everyone. I'm Rachel, a youth services librarian here at SFPL. And today I have the honor of being in conversation with Melinda Lowe about her award-winning book last night at the Telegraph Club. Before we get into the conversation, we're going to pay our respects to the Ramatush-Aloni peoples. We are broadcasting from the area now known as San Francisco, which is on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush-Aloni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramatush-Alonis have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatush community. This event is part of Summer Stride. Throughout the month, throughout summer, the library offers free in-person and virtual programs for all ages and abilities designed to inspire reading, learning, and exploring for at least 20 minutes a day. Listening to this program counts toward one hour of activity. Sign up today and get a customized 2022 Summer Stride library book tote after 20 hours of activity, so if you sign up today, only 19 more to go. Visit Summer Stride, visit sfpl.org slash Summer Stride for book lists and upcoming events. Visit the library's YouTube page to see past events. In our virtual library, we have coming up tomorrow from 6 to 7 p.m., a panel of queer mystery writers passing on the torch.  And for in-person events, the new farm will be jumping with the children's book giveaway goats, chickens, galore, and live music this Saturday, July 2 from 1 to 5 p.m. SFPL, the new farm partner. Oh, next slide, I guess. Our next on-the-same-page book is going to be Beverly Jenkins' Wild Rain. It's going to be our July slash August selection. Wild Rain follows the story of a black female rancher Spring Lee in Wyoming after the Civil War. Spring has triumphed over a turbulent past and now owns her own ranch, wears jeans and sand dresses and is not looking for love. Then in walks Garrett McCray, an escaped slave now reporter in Washington who has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his black newspaper. Garrett thinks Dr. Colton Lee will be an interesting subject until he meets Dr. Lee's sister Spring, coming soon to a library location near you. Now let's get this conversation started with a little bit about this book. A coming-of-age story, unlike any other, last night the Telegraph Club touches readers from tweens to 90-somethings. With the backdrop of the cookie cutter post-World War II America and a rampant McCarthyism outing and savaging suspected communist sympathizers, this story takes place in San Francisco during 1954. Lily and Kathleen Miller, students at Galileo High School, find themselves confronting treacherous challenges on many levels, the least of them being their academic futures. Classmates, friends and romantic partners, Lily and Kathleen's love story unfolds during a time of conservatism, suppression, heteronormativity, racial exclusion, and homophobia. For Lily, survival means learning to live in several realities, white America, San Francisco, traditional Chinese culture, and familial ties to Chinatown, and the lesbian enclave of the Telegraph Club. All about discovering and defining her identity for herself.  In 1954, it was dangerous to be your true self, let alone find ways of expressing it and living openly. And more dangerous of all was crossing racial lines. What to make of two young women, one Chinese American and one white American, coming together and finding more than just friendship during such a perilous time. This is a story of unprecedented authenticity as well as emotional and historical candor. It is a testament to the hard-won struggle of what it means to live an authentic life, but most of all, it is a story that resonates fully of the human experience and desire for love and acceptance. Melinda Lowe is the New York Times best-selling author of last night at the Telegraph Club, winner of the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, as well as Michael L. Prince and Walter Dean Meyer honors. Her debut novel, Ash, a sapphic retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA debut award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction of Fantasy, the Myopoic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Lowe's short fiction has short fiction and non-fiction has been published by the New York Times, NPR, Autostraddle, The Horn Book, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their dog. Thank you so much for joining us today, Melinda, and it is such an honor to have you here as part of our Summer Stride programming and to help us close out our Pride celebration. Yes, yay! Rachel, thank you so much for that incredible introduction. I am so happy to be here. I mean, I wish I was in San Francisco in person, but this is close, sort of. I imagine myself there. So yes, happy Pride. I'm wearing my We Need LGBTQ Books Dragon shirt. Yes, I love it. I love it. I was hoping that we could start this conversation off with a reading from your novel, if that's okay with you. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to read a brief scene. This is actually the first time that, well, not the first time. This is when Lily brings her friend, Kath, to a drug store to show her a lesbian pulp novel called Strange Season. So Lily really hopes that by showing the book to Kath, she can figure out if Kath is gay, instead of asking directly, because that would just be really hard. It's too hard. Okay. Lily spun the rack of Todry paperbacks again, then began to flip through novel after novel, hunting for the provocative cover of Strange Season, the blonde that had to be Patrice in her negligee on the floor, the brunette Maxine with dark eyes above in her sultry black gown. Lily was aware of Kath beside her watching, and she said, it's been here for weeks. I thought it would still be here. Kath pulled a book from the next rack over, a detective novel with the silhouette of a corpse on the cover and asked, what was the title? I'll help you look. Strange Season. Kath put the detective novel back and started to look through the other books. When Lily had finished with the romance rack, she moved on to science fiction, wondering if it had been mistakenly placed there. But at last she had to admit defeat. It's gone, Lily said, sighing. I suppose someone bought it. She couldn't imagine who might have had the nerve to put their money down on the counter. Someone very bold. What was it about? Kath asked. When she decided to show the book to Kath, Lily hadn't considered the possibility that it would be gone. She had hoped the book would do the work of voicing the questions she wanted to ask. But without it, she was back where she started. She was faced with a choice now. She could explain what the book had been about, or she could lie. Kath was watching her expectantly and there was something in her expression that made Lily hope that perhaps she already knew the book. But Lily told herself that was wishful thinking. In all the time they had spent together, all those Watts down Columbus, they had never brought out the Telegraph Club or Kath's friend Jean. Not once. Lily wanted to believe that the total absence of those topics signified their importance. But it probably meant nothing. She felt queasy and Kath reached out and touched her arm. Are you alright? Kath asked. Kath's fingers pressed lightly against Lily's upper arm. She saw both concern and curiosity in Kath's eyes. They were grayish blue, like the sky covered by a scutting sheet of rain clouds. Lily backed away into the corner between the science fiction rack and the rear wall of the store and Kath followed her. They were quite alone now and above them the fluorescent light buzzed as if a mosquito were trapped inside the bulb. It was about two women. Lily's mouth felt so dry she might choke on the words.  And then she asked the question that had taken root in her that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Kath's eyes widened briefly and then she looked down at the floor and over at the science fiction rack and back at Lily, who felt her heart thudding like a drum, her blood rushing through her veins and turning her skin pink as she waited for Kath's response. An eternity seemed to pass. The heat of the fluorescent light on her head was like an artificial sun. The cash register at the front of the store rang like an alarm bell. Finally, Kath said one soft word. Yes. Absolutely love that scene. It is my favorite scene of all time because when I was reading it I was screaming yes, representation. This is why it matters. This is why we need to see diverse books. So that scene sent me on this huge search for other lesbian pulp novels and I imagine the amount of research that you put into this book must have been absolutely staggering. I did do a lot of research but I do love research so I probably did more than was strictly necessary. So, which brings me to what came first? The research or the idea for this novel? Well, okay. Interestingly, I was researching a different novel that I have not written when I came up with this idea for a story for this. So I was reading Two Books Wide Open Town by Nan Ella Miller Boyd, which is a history of queer San Francisco. It's an academic history text. And I was also reading a book called Rise of the Rocket Girls by Natalia Holt, which is about the women computers who worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab in the 40s and 50s. So these two books are totally unrelated, right? But I was reading them kind of in proximity to each other and in my head they came together to inspire this character of Lily, this 17-year-old Chinese American girl who's obsessed with rocket science and also thinks she might be a lesbian. So that's where, so the idea actually kind of emerged from research, which is interesting, but I wasn't researching this book when I was doing that research. So, you know, I get a lot of ideas from nonfiction that I read. So yeah, I love reading nonfiction and I love doing research. Do you think you're ever going to write a nonfiction book of yours? Do you like yourself? I don't know. I mean, I like to read it. I mean, I'm really not sure. I dropped out of a graduate program to get a PhD in anthropology and I was really excited to do the research for that. But now that I've been writing fiction for so long, there's something about fiction that, I mean, it's obviously not nonfiction. So what I love about research is following interesting ideas and facts basically that I'm interested in, like just things that inspire me. Like I don't have to find things out in particular necessarily. So I can follow my interests where they go and that informs the kind of fictional story that I want to tell. Whereas if I were writing a nonfiction book, I would have to research certain facts, you know, I have to like stick to some stuff that would, and so I think I like the free flowing nature of research for fictional, for fiction. I mean, there are some things I definitely had to look up, but it's not like I have to prove myself because you have poetic license. So I get to have a lot of fun with my research and just follow little rabbit holes, wherever they may lead. Oh yeah, like thank goodness for the historical fiction genre, right? Yes, yes, I love that. Yeah, it's so fun to see how people lived in different times and and it's fun to imagine that, you know, I think that's really interesting. So in all this research and going down rabbit holes, I love that you included different members of Lily's family and their backstories throughout the novel. I thought that was a really interesting point of engagement. And I'm wondering who was your favorite family member to flush out their history and their story? Oh, wow. Well, you know, okay, so my favorite family member was definitely on Judy. I love her. She is really, she was really inspired by this woman named Helen Ling, who was one of the first women, first Chinese American women to work at JPL. But, you know, that was fun to research. But honestly, the most fun research I had while writing the adult storylines was the research I did for Lily's mom, Grace, because I got to read some San Francisco Chronicles from the 1930s, you know, I got to kind of figure out what the city would look like during this. There's this one scene that takes place when Madam Chiang Kai-shek visits San Francisco. So I got to find all those original newspaper clippings and look at the photos and kind of imagine what her visit would have been because it was a huge event.  