Oh, hi friends. Hey, brother Mike Back on the Sunday morning podcast. It's nine o'clock mountain time the nine o'clock in Arizona time 11 o'clock Eastern welcome to the show. I Got an interesting Bible study for you today. I'm gonna ask you to consider some unusual things about divine healing Wanted to share it with you today a couple of quick announcements, of course, so the women's seminar is November 19th go to the website hardcore Christianity calm for that one. It's going to be a boomer Sister Julie Andrews She's my top counselor on the staff at the Deliverance Center is doing the seminar. It's going to be fantastic Ladies you need to be at that one broadcast live on our YouTube channel YouTube comm slash house of healing easy and then on the 25th I'm having a Healing and deliverance service and a seminar on the mysteries of divine healing I'm doing doing a preface of it today to give you an idea of some of the things we're going to cover and then on the 26th, which would be December 26, I will Not be doing my deliverance training class on that Saturday I'll be doing it a week earlier. So it'll be on the 19th and Don't please remember that we have to zoom deliverance services every week Tuesday and Wednesday nights at six o'clock Arizona time and mountain time you can send me an email Mike at hardcore Christianity comm and I'll be happy to send you the link Passcode and the ID for the zoom service event Thursday and Friday. We have live services at the Arizona Deliverance Center Those are broadcast on our YouTube Channel plus four other platforms YouTube comm slash house of healing a Z and All kinds of things for you. Thank you by the way for your prayers yesterday at the international healing Cathedral at sunny slope The crowd turnout was low, but we had some spectacular Deliverances we had healings one lady got healed of fibromyalgia and chronic Right knee pain plus she got healed of clinical depression All three of them right in that service and it was it was beautiful. We had some spectacular deliverances Thank you for your prayers and your support. Hey, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about divine healing today it's a strange subject and Not everybody Understands it completely. Let me strike that nobody understands it completely Including me, okay, including me, but I want to share some of the things some insights into it That I'll be sharing at my seminar this month That are very important and the confusion around divine healing is is is Spread across all of Christianity, but you can clear up a lot of it this way Remember that Satan has supernatural powers and In his ability to affect human beings and God revealed that for us Divinely in the the incredible book of Job In this book in chapters one and two and With the advent of Job's three friends you can see Satan's supernatural power working clearly in the lives of people The Bible specifically says that Job murdered had his farm laborers murdered by Satan Lightning killed Job's sheep and his employees Caused by Satan Satan stole his camels and killed his field workers and the Bible says Satan did that Satan killed Job's children with a tornado once again controlling the weather Most people don't know that Satan but has the ability to control the weather a lot of people are not aware of that He also attacked Job with sicknesses. He had boils literally everywhere on his body The guy was tortured for weeks or months. However long that trial lasted and Then Job sent in his three friends, which he's going to do to you You know the Bible says draw night a God and he will draw night to you and As soon as you start that process The devil will send in your friends They're not really your friends. They're plants by Satan to destroy your anointing and keep you from drawing closer to God If you draw night a God, he will draw night you notice that you have to make the first move He makes the second move. It's like checkers. You move The other person moves you move The other person moves you can't place checkers by yourself unless you've got Did or schizophrenia Now in the Bible clearly states When it comes to divine healing that it is God's will to heal and the Holy Spirit was trying to illustrate that through the ministry of Jesus It's God's will that everyone be saved and born again and go to heaven Okay, second Peter chapter 3 says the Lord is not slack concerning his promise As some count slackness, but it's long suffering not willing to any should perish, but that all Should come to repentance First Timothy chapter 2 says who who will have all men to be saved and Come to the knowledge of the truth that there's one God and one mediator between God and man Jesus Christ the Lord the Greek word for who will in that verse and first Timothy chapter 2 verse 4 is phthalo and that means I want to He wants to have all men be saved sozo That's a Greek word for deliverance sozo. It's used in numerous contexts different types of context in the Greek text But it means deliverance deliverance from sin from from sickness from hell from judgment from death, etc In Hebrews chapter 2 the Bible specifically says that Quote through death Jesus might destroy him that had the power of death that is The devil The devil is has the power of death. That's the Greek word kratos.  That's why everyone dies That's why Barring the rapture you and I are gonna die and quite frankly the possibility of us dying Pretty slim right now. The end is only a few years away And it says after he destroys the devil It says who through fear of death were all their lives subject to Bondage the Greek word is Delia. It means slavery. We have all from birth to death been a slave of dying everything dies and The dominion or the ruler over the world of death is Satan John first John chapter 1 verse 3 says for this purpose was the son of God manifested that he might destroy The works of the devil. That's the Greek word luo and it means to loose or unchained and That's the purpose that Jesus came to the earth to Destroy or loose all the bondages of the devil, whatever they may be Sicknesses sin Demons death eternal death damnation everything Whatever the works of the devil are that's what Christ was sent here to destroy and There's several other verses in the Bible that explain clearly that it's God's will to save heal and deliver and Jesus's Commission from father in Luke chapter 4 was his a quotation of Isaiah 61 It said the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor The word gospel there is the Greek word in Galeon. It means glorious good news And he sent me to heal the He broken hard hearted people who have had their hearts shattered the Greek word is soon tribal That's what happened yesterday at our Meeting Saturday morning at the International Healing Cathedral a woman who had been molested by her cousin when she was six or seven and it led to A Clinical depression over the years. She was completely healed yesterday And that spirit that transferred from her cousin into her was removed Right in the middle of the service and that is simply the Holy Ghost carrying out the inheritance of the living Christ To heal that woman Because she came forward I went like this in the crowd I waved her to come forward and stand in the front and she did she got up She came forward and then she told me what was hurting her. She told me what her problems were of the struggles that she had and She repented and but there she was she got healed right in the middle of the service Everyone who does that you draw night of God He'll draw night of you Confess your sins, which is absolutely required, right? If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteous and that includes removing sicknesses and demons from your body Causing a physical illness or your mind causing a mental illness And that's what happened to that lady yesterday. She got healed a clinical depression She got healed of fibromyalgia and she got healed of chronic right knee pain It happened yesterday morning and it happens routinely at the Arizona Deliverance Center In Phoenix. So if you come for a visit or you're on the zoom and it doesn't matter or you're on the YouTube It doesn't matter the Holy Ghost is not limited by time space He's ready to go Big time Now take a look at this We noticed that in the Bible And I wrote a book on it. It's a very Short book and quick read. It's all in the books core bookstore. It's called atonement healing Atonement healing and I bifurcate The healings in the New Testament These are Demonic root issues. These are medical root issues. Not everything is demons Sometimes you need to be healed. Sometimes you need to be delivered to be healed some Illnesses and sicknesses and Traumas are not caused by demons. They're they're medical conditions. Some of them are caused by demons and They need deliverance the problem is when you put somebody on a prayer chain it goes out to the prayer warriors and then they all pray for the person's healing but That doesn't work The reason those prayer chains are so ineffective is because many of the prayer requests should have been sent out as deliverances not healings If a spirit enters your body and causes an illness the illness Can be removed easily when the spirit is removed And most of the cases the illness goes with the spirit at that moment for example yesterday with this lady I'm telling you about Her clinical depression Gone her fibromyalgia gone because the spirit was causing the illness And once the spirits were removed the illnesses went with them And that's generally speaking how it works And so you look through the text and you'll see Demonic illnesses and then you'll see Medical issues right pretty clear For example the woman from Syria who tracked Jesus down and drove to the disciples nuts Trying to get her daughter healed Because she knew that her daughter had become infected with a spirit You see in the United States 99% of the churches are grossly ignorant They don't understand demons and don't want anything to do with them but back in the day When Jesus was alive in the first century church demons were not things that caused people to be shocked Nobody was Confused over spare everybody knew about demons. They knew they existed and they knew they caused physical and mental illnesses It was it was like a routine thing back then now. It's like well. What in the world is that? Back then it was common knowledge and so this girl excuse me this mother hunted Jesus down and was stalking him in an attempt to intercede for her daughter who was Back home in Syria and she kept yelling at Jesus so much.  They don't understand your desires. They don't understand your mission They don't understand And what people don't understand It's human nature. They will nitpick it or criticize it I've been a counselor for 40 years. I know a lot about people a lot more than most people People will naturally criticize something that don't understand or that they're afraid of Those two things will generate Verbal persecution so that's what happened to her the disciples didn't have any compassion for they told her to leave They told Jesus to get rid of her. Hey, you're gonna run into that exact same thing not at this stage Draw an eye to God But at that stage he will draw an eye to you when he makes his move on you and comes to you That will trigger the move of the spirits attacking you And Jesus finally came to her and she said my my daughter Is grievously vexed Now that Greek word there Was daimonidzami it means to be under the control of a spirit To a greater or lesser degree it should have been translated badly demonized But it was translated the king james bible grievously vexed It means that the girl was sick and being tormented by a demon And jesus it says didn't answer her And then the disciples said send her away. She's She's yelling at us Krodzo is the Greek word. She was literally yelling at that. She was yelling at jesus for help And then when the disciples told him to send her away Jesus then talked to her before that he wasn't talking to her And I think he didn't talk to her because a he wanted to see the level of her faith and her perseverance and b He wanted to teach the disciples the lesson And so jesus says to her hey, I'm not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of israel And she fell down in front of him and said she was worshiping him And she said lord help me now.  There it is. She came in worshiping and then she made a request Jesus then tested her faith another step. He said it's not appropriate for me to take the children's bread And throw it out to the dogs Now you say well, that's that was very insulting. No, it wasn't the dogs was a common term term that Jews used To describe Gentiles, but in this case it was mistranslated the king james bible mistranslated It was kunarian, which is puppies puppies in in jewish society The jews were considered big dogs and the Gentiles were considered puppies There was a gap. Here's the mature Big dog. Here's the puppies the Gentiles And so jesus was using common terms of the day. He says it's not proper for me to take the children's bread, which is what? Deliverance is the children's bread You see you don't want to run around casting demons out of sinners. Okay on youtube today Deliverance has now become Run of the mill. It's become the flavor of the month.  