I wish I could ask you a few more. She said, there, I think that's all. I mean, she said she was just in there.  I know what she's talking about.  Well, you did a great job. But what do you see? I did physical pressure. And I didn't do anything. She did that.    I was very discouraged. Great, great, great job. How do you present those references of authority, sex, and human rights in your own ability? And that's, for example, in the fall of the 19th century, you're exploiting somebody. You've got to run down to the top of the story. That's a great insight, going down to the bottom. And then you cross the heart.      We're going to begin again. I got you here yesterday. You can go and sit down. Yes. Yes. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You can go and sit down. Yes. We're gonna sit here. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It feels good, though, when we're all doing it. Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Okay, enough silence. Let's skip musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. On the top of the morning to you, happy day after St. Patrick's Day, and welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. Speaking of things that are different in this world, I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special 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, stick around, and we would love to host you during the fellowship hour where we can answer any questions you might have about FUS. And speaking of answering questions and taking care of each other, this would be a great time to silence those pesky electronic devices that you just will not need during the next hour. While you're taking care of this simple but important task, I remind you that if you're accompanied today by a youngster and you think that young person would rather experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you, including our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and some comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your young companion can hear and see the service. Only a couple announcements before we begin the service, actually just one announcement, and that is 47. There are 47 days remaining until cabaret. On Friday evening, May 4th, we're going to take a Caribbean cruise or a Caribbean cruise, either one. As part of our annual cabaret fundraising party, a great opportunity to have fun with friends and make new friends. Stay tuned for more details. Again, how many days until cabaret? 47. Wow, we're aligned already. Great. I told you we would be fully present with each other, and we will be fully present on May 4th, Friday evening, the cabaret party. So with that, I invite you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I think it will touch your heart, stir your spirits, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. We're put on this earth not to leave things the way that they were, but to interact with each other and with nature's harmony so as to enrich all that we touch. So let our being in the world become a mark of gracefulness, intelligence, and loving concern. And may this time together, the thoughts, the music, the conversation that we share encourage us in these noble ends. May it help us to become more faithful and effective stewards of the many lives and of the planet that we cherish. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And please join with me in reading the words of affirmation in today's program. May we find the courage to live our faith, to speak our truth, and to strive together for a world where freedom abounds, peace prevails, and justice is done. May we know the fullness of love without fear and of security without oppression. May we hold one another in the deep and tender places of compassion and know that the divine spark within makes soulmates of us all. And in the spirit of soulmates, please turn and exchange a warm greeting with your neighbors. Please be seated. And at this time, we would invite the children to come forward for the message for all ages. Good morning, everyone. So I don't really have a story to tell you today, but I do have a message, and the message is a song. And there are going to be some pictures up there that you can watch as I'm singing this song to you. And the message is actually not an answer. It doesn't give you an answer. It asks you a question. And so as we're singing the song, I'd like for you to think about the question that the song is asking, OK? And it's called These Hands. Some hands have held a world together. Some hands have fought in wars forever. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? And some hands have blessed a million people. Some hands help free the world from evil. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? Because the world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? Some hands can stop life from dying. Some hands comfort a baby crying. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? Because the world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? I want to sing it from my heart. I want to hear it in the wind till it blows around the world and comes back again. And all that we can ask is for ours to be free, to use them when we want for whatever. They give voice to a nation. Some hands wrote the times they are a-changing. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? The world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? So tell me, what shall I do with these hands of mine? So what was the question in the song? It was repeated lots of times. What shall I do with my hands? And what shall I do with my hands to make this a better world? I think that's what it's kind of asking us. And your hands are kind of representative of your whole bodies. What are you as a person going to do to make this a better world? So anybody have any idea what you can do that might be helpful? There were some ideas that were up there and that I sang about other than holding a baby close, becoming a doctor, and helping to heal people. Even as you're in school, there are all kinds of good things you can do to make your school a much more inclusive place where everybody feels welcome. So that's one of the things we can do with our hands. Any other ideas? Well, you just kind of think about that question. And as you go out to your classes today, I'm going to invite you all to join me on the refrain as we're singing our kids out. Time for class. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? The world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? So I have two readings to share this morning, the first from Francis Moore LaPay's book, Democracy's Edge. When Texas Wesleyan College announced that it was moving to a more upscale part of Fort Worth, Texas, the college was reacting to the decay of the neighborhood. But if the college moved out, the neighborhood had virtually no chance of recovery, because the campus provided the last point of stability on which to eventually rebuild that neighborhood. So in response to this move, allied communities of Terrant, ACT, a broad-based citizen organization comprised mostly of moderate and low-income blacks, Hispanics, and whites, they contacted the board of trustees of the college and the president and asked for a meeting. The Reverend Terry Boggs recalls that, to prepare, we conducted a two and a half hour role play. We went over every eventuality, and at the end of it, we thought we were ready. At the appointed hour, all of us, 15 laypersons and pastors, arrived at the parlor off the president's office. And there we saw chairs lined up in two rows, all facing a table where the president was to sit. So immediately, we started rearranging the furniture so that we could all sit in a circle. ACT organizer Perry Perkins explains what happened next. At that point, the president's assistant walked in. What are you doing? He asked. And we replied, we want a meeting, not a lecture. We were polite, but our actions communicated that we were an organization with some power. And we deliberately created a certain tension. Our action produced some discomfort that the president and his assistant could not ignore that they had to deal with. We created a public moment that succeeded in focusing people's attention. And it worked. And the college ended up recommitting itself to the community. In its disciplined initiative, ACT had remade the power relationship, not through nastiness, but by creating enough tension to make those with more power aware that they had to take seriously the voices of those whom they had perceived to be powerless. Typically, Americans think of power in the form of money, law, force, status. But once we understand power as a relationship among people, many new possibilities begin to open up. In a similar vein, this poem, Hope is a Long, Slow Thing by Marge Piercy. She writes, I became a feminist, but I didn't get it all. So I have committed myself to the Church of Perpetual Subservience. I protested. I demonstrated. But still, war went on. So I have realized that politics is useless, and I have joined the Junior League instead. They have wonderful lunches. I made phone calls for my candidate, but little happened. So I'll never vote again. The progress is never individual. A wave crashes on our shore, traveling all the way from Africa, storming, eroding the cliff, grinding it down. But the same water is not what moved. We are droplets in a wave. Maybe I cannot, with my efforts, displace a rock, but the energy of the movement can force it from the way. Look back. My great-grandmother was killed in a pogrom. My grandmother gave birth to 11 children in a tenement, eating potatoes only sometimes. And my mother had to leave school in the 10th grade to work as a chambermaid that salesmen chased around the dirty bed. Nothing changed by itself, but was changed by work. And history records no progress that people did not sweat and dare to push. Along we is the power that moves the rock. Wonderful music. So everybody sleep well last night? I'm not someone who personally has a hard time sleeping. My head hits the pillow. I'm pretty much out until my bladder wakes me up a few hours later. And then I'm probably good until about sunrise. So rarely have I been upset or anxious enough to have my sleep disrupted or my dream life tainted by some untoward turn of events in the larger world. Now, to be sure, as an elementary school student who was taught to duck and cover when the air raid siren sounded, well, fantasies of nuclear holocaust would keep me awake. But that was more than 50 years ago. And then Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. After November 8, 2016, I slept fitfully and often awoke with this sense of unreality. That really just happened. And I'd only begun to come to terms with the electoral outcome, and the inauguration took place, and my agitation spiked again. So I'm hardly exaggerating when I say that the last election ranked close to 9-11 as an emotional disruptor in my life. Now, when it comes to our national politics, I'm typically a fairly non-anxious person. I was a polysine major in undergraduate school, so I know something about how the American political system works. I know about the fickleness of the American voter, the vagaries of the electoral college. So none of this hardly surprises me. And having now lived through some 11 presidencies, I have known disappointment. But even the tainted 2000 election that propelled George W. Bush into office did not exact the psychological toll that this latest one did.  