at a point where they were so confident to switch up their team in the second T20. That's why you know I felt as if they didn't think that Westonese woman would have been able to beat them in that second T20. So they brought in different boulders they played with the team a bit. Yeah but also you as Lance also pointed out as well you just need to look at what the other batters and let's be honest. I know the question has been asked quite a lot why the other batsmen in or batters in the Westonese women's side are not as consistent. My simple answer is they don't have the quality to be consistent at that level. And so that's a large part of the reason they are not. Haley Mathews has the quality. He saw a bit of that from Steph as well. The one time she made that. Well Steph is a star. Steph is a champion because of that shot that she played today. So here's the thing with Stefano Taylor for me. I have found that whenever Stefano Taylor has to be or feels she has to be the aggressor she is not as potent. And it's part of the reason why she bats so well with Haley Mathews. And when Deandra Dottin was in the side why she batted so well with Deandra Dottin because when she has those types of players who are capable of dominating and she is the anchor I find that she is comfortable playing that role. She is not a big hitter is Stefano Taylor at least not in my opinion. She's a player who needs to build an innings and get herself in before she starts playing those big shots. And I think after Haley Mathews got out she probably felt that she needed to be the one to take on the Australian bowling. And I think it was just too soon in her innings.  And she would not have been in them for some time.  We want to get to one fifty one sixty but now when you know you're chasing one ninety it is a little bit different. Yeah. I want to make a quick point to just go back quickly to the balance of the team and the fact that Haley Mathews needs batting support for this West Indies team to flourish and to highlight the fact that her outstanding three hundred and ten aggregate in this series tells us a lot about the difference between her performance and the others because in that same brand or series that you referenced when he scored over six hundred runs the West Indies had Ram the Rissau and Chris Gale Carl Hooper and very good batsmen there. But they were unable to score anywhere close to what brand Laura had scored in the same way that the other batters in this series haven't been able to even touch the aggregate score that Haley Mathews has has put on the stat sheet. Yeah. And I also I'm glad you brought out that point Lance because I was looking at the makeup of this team. I know the job is difficult for the selectors. It as a selector I I don't know that I would want to be a selector because sometimes I feel as if you just can't get it right unless the team is winning all the time. But Natasha McLean in the women's CPL was only outscored by Haley Mathews and Deandra Dottin as West Indies players. Kaysia Knight 31 years old has been around a while also had a good women's CPL. I don't know if it is that the selectors went for a squad that could go across both the T20s and the 50 overmatches in Australia. But I would like to think that either Natasha McLean or Kaysia Knight could have been strongly considered in my opinion. There are more aggressive butters. They are better for the top of the order. And I would have gone with one of them opened with one of them. Kaysia Knight can also keep I would not be looking at Rashada Williams for T20 cricket because in my opinion she is not a T20 batter and it is shown by the fact that she is a traditional opener and she's batting all the way down at seven or eight or whatever it is. So in my opinion you don't need Rashada Williams in a T20 setup. Chameleon Campbell can wicket keep if you bring in Kaysia Knight or Natasha McLean. They both can wicket keep and I would have preferred to go with one of those give them the gloves or give the gloves to Chameleon Campbell and Rashada Williams would not have a spot in that team for me. And Ghaznabi I like the look at her but I think she could be even more effective in around that number five number six position rather than in the opening position. So I would consider those changes if I was in a position if I were in a position to be helping to select this first in this women's team. I like the idea of Natasha and Kaysia Knight but on that note team we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we have a lot more sports to talk.


to watch me work it's um what day is it amber what day it's earth day oh yep it's earth day it's wednesday it's earth day it's the 20 whatever it is the 22nd of april and i'm slp we've been doing j julian christopher has the best backgrounds sorry it's something great every day um and we've been doing this uh i've been doing this show uh for 11 years in the lobby of the public theater at the public theater i'm the master writer chair i write plays and movies and novels and tv shows and songs and blah blah and everything pretty much everything uh every kind of thing and um the public theater has been kind enough to host this this this thing for the past 11 years howl around came on a few years ago to help us livestream and now has the public theater and howl around have generously come together to provide us this platform so that we can come to you every day at five p.m where we work together for 20 minutes and then for the remaining 40 minutes we talk about your work and your creative process and that's what watch me work is all about it's about your work and your creative process and i offer you some encouragement uh some you know things like that what we don't do is give you specific feedback on things you've written we try to keep it open for everybody and talk about your process and not your product and anything else amber amber's gonna tell us how to get in touch oh