Hi, my name is Fominal Barrilla. I will try to introduce you to Prow. What is Prow? Prow is like a CI CD natively for Kubernetes. It's the platform where Kubernetes is tested, OpenCiv is tested, and all the PRs, all the mergers, and also all these kind of things, it happens. Yeah, let's put up this one. I'm senior software engineer at Rehat. I love programming and OpenCiv and Kubernetes lover. And this is more or less the agenda. I don't think that I have dated in the last PR, but it's fine. It's almost this thing. Okay. Let's get started with Prow. As I said, it's a CI CD system that is based on Kubernetes and it's more attached to GCE, GKE, and yeah, it's it's an opinionated platform, let's say. Then you could manage your Github repo through this using chat ops, which is like I will put a command in a PR with that you could let's say your Github bot will take care about all the PRs, all the mergers, all the, I don't know, put all the labels on the right PR, right mergers, and it's made in Golan, which is cool. All the manifest, all the configuration are storing in secrets, config maps, and also in just the deployment that you put on the Prow. Then the behavior is more like operators. It's an infinite loop where the component will check the configuration on the config map, and with that will happen in some things. Could be interacting between some, let's say, components, or maybe just add to the, against the Github repo or just create a build, create a test spot, whatever, okay? And I create this presentation in order to have some kind of guidance for the people that they could use it, but it's like a script, okay? Then you could use it as a documentation, and you could put your hands on and it's fine, but I could not stop in every step that I put here because it's like 80 slides. This is how it looks like the Prow pods in the console plane namespace. As I said, it's all the configuration in config map and secrets. We have two namespaces, two main namespaces. The first one is the control plane one, which is by default default. And the second one is it's called test pods, which all the jobs will be triggered. And this is all like, we have like five, four, six main components. I will talk about them. And this is all the services that are up on the cluster. I think the main ones are deck, hook, and tight. But yeah, I will go through them a bit later. Let's go with the control plane. Okay, hook. What is hook? I think almost the word itself is planetary, but the thing is hook will take the communication between components and also with GitHub. Then GitHub will talk with hook, and hook will talk with whatever, tight or deck or whatever component that makes sense. It's a statements deployment, which involves pods and pbs. And dispatch all the calls to the other components. The other component is called plank. I think it's most base one. Manage the job execution of every test that you have in your configuration on just on your jobs. And Manage also the life cycle of the jobs itself. Also have a cool feature which is called decorate. Decorates will add some, let's say, extra things to your jobs without put the explicit in every job that you need to configure. Then if you put the thing called decorate to true in your presets, it's like all my logs or my artifacts that I create on my build will be uploaded to GCS, which is cool.  You could create whatever. I don't know. If I need to use a secret that is not usually used on one job or whatever, you could use these utility images. Yeah, you have many things with this decoration. It's very cool. Yeah, utility images will take care to bootstrap like four or five images and containers. Doing every image and every container will do different jobs. For example, there is one called init uploader which is in charge to upload the artifacts to GCS. Yeah, there are many. I will go through them a bit, but not so deep. Well, Dec is just a UI. It's informative. You cannot configure anything there, but it's informative. You could see every PR, every merge and every job executed during the time. Here we have another one which is called PR status. You could see how is your PR and how many commits have in this PR. What is the status and the author? Take history. Take history is like all the merge and all PRs that have been triggered to your repo or your organization. You could manage organization and repositories as you want, but you could see here all these things. The action that will happen, the target, and the base commit which is starting the thing. Also the PR author and the PR status will show, it's like a query. It's triggered to GitHub. It shows which author creates how many PRs on the repo. You could see the status and all the labels that it has and something like that. Let's go with two more which is called Oralogion and Syncer. Oralogion has not explicit configuration but it's like the component that is in charge to trigger all the periodic jobs which is like a Chrome manager.  If you have like, I don't know, 20 jobs in a row in your test name space, it's not so clean, let's say. Then Syncer will take care to clean that stuff and keep the workspace clean. It has explicit configuration, Syncer, but it's like what is your pace to clean the jobs and these kind of things. Tide, Tide is I think one of the most important. Manage retesting and merging of PRs and it needs another plugin called Trigger to make it work completely. Also manage to sync the config map that you have in your configuration in order to read every time that you need to sync with the GitHub repo or just to have updated on your configuration file. So Syncer works with a pool of GitHub PRs which is very cool. Yeah, it populates the DAG dashboard. Yeah, it provides three models of merge which is the same as GitHub does and it's merge, squash and rebase. The bad thing that it's on prow is the vendor locking thing. It's very tight to GitHub. It's working on the pro guys. It's working on GitLab to make it work but still it's not working at all. Yeah, it's ongoing. Cryer I think is the last one for the control plane. It's the notification demon. For example if you work just with GitHub it's fine. If you have a pre-commit or post-commit pre-merge or post-merge jobs it's fine because GitHub will notify you when something happens. If every post will fail it's fine or will work it's fine, will notify you. But the thing is if you have a periodic job that doesn't have any context about your repo, about your, it's just a generic job you don't have any way to notify you. Then this is the component that will happen, will make it happen. Then it has a specific configuration and for now I think I have just four providers that do notify and this is the four one. I think we will just cover Slack and the configuration. The configuration is just a secret with the OAuth token and that's it. Okay, until now any questions? All right, let's go with deploying thing. I think this is the most complex thing on the talk but we have one way to do it easily which is using tackle. Tackle is a component installed using Golang. It's a Golang tool which will deploy Kubernetes on GKE. I think by default it's like a three-node cluster. It could be configured, it could be customized. The default one is three nodes with four CPUs and eight gigs of RAM, more or less. You could do it manually but the thing is if you use tackle, let's say the good thing, all the ingress thing, all the load balancers are managed by the ingress and in this case by GKE. If you do it manually, you need to take care about the deployed load balancer. You need to customize ingress like Nginx or something like that and you need to configure manually all those things and it's not great. But as I said, this talk is based on the tackle installation but here you have the sample of manual installation. You need to configure your G Cloud account in your shell and your all token. As I said, I put all the sample installation and all these things. You could just click on the links and that's it. As a script, you need to create your GC instance on the manual installation, deploy a Kubernetes and with that clone the Sinfra repo and apply all the airbags, all the deployments and that's pretty much it. It's not so complex but all the ingress thing, it's the bad part. You need to configure all the ingresses, all the things. If you have like three nodes deployment, you need to configure load balancer and all these kind of things. If you use GKE, this will be done by the cloud provider itself. Okay, any questions? I think, yeah, go ahead. No, this tackle tool is like the operator but it's not operator, it's just an executable and there is not operator at all. I don't think so but I think you don't need an operator at all because the update method is quite easy. Yeah, the Kubernetes people, I think they are not covering this thing but yeah, PRs are welcome. Wherever you want to deploy it, it's fine but the thing is you need to be reachable by DNS, by GitHub, configuring the webhook in the UI and that's it. The unique thing that you need to fit is the GitHub thing. It depends on your test. If you have jobs like I need to rise up another Kubernetes in a Docker, you need a very big machine but you could configure clusters which is called like node selector and you could have a cluster called bare metal and you could have your bare metal clustering premise and you could have another one which is like cloud provider fitting and then yeah. You could configure this on the jobs, you put the node selector when you need to point to another cluster. Just pro, without testing or just testing minimal thing, it's like one node with 8 gigs of RAM, maybe 4 and yeah, 8 is better. Two CPUs or 4, it's fine. There's no more on that. All right, let's go with the configuration. By default, tackle will not deploy the SSL thing but in this presentation I configure Proud with third manager and you have all the sample deployment and also all the stuff to configure the issuer against the let's encrypt, creates the issuer, creates the certificate and with that create the ingress. This will create the load balancer on GC and with that will point to the right pro instance which is this one. I have all the execution here. I let him like two days in a row just to get some history. And yeah, for example, if I go here I could see the deluxe execution for this job and this for this one. Okay, to configure this you need just to deploy third manager, configure the issuer against let's encrypt in this case is ACME base and with that create the ingress. That's it. Let's encrypt will recall and create the CA and create all the, minus all the certificates. Okay, and here's the big thing, the configuration, the plugins, the labels and the jobs. You could merge configuration and jobs but the good way to do it is to separate jobs from configuration. I think it's quite nice to have it separated and if you have a very big organization or repository it's recommendable to do it in this way. Let's go with a config file. For example, this is the