It has to do with a particular individual who, as commentators across the political spectrum have agreed, is the least qualified person ever to occupy our nation's highest office. Now to her sorrow, Hillary Rodden Clinton once used the epithet deplorable to describe candidate Trump's supporters. That was an insensitive and elitist comment, and it probably benefited her rival. But deplorable is not too strong a term to apply to the candidate and now to the president himself. And that, my friends, is what keeps me up at night. And it's not just the policy positions that Donald Trump has taken. The scaling back of environmental and workplace protections, the crippling of the Affordable Care Act, tax reform that exacerbates inequality, draconian immigration guidelines, a shoot from the hip approach to international relations, the padding of our nation's already bloated defense budget to name just a few. The United States has weathered and experienced and overcome such extreme policy shifts in the past, and we probably will again. So the challenge that we face today, I believe, is of a different order entirely. And it is reflected, at least in part, in Mr. Trump's misogyny, his mendacity, his recklessness, his self-dealing, his willful ignorance, his spitefulness, and his pugnacity that an individual possessing those characteristics command so much power today is chilling and that so many others in key leadership positions have become the president's enablers and his apologists seems inconceivable. Now until recently, I wasn't quite sure how to frame this issue, how to look past all the bluff and the bluster and the tweet storms and the rabble rousing in order to get down to the heart of the matter and the real underlying source of my deep concern. And then I came across this article by a guy named W. Robert Connor, Professor Emeritus of Classics at Princeton University. And the focus of this particular article was demagoguery. Connor takes us back to ancient times, the time when the city of Athens was embroiled in the Peloponnesian War. And the war was not going well for the Athenians. And so following the death of that city's great statesman and general Pericles, leadership passed to an opportunistic politician by the name of Cleon. And Connor writes, he seemed not to have any fresh solutions for Athens' difficulty, but he spoke and he acted in unprecedented ways. As far as we know, Cleon was the first individual to whom the label demagogue was applied. Apparently the comic playwright Aristophanes coined the term. Demagogue is a cognate created from the Greek words for people and to lead. One so described leads the people, but more in the manner of a pied piper than someone guided by a coherent policy platform. And so according to the Greek historian Thucydides, Cleon was this magnetic speaker and it was his oratorical skills that made him a favorite among the people. But any ideas that he presented were beside the point. What one of him numerous rabid followers was his skill at expressing and manipulating their emotions. Demagogues don't worry about consistency or the practicality of their proposals. There may be nothing at the core, Connor writes, except a vacuum that sucks into it cliches and slogans and factoids and fabrications. But because the emotional bond the demagogue has forged is so strong no argument can pierce the thick armor of his followers' loyalty. And so Professor Connor asked the reader to consider parallels between Cleon's time now 2,500 years ago and our own. Demagogue, he writes, has the ability to transform itself into autocracy. If one by one the institutions that resist the aggrandizement of power are eroded or destroyed. If much of the foregoing seems vaguely familiar, it is because we've been exposed to enough of President Trump's mass rallies to have a pretty clear idea of what demagoguery looks and sounds like. He stirs the fire of discontent with his broadsides against media figures, political rivals, the special counsel, the intelligence agencies, and then he combines all of that with lavish praise for autocratic and repressive practices. Professor Connor finds all of this deeply troubling. Peter Slaterdick is one of Europe's best known public intellectuals and he echoes these concerns. Trump and leaders like him, he says, are rage entrepreneurs, fear mongers. His true significance, Slaterdick says, lies in the way that he instinctively subverts the norms of modern government. And so instead of waiting for the crisis to impose his decrees, his decrees get him the emergencies that he needs and the playground for madness is vast. I don't think it's too great a stretch to say we're headed toward a crisis of democracy that we downplay and we dismiss to our peril. The stakes, I think, are that high and yet I don't think a lot of us are convinced of the immediacy of the threat but we certainly ought to be. And that threat needs to be lifted up as often as necessary and in as many venues as possible including in our faith communities. An old memory prompted me to share these concerns today. In 1973, I was 22 years old and had just landed in Berkeley, California to begin studying for the Unitarian Universalist Ministry. And that first semester there, my wife Trina and I volunteered to teach church school at the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. And so for several months every Sunday we crossed the bay in order to fulfill our commitment. On one occasion, however, we were free of responsibility and were thus able to attend services in the cavernous sanctuary where the Reverend David Rankin, the highly esteemed senior minister, routinely preached to large and appreciative audiences. 1973, November, Richard Nixon was in office. Evidence of political dirty tricks and obstruction of justice in the Watergate Affair was mounting. Months would still pass before the president would finally be forced from office. But that morning, November 1973, David Rankin said that the facts are now incontrovertible and he called on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings. As I recall, he was the first Unitarian Universalist minister to take that prophetic step. In our own time, the Reverend William Barber is convinced that our own political culture needs a similar jolt. The moral Mondays movement that he helped launch in North Carolina has now gone national and is part of a much larger effort called Unstoppable Together. Worried about the fate of our democratic institutions and the declining fortunes of our ordinary citizens, Reverend Barber is challenging us in his words to be the moral defibrillators of our time, shocking the heart of this nation in order to build a movement of resistance, hope, justice, and love. Reverend Barber is not at this point in time beating the drum for impeachment and quite frankly, neither am I because given the current composition of Congress, that is simply not a realistic expectation. But for the rot, for the rot at the highest levels of our government to be cut away, there has to be a strong recommitment to the democratic norms and principles that in our complacency we have sometimes taken for granted and failed to protect. And so what is called for today is a sustained uprising. Because it goes to the heart of the things that many of us care so deeply about. This isn't just a political battle. The values that are at stake here are spiritual ones and they are moral ones and they include our children's very lives, currently threatened by easy access to deadly weapons that our legislators have made possible. The fate of the planet as the pace of climate change accelerates while lawmakers curry favor with the fossil fuel industry. A widening gulf between the haves and the have nots due to regressive tax policies, business friendly right to work laws and corporate welfare.  So these are just a few of the spiritual moral values being transgressed by an increasingly autocratic regime and the present peril fortunately has captured the attention of a wide spectrum of Americans who in last year alone participated in 8,700 different protests across the country. The Me Too, the hashtag Me Too movement. Its stock has continued to rise but it also drew its initial energy from women who were dismayed over Donald Trump's sordid past. And we have seen nothing like this really since the early 1970s as tens of millions of people including I'm sure some in this room are rising up to protect the spirit of democracy, the spirit of brother and sisterhood, the spirit of equity and fair mindedness, the spirit of forbearance and open mindedness and the spirit above all of truthfulness. So what will it take for this spirit of resistance, this moment of resistance to succeed? Well first the recognition that it will take much more than a moment and that these powerful opposing interests are awash in resources and they have plenty of arrows in their quiver. And so a successful resistance effort will require constancy and a willingness to persevere. Where do we get the energy for such a prolonged struggle? Well from indignation, indignation, a fitting natural response to repeated offenses against human dignity and the degradation of our common life. Indignity, it's related to anger but indignity is much less likely to hinder our ability to think clearly and to keep faith with our moral compass.  It makes us self-righteous. As Ursula Gaine recently wrote, it fuels not positive activism but repression, obsession and vengeance which we see too often among those who have given their allegiance to the alt-right. So we need to stay in touch with our indignation which is not too terribly difficult since every week brings some fresh insult to our political and our social sensibilities. But indignation alone is not gonna do the trick. For meaningful action to occur we also need some positive sentiment. Indignation needs to be wedded to hope. As Paul said in his letter to the Galatians, let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. What does hope look like? You need it only to be on the Capitol Square last Wednesday at 1 p.m. to see hope in full flower. You saw some images of that demonstration earlier. For years the National Rifle Association has crafted these permissive rules that have helped to create more carnage in this country than in any other developed land. But on Wednesday, thousands of high school students, junior high students, teachers, moms and dads, grandparents, community activists, and clergy marched, chanted and demanded meaningful and immediate change in our state's gun laws. As I watched, a middle-aged man in an NRA hat and slunk away from the crowd affected one hopes by the determination of this budding crop of new activists. Over the years I think too many of us became resigned to the gun lobby's sway over its morally challenged legislative pawns. And our fatalism on the gun control issue as George Zornick observes, at some point became self-reinforcing and so the Second Amendment absolutists prevailed over and over again. But the members now of Generation Z aren't accepting that and they have discovered that even if they do not yet have the vote, they have a powerful and influential voice. And although gun control groups have been springing up like weeds all across the country, ever since Sandy Hook Massacre, these students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School may at last have brought us to the tipping point.  