the good stuff um yes if you would like to ask a question during the questions portion and you are inside of the zoom please click the raise your hand button it should be um in a participants tab that is more than likely at the bottom of your screen if you're on a computer or laptop if you're on an ipad more than likely on the top of your screen if you are watching the stream on howl round dot tv you can ask questions via the public theaters twitter or instagram you can also ask questions via the watch me work twitter which is at watch me work slp don't forget to use the hashtag howl round which is h o w l r o u n d tis all fantastic okay so uh we're going to get some work done for 20 minutes and then we'll get to chatting for the rest of the time here we go all right there we are that's our 20 minutes of work together time now let's do the rest of the time with questions from you guys if anybody has one let's do it we have nancy nancy are you there can you hear me i can hear you now all right so sorry um i i'm writing a comic memoir and most of it is true uh however i'm at a point where i have to i could bring in information about um other people who are still living and i don't know whether to fictionalize it at this point because i'm sensitive to how they if it ever if they would hear it or know about it but on the other hand it is really a part of the dilemma of the protagonist and so uh i know people come up with this you know if yeah how how how daring can one be um sounds um you you want to tell it like it happened or you want to fictionalize it because you're mindful of people who are still living who you know would be what have their feelings hurt or uh you know which is no small thing or maybe say defamation of character or i mean what is your concern with well i would be bringing in their private story i don't know what they experienced i can only imagine but i um i was you know yeah so fictionalized so fictionalized i mean that's a really good point um it's like you would be bringing in their private story you don't know really what they experienced so i would say take steps to fictionalize it somewhat um okay because uh yeah yeah because you're talking about at the point where you start talking about other people i i think you have a that's good to be somewhat concerned you know maybe change a name i mean it's have you written a first draft of it already nancy um i've written a great deal of it i'm at a at a critical point where i'm uh speaking about well you know it's it's about a relationship and the and the backdrop to them to the to to the to the partners other life and um not yeah it could go so many ways and and and because i'm a feminist i have all those issues and yet you know when you're really in something you're really in it and that's basically how you feel so to be emotionally honest with the writing i i i don't know whether to write from the place that uh she i was in at the time it all happened or from this abstracted view where i am a lot more critical and i you know it's it's hard because it doesn't it's a little more it's not as juicy but i'm i've aged and i've i've thought about things over the time so it's finding that balance i guess i'm trying to find the balance so that the tone is correct right well there are a couple of different questions you're asking now it's like how much do i you know how do we keep it uh just we fictionalize to sort of save the real people uh some face should i should i find the right tone all those things so maybe just tell it as you remember it get the first draft out nancy and then again with your publisher like we were telling someone yesterday with your publisher um with your editor you know then you can take a look at it and see what it needs to take to go to the second draft um you say if you want it to be juicy so go ahead and write it in the juicy interesting way that you think it should go and if you need to step back a little bit uh after you've written that first draft then maybe the second draft is the time to step back and rewrite and edit great okay thank you thanks very much for all this thank you thanks Nancy all right next we have Ramona hi um thank you so much for doing this you have no idea how wonderful it's been to have a group to come to um i've had a writing practice for a long time but i've never i've never written very long pieces and i'm not used to creating on my own i used to do improv and improv sketch writing and so for me i've always had the what to me has been very liberating of not having to come up with a full idea you show up to the performance space with one element i'm a watermelon and your partner is going to rip off that and your only duty as an improviser is to make your partner look good it's about nothing else i recently i've had a character that has been following me for years and i finally figured out what that character means to me and i've started exploring the idea but i find myself it's like being in a very large garden all of the sudden i can see all sorts of elements around me but i don't know how i don't know how to play with those ideas with the same level of freedom i used to be able to just take in an idea to my group and i could see it reflected back immediately and that immediate contact it let me test my idea oh i hadn't i hadn't thought about it from that perspective i hadn't thought it could contrast this way because it's not just me i'd be seeing it reflected in all these other people around me and i'm having trouble i don't know i feel like i'm in my head which i obviously am but i've never i've never been in a position where i'm creating something where i can't immediately reflect that out and so now when i'm facing all of these potential ideas that i could follow i don't know one should i be trying to differentiate between them or just play with as many of them as i can i i don't know how to create on my own which sounds like a very strange idea