Hey guys, how you doing? It's Andy Elliott and I got a little interview going today with my man, Johnny Johnny tell him what's up? What's going on guys? How you doing? I'm checking in from Redlands, California. Thank you for having me on Andy Yeah, so guys so the reason why I told Johnny earlier.  What in August Johnny is that right? Yeah mid August Okay, so listen. It's March Johnny's been selling cars for eight months long story short number one Johnny made the most money is his dealership last month out of everyone number two Johnny got the most gross for the month in February out of his entire company Think about that guys He's not he's not a 10 year veteran. He's not a 20 year veteran. He hasn't been doing this forever and at the end of The day Johnny tell him some of the steps that you take in to push yourself. How did you get there? Just tell everybody what you're doing. All right, cool. So I Think when I first started I just I just wanted to know more like naturally like I just wanted to know more Right because I saw that right away the training that I got was very basic It was just like here's a copy machine Here's what we hang out and talk and then like that was it right and so I just wanted to know more So I just started looking, you know, I think if you seek for answers, you'll eventually find them So I just started looking I started you like YouTube and stuff And that's when I found you Andy and then so I just started digging into a lot of his content that was online I started kind of going over a lot of videos that was like word tracks and stuff like that And so I started low-key like I started practicing and then I saw Andy's course the zero to 100k fast and I you know I thought about it like like everybody would always think about damn like should I invest this money? Should I spend this money? I don't even know this guy like naturally like we're skeptic, right? Like we we always And so I went on ahead and I just made that leap man And I just took that chance to know what I want to make more and to be like I was only making like my first two or three months like my my commission check was only like 400 bucks Right and so along with my hours check. I was barely making like two grand a month And anybody trying to I mean I live in California. Ain't nobody gonna survive or have any type of life living off of $2,000 You know I'm saying yes, or any anywhere society is too expensive, but especially not in California No, no, so I made the decision to buy the course. I went through the course Like ate it all up. You know, I printed everything out. I was underlining everything. I was Okay, so the first time I went through it I went through I just I went through it But then the second time I went through it It was more like I took my time with it instead of doing a few videos a day I did one video day and then I would actually start to do the things that Andy was talking about doing in the video To where it was like you show up to work You walked a lot like I would I would write it down everything that you that you had on there Like I printed it out. I wrote it down. I got my own personal planner though, too but I would write it on that and then I would go do it, you know what I mean and You know doing doing the posting on Facebook like that was my day everything that Andy talked about like how to set up your day I just started doing it and then just little by little my growth started going up my confidence started going up The little trial clothes that you would have us do on the test drive do that is so golden Like the little mean and everything just started. It was it was crazy. It was like there were no objections You know I'm saying like it was just like This is what I've been practicing and then now the results are coming in and so there was no resistance and so Man, I don't know like It's just been crazy now Like like Andy said a minute ago. I made well I don't know what I made just yeah But I but I believe I would I think I've made about four grand last month on commission So total will say like 5600 so you talk about a guy who came in here who didn't know nothing never sold cars in my life You know I'm saying making two grand like to start but now I'm almost we can say I'm almost tripled in that and A month and a half because I've been rocking with that And it's like dude, that's six weeks. You know I'm saying that's six weeks and it's like dude Naturally, I'm introvert, but I want to be extrovert like sometimes I'm a Libra So I'm kind of like, you know what I mean like this, you know, I'm saying and so I just I don't know man If you're hungry, it's here and like you say Andy like here's the test and he gives you the Andy gives the answers You know I'm saying and it's just I just been doing it and crushing it And so I'm just I'm just excited man Because I see the potential