They were also pretty darn savvy. Within four days after those shootings in Florida, these students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had given their nascent movement a name. Never again. A concrete policy goal. Stricter background checks for all gun buyers. A plan for a national protest. The March for Our Lives schedule for next weekend. Emily Witt notes that the student leaders knew that the headline industrial complex grants only a very narrow window of attention. But these students made the most of that window and they widened it. Now these students may have been coached by their elders or they may simply have had this intuitive sense of what you need to do to build a movement. You begin with passion and with a very clear sense of purpose, what you want to see done. You figure out how to engage the opposition on your own terms. Enough with all the prayers and condolences. Let's look to the elephant in the room. You establish a network and you keep expanding it until it cannot be ignored. And you find ways to leverage media coverage which in turn keeps the pressure on our legislators.  As you can tell, I don't have a whole lot of confidence that the demagogue currently degrading his eye office and undermining our democracy.  But a patient and resistant and persistent resistance can in all of its myriad manifestations, such a resistance can prevent Mr. Trump from turning his worst impulses into public policy. Now since each one of us as individuals is limited as to how much time we've got and how many resources that we can expend on this effort, we need to find ourselves, each of us an issue or two that touches us most profoundly, engage with it and stick to it. And if there is any kind of silver lining to the current presidency, it is that Mr. Trump has spawned an insurgency that it may be impossible to suppress. The political arena today is being flooded with voices that the powerful once felt safe to ignore and that they can do so no longer. As Chuck Collins of the Institute of Public Policy put it, there is a fundamental realignment going on in our society. Younger people especially are not buying the old stories. Some kick-ass movements are emerging and as a member of the older generation, Collins writes, my job is either to support them or just get the hell out of the way. Blessed be Adam. Our Unitarian Universal Service Committee does wonderful work throughout the globe promoting justice, sustainability and peace. Your gifts today will be given in their entirety to our Unitarian Universal Service Committee. Please be generous. Just thank you for your monetary gifts either to First Unitarian Society or to the institutions that we support. And we also are thankful for those who volunteer their time to help our services run smoothly and today those people included Mark Schultz, our sound operator and Smiley was our lay minister, Corinne Perrin, the greeter at the door when you came in, our ushers Michael Lossy and Smiley, Christopher McKelvie and Karen Jager. Hospitality will be provided by Jeannie Hills and Blaise Thompson, so we thank all of you. And we do also gather each week as a community of memory and of hope and to this time and place, we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where these might be received and celebrated and shared. There was one entry in our Cares of the Congregation book that lives outside the middle doors today. And so we all wish that we can send, we hope that we can all send healing thoughts to Glenna Ellis, one of our elders here who is frequently here on Sunday mornings. But Glenna unfortunately suffered a heart attack in the early hours of this morning and is now resting at the UU intensive care across UW intensive care across the way. So our very best wishes and our heartfelt prayers to Glenna Ellis this morning. And in addition to that concern, just mentioned, I would also acknowledge any unspoken joys or sorrows that remain among us. And as a community of concern and caring, we also hold those close to our hearts. Let us participate in, share in just a moment or two of silence in the spirit of hope and empathy. And so by virtue of our brief time together today, may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. Please turn now to our closing hymn, number 163. And I invite you to rise in body or in spirit. Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. We close with these powerful words from Audrey Lord. I have come to believe that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our brothers and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned. We can sit in our safe corners as mute as bottles and we will still be no less afraid. We are going to die. If not sooner than later, whether or not we have ever spoken ourselves. My silence has not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. So let us recall the times we have remained silent. And then let us find our voices. Blessed be.


You can sound confident and have anxiety at the same time. It's okay. It's messy, it's okay. You can look tough and cry. It's okay, it's messy, it's okay. You can be beautiful and feel ugly. It's messy, it's part of our humanity. It's light and it's shade. You can love people and be sick of people. It's all good, it's okay.


Yeah, so I guess some practical tips for becoming a full-time activist. Number one, this is the most important thing that you need, otherwise you're not going to, is a burning desire to make a difference. Okay, you have to have a very strong purpose, it has to be purpose-driven. You have to be driven by what's going on to animals and you have to really have a burning desire. If you don't have that, don't even bother, because it's going to be all fun and interesting at the start, it's going to get hard, there's going to be ups and downs, not everyone's going to always support you, your friends aren't always going to support you, other vegans aren't always going to support you, meat eaters are going to attack you, so if you don't have that driving purpose, there's no point even going for it. Like you really have to have that and I still have it and the reason I started was because I had it, it was really pronounced burning desire in my chest and I couldn't even sleep and when I did sleep I woke up, thought I just wasted another few hours sleeping, what am I doing? I need to do this. Now you need that, okay. Now then there's a, that will lead you through the journey and it will keep you speaking for the animals and don't ever forget that and if you do forget it, like for a moment, go back to the reason why you started, it's always about the why, the why will keep you going and keep you fueled and then practically like how do you like on a practical level do become a full-time activist, the why will drive you there? So you'll find a way, the way will be shown because your passion and your purpose will be so pronounced that it will just methodically lead you there, but the way it happened for me, like this is my scenario might be different to yours, I was working 40 hours a week as a bricklayer, a laborer shoveling sand and mixing concrete and stacking bricks in the in the heat getting a very mediocre wage, it was very small wage and I decided to quit that job right because it was taking, sucking away too much of my energy and I really wanted to start filming videos and then I by virtue of some type of synchronicity got offered a job like two weeks later doing three days a week as a traffic controller. Now a traffic controller in Australia you're going to get really good money, you can work night shift, you can kind of select your hours with some places, you can do part-time, select your hours, it's a really good ticket to have a traffic controller's ticket. Now I was making the same amount of money in three days, standing on the roadside, setting up signs and stop slow or whatever or sometimes just on my phone debating with meat eaters. I was making the same amount of money in three days and I was working a 40 hour week as a laborer for a bricklayer so then I could balance a mediocre amount of work, I was eating oats and potatoes pretty cheap, I wasn't drinking alcohol, I was riding my bike everywhere and then I could balance the rest of that time focusing on building a social media presence and speaking for the animals. So that progressed into people seeing that I had something and that I was purpose driven and I was speaking for the animals really well and then many people wanted to get behind me and once I had built up that foundation of people wanting to get behind me I swallowed my pride and started a Patreon and accepted help because I wouldn't accept help before that, I thought I could do both but then you make the decision between splitting 60% of your time for the animals and 40% of the time trying to survive and I made the Patreon then. I didn't just make a Patreon, I built up a social media presence and started really getting into it and dedicated every single moment spare that I had to it and I learned how to film and edit because I was driven by that purpose and you know that's how it worked. Now when I went full-time activist I was a full-time activist every moment waking moment all I talked about or thought about was how I'm going to get the next piece of content how I'm going to edit this video or how's the video going and where can I go and film to you know create an impact. These were all I was concerned with and it consumed me to the point where I didn't couldn't even build friendships with people because I was too concerned with you know making this impact. That's how much it overtook my entire life and most people don't want to do that to be honest with you most people aren't prepared to make that type of sacrifice to get where they need to go and then when they get this platform a bunch of disappointments come through like oh my god we're not all on the same team oh my god I'm getting an attack left right and center so um that's how it happens like this this doesn't just fall on your lap it's not gonna be like that for some people they're really lucky they bring something to the table right at the start and they really propel themselves into you know the higher levels of the social media world but when you've got an explicit animal rights message people don't want to hear her for starters so getting a following as an explicit animal rights activist is kind of it's kind of hard because people don't really want to hear this unapologetic message