And Grace is part of that. And so, so was Lily as a child because basically all the Chinese Americans in San Francisco turned out to welcome Madam Chiang Kai-shek. So that was really fascinating to read about. And I did enjoy that research. And I could feel myself getting pulled down the rabbit hole there. And I had to stop myself because I didn't actually need to know every single last detail about her visit. But that part in the book is so beautifully detailed that I felt like I was there.  It's an incredible and there were there were amazing photos of it because it was such a huge deal. So it was everywhere. Yeah, that was really fun to research. Yeah. And Aunt Judy was my favorite second character. Like throughout the book, I have these little like notes that like go on JJ. I love that. I love that. Yeah, no, I was team on Judy the whole way through. But bringing up Grace's mom, not Grace's mom, Lily's mom, Grace. There's this part where Grace is expressing this longing for a people that she knows ethnically, but not culturally.  And I was wondering when you were writing this book, were you thinking of aha moments like that, or did that just was it all organic? Okay, so that didn't come to that didn't occur to me, but that's wonderful. I think it is a very, it's a very good parallel. I mean, the thing is, I'm a very instinctive writer. So I kind of, I kind of write what I write. And I don't always, I very rarely understand at first why I wrote something. And it is during the editorial process that my editor is very talented. He reads what I wrote. And he, he kind of explains to me what it's about sometimes. Like he'll have these comments and, and he'll say things like note this, this is important, it comes up later. And it is through conversations with him and through the editorial process that I come to understand these kinds of themes. So I did not notice that. Maybe he did though. I don't know. I mean, I yeah, it's, it's a really interesting thing because so much comes out of my subconscious when I'm writing. And I think it's better that I don't consciously try to make a theme happen. You know, I do think it feels more naturalistic if it just emerges through the writing process. And then once I understand that that's what I've done, like by talking to my editor, then I go through and make it clearer and tie things together more directly. Solid plan, solid plan. I can't really do it the other way anyway. So it sounds like a plan, but really it's the only way I can do it. Well, it is like the happiest of happy accidents as Bob Ross says, I believe. That's great. Another aha moment that I had at least was there was this backdrop of the Red Scare and this impossibility of depression for so many Chinese Americans was incredibly prevalent. And I thought it was interesting that Lily's friend Shirley was willing to risk her and her family's status in America to be with Calvin, but she drew a hard line, a super hard line when it came to Lily's homosexuality. Yeah. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that dynamic. Well, I wanted Lily and Shirley to kind of both have a first love at the same time. And both of those experiences make them do extremely unwise things, right? Like Lily should not be sneaking out and going to this gay bar in the middle of the night. I mean, she's underage. She can't, she's totally breaking the law. And it's, it's very dangerous for her to do this. But she doesn't really think of it that way because she's 17 and she doesn't really understand the consequences that are possible. And Shirley at the same time is falling in love with this, this young man, Calvin. And she also doesn't fully understand the consequences of that relationship. I think Shirley doesn't quite understand it because she's an American citizen. Like she was born in this country. Like she knows that this is a problem. Like she knows that Chinese Americans are being harassed and potentially deported. But when you're a young person, you often think that's going to happen to me, right? And I wanted to show that even though Shirley doesn't understand or accept Lily's relationship with calf, Shirley is having the same experience that Lily is having just on a different plane in a way, in a different, you know, in a different category of experience. But it's, it's, it's kind of the same thing. They're both doing incredibly reckless things as 17 year olds falling in love for the first time. And so that's, so that's a little bit about, about them and why I did that. Because when I was going through that scene, I was like, you know what, Shirley, I am, I am not a fan of you right now. My girl Lily a little hard. Yeah. Out of the two, which one was your favorite one to write? Or do you have like no favorite between them? My favorite between my favorite character to write was Lana. I don't, Lily and Shirley, their relationship is really very strange in a lot of ways. And that was difficult for me to write.  So I kind of drew on that experience for the relationship between Lily and Shirley. And it was, it was difficult to write because it wasn't fun. And I know that a lot of people don't like Shirley, but you know, I still sympathize with her. I have to, I have to have empathy for all of my characters, no matter how bad they are. I will admit, I was rooting for Shirley at the beginning. I was like, oh, she's a solid friend. She's going to do great things. And then I was like, dang it, Shirley, let me down, girls. Yeah, but they have totally different goals in life. And I don't think that it would be possible for Shirley to be an ally to Lily at that time in her life. Maybe later. I don't know. I would like to think that Shirley got over it and like, came to understand things more, but I'm not entirely sure that she does. So sorry. Trats. I thought it was so cool that there's Lily and Shirley's friendship going on.  But it also reminds me of how first love functions in that first friendship situation. And I love that Lily and Shirley are going on like this roller coaster of like, are we going to be friends? Are we not going to be friends? Like, where is this going? And I thought that was such a fantastic kind of parallel between like first love and first friendship. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see. Another question that I had was Lily is definitely going to be one of my favorite teenage characters, just because she is so entirely relatable. She has these moments of meekness, like when she goes into Shirley's demands, and then she like pops up with these moments of such insane strength.  How important to you was it to show Lily's progress as she settles into herself? Well, I think that's, that's, that's her whole story, right? I think the relationship with Shirley is difficult for her because they've always had this one dynamic where Shirley is the leader, essentially, and Lily follows along. So when she start embarks on this relationship with Kath, you know, it's different and she, it affects the way that she is in all relationships of her life. And that's the journey she takes in this novel. And um, yeah, I don't know where I'm going now. I actually don't know where that question was going myself. Yeah, there we go. Okay, next. So the amount of research, and I wanted to shift away from the research questions for a moment, but we're going to hop back into them. I took a digital stroll through the History Center archives at SFPL. And I think I found the news article that you base the teenage girls recruited at Sex Deviate Bar news article on. And I'm wondering what was it like for you to find those articles? And then kind of changing how the actual event ended to something softer. Looking back at your novel after reading it, I feel like and correct me if I'm totally wrong that you attempted to give a happier and more deserving ending to the parties involved. Well, okay, so finding the articles was incredible because I did not realize how tabloid-y they were. Like the examiner, the San Francisco call, the chronicle of the time, the way they wrote about these bar raids were so salacious and so homophobic, incredibly homophobic, and also incredibly sexist. Like the way the newspapers wrote about women and queer people was horrendous in the 1950s. So that was amazing and eye-opening. And it was, yeah, it was very eye-opening to me. I, so the way I fictionalized it for this book was I basically didn't follow through with what happens long after the bar raid. So early, very, very early planning for this novel included a trial which continued to follow the course of what really happened. But I didn't do that because that wasn't the story that needed to be told here. It would have been a completely different book and it wouldn't have worked. So I'm not sure that I actually made it any better than what actually happened in reality. I just didn't really, I just didn't go into it because I haven't explained what happens to the other people involved in the raid. And you can, I think the reader can have their imagination about that. I just, in reality, it did not turn out well, you know. And there was a raid on a bar called Tommy's Place, which is what this is, this bar raid primarily was based on. The bartender, Grace Miller, was in prison. And I think recently the SFPL did an Instagram series of posts and they had accessed Grace Miller's papers, which was incredible. I hadn't, I hadn't seen them. And it was amazing to see her papers because she was really done wrong. Like I, she, she had to pay for stuff that it was not her fault. There was, it was a terrible situation. And the person who owned Tommy's 299 was a lesbian called Tommy Vasu. And ultimately Tommy Vasu was also sent to prison and died in prison. I don't know if it didn't happen to me, but that is also a fascinating true crime mystery that I will not, I don't know why Tommy was arrested again later that, I mean, they, they were involved in drugs, I think. But it was a, I mean, this is all this, this bar and the community, many of the bars at the time were kind of on the edge of legality and crime did happen in them. But it's also difficult to tell how much was actual crime and how much was salaciousness blown up by the newspaper. You know what I mean? Because it was just such a homophobic time. And they wrote up and being gay was, was a crime at that point. So anyway, yeah, I want someone to write a true crime novel about Tommy Vasu. That's what I want. I want to read that book. Yes, I want to read that book too. Because when I was digging through that, I was like, wait, no, this is a cold case. Can we get, can we get people on this? Tommy was murdered. It's true. It was a cold, I don't know. Anyway, somebody listening, you can go investigate this. It's, it's, it's such an interesting part of history and we don't know what happened. It's something we need to know. Like I need to know from my own piece of mind insanity. But I always think it's so crazy how I grew up in San Francisco, lived here my whole life. And I always find it so hard to understand that San Francisco once did have an incredibly homophobic past, especially because I know that as a port city, a lot of people were kicked off the boats at during like, going off to war for being allegedly gay or what have you. And just reading through this novel really kind of cemented how dangerous it used to be, to be gay in San Francisco. And I was wondering, have you ever encountered that feeling yourself where you think like a place is really welcoming and cheerful and happy, and you think something's going to go one way, and then you discover like this twisted dark history about it?  