because there's so much more like zero to a hundred There's other stuff that and you see it like we haven't even gotten to like negotiating closing Warranties. What were we talking about earlier? You're talking about the the 13 percent. What was that again? It was There we talked about the one percenters Well, no, no, no, we were talking about the 13 percent people are the the people who have financed their vehicles at 13 percent What was that you called it? We're talking about calling the vehicle list the customers that bought at cars two years ago that Paid 13 percent or higher in interest rates We need to be calling them now and getting them to come back into the dealership because they probably qualify for a better Right, they'll just come right back to you. It's just they're ready. I mean who would come back in for a better Right, right who will say no to saving money pretty much? Yeah, nobody A lot of those lists are just dead, but sales people don't know what to do The reason why is because every management is so busy and dealerships and a lot of the time They've been in management for I don't know what most managers been in for five or ten years at least, right?  So it's like You need stuff that works right now today and the training that you got just in six weeks Dude tripling your income. I'm gonna tell you man. That is that is amazing, man I mean honestly and imagine this so think about this Invested what? $299 right right You can wipe your butt with that dude And I'm not saying wipe your butt with money, but I'm just saying like dude, what would it cost you to go to college? Whoo, I mean how much would that and how much are you guaranteed to make with that? Nobody goes to college on 299 and hey and another deal I want to talk about you're coming to the master closer seminar, right? Yeah, man It's crazy because it's like I didn't see myself Taking myself this far. I pushed myself this far. I mean I I wanted to make I knew I came into this and I want to make some good money initially my goal is all man I just want to make four grand a month But yeah, man. It's yeah, I'm coming to the master Seminar is it is that what it's called master seminar master seminar after closed your seminar, baby Anybody any time any place baby for all the money Yeah, we're doing Andy like whenever I would be working like whenever I would come early to work Take my cars out take pictures of them come back in I'll be right here on Facebook posting them I would always get guys like coming looking over my shoulder like what are you doing like, you know? Or whatever I would grab lists that you would tell me to grab and I'd be making these phone calls smashing them out We're only supposed to do 30 calls 30 texts and 30 emails I'm always that guy that's doing like 40 50 60 calls 100 tech. Why are you why you making this look bad? I'm like bro.  It's it's crazy, dude And is it's lonely at the top, right? Yeah, for sure for sure How many people don't want you to make it? How many people are rooting for you to win right now?    We're actors and our job in this world is to learn the skill acquire the skill Just like actors that you think Brad Pitt and Hollywood like you know, he acts. He's really that way He is in his movies. No No, but you know what?  Just keep working hard. You don't need to invest in yourself And that's the stupidest advice I've ever heard in my life, you know I'm saying and guess what they want you to sit there with Them they don't want to see you win, you know me but one of the reasons why we make videos like this is because there's a guy that just started in last August out there and He's thinking his management staff has told him that if he just keeps working hard it'll it'll pay off And he's gonna look up in three years. He's gonna put in 70 hours a week He's gonna be disconnected with his family and his kids if he has one.   I just want to say I would just say just be patient guys you know and girls like just be patient because Like success just it's not overnight. I mean we know that I mean shout out to The great Kobe Bryant like that was the guy who I followed when I was young I mean that guy just watching like a lot of stuff on YouTube on him and the way he just by year year by year He got better and better and better He wanted to be great and so he was willing to put in the work in order to become great And so that just takes patience. It takes a lot of practicing and it takes a lot of sacrifice Relationships may suffer a lot of it's funny. A lot of the guys may ask I mean, this is the car industry. Hey, you want to go for a drink after work?   Give me a burger, but so we were we were hustling making money, but man I got fat dude. I'm gonna tell you this it It can sneak up on anybody you got to take care of yourself. You know I'm saying mentally spiritually physically take care of yourself hundred percent. It's not just You know in this lane.  