like any type of campaign any type of disruptive activity that you do to create media like I'm always saying going vegan go vegan be vegan everything this that the other be vegan is always the answer it's always a consistent message unless you're vegan you're paying for animals to be abused it's always a consistent message no matter what avenue you take to spread that so you should apply those principles principles to your disruptive activism as well if you can get a really good solid message in with your disruption you know that compels people or makes them feel accountable and wanting to go vegan or like not even then obviously disruptions don't turn people vegan they leave messages in people's minds that are a seed and like advertisement and then the sleeper effect takes place and then they that that seed might flourish later on or that's what they were talking about or I think these things can be done not not as effective and I think they can be done more effectively depending on the message how strong the message is Gary Rofsky is one of the most experienced animal rights activists ever and one of the most effective ever and he always says no matter what you do no matter what activism you do it has to be education based right now if you're going to do your speeches at the school it's of course it's education based you're sitting down you're educating people right so if you're going to do your disruptions try to squeeze in a little bit of education there even if it's sound bites or phrases um you know everything that we do should be even even direct action you know liberations you know if you can do some type of education off the back of that even if you're covering your face and doing a post an anonymous post sending it to ALF to post whatever if you're doing all of these things um it's the best the most effective way to do all of them is with some type of level of education if you're just educating amazing but if you're coupling what you do tash with education that could even be more effective because you're gonna get that education out to sometimes a million two million people or the media everything gets much more complicated when you get a bigger platform and things like that trust me so everything's gets a lot more complicated especially in the vegan movement there's lots of complicated people in there so one one piece of advice that i would give to you guys here no matter what happens right always keep your activism focused on the animals and it's going to feel hard at the times because the movement is full of different ideologies and political views and all of these things and they're going to want to get you into it they're going to want to get you into this side topic of whatever it is but what you got to do in that scenario is make animal rights content in response make animal rights content in response um there's sometimes going to be hard i respond to people about outside issues sometimes but publicly on my platforms i respond by making animal rights content someone in the vegan movement saying some stuff or make animal rights content and that will keep you on track just remember always remember that otherwise you're going to put all of your energy into debating in the vegan movement about things that don't have nothing to do with animals and that's where you're going to burn out and you'll know when it comes up because it's going to come up it probably already has probably already has but uh you'll know and you go oh this is what joey was talking about what do you think activism is it's attention seeking what you want no one to pay attention while you're in the corner talking to yourself fucking attention seek do what do what you got to do like oh like they don't um so if they don't want to get attention fuck them but if you're willing to do what it uh takes to get the attention and you have courage do that because that's what's going to get the vegan message attention if the message make sure your message is on point that's what matters don't matter you get that attention your vegan message has to be on point obviously no violence but you know um be creative but don't let don't let people bring you down the the brighter the the brighter you shine the more people want to dim your light this is the way it is that you shine too bright in their eyes they want to bring you down don't matter if they're on they claim they're on the same team as you whatever animals team don't worry about all of that um there's got you're going to have a few people that you can trust in the movement and you can work with um and don't be too concerned about being able to please everyone in the movement or anything like that remember you work for the animals um that's the most important thing you're speaking for the pigs and the chickens and the cows they don't give a shit about human and shit they don't care about that they just want to stop suffering so um yeah that'll be my best advice stay focused on the animals don't worry about trying to please everyone get the attention that the animals need and make sure your message is very strong for when you get that attention so that people aren't going to get confused


Welcome to Shrink Rap Hawaii. Boy, have I got a show for you, I think. My name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Hawaii and with me today I have Dr. Dean Nelson. Welcome Dean. Hello, how I went on the show. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Steve. So, yeah, I'm really glad I did and I'm really glad you accepted. It was all kind of last minute and somebody once said if it wasn't for the last minute nothing would have happened. And no, really, it's a surprise. I'm thinking, is he really going to show up? He showed up, you took over, it's all yours now. So you sent me all this information that I just read about two hours ago about your life and I thought the most interesting piece for me was the little piece that you sent around, I guess, to the people that were going to your high school reunion? Yes, yeah. Oh yeah. And that's how I found out that you had also been a dancer. Yes.  Yeah. All right, so this is your life. Where did you grow up? Who's going to traipse in? Who's going to traipse in? Do you remember Little Murray? No. When I pulled the angel wings off of him. No, okay. Where did you grow up? I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm an original Norwegian bachelor farmer. I'm from Lake Wolbigon. Oh, what? No kidding. Yes, absolutely. Oh, wow. What town? St. Paul. Yeah. And how'd you get out? I heard about airplanes. I know it sounds true, but at those point only wealthy people flew. Right. And I had lost my scholarship in football or my ability to play football and I found out that I couldn't afford the school I went to. Where was that? I went to a small college, the only one that probably let me play called Luther College in Dekora, Iowa. And so then I had to pay for my own schooling. But you got a football scholarship? Well, let's just say it didn't cost me anything to go to school there. They never called them scholarships. What position did you play? I played wide receiver and I returned kickoffs. Oh, so you could run? Yes. I actually was very fast, very, very fast. So you left there? Yes. And then what? Came here. I came to Hawaii when I was in Hawaii. What was the connection? Well, you know, there was a profound underground. This is, of course, most of people my age, I'm assuming. We're influenced by the Vietnam War. That is what marked you as a male. You had to figure out what you were going to do about Vietnam. In those days, Hawaii, the University of Hawaii, had no out of state tuition. Do you know what it cost me to go to school in Hawaii for one semester? What? $86.25. And that was your registration fee? Yeah, that was, no, that was your whole fee. That was tuition? That was tuition. So it was like, stay cold and maybe go to Vietnam and stay in Hawaii or, I mean, Minnesota or fly to Hawaii and stay in school and continue studying. Let me go that again, you know, it was just like, wow. So I'd gone on my first plane ride in California. So you knew nobody? I knew no one. Wow. That's Hutzpah. 1968. Again, a Hutzpah in stupidity. Hutzpah has some sort of bravery. This was just stupidity. Wow. And you were studying what? I did the basic anthropology, sociology. I don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up courses. Yeah. And then what? Well, then I ran into a brilliant teacher of the dawns who's still here. Someone I consider my mentor and still my first teacher, quote, unquote Betty Jones of Dance As We Dance, and I started studying dance. And then all of a sudden all the lights went on because now I could use the physicality that I was really longing for that I missed from football with artistry and with the full discipline of everything on board. So you were a dance major? They didn't have a dance major in that period. So I finished my degree and then I went on to get my MFA. Oh, wow. Wow. At UH. No, I got my MFA from Utah, University of Utah. Oh, with a concentration in dance? It was a choreography. Oh, wow. Yeah, a choreographer or dancer, whatever. So then I started my own company. But that's all kind of sorted. Sorted? Pretty sorted beginnings, right? Pretty exciting. It was a very, very delightful way of spending one's youth. You only get a young body one. Right, it's beautiful. Yeah, that was fun. And then what? Well, then I had a period where I realized that I was 31 and where I was going to be at 40. It was one of those crossroads, I think, maybe you hit at 30. I realized that I didn't want to be either that physically in pain or that poor, and I made a huge shift into medicine. And what did you do? Well, there were some years in there because I was scared of science and so I sold real estate and just kind of, I call them my lost years where I just really couldn't put the pieces of my life together, quite frankly. But I had fallen in love and I was in Seattle. Anyway, it really was the discipline of dance. You and I chatted a little bit before the show about the discipline of the arts. I think classic musicians and probably dancers are some of the most disciplined. So a light went off that said, if you have the discipline to dance and what it takes, the everydayness and the pain and the poverty as well, you can apply that to anything. And so it took me longer or harder to accomplish the sciences because I had to go back and start all the way up to algebra to do the pre-meds. Well, you slipped something in there that interests me. You said in Seattle you fell in love. Well, as a lady, I'm sorry, there's no real short story. I met my wife at a Buddhist seminary. Sounds like the name of a book. So I met my wife at a Buddhist seminary and at that point I had invested in a sailboat. I didn't have a house. She had a house in Seattle, so I moved out to be with her. Where does the sailboat figure?  