config file. No, this is the plugin file, sorry. Yeah, this is the config file. Here we have like the non-section thing which is the default things like log level for debugging, pond name spaces and prune name space. You need to configure the proper airbag if you change the name spaces. Type configuration which is configuring the sync period which will recall the config map and update the live configuration that it has on the pod. All the merge method for your repositories, in this case we are configuring merge method for all the repositories that we have on the shadowman organization, Github organization. All the queries that you need to fill to make these merge happen. Then you need, for example, I have a PR on ProDevconf repository and I need to get these merge happen by the bot. Now I need to make all these requirements fit. We don't need to have, do not merge, do not merge hold, work in progress or invalid owner's file. And I need at least two labels, look good to me and a prover. It needed to allow type to make, to merge this PR. PR status is a page on the on deck, but it's not a big thing. I will go through this, sync air configuration, just the garbage collector, I remember in you. This is the, like, what is the path that where you will store your logs and your artifacts in your GCS bucket. And I just copy paste a template configuration. I think this is the best way because it's a mess to get this configured. Job URL prefix config, which is where I will store the artifacts, well, timeout will happen. And the decoration thing, I think this is very useful. Utility images that I talked before, it's clone ref, I will use this image and this version of the image. They need to upload things to GCS entry point to get bootstrap the container and pod and the sidecar. If you need a sidecar, you need to decorate the pro job. Deck, which artifacts will create on the execution and presets, which is, like, all my jobs that have this label will have this configuration. It's not a big thing, but it's useful to don't repeat yourself in the job description. Okay. I think I show almost all in this. And here we get to the, we already have my configuration done. I will show the plugin, but I will talk about it later. Plugins, yeah. Here's the plugin thing. I think the config updateer is the best one. When you create a PR against your configuration repository, you could have, like, an automated pool when a component will trigger the configuration from github repo. And from that we'll update the config maps. I think it's very convenient to have it configured on your CACD system. And it's, as I said, very convenient because if you create, if you are working with many people in a team, it's okay to have separated folders for every repo that you are managing. And I think I will show an example. This is a repository where it's located and manage all the, all the jobs of our organization. This organization is like maybe 20 repositories and every repository has their own, their own folder. And inside of every folder you have, like, well, this is not a right one. Let's go with this one. It's like periodic jobs, pre-summit jobs, post-summit jobs. And if you have some presets configured for this, you could use it. Okay. And with that, would you just point to them, use another tool called Basel, which is a build configuration or build, let's say, build program where you just have many commands done in GoLand. And you just need to use a tool which is called chess config just to ensure to don't upload bad configuration to your CACD system. Then with that, you just need to update your config maps and that's it. If you already configured your config updater, you don't need to configure your config maps. The PR will take care to do it by itself. I will show an example of a pull request already done and merge against the configuration and how... I think this is it. Yeah. This is a PR already against the configuration. Some folks helped me to do that because you cannot approve your own PR. Then I think it makes totally sense. When he puts something like look to me or approve on the repo, on the PR, the bot will take care about approve the PR and merge the PR and will notify you which configuration or config maps will be updated. In this case, plugins have been updated and your config have been updated. This periodic one and the pre-summit one, the bot will inform you how the configuration has changed and it will be published on the PR. I think it's very convenient and if you will do in a serious way, I think you need to configure it in your repo. Okay. With that, we could start with plugins. Any question until here? Okay. Plugins. I think it's another thing that is very important. It's very extensible and it's not very complex to create your own plugin for PROW. This is the main configuration for plugins, the main file. I could show you. You could configure for your organization and PROW will take care about extend if you put some repo just to extend the configuration up to this repo. Then if you put to your organization all these repos, all these plugins, it's fine and for every repo that you want to configure separately, you could do it in this way. The other thing that you need to configure to make tight working in a proper way, it's these triggers which will take care about the merging. With that, it's fine. It's not so complex. Also for approving, you could have more configuration in this case. It's just implicit self-approve, which means when I create a PR, I assume, let's say the bot will assume that I put a logo to me. And logo to me as a proof. I put as false because it's not always the case. And also a good thing you can do is like a logo to me review will act as a logo to me. If you review the PR, it will take care about all this logo to me. It doesn't make sense to repeat yourself. I enter already on that, configure editor. I already talk about it. Yeah, the config maps. It's in the control plane, in the control plane name space. And we have four config maps. They are these ones. Yeah, it's a Jamel base. And it's parsed by tight. If you separate your job config from your configuration, you need to decorate your every deployment that you have on your name space, on your phone to plane, to include these lines, which is the, I will have my separated job configuration. I need to mount the volume in this path and also in this, and I also need to use this config map. That's pretty much it. You have a link to do it here. And this is how it looks like a repository based on separated jobs by every repository. But periodic, pre summits and blah, blah, blah. This is how it looks like the successful PR. And another one I think it's very cool. It's approvers and owner labels. You could manage with this plugin in a very granularity way. What this means is I could put an owner file on every folder that I have on my repo. And with that in this owner file, I could put separated owners. And just them could manage this folder. I think it's very cool because every job in the configuration and every job in your proud instance could be different or managed by different people or different teams. Then this could make your day. Also you have another thing, which is meritus approvers, which is like temporary approver. And yeah, you also have filters. Filters will apply some labels to the PR or to the jobs in base of these reg expressions. And yeah, it's not so complex, but the owner labels it's very, let's say, useful for when you have like, I don't know, 50 labels to manage. One thing that is not displayed on the proud documentation is you need to create all the labels on the repository. If you will recall this label on applying that you don't have, you need to create by yourself. But we created an image that will make this for you. Look at me approve. Questions on plugins? Yeah, sorry? Reviewers and approvers. Reviewers have not the same, let's say, credentials. Reviewers will just could be like a contributor. And approvers could be like owners on the GitHub repo. More questions? Yeah. From two guys, not only one? Yeah, yeah, this is by default the behavior. Like give it to me, yeah. And then it's okay. Yeah, after that another needs to approve that. And you have another plugin called Bunderbloss, if I remember correctly, which is the plugin in charge to assign the PR already to reviewers, which is cool. Then you don't need to go through GitHub repo and assign the reviewers manually. More questions? Okay. Yeah. No, it's just to assign, if you have a PR and it's not managed by anyone, Bunderbloss will take care to get the owner's file, see their reviewers, and assign them the PR to manage their look to me and review code and all these kind of things. Is there something? I don't know. I don't think so. Okay. Automatic management of the GitHub repo is quite easy. You just need to configure the web hook on GitHub repo or on organization, which is the normal way. You need all the involved components will be planned tight on deck. And this is the usual behavior. Plan will take the utility images and ready to GSS bucket, tight manage the self-merging and testing the jobs, and just on deck will show you the status of all these actions. And again, use check config because if you have separated a configuration from jobs, the configuration will not give you any error and you could upload it. But you need to go to execute check config to get the errors on the jobs. Tight will not say anything about this working or not working. But you could, for example, check the job config in order to know how many jobs you have. Then, for example, here we have all our config maps. I will get job config, for example. As you can see, I have one periodic job for this file and two jobs for this other file. The thing is, for example, if I have four jobs and you don't have one of them in them in the config map, you have an error in your configuration, but tight will not say anything about that. It's very cool. Okay. The way to replace manually your thing if you are doing things fast because you are pushing it, you're very pushing it. And yeah, question on that? It's quite easy to configure your repo. Okay, let's go with testing. We have three kind of jobs here. Presummit, posummit, and periodic. The thing is, the periodic one doesn't have any context, as I said. And you need to put all the extra argumentation on the job. And it's something like this one. Extra reps will point to the right repo to clone and to manage. You could put whatever you want. It's an awry.  