You have to renew your mind that is required by god and the bible We do not do casual deliverances on people. That does not happen repentance has to be part of The process for it to be successful. Okay, when whirley was Very successful using the repentance method derrick prince, for example extremely successful Using the repentance method But deliverance is the children's bread. You don't cast demons out of the center because they don't have any weapons to fight The demons when they come back the demons will try and re-enter after you cast them out Well repentance and mind renewal keeps them from getting back in But sinners don't have that they don't renew their mind. They don't repent of their sins You just blew some demons out of somebody Well, those demons are going to try and come back and in most cases they get back in most of these youtube deliverances They're terrible because they don't require them to repent They don't require them to renew their mind There's no system or process set up That's the danger of casting demons out of people in parks On the street going down to the homeless encampment. We're going to cast demons out of the homeless people today Very risky Very risky unless you've got a system set up Where they can renew their minds and they can finish repenting of their sins So the children's bread is for christians deliverances for christians not sinners That's one of our benefits from the atonement And the woman says to jesus That's true lord But the puppies eat the crumbs which fall from their master's table and bang that did it Jesus had seen enough faith And he said woman great is your faith. So he was testing her faith And your face is going to be tested too You're not just going to wake up tomorrow morning. Oh, hey, I got the faith of smith wigglesworth. That's it I'm entering my worldwide healing ministry. No, it's not going to happen Not going to happen Your faith has to be tested for it to grow testing adversity Allows your faith to accelerate as you become revelation chapter 2 revelation chapter 3 and overcomer You have to be an overcomer And she had overcome she passed her test the test of faith and Jesus said to her listen to this it's amazing Be it unto you The way you want it same greek word phalo What you want That's amazing Her prayer according to what she wanted After she passed her faith test was hers She was granted it But if you continue without an unbelief and complaining and griping and moaning All that stuff wipes out your prayer and steals your miracle Mark chapter 7 it says when she came home She found the demon had gone out of her daughter And she had been thrown on the bed ballo greek word ballo to throw Like you'd throw a football like you'd throw a chair in a bar fight Thrown on the bed the demon when he left her through her on the bed And when her mother got home, she was still on the bed probably sleeping and resting from the ordeal She was completely healed She was now that's an example Of a demonic root illness the root illness was demonic and The cure was deliverance Had it been a medical issue The the young daughter would have been healed Deliverance for demonic root illnesses healing for medical root illnesses and if you can through discernment Or through your intelligence Investigate that and figure it out Bang you know how to pray and then you know how to get them healed You know how to get them healed Luke chapter 13 is a famous section of text. You've all read it this woman comes into The synagogue And to her utter surprise the king of kings is the speaker that day The synagogue ruler had turned it over to jesus smart move The lord jesus was teaching and right in the middle of his teaching he looks down and sees this woman Who has kyphosis? You know kyphosis is a disease that causes the spine to curve forward scoliosis is a Is a s shape in the spine rheumatoid arthritis is a bent swelling in the spine And it looks like this woman had kyphosis because it says She was all bent over Bowed over as the king james term soon kupro means to Bend forward She bent forward So but anyway, who cares whatever disease it was You see in the text That this was a demonic root illness Not a medical condition The medical's up. This was a demonic root illness. The medical Is out And jesus called it A spirit of infirmity You remember that? Yeah, she said should not this woman being a daughter of abraham. Should she not Who is whom satan has bound for 18 years? A demon got into her body 18 years before she was in the synagogue that day. She had had the condition for 18 years then When the spirit was removed from the body The bible says she just stood right up Which which is literally impossible medically for scoliosis or kyphosis or rheumatoid arthritis. You can't do that. That's not going to happen. Those are Those are incurable Medical conditions incurable the reason they're incurable is because doctors and nurses don't understand the spirit world They don't understand the word of god. They don't understand demons. They don't understand Satan and all the things he did to job And so because they are spiritually ignorant They are not able to cure Many diseases that the holy ghost routinely cures Because people know that it's a demonic root illness once the spirit is removed The body instantly or gradually recovers I've seen it happen hundreds of times over the years Yet they recover instantly for example yesterday at that service that woman instantly recovered from her A fibromyalgia and from her clinical depression. She was instantly healed She was crying tears of joy. She got up and grabbed the mic and gave a testimony I mean it was holy ghost impressive We thank god for it And jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue Should not this woman who is a daughter of abraham meaning she was in the lineage of The father of faith abraham Whom satan has bound Jesus said satan had to so now you've got a demonic root illness Removing the spirit brings instant recovery in this particular case right Yeah, there were new there were all kinds of healings in the bible That were not really related to demons, correct?    He was a beggar, right? And you wouldn't believe what we have today in our homeless camps all around the country Particularly the big cities phoenix has tremendous issues with homeless What happened bang He got completely healed. There was no mention of any demons. He must have had a medical condition that Damage his eyes or something could have been a birth defect And that was it. He was healed. There wasn't any mention of demons not everything is demons So you've got to use your discernment to figure out which is which is this a medical root or is this a demonic root? And once you'd make that determination your prayers your prayers then are laser sharp and to the point Bang you will see your healings Accelerate dramatically instead of just throwing somebody on the prayer line Without even knowing what you're doing because you were told to do that and you think it's the right thing Use your discernment Analyze the thing and see if deliverance is needed or if healing is needed Healing is needed At the service yesterday, I knew and I could see That those were demonic root illnesses In that woman Fibromyalgia clinical depression She got healed That's right. You remember the story uh of the of the uh panicking father Who brought his Son to the nine disciples for deliverance and it was a failed deliverance session This is very common In this particular case, it's very interesting Mark nine and luke nine have this story Itemized it's really fantastic It's it's a tremendous teaching story Okay, the father Comes to jesus and he says master.  I beg you look on my son. He's my only Child a spirit takes him He suddenly cries out The greek word krazo means to scream He suddenly screams And then it tears him Sparrasso is the greek word. It means Seizure This demon inside the boy Would start screaming and then he would have a epileptic seizure so to speak Probably grandma He phones at the mouth. He the spirit bruises him And it hardly ever departs from him and that meant that means that it was a chronic Systematic chronic medical condition that had a root That was demonic Then it says wherever he takes him he tears him and foams and gnashes His teeth he gnashes his teeth. That's a greek word treatzo He was grinding his teeth while he was having a seizure And he says he pines away. Okay that greek word for pines there is exorano Exorano means he's wasting away. That means he was dying from malnutrition And he says I spoke to your disciples make that they should cast him out and they couldn't do it Okay Why didn't the couldn't disciples do it?  I have as much trouble with them as everybody else does You've got to get the person who has the demon to join in with the deliverance and repent and fight back with you In order to get these spirits out of people But notice this was a demonic root illness and the Child had multiple disabilities because jesus asked him He asked him how long ago did this come to him? Jesus was asking him a question because he wanted some key information out of the dad And the dad said it can't it started when he was a child A piety often means it started from infancy So this looks like a case where the demon entered the womb and then entered the fetus And infected the child before he was born Because he was having seizures foaming at the mouth from The time he was an infant A a tiny baby an infant piety often And and then the father asked jesus if you can do anything Have compassion on it. So right now you see the The peril that this poor dad is in He's heartbroken over his son. He's in tears He's Hoping against hope that somebody can deliver him. He heard that jesus Could deliver him He takes him to the nine disciples the other three are on mount on the mount of transfiguration He goes to them and he says This has got to be it. These are the number one exorcists in israel I finally going to get my son healed and then they couldn't do it. This man Had lived an entire life with his child In chronic disappointment Okay, and disappointments are the satan's specialty He beat job down to a pulp Not just because of boils but because of chronic Disappointments His prayers to johova were not being heard His sacrifices to johova in his mind Were not working for his children.  They said why couldn't we cast them out? He said because of your unbelief because this kind only goes out by prayer and fasting Genea is the greek word for kind in that verse, right? It means generational So this was a generational spirit that came down through the family tree hit the kid in the womb Caused him to be born with defects and then tormented him His entire life so now he's a junior high or high school And the kid's still being tormented from a generational spirit And so these demons that come down through the family tree They call them deaf and dumb spirits these demons are superpowered they usually have some form of witchcraft or masonry or Mormonism or false religion or something in the family tree Somebody was messing around with demons superpower demons up the family tree They come down the tree and start picking people off and this kid got picked off in the womb And he had congenital disabilities Yeah See you have to be able to diagnose whether or not the illness is demonic right before Jesus saw the The disabled man at the pool of the sezda remember that there were no demons mentioned in that story Nothing was cast out. It was just a healing He apparently had been born with a birth defect He couldn't walk probably a spinal condition And he needed healing remember not everything's demons, but everything requires discernment Okay, think about what you're doing Analyze it take a look at the text see if it fits and then pinpoint your prayers laser sharp To destroy the works of the devil, which is the purpose that jesus was born jesus was born to destroy the works of the devil And once that deaf and dumb spirit was removed from that child's body Jesus had already done his fasting. He had zero doubt and zero unbelief And demons were completely subject to him. Okay, you and I don't have that level of anointing So we can't do what jesus was doing.   They were tears of joy What you got to remember you just got to do it You draw night of god When he draws night of you You are going to get hit Okay, some people get hit when you're they're being drawn in not normally Because the demons they don't really think you're going to do anything. You're you're not going to pray through You're not going to persevere. You're going to do what you normally do You're going to do what you normally do.  