And we ran it as a charter business down in St. Thomas. Is this really where you want to be going? Did the wife come to St. Thomas? No, I eventually gave up on the boat and moved with her. Aha, aha, aha. Okay, and so you started with the sciences. You went back to undergraduate classes and stuff. Actually, I didn't need to go to undergraduate. I did a crash course and it was called pre-med, which is all sciences, all the way up to physics and calculus. And then what happened? And then I went into Hellfield and a light went off. It was one of those light went off because I had a prediction of all things by an astrologer. He says, you're going to continue working with the body but with energy. Seriously, seriously. And the light went out.  This is a weird field. He says, we work with the body's energy and I went, I'm there. And it wasn't totally chiropractic, however, that really excited me or what I was passionate about. It was energy. We work with energy. The true authorities, in my opinion, on energy in the body are the Chinese, the Chinese medicine and Tibetan medicine. So eventually I just, chiropractic was what my degree is in but my real study was in Chinese medicine and Tibetan medicine.  I'm a licensed chiropractor, licensed acupuncturist. And unlicensed, strange. So when did that become your full-time life? 1988. I think I was finished school with it. I started doing body work in 1988 and got the degree in 92. And so I've been doing that for 24 years. And that was where? That was in Minnesota. I went back to Minnesota. Yes, yes. My wife was a flight attendant for Northwest and so we needed to be a base where she had seniority, so we went there. And you stayed there till when?  And Hanai. And I was tired of getting stared at in grocery stores. In Minnesota he was unusual. He was unusual, yes. And of course I was chomping at the bit to come back to Hawaii. I've always considered this home from the moment I stepped off the plane. It's funny, people either get that feeling or they're gone in two years it seems. Yeah, that's right. It's almost like you don't bother to get to know for two years. I mean, I don't mean to be callous, but there's no sense. There's no sense, right? Right, right, right, right. And so you felt like this was home immediately? Yeah, actually Kailua, right. I agree, but just don't say that. K-word, K-word. Obama, the old red stage, right? Right. Okay, so we rented a house on the beach when I went to school here in 1968. I was just going, there couldn't possibly be a better place to raise a family. Wow, wow. So I came back. So did you immediately start doing chiropractic work when you came back? I did. I opened a clinic in Polly Palms and because of the acupuncture and the various modalities I was bringing in, I was lucky and we succeeded quite well. Is that what I read? Is that what the Wind Horse? Yeah, Wind Horse Healthcare. That's a combination of all the things you do? Wind Horse is a Tibetan word meaning lungta or the chi, the life force that powers you. And if you get that right in the body most everything takes care of itself. And you do that with acupuncture and chiropractic? The actual treatment modality, I mean this is so sweet of you. The actual treatment modality involved a very strange and wonderful form of chiropractic called network combined with cranial, combined with acupuncture, combined with herbs and then the key thing was as I taught meditation every week at night. So you were almost, you were signing, if you came to me it was because you wished to also learn about your mind and how your mind affected your body. And that was the, still is the pivotal piece about my approach to healthcare. That fascinates me of course, you know. Do you think? The mind-body connection, right? Yes. That one was the one that was the most fascinating to me. It is to this day. You just came back. Yeah. You were gone for six months? Yeah. Again, what has happened is again we had a wonderful life and we became empty nesters and at that point I wanted to be on retreat more. I wanted to, I think Haviv says it well. He says, I've become a heroin addict for the sublime state. And so at this point I have been a Buddhist now for 40, 44 years, 42, yeah, 42 years and I wanted to be on retreat more and more. I wanted my life empowered by a retreat mind more and more. And so now we go on retreats in an RV. Way meaning? My wife and myself, who's also a Buddhist. Not that there's, I mean anything particularly special about being a Buddhist but those are the trainings that we bring. So where did you go? Each year we kind of design something, you know, and my wife had never been to the Canadian Rockies so most of our trip this year was focused on the Canadian Rockies but our idea is to, we call ourselves sight snobs. We try to find isolated pukas where we're alone and virtually can't see anybody and I'm not bothering anybody and also not bothered by anybody. So can you paint me a picture? Wait, I think we have to take a break. They're whispering in my ear and we'll come back very shortly and remind me I want to go back and I want you to paint me a picture of what that retreat looked like. Okay, stay right there. Don't touch your mouse. Aloha, my name is Josh Green. I serve a senator from the Big Island on the Kona side and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on Think Tech is called Health Care in Hawaii. I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting Think Tech. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We're giving you the best tips and with our best health coach here. So Viva health coach. Viva la comida saludable. Hey everybody, my name is David Chang and I'm the new host of a new show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you secrets on giving yourself a smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests and great mentors of mine from the political, military, business, nonprofit. You name it. So it's something for everybody. So Dr. Dean, we left off you. We're going to paint me a picture of your retreat. How many? So I can have a feel for what that was like. The retreat is just so marvelous. After a while, the only kind of quote unquote help or shrine room you could say that I need or meditation room I need was nature. In some ways, from the very get-go, nature has always been my church. And it works very well with Buddhism, especially the kind of practices I was doing was just simply being nature. I said because I was stupid, I really needed the power of nature to help me into this state of presence. It's not particularly esoteric.  What opens up the monkey mind, right? So once you start to diminish, this is an aside, I just saw a scientific study saying that we think 50,000 thoughts a day. I figured that out. It's about one per second. I mean it's really, really, really bizarre. Most of those are completely dumbing down our game. They're just stupefying us. So of those, 90% are negative. Wow.  You thought of them yesterday. So it's really a kind of a state of the mind. So at some point in my life, I wanted to just see what 25,000 a day seemed like or something like that. Can you do that? Yes. There's no question. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. So our retreat is unique in a sense that we're not a place where you can meet, you blend a little bit of life. You could say we don't. You blend a little of mundanity, meaning cooking and such with your life and walks and such. But I think the unique part about it, when I tell this to other men, I'm sorry if it sounds a little, I don't know, humorous, is that we don't speak to each other. We don't even say good morning until two o'clock in the afternoon.  We just make our tea and then we practice. We do meditation practices until about one or two. And the silence part of it is one of the key things that's made at work. And so we're always in those astoundingly beautiful places. So we both find individual places where it's quite secluded and then we do our practices. So what would I see if I'm watching a movie of this between, I don't know, seven and one or two o'clock in the afternoon? What am I going to see you doing? Well, I mean the classic practice for first just reducing the amount of noise is called mindfulness. And of course it's the darling now, but it's kind of considered a remedial tool for just getting the noise down to some level where you can have some joy in your life, where you can actually be present enough to not be your own kind of worst enemies. And sometimes mindfulness is actually translated as making profound friends with yourself. Which sounds simple, but if you say to somebody, you're going to be quiet for an hour, many and most people completely panic. Right? It's true. I was working with a client the other day, she couldn't do five minutes. I've had Navy SEALs say they would rather go on missions in armed forces than have to do meditation because it's so profound to actually meet your own mind. But there's really nowhere out but in. You have got to at some point in your life. But still, I don't know what this movie looks like. I'm watching you do mindfulness meditation or whatever you're doing. So I set up, I get one dog, she gets one dog, I set up my red chair somewhere. A dog, DOG dog. Yeah, we take dogs with us on the retreat. I set up in the first hour, I probably do some sort of meditation. But I also work with intention and motivation. So I'm setting up intention and motivation. Those things, I'm really contemplating what you're trying to do, what do you hope to affect. Can you give me a sample? When you're setting up intention and motivation. You intend to clarify your mind to benefit the world. Simple stuff like that. But right, don't you do that? Isn't that why you get up in the morning? I get up because I know I'm going to have coffee. In some ways, I need a positive reward to leave the word coffee is mantra. Coffee is the word mantra. Coffee, coffee, coffee. That's it. Okay, so you got up for the word mantra, but then you go and now you're gone. And then I know I have it very... I don't know if it's... See, I'm talking about myself. I told you that's my fault. No, I love it. It's much easier for me.  Then I do what in some circles known as morning pages. I write a thousand words or two thousand words or whatever. But in November, I call it non-no-ri-mo. Do you know about that? No, I don't know that. There's this project of writing a book in one month every year that's done by tens of thousands, if not a hundred, around the world. No, I didn't know that. And you submit it and some of them get published. Wow. So that's the goal to write. For me, it's 30,000 words in 30 days. No. Right. So I'm doing it. Yay, Steve, this month. So it's the same thing, though. It's my morning pages, right? So I just sort of stream of consciousness. Well, the word you used was really... We have a ritual. I have a ritual that I go through. And I actually do have a morning meditation with tea. And actually, that literally is probably the first thing I do is just literally drink tea with precision and utter appreciation and open my senses to the beauty of the birds or the waterfall. You're always in these outrageous places. Well, yeah. And I live on Kailua Beach. Yeah.  