but i feel very i miss my buddies i don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of and i don't know i don't know how to test myself without that that makes that's cool well i mean sketch comedy is really really hard so you've been doing stuff that's really difficult on a whole nother level and a whole nother kind of difficulty um because you have to come in there and be ready to ready to play with your people you know i'm a watermelon and then what do they got you know that's kind of great that's really it takes a lot of daring and courage and artistic chops to be able to do that so that's cool so you got that down you know how to do that and now you're trying something a little different which is playing by yourself yeah creating things by yourself which is a whole nother level of hard you know a whole nother level of difficulty um you know there's a couple things one yeah you could you could call a couple of friends and cut a spitball ideas with them you could um or you could uh like you said just try out different things i mean you those of us who write a lot by ourselves are trained in the uh do you have any imaginary friends yes which is strange to say at my age but yes no no what i'm saying is the writers have a lot of imaginary friends that's that's who we talk to all the time so it's um but you can do improv with your imaginary friends i mean you have the one character that means a lot to you and what about is there another character in the room do you see what i mean and they're they create a dialogue i mean it's you're not really alone you're as alone as you are on stage by yourself with your idea of i am a watermelon you just have to throw yourself into it and try out your ideas it sounds a little simplistic but think of what your character wants what they're doing just make it don't worry about being stuck inside my head why it's or you can if you want to i mean you know what i mean it just feels weird it feels weird to be well what do you mean stuck inside your head like you don't look like you're maybe you are inside your head right now it looks like you're in your living room or something when you're improvising i've managed to create characters i never would have thought of because it's so quick and when i'm writing on my own i have so much time that it feels like i'm i'm writing from a much more logical practical perspective and so i'm setting up like i'm actually setting up scenarios before i write and i don't know how to find that same level of freedom writing as you can when you just walk out to out onto that stage and just decide you know what i'm a piece of fruit and that's all you have to do and off you go yeah and then but then what what if you're also the other person i'm a piece of fruit okay then what you have to be that other person i'm saying Ramona do you understand you have to actually embody your partner that's what we do when we write we embody multiple characters so we're not just in our head being logical we're actually in but we're actually able to transport ourselves into the shoes or to the the space of the other characters so it's not just coming from like my head i am actually kind of like not teleporting i don't know what the word is but you're actually moving around and being other people so you are yourself and you are your improv partner at the same time if you want to try working fast give yourself do like one minute sprints or something write standing up do you know what i mean do you write sitting down or standing up i've tried actually writing on my feet so i'm walking around and just speaking it out great do you actually when you're doing your improv have we actually written stuff or is it just like you're out there talking no i used to do sketch writing as well so actually writing great okay well did you do that alone or did you do that with others i did it alone but they were always very short pieces great so right right short pieces like i said right really short pieces right so just keep exploring and see what comes of it yeah just keep exploring see what comes of it you know if you try you know you don't need to label it like oh i'm in my head you know you're sort of right on your feet walk around when you're get into your body you know i mean get more into your body like you would if you were performing you know all ideas are good or interesting you know but if you've done sketch comedy writing then you you know and you've done it alone you know how to do this already i know i'll keep going you're like Dorothy you've already got the shoes Ramona just look down you're there you're already there all right okay thank you thank you thanks manna next we have brandon hi um i just want to say thank you so much i've been part of this for the past um i guess my question comes with a bit of a confidence thing i decided for the first time in like maybe a year and a half to pick up and it's already like a complete draft but as i'm reading it the piece itself just jumps around in time too much and i feel like there's a lot of whiplash between it's like three lines of dialogue and then different time period three lines of dialogue period it's it's essentially like a memory play i guess i'm trying to emulate i just i'm like little timeline whiplash between going from point a which is like towards the end okay um you're you're the sound cut in and out a little bit so let me just repeat what i think you said um you're you've written a play you're rereading you've had the whole draft you're rereading it and what concerns you is the sort that it jumps back and forth through time because it's kind of a memory play now which is pleasing to you and sounds like a cool idea but what's tricky is that the kind of whiplash thing you've got going it feels like because it's three lines of dialogue and then it then in another time period back and forth and back and forth so it seems like the jumping around in time isn't bothering you