And you could get arrested for it and it wasn't safe.    Like it was already known as that. So there's this really interesting contrast, right? Like publicly, it's illegal. But privately and even not privately, everyone knew San Francisco had this reputation. So it's a really weird combination of factors that are in play at this point in time in San Francisco. I have, I came out in the 90s and, you know, I've been to some sketchy gay bars, but I have never truly felt unsafe in a gay bar. I have sometimes not wanted to, I have not come out in some situations in states that are in red states when I'm doing events or when traveling. I have kind of kept a low profile at times because, you know, as, first of all, as a woman, every woman knows there are places that just give you that little feeling of this is not okay here.  So I try to avoid those places. Let's be real. I try to avoid them. So it, I mean, but I have, I've had experience that it's not fun and, but when you find a gay bar in those places, the gay bar usually feels fine.  Oh, yeah. This question might come off a little confrontational and I don't mean it to. I just didn't know how to word it correctly. I was wondering if you could expand on why Lily's looking and respecting the female form is coded as respectful while the men throughout the novel are kind of noted as leering or gross or vastly inappropriate. Oh, yeah. So this is a thing that happens at multiple times in the book. So the story is about Lily's journey to understanding who she is as a lesbian.  And a lot of the time, this is how I feel I felt also, you were free to look.   And so this is Lily's journey trying to understand how to see women that she is attracted to and acknowledge that she's attracted to them. So that's her journey. And I think that that is quite a different journey, a different experience than the experience of mostly older straight men who are watching her as a young Asian American girl on the street or looking at other young women in various public places. So if you are a woman who has ever experienced straight harassment, you know, that's an experience that you can understand that is not, it's not okay. But because it carries a certain power dynamic involved, like the men who are doing this leering and catcalling believe that they have power over the women that they are ogling, right. And there, it's a threat. It's not really a compliment. It's a threat. And so that is why it's different than Lily coming to understand that when she sees Kat, she's attracted to her and thinks that she's, you know, someone that she wants to be with. That's a, it's a very different experience. Lily has no power over Kat for one thing. There's the power dynamic is completely different. And it's a, it's a very different experience, but you're right. The power of the gays and looking gays G A Z E and looking and seeing it's, it's a really specific thing. And it depends on who is doing the gazing and where the power lies. Yeah. I think it's interesting that you mentioned the power dynamic between Lily and Kat because there's the scene where Kat is getting Lily the fake ID and Lily is going through this whole like, Oh gosh, like, if I get caught with this, it's really going to be all bad. And Kat is like, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. It's all the time. It's fine. I was wondering. Oh, I forgot what my question was. Dang it. That was interesting because I, when I was writing that scene, I wanted to, I wanted to note that it is about a power difference in a way or it's about like a different status of identity. Like Kat doesn't, doesn't quite understand that if Lily is caught faking her identity, it has repercussions because of Lily's race.   And Kat just doesn't, doesn't know. She doesn't know the history of Chinese immigration. They did not teach that in the 1950s. She just doesn't know. So she's well intentioned, but she doesn't understand Lily's hesitation in that moment. I remember now it was like the accidental racial power, power structure between Lily and Kat. Thank you for like catching that somewhere in that babble. That was a deliberate choice on my part. I definitely wanted to make that something that the reader could pick up on for sure. Yeah. Another scene that I thought was really interesting between Lily and Kat is when Lily brings her to Chinatown to get the ginger ice cream and she's excited and then she's slightly embarrassed about it. And I thought it was so interesting considering how open Lily was about showing Kat this book. And I thought like the separation between cultural identity and sexual identity for Lily at that moment was really interesting to kind of think about and play around within my own mind. And I was wondering for you personally, have you ever had to grapple with the difference between cultural and sexual identity? Oh, sure. There's always a little bit of a disconnect, I feel like. I grew up in a time when Asians were straight. You know what I mean? There are queer Asian Americans, obviously, but when I came out in the 90s, the Asian American community around me was very straight. So it didn't feel like it quite, it made me feel like I didn't quite fit in to that community. And it took a long time. I have friends who are queer Asians. So it just took a while to kind of have those two parts of my identity come together in a way. And sometimes I still see that separation. And it's often in situations like the one where Lily takes Kat to Chinatown to go to Fong Fong is when you're taking someone who's not Chinese into a Chinese space, and you can see them taking it in and they feel like it's different and maybe a little weird. And in those situations, I feel that separation quite, you know, I feel that separation. Yeah.  You know, that happens too. Sometimes they look a little uncomfortable. So it can be a double whammy. Exactly. Exactly. I had so many questions and I feel like you hit on all of them just as we were talking. Let's see. Oh, I know that in early October, you have a companion novel.  And can you talk a little bit about that? Did you always intend to write a companion novel or did you find yourself wanting to tell more about Lily and Kat and I'm secretly hoping their families as well and how that impacted everyone they came in contact with this time past? Well, the weird thing about my fall book, it is called The Scatter of Light. I started writing it in 2013. So I wrote it well before I had any idea I was going to write last night at the Telegraph Club. And that book is about a totally different character than Lily and Kat. I mean, it's set in 2013. So it's set 60 years after Telegraph Club. And so when I first wrote it, it was a contemporary novel, a contemporary coming of age novel, and I couldn't sell it. Like no publishers wanted to publish it. So I thought it was dead in the water basically. And then later on, my editor that I worked with on Telegraph Club offered to buy it. And I was, I was really surprised, actually, I didn't, I really thought it was dead. But while I was working on Telegraph Club, I realized that it was connected to A Scatter of Light. And the two books do share some story arc kind of similarities, and some common themes, but they're quite different. So you will, in A Scatter of Light, you will find out more about Lily and Kat. You will. But it is a very different book. So Telegraph Club, I think of as a love story. And A Scatter of Light is not a love story. It is not a love story. Warning you from page one. It's not a love story. It is about, it is about coming of age. It is about messy first relationships. It is about the relationship between the main character, Arya. She's 18. It's the summer after high school. She spends the summer with her grandmother and artist in Marin County. It's about art. And it's, it's a complicated book. And I, I hope that people like it. And I know, I do believe they will like what they find out about Lily and Kat. Other than that, I hope they like the book too. At the end of the Telegraph Club, I was just like, what happened for the Lily and Kat? I really need to know, like, what was the rest of their life like? What did they do? What did they talk about? So I'm good authority that you will find out some of that.  Because I was like, I have to start writing fan fiction now. Like that's where you should do it. Right. I love fans. I don't read fan fiction about my own stuff, but you should write it. I give you all permission. Yes, I'm taking that. Okay. Um, let's see, we have about 15 minutes left. I was wondering if we should open it up to a Q&A. That would be great. Sure. Yeah, let's see some people chatting. I'm sorry. I'm never able to follow the chat when I do one of these things. Neither am I. I have to like look at it like the last second. I'm like, Oh, questions. Let's see. So from Penelope, we have what was your favorite part of researching last night at the Telegraph Club? Was there a specific area slash topic you found really compelling or fun to research? Well, I did love researching all the the bar history. I thought that was really fascinating. Partly because when I was living in San Francisco in the early 2000s, I went to a lot of gay bars. So it was really fun to learn about the community that as it existed before I was there. And I enjoyed doing some archival research. I did come to the San Francisco Public Library to your history center. Yeah. And I looked at the Galileo High School yearbooks, which was really fun to see these 1950s teenagers. That was really eyeopening because I realized when I saw the pictures of these students that I had envisioned in my head, the 1950s was a very white time, which but it wasn't. It's just that's what's on like leave it to be there. There were people of color in the 1950s. And when I looked at this yearbook, it was really incredible because I think a third of the class of the third of the high school classes at this time were Asian American and a third were black. And it was I did not know that. And so that was really interesting to see. And it was also so fun to see all the Asian students in these like 1950s out because you never see that in popular culture like that never happens. So I did enjoy seeing those photos and the San Francisco Public Library has you all know you should all know this. There's an amazing historical photo collection. And you can, I loved doing the photo research, like looking at the pictures of the city in the 50s and trying to find specific blocks and locations. That was really, really fun. I was wondering, did you ever go to Galileo? Because I went there. Yeah, I didn't go inside. I just walked around and like looked at it because it wasn't going to go into it. Because I briefly went to Galileo myself. Oh, you did? Yeah. And when you described the tunnel, I was like, oh, she's been here, been here. I did my research. I was so excited when I found out about that tunnel. And I, yeah, I imagined it. I hope that it was correct. It was correct, which is why I was like, okay, she like was serious about this research. Yay, I'm so excited. Awesome. Let's see. Another question that we have is, I was curious as to why you included the Chinese language characters in the text. And that comes from a Lilly. Ah, hi, Lilly. So I wanted to have Chinese dialogue in the book because Lilly's bilingual. She speaks Cantonese at home. And her parents speak two different dialects of Chinese. Her mom speaks Cantonese and her dad speaks the Mandarin as well as Shanghainese. So the problem is when you have Chinese language in an English language book, you have to decide whether you're going to romanize it and how you're going to romanize it. So today, standard romanization of Mandarin is in Pinyin. But in the 1950s, Pinyin didn't exist. And Pinyin doesn't apply to Cantonese. So I was like, how am I going to do this? Because Cantonese, when it's romanized, like put in English letters, you can't tell what is happening. Like it doesn't, they don't look like real words to an English speaker. And I just didn't want to do that.  