The node selector, as I said, you could put the cluster here. In this case, it's primary. But if you put, it doesn't put anything here, it's fine. But we'll run in the same cluster that you are running proud. And this is Daymatch, the Daymatch definition. The commands and the argumentation is the useful for Kubernetes. Presummit is when you have a PR already submit to GitHub, it's ongoing, and are the tests that are in execution. To make the PR happen, you need to fill all the tests and finish successfully. If not, it will fail and you need to check the pods and so on. This is the configuration for Presummit. You don't need any context here because you already have it. On the PR, you already have the repository, the organization, and yeah. You could put some things like a script report. I don't need to report, type, whatever. Always run. In every commit that you have on the PR, we'll run this test. If not, you could just disable it and that's it. Decorate. I always use decorator. The name of the job, and that's it. After that, we have the podsummit. I think this is more like after when you already merge PR, all the execution that you need to execute on the proud. For example, if you need to already have my Kubernetes version already done, it's tested, it's merged. I need to spread all the images to Google Compute. You could do it with this one. This is the aspect of the job. It's more or less the same for Presummit. That's it. It's not more complex than that. Any questions? Notifications. As I said, the thing for notification is on periodic. You don't have any notification. With Cryer, you could do it. You define on the configuration which is the behavior in order to get notified. For example, you need to configure the Cryer airbag and the Cryer deployment because by default it's not deployed on your proud instance. Also, you need to create a generic secret which contains the Slack token. That's pretty much it. With that, you have it, let's say, prepared to get configured. With that, with this configuration, you have it configured. Job ties to report. For example, if I have already configured our GitHub notification, we don't have to get it configured by Cryer. Then I will avoid to put Presummit and Possummit on this one. I just have periodic and batch ones. The state of the report could be just ping me when it fails. For example, the Slack channel will be notified and the template. This job, whatever name, will have been failed on this link. The link will be pointing to the logs and that's pretty much it. It's not a big thing. Any questions? Other similar project? Jenkins? Yeah, but it's not based on the same base. For example, you could use Tool, which is used by OpenStack guys. There are many of it. The thing is, Proud itself is not a complete thing. You need more high-level, let's say, component-like pipelines. You don't have it here. You don't have it like Tecton or something like that that will join to this Proud thing and will take manage to all the pipelines and all these things. For example, you already have one thing called external plugins, which is not explained in this deck, but it's fine. You could use a Jenkins external server to execute some jobs. External plugins, it's okay, but you need to put it manually in the pro instance. It's a bit messed, but it's very useful. Here you have all the references where I put all... There are many of them and yeah, it's done. Questions? The thing is, not for now, they are working on a GitHub integration, but it's not working at all for now. The PR is ongoing. Yeah, you just need to add it as a cube node without you are fine. Well, depending on what do you need, I mean, you have already one test namespace where all the posts will run, all the posts mix. You don't have any name on them. Then you cannot identify by, let's say, just scene. You need to go to the PR and see which number is being executed. But you don't have any way to separate the jobs for now from the repository that you are managing. All right, thank you.


Hi, I'm Zor. Welcome to Unisor Education. I would like to talk about series, introduction to series. Well obviously this lecture is a follow-up after I was talking about sequences and there are a couple of problems which I actually presented. So what is a series? Well shortly series is a sum of sequence. Usually when we are considering a sequence we have elements which can be actually described as the first, the second, the third, etc. This is element number K and maybe some others. So if it's a finite sequence there is some kind of a maximum order number. If it's an infinite sequence then it's defined for all natural indices. These are indices 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Example, a sequence of all odd numbers. Now, so series is a sum of a sequence. Usually we are summing up together all the elements of the sequence beginning from the first one, which is A1 or in our example that's the first odd number which is 1 and ending at some maximum number which we are including into summation. So for instance a series which we can basically call as K is a sum of all elements of the base sequence with indices from 1 to K and that's why I use the index K here. Now obviously if the initial, the base sequence is finite and it has let's say n elements then we can construct as 1 as 2, this is A1, this is A1 plus A2, etc. We can construct as n which is sum of all elements up to the maximum available number and no more. Now if it's an internet sequence where there is no maximum number and obviously we can construct series for any index K from 1 to basically to infinity. Well, let's concentrate on the example which I just presented. So let's say we have a sequence of all odd numbers and let's see what are the corresponding series will be. Well, S1 is obviously 1 which is only the first element. S2 is the sum of the first two elements which is 4. Now S3 is the sum of the first three elements which is 9. S4 which is sum of the first four elements is 16, etc. Well, just out of curiosity I hope you notice that this is 1 square, this is 2 square, this is 3 square, this is 4 square and my very intelligent guess is that Sk which is the sum of all first k odd elements would be equal to k square. Well, yes this is not only very intelligent but also correct guess and I'm going to prove it when I will talk about the details of summation and different series. This is just an example and this example is just an illustration of what really a series in this particular case is. This is a series of the sequence of all odd numbers which by the way is a arithmetic progression because it has a difference too and that was my first example. My second example which I would like to present to you is a very ancient one. It was a Greek philosopher by the name Xena and there is a famous Xena's paradox where he is logically proving that Achilles would never be able to catch the tortoise. So let's assume you have the road, this is your tortoise and this is your Achilles which is behind and they are moving this direction. Now let's say initial distance between them is 100 meters. Now let's consider the first interval of time during which Achilles will move 100 meters forward to basically be at the point where tortoise started moving. Now during that same time he has moved to this point tortoise will move a little farther, let's say by one meter forward.  But what I would like to point out that during this time while he is moving to this point and tortoise to this point obviously he didn't catch tortoise. Alright let's consider next period of time. The period of time during which Achilles moves from this point to the point where the tortoise was before. Now he will move one extra meter but she would also move tortoises here, I use sheep. So the tortoise would move some other smaller distance obviously. Let's say it's one centimeters, one centimeter. So by the time he moves one extra meter she moves one extra centimeter so he didn't catch it again. Now obviously this trousers can be repeated infinite number of steps. So it looks like during all these infinite number of steps Achilles would not catch the tortoise. Well obviously we all know that he would sooner or later. So how is this logic actually working? I mean what's the contradiction in this particular logic? Well also when I will talk about geometric progression and the series of the geometric progression I will explain the details of this calculation and I will explain during which period of time or during what distance the Achilles will not be able to catch and then after that he would. So basically I will defeat this particular paradox. I will explain what's wrong with this and logically prove what exactly is the right state of affairs in this particular case. But what's interesting is that this is a perfect example of summation of geometric progression and I'll explain you why. So this is just a couple of examples. One is the sum of odd numbers, sum of arithmetic progression and sum of geometric progression derived from paradox described by Greek philosopher Zina. And the last thing which I wanted to talk about is basically some kind of symbology which is used in mathematics when dealing with sequences and and serieses. Usually to express that the particular, okay, so let's say we have a particular sequence where Achilles is a generalized element of this sequence. For instance, if I'm talking about all odd numbers then generalized odd number will be this. For k is equal to 1, it's 1, for k is equal to 2, it's 3, for k equals 3, it's 5, etc. etc. Now if I want to symbolically explain that I'm summing up all the elements from a1 to an, I will use a Greek letter, uppercase letter sigma and I will put the general member general element of this particular sequence near it. And the only thing which I would like to specify here how exactly I'm summing up, what exactly are the elements which I am summing. So this particular index should be changed from the value of 1 to n because I'm summing up all elements from 1 to n. So that's basically, this is exactly the same as this. And obviously you can use different indices. You can put a i, i from 1 to n or whatever else. I mean this is not important. Letters are whatever you choose but what's important is to use the uppercase Greek letter sigma and specify the limits. Now in many cases, by the way, when we're talking about summing a sequence, arithmetic progression or geometric progression or anything else, we might do a little bit shorter. We might do this. If there is no confusion what's the index, then basically we don't have to specify it here. If we are talking about sequence, usually we are starting from the sequence element number 1. So if we are starting from 1, then only difference basically is what's the maximum number which we are summing up. But anyway, these are just symbols. What I wanted to point out is the usage of the sigma sign for summation. All right. So this is a very short introductory lecture about what actually series is all about. I will spend more time explaining what kind of rules of summation of arithmetic progression or geometric progression or whatever else and I will present a certain number of problems but that's for the future lecture. This is just an introduction. Don't forget to, after you listen to all the theory, try to solve the problems yourself first and only then listen to the lecture which presents some solutions to these problems.  That's it. Thank you very much for this particular lecture and let's hope the new ones will be more interesting and longer.