Like how the how the how the water rises all ships or something like that But you know when the tide rises all ships rise you got to be the tide man.   Any year in two years from now the incredible thing about it is these guys They're gonna be chasing you as hard as they can and because you're at the top They'll naturally make more money because you'll be that tide that's rising and in our in my life The more money that you make Johnny the more money that everybody else makes the happier I am because I remember what it was like When my management staff would say I don't have time to train these guys and I'm like Man, they're not gonna make it. They're done. They're not gonna make it Because they can't and they go work constantly and then you know 70 hours a week later two years later They've lost their family. They don't see their kids. They're dead broke. They've mortgaged everything they have and The car business is one of the best business in the world to be in but if you don't do what you're doing Which a I'm so proud of you and which is invest in yourself and I say that because It's like going to college to get a degree. This is our degree This is our degree for sales. We're a student of selling for the rest of our life and like you said We want to live our best life and be totally fulfilled, right and every year 100% brother 100% Okay, man. Listen, we'll have a great day, dude. I'm glad that everybody got a chance to meet you I will see you at the seminar. Okay, brother. Yes, sir. Thank you so much for having me on that. Yeah, I appreciate you man Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah, we got on Tony Tony say what up Tony Tony Tony Yeah Yes, sir Yeah, sorry. Okay, so we so we will see you at the seminar brother have a blessed day man rock and roll and I appreciate your time Okay. All right. Thank you so much Andy. Have a blessed day. All right, brother


Well, first, as you know, this is an important part of the economics of the ability plan, where we're trying to build 300,000 housing units across the country in the first phase. And this is mass housing. This is low-cost housing. We're hoping that each of these houses will not exceed 2 million Naira, which is the target. So that on the average, anybody who is earning 30,000 Naira a month, if you're ready to spend a third of that amount, there's about 10,000 or less every month. You'll be able to afford one of these houses. That's the plan. And what I've seen so far, there's one bedroom unit, and then there's a two bedroom unit, both coming under 2 million Naira. And I think that this is a good thing indeed, and I think that the point has been made, that it is possible to build good, decent accommodation that isn't out of the reach of practically everyone. So we're hoping that we'll be able to replicate this, not just here in Abuja, but of course across the country. So far, we're, I think, about 11 states. The family homes funds in about 11 states, and the states have given up the land. So we're hoping that in this year, we'll be able to very rapidly improve the scale and the speed of putting these houses in place. Once we're able to get moving and going very quickly, we think that we can do several hundreds of thousands of houses across the country, and more and more people can afford to live in these houses. But also importantly is the job creation. So we have young men and women who are builders, architects, civil engineers who are working on this. And then, you know, we're hoping that a lot of the building materials will be locally fabricated, locally made, especially the windows, doors and such like components of the house. And we also recently had a discussion with the cement producers, the major cement producers, Dangote, Lafarge and Boa, the three major cement producers. So they've agreed to give the project cement at a considerable discount, which is a very, very helpful thing indeed. And we really commend them and thank them for the contribution they are making because it's a very patriotic thing on their part. They also see the importance of this, they see the importance of the mass housing project. So we're all set to go.


This systematic review investigated the use of artificial intelligence, AI, in arc fault detection. It found that AI can significantly improve the accuracy and speed of arc fault detection, as well as allow for customization to specific types of faults. However, there are still some challenges such as missed and false detections, limited application of neural networks, and lack of relevant data. Overall, AI shows great potential for improving electrical safety by detecting arc faults more accurately and quickly than traditional methods. This article was authored by Chunping Tian, Zhao Yangsu, Lu Kuanwang, and others.