So I asked my editor if that would be okay, because I have not seen that before. I did see Chinese language translated in a footnote. I saw that in Crazy Rich Asians. And that's where I got the idea for footnotes from Crazy Rich Asians. And so I used Chinese characters so that I wouldn't have to romanize extensive dialogue in Cantonese and Mandarin.  And if you want to know what they're saying, you can look at the footnote.  And it's just not going to work if you don't speak Chinese. It's going to be weird. So that's why I wanted to do the Chinese characters. But when they just, when they're speaking what I call Chinglish, you know, and they just have like one Chinese word in an English sentence, then I would romanize the word so that it's easier to read that one, that sentence. I thought about this a lot. That was probably more than I needed to know. No, I really like knowing it. I'm pretty sure probably Lily also like knowing it. Don't want to speak for you, Lily. Just throwing it out there. But I really enjoyed that aspect of the book, because I feel like sometimes when we're reading, we tend to like shift people into not who they are, but someone who we think they are. So seeing the Chinese characters was like, oh, wait, no, this is what I'm reading. So it kept it like centered in Chinatown for me. So I really appreciated that. And or else I will sit there for like 20 minutes being like, how can I say this beautifully? Exactly. So don't bother saying it. Yeah. No, thank goodness. Let's see. From Andrea, we have what do you think has changed from now and then about all those locations and queer spaces?  And now they're not. That's one major change. Like they're, I mean, they're in the cast or in the mission. And so it's the location of the bars has definitely moved. But you know, what was interesting when I was doing research on the book, I also read some transcripts of interviews that Nanelle Millaboy did for her book, Wide Open Town. And reading those transcripts showed me that the lesbians of the 1950s talked about the same stuff that my community did. Like they, they all have gossip, like relationship drama, like like basic dyke drama. It was the same. They had the same stuff they were talking about in the 50s. And so that was really interesting because it made me realize that the world changes. But people, people really have a lot of the same experiences across generations, I think. I did think it was really cool when Lily and Kath were at the club and, ah, I'm blanking on the other couple's name that they were there with. But she was like, oh yeah. Yeah, she's a baby butch. And I was like, oh, that's exactly what's said today. And I was like, that's so, it's so modern, but I guess it's just so, it is how it's been through time internals. I think it is how it has been through time eternal. I agree. Let's see. All right. Penelope has a two-part question that I really like. She says she loves all the food scenes. And was there a favorite food you included in the story? And how did food help you connect the characters to their heritage? And did you draw on your own experience of food and cultural identity? Well, the one, there was, it's interesting because this, this short story, I mean, this novel started as a short story called New Year and it was centered on Chinese New Year. So there, there was always a Chinese New Year banquet in the story. And when I wrote the short story, I didn't do too much research into that because it was a short story. And I was like, I eat Chinese food. I know what they eat.  So I had to research that. And the funny, one of the funny ways I researched it is I asked my parents what they would have eaten for Chinese New Year in the 1950s, because they were in China at the time. So it might have been different, but I had to get an idea of what was eaten in Guangzhou, in Southern China, in Canton. And then I had to figure out if they would eat that in America. Like would they have the actual ingredients in San Francisco to make that? And so it was, it was really interesting. I, you know, I didn't, my favorite Chinese foods were not in this book. But I like all the food that's in this book. So there's that. Chinese food has so many different regional specialties. And it's fascinating. And I actually wrote my, my master's thesis on Chinese food in America, Chinese cookbooks. So I could go on about this for quite a while. But yeah, I felt like it was very important that I'd be accurate to Lily's family, especially for that New Year scene, because New Year is a holiday, like Christmas and Easter, where families tend to eat the same thing. Like it's a tradition, right? You always have the same food at this holiday. So I wanted to make sure that it would be accurate for her family and the time period. I really liked when Lily, not Lily. Yeah, no, Lily and Shirley go to Sutro and they're talking about like Chinese food is so great. Like why would you want to eat American food all the time? And I was like, points were made, points were made here and now. I enjoyed that scene because they were friendly at that. That scene was a good scene for them. That was a fun scene. Yeah.  And then I think we have time for one more question. And it's going to be from Angela. And she asked, what does your writing process look like? Oh, well, my writing process is different for every book, as every author will say. And it, you know, it takes years for me to write a novel. So it also changes according to what part of the novel I'm, or to what stage of the novel writing process I'm in. So when I'm writing a rough draft, like the first draft of the book, I do have a kind of a thing I always do. First of all, I quit Twitter. I quit Twitter for like months now while I'm writing the first draft. And then I, I'm a morning person. So I, before I write, I always meditate. And then I write in the morning. And I have this goal where when I'm writing the first draft, I have to get down 1000 words a day. And when I get to 1000 words, I stop. So sometimes this takes me like half an hour. And then sometimes it takes me like eight hours. It's terrible. But I, I make myself get to 1000 words. Like sometimes I do a little bit more, but I try to not do too much more because I've noticed that if I write a lot more, if I feel like I'm super inspired and I write a lot more, I can't write the next day. Like the number of words I can do is somehow limited. So if I spew out a bunch of them on one day, the number goes down the next day. And then I kind of lose momentum. So I try to do 1000 words a day. And then for the, that's the first draft. So once that's done, it's going to be in revision and I'll be, I'll be in revision for years. Sometimes like, I think I was revising this book for two and a half years. So when I revise, I can write for longer. So usually I'll try to work all day, but I have to schedule in time to do author stuff, like emails, but I always try to write in the morning. So my brain is clearer than, so I'm usually working on the book in the morning during revision, at the very least. And sometimes I'll do all day, but you know, definitely in the morning. A thousand words sounds like so many words to me. How many like pages is that? Oh, it's not very many. It's like, it's like, if there's like 250 words a page. So that's like four pages. Ah, okay. Double spaced. Oh, okay. It's, I haven't been in school for a minute. So I was like a thousand words. It's not that much. Yeah. I have author friends who will do like six to 10,000 words a day. And I have no idea how they do that. I, but that's fine. You know, not everybody writes at the same pace. And as a writer, one thing you have to do is figure out what your own pace is and what works for you. So don't feel like you have to do a thousand words a day. You don't have to.  Like I got it. That's totally fine. It's still moving forward. The trick is to keep moving forward when you're in the drafting process, because it's very easy to quit. You just got to keep going. So you get to the end. Let's see. So I think, I think that's time for us. We reached the end. It has been so absolutely fantastic to have you here. And this is actually my first like author talk. So I am so, so incredibly happy I got to be with you. And I want to thank everyone in the chat, everyone who is behind the scenes, getting this together. You are all like total rock stars for this. Yeah. Thank you so much, Rachel. And thank you to everyone at the San Francisco Public Library for putting this together. It's been great. And for all the questions and everyone who came, this is wonderful. Thank you so much. Now is the awkward part where I don't know when I just sit here.


So it's time to talk about parallel NCTS. We have just seen that the number of bots that we deal with at the same time, in many cases has precious little effect, hooray for parallelism. Parallelism is one of the main things that make deep learning be the useful tool, the efficient tool that it is for us. Deep learning is fundamentally about that and we will talk much more about parallelism in week four. Just as a reminder, why is deep learning so possible now relative to, say, when I was interested in the same questions in the 90s? Well, we run on GPUs these days and GPUs have gotten incredibly efficient. So what we have here is we have floating point operations par 2018 dollar, basically how much compute does on a GPU does our money buy. And we can see that it has gotten much, much more efficient over the last 20 years or so. It really came a long way. It's much more efficient than CPUs. For many real world applications, it will give you a factor 100 or so effect. So that's why it's so important that when you run on these collabs, you will generally choose a GPU instance. Now, it's time for you to understand the scaling that we have. We will now take the whole network and analyze how training time scales. And understanding this kind of scaling is the key to being efficient at producing deep learning solutions.