Really picking up where we left off, our biggest initiative that we're working on is our pursuit for broadband to become a gigabit community. Now that we have a new industrial park, we have to set ourselves aside above and beyond what somebody else has that we're going to be competing against. So when you look at the Lexington's or the Louisville's, you have to ask yourself why would a corporation want to locate in Eastern Kentucky when they can go there, where they have interstates and all those amenities? Well, one area that we can really advance in and really mark ourselves in is if we become a gigabit community, utilizing the state's new fiber, dark fiber initiative. So we're leaps and heads above a lot of other communities in our pursuit of making that happen. So it's been a plan really under the city's comprehensive plan for the last 10 years, was really develop the quality of life issues and things like tourism and improving our streetscapes and bringing in new retail type businesses so that as we prop up and support the medical profession and the educational community and the finance profession, then what that will enable us to do is just show industry that we're forced to be reckoned with.


All right. We are just past the hour of six o'clock, the start time for our event tonight. No poetry, no peace, which is a reading of local poetry and a celebration of human expression and peace. This event was set to be held today in order to help celebrate Poetry Month, National Poetry Month, which is April. So my name is Taryn Edwards. I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. I hope you can see our beautiful library. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mechanics Institute, we are not just a place for those who wield a wrench, but anyone who feels like making or doing or reading or writing things. We are an independent membership organization that houses a beautiful library. You can see it right behind me. We are the oldest designed to serve the general public in California. We are also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club. That is the oldest in the nation. We were founded in 1854. And I hope so far, your interest is peaked. I would consider becoming a member with us. It is only $120 a year. And with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. So I have a co-host tonight. She is the co-author of the collection of poems after which this event is named, No Poetry, No Peace, which she produced with her daughter. Dr. Angela Boutet. And Cheryl has selected the poets who will be reading tonight. And she also is the author of the novel Betrayal on the Bayou. And you will find all of her published work at the Mechanics Institute's library. Cheryl is invaluable not only to me, but to the community at large of Mechanics Institute. She helps me with our monthly writers event, the writers lunch, and also host fun times like this one. So thank you so much Cheryl as always for volunteering your help, helping me and all of us keep our community, not only writing but reading the good stuff. I appreciate you so much.  Thank you so much. Well I got inspired you know I had to keep talking because my dogs actually burst through the door. Right when I was talking anyway, before you take over officially I just want to tell our guests. Thank you so much for coming tonight. We are using the webinar version of zoom, which means it's completely normal for you to not see yourself. Only our poets will be visible tonight. I also wanted to encourage you to use the chat space to comment or congratulate our poets. I will be posting the links to their individual websites there and also engaging with you throughout the event. Cheryl, I think maybe we're ready to enjoy some poetry. What do you think. All right, sounds like a plan. Thank you so much Darren, and thanks to the Mechanics Institute for having us again with these wonderful poets we have tonight and thank you. All of the people in the audience who have joined us tonight. I just wanted to remind people that this is National Poetry Month, and that is one of the main reasons that we're here. And this evening we gather with a group of gifted and wonderful poets under the banner of no poetry, no peace. And I'd like to open this this bountiful reading with a couple of quotes. Poetry is an echo. Asking a shadow to dance. Carl Sandberg. And another poetry is language and it's most distilled and most powerful. And that was Rita Dove. And tonight you're going to hear beautiful beautiful things that these poets have created out of their imaginations and experiences that I know you will remember long after this night of poetry has ended. I would first like to introduce our first poet, Carla Brundage. Carla is the author of two books of poetry, including swallowing water melons and co author of Malata, not so tragic. Her work as editor and publisher for Pacific Raven Press has included anthology authors in the Bay Area, Hawaii, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. A graduate of Vassar College Mills College MFA program hey my mill sister. I'm going to be a golden girl this year by the way. And San Francisco State clinical schools project Carla is host of ugly beauty poetry series and founder of West Oakland to West Africa poetry exchange, and I also want to just add right quick. I was honored to be one of the contributors to the Colossus Press home anthology that Carla did along with her partner Sarah bill. Ladies and gentlemen, Carla Brundage. Thank you Cheryl. I'm going to dedicate the whole reading that I do tonight for poems to Justin Pearson and Justin Jones of Tennessee. What we witnessed the bravery of these two people standing up and putting everything on the line was magnificent so I'll just get started. The revolution will be televised with apologies to Gil Scott Herron. The revolution will be televised. Can't you see it's happening right now. Phase one, destroy the warriors define warriors, however you want. Phase two, cut out our tongues, change the language, redefine words to have new meanings, liberal entitlement news, Trump connect stream footprint cloud. Phase three, take our religion, give us icons and devices to worship, bow your head and text, bow your head and text, replace prayer with for take our land, displace the people. Phase five, destroy the family unit, undo the matriarchy, let women come together for no against no for no against the safety of our children born and unborn our bodies sacred and trampled the harmonized love. Phase six shock and awe replay violent deaths over and over for analysis. Was he really choking. Could he really breathe. Was she really carrying a phone was there skirt to short. Did they ask for it. Was his back really turned. Tell kids it's okay to dance on the heads of their dead opponents. Introduce the extreme right. I'm right. I'm right. I'm right. Ask the extreme left. Who's left. The revolution will be televised. Turn off all the lights. Keep them on. Turn them off. No, keep them on. Are we running out of water. Are we running out of time. Are we running. Make sure you have a gun. Make sure you have a gun. Lock your doors. Lock them tight. The revolution will be televised tonight.  Black people have always fought for this country fought for fought this country fought for this country fought one alongside whites occupying spaces of shadow. My grandfather's hat and gun. Crossbow spurs. Twinkle in his matted eye hair like a buffalo soldiers. In the bedroom to is silence. The stop, the choking gall to aspire towards light. Of course, a synthetic illusion of freedom. Hold my blistered hand love. Open the door. There's a baked ham on the front table. But to sacrifice my happiness to hatred. What for. Am I obligated to to pay price paid so many times over. Arms weary from carrying the signpost. Pinched nerves in the back of spine. I am a woman. This is a new poem I just wrote it. Yet untitled but it's about my students. I'm going to call it ghosts for now. My classroom is an intimate place. Apathy filled backpacks. Faces hidden under black hoods. Masked sorrow. A hand may raise a question posed. A comment dropped. Little L comes into the room. His bravado bearing back breaking anger. He cannot allow life and limber, he cannot allow his body to rest in a chair. Up and down each minute. He paces the classroom offering a lab. A curse. A shocking moment of brilliance. Of course he can quote sojourner truth. But why should he when his identity no longer exists. He could be an illusion.  The ghosts of bullets bouncing off their backs. Manhood can make dangerous thoughts. A journey in a classroom where what is reaffirmed is his invisibility. It always comes naturally. It always has. He knows that to be a victim is to not seek revenge. For a moment he sits, writes out a few lines of a poem. Crumples it up. Tosses it across the room. Daring someone. Anyone to read it. Our eyes lock. Pick it up. The answer is a slow deliberate lean. A taking back. There's a shrug. Then a hoodie raised. Tension in the room condenses windows frost. All the other students suddenly are quiet. Focused on their writing. I turn my back. The ultimate sign of trust. And continue to write on the board. He stands. And with all of his young man's voice. Asserts. I need. To use the bathroom. Sure, I say. Not turning around. And when I do. He. And his crumpled paper. Are gone. So my final piece. Coming back to Justin Jones. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I actually wrote this when I was imagining. A Kamala Harris. Who I believe is going to get. A lot no matter what she does. Good or bad. But anyway, I wrote this imagining a black woman in the white house. So before it actually happened. And it's dedicated to Huey Newton. Bobby seals. The author of the 10 point plan. One. The brutal killing of black children must stop. Two. Children are not meant to be hungry. Give us lunch and freedom. Three schools that teach self-determination and community. For employment is a right. Not jails. Close them and stop police. Five. Six. We need bread education. Just peace. Control of new seven. Technology should make health care completely free. To we eight. Demand prison reform. To so-called crimes under unjust laws. Nine. To carry arms to protect ourselves and power to determine. 10. Our destiny is not robbery by capitalists. But unity. And that's our destiny. Thank you. Wow, Carla. I think you should package up that 10 point plan and send it to Vice President Harris. I think she would. Get some use out of it. Wonderful, wonderful poetry. Thank you so, so much for being here with us tonight. And sharing all of those wonderful things. Next, I'd like to introduce Sandra. Sandra is a great explorer and she has a long life. And in San Francisco. Sandra has lived most of her life in Alaska. Involved in dogmashing as a kid. Mountain running as an adult. Raising her two sons and having a long career. An adult in vocational education. She served as managing and poetry editor. Of 14 Hills and co-founded the Bay Area, generations. Sandra and that wonderful unique way of presenting all kinds of literary art with intergenerational partners. And she posted this multi-generational reading series continuously for seven years from 2013 to 2020. Her first book, The Dream That Is Childhood, a memoir in first about growing up in the territory of Alaska during the 1950s, was recently published by Cirque Press. Please welcome Sandra Wasil. I am now live. Thank you very much. Thank you both Cheryl and Terence for organizing such an important reading event and the Mechanics Institute for providing the venue. It's wonderful. I'm going to read you three poems. Two does come out of the book about my childhood. The first poem will be Diamond Willow, which focuses and gives you a little flavor of the community, which was very tiny, no more than 20, 25 people at a stretch where we lived in the wilderness. Two notes, Diamond Willow is a common willow with a virus. It affects the heartwood and creates diamond-shaped recesses that produce a beautiful pattern in the wood and is used by craftspeople to make furniture and beautiful things. Outside to an Alaskan used to mean the United States, and it has come to mean the rest of the United States, Diamond Willow. It hid with its sores under black, under bark, rough with lichens, solitary and afflicted among the common willow. Those gray whips crowding the banks of slews and creeks that emptied into the lake ready to lash my face if I ran by too close, too fast on snow-fixed trails. Distant were the first people I knew, the men who lived around the lake, far from cities, factories, wars, far from each other, mean men, spare of word and cash, until mail day, once a week at the post office, front porch of our house, dog teams or boats tied up at the shore the day given over to waiting, waiting for the mail plane, losing hours and hundred mile hops, pots of coffee and rounds of story, perched steady in the kitchen, sweaty with cigarette smoke, whips of urine off the fur of homemade parkas and of fish off the gurry wiped on pants. They waited for just since weekly an order from Sears, maybe a check from Sam Applebaum, the fur buyer, a case of Paps Blue Ribbon Time Magazine, contact with the outside in packets and parcels. In a dream that is childhood, I weaved through willows and adults unaware of a rot that broke off their branches and ate into the red heartwood rhomboids, scars that hardened the tree, unaware I too would become infected and mourn for the bitter taste of willow and winter at the lake when the cold grew so dark heaven swallowed the earth and the stars, burned out recesses, scattering light that felt like serenity. The second poem in this book is Dear Anastasia, a letter to my foster sister whom I never met, but whose life configured mine in important ways. Certainly, I give a lot of thought to how war affects children. Dear Anastasia, epigraph, a memory of the foster parents' plan for war children. My foster sister in Greece, I want you to know my mother shared your photo and notes with me and I thought of how you came to be orphaned, having an inkling even at the tender age of five that the world war killed parents and children suffered. Now I wonder how much my parents choosing to foster you stemmed from the loss of their son to an institution such a gesture instinctive to mending their personal wound, knowing their funds to sponsor you helped mitigate such pain and separation that parent and child feel whether temporary or wherever. I don't know if you were an orphan at all or made destitute by whatever happened in Greece during the war, but I have learned it was the communist to help the Americans gather the intelligence that ended the war in Europe, the Greek government having been compliant with the Nazis. Whatever happened there, the country and people paid a price. Whatever happened to you, I consider from time to time. I thought once you might be adopted, I heard those words spoken by my parents. You would come to live with us and we would be sisters who played with one another, but you never climbed down the steps of the airplanes landing weekly at our tiny airstrip. And my parents had other babies. The youngest, the sister I felt had been promised to me. You know, Anastasia, maybe you were considered before my brother had to leave us. Perhaps the impulse may have been pure as pure as any human impulse can be. And the failure to adopt you gave us the toughness to weather our loss. Knowing you existed, spurred on my love of Greek myth. And I imagined we were sisters in distant time, a personal myth I remember whenever I pass as Greek. And now coming to the present, to my Yupik Eskimo family, into which I married and my children. This poem has three words of note. Ewa is the Yupik word for the sun as the eye of God. And Sedna is a very feisty goddess or female force of the ocean. And Raven, well, Raven is kind of a presence of normalcy with a kind of nagging that says get to the business at hand already. This is called affliction. And it is published in Essential Truths and Anthology, Essential Truths, The Bay Area in Color. And I know Carla has some work in there too. And it was edited by Shishwe Siegel here in the Bay Area. Affliction.  The other, a fusion of vertebrae energy choked into a narrow stream within distorting posture. Radiation like the past buries a time capsule. Broken my bones liquefy as rock turning molten and implode into the blood but my day sets. My children writhe in the unrelenting glare of Ewa burning up the pestilence that spawns affliction. Where are you Raven? Or is it Sedna wanting the bones of all people to wash back into her realm, the ocean filled with tears for what they have done to the earth, the thunder the tree that lifts itself to sky to find rain?  Have his wings tired in trying to find land where no sickness lives? Where we can heal in the freshening breeze and seed and action verb for kindness in soil so soft we can lie down on your bosom and hear your heartbeat where we can stand up tall on strong bones and reach for the sky. Thank you. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you Sandra. Moving and I learned a lot about Alaska and how you feel about it. Just wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next poet is Terry Tierney. He's the author of a poetry collection The Poets Garage which I just love that title and the novel's Lucky Ride and The Bridge on Beer River published by Unsolicited Press. His stories and poems have appeared in over 70 literary journals. Talk about a prolific writer and poet including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dreams, Rust Plus Moth, Typishly, Valo Paricio, Poetry Review, The Lake Third Wednesday, Port of Del Sol, and Poetry Northwest. Everyone please welcome Terry Tierney. Sorry I had to unmute. Thank you Cheryl. And thanks to the Mechanics Institute and Taryn for putting this program together with Cheryl. And also want to thank Carla and Sandra. I really enjoyed listening to your poems. Thank you very much. So I'm going to start, since it's poetry month, I'm going to start with a poem that's about poetry from my book The Poets Garage that Cheryl mentioned. And this poem is based on a true story although there's quite a bit of poetic license involved in the telling. The Poets Garage. When the policeman come to arrest me for forgery, I hide out in the garage where I learned how to write. My manual laid out on the bench, words stacked around me like old tires, pools of black grease where lines have spilled, staining the sawdust.  