so much which is fine but the the whiplash feeling is bothering you a little bit is that correct yes that's correct okay okay so can you flesh out those story beats you know so because it's like it's too fast right like that right my sister my mother my sister my mother whatever right okay so what you want to do is allow yourself allow your story allow your play to settle a little bit in a little bit more maybe in one of the time uh one of the story lines so if it's whatever 1940 and 1912 what i'm just picking shit you know so 1940 what is happening in 1940 that we need to see are we seeing it great how does that influence what's going to happen in 1912 what is happening in 1912 now what is it you see what i mean don't just pop back and forth like a ping pong okay um again it sounds like that might help just allow yourself a little more time in the in the various time zones all right thank you you're welcome thanks friend and next we have alexandra hi um so i have a question in regards to the kind of play that i've been trying to write um when i was in high school um we read uh the death of the last black man in the whole entire world which is incredible thank you for writing that piece but the something that's always struck me about it is that it's so i don't want to call it abstract but that's the only word that is coming to my brain right now um but it's not a traditional linear play um and i've always been writing plays that are like two characters walking to room and they're in real time and they're talking and whatever um so how do you go about writing a play that that's that's so rich but abstract and not exactly um written in a traditional way all right um that's a cool question alexandra um those of us who write abstractly or poetically or whatever um aren't trying to write poetically or abstractly um so i think it's just when you're aware of things you know um i ran into somebody who's a really uh one of the fashion anyway some fashion icon person and i said gee what is it about you know people like you look at you you're all dressed you know she said you're born with a fashion sense she says you know which is interesting you know she says i can't go outside with anything but certain kind of shoes or so you know so it's it's just like the sort of how she orients her life and the things that are attracted to her so if you write poetically those are the kinds of things that are attractive to you um that's also what you're feeding yourself you know so maybe if you want to write more poetically read more poetry watch less television or whatever it's called you know what i mean you know um if you want to write more like a tv writer watch more television read less poetry you know um so feed yourself the thing that you want to you know if you want to be a better basketball player get out there and practice your you know your dribbling or whatever you know so practice that read that read your poetry read your uh abstract writers look at the world and realize that you know we're living in the matrix you know i know or all the world's a stage you know what i mean um there's something going on behind the to happy earth day by the way everybody but there's you know 50th anniversary but you see what it means you got to feed yourself appropriately alexandra um do you feel when you're writing that what you like for instance with that piece did you feel that you were writing hyper specifically or were you writing i'm just curious as to what you're what you felt in terms of you know writing what you know what what was that you that you knew writing that piece so when were you born alexandra what year what year just generally just just kind of like 2000 i'm going to be 20 in a month oh congratulations okay okay so i wrote that play in 1990 so i cannot remember i mean i could say some you know i cannot really remember what i was feeling you know although i was hearing and i was feeling the play you know i was very much feeling the play i wasn't trying to write abstractly i could hear the play in my head i was trying i was writing about a real a very real thing that i knew to be true some shit was going down you know um and when we redid the play at signature theater a few years ago it resonated even more profoundly than it did back in whenever we did it back in downtown 1992 whatever we did it so you know but for you again because this is about your work and not mine it's very important to again we're not trying to be interesting poetic important on broad way all these people this grasping that's going on is very unfortunate i think in the art world whatever kind of work we do these days the grasping is unfortunate i think um you you just need to focus on what feels true to you and if you white two character plays where two characters are in a room there's plenty of great two character plays with two characters in a room i've written plays with two characters in a room yay for two characters in a room you know what i'm saying you should come by all your artistic choices honestly right instead of not this is what you're not doing this but instead of i want to be i have so many students who would say i want to be more poetic i want to be more easy i want to be more successful i'm gonna you know and you need to write your your play and another one and another one and another one and and other things too not just plays you know you see you just got to keep writing and keep feeding yourself now's a good time to catch up on your reading it has been yeah okay thank you you're welcome thanks alexandra all right next we have bella you there yes hi hey bella um so i have been thinking about history or historical context in theater a lot recently and i'm thinking about this in relation to well specifically i was thinking about your play father comes home from the wars and i guess i just wanted to get a little bit of your perspective on approaching something as uh enormous and grand and