Good evening everybody. My name is Akal Agwek and I'm going to moderate the forum for the School Board of the City of Burlington for World Four. Joining me tonight are the two candidates, Matin Larok Golik and Erika Radik. These are the two candidates that will be having the forum with me tonight. So let me read the ground rules and we will go straight to questions. First, the candidates meaning both of you will be allowed a minute opening a statement so you have your one minute. Second, all candidates will have two minutes to respond to questions. So when I ask you questions or when a member of public call in, you will have the opportunity to answer that question for two minutes. There may be questions from the public in which case we will take those. All candidates will be given the opportunity to respond to questions from the public. So the question from the members of public takes the priority. When questions come from the members of public, I will just give it to you. Each candidate will be given the opportunity to ask a question of the other candidate so you will have opportunity to ask each other. Candidates are allowed 30 second rebuttals so you can rebut anything that has been used against you with 30 seconds and then candidates have 30 seconds closing comments. So the producer will fill the question to us and so if no question comes from the members of public, then we will continue with the questions I have here. So the first to begin right now is have your, let me just double check the script. Have your one minute opening statement. Mateen, you have the floor. Since you first came, your one minute opening statement. Thank you, Echo. As I said before, my Wi-Fi is not great so I may be shutting off my camera. So I apologize for that ahead of time. But I hope you all can hear me. I am a resident of Ward 4 in Burlington, as you all know, and I'm running for school board. I am a parent of two graduates of the Burlington School District. I'm a former educator of about 30 years and I've served on the school board for two terms, so four years. I have been extremely active in these four years. I have, I could list all the things I've done. I'll just mention a few that I'm proud of. One is that I was co-chair of the superintendent search to bring in a new superintendent to our district. Also part of the strategic planning committee, as well as the BHS and BTC, you know, re-envisioning plans. So those are some things that I've been really proud of. I'm also really proud of the work that I'm doing.  Okay, so hopefully this is better. Hopefully you can hear me. Work that I've been doing at the state level around school funding. So, and I'll get into that a little bit more later, but there is a funding formula that waits for various students and Burlington has been in a position where we are not, haven't been and still are not adequately funded for our student population. And so I've been working on that and I'm super proud of that work as well. So yeah, I would love to have the support and the votes of the people in my community and continue this work. Akal, I can't hear you either right now. I'm sorry. I did mute my, I did mute myself. So I'm sorry for that. Go ahead, Erica, you have the floor. Thank you, Akal. I appreciate that. Hello, everyone. My name is Erica Redick. I am a resident of the New North and of Burlington. I am, I went, I did attend school here in Burlington. And even though I don't have children in the school system, I am very dedicated to the next generation and every Burlington resident ought to be very concerned with the educational quality of our next generation. So I, that is a priority. My husband and I work with at-risk youth and we very much care about pouring into the next generation. And that being said, you know, it is from my perspective that our current school commission, while well-intentioned, has not done a great job of being a good steward of the resources that they've been given by the Burlington taxpayers. And there's a real lack of forethought and critical thinking in the decisions being made, and that's demonstrated in the outcomes, the educational outcomes of our schools. As an example, Burlington High School only graduates about 74% of its students and only 16% participate in AP course participation. We're not even in the top 15 schools in the state, and yet we spend the most money. And so what I would like to see is more care and consideration given into how the resources are being used and ensuring that they're being used towards educational purposes and not things like multiple millions of dollars to rounds of architects. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I get both of you two minutes each so that I can balance it. Now moving forward, I will stick to your two-minute answering question. So let me just go to the second question. Do you support this year this year's school budget of 98.2 million? Erika, ready? You have the floor since you were the second. Two minutes. Thank you. I do not support the school budget of 98.2 million dollars. Again, it just really has been demonstrated that the resources are not being utilized well, and it's as if the members of our school commission believe that all Burlington taxpayers can just give them a blank check at the end of the year. A neighbor of mine whose taxes went up $1,500 from the reassessment last year literally has had food taken off of his plate. He's on a fixed income, and that $1,500 has to come from somewhere. So he literally said, I will be eating less food. And so this idea that we're just going to keep raising, raising, raising without consideration of our neighbors is really just pretty shocking to me. So absolutely not. If they need more money for certain programs, they should be doing what all responsible adults do. They cut the budget.  So you mentioned something that I will come back to later on, but Mateen, you have your two minutes. Thank you, Akal. Yeah, I 100% support the school budget. The school, our school district is the heart and soul of our community. It is an entity that brings value to our community, brings value to our homesteads, our houses. It brings value to all of the relationships that we have. So it is, yes, an investment. Absolutely 100%. Let me just demystify a few things that have been said. First of all, we, the school board have been running a surplus for the last five years. We are not folks who don't understand money and don't understand budgets. We do. We have been running a surplus and investing it anew into the system and saving it, frankly, for the future as well. We have added no new programs to this year's budget. We have not added anything. The only increase is wages and benefits. So I bought a little bit at some of what's being said here around this budget. I also want to just add that, yeah, we do at this point have a high per pupil rate. This is true. It's partially because we had to shut down our high school due to contamination. And we are paying for rent on a building that we don't own. We are paying fixed up, fixed up costs that are necessary to have our students safe and educated. This isn't the case for other communities. We also, as you know, have aging infrastructure, which I think we're going to talk about later. Thank you.  It looked like you have difference. You have different on these questions. So I will stay on a little bit. Do you think you need to ask each other a question? I mean, my only question to Erica would be, you know, I would just love to hear some specifics. She talks a lot about cutting the budget and lowering the budget. And as someone who has been working in education, I know that in Burlington we are running on very slim margins. So I would just like to hear some specifics. Yep. So Erica, go ahead. What do you think? Yeah, great question. I would, I will have a question after as well. For one thing, while it is a nice gesture to give raises to the folks in the school district, the teachers and other staff, many of us Burlington residents had our businesses forcibly shut down, lost our businesses, lost our jobs, had pay cuts and all of those other things. And so, and a lot of the teachers and staff make far more than the average Burlington resident. So I don't think that they need raises and I'm sure that's going to make me very unpopular and I'm okay with that. Because, again, the their first responsibility, or I would think is is to is to the taxpayer is to the community to make sure that we can actually accommodate what is being asked without a severe sacrifice. So it's only the raises that you are cutting? Oh, oh no, I'm sure that there is far more. I will do a detailed audit of the school budget to see where things can be can be moved around. I can give you examples of things like I know as an example, the tech center has a avionics program where it's for teaching kids to fly planes or fix planes or whatever. And last I knew one student was in the program and it costs over $100,000 a year. So I mean, that's very nice. But the if we aren't graduating kids out of these programs, then why are we paying for them? Thank you. Thank you. Now you can ask my team your questions. Um, I am I'm curious. You said that we've had surpluses the last five years. But those surpluses have not gone back to the taxpayer in the form of rebates or reductions in our tax bill. So I'm curious, who decided what to do with that money? And why wasn't it given back to the taxpayer when it was determined it wasn't needed? Thank you, Martin. Go ahead. Yes, I will. And I'd love to respond to some of the other things that Erica said. So Erica, if you read the the budget one pager that we recently sent out, this is all underscored. But that money has been was put aside. We've been obviously saving it. And it's a good thing that we have because we're going to need it now that we are in a new building and had, you know, we're removed from our current high school. But yeah, it does. We do take some of that surplus and put it back into into the budget. So it hasn't just been sitting there as you say. And I do just want to add the teachers are not getting a quote unquote raise. They get a cost of living adjustment as well as you probably know this, Erica, because I know your sister works in education.  And that is all something that is set by the district by the state. Okay, I'll stop. Thank you. So the voters definitely see the difference there. You can and I hope you will continue with that conversation during your campaign. Let's move to the next questions. And that is about racial justice. Do you support the passage of H 584, which would require the standards in education design to promote anti racism in schools? Why do you support or not support this bill? Martin, you have your two minutes. Yes, I 100% support this bill that's coming out of Massachusetts. We are living in a time where you've got school boards around the country banning books. You have school boards around the country that are banning quote unquote critical race theory because it makes their kids feel uncomfortable. I have a real problem with this. I do believe that there is part of being an educated person and being educated that is at times uncomfortable. I personally am still bitter at the education I had that was very much a whitewashed history of the country. I did not learn about redlining. I did not learn about the fact that African Americans were kept out of homeownership and the GI bill after the war. These are really important systemic issues in our country that I never learned. And I'm sad. I'm just now learning this as, a 40- and 50-year-old woman. So I absolutely think it's important. I also think we need to use culturally responsive teaching methods in our classrooms that really make sure that students see themselves in the classroom, whether it's in the curriculum or whether it's in images around the room or whether it's on their devices. This is all very important. Am I at the end of my time, Nicole? Sorry. No, you're still happy. It could be at a time now. So keep going. I will entrap you. Go. Okay. So yes. Again, the system that we live in is kind of inherently, not kind of, it is inherently racist. So we absolutely need structures and definitely through legislation. We need structures that ensure that our students are getting an honest and well-rounded education. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Erica, you have the floor. Do you agree or disagree with the passage of H584? Thank you for the question. I would not support the passage of this bill. Racial discrimination and things like that are already against the law in our culture, in our state, in our cities. And as the wife of a Black man, I happen to have an interracial family. And through that marriage have additional multi-racial family members of various, you know, whether Black, Puerto Rican, Panamanian, etc. And so I just really reject the notion that we have an inherently racist system. There was nothing that kept my husband from succeeding. There was nothing that kept our friends and family from succeeding.  That didn't keep me from succeeding. And so I just really reject this notion that we have an inherently racist system that without special consideration, students of color can't make it. I just really reject that. I think that that actually is pretty racist. And it puts non-white students below white students, in my opinion, and in my Black husband's opinion, that really is the case. And so, and unfortunately, what's happening now in the Burlington School District is Black students are actually allowed to abuse their white cohorts and the teachers. In some circumstances, and I've been told this by the individuals involved. There was a situation with a Black student.  She was not making a racist gesture. There are multiple Black students who have been stealing from teachers, who have threatened physical violence against teachers. And those teachers were told to stay silent, and nothing was done because they are Black. And I just think that that is the most racist kind of treatment that we could give to our students who are not white, to treat them like that as if they're somehow less than the white students. Thank you. Thank you. It looked like there is a difference here. Any bottles, Mateen, or we can move on from here. It looked like you don't need, it looked like no, are you there, Mateen? Yeah, I'm here. One minute, if you want to make comment, and then I will give one minute to Erika, it looked like you are different here. Yeah, yeah, I think we could spend the rest of the evening probably talking, easily talking on this subject. So I can't speak to the individual incidences that to which Erika is referring, but I guess I'm shocked when I hear folks say that the system, our system is not inherently racist. I just, there's so much evidence, if you look at our history, that that's just not true. And that there have been impediments that have stood in the way of our BIPOC community members throughout history, and they exist today. So thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. You have your one minute if you need to to put back Erika before I move on. Yeah, sure. I don't think anyone is denying that there have been racist things in the past. I think anybody who would try to say that clearly doesn't know history, but I learned about redlining. So I don't know about Martin's education and upbringing, but I learned about redlining. I learned about the struggles of black people. I learned about those things. I'm also in relationship with people who are black, who are from all over the country. And again, even if they did have some circumstance of prejudice in their life, they didn't let it hold them down.   