ot was there was thinking about phasing it out and looking at other things and and And it was said at least in subcommittee meetings, and I don't remember. I don't think it was full committee. I don't remember But that's when you say people are hearing things that that's part of where You know, it's not just people making Things up not that they would but there were definite statements made by various members of the administration about this and it wasn't in a It was just statements that existed by themselves. It wasn't uh here We're going to take a big picture look at this and how can we fix it? It was just kind of we're kind of going this way Um, and yeah, I think we we need to know what the process is so that we can tell people What's coming and how? The decisions are going to be made and because it is and part of it is We never heard from the people who science camp was not a good thing for and I am not I am not trying to discount their feelings or concerns But we have to have this conversation hearing from all these voices and and figure out because because what we have heard is all the Good things and there were a lot of good things and we don't want this to just go away But I do acknowledge there's other things. We didn't hear that. I know we're not good things. So And I think the sense of people is that the the intent of the district is just to kill it that there is no desire To do it and that it just would that the best thing to do is to sort of delay delay push push You know and eventually it will just die and there won't be anybody left who remembers it and That's that all pre that predates you Well predates you But I do think that this is a you know, it's it's a situation where there I think we could you know, we could lose trust pretty quickly if it's if it's not clear Um What the what the intentions are so I I am no more clear about what the intentions are But I you know, I don't I don't know how we get to that point So And I went on science camp twice. It was a great experience from my perspective and from I actually you know I have a pretty good read of kids. I mean I saw kids. I mean a good experience Mr. Schlickman, yeah, I think it's not a time to Ask for a response from superintendent tonight But I appreciate the fact that you're that she is thinking about The problem is directing herself toward a process with community involvement For the purposes of answering all the questions that are out there Um I mean maybe she'll have some thoughts for us in a couple of weeks Maybe not I'm not going to be There's so much on the plate that I don't expect her to be thinking About such a long-term thing over the course of the next two weeks given everything else. It's on her plate But I feel comfortable that she is taking this seriously And as We get out of the the school year and have a little reflective time can bring people together and and Uh Explore the options and engage the community Yeah, I'm I'm certainly not in a position right now to say yes, absolutely Or no, absolutely not. I don't them. We're not I'm not in that space yet. I am I've learned About the history of and the reasons why families want an experience like this Over the course of this year and I've gotten to see some of the dialogue that has happened around it Even just over the last couple of weeks um A couple of things i'm thinking about is one is that I know that Staffing became an increasing challenge over the last several years of the implementation of this And that that is only if we were to try to do something next year That's only going to be harder next year than it was before the pandemic And I have some ideas about ways that we can resource and an experience like that with staff who may not be teachers But who may interface with our students on a regular basis And I have thoughts about how we can improve some of the logistics of this by thinking through What school group or at what age something like this were to happen And I think there's some potential to do an event like this That could be organized not primarily by but in partnership with the schools I do see it as somewhat outside the charge of the public school system um to try to get our professionally licensed staff To organize an event like this given what I hear its benefits are However, we are a district that is committed to social emotional learning and to really rich experiences for students Um, and I see the benefits of an experience like this Towards that I want to make sure that whatever we were to do it would be Accessible to every single one of our kids and that there would not be financial barriers Or access barriers and that is what makes this a particularly tricky Thing to figure out how to partner even with an outside organization to accomplish So Yes, we are going to look into it I can think through what a timeline would be for a decision on this and get back to the committee One last thing on this I'm sorry. You should which we call on the um We have not heard about kids not having access to it So this is news to us. So it's like be good to get that data or some report on that or some information Let me mean access and special education meaning that part They might be able to physically attend or they're allowed to attend But actually being able to engage meaningfully in the activities and having the supports through the camp To make that engagement and that participation meaningful has been some of the issues for some of our students and other students Yeah, so we've never heard a report on it We've never gotten like data report on it that I recall In my time on this committee, but maybe we did Hard to make You wouldn't hear from families. Most likely would come and right so