sometimes impersonal as the idea of history um and how how you sort of break that down into something that is meaningful and immediate instead of sort of uh like a ploy for emotional tension or something like that right right bella history is about people i mean that's how i experience it anyway right history is about people for me for some writers it's about concepts and ideas and issues and things to say for me it's just about a whole bunch of people doing stuff trying to do stuff you know stay focused on the people and what they're doing given a certain historical context you know whatever you did today that's history you know isn't it yeah that's part of history so just again stay focused on the characters i think i mean that's what i do i stay focused on the characters right and how can i ask uh there seemed to in that play specifically there seemed to be a particularly um contemporary lens that you're applying to these characters um and and they seem to have sort of contemporary awareness is filtered through their uh historical context what what is i mean do you have a process of joining those two um paradigms writing writing you know i mean you know again it's i think it's it's yeah people read things and then they go yeah i want to do that and then it becomes it's it's a very organic thing i wasn't trying to do something i was just listening to what was going on and how do we know that these people had to have a a contemporary understanding of things i don't know i wasn't alive back in 1860 whatever how do we know what they were like right really really we assume that they were more clueless more something more religious more interesting something you know um we assume these things about people that we uh see from a distance whether it's people in the past or whether it's your you know the other whoever they are so again seeing them as people focusing on what they want um but it was but it's uh yeah it opened up a whole sort of you know yeah people wanting to i don't know it's it's it comes from an honest place and not an attempt to put something on a historical moment thank you yeah sure thanks maila we have about 10 minutes left and next we have jacob jacob hello um so i'm uh curious about uh like picking projects to work on and specifically i feel like i always struggle with this but especially in a moment like this where there is so much sort of chaos um in terms of both like how do think like prioritizing new work versus prioritizing like rewrites of old things um and also prioritizing work in the theater versus work in film and tv work that is for like you know that feeds the soul versus work that is for payment um and i guess i'm curious if you have any thoughts about your in your own practice of like how you attempt to find balance uh among those many sort of competing notions great question jacob and i know jacob from way back so it's really good to see you man and i know you're you're really disciplined and working hard all the time um it's great that you have so many things going on now it's good to hear that really good to hear that um i would i don't know i would say go where you're you know unless you have something that producers for example are saying hey where's the latest draft right if they're saying hey where's the draft we need it right now because we're even in this hiatus time we're going to be sending the script around or whatever trying to set it up somewhere whatever they're doing um if they're that's the case then i would say man maybe you should work on that and fulfill your contract right um but other than that i would say go where your gut leads you go where your heart says hey this thing over here you know it might be a good time to just bring some projects to completion and then start on that new thing because then you will have would have at least finished those outstanding projects you know but um sorry the sun's coming in making this really weird but um but um yeah i would i would think i like to get things sort of off my plate before i start new things you know that's my preference but everybody's different so i would say if there's an outstanding project that you owe somebody something maybe just get it done if you can get it done quickly then you look around and you say okay now that i've sort of satisfied that requirement you know uh i paid the bill now i'm going to look around and say wow maybe there's that project that i want to finish or if there's nothing there then you go i really have a jones again a desire to uh do this other thing you got to follow your gut it's a great time to do it if you can you know totally the sun here i am oh here this is better yeah the sun comes in at five it's six o'clock yeah so you know so you think like yeah what really pulls me you know what excites me um and go with that you know what delights me maybe what seems like fun or you know it could be kind of cool you know does that make sense yeah um yeah i mean i think when it's it's that tricky thing of that balance between on the one hand trying to finish things and on the other hand because if i feel like if you follow just what if i follow just what delights me i'm only ever working on new things and i never finish anything okay so finish so go ahead and finish some finish something you know maybe trade off finish one of those outstanding things just to get the fucker out of the way you know and then go back and then say well maybe i'll think about something that delights me you know but get those things done it's a good feeling when you got the things done and then you're free you can do whatever you want you know that's what i'd say okay it's great to see you man to see you thank you good to see you thanks jakem all right we have about six minutes left next we have karla karla are you there i hear me can you hear me now yes yeah i will have these headphones that the microphone doesn't work and hello hi hi um i actually i've been here