He reads her how I forge checks in three counties. The name is right, but the description fails. The forger stands taller, pounds heavier, a different Smith. My husband looks like a mechanic, she says, and he's much older. A blue-suited sergeant refuses to believe her, saying I am both smaller and larger, older and younger, a mechanic and a Smith. Look in the garage, she says, modifiers hanging on nails, the cardboard box of active verbs, the files of proper nouns, no signatures remain, the author gone, only the spaces where he worked. They gathered the spaces for evidence, but I escape with the narrative, some of it leaking on the way until my book breaks down in Pennsylvania. When my wife escapes and brings my tools, I begin to forge a new name, a new home, a new library. Thank you. This next poem recalls my childhood. It's called Blue Jay. Blue Jay lances down from red maple, swirl, darting in retreat, clutching phone line, ducking for cover. I sense the airborne threat, trying to pick cherries, a boy with courage, only for groundfall, the blue jays screech and swoop, protecting even rotten fruit. I fill the birdbath to distract him. His sharp beak and talons claim cherries and water, staining the basin red with skins and pits. My family moves to a new home, then another, each house white, a three bedroom ranch, where Blue Jay perches in the backyard tree, redwood, boxelder, catalpa, spruce, Blue Jay always the same. It was years before he found me here, my own ranch house, my cherry seedling. When he lights on my windowsill, I know what he will say. Every move disturbs his nest. There's only one house, one tree, one Blue Jay, the color of sky. Let's skip to some newer poems. This next poem is a love poem. However, I need to give you a warning if you don't like descriptions of human dissection, but just remember it's really just a metaphor. Psychotherapy after dinner. When she unzips her sweater, her lungs spill to the floor, still humming the soundtrack of our dinner conversation, our sticky choice of dessert, how we tasted the pollen in honey, the way she knitted the carnation on her pocket, a finer yarn tacking the blossom, like veins connecting her stomach as it slides out between the flaps of her jeans, then the long trails of intestines, slippery serpents smelling of souls, the salmon and wild rice, the wine. I worry about her gentle heart, whether it can take the pressure, the jarring fault of hardwood, but it purrs between her womb and her fertile lobes of brain. Her long legs and slender arms detach and curl around her organs and her ribs pull away like butterflies until only her spine stands hanging, an empty hanger bent straight with nothing left to stretch, collapsing beside her shoes. From her warm pile of blood and flesh, I feel her fingertips emerge, crawling up my ankles past my waist to my own peeling hand, helping me unbutton my shirt. So since the theme is no poetry, no peace, I thought it'd be good to read a couple of war poems, but this poem is really more local. These are the wars that are going on around us right now, and this is a very new poem. It's called Civic Center Station.   Two guards look behind me, eyes bored. One checks his cell phone. The loud speaker announces, the elevator is broken, use the stairs. God, why aren't you listening?  The voice comes around a column, moving faster than me. I feel isolated, losing sight of the guards. The gray jacket rushes past, eyes scanning the floor and back up, hair bobbing between pleas, arms bent at the elbow, hands to his head, and back down, as if shaking them dry. What can I say to him? But he's not looking at me. He moves toward the tracks, causes to stare down at bare dirt, cigarette butts, napkins. I'm talking to you, God. Listen to me, God. Turns and circles in front of the turnstiles, avoids a blanketed figure, clutching tinfoil, strides toward the gasping ozone. I reach the steps, the loud speaker drones, Antioch train arriving, platform two.  Listen to me, God. This next poem, I owe to my son when he was very small. It's a little bit more of an environmental poem. After that last one, it's called Why Trees Stay Outside. Why do trees stay outside? My son asks in the rear view mirror. His car seat centered behind me. He worries about the soaking rain, the trees getting wet. I could tell him the old fable, the night the redwoods came to dinner, or I could tell him the truth, how the trees are inside now.  They watch, wondering why we neglect the pain of mowed grass, the desperation of dough and fawn sprinting for shelter, the cold stars peering through boughs of live oak, the promise of blooming moss. I might echo his teachers, say we are one with nature. The trees and rocks love us. They want to be left outside. The easy answer he expects. We climb a ridge as the rain clears, sifting soot from the air, across the bay, the Feralon Islands, punch through the fog like knuckles. I'd like to end with a short poem, another poem that talks about recovering from war. And my father was a veteran of World War II. And when I was sucked into the service, and before they were going to ship us overseas, they showed us these scratchy old black and white training films.  This film was called What to Do in Case of a Gas Attack. My father dug a trench for his fear. By the time he returned, his blisters had healed and no access planes had bombed Minnesota. With his uncashed checks, he bought a mortgage, a two-story house, brick, no cellar, an attic with no windows. Upstairs, he built a shower and a locker for dry goods, beans, canned peaches, condensed milk, and flour, a baking soda solution, a bleaching solution, and soap. Sometimes I heard him climb the stairs at night to check his provisions. Some nights, he heard the sirens and clutched my mother's arm. Some nights, he never stopped climbing, up through the roof, above the heavy clouds. Thank you. Thank you, Terri. That was, that was a wonderful, that last one I really, that was really moving. But I also have to tell you, only a poet can turn dissection into a love thing. Thank you so much. Did I see Gene, Dr. Gene? Yes, I think I'm here finally. All right. Okay, so Dr. Gene Powell is an author of poetry and essays with five books in print and a cultural critic online. She's a writing consultant and a college instructor. Gene Powell's poems have appeared in several print and online journals, including Essence Magazine, Hate Ashbury Literary Journal, and her poem Next Time won first prize from the Detroit Writers Guild in 2002. Please welcome Dr. Gene Powell. Good evening, everyone. And I do apologize for being in another time zone in my mind. I'm going to start with a short poem about American history. For those who never liked history, I've condensed the civil rights movement into one and a quarter pages. If the shoe fits, buying a new pair of shoes, second nature, nothing to fear, get on the bus, sit next to the driver, walk into the mall, find a comfortable chair, signal a clerk, wait for the right fit, piece of cake, easy as pie. My father, he bought shoes through mail order, Sears Robux Wishbook, because you couldn't try them on in any store he knew. Guess somebody heard about it, finally did something. Capitol Hill, the White House, maybe the Supreme Court. Suddenly, you could go downtown, walk into retail, sit on a Nagahide chair, and try some on for size. One thing, though, nobody told the tight-lipped clerk about service with a smile. Imagine, if you will, dressed in your best brown skin and shiniest braids, trying on patent leather and Mary Jane's under the flinty gaze of one who last visited your neighborhood in the moonlight, dressed all in white America, where all things are possible. Some people may remember that Kathy Freeman was the first Aboriginal gold medalist, and she also, at that Olympics, I believe she lit the Olympic flame, and as she was doing it, I had this image. Next time is a meditation on ancestral memories. Waiting into reflections, immersed in the roar of the crowd, free Kathy walked toward the center of the earth, lowered her torch to the still waters, ignited a running ring. The fire dance surrounded her. Please do not let them burn her. Logic said they left her a way to escape. They won't burn her. She's their only Aboriginal symbol, pioneer, and champion. Reason replied, they burn symbols, have incinerated pioneers, may sacrifice champions. Do not let them burn her. She would make such a glowing sacrifice, consecrate the games, fire their spirits, purify the hemorrhaging history of Down Under's new world order. So brave, her grace in silent, running waves all around her. Do not let them burn her. A sly miracle woman, she escaped the burning, stepped clear of the ring, leaving the fire this time, and faced the arena, where the crowd waited for the games to begin. We live in challenging times. This is called the noise of tomorrow. Look, I don't know how I got here. Some celestial contract in the Akashic records, or a spacecraft ran out of fuel, whatever. There may have been some colossal misunderstanding back in the day, an angst-ridden war among the gods. One minute we are progressing on a picture-perfect planet, and the next millennium or two, we are at each other's throats in constant mesmerizing warfare. I'm telling you, I honestly don't know how I got here. And about those five-year plans and ten-year plans, do you seriously believe I ever thought about either option? I'm here by accident. Remember, there was no grand design, at least none that I'm willing to recall. Did my planet disintegrate like Krypton? Or my magical island disappear into the mists when faith took a holiday? I'm the lady of the lake without my Avalon, or the last temple priestess after the collapse of Atlantis. How on earth do you expect me to plan for tomorrow? It's too noisy here. Too many people with no room for dignified retreats, where you wander alone on an icy wind-swept shore. Babies are crying for lost mothers. Mothers are crying for disappeared children. Women are widowed for profit. And the old are without wisdom. Look, I did not bargain for any of this. As a matter of fact, I may not have been allowed to bargain at all. Some bearded guy holding tablets written in stone, an oracle or two from a cave in Greece. Will I ever get a recount of any votes, an appeal to a higher court? The noise of tomorrow is here today, and I need earplugs and a game plan and a witness. Can I get a witness? When I read about these legendary women who waged a war against one of the largest empires in the world, I had to write about them. Remember our names? 