be hard to make a judgment on it without some report And that report shouldn't have student names, but it should have some something in there. That's possible to do Right, I mean sure figure out what that might be. Yeah, we can talk about what that might be You can put something together without putting student names on it It sounds like this The CIA committee Want to sort of take this I just I only mean in a like in a pop right like a timeline piece Right because because my concern is that If people want something to happen in the spring of 2023 like there's a lot of planning that has to go On and a lot of problems. I'm hearing a lot of problem solving that needs to take place and so um You know just thinking about how can we as a committee be kept abreast of what's happening without it being a Standing agenda item on you know on our on our We would love to do that Very much We uh did some I'm looking forward to our Subcommittee announcements because we did do some some brainstorming of things we wanted to think about so Okay Superintendents report. Yeah Um, all right, uh discussion and approval of the school committee letter to the select board regarding traffic safety concerns. Mr. Schlickman, yeah, uh, we came out of negotiations with the traffic supervisors And one of the things they mentioned Was something that's not directly out of our directly in our control at all Is the traffic out there and you know, we've we're we've got a whole bunch of boston drivers and We've got some dangerous situations out there and the traffic supervisors specifically mentioned two intersections That they were concerned about um River street at university road as well as broadway at rosson road as being treacherous locations for the traffic supervisors So they in conversation Uh Asked what we could do and I said well, okay What one thing we could do is forward the information to the select board and ask them to refer it To the transportation advisory committee Uh for a study So the attack is really really very good at this they organize little task groups and go and and Do a thorough examination Come up with a set of recommendations report back to the select board. The other thing in writing that Uh and in the discussion Is there's really a lack of school zone signages On river street broadway in mass av in various locations And so I tack that on the letter as things that uh to to look at I think it's important for us to do to Maintain our commitment to the safety of students as they're coming to and from school. So I move that we direct the Um chair to submit this letter to the select board copied to tack Second Any discussion? Mr. Hainer. Yes, mr. Pardon. Yes, mr. Morgan. Yes, mr. Schlichman. Yes Yes And I vote yes, we could do this by voice vote. I think Yeah, we could we I've only ever been in a I know I know Only so thank you. I apologize. We're all here. Yeah. Look at this Okay, I think this is the first time we've all been seven of us together. Yeah, yeah, okay So discussion in first read of a school committee presentation calendar for school year 22 23 so dr. Holman and I Worked together to develop this draft of presentations For the 2022 23 school year. It's Some of it is similar from the one that dr. Holman and mr. Hainer had shared with us last summer But I also added some of the items that we will still need for Our superintendent evaluation in November And I also asked that we add more We incorporated more department updates For next year so that not only are we hearing from the schools but also from From the different content areas And I've added a note from earlier about the equity audit So Um Feel free to you know look over this if there's any feedback you want to share now or you can share some other feedback with miss diggins On a later date, but just this is to give everybody an overview of Of what we're thinking Just in the summer programming report can we specify both esy and title one? So that we get both Because it's true. It's different people, right? So Dr. Allison ampey So This is really great and I would love for us to hear of all this. I'm just wondering if it might be a little Over ambitious But I will leave it to you folks to decide Dr. Holman is assuming we're going to rise to her level of energy So we did try that was actually one of the conversations and you'll see like we tried to Refer some of these things to subcommittees too so that it wasn't wasn't all in a full committee meeting So that's something that we can think about too if there are things that That would be better time would be better spent in a subcommittee I will add that the draft that I have I have like a working version of this and we've added some subcommittee Notes to a few of these things in particular More workshopping and budget subcommittee in january I think amachron took over a bit this year in january, which was at a really critical and challenging time And at the same time that I was doing a number of reports on the entry plan And so I want to make sure that I'm sort of Budgeting time in places where subcommittee heavy work needs to happen sounds like fall will be very busy in ciaa And I know that january will be very busy For budget So if there are other subcommittees that we are that we can project Knowing have some heavy work to do that would be helpful to sort of sketch in as well So then the other thing that I wanted to talk about was Some just some summer workshop retreat topics First I want to say thank you to miss diggins And all of you for responding so quickly about available dates I have some thoughts about what we might do and then I'm interested to hear yours as well So first I I'm hoping that we could do some kind of reflection on