for a while um and i actually work at the public theater oh it's really great i work front of house so yay public theater family um my question is uh um i'm writing something uh that lately has become more of a it's basically my own story and it's very personal um and i am trying to write it just because i want to write it in a way of healing and finding a way to heal through it but i'm having trouble getting some things out i'm writing it down i'm a writer that writes by hand first and i write first person and then i'm trying to like pass it on and write it as to a person to kind of see it you know see it over there and try and like figure it out sort of for myself so i don't know it's like a lot it's like a lot of stuff it's very heavy and i don't know what is the best way to kind of comfort mentalize it in a way i'm trying to take it step by step and i tried to do like uh at least i'm writing it in novel form so i'm like focusing on like chapter number one and like what i need to put in that chapter and it's it's coming together but i at the same time i feel like i'm flipping so like pages and like what's the other thing and like it maybe i'm like overwhelming myself and it could be that is the the the content or maybe not i'm not sure so i'm like it's like stressing me out a little bit and so i didn't know if i should i don't know i don't know how to compartmentalize it or try and get my emotional part of it out anyway i don't know if that makes sense it makes total sense it sounds like a really beautiful project and it sounds really necessary if kind of difficult to write and there are things you got to do to sort of give yourself a chance to chill so you're it's like you're crossing a river and you want some stones you know some rocks to step on you know what i mean so you want some rock so you could you have sort of an idea about what each chapter is going to talk about um sort of at least right now i it's it's based on something that happened to me when i was in college so i in like i've been even talking with a therapist about it because you know i talk about how writing is a good way to think things out right and so i was like that's always where it starts for me that moment in times where everything happened or everything started so i start from there but now like for example today in our 20 minutes i started writing about well when i start the story nobody knows anything about my character they just suddenly you're coming into the action and she's on the phone crying and like freaking out maybe i need to dig more into this character that is me but yeah i don't know it i think it would be helpful again to build yourself some stones to get across the river okay because it sounds like you're you know you're like you start you're not sure if that's the right way to start you might go back you might do so just build yourself get some maybe some index cards or pieces of paper that i don't have my census card oh yes i do my handy oh you know little pieces of paper right and you can write on the piece it doesn't have to be actual index cards okay you can just get pieces of paper and fold them and write you know what's in each chapter in this chapter i want to show this in this chapter my character does this in this so you keep it small you can write by hand on these little cards but they're bite size they're manageable yeah yeah you're not sitting there going okay i have to write the whole thing from page one here i go in this chapter my character does this in this chapter i want to talk about this okay so you have maybe i don't know 10 of these cards because it has the stuff of every chapter and then you can go through and say okay today i'm working on chapter whatever it is this chapter do you want to do it in order this is a chapter i want to work on great i'm going to sit down and work on this one uh tomorrow yeah i can't really work on that chapter anymore let me go to this other chapter here and write a little bit on that one okay it gives you the ability to flip around yeah flexible um while at the same time keeping to some kind of organizational principle hmm yeah okay yeah i just more ideas you can add more cards go ahead yeah yeah because i exactly i just keep jumping and even in the same chapter like today i was like i'm going to try and focus on chapter one but then i was jumping between talking about one character and then another i was like ah no i have to focus on specificity oh i can't hear you i just said exactly exactly i'm trying to keep the i'm trying to the sun sunscreen in my on my camera but exactly okay so you just just try to keep it manageable with little things like index cards allows you to take a breath it's not a huge notebook full of things right yeah um and just and also take breathers sometimes and type up what you've got that's a good thing to do too yeah i've been i've been trying to do that whatever because i had a i started a new notebook because i finished my other one thanks to the day so everything i had in that one i typed it all up and put it and like you know it looks like a real thing it's so nice i'm now i'm back here with a new notebook and am i okay it's too many flipping and going back and forth and so i don't want to add more stress to something that it's already a traumatizing experience that i want to talk about you know i hear you i hear you but yeah thank you so much it's been amazing and it's nice to have again a connection to the public since i'm so far away i know great to see you carla yeah nice to see you thank you thank you hello okay what time it's six oh one it is six oh oneth uh shall we come back tomorrow i think that we should i think that's a grand idea s lp okay um just a reminder everyone you can sign up to be an each day zoom class at public theater dot org by three p.m a student standard time each day and we will email the link out by three and four thirty p.m and we will see you all tomorrow see you