They know that they put that in your mind Years ago, but if somebody actually presses through that And really draws night of god and the demons will see it They will counter attack Then they usually use people to do it the syrian woman brother jarius is out on the street And they come to him they said Hey your daughter's dead There's no point in bothering a teacher anymore same greek word the douskalus. They called him a teacher If that's all he is to you as a teacher you're in some bad trouble Yeah, he's much more than that. Hey, he looks around at jesus He's got a look on his face of sheer terror His daughter died Come back and let's do the free and roll because you remember in under jewish tradition and law You had to be buried within 24 hours Oops So there's not a lot of time to be out running around to people raising from the dead or faith healers They said hey, you got to come back and bury your daughter.  Did you know that?   Okay, if job were here, he'd explain it to you far better than I could He stole everything job ever had just ripped him right off totally ripped him off Let me let me tell you something That happened to me years ago My daughter who led me to the lord was in a brain dead coma up at john c. Lincoln hospital in sunny slope So yesterday when I was in sunny slope it was kind of a homecoming for me at that service I was really happy to be back there because uh, I hate All the crime and the drugs and the sin in sunny slope And I love sunny slope because the hospital up there and god used to save my daughter's life he miraculously Raised her out of a brain dead coma on christmas morning in 1996 december 25th 1996 my daughter raised from the debt And then of course, it's a long story after that how she led me to the lord. I came back to god. I can't uh retired from my Counts secular counseling practice in 2005 Then I went into the ministry full time and he and Interhealing and deliverance the full time. So That's a long story cut real short.   That's how I got one My daughter's been in the wheel wheel chairs Since 1996. I got a score to settle. How about you? I partially settled my score yesterday at that service Yeah, I partially settled it on fridays at the deliverance center. I see people healed and delivered Those are partial settlements I'm looking for Some real damage How about you You ready? Yeah You got any questions or suggestions for future shows send me an email mike at hardcore christiania.com Please be on the youtube broadcast Fridays and saturdays I usually teach on fridays be on the youtube teaching channel youtube.com slash house of healing a z also live Thursday and friday nights is On my facebook page michael w smith You can catch it here on twitch dot tv. Just put in the code hcc adc Bank you're there We broadcast it on rumble live. Just put in the code Oh h hcc and that stands for house of healing hardcore christianity And then uh after thursday and after friday. We also post them on our other platforms Vimeo carries it closed caption put in h o h a z Bitshoot carries it hcc adc Rumble carries it h o h Hcc so there's all kinds of uh venues to uh To catch us please remember If you want to be healed or delivered you can be healed and delivered over the zoom tuesday wednesday nights six o'clock Mountain time six o'clock arizona time. Please join send me an email mike at hardcore christianity dot com I'll send you the code And you can get on the healing and delivered service on zoom And uh, please send me an email after the zoom And let me know how many people got delivered and healed while you were on the broadcast because there'll be several of them It's quite remarkable. What's going on And it's all based on god's grace and god's mercy. I want you to remember this as I close I love you you You and me yeah We got scores to settle


There's actually not really good surgical adhesive out there, so you can use things like sutures and staples, but they have their drawbacks. Sutures and staples are always going to punch holes into the skin or into the tissue that you're working with, and then in some cases you also need to go back and remove them. So we're trying to make a glue that surgeons or doctors could use that would be a good material, have strong adhesion, and would also be good material for soft tissue. So things like your skin or internally some of the soft organs inside of your body. We've engineered this protein to have some of the properties that we're interested in, so one of those properties is to make sure that it's adhesive. To do that we've incorporated a molecule that's sticky, it's called DOPA, and this is inspired by muscles from the ocean. So they secrete a protein that allows them to stick to rocks. Another property we're interested in is having it be elastic, and so we were inspired by a protein actually found in your skin. The last one has a unique property that allows it to phase separate. So when you warm up the protein solution, what happens is you have two different phases. One phase is protein-rich, it's dense and it's at the bottom. Another phase is somewhat like water and it sits on top. The dense phase allows it so that when you dispense the material, it will actually stay in place where you've put it, and so it doesn't get dispersed into blood or other fluids in your body.


This research integrates multi-source remotely-sensed data to map China's impervious surface area, ISA, distribution at 30 m spatial resolution, achieving producers and users' accuracies of 83.1 and 91.9% respectively. These ISA data can be used for better management of urban landscapes and as an input in other studies such as socio-economic and environmental modelling. This article was authored by Gu Ying Li, Long Wei Li, Deng Xing Lu, and others.


Beethoven Sonata Opus 31, number two, Tempest. We want to talk about some technical difficulties. And we all know the problem with the repetition at the beginning. If you see it from the technical point, you have just the adagio chord to warm up. And these are only two bars, so it's not enough to really be warmed up. And you have to do these repetitions. And very important, I think, is always have in mind it's allegro, it's not a presto. You don't have to rush, you have to play it really in an allegro tempo, and not molto allegro, and not allegro con brio, allegro. Just show the beginning. Yes, thank you, thank you. You would do the repetition with four, three. And well, I think in this special case we can be happy if it works. And so we don't have to care about the fingering, we have to find a solution that it works. And with your interpretation it works very well. Mare Pereira wrote three-two for the repetition, and we just tried it out. Can you just show how it looks and how it works with three-two? Slowly. Yes, if you can play it in tempo. This even works very well. If I am very, very critical I would think this was even better. But well, it's up to you. I think there is a moment where a fingering, it's just a proposal. And we are free to find a way to do it. If you play one note with your nose, it's possible. But please show the audience how you practice it. I practiced this passage very slowly at first. And then I made some rhythmical variations. And also like this. And I think it's very good for concentration because we have the jumps from here. It's one octave jumps. And if we just practice so fast, we will not have time to concentrate on the jumps here. What I like very much, you play slowly, but you play with emotion. And I think this is also very important. If you practice a technical moment, you should always have the music in mind. And try to include crescendo and preparation for a fermata or whatever. And this comes out very, very good. Okay, then this one. What is your approach technically to this? How do you do it? First, I had a problem in this passage so many times. Because when I play it in the forehand, I would make some mistakes. But I just asked Mr. Tansky and he just said to me, I can solve this problem by not connecting D and F together. And then put my hand out and then in that direction. Like this. Yes, and it works. And it works much better than this. And what is also important, I think you play the right hand really wonderfully. It's a kind of tremolo. And it should not sound like you hear this so much and you can't follow the melody. Especially when the piano comes with the overtaking hands. Can you show it again? And also here we should have in mind at the beginning it is forte, not fortissimo. And later in the development we have the fortissimo. And I think it is important to shape the different chords. It's like in a choral where some chords are more important than the others. And you have a solution and you have a tension. So in the development it should not be always the same loudness. And it would be this passage. You start with the fortissimo but then here is forte in brackets. And then it could be more and more and more but not always the same. Can you show it? Very good. For me I think like here in the first F sharp minor is the root position of the chord. And the second we have is the second inversion. And then we have again F sharp minor but it's in the first inversion. And then we have B minor. It's in the root position so it can be much more stronger. I think it comes out wonderful. So always and this is also my proposal for a lot of pianists don't play too loud. It is violent, it is strong but it should not destroy the piano. And well I once had a student in a master class and he really destroyed the F sharp. At least he had a key in his hand. This should not happen. Well could you show the lago, this expression again, how you touch this pianissimo with the pedal. You change the pedal very slightly and what are you doing that it is going through? I think for the pedal I hear the sound. I have to hear the sound very carefully. I don't have to make the sound. I don't want the sound to be like this. So I need to ration but just very little. Not the whole change but just very little. And the left hand? And then I put my left hand. I never take my left hand off. So I can sustain the sound of a major chord. It comes. I think it's very wonderful that you do it. I would always propose to when you practice this that you just take in this case this chord and then you improvise like this. Of course it depends on the piano. Maybe it's different from piano to piano. But this is a thing of trying out and listening. Very good. The end? The end. Because this is always a big problem. Because I want the sound like that. Just try to avoid an accent but it works. Good. Okay, second movement. I think if you have a wonderful cantabile and you have good chords then there is less technical problems. But this one where you go over with the left hand is really a problem. Can you just show some parts from the beginning? What are you doing? As soft as possible. And I try to concentrate on the melody on my right hand. If I concentrate on my left hand, my mind is going to be very busy on my mind. So I just try to follow the melody and everything is going to be fine. The rest works by itself. I think for me the most difficult passage is the tremolo in the left hand. Because sometimes it works, sometimes it's not so even and sometimes it's not so good. So I practice like this. And then just once. How about pedal in this tremolo? I don't use any pedal. Okay, and left pedal? Left pedal. I use my left pedal. This is really great. One can hear the timpani doing it. And also on my right hand is like some woodwinds or some brass. And it's contrast with my left hand. The most important thing is to play the legato as possible in the right hand. And not to be too shy to show expression. You do wonderful. So maybe it helps also to practice such things sometimes in metaphor. The melody. And also without pedal when I practice. And try to connect the melody. Yes, with silent finger change if possible. So then you have done an important step to be a good organist too. Okay, and a third movement? What would you think? The hardest thing is the jumps. There are so many jumps. Can you show this? And also on the left hand in this passage. What do you do to practice such a jump? Do you take time or do you speed up? What are you doing? I just practice slowly. I play like this. And also on my left hand in this passage. I practice something like this. So you play double chords instead of... Sometimes like this. And also something like this. And also the most trickiest thing in this movement I think is the chromatic in the end. Show us this. Because sometimes when I play I play so many mistakes. In the score it's written to do it with both hands. I think this is a big risk. I would take the first D with the left hand and then you play an octave. Actually I think like this. Also the left hand I think is quite so risky. So we have to practice handset play. And also maybe even if it's fortissimo leading with the right hand and not so much care for the left hand it should follow. Can you show? But I'm here. I think it should be strong at the beginning. And at the end of the sonata, remaining for a moment on the keyboard without moving or finish and get up and stand up and bowing. It depends on the feeling. I think we don't have to think so much because the performance will not come so very natural. Yes, this is right. This is one of your really great qualities. One can hear you have such a passion and a joy to play. This also gives me a lot of passion and joy for you. Thank you very much.