our first year Working together with dr. Holman Just I'll leave that there for now And then as we've been talking about the strategic plan and the strategic priorities having an opportunity in the summer to to workshop That plan and giving us time as a committee to To really get into some of the the meat of the action steps Assuming that we're able to approve the priorities So that in the fall and that starts to get Drafted and put together dr. Holman has had some Feedback from all of us on where we we would like to see it going and then the third topic is A diversity equity and inclusion workshop for us as a committee I think that dr. Holman and miss thomas have done a tremendous amount of work with their staff And your letter about the hiring practices I've just never I hadn't seen anything so tangible about about how You're thinking so much about this and so I just think it's important that we as a school committee Are participating in in those conversations and in this work as well, so Those are my thoughts and now i'm interested in in yours Mr. Schluckman, yeah, I mean the di a work really is important for us I think it's a focus that the district is working hard on and we need to be a part of that The other thing is when we did the overarching goals 10 years ago It was In many ways a work product that came out of another agenda item, which was to bring the committee together To to build the relationships among members to get in and to and to build a common language amongst each other so that We understood each other and Could say certain things and we all understood um, I think that two years of coveted has sort of frayed the Collegial glue of the committee because we haven't been together We we haven't Sustained the relationships that we had uh two uh two years ago In and I think that we need to come back together as human beings who meet in the same room together rather than little boxes on the screen and and Bringing that back together. I I've really missed that. I've missed the physical presence of being with colleagues and and The conversations that happen beyond what can Happen over zoom I I think we need to talk about the implications Of the the override and the work that we need to do as a school committee leading up to that I mean, there's there's a lot of And len really blended a lot of it the last time and we We supported you. Um, but but there was a lot in in developing well in developing the the five-year budget plan and Engaging with the community and and presenting around that and coming You know, it's 2023 is going to be here Before we know it and I I think having some common understanding of What that's going to look like and what our role as a as a body is going to be in that I think is is going to be important and it's going to take multiple conversations to Get to something meaningful Um, I had actually I I agreed that I would like us to do a di workshop I had wondered about doing it Together with the select board just that it would give us a chance to get together with them because we've had Very few opportunities in the past year or two years to do that, but I don't I don't want to take our workshop time for them So it would be separate, but anyway that was just one idea I had had Just to add on that when we were talking about having diversity Marcus position and the town's position They brought that idea of kind of bringing the two groups together And we have I'm going to brag we have more of a commitment To do things together. I think than they do By Putting the I think it would be good for all of us to be together to see how the other people wear the other shoes You know, I'm not getting a lot of thought to how we're going to do I'm glad we're going to have so we have two days right to two three hour sessions That's what we've booked right now. Yes. Yeah.  So, um We uh, so I don't know. Um, I mean, I'm not opposed to it. It's just that there's You know, you kind of usually do a series of workshops over a course of many months and you know You explore a lot of different topics and so, um, I'm not sure what you know, maybe we could do something But I agree with jane And that we need to start to have conversations now about, you know, coming together and being unified about our About our position on the override, but clarity on on what it means I mean, I think we need to kind of go into that in depth and talk about it in depth because You know, we've had, um in the past here in negotiations with The select board and other people about the number and we've had we haven't all agreed We haven't all agreed and so I think it'd be good to kind of Start that process so that we're all aligned Not in the recent years, but before that we were not all agreed The consent agenda all items listed with an asterisk are Considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests In which event the item will be considered in its normal sequence warrant number two two two six nine May 31st 2022 in the amount of seven hundred twenty five thousand six hundred eighty seven Dollars and seventy cents school committee regular meeting minutes may 26 2022 so move Second Motion by mr. Heiner second by mr. Cardin all in favor Yes I did great. I think you have to do a roll call Oh for for a consent agenda No, no We are we have a remote connection But the members are voting are here whatever okay fine I'm not gonna I I Opposed okay, it's unanimous All right subcommittee liaison reports and announcements budget dr. Allison ampie budget We'll be scheduling a meeting too Community relations, mr. Heiner school committee chats saturday this saturday June 11th at 11 to 12th for special education families Thank you curriculum instruction assessment