2000 years ago, we lived and fought and died. You may not remember, but our names are carved in stone, in legend, in the hearts of our people. Small and wiry, we women championed fierceness. Was it not enough? The Han invaded our nation. We even paid taxes to those patriarchal bullies. They raised our taxes. My husband protested, and the Han invaders had him executed. Did they think I would retreat to a house by the Red River and grieve in widow's weeds? They clearly knew nothing about the sturdy women of the Hong River Delta, the Crimson River. My sister and I raised an army of 80,000 women and men. We fought this Han intrusion, sturdy and fierce and unrelenting. We fought the invaders year after year. Even in our defeat, the Han did not win.  In retreat, the enemy dragged their swords. When young men and women joined the military, they signed a contract. Paragraph 9C of the enlistment contract states, in the event of war, enlistment in the armed forces continues until six months after the war ends. But what if the war is never declared and it never really ends? Stop the loss. One. Rumors of war were added again. Only the 20th time since I came of age, civilian bodies litter foreign boulevards, American coffins fill airport corners. We watch with resignation as reservists go off to die. Involunteers unaware of stop loss and other slide devices utilized to keep them at the front forever. Now the women are dying. American women, along with thousands of civilians, they tell us these consecrating battle fields in Afghanistan, a land so ancient that time has forgotten. You're the ones I'm speaking to. Easy to overlook the loss of women, unless you see through patriotic headlines into under financed corners of your TV screen at two in the morning. Look closely at photographs ending the news hour on PBS and you'll see lipstick traces and lots of hair under military headgear with names like Emma and Maria confronting you in silence. That's how you tell. Of course you only see those photos after they die and next to Ken are notified. What did they hope to achieve these women? To serve well and support their families.  You know that earnest carpenter on cable who gives away houses to families in crisis. He and his crew built a strong new house for survivors of the dead reservist. Two bewildered elders raising orphans forever wounded by the loss they were powerless to stop. Two, you watch the six o'clock news with one eye open and an ear half copped while you multitask in your busy life. The war again edited to fit your TV screen. A high pitched wailing scream then medics load an American fighter into an ambulance cameras avoiding her face while the journalist embedded drones on and on. Clearly we must not know about her death before her parents. Only this one didn't die. They shipped it to Germany then home to the VA. Germany called MASH in Iraq asking why did you send her? You know she won't make it. They answered back wait and see. This one will surprise you. Such a long battle she faced at home just a reservist getting second class care. But doctors and family fought the system. Somehow she got what she needed to survive. Her brain kept on swelling. So doctors removed part of her skull stored it inside her good leg for safekeeping. Months of PT for the leg that was shattered, fighting through pain, surgery, more pain. She did not recognize anyone from before, not even the man who visited each day. Hospital staff fell in love with her courage. State side called Germany and MASH in Iraq. See how she's doing. She made it. Come see. One day she remembered who she was, remembered the man who never left her side. By the date of the wedding she was walking with a cane. She kept both legs and her skull was intact. A hard fought, hard won bittersweet ending. If only we could stop the loss, enforce a ban on undeclared wars, raise the enlistment age to 30, draft the old before the young. Hold the president accountable. Find the courage to fight for these women and all the others. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Powell. The span of time, historically rich, contemporary, always lyrical and beautiful. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. I will add my voice now with a couple of poems. This first one is from my childhood. It's called You Could Not See Us From Russell Street and Russell Street is a street in Berkeley, the town where I was born. You could not see us from Russell Street. Two blond and blue eyed, one brown and braided, two houses on the same lot. Daily we toddled down the facing porch steps to meet in the middle of the concrete driveway. To play and run and scream and run, ten sticky with the results of the candy necklaces and juices of fresh pineapple. Eyes covered with matching red-framed sunglasses from trips to separate beaches. But you could not see us from Russell Street as we hopscotch and jump rope and spun and spun. No notice of two getting redder and one getting browner as we laughed and laughed and giggled and danced. Eating bologna sandwiches and drinking from each other's cups. Skins not included, invited, observed, except when wounded. But you could not see us from Russell Street where we knew nothing of difference or lack of joy. We loved what we were to each other. It was more than enough. These days even when I tell you because you could not see us from Russell Street, you do not believe we were real. This next one I'm dedicating to the earth because we also have Earth Day this month and it's called the Big Breakup. You named me Mother Earth and in my last days I look back and wonder if you had believed I was a man would you have respected me more would you have treated me like the devoted caregiver taken for granted thinking I would always be here because mama always got you even when you slowly and deliberately break her heart. I have come to know you like the indifferent children you are greeting and uncaring where those among you with the loudest voice and the biggest bag of coin silence those who want to save me you shake my poor producing unnatural fire my heat does not subside my tears evaporate I only imagine I can cry gone are my seas of clear aqua comb debris clouds reflection of the exploding stars melting in my fever freezing in my chill I am starving and seeking the sweet breath that is no longer there I choke on my dryness I drown in my wetness my greens are dust my browns are mold I am toxic to life my rancid smell repels I cannot control my bowel as I spill over into the unknown and places where my wardrobe no longer fits I am naked and alone stripped of my riches as flames rage across my belly with misplaced rain steaming from my head poison droplets swipe right across my chest landing at my center I give birth sporadically in strange places where some things do not belong there was an order here there was a freedom there was a love openings for new beginnings the portal is closing my feet are missing my soul is heavy movement is an elusive dream I have grown tired I must rest my soul by leaving you if enough are left who really love me you may find my hiding places while the sun continues to reveal and the moon lights the empty dark and this last one I dedicate to the changing world that some of us seniors find a little perplexing sometimes but we we still try to keep up with things it's called true new there is something disconcerting and abrasive about the brand new the shiny too clean no history emptiness of it all immersed in it I find no lingering aroma a signal to the soul that we are indeed here and remain actual new is not a true thing yet not honest like the slightly worn carpet with deep fresh vacuum cleaner marks that speak our presence in crooked lines before welcoming footprints obliterate and the paths of genuine cycles return new is not a true thing yet like the freshly sheeted bed with graceful and purposeful purposeful indentations marking the places of past sickness and healing love and peaceful dreams there is a certain discomfort and unknown to the brand new with this overly shiny brashness and lack of experience absence of knowing new is not a true thing yet like the face beginning to droop from a to rigid center all the while protecting the brightness of the brown eyes looking just like they did when they were new I thank you thank you all for being here this evening I hope that everyone enjoyed it and as I like to say when closing no poetry no peace say it with me poets and I thank you all you're all brilliant and wonderful one two three no poetry no poetry no peace no peace have a good night poetry no peace thank you thank you thank you all right thank you all and I would love to invite you to join us for the Cheryl and Taren show I'm kidding but Cheryl helps me with a monthly writers event and this month's topic is the birth of a poem and the link to join us is available on our website under events mi library.org and I'm going to put it right now in the chat space so you can join us if you like it's a zoom event on Friday April 21st at noon and we're going to talk all about how poems are born and Dr. Jean Powell will be one of the speakers at that event so thank you all for coming thank you as always Cheryl and Sandra and Carla Terry and Jean hope to see you around in the real world or cyberspace it's all good thanks so much for sharing your your art with us tonight and happy uh National Poetry Month yeah thank you thank you thank you Cheryl thank you so much Taren and Cheryl all right good night good night good night