CHAPTER 30 It was Monday evening and there was company at Mr. Robert's home, not the usual Monday evening gathering, but quite a large party of well-dressed men and women, many of them young, yet some were middle-aged. The pretty room opposite the conservatory was thrown open and aglow with lights and flowers, and groups were continually passing in and out, admiring the paintings and the flowers and the typewriters of different patterns and the books and magazines, of which there were many. But interest was not confined to this room. The parlors were thrown open and the music room beyond. Even the cozy little library was public property for this one evening. The company was large and their tastes were varied, so no pains had been spared to give them variety. You are acquainted with quite a number of the guests, yet I am by no means sure that you would recognize them all. Even in so short a period of time as three years, great changes may be elicited. For instance, do you know the young man in unnoticeable and therefore appropriate evening dress, who is doing duty at the piano, watching with practiced eye the course of the player, and turning the leaf with skillful hand at just the right moment? It is a somewhat embarrassing position, but his manner leads you to suppose that he has been accustomed to it all his life and that he reads music well. In the latter belief you are correct, but as to being accustomed to it, three years ago Nimble Dick could have told you a different story. You can't believe that it is he? I do not wonder. The change is certainly a great one, but he does not feel it. To tell you the truth he almost forgets, when he becomes absorbed in his work, that this sort of society was not always open to him. Three years means a long time to the young, and Richard Bolton has so long been accustomed to the freedom of Mrs. Robert's parlors and to the sort of people whom one finds there that none of the refinements of polite life are strange to him. And as to turning music, has he not done it for his hostess numberless times? If your eyes are now opened, it is possible that you may be trying to spy out other young men. The rooms are full of them, elegantly dressed, fashionable young men. But a few are noticeable by the air which they have of being in a sense responsible for the comfort of the others. They are on the alert. They are taking care that no young guest shall appear for a moment to be forgotten or neglected. They appear to be entirely familiar with the house and all its appointments. They can be appealed to for a glass of water or an ice, or to know what special scene this landscape hanging over the mantle represents, or whose bust this is in the niche at the left, or in what portion of the library a certain book will be found, or from what part of the foreign world that strangely shaped shell came, and they are all equally at home. In short, it is like having a dozen or twenty young hosts to look after your comfort and pleasure. In point of fact, there are seventeen of them. The original seven has thus increased. Two months ago there were twenty, but one has secured an appointment as telegraph operator in a distant city, and as Stephen Crowley occupies a similar position in one of the offices in this city, some very interesting conversations are held, and many important items connected with the Monday evenings and the South End School and the Library Association, etc., are transmitted when the lines are not otherwise employed. Young Haskell, too, has gone with one of the partners from the store where he was first employed to set up a branch store in a not distant town, and his old Sabbath school teacher has already received letters from him, saying that they have started a branch Sunday school in the south part of the town, and that he has picked seven little wretches out of the streets from eight to twelve years of age and gone to work. And, dear Mrs. Roberts, I wish you would pray for me that I may be able to bring every one of them to Christ. So the letter ran, and that tells volumes to the initiated about Young Haskell. But although the changes among these young men have been great almost to bewilderment, only one of the number has been promoted to a dazzling height. The others are, without exception, earning good, honest livings for themselves, securing good, substantial educations through the evening classes which have grown out of that first effort, fitting fair to become leading and honored citizens when they actually take their places as men. But Mark Culkin's faithful, plotting, good-hearted, patient Mark has surpassed them all. The truth is that I have not seen nor ear heard nor hath entered into the heart what sort of magnificence surrounds him now. He has gone to court. The chief ruler of the realm has sent for Mark to be always in his immediate presence in the palace. And with what joy he went I cannot tell you. Nor how often they speak of him and try to let their hearts conceive of the glory which surrounds him, and dwell on the day when they will be called, one after another, to share the same glory. For this is the ambition of more than half of them. Now in that sentence is unveiled the most curious part of my curious story, and that it is curious I frankly admit. It is no made up affair. I am not responsible for the strangeness of it.  It is, then, a fact that these young men have each received conditional appointments to serve in the palace, high in power and splendor and dignity. The conditions are that they are to be willing to be guided in all things by the will of their king, whom they each admit to be wise above all wisdom, and to be kind above all their conceptions of kindness. It is true that nine of the number have accepted their appointments, donned their uniform, assumed their positions as he has directed, and are waiting for the summons to appear in person at court. It is also true that the others are still in a state of indecision. They do not know whether to accept the appointment or not. It is true that they feel themselves honored, that they believe this to be the only path of honorable and safe promotion. It is true that they have full faith in those who tell with joy, that, having enlisted, they find the service even in this anti-room suite, and the rewards great. It is true that they severally visited Mark just as the door was opening to admit him to the palace, and heard him speak of the glimpses of its glory, and heard that his last words before he went away were, Oh, mine eyes see the king in his beauty, and that his voice was jubilant as that of a conqueror, and his face radiant as with a reflection of unseen glory, and yet they hesitate and dally with the call and mean some time to have such an inheritance deeded to them, but not now. Remember, I am not responsible for this.  But I do solemnly declare to you that this is fact. Account for the folly of their behavior as best you can. Well, Sally and her father are left behind. But, mind you, they are not among the doubtful ones. They both as much expect to serve at court as they expect to live through all eternity. But while they wait, they are busy. They have moved from the alley, the surroundings were not such as they liked. Did you notice that bit of a house landing modestly back from the road at the further corner of those ample grounds that surround the south end church? It's the sexton's house, and that church and those Sunday school rooms and those grounds and everything pertaining to them are under his care. The father is the sexton, it is true, and attends the furnace and rings the bell. But it is Sally's care that keeps seat and desk and window so beautifully free from dust or stain. Oh, they live busy lives and happy ones. Sally trusted not in vain in her father's promise that night when he put his weak will into the pledge. But you are to understand that it was but a few days thereafter when he planted his weak and wavering feet on the Rock of Ages.  So on this Monday evening there were but seventeen of the gathering. I hesitate over what to name the gathering. I would call it a party, but that in many respects it was so totally different from anything with which you are probably acquainted by that name. The young man who stands by the door of the conservatory eagerly describing to Ms. Henderson a rare and curious flower which has been sent to Mrs. Roberts from California is Black Dirk. Really, I hope you are sufficiently astonished, for he looks so utterly unlike the scamp who used to be the special torment of the south end mission that I should be disappointed if you were not impressed by it. Mr. Coulson almost everybody calls him now. The name has long since lost its strangeness. He is in the employ of the great firm of Boswick, Smythe, Roberts and Company, and although Mr. Roberts has never found it convenient to do so before, there are reasons why he thought it would be well to have a clerk within call. So Mr. Coulson boards with what was the junior partner of the firm. He is so no more, by the way, for Mr. Reed has been received as a member and is decidedly a junior partner. Probably Mr. Roberts could tell you if he chose why one so young and without capital had been elected to partnership. But as a rule, he keeps his own counsel, only remarking that the young man developed remarkable business faculties which were patent to the whole firm. To his wife, he said, I tell you, Flossie, I believe a consecrated life will be honored by the Lord in whatever channel he gives it talents to develop. Whatsoever he doth shall prosper. That young man is going to have a career in business. I shouldn't be surprised if the master meant him to show the world how a Christian can use money to earn his glory. It is early yet to prophesy what Mr. Coulson will do. Doubtless he will be a merchant, certainly he will be a Christian. Possibly he will be an orator of whom the world will yet hear. A temperance orator, for instance. I know you would like to hear him read a poem. He is not confined to Will Carleton's style now, though he still reads with power some of those inimitable delineations of life. But Gracie Dennis offers no more criticisms when he reads. In fact, I have heard her defer to him when a question arose as one who had probably studied the passage and caught its best. I am willing to confess that my poor black dirk was a bit of a genius. The thought I desire you to catch is that so many of these poor fellows who of necessity live by their wits in the city slums are diamonds which could be fitted to shine. You take a diamond and throw it down in the dirt and filth and put your foot on it and grind it in and leave it there, sinking and soiling day after day, year after year, and when somebody comes along and picks it out, how much will it gleam for him at first? Yet the diamond is there. Thou shalt be a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Mrs. Roberts had been at work hunting diamonds for his diadem. As Mr. Coulson stood there chatting freely with Miss Henderson, there was nothing about the association that looked incongruous, neither did it occur to any. There was not a trace of embarrassment about this boy from the slums. He had forgotten the slums and stood talking