So it made me feel better about this nonsense now. I mean, it's my... Not nonsense. Don't you love it? Would you want to live your life without it? I wouldn't want to die, but I really appreciate it. I'm grateful for it. Okay, so you set your day with appreciation. You have these rituals. And then meditation is just another form of height in making your entire life a ritual. Right. In some sense. Right. So you want more of the movie filled in? Yes. Okay, so then once I do those practices... So is it that you're... I'm interrupting again. I'm sorry, but I really want to know what it looks like. So are you sitting on a log or walking with the dog? No. What are you doing? We've got these 999 folding chairs that you get at Walmart. Uh-huh. Sometimes I take a cushion with me, depending on what kind of posture I want to take. And I usually get one dog. She gets one dog. I've done my team meditation. I set up motivation and intention. And then, quite frankly, I'll spend some time on lineage. Your line of juice. For instance, in any Hawaiian protocol, you're going to listen to lineage chance first and foremost. So folks that you've got to thank for getting you there. So then I'll do lineage chance at some sort of... Your ancestors? My ancestors. Quite frankly, my lineage chance is very vast at this point. And you flesh those out almost like friends to tell you the truth. They become... They literally become a part of your retreat, these lineage holders. So you think about each one of these people. Do you say their name? I can say them very fast or I visualize them. It depends on if I want to spend time with that particular aspect of my practice. So these... But lineage is very important. Like blood relations or people who have taught you or all the most above. Most of these people have taught me, but certainly Jesus is there, Buddha is there. For instance, people who have... The people who have given their lives to see the goodness and love and aloha is said, I thank those people. I bring them into the retreat. But what about your biological lineage like your parents and people like that? Yeah, they're in there too.  They're rooting for you. They're rooting for you. They're rooting for you, right? I hope so. Yes, no, you don't even hope. They want to see you succeed. So yes, they're there, but they're not quite as high up as some other individuals. Do you have a set... Do you do the same people every day? Oh, no. No, I do different people pop up. But again, I'm just establishing the ground. Then I do relatively... I'm trying to look for... Then I do start doing what's called deity and some esoteric practices having to do with body and yogas and things like that. Mantra practices. They're sometimes called sadhanas. The main one of which I do is medicine Buddha. Tell me about medicine Buddha. I would like that. You know, I thought about it. I wonder if they'll ask me about medicine Buddha. At some point in the development of humankind a thought came that it is a marvelous thing to care for one another, to actually try to help somebody get out of pain. That took an awakening. And that lineage that you could think of as a first medicine woman, the first medicine man, the shama, that tradition shamanic, that tradition of us trying to help one another out of pain took a Buddha, took an awakening. Buddha means awake. So that practice goes back to that level of antiquity and covers all the way up to Dr. Blank Blank Now. It's a lineage of people who actually wish to care for one another and get them out of pain. So that's the lineage of medicine Buddha. So I looked up medicine Buddha, right? Yeah. And I saw this guy sitting like this. Lou. Yeah. So is that the guy, the first guy? He was actually considered a human at some point, but now it's more like a force. An awake force of compassion, caring. I mean, if you think about your healthcare givers, it's a pretty extraordinary field. Yours included. It's extraordinary that one would want to spend their lives trying to help people out of their different morasses and pains. Well, yeah. I mean, it's selfish too, right? Because it's healed by self. That's a good point, yeah. I think that's why... It's its own journey in that sense, yeah. It's why I'm in it. Yeah. Which goes into a whole other realm of interconnectedness, right? Which is what we were talking about. Sunday. Yes. In the interconnectedness, and you're talking about this illusion of separation? Yes. Mm-hmm. Can you talk a little bit about that? You know, take me back a little bit. Illusions... Well, it's feeling that we're separate from the rest of the world.  Yeah, you were talking about how we use all this energy to create this myth.   You, you survived.  Really? That's what life's about? So at some point, that becomes really, really fishy. The reason it becomes fishy is because of pucas. It's all about holes. There's holes in this fear-based model of protecting yourself where aloha comes in, where love comes in, where brilliant comes in, where luminosity comes in. And because you aren't, because you could say the ignorance that created the separation in the first place isn't as smart as the intelligence that made that paradigm, these pucas, there's holes where aloha comes in. You know you're built from love. You know you're built from aloha.  Aloha, everybody. Join us again next time on Shrink Rap Hawaii. Thank you.


Hi. Can you hear me? Yeah. Hi, my name is Nelson Nahum. I am CEO of Zadara Storage. And I'm going to present how storage as a service, and especially Zadara Storage can solve many of the problems of IT infrastructure related to storage. So what are the main storage challenges today? First of all, the obvious one is that people need a lot of capital to acquire the storage systems. Obviously, it's a capital-extensive proposition. And we want to solve that. You will see how Zadara Storage solves this problem. The other issue is that there are different storage products for different kind of workloads. So you buy a box that is very good for block. You buy a box that is very good for NAS. Another box or software for object. If you want a backup and archival or SSD storage, every different workload has a different storage box. And typically, you will buy from different vendors. And that means that you need to deal with multiple vendors, deal with different storage boxes, train your people to manage these different storage boxes. And obviously, capacity that is in one cannot be shared with in others. So this is a really big problem today. The more different boxes you have, especially from different vendors, it becomes really complicated to manage. As I say, you need to have a storage team expert on every one of these different products. There is a support problem. Storage is really important. And typically, vendors give four-hour support. Four-hour support is an expensive proposition. But still, four-hours is a very long time. And you need for service providers and IT that needs 24 by 7, you need a much faster support response. And all these problems lead to the last one that today buying storage requires extensive capacity planning, a lot of research. You want to know that you are doing the right thing. And you cannot basically shrink. You cannot say, oh, I did a mistake. I spent $100,000 on this storage box. I should buy a different one. You cannot do that. So this lead to a really extensive capacity planning and negotiation with the different vendors. And we want to solve that, obviously, this impact your agility. If you cannot go quick and you require a lot of planning and negotiation, impact your agility. This presentation is about the data, how it solves all these critical items. What we provide is enterprise storage and as a service. So we provide the same capabilities that you will have in traditional enterprise storage boxes. That means data protection feature, performance, security, snapshots, clones, remote replication, SSD caching, clustering, NFS and SMB and SAN. All these good features of enterprise storage, but in a pure as a service and OPEX model. And this can be in one of our public locations or in your own data center. So we will ship to your data center the storage, the software. We will do remote DevOps on the storage for you. It's like a cloud storage, but sit in your own data center and you will pay only for the usage. You don't pay for what you have in the data center. This come from a multi-tenant system and our software, what is really unique is in the separation between tenants. And this is how we can support multiple workloads. We can support a database running against a storage that is pure flash, block storage flash, the fastest performance possible. We support NAS systems with high capacity SATA drives, storage for archive or backup. And this workload can coexist in the same multi-tenant system. And how we do that is because we can separate really the workloads. We can have what we call a VPSA. VPSA stands for Virtual Private Storage Array. And when we create the cloud, every VPSA has a dual controller configuration and has dedicated drives. We are the only service provider that can allocate dedicated drives, physical drives per customer. So customer A may have four drives, let's say SSD drives, that are across multiple nodes. And customer B may have 10 different drives that are SATA high capacity at a lower cost per gigabyte. And each one will run different workloads. Each one of the VPSA has different controllers. It has completely separated networking. The network of VPSA1 is separated from the network of VPSA2. So we really separate the network. Every tenant feel that he has the enterprise storage with all the capabilities and the full management of the storage. But at the same time, this comes from a multi-tenant system. So the provision of the storage is instantaneously. And you can easily expand and shrink and change if you decided that the drives that you allocated are not the ones that you wanted. You can try other drives for a week and remove the drives or expand the cache or lower the cache utilization for a few hours. And we track all these actions. And basically, you pay for what you use. You don't pay for what you have installed. At the end of the day, our cloud storage is basically a physical infrastructure based on standard X86 server. We use super micro servers with Toshiba drives. And this can grow from two nodes to hundreds of nodes. We use OpenStack as part of our own implementation. And when a user create a VPSA, it decides how many drives, which type of drive, which type of controllers. We give them an IP address and a networking just for this customer. And you can see here multiple customers with multiple VPSAs. Each VPSA is completely redundant. It's a transparent failover. So it has all the performance, reliability, and data features of enterprise storage array. But it comes from a multi-tenant system. So if the customer of VPSA1 created a VPSA and he used for three months and deleted the VPSA, he will pay only for the three months. And the storage, all the resources are going back to the pool and can be used by other customers or other tenants. So we provide really good isolation between workloads. And this is why the same product can support backup storage at a lower cost per gigabyte, high performance SSD storage for