So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We could go on and on on this. And maybe if I could go back just one minute each, what is, and I will go back to you, Martin, specifically, what is in H584 that you support? What is it in that resolution that you really value that that that you can point to? Well, I don't have it in front of me. So I'm just going on what I've read and what I've heard about it. But, you know, basically putting structures in place that ensure that our students are getting a balanced education and an education that reflects all of the students in the classroom and in the school, that this isn't a this is not an education that only reflects the the white majority. It's so it's just that that equity piece that I think is critical. We know that our students of color perform better when they have teachers who look like them. I mean, these are all things we have data that supports all of these things. And so thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Erica. What is it is specifically in age 584 that concern you something that you can point and say, this is why I don't support this resolution? Excuse me. I think any sort of resolution or educational program that sets white students against non white students as somehow different and teaches them that they are inherently different because of their skin color is racist. Period. So I think that we should teach history. I think we should teach a history that shows black people being successful rather than just slaves. That is something I would support and that's maybe in in age 584. But so again, I would love education that doesn't just show black people as inferior somehow by only teaching about slavery because there's so much more to black culture and black history than that.  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to both. You could never have been different. There is a start different year for the voters to see and and I will it look like we have only we are down to five minutes. So I should move to the next. Yes, I should move to the next question. I would have stayed on this, but but I think I think that the voters have seen enough different between two of you to make that decision. So let me move to this question and that would be it. And I'm going back to BHS is cool construction. I'm going back to the money. Thank you. As the school district enters the planning phase of the Neil Burlington High School and Tech Center. What would you like to see in the new buildings? Do you support the current plan? Erica, you're too many. Thank you. I am I am 100 percent against the current plan. It is absolutely irresponsible. In my opinion, to the taxpayers, those of you who were in Burlington a couple of years ago will recall the bond that passed and all of the money out of that bond that has been spent literally millions of over a million dollars in architectural fees to redesign Burlington Technical Center, millions over a million dollars in architectural fees to redesign BTC. And now we're just going to throw that money away instead of including those renovations or those designs with the remediation program. What should happen if we were being responsible is we would remediate one area of the school at a time and then and bring the students back as it's safe. It is it is very nice to send architects to and again they just sent the architects once more to ask for all the hopes and dreams of the administration and the students and the teachers. Without I did not hear that they gave them a budget to stay within. So now we're going to spend millions more dollars on architects to build a school that we can't afford to build. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Matin, your two minutes. Thank you, Echo. So I just want to point out you it's really impossible to say that you don't support the current plan because there is no current plan. We have had to go back to the drawing board so to speak because we found out after we passed our 70 million dollar bond for BHS re-envisioning that our school is contaminated.  So we were held to that process and obviously as you all know our school was found to contain PCBs. Various ranges of PCBs because we have a building that is not a building. It is six, it is seven small buildings each one with its own level of contamination. It's very complex and it's hard to speak with someone who doesn't really understand the situation. Mitigating, testing and mitigating for PCBs is incredibly expensive and it's incredibly complex. So to just kind of brush it off as well why are you spending that money, that money had to be spent. We were asked to leave that campus by the state of Vermont which has very low levels of PCB contamination threshold and do you want me to stop talking, sorry. Thank you, thank you, yeah thank you. So now since we have used a lot of your time, is it possible to get a rebuttal? Is it possible to do a rebuttal on that? We are running out of time, just 30 seconds. I can do it in less than 30 seconds and then 30 seconds. So go ahead. It is not that complicated to remediate. I've talked to multiple contract companies, contractors who have done this kind of work. It's very specific stuff and it is all feasible and it is all far less than building a new school. Thank you, thank you. Last 30 seconds, Matin and we will close the program. Are these my closing remarks or? We run out of time. Okay, Erica please send these experts our way. We would love to hear what they have to say. Obviously I pay taxes in the city as well Erica. I'm concerned as everyone else is about taxes but I'm also concerned about our education, the safety of our students, the safety of our educators. This is a big deal and it's not, you know, to say, oh we can send people back in the okay, sorry. Thank you, sorry. Thank you so much. I'm sorry we have run out of time. I know that you will continue that conversation on the campaign trail. So thank you so much for your time and I look forward to watching your debates go on. So thank you and have a good night. Thank you, Paul and Kate.


My name is Jimmy, his name is Jake, and this is The Weekly Dumb. We are joined by Pappy, who died last time he was on the show, he's back. Back at it. We are not happy, Jim. You're way too hot. August, your least favorite month. We just had a real hot week. Are you going to cool down? I've not been checking the weather because I've been so scared of you. No, dude, it's the first week of August. I hate it. It's so hot. Yeah. We're going to get rain soon to break the heat. Who's the weatherman here? Zach? You're dating a marine biologist. That's out there. Could rain? Could rain. Could rain from Zach. Update. They could rain. Could rain from Zach. Can you tell us about the sports, Jake? James, it's the dog days of baseball. It's the dog days for everyone, kind of. And Spencer Strider, young stud pitcher, he's actually kind of killing it. His strikeout numbers are through the roof. He's having an amazing rookie year for the Braves. Spencer Strider, name, three, two, one. Six point one. We're close. Jim, he does have some bad quotes here. The Braves, they get beat by the Mets. I think it was four out of five. Games, division rivals, the Braves were going to catch him, then they kind of did it. And then the Mets, Bulliam, and he's got some tough quotes here. Just the things that you're allowed to think as a competitor, but not allowed to say out loud, even if they're true, which I don't know if they're true, but they asked him about it, and he said, there's a lot of weird hits. They seem to be having a lot of luck right now offensively. That's great. It's August. We'll see what things are like in October. Sure. It is August. He's right. That was the top of the show. We talked about that. I don't know, he said. It helps when they're getting calls and one-one counts turn to two-one counts instead of one-two counts and stuff like that.   I know what Babbitt is and I like it, but I am admittedly a baseball loser is three thirty, three forty as a team. Like the fact he knows there, the team Babbitt is too deep. It's tough to get quick innings to get quick out. So he's saying that how many excuses do we have here? Just so many excuses.  This is why guys normally don't give quotes because you can end up falling into something like this pretty easily. You just say like we lost. The not another teen movie when they're spoofing breakfast club and he keeps getting detentions and his friend in the background is like, Mitch, stop. Jim, this almost a breakdown combines a couple things you're all about hypnotizing and sharks. I'm not against sharks. I don't really like hypnotizing. It can't be done on me. I've I've tried twice at school assemblies every time the guy says, you're too strong of the mind. Get out of here. I've verbatim. But yeah, you're not mentally weak. Get out of here. Sorry if you've been hypnotized. That was rude. My girlfriend got hypnotized right after I started to all of our hypnotize ease. This guy hypnotizes a shark. Aren't there certain animals where you rub them in a certain spot and they just kind of like do that? There's there's another. There's another. There's another animal of the sea where they're like, if you can get it in its belly, it just kind of goes to sleep. Joe's would know it might be a dolphin. Anyway, this video, the sharks upright, which is weird. There's another fish like a sucker fish, but it's too big to be a shark sucker fish on his belly. And then this shark just might be dead. I think this might be a spoof.  Well, I don't think he's hypnotizing him. I think he's just it's a prop shark. The north and south of the shark is a really good point. Yeah, it's just a little bizarre. I've only seen sharks in that position when they're strung up dead. I saw one of those, man. I don't like it.  It's just blown away, man. Seeing it like real shark out of water. Not into it. Well, well, how about the audio get that? Did you get that? I said, what about a whale? Oh, wow. Let's go back to the sports. Jake, it is a doozy. We got a guy not wearing mizzen and main wearing something else looks like a fool. Does not look as good as us. You took the shirt off that was underneath the shirt. So just wrong again. I can't see it. Go check out mizzen and main. Jim, we have an all timer here. This is made currently everyone that's heard the story laugh. We have a man, a 53 year old Colorado man who's just set the record. Peanut, yeah. For pushing a peanut up the summit of a mountain seven days. And you need to see the video of how he does it because it's unbelievable. It's a homemade contraption. Yeah, sure is. I don't know what this guy's doing. That's the biggest thing. I don't know what he's doing. Did you see the line here where he said he initially planned to have someone come with him to carry his gear? He ended up going alone. That's a tough invite. If this guy says, hey, do you want to come with me on a two day trip up a mountain? Seven day trip up a mountain. I'm going to be pushing peanut with a spatula. I'm taped to my nose. I'm not surprised that everybody has turned him down. He's like, you know, I'll do this alone. Couple things. It's a spoon taste taped to a CPAP machine. So it's not a spatula. So put a little respect on it there. And B, no one was ever coming on this trip. Sad man. This guy's got a lot going on. Jim, speaking of a lot going on, the not sports is another thing that really speaks to you and your feline friends. Cat's out of the bag. Fancy fees is introducing pop up dining experience. Gatto Bianco exclusive tasting menu for humans inspired by our medley recipes. So if you have ever bought fancy feast and said, damn, which just came in human, you're lucky because it does now for eight people. So eight seat pop up. An eight seat pop up is just you cooked for your family. A bad, weird recipe. But we're going to send Joe's to find out they got the turkey florentine, the beef regu and the wild salmon primavera. And the writer said, actually, they don't sound that bad. Yep, because those are real foods. Right. The cat food is named after human foods. Human foods we've already agreed on and we like and support that they're now going to try to add a cat food twist to it.  How many of you are you want this, you're out. How many people bring a cat? Everyone. Everyone's bringing a cat. Every person. I hope it's okay. And they're all going to say, hope it's okay. I brought my cat.   You've eaten cat food. I have a video of him eating cat food. You want that video for personal use or are you going to put it in the video? Hey, but you'll agree on this. Eating cat food. This turned sour for you. This was a horrible turn for me. Eating cat food is better than going to this restaurant. You should show up to this restaurant. I'm not going to this.  I got the real thing right here. Well, that story just backfired. Yeah, it's the employee of the week. It's the employee of the week. It's the employee of the week. It's Jolly Olive. It's Jolly Olive. Can't tell you why though. I love to know. That was the Weekly Dumb. Today's episode of the Weekly Dumb was brought to you by Mizan and Maine. Did you see how good Jake and I looked? Well, Mizan and Maine are inventors of the performance fabric dress shirt. They combine the comfort and flexibility of your favorite athletic wear with the fit and style of a custom dress shirt. I enjoy wearing them. They just turned 10. So they've got great deals running on their site all summer long. Right now, if you go to MizanandMaine.com and use promo code DUM, you'll receive $35 off any regular price order of $125 or more. That's $35 off when you go to MizanandMaine.com and use our promo code DUM. Yeah, we were really drunk and someone wanted to get more beers. And I said, Jake, what do you want? And he said, I don't care. Give me whatever. And I said, I'll get you cat food. He said, I'll eat it. Who said, I'll get you cat food? Because that seems like the problem in the story.  It was a- I said, I'll get you cat food. It was David's sister. That's not water. Did you support it? Yeah, I had the video. You supported the decision. I might have it on my phone. I don't like that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember eating the cat food. Yeah, it's just out of the can fork cat food. Ship me out.