with one of the aristocrats of the city. How came she to talk with him to allow herself to be entertained by him? Let me tell you, thereby hangs a tail. Sometime before this evening, in fact, nearly two years before, Mrs. Roberts had come to a puzzle and stood and looked at it doubtfully. Then she presented it to the others. They are growing easy in their manners with me, learning to be gentlemanly without embarrassment, and thoughtful over little things without being ashamed of it. But I am afraid that with other ladies they would be sadly frightened and awkward. When Mrs. Delaney came in this evening, I could but notice how utterly silent Mr. Coulton became. He had been talking well before. It seems as though there was a great gulf between them and social advancement. How can we bridge it? Then young Reed ventured his thought. My sister Esther had a class in the Centre Street Sabbath School, nice little girls who wore pretty dresses and had their hair curled and came from the best families. After she was taken sick, she told me one of her regrets was that she had not stayed well long enough to try a plan which she had. She meant to take a class of rough little boys in the mission school, and she meant to ask the mothers of the little girls to let them come once a month and play with the little boys from the streets, she to play with them and watch over them every moment, but to try to interest the girls in teaching the boys gentleness and good manners. I don't know how it would have worked. Esther was never well enough to undertake it, nor could she seem to enlist anyone else in such service. It has grave objections, I suppose, but I have always thought that I should like to see something of the kind carefully tried. Mrs. Roberts, before this little story was half concluded, had turned those eager eyes of hers on the speaker, eyes that always had a peculiar light in them whenever her soul took in a new suggestion. Thank you, she said. I see, oh, a great many things. I ought to have called in that dear sister Esther to help on this phase of the question before. It has always seemed to me as though we were doing her work. End of Chapter 30, Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 31 of Esther Read Yet Speaking. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Esther Read Yet Speaking by Pansy. Chapter 31. Their works do follow them. That was the beginning of a new effort. There were certain young ladies becoming well known to Mrs. Roberts by reason of a similarity of tastes which drew them to her. She sat down one day and wrote out their names with great care on her tablets. Ms. Henderson's name headed the list. She was one of the aristocrats. I used the word in its highest sense. The accidents of wealth and position were hers, at least that is the way we talk, though I suppose we all believe that the Lord is the giver of both and will require an account of the same in our hands. If this be so, Ms. Henderson will be more ready than some with her rendering, for she is of royal blood and guards well the honor of the Christian name she bears. Without hesitation Ms. Henderson headed the list. The others were chosen more slowly. Ten of them picked soldiers to do special duty in his name. It required much explanation, much care to plan wisely. But the girls caught at the idea. In the course of weeks they formed a band with Ms. Henderson for president. Ostensibly they were a literary society, really they were diamond polishers. They met one evening by invitation with Mrs. Roberts and made the acquaintance of the Monday Club. They sang for them, read for them, heard them read, chatted with them on the various topics of the hour, the last lecture of the course which all had attended. A certain book carefully read and criticized by Mr. and Mrs. Roberts and Dr. Everett in the Monday Club, not so carefully read by the young ladies. Therefore it came to pass that they were somewhat worsted in an argument concerning it, which was bad neither for the young ladies nor the Monday Club. Finally they were taken out to supper by these young men who had so far come under Mrs. Roberts influence that they were willing to endure torture for the sake of pleasing her. It is a long story, I could write another book about it just as well as not. The main difficulty would be that the critics would pronounce the story overdrawn. They always do when one revels in facts. It is only when an author keeps within the range of sober fiction that he may feel comparatively safe from this charge. These young ladies represented other parlors and other dining rooms. They arranged for little graceful entertainments to which the Monday Club was invited. Gradually others were invited too, good, solid men and wise-hearted motherly women. The invitations were select, the polishers were chosen with care, but it was surprising to these workers to find how large the Christian world is and how many stood ready to help if they were shown love. It is one of the best suggestions that Dear Esther has given us. This Mrs. Roberts said one evening when the young ladies band and the Monday Club combined their forces and gave an entertainment to some of the best people on the avenue. I have given you hints of how they did it. They were every one Christians, these young ladies. None others were chosen. They worked with a single aim in view, his glory. They took no step that was not paved with prayer. Do you need to be told that they succeeded? This was one of the reasons why Mr. Coulson chatted with Miss Henderson with perfect freedom and why his bow was graceful and easy when she introduced him to her friend, Miss Van Shah, of Philadelphia. He was accustomed to being introduced to her friends. I'm sure I hope you wish I would tell you somewhat of Mark Coulson. If you are not deeply interested in her, I am disappointed in you. She has been such an object of interest to me since that time when I caught a glimpse of her once through the cellar window with a gleam of sunset making her hair into gold. It is a summer evening of which I tell you, and she is all in white, except her eyes. Nothing can be bluer than they are tonight, and except the flowers about her. She is always among the flowers. I hesitate after all to tell you about Mark. Hers is one of those stories hard to tell. Besides, her friend and patron has suffered much criticism because of her. And though Mrs. Roberts does not care in the least, I find that I am sensitive. Has she really kept that Coulson girl with her all these years? Yes, she has. I speak at Meekly, but she has. And never had her learn a trade or work in a factory or learn to support herself in any way? She has never sent her anywhere to learn a trade or to work in a factory or to stand behind a counter. It is too true. No, I was almost sure you would not approve of it. But for all that, I don't mean to argue Mrs. Roberts' cause. To her own master she standeth or falleth. Not but what Mrs. Roberts has argued on occasion, with Gracie Dennis, for instance, who paid her a few weeks visit less than three months after she first went home. Flossie, she would say, what are you going to do with the girl? Do you really mean to keep her here? She has no mother, my child, nor father, and her brother is not able to care for her yet. Where would you have me send her? Why, Flossie, there are places. Yes, my dear, I know it, and this is one of them. Well, but she ought to be learning things. How is she going to support herself? She is studying arithmetic with me, you know, and writing and reading with the dining room girls. And I am teaching her music, and Mr. Roberts proposes to have her join the history class as soon as she is sufficiently advanced in the more common studies. But Flossie, shipply, that is great nonsense. You know what I mean. You cannot turn the world upside down in that fashion or make an orphan asylum of your house or a charity school. My dear, do you really think the house is in danger? Does it look like an orphan asylum or feel like a charity school? Then would Gracie Dennis laugh but look a trifle vexed nevertheless and mutter that people couldn't do things that way in this world. Then would Flossie be ready with her gentle drops of oil to soothe the ruffles. Gracie, dear, I am not trying to reform the world. There are a great many girls left destitute, I know, and I will do it wholesale all I can for them. But this one is peculiar. You have admitted that it was unusual to see such dangerous beauty, and she is unusual in her mental development. She could be fierce and wicked.  I am afraid for her. I have not been able to think of a place where the Lord Jesus would have me take her. I must see to it that he is pleased you know at all hazards. If he does not mean us to keep her in the shelter of our home for the present, we do not know what he means. We cannot mother the whole race. He has not even suggested it to our hearts. He has simply said, Here take this one. There is room for her. Keep her until I plainly tell you that her place is elsewhere. Gracie, would you have me tell him we cannot? By this time Gracie would be humble and sweet. It is very good of you, she would say meekly, and I was not thinking of such a thing as finding fault.  But a sentence like that was always liable to put little Mrs. Roberts on all the dignity she possessed. Her husband had ideas on that subject, and had imbued her with them. Her voice could even sound almost haughty as she said. As to that Gracie, we must remember that the sphere of an American woman is the one that she can fill acceptably in God's sight. He may call her to the highest, I don't know. Since she is the daughter of a king, there may be no spot on his footstool too high for his intentions concerning her. There was outside criticism, of course. Indeed, Mrs. Roberts was sufficiently peculiar in many respects to call for such criticism from the world. They talked much about that girl she had picked up. Gradually they said that Coulson girl, then one day some daughter asked, is she really a sister of that handsome Mr. Coulson in the store? And by and by there were some who spoke of her as Maddie Coulson. That was the name which Mrs. Roberts always called her. It began gradually to be known also that Maddie Coulson knew a great deal which was worth knowing. Three years of companionship with a lady like Mrs. Roberts, and such as she gathers about her, can do much for a girl who wishes much done for her. As to earning her living, I am not sure but she was learning to do it in several ways. Mrs. Roberts struggled against all false ideas of life, therefore taught her none. She was not the cook, but she could and had on occasion served up a most enjoyable breakfast. She was not the second girl, yet her fingers were undeniably skillful in the arrangement of rooms and tables. She was not the sewing girl, yet constant were the calls on fingers that had become wise in these directions. She was by no means the nurse, yet there was a little golden-haired flossy in the sunny room upstairs whose devoted slave she was, and whose mother felt that Maddie's loving watchful care over her darling was only second to her own, and was so to be relied upon by day and night as to repay