databases at a higher cost per gigabyte, and anything in between. Today, in the public cloud, we are connected to Amazon and to Azure and other cloud providers. So anybody that is an Amazon customer or Azure can use our storage and mount our storage directly into the VPC of the customer. We also have a private cloud product, or it's the same product, but in the private cloud, we call this OPAS on-premise as a service. And obviously, you can use with OpenStack cloud or other cloud, VMware cloud or Microsoft. So what is OPAS? We ship the hardware to you. It's fully managed by us. We ship firewalls. We have dedicated line. We do the DevOps and support and installation remotely. It's totally paper use. You basically start creating your VPSAs like you do in the public cloud. And you will pay for the allocations and the resources that you use. Now, because we have remote operations, we can provide much, much faster response than the four-hour of typical vendors. We know immediately when a drive fail, when a hardware fail, when a software fail, the system is already integrated with the ticketing system. We probably will know before yourself. And we have the access to fix and remedy the situation. Today, we are installed worldwide. We did installations in Australia, in Japan, in Zurich, many in Europe, and many, many in US. And our response time is immediately. Basically, after a few minutes, we get the ticket. And if there is a drive failure, our DevOps team can go and replace the drive logically with another drive of the same cloud. And from time to time, you can ship the drives back to us. And we can ship you other drives. But the main point here is that we can provide 15 minutes or less response time for all the storage needs. We have a two-month try and buy capability where we will ship for two months the equipment. You can use it.  If you prefer not to do, you can ship the equipment back. And even after you decide to continue, any month or any day, you can decide, OK, I want to shrink. I want to remove this data center, return the equipment, or I want to expand. The action of getting more storage or less storage doesn't cost you anything. It's only when you consume that we track and we matter. And you are charged by the consumption itself. This is an example of the private portal. Cal Poly University is one of our customers. And for every customer, we give a private portal to provision the storage. The main thing here is that you will see your logo plus multiple regions. So our portal supports multiple regions. If you have multiple data centers, there's one portal that you can create storage in all the data centers around the world. When you create the VPSAs, you can select what we call the storage engine. Those are the storage controllers. Always we have high availability and in dual controllers. And you can decide different levels of performance, CPU, memory, et cetera. And also, you decide how many drives and the type of drives. Today, we support mostly three type of drives. SSD drive, SAS, 10K RPM drives, and five terabytes SATA drives. When we ship systems, we ship with all three. So you can create a VPSA that is SATA drive big 100 terabytes just to store files and provision this as an NFS or SMB. And you can create a database storage based on SSD or SAS from the same system. And you can see here the prices. So when you hit submit here, after a minute, in this case, we have a boost controller VPSA with 16 SAS 600 gig drives. After a minute, you will have an IP address with the management available for that storage array. And you will see in the grid the 16 drives. You can create the rate groups, the pool, volumes, block, or file, and snapshots, policies, et cetera. And you can do replication between different data centers. You can do replication to the cloud, totally seamless. Again, on premise, you pay for what you use. This is an example of two nodes with physical drives. We customer created a marketing or customer one VPSA with the green drives. Customer two or engineering VPSA with the blue drives. And customer three with the pink, I guess, cells. Customer three has a different VPSA. Each VPSA has, again, different drives, different controllers, different IP addresses, different networking. And they are isolated between them. You can see here how you can create multiple VPSA for multiple tenants over the time. At some point, we see we have constantly monitoring. We see that you have enough free space. And we will ship you for free another node that you can install and automatically become part of the pool. And in this way, you can continue to grow. Now, if you delete one of the VPSAs, the next month, the invoice will go down. And you will not get billed for the VPSA. Some people are questioning what is the difference between a lease or a flex lease and on-premise as a service. Lease, in general, is 2 and 1 half years from 2 to 5 years. On-premise as a service, we have a minimum commitment of a minimum usage, not of what we send, of six months. Ours is pure paper consumption. We start small, and you can add as much as you want. Very easy to expand. Ours is fully managed. You don't need to understand anything about Zodara to provision block and to provision file and to provision object and any other workloads. We will do all the support and management remotely. One important thing is that if you buy one petabyte of one of the traditional vendors, and even if you lease for three years and after six months, they reduce the price because the price always reduced, you will not get credit for the petabyte that you have in the floor. And probably the next purchase, you will have price reduction. In our case, it's different. This is as a service. If you have one petabyte of Zodara in your floor and we reduce the price, and we do reduce the prices, then next month, you will see your bill gone down. And in this manner, you don't need to do long-term capacity planning and negotiations. You know that you will have always the right price. We are connected to Amazon, and you know that Amazon and Azure, they like to reduce prices quite often. So obviously, we need to compete with them, and we need to continue the reductions. And this affect you immediately because the next month, you will see less money to pay. So this is completely different when it is as a service or leasing. In leasing, you don't get the advantage of price reductions. And obviously, as I said, the support and services included, you don't need to know anything about Zodara. We do all the DevOps, and the support is much faster because the system is integrated with our support system. Our people, we have 24 by 7 support, and we can react immediately. We can do things because we have more redundancy in the cloud. We can do things and solve the problems immediately, even if it is hardware failures. Obviously, for software failure. Every VPSA is an enterprise storage array and has all these capabilities that you can see in top of the line storage array. We do support NFS and some SMB, including Active Directory integration that is very important for many customers. We do block ICSI or ICER, RDMA. We support large volumes, 100 terabyte volume. There is no problem. We support data encryption at rest and in-flight. And the important thing is that every VPSA can have a different encryption key and can be managed by the user. Every user controls his own encryption key. Obviously, we support clustering and team provision volumes. SSD caching is part of the standard VPSA. All the upgrades of the storage firmware we do this transparently to you is totally not disruptive. And we do this ourselves. You don't need to take care, even if it is in your own data center. Everything is 100% RESTful API. So for whatever, everything that is available in the GUI, you can do a REST API and automate that. In terms of data protection features, we have unlimited snapshots. We have writable clones that are very popular in enterprises. We do mirroring synchronous and asynchronous. We can have mirroring across data centers synchronous mirror and asynchronous mirroring. And you can also do mirroring into one of the public cloud locations that we support today. We do online volume migration that is completely transparent. And this is very good when we introduce new hardware. You don't need to go through a tremendous painful migration. If we support today five terabyte drives and we are looking actually to release six terabyte drives shortly, we can ship the drive, we do online migration, and you can ship back the five terabyte drive. So you are constantly on the top of the technology. We can ship new nodes, do migration, and remove the old nodes. So you don't need to go through the refresh of the hardware. We do that. And it's totally online. We have a feature called Multisone HA, where a VPSI can be stretched across two different data centers and have automatic failover. This is for high-end customers that require zero downtime and zero data loss in case of disaster. This is a regional inside the same region. And this is a very good opportunity for service providers that have multiple data centers or are using data centers like Equinix and CoreSight. You can provide better services than some customers they have because in order to do that, a customer may need to have two data centers, teams, expensive equipment. You can provide the same capabilities at a much lower cost if you have your own data centers or you use Equinix or CoreSight collocation facilities. And we provide a software that can do the transparent failover between data centers so the customer not only don't lose any IO, it doesn't lose any minute or any second of downtime. So this is my summary slide, the problems that I propose on the left. Need capital to buy storage. Zadara is no capex, pure OPEX consumption. Need zero capital to start. Different storage products and silos for different use. We solve this. We can provide storage that the same storage as a service can support a backup storage and high performance database storage and file systems, et cetera. You don't need to hire a team of storage experts because this is fully managed by us. You get much faster response than the top storage vendors because we don't need to send somebody on site and we don't need to have teams everywhere. The system was created to do remote DevOps and we have the team of experts that can access at any time any storage installation in the world. So it's a 15-minute response time as opposed to four hours. That costs a lot of money. The 15-minute response time is part of the pricing. And obviously, because there is no way that you can get it wrong, you can try, you can very easy to migrate storage to reduce, to expand, to change, and you pay only for what you use, then you don't need to have extensive capacity planning and negotiations. You can just start and you see what is good, what is working good, you continue. If it is not good, you delete and you stop paying. There is no problem that you purchase something that is not good. So it's totally on demand and you can expand and shrink at any time. Thank you very much and remember to stop buying storage.