Hello everyone. I guess we can start. Oh, thanks, Brian. So, my name is Adam Shemalik and I work on the FederaDocs, which we got out last week. And many thanks to Brian Exabier, who basically did half of the work with me. So, that was great. So, what I'm going to talk about today is four things. I'll give you an introduction of the new site, what it is, how it looks like. Then I'll talk about Antora, which is our built engine. We use some core concepts and how we can use it. And then something about contributing and the source structure, so everyone knows how to make contributions. And maybe if you're a working group or a team or someone, you can even move your recommendation in there. And then some plans for the future that we want to do. So, let me start with the introduction. And I'll have some few slides and I'll just show you the site. So, about the sources and building. We have converted sources to ASCIIDoc, which is a very simple markup language. And before we basically did this, the documentation was written in DocBook, I think.  And we didn't get much contribution for some reason. And so, we, or basically the people before I joined, were figuring out what to use and ASCIIDoc was the best option. I think they even considered markdown and other things. But ASCIIDoc was one of the things that was basically the best. And in the end, we used Antora, which is a new built engine with an active community that basically takes the sources and builds a static website. And you'll see that in a minute. So, I apologize for this slide. I think I have never written so many words on this slide, but it was late. So, about the navigation, we've built a clear navigation structure that kind of scales well. So, I say that the information architecture has been designed in a way that scales extensively. And this is important because we want to accommodate many different things on the site. So, for example, we have the user docs, but we also have docs about the Fedora project. And we can also run working groups and teams in Fedora in there. I'll show you in a minute how that looks. Yes, we work on translations because this is important because we have community around the world. This is in progress, but we already have the language code in the URL. And I'll talk about the end in the future section. And there is one new thing that's called QuickDocs. And these are basically docs with a specific purpose, describing how to get into a specific goal instead of describing features. So, if you, for example, see a documentation of, I don't know, HDTPD and you can see all the configuration options. Like this, this, this, this, this, this, this. It's kind of hard to start with. So, this will tell you, for example, how to use the web server in this particular way and how to get with it, how to get to it. And there is already an effort putting various Wikipedia and other resources into these QuickDocs. And you'll see in a minute that we need a better UI, but that's also one of the future things. All right, so let's see the documentation. And I'll try to speak in the mic here. All right. So, hope you can see that, right? So, this is the new website. It looks like this. The homepage is quite simple, simple-looking, but I think it has everything we want. So, there is the user documentation in the top and then the community section. And for example, if I want to see documentation about Fedora28, I just click on it and I see all those, basically those three guides we already always had. So, there are the release notes I can click on and just Wi-Fi is failing me, but it'll get there eventually. I get the installation guide and the system administration guide. And now my Wi-Fi just died. All right, there we go. I can also share the QuickDocs, which are kind of messy. So, these are like all the ones we have. You can see why we need the new UI. But they basically describe end-to-end things. So, we will logs in Fedora, for example, or how to create disk partitions and stuff like this, or installing Java. So, these are the user documentation. And we have the two active releases here, the QuickDocs, FedoraRohite, and this will be the link to the old documentation back to, I don't know, Fedora... whatever, I guess one. And here is the project documentation. So, Fedora Project, Fedora Council. And these two sections about engineering and mindshare, which are basically the two major groups in Fedora. And if I open MindShare, apart from some information from what that is, I can see MindShare Team. There's not much, there's just one, Fedora Community Operations. But basically, this is the space where we can list multiple working groups or teams we have in Fedora that are doing mindshare. And they can have their own space here, with their own menu and everything. And basically the same structure in engineering. And then there are some other links, like Google Summer of Code and Outreach E-Docs, which are actually externally. So, that's how the website looks like. And now let's have a look at the Antora. So, that's the built engine that we're using to build the site. So, conceptually, it's very simple. We have the whole site, and it's made out of components. They call it components, and a component is basically a space in the docs with its own menu and a set of pages. So, we saw, for example, the comops page that was a component. Or we saw the Fedora 28 documentation that was a component. Even the QuickDocs are a component now. And this is basically all you need to know. There is one more level of complexity. And this is more these days, like everyone likes to call things modules. So, this is completely different than modules we have in Fedora. This is completely different than the modular way of writing documentation. This is just an Antora terminology. And basically it's a section of the component that can be split into a separate repo. For example, in the Fedora 28 user guides, for example, there are three books. And each of these is a separate git repo that can be owned by a different group, for example. But they get composed into the single space with the single menu. And when we build the site, and this is quite interesting, it builds, they call it virtual catalog of all pages. And that's this thing, which is version, component, module, and the page. Oh, by the way, I haven't mentioned that components can be versioned. So, let me show you. I forgot about that. So, if I have the Fedora 28 docs, for example, this is one version. And here in the upper corner, I can switch it to another version. Rohite F27. So, that's basically what the version is, component, module. And you can use this to either build the menu or to use internal links across the whole website. And this will get still the same, even though if you, for example, move the pages in the component a little bit, this will always work. And the build is from, it looks like this. We have many different git repos with the source, again, owned by different groups. For example, commopes modularity, quick docs, and there are the three guides. And we build it into a single documentation website. And in case you're curious, this is the link that gets you to the list and also to the build scripts. It's very easy to build. I'll show you that later as well, maybe. And by the way, I'll share the slides with you when I'm finished. All right. So, that was about Antora. And now let's have a look about contributing and how the source is actually organized. So, we are using git to store the sources. And we want to use similar workflows to software development. So, if you want to make change, you basically make your own copy, make the change, and then send a full request. And this is useful because someone else can make a review, make comments, and it makes basically a little bit less pressure on the contributor because they are not actually pushing the content themselves, but they have someone else reviewing it. So, that's always good. And this is the source structure in the Content repo. And I have built a template that is on this URL you can see. And basically, the most two interesting parts are these pages. And this is the navigation. This is the menu definition. But you also have images there and some metadata and things that support the build scripts. And this is, the root is one of the modules. Most pages have just one module because they're in one repo. And the default is called root, but you can have multiple ones, even like in one repo or spread to other repos. So, let's have a look at the template. And I'll mostly show you the menu definition, how it looks like. So, this is the repo. It's on pager, it's fedradocs slash template. And all the document, all the information is in the readme, so there's the structure. It describes what it is. I even have a recap of what component and module is because that might be confusing from the beginning. And one of the nice things about this is that you can build it very easily. All you need to have is a container runtime. So, for example, we are using Docker, and we have two scrapes, one for build and one for preview. And if you run it, it will just run the container in the background, build the website and start a local app server and it will just see the site. And you can do this with the individual repos. And you can also do the same thing with the whole website if you want to have a preview. So, I think this is one of the good steps here. And I promise you to see the navigation structure. So, if I go to files and I open modules, this is the default module, and I have this nav adoc. And these are the page IDs. And you might notice they are a little bit easier here. They don't have all the components in there because I'm referring to the same module to the same component. But I could use the full version if I liked. And it's basically just a list. The index ref, the name I want to see in the menu. And this is just basically a list that defines the structure of the website. So, if I build it, it looks like this, and these are the five pages. So, I have the index page. This is the nested thing, which is defined here. And that's how you basically can define the structure you want without moving the sources or changing the page ID. So, even if you want to reshuffle the menu completely, all the internal links will keep working. So, right now, if you want to make a contribution, and I'll talk about that in a minute, also, you need to go to this URL, which is our pager build repo. And there is a list of all the sources. And then you just go to the repo and make a contribution. But what we plan to do is an edit button. It will be on the right corner and just click that. It will get you to the git repo. And you can make an edit and just click a button and it will submit a PR for you. This needs to be done in Antora. It's supported for GitHub and to other gits. I don't think I remember. But if you host your sources on GitHub, it will work already. We need to make the change for pager upstream. All right. So, let's talk about the future. And there are a few things we want to work on. Automation is the big one. We want to have capability of building PRs for previews. So, if you submit a PR, you will see in the PR the whole site with your change. This is almost done. I think we have the pipeline setup. I still need to finish the image, but this should be weeks. We also want to build the whole site, which is right