tenfold whatever she might have done for the girl. In fact, it would perhaps be difficult to define Mark Coulson's position in the house. Yet she was, as I said, becoming known among the young ladies outside as Maddie Coulson, that handsome young Coulson's sister, as pretty as a doll and a protege of that lovely Mrs. Roberts, you know. As for the young ladies' band, I do not include them when I talk of the girls outside. What they had done for Maddie Coulson, she could not have told you, though she tried, her eyes shining with tears. The days had come wherein the very matrons who had said that it was a strange thing for Mrs. Roberts to take a girl from the slums into her family, that it was tempting Providence to attempt such violent wrenches now said to one another, that it must be a great relief to Mrs. Roberts to have that Maddie Coulson always at her elbow to see that everything about the home was just as it should be, and they added with a sigh that some people were very fortunate. Now, dear critic, you stand already to say that this is a very nice paper story, but that in actual life attempts at doing good do not result so smoothly, that to be natural, Mrs. Roberts ought at least to have tried in vain to reclaim half of her boys. It is true, I have said nothing to you about two or three whom she has not as yet reached, though she is still trying. My story was not of them, but of the twenty whom she did reach. Concerning your verdict, there are two things that I want to say. First, go into the work and give the time and patience and faith and prayer that Mrs. Roberts and her fellow workers gave before you decide that it is vain. And secondly, will you kindly remember that, whether this be natural or not, it is true? I do not think I have told you the immediate occasion of this particular gathering. It was, in fact, a reception given to Mrs. Reed. It is not likely that I need tell you at this late day that her name was Gracie Dennis Reed. I could have told you much about it had I been writing a story of that sort. In fact, there is a chance for considerable romancing. There are matters of interest that I might tell you about Mr. Coulson himself, young as he is, and about Maddie, who wears to-night a rose that she did not pick from the conservatory, but I don't mean to tell it. I have just one other bit of history to give you. They stood together for a moment, the young bridegroom and the lady with whom he had faithfully worked ever since that rainy afternoon in which he had confided his gloom to her. Both were looking at the two young men who stood near the piano waiting to join in the chorus.  Still another of the original seven stood in the immediate vicinity. The glances of the two workers took them all in. Then they looked at each other and smiled meaningly. I have been thinking of that first Sunday afternoon, said Mrs. Roberts.  Pick it up yourself, mom, you're as able to as we be. I wonder if they would remember it. What if I should tell them? As she spoke the bit of cambrick in her hand designedly dropped almost at the feet of Dirk Holson.  But the chorus was commencing and the bass and tenor were at once absorbed in their work. So Mr. Reed and Mrs. Roberts had the memorial laugh all to themselves. None but they understood what the white handkerchief said. Despite the laughter there was a suspicious mist in Mr. Reed's eyes. How far is Murth removed from tears? he asked his hostess. And then, do you know when I look at these young men moving about your rooms at their ease, really ornaments to society, and think of the places in the world that they will be likely to fill, and think of what they were when you first saw them, the overwhelming contrast brings the tears. Said Mrs. Roberts, I will tell you something that will do your heart good. Did you know that our young lady helpers had reorganized in larger forests and with certain fixed lines of work which they feel certain they can do? The effort has passed out of the realm of mere experiment. They have chosen a name. They are henceforth to be known as the Esther Reed Band. They came to me for a motto to hang in their rooms below the name, and I gave them this. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Right, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, say at the spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.


Okay. Hello. Our next presenter is Florian Wilhelm. He is data scientist at Inovex. And the title of his presentation is Handling GPS Data with Python. Thank you, Florian. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to my talk Handling GPS Data with Python. My name is Florian Wilhelm and I'm a data scientist at Inovex. Inovex is a technology consulting company based in Germany in all the major cities. So I once had a project where the task was to relate the brake pad wear of trucks to the route they're driving and how much they're driving and where they're driving. So this was the time when I first had to, like, deal with GPS data because what we had from those trucks were GPS data and, of course, the current condition of the brake pads. And so this is how I came to that. And when I tried to find information about libraries, about what kind of libraries I could use to, in order to fulfill this task, I found it quite hard, actually, because normally you're used to that whatever Python libraries you're searching, you get a lot of good tutorials and so on, but it was kind of hard for GPS. And so this is the reason for this talk that I want to share a little bit about information, about things I found out during this task. And, of course, I'm also, as a mathematician, interested in the algorithm and the mathematical algorithms in that domain. And it's always good to have a talk, right, when you're going to a cool conference like the EuroPython. So first of all, when you're starting to deal with GPS data, it needs to be stored in a way, right? So the typical format for GPS is the so-called GPS, the GPS exchange format. And it's based on XML. It describes three different points. So we have here three different things. We have way points. We have a route. So route is, yeah, the way you actually want to go, if you're, for instance, using it for hiking. And then the actual track that's the route you then actually took, because maybe there was some kind of mountain in between. And this is basically what this format is describing. So to give you a little bit of an idea of how the general structure looks like, we have here the way points as shown before. We have the route. And the route is just a list of different route points. And we have the track. The track is composed of several segments. And you're using segments, for instance, when you lose your GPS signal, you start a new segment, or when you're hitting pause, for instance, on your running sensor, then you start a new segment. And each segment contains many track points, which build up then the track you actually took. And for this presentation, I will use not the customer data, of course, but data I took from my watch, from Polar Flow, it's called.  And we have here the latitude and the longitude and the elevation. And of course, the time when this measurement was taken. So how do we now deal with those kinds of files? So there's one library called gpxpy. It's a gpx file parser for reading and you can even write gpx files. It's licensed under the Apache 2.0. It contains a nice small command line tool, gpxinfo. That gives you some basic stats about your files. So if you're just interested in, okay, what was my average velocity, then you can just use it. It's Python 3 compatible, what is always important with small libraries like this. It's written by Tomo Krajinda and it's used on his website, trackprofileup.com. So how do you actually use this? It's really, really easy. You just import it, you open the file as a file handle and you just parse it and basically that's it. So when you get back is an object and you can then use the tracks attribute to access the different tracks. In this case, we only have one track. And the segments, in this case I also had only one segment. And then normally what we do, right, if we want to deal somehow with this information, we make a data frame, a pandas data frame out of it and that's exactly what I did here, set the index time and that's the data frame. So far so simple. So, of course, since GBX is something really visual, we want to plot it and just to give you an idea, so this was one of a run I did in Hamburg. So this is if I just plot the longitude and the latitude with the help of mudplotlib, exactly. And this was just a track, just a line. What happens if we plot not only the line but the actual points with dots, then we see that we have a lot of points. We have more than 10,000 points actually. So at that point I might think, okay, maybe 10,000 points for a small run is way too much. So how can we reduce it? How can we reduce the number of points that we have to deal with less data without actually destroying the geometry of the track? So a really simple trick is we use only every 105th point. And in that case it works because I was running with about always the same speed, but this would not work if I had done this with a car or we also see that on straight lines like here, of course you would need less points to describe a straight line, only two points actually, but in a curve you would need more information to describe the curve. So you see there's the need to somehow use a cool algorithm to simplify a GPS track. And one algorithm that is quite often used is the so-called Rammert-Duglas-Polger algorithm. And I think it's best explained in how it works. So let's assume we have this GPS track and we want to simplify it. And what does simplify mean? So we have to give some kind of epsilon, some kind of error that we say that's okay to make that kind of error, but not any more, not more than a certain epsilon. So the algorithm just works taking the first point to the last, drawing a straight line and this epsilon surrounding, this epsilon environment around that straight line. And the algorithm goes, if now all points would be inside this epsilon environment, then we could just reduce all points in between. If it's not the case, then take the point which is the furthest away from this line, which is that one, and apply the same algorithm recursively on the two segments that are by splitting at that point. So one segment is that one here and the other will later be that one. So we start with inspecting that one. We see, okay, all points are in this epsilon environment. We can just remove that. And now we do the same here. We have the problem, not all points are included. We take the one that is the furthest away. So that one, we're going to split up from here to there, and then from there to there. So first this one, we can remove that point. Here we have the same problem again. And this is how this algorithm recursively works. And we see that we have simplified the track, reduced the number of points. And if we go back and forth, you see this even better. And this is an algorithm we can use in which it's quite often actually used to simplify a GPS track. We will later make use of this. So in this case, I just use this algorithm. And, yeah, at that point, one should also make it, yeah, one word of caution. So never ever use recursion in Python.  