Time here for more systems, and we're getting close to the end of another project This is another interim video update, but I'm excited. This facility has been some challenges because how long it's been taken But we're excited. We're finally punching down. That's what's exciting right now for me Because that means it's closer to being billable which always kind of makes me happy and we'd like to see the facility Completed working and everything so I'm gonna give you a quick overview of what we've got done so far here So all the wiring comes up through the bottom on the floor and it's coming up over the rack That's because of the way this facility was laid out everything went completely Underground and they had the core out this started as a big empty warehouse Essentially, and they cored out the floor. They brought up all the wiring through tubes that then come up and over the rack behind me And this allowed them to have essentially floating workstations where all the workstations sit independently across here without having to be Any wires dangling from the ceiling or things coming from the wall or putting pillars in to do that We hid all the wiring behind these green facades You see on the side here and that's where all the wiring goes inside of there And then there's a series of crossover tubes where they go up and over and back down to come to this middle area Which is a conference room area where the staircase on there. Oh, by the way, this fan is really cool I don't know. It's just kind of neat that they have that in there So the facilities so far everything's gone really smooth All the cans and the floor and everything are looking really nice The next step is the furniture people are going to be out here. I thinking next week and We after they build the frame of the furniture, we're going to be hooking up from the cans Bringing them up through the cans and into the furniture So it's actually first punched there and then terminated and then brought up with a short extension cable Where it's gonna hook up to the computers and the reason for doing that is that way if anything gets damaged We can just simply snake back down go into the Can part and just replace that one piece of cable on there Normally, you don't want to have an extra break in there But part of the advantage of doing this like I said is really damaging any of the cables It has it's an easy way to slide one cable out and replace another cable in when we put the furniture in But I'm really happy to see this coming along here It's like it's been several months and but the place is looking pretty beautiful here So the staircase everything I just really enjoyed this working with this client and the design they came up with to put their Building together and I can't wait to do the final video when all of this is done and operational So I'll kind of looking forward to that and there'll just be a little video at that point of Just like what it looks like when it's done. Thanks for watching if you like the content here on my channel like and subscribe


It's going on everybody got a Kyle and Shawn here with late sports cards And we are ripping two boxes of Star Wars master work both of these are gonna be for mr. Drew Baca Good luck drew. Let's see what we got and really liking the master work man. Let's see it. Let's see. Let's see it. Good luck Yeah, I don't think the dolphins are gonna lose the Titans really, but you know always possible Hey, we'll see you shite have a go my man. I just uh just threw in a couple of things you gave me so See what we got frame in here We might have a frame in here It's kind of heavy Yeah, good luck drew Drew this one's definitely heavy Most definitely heavy Surprised there is not a frame. There's a quote from old Ben Kenobi got a blue bubble fat Think it might be one of the relics add is It is one of the relics Kizudo and it is Kershanton on the relic. They're the knuckle dusters Kershanton's Kershanton's knuckle dusters Force needs a pair of these Need tools and technology Her sands in there on the relic Try them out on Jake. Oh man The old knuckle dusters Dust in the shirt man. So the question is do you want to watch the one game or do you want to do Red Zone? What's the one game of Jags? Probably Red Zone, but it's just Jags and someone else. There's a Grogu blue Grogu blue. That's a sketch. Let's go. That's a sketch So we had in front of it was Darth Vader on the base We have Padme Right and the sketch is gonna be a clone trooper. Nice one there. That is sick. There we go drew That is clean man. That one is gonna be Benjamin Lombards as the artist on that one the Clone trooper that is very sick to get that in the mag for you mr. Drew Yeah, if you got small enough hands you can pull them nice sketch there The knuckle dusters only fit Yeah, fair We're both a man. There's a base of Dengar This one is Green Bodhi Rook to 99. That's fair Bodhi Rook to 99 That one's gonna be Beru Lars, Asajj Ventress, and Otto is gonna be a Silver Otto hunter Hunter there that one is D. Bradley Baker as Hunter to 50 On the refractor Otto. Yeah, I'm sure yeah, you're the cool that You know I agree There's a Luke on the insert and blue is crosshair crosshair blue It's gonna be a Sid and Silver to 299. That's gonna be wicket the Ewok It's a 299 wicket and a Otto there is gonna be a pike traveler Pike traveler on the Otto there Alfred sink. Yeah, what we do have Timmy to today. We do have Timmy to today We did it. We're not banning Timmy Time to melt by ice and ban them I mean All right box two I saw put some confidant in here, so Put some confidant he's right All right another heavy one should be another Valium a and seen a card that dick. That's those relics. I think actually Be mindful of your thoughts and can they may betray you on the quote got a blue Valon Hess It's gonna be a third sister This one is gonna be Bayes Malbus number 250 on the relic there Bayes a Malbus on the prop relic and one is number 250 on-screen relic Bayes Malbus a radar screen 3750 Bayes Malbus. Yeah, those are thick man. Yeah, I forgot about those cuz they're so thick I was wondering what it was. All right, we go in here drew there's a Job of the huts and purple is Beru Lars purple the 50 there Beru Lars one's gonna be here at Cendula Luke Skywalker base And this one's a relic. It's gonna be gin or so on the source fabric material from Rogue one Gin or so the poncho relic two more mini boxes band from PayPal geez Say Django Fett Django Fett One's blue Moff Gideon. It's gonna be magistrates Morgan Elizabeth and a silver is gonna be the imperial Guards to two 99 Imperial Royal Guard Sam's boy And on the back is a Saw Gerrera autumn Animated Saw Gerrero's Andrew Casino Based out of their Saw Gerrera and last many good luck. Good luck. Mr. Drew We'll do another masterwork right after this one And we got Jeremy with a couple of bowman chrome and Taylor with a tops chrome update At our insert there of the stormtrooper Got a true team way green to 99 True team way to 99. That's gonna be Omega and General Grievous And our auto is blue. It's gonna be aura sing on the blue auto I want is number two 99. It's Michonne Boreage as aura sing On the blue auto Right there, mr. Jeremy that'll do it for your one but or two boxes of Star Wars masterworks Nice hit on the clone trooper sketch really nice one there. Get that right out the assert. Thank you. Thank you