Yep, I got these I got these two months ago. They look the same ones you had in high school Your's weren't Pierce in high school. My high school.  Osrryck you false and he scrapped shame shame what they can't see it but shame for a while I'm looking here it almost looks like there's a baby under a blanket sitting there and that's its head sticking out this is what I see sitting over there underneath the today we're reacting to a mom we were reacting to a crazy little thing called love no I can't say that crazy little things called shapa wachum fair sedan project Rajani Gayatri it's a collaboration between Ranjani Gayatri the legendary Carnatic duo and fair Saddam project an initiative by Ambi Subramaniam a child prodigy violinist son of legendary violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam Bindu Subramaniam singer and music educator and daughter of Dr. L. Subramaniam Mahesh Raghavan a Carnatic music fusion artist this is based on the Raga Shakhravam enjoy cool very cool excellent so are we gonna see this prodigy I assume I think so okay all right here we go never seen or played a violin up close the strings on a violin tangled so if you were holding a violin from the bottom of the body and looking straight up it it looks like that and that's why when they take the bow across the strings they go over and under because they're hitting the lower strings and higher strings based on that little hill they go over the speed at which he was going from the lower string to the higher string and then doing triplets and sometimes I think he was doing 30 seconds with his frickin finger on some of the strings and there was also right at the very beginning I wanted to know if the tonality I was hearing in his violin was something they did in production or if that's just the sound he gets from his violin because there was a tonality of his string that was much this gum gonna get weird on this one it was it was broader it was like a tonality of other violinists have a string that seems if it was fatter seem like thin his seem to have a more open rounded tone to it I'm blown away yeah by him and the ladies vocals were incredible yeah the ladies were incredible the whole entire production of this entire video I mean they should have a coke studios absolutely they should have a coke studio song that lasts the frickin half an hour which is equivalent to the quality of song it was incredible how many views has that gotten I think like half a mil okay it doesn't weigh more than that it should have frickin ten times that it should have 51 million views yeah that's so freaking good oh it's always fun to have those what it's just one of those moments where I get aggravated about on the one hand I love the fact that we live in a world where somebody can do something really stupid and they get five billion views right yeah on the other hand I get really irritated that something stupid that really has no merit to it other than it was dumb can get more attention than something as magnificent as that level of artistry I just I wish I wish we could celebrate more things that are this uplifting of the human spirit and creation then a lot of the crap that's out there yeah so share this with everybody that's one of the big things even in the entertainment side obviously Bollywood's going through that whole thing right now people not wanting to stupidly for some you're not wanting to watch anything Bollywood puts out yeah but then also they don't support films like the one like smaller independent films that are yeah artistic yeah that's not just body that's that's everything that's been that way forever it's been that way if you study the history of art it's just always been that way forever there's oftentimes things that get elevated that never should have been and things that weren't elevated you know it's always elevated good artistry yes this shared this with as many people as possible regardless if we're talking about Bollywood regardless of if they are the biggest star if it's good artistry spread it yes bad artistry don't support it there you go that's the simplest way I can describe and that is absolutely one of the things that the heart of why we do what we do it's what we did before the channel existed we would tell people don't go see that movie because we don't want you putting money in it because if you put money in it that means they're gonna make more of that crap go put your money in that film so they make more of that stuff yeah baby send us more of this


Hey guys, this is Matt Beck from freesaloneducation.com. I got a cool new toy here, the Palmatro Nuro Cell. You know, we just got this in the mail. I don't really know anything about it. But what I want to do is just take it out of the box, show you what it looks like, what it's all about. It's pretty exciting.  And now, you know, with this kind of technology, this cool look to it, I think they could definitely make their return. So let's take a look at a few of the specs of it. Revolutionary and compact roller hot pod. I think basically what that is is what the heats up the roller really quick. It's, you know, the easiest way to explain it. So it's smart sense microchip for lightning fast heat up in eight seconds. So that's a pretty cool deal.  So six one inch rollers. So we're going to take a look at those and see what we think. Premium flocked rollers provide grip, tame frizz and smooth curls. So they actually have a textured feel to the roller, which is great because if you've ever used, you know, certain types of rollers, sometimes it's hard to get the hair to wrap around it. This actually grips on to the hair. So you can wrap it up real quick, nice and fast. So one hour auto shutoff. Another thing Paul, which has been doing with the neuro tools is putting that shutoff timer on there so that, you know, you don't leave your tools on and forget about them. So a good home safety thing and also a salon safety thing as well. So the audible temperature status with mute function. I'm hearing from Dreia that that means it's going to beep when it's ready. So like a microwave. Awesome. Okay. Cool. So, um, hot roller refills of other sizes available for purchase. That is good to know because I'm going to show you right now. We're going to take that out. Take a look at the packaging of the box already. See what we got here. Very cool. Cool little bag. Open it up. And inside we have our clamps for clipping on to the rods. We have our six rods in here. You can see that in the box. Cool. We have all those, which is great because this is an easy way. I mean, we used to use like a bobby pins to try to hold on to the rollers.  It wasn't always fun to use hot rollers. So we have our pod in here. Take all this out. We have our pod, which is a cool sleek. Again, Paul Mitchell did a really cool job with the neuro tools. I think that they look cool and I would love, you know, these could be sitting out all the time and it wouldn't look bad in this long whatsoever. Real simple. There's a power button, a plus and a minus. So the settings are going to be on here. Then the key to this, I believe is the roller. It's got kind of a felt feel to it. And so it's going to wrap the hair up really nice and it's going to help protect with frizz. So, you know, it's kind of a win-win. You walk in the roller into this and then as soon as it heats up, it's going to beep, right? And this lights up. And that turns red. Okay. So everything is going to turn red. The inside of this turns red and it does it in eight seconds, which is a very, very cool thing. So the one thing you definitely are going to need more than six of these, I would think. The other thing would be because other sizes are available, that makes it exciting for me because until I just read that in the box, I didn't know that we're going to have multiple sizes. So having the multiple sizes that you can purchase later on, you can really fill up a really cool set of these rollers. And I could see you using this in the salon all the time because just being able to set curls while you're blow-drying, round brushing, anything like that. So later on in the week, we're definitely going to test this out. We're going to give it a run, but I wanted to give you a quick rundown, show you what it looks like, show you my thoughts on it. I'm excited to use it and hopefully you guys are as excited as me. So if you have any questions about it, please post them. Follow us on freesaloneducation.com. Subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on Facebook at Gratitude Salon Education. And please post questions because we can figure them out for you. You have this in our hands before you purchase it to make sure that this is the perfect tool for the hairdresser, which looking at it, it looks like a really cool purchase. So thank you guys so much. If this helps, we'll see you soon.