So if you have more than recursion depth of more than 1,000, then you will get into trouble. So it's better to reformulate this algorithm iteratively, which makes it more complicated. But this is what I did here. And, yeah, so I used an implementation that is iterative. And I just run it on the long latitude. And I can reduce the number of points from more than 12,000 to less than 200. And we see here the outcome. We see as expected, straight lines are really straight lines. And here, for instance, during a curve, more dots are actually used. And, yeah, that's it about the simplification. So when I was doing this project with the trucks, I had only longitude and latitude. And, of course, I was interested in kind of finding out, okay, what was the height, the uphill and downhill distance the car was actually doing. But, okay, where do I get the elevation from? So I was looking around. In my track, so this is the track from a bicycle ride I did in Italy. And there I have the elevation, but I will now just remove it. So that it is like it was in the project and I don't have it. In that case, there's a really cool extension to GPX PI called SRTM PI. And SRTM PI stands for Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Elevation Data for Python. And that was, I think, maybe some of you remember in the year 2000, there was this huge NASA mission where they were using radar to find out the elevation almost everywhere on Earth. And this data is publicly available and this is just an interface for it. And you can really easily use it to get the elevation data. So you're just imported. You say SRTM get data and you say add elevation to the GPX file to this object we opened before. And what SRTM will do, it will just start downloading partial files with this data and add it to your GPX file. And additionally, we can say at least smooth the elevation. So two neighboring elevations are averaged in that case. And, yeah, so if I just plot it to see, to compare the elevation that my sensor took or measured to compare it to the SRTM data, we see that it's basically almost the same. So this works always great if you don't have the elevation data but you somehow need it. So, of course, if you do a project in the end, you want to present something to the customer. And the customer always likes nice pictures. So I was also facing the problem of how can I now visualize the data in a nice customer-friendly way. And I found out about a library called MPL Leaflet. And the nice thing about this is it can just use any mudblot and put it into a panable, summable, slippy map. So all these maps you see in webpages where you have OpenStreetMap or Google directly embedded in a web page. It's extremely easy to use, also a new BSD license. It integrates fantastically well with the Jupyter notebook and Python 3-compatible. And the word of caution, you should definitely simplify your tracks with the Rama-Douglas-Polger algorithm first, because if you started using it with 10,000 points, then it will not work. Okay, so how does it work? As I said, it's really simple. We start with a mudblotlet plot, that one we have seen before. And now we just project it onto OpenStreetMap. We just import MPL Leaflet and say display the figure we created before. And this will in Jupyter embed it into the output widget. Or if we would say, it would have said show, then it would just open a new window. And this is fully interactive and summable. And it's two lines of code to actually embed this somewhere. And this is, I really, really like this. That is so easy. And another track that I want to talk about a little bit more now is, yeah, this bicycle ride I did in Austria and Italy here. And when I was looking at the data of the track, I found out that there are some curious things.  And, yeah, and down hill about the same. I was wondering, okay, I mean, sounds good. That's a lot of height meters to do actually by bike. But the organizer, he told me or it said it's on the website that it's roughly 2,700 height meters. So strange. So somehow my sensor must have measured something strange or maybe I'm doing something wrong. So I was trying to start investigating. And if I looked, when I looked closer at the elevation, I realized that there are just bumps here. And these bumps are quite unrealistic. So we directly see that the elevation sensor measures in accuracy or precision of one meter. And sometimes it jumps up and it jumps down and it jumps up and down. And if you do that a lot, of course, if you measure the uphill distance on that side, you gain uphill meters, although this seems quite unrealistic, right? So we have to somehow smooth the data because this is an artifact of the sensor that's not the actual position I was at that time. And also when I was looking at the speed, I was quite, yeah, feeling strange that I was sometimes doing 230 kilometers per hour, which is on a bicycle. I mean, I was going downhill sometimes, but even downhill, that's way too much. And this was also, I mean, I was using the GBX file at missing speeds function, which basically takes the time and the distances and calculates the speeds. So it shouldn't be a mathematical problem. It's more like the problem has got to be somewhere in the data. And we directly see that this peak is extremely unrealistic. But why, how do we know that this is unrealistic? I mean, it's like, okay, we have the picture of a bike in our head and we say, a bike has a position and some kind of velocity. And if we know the velocity, then the position will be, the next position will be somehow based on the current position and on the speed vector we have.  And so we have this kind of model in our head. And this is exactly what the Kalman filter is all about. So Kalman actually, he passed away just three weeks ago. So really beautiful mind. And he came up with this idea of describing, giving a model to some, to all kind of physical things. And in this case we have, we want to describe like my bicycle ride. And the idea is that you have states, states you can't really directly observe, not like the real states. And I can think of my bicycle like having, or me on my bicycle of having a position and some velocity. So this is this state and state acts. And somehow I want to project this into the next state. So if I have, like I said before, the position and the velocity, I can just use the velocity and add it times the time to the position and I will get a rough idea of the next position. And then we have in the general form, of course, he's a mathematician. He made it as general as possible. We also have a control vector. This in this case we would not need. But for instance, if you're looking at a falling apple or falling ball, then this could be the acceleration due to gravity, due to gravitation. And of course we always have an error term. So the error term is when I'm walking and slowly changing my direction, then this is part of the error term. And then besides the state equation, we also have the measurement equation. So this is where the GPS idea comes into play. So the state, I said, we cannot directly observe it, but we observe a measurement and the measurement is somehow generated from the state plus an additional error. And this is basically the main idea. And now that I kind of have a model how I think something physical, some process behaves like my ride on a bicycle. And on the other hand, I get measurements and those will never be exactly the same. I somehow need a method to bring them both together. And this is the main idea behind the Kalman filter. So I take everything I know up to a certain point about the process and about all prior measurements. This is called here x hat minus. It's a kind of a priori state estimation. And then in the next step, I get the measurement. This is the set k. And then I want to somehow get an up posteriori state estimation, which is better than my a priori knowledge I had before. And this I do by taking my a priori knowledge plus some residual between the measurement and the state like mapped on to the measurement I would get directly from my a priori state. And this is multiplied with a k, the so-called Kalman gain. And finding an optimal Kalman gain is now the hard part. So optimal in the sense that you want to minimize the error covariance. And if we had something like this, and actually we have, we can just use this to predict and to correct and do this iteratively with each new measurement and then we have the basic idea of the, not the basic idea, but then we have the Kalman filter. So what happens is that we use our transition equation, our model about our physical process and make a prediction with the a priori knowledge, also with the error covariance. And then the measurement comes in. We can now correct it. We calculate the optimal Kalman gain, so this is the formula, but you just ignore it for now. Then we do this optimal averaging of our a priori knowledge and the measurement and we get an update and can go back and start doing this for the next time step. And for instance, if you're looking at some, if you're looking on Google Maps and if you're losing this measurement update because you're losing your GPS signal, you see that this, this obviously circle around your point which is starting to increase. And this is exactly what happens in that part, in the prediction part. If you're losing GPS signal for five, six seconds and the circle starts increasing and then some more measurements come in and the circle goes down again. And this is directly what you see in many, many GPS applications. So for our Kalman field and our concrete case, the model state equation is just the next position is the current position plus the velocity times dT, so velocity times the time step plus some noise. And the current velocity, the next velocity is the current velocity plus some error term. So that means I'm not accelerating or de-exaggerating so fast or it's, it should be something, a smooth process. And if I write this in vector notation, I just get this matrix. So this is more or less just transcribing this down to, to this matrix here. In our case, the sampling rate of this, of this watch is one second, so dT is just one second. And the measurement equation is also really, really easy. We are measuring only the GPS position. So with the help of GPS, we only have the position and only implicitly we somehow know something about the velocity. So it means that our state which includes the position and the velocity vector gets mapped to only a measurement of the position plus some, yeah, plus some error. So it's, it's like a, like a really easy equation. And what we also know in this case, we know something about the precision error of GPS. I mean you can look that up. It's something like 10 to 30 meters. And this relates to 10 to the power of minus four in longitude and latitude. And I assumed an error of the elevation of 100 meters. So the, the elevation with GPS, so never trusted. It's really extremely imprecise. And this I take for the error covariant variance. So far everything about the math. And yeah, I hope