now manual process. But again, if we do any change, the CI will rebuild it and deploy it. And we've already won some tests. Still need to think about this. Translations. I've mentioned translations already. So, the URL is final. No changes in there. And we have some testing project in Zanada, which is the translation thing. And yes, we are making progress in there and it's definitely something we want to do very soon. It's one of the highest priorities. And QuickDocs. So, this is the thing we might need some help. So, as you could see, QuickDocs had the menu on the left with all the pages listed. And that was kind of crazy to navigate, right? So, we might want to do something with, I don't know, tags, search. So, if you're kind of person who can help us, that would be great. Probably, we want to build something like Stack Overflow or use something that exists that can provide this kind of experience. And search. So, good news is that the Antora documentation already has a search. So, we know it's possible. We just need to somehow integrate it with the Federal website and they will have search. And this should be even useful for the QuickDocs, I guess, as the first step. And we want more contributor docs. So, if you're a working group or a team in Fedora or SIG, you're very welcome to move your documentation in there. So, for example, I know Fedora infrastructure, Fedora relinch have their own documentation. It can be very easily moved there and you get your own space on the page. You can have it in your own repo, in your own place in the repo, your own rules for contributions, making changes that will just build it for you and publish, which I think would be useful. With it, for example, with the modularity project I also contribute to. And with this, I think that's all from my side. Are there any questions or concerns? Yeah. Would you like a mic? First of all, thank you for all your work with Antora. I know it was hard work. I was trying to test myself and my first question will be, we are moving from ASCII binder to Antora. How it affect the way we were working before for writing documents? Because the test is different, but I don't know if we need to, before we have to define the topic map, Jamel, and then to add the document inside the Jamel and the Jamel structure and then to write the proper ADOC file. So how is this new way different from that way? Yeah, that's a very good question. Thanks. So that's something I haven't mentioned. So before the dog book, between the dog book and the Antora, we had something in the middle that was called ASCII binder. And that's basically Brian Exabelt's work. So that was also great. And it was also using ASCII dog for the documentation, but to build it from multiple repos, it was kind of tricky. And also, when you define the page, you have to do one extra file that basically describes all the files in there and then define the menu. So right now, all you need to have is the page files and the NAV ADOC, which is the ADOC file with the list of links. And those links define all the structure and that's all you need, basically. And all the information is in the template, repo I showed. So that should be very clear. Otherwise, I'm very happy to help on IRC. Thank you. I have just another question, sorry. The other question is, because I want to port several SIGs websites to the documentation side, so how this will work? I mean, I should host it in the SIG pagure and how I reference it in the documentation pagure. Very good question. So you basically can host it in any Git repo you want. It can be pagure, it can be whatever. And you can put it anywhere in the repo you want again. You just need to have the structure with the structure of the template, sorry. And if you go to this URL, so this is the Fedora docs, and yeah, it's messy, but it's just a squeak here. And it's an easy URL. It gets you where you need to go. There's a main build script that lists all the repos with the sources. And in the files section, and I might even make it bigger for the projector, is this file called sci-taml. And if I open it, it lists all the Git repos we use as resources with all the branches in them. So that's how we reference the repos. So basically, you just let us know that you want this included in the PR if you like. I think opening an issue is fine. And all we need to have is like a clone URL that's publicly available, the name of your branch, and if you have that in a separate path. So for example, the comops have a directory slash docs. You can do anything you want. We can also specify it here, so that way it's not just interfering with your other code. So let's say I'm playing around with this and I wanted to do a preview build on my own laptop. Is Antora already available in Fedora, or how do I actually build on my own laptop? Very good question. So we don't have an Antora package in Fedora right now, but there is an upstream container image that has all the things you need. And we made it in a way that we have two scripts in the repo. One is called build and one is called preview. This is just like runs the container with the build site for you. First time it pulls the container from the upstream and then just like keeps working and this is just a container with a web server that makes you the preview. So that's basically all you need. It should be very easy and it works on Linux. I just did it on Mac. So that way we can attract contributors like using different... It should basically work anywhere where either the container runtime is or I think you can even install Antora so it's very flexible in this regard. Yeah. Okay, I have one question. If I'm not mistaken, the documentation is now locked in Xanata for translating. So when does this change? I think that would be best answered by Brian. Let me give him a mic. Everything I'm about to say is extremely ignorant, so correct me when I'm wrong. We locked the doc book versions of the documentation at the request of the internationalization and localization folks. We have test pushed projects into Xanata of the ASCII doc and quite honestly I just need somebody who uses Xanata to sit down with me and tell me if this looks right so that we can send an email out to the localization list saying go for it because after that I'd like to work with Adam to do a test publish on a language but I'm monolingual so I can't actually do it myself. Well, I have successfully translated British English to American English but beyond that I am monolingual and I have a credit, I can show you the web credit but like in all seriousness we need someone from the localization team who can look at what I've pushed into Xanata and say this is sane because I've never had to use Xanata and what I would like us to avoid if possible is giving the localization teams a bad set of pushes and projects to work with and then we're like oh well yeah those were all terrible so we're gonna throw all of your work away and ask you to do it again and that's kind of where we are with this. I would be really happy to sit down with you like immediately after this or during flock to get this worked out. I didn't do much translation work so I'm not sure if I'm the right person but I could look who is in your translation group and see who is in I don't know who is the admin of the group and... Let's just work out. Yeah, okay. One more thing just one enhancement for the page it will be good if the page has something to contribute or guide That's something we are working on and I think it should be coming in a few days right? I think there is a talk in flock about the user guy or the contributor guy so I'll say later Yeah, it wasn't underhand Yeah, it's different, sorry I just confused both But two things that should make you happy I did a Fedora classroom this Monday and it's recorded and it should land on YouTube on the Fedora channel and I just walked through the whole workflow of contributing so that's one option and another one is we are building a contribution guidelines or something like with all the steps and it'll land on the documentation page so it'll be just like self-explanatory but it's not very right and it's coming Any other questions? Yeah, we have one there So is the format actually Exkidoctor or Eskidoc? So the format is Eskidoc It's built by Eskidoctor which is somehow Extension above Eskidoctor actually it should be like Eskidoctor 2.0 so that's why I'm asking It's doctor Right, alright, so there is Eskidoctor, thank you I just want to make this clear that probably you should make it clear in the documentation and the second question is probably on Ryan, is Eskibinder dead or not? Would you like a mic? For those of you who don't know, Eskibinder is a project that was written by our good friends in OpenShift and it is used to build static sites for documentation as well from an Eskidoctor formatted set of repositories They designed it to solve some very specific problems around a single documentation set trying to build it for three different flavors of a software project It is not dead I do not know that it has much active contribution because it's currently solving all of the OpenShift requirements set It did not meet our requirements set and that is one of the reasons that we looked at Antora but that upstream as far as I know is in the same, I'll say maintenance phase tail end as it was before and inside of Fedora there, inside of Fedora we still are using it right now with the budget website because I haven't had a chance to convert that and we're still using it with no, that's it, just the budget website I'm asking because I package Eskibinder for Fedora so I'm asking what is the future of the package and if it will have some future and if it will need maintenance or not I direct you to Harrison on that one, in terms of its future and whether it will need maintenance I know that they're supposed to be looking at Antora for OpenShift but I don't know that they've had the resources to do it I don't expect you will be doing a lot of work in this package Okay, thanks Okay, thanks for all the questions if we have some more Yeah, so one additional so when Antora will be packaged in Fedora and what does it mean because looking at the Docker file and so on I don't know if they want to use it in Fedora So yeah, that's a very good question as long as we have someone who would like to package it for us so this is Node.js so we need someone with Node.js and CJR maybe is volunteering now so So I've started the process of trying to get all the dependencies for Antora packaged up in Fedora it's a non-trivial thing I think I've packaged 60 or 70 Node.js packages so far just to get the dependencies in so far and I don't seem to be making significant progress and getting anywhere close to the Antora package itself it's something I do in my spare time when I'm sitting on an airplane and have nothing better to do that sort of thing but it is going to be a long hard slog to get there unless we just bundle all the dependencies and that sort of thing But at least about the container as part of the CI I'm building a Fedora-based container that will use Fedora and Node.js package and then we'll just install the Antora from npm but otherwise it'll get just through our stuff that's the first step Any other questions? If no, thanks everyone for coming and enjoy your half an hour early lunch this is the only talk it does that