you get a, you get a good understanding of the basic idea of Kalman. So as I said before, maybe as a small summary, you have some model, some model equation, some measurement. You somehow optimally average those two to get a better idea of the current state. And a really cool library for this is PyKalman. It's a Kalman filter, a smoother and, and, yeah, expectation maximization library. It's that simple to use and really powerful. Comes with many examples and a good documentation besides Afin or, yeah, linear transition matrices. You can also define non-linear and non-Afin state models. It's licensed under a new BST license and it's written by Daniel Duckworth. Now we're going to use it to actually help with the curiosities we found in the data. But before that, of course, we have to do some, some, some data wrangling. So again, we start up with the pandas data frame of our data. And yeah, we start looking a bit around and by looking at the tail, I realized, okay, it's not really one second, the sampling rate. It's, it's sometimes less than a second. So the difference is not always exactly one second and it's really important that the time interval is uniform for this discrete Kalman filter. So what we have to do here is that I was just rounding the, the, yeah, to the next, to the next full second, the time. But what about signal loss? So maybe I had signal loss during my bike ride and, yeah, how can we check that easily? For instance, we could just use the numpy function diff and just do this over the time index and then we see if the difference of two entries is not one, then we know, okay, that's got to be some kind of signal loss. And we have, here, we see we have three times, we have a signal loss. And we can fix this. We need to fix this. As I said, we need a uniform time interval. We can fix this by just using the pandas resample functionality. And this we do with resample one second. And we get some additional rows, which are, of course, not available. Because, yeah, that's the data that I bought during the time of the signal loss. But, yeah, we need it. We're going to fill these values later. Kalman filter is going to help us fill these values. Now, since the Kalman filter works with numpy arrays, we have to go back now. We have our pandas data frame with a longitude, latitude and elevation. And we take the values, so we convert it to, or we take the pandas, the numpy array from it. But we don't use a normal numpy array. We use a masked array because PyKalman expects us that the real measurements are, yeah, are, so note the missing values that they are masked. And this is exactly what I'm doing here. And so the num values are directly masked. And additionally, I just plotted the signal loss points to get an idea where the signal loss was. Here was a tunnel, for instance, and, yeah, to just double check. So now, basically, we are all set and fine for using the Kalman filter. So we have our state transition equation F. This is just the matrix we've seen before. DT is one second. Here we have our measurement matrix. So this is three cross six matrix. And we have our covariance here, covariance error. And we need to define an initial state mean, an initial state covariance, so, like, an initial condition that I just take the first measurement. And we give all that to the Kalman filter from the PyKalman package and say what we don't know is actually the transition covariance matrix. So how fast I'm, like, for instance, changing my direction on the bike. So this is something we don't really know, but we can estimate it. And this is what I'm saying here. So my expectation maximization variables should be this transition covariance matrix. And then we can just fit it. And fit it is just calling KF EM, so expectation maximization again on the measuring and the number of iterations. So this, I took 1,000 iterations just to be sure it really converged. This takes a very long time, like a few hours. And now that our model is fit, we can use it to actually smooth our measurements. And we get in return mean estimation of the states I really had at that point. So now we're going from the measurement to the real to the x to the states I described before. And if I plot now this state, so this is on the right side, and to the left are the measurements, we see that actually it's looking much, much smoother. So we got rid of all those little bumps you saw. And it's looking fine. And of course we can ride it back, the smooth track. And this just basically is we iterate over all the segment points. And yeah, we fill it back in. And then we call the get uphill downhill distance again. And we end up with 2,677 height meters. And this is roughly about the 2,700 height meters that the organizer told me about or told us about on the webpage. And so, yeah, we are fine. We used the Kalman filter without actually, yeah, coming up with some cool smoothing tricks. I mean, I talked to other people, I said, yeah, why didn't you just like take two or three points and took the average somehow, but then you have a lot of variables you need to fit. And here with the Kalman filter, we actually only described the physical process, the relation between velocity and the position. And it turned out to be just fine. And of course, if we do this with a speed, the speed was a little bit more involved since you, yeah, one had to be careful with the points where the signal was lost. So the problem is most sensors, GPS sensors already have some kind of Kalman filter inside.  And then it starts like, yeah, going after the real measurements so it realizes, okay, the measurements are really somewhere else and then you get like jumps where you're really, really fast and this is what happened here. So I had to delete a few points and use the Kalman filter to fill in the more realistic points. But in the end, it turned out really good. So I was driving according to this about 77 kilometers per hour, which is still fast, but I mean downhill and I was checking on my tachometer and it said something about 70, so the maximum speed, so they're still a little bit off. And what's cool about the Kalman filter, you could even now use the data, for instance, of your tachometer from your bike to actually, yeah, to average the measurements from different sensors to get an even more precise estimation of your state. But this is beyond this talk, but it's possible. All right, so this is about the libraries I used. So I want to give a short summary of all the libraries. We have seen right now, I put at point, GPX PI for reading and writing GPS files as well as imputing missing values like the elevation which you can do with SRT MPI. We have visualized our GPS tracks with MPL leaflet, which uses internally the leaflet map, which is a JavaScript library. We've talked about Ramaduk Das Polka algorithm. There is actually, there's really an implementation of it, RDP, which you can just pip install, but as I said, be careful with this. It's programmed recursively, and for my tracks it just didn't work. And then there's Pi Kalman, the data sample Kalman filter. I have a few more notebooks that I created during, yeah, during, I made this talk during the creation of the talk. And you can find it here. It's a total of four notebooks where you can play around with it, and I left several parts out, but there you have the, you can get the full pictures and just play with it. Of course, credits where credit is due. So the RDP example, so there's nice animation. I took from Mario's cart house, the waypoint track graphic from Wikipedia. The logo on the first slide is from GNOME Maps. So if you haven't used this app, it's really, really cool. So for all the Linux user, it's a really nice OpenStreetMap tool, yeah, similar to the Google alternatives. The Kalman prediction correction graphic from Pilgen's blog, and if you're interested about reading more about Kalman filter, there's a really good Kalman invasion filters book by Roger Lappe, and yeah, he's also using Jupiter notebooks and showing how Kalman filter and patient filter work. Okay, so you can find this talk under that URL, and thanks for your attention, thanks for listening, and I'm ready for some questions. Thank you. Thank you, Florian. Is there any question? Hi, great talk. I was wondering if standard geo libraries like GDAL or OGR don't supply comparable functionality. Sorry, I didn't get the, what kind of libraries? Do you know about libraries like GDAL or OGR, which are pretty standard geo libraries? I haven't actually checked them out, but the question is, do they have a cool Python interface? They do have a Python interface. I was just wondering if they also supply GPS specific functionality, but you don't know. So I was doing, when I started this research, and for me, the most important point was that I can really easily access it from Python, and so maybe I missed it, but so far I don't think so that you can easily use them, but thanks, I'll try. Hi, so thanks. What would you do if you had to deal with GPS data in feed format, you know, Garmin is exporting just the feed format, and there's a Python feed pass library, but it's not uploaded since two years ago. Would you use some GPS label to transform it to this GPS, or is it okay? I mean, what would be your approach if you have experience? So I would, I don't know this format of Garmin, so since, yeah, I'm quite liking this fear using the polar products, they directly allow you to upload or download everything in GPX, but in this case, I would look for converter. There surely is a converter, and if it's, yeah, a human readable format, this Garmin format, is it, or is it binary? Is it completely... In more efficient in memory, and in, when you, like, have really long tracks, it's really memory efficient, so it's not human readable. Okay, then you might be having a hard time, but maybe there are converters for it, I guess. Fit files can be imported in the Garmin website, and exported there as GPX. It's a cop out, but okay, we'll see. Okay, but that's, yeah, a good point. So if this is always problematic, if you use pro retire reformats, then... Okay, but then it should be possible to find software that transfers it to GPX. I'm quite sure then. So often, GPS data also comes with, like, a value of accuracy. I don't know if that was available in this talk or in this system. Would it be possible to also use that data to make it more accurate, if you know the accuracy of the GPS data? Yeah, that should be definitely possible if you have, at that point, I mean, you have for each point this error covariance matrix, and if you have then an estimation, even what the error is at that point, you can also use that additional information. You could use the error maybe just as new state variable, and then use your measurement of the error to correct this. So yeah, I would need to think about this, but it should definitely be possible. Yeah. So basically, with the help of the Kalman, whatever kind of sensors you have, having different error variances, and even if you have a measurement for the variance for the error, then you can merge them together to get a better estimation. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Any other question? Okay, thank you very much.