and accountability mr. Morgan. Uh, we had a meeting. It was great Yeah, we talked about that meeting earlier. I guess we're gonna have some more meetings We're gonna talk about the same thing that we talked about the last meeting we're going to meet We are gonna meet like on tuesday the 21st We're gonna talk about the mission and the vision and then That's what we're gonna do this school year. We are also going to meet at some point and talk about science camp Facilities mr. Thielman Mr. Mason and I are going back and forth and we're probably gonna split the sudden meeting I don't know if we're gonna get it in by the end of June. We'll see Policy and procedures mr. Schlickman. It's tremendous joy Uh in anticipation we're gonna meet at 10 45 or some at some point like that On next wednesday the 15th Arlington high school building committee mr. Thielman. It is going great We're not meeting in july. We don't think Yeah, so we have an update. Um, we are we are um switching counsel To Katie My note my note There is it's actually not a A formal retention letter because I think probably because she hasn't formed the firm yet But she's forming the firm as of july 1st 2022 And this is her offer to us So I move that the superintendent is directed to Engage k.m. Education law llc As school council and authorized to sign a retention agreement second Can we do any questions or discussion? Sorry, can we do can we Approve this as a as a subcommittee Report, yes, we can direct her to do it. Yes. Yes. Oh because as opposed to having it on the agenda as a specific item um Because I hit I so Dr.  I'm open to that. Can I wait till next meeting? It can I wanted to if there's going to be any discussion concern or otherwise, then it would be nice to know that No, we can have a consensus to support. Yes I I see no problem supporting it, but I think for open meeting that we're retaining new council.  I think yeah I just wanted to clarify so this is We still retain Fullerio. Yes. Okay. Yes. This is a replacement. Um, this would end our agreement with stonem channeler and miller Ms. Minnell Was previously counsel with stonem channeler miller. We've worked with her in the past And we did interviews for this process and we spoke with multiple firms and considered multiple opportunities and Members of our community who interact most frequently with counsel felt that she was a great fit for what we need and what we have really Enjoyed having in the council that we've had in the past. So and just I don't I understand she's forming her firm and stuff. But what is there for backup?  Cardin's referring to is that she'll be opening her own firm He will stay on his council. So he would or of counsel is the term And so he would be backup if necessary. Okay. Okay. So there's not just one's not just her I know sometimes we need counsel like now Okay Okay liaison reports announcement Mr. Heiner I want to commend students and staff of the oddison school for the memorial day program This is an annual program inviting and honoring veterans. They were veterans from korea, vietnam and enduring freedom We all wanted you to know how grateful we are and want to thank the students and teachers again for remembering us And those who do did not come back We are going to do future agenda items. Oh, thank you. Sorry Just the 22 23 goals We've got it. We did a first read and then we dropped them from this meeting So they need to be on the 20 they're on my list for okay, great. Mr. Heiner could I have a very brief Discussion uh school committee chat format for 22 23 school year whether it's zoom continue to do it zoom or live or make a combination Brief discussion. That's all That's good Yes, sorry. I'm that's all right I'll remind you okay So now we will enter into executive session And we will not be coming back from executive session into open session To conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract Negotiations with union and or non-union in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect Collective bargaining may also be conducted A ea and triple a negotiation discussions and to approve executive session meeting minutes from may 26 2022 Motion to move second Okay, motion by mr. Heiner second by mr. Schlickman This has to be Okay, mr. Heiner. Yes, mr. Cardin. Yes, mr. Morgan. Yes, mr. Schlickman. Yes, mr. Thielman. Yes, dr Allison anthey. Yes, and I vote yes, it's unanimous


Hey Todd. Hi Mark. Hey everyone. Thanks for lunch. You're welcome. Thank you. That was really good. I hope you all had lunch as well. Are the flowers good? Are we kind of hidden? We're good? Okay great. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. So welcome back. We took a little bit of a lunch break and now we're here to keep the conversation going. Hopefully it can take us a little further into this kind of conversation that we're having. This two-person theater conference talking about art and aesthetics and practice. And this hour we're going to talk about individual artists, playwrights, solo artists. A couple of reminders for folks who might be watching. Feel free to send us some comments or questions. You can do so at any time during the broadcast, I guess is the right word, right? The livestream. So feel free and we'll take a look at those if there's comments that you'd like to share. Do you want to tell folks about the May Day Challenge? Sure. Hi again. So for those of you who are just joining us, this is for Mark and myself, Todd London. This is a continuing conversation that we've tended to have behind the scenes and in our lives together in the field over many years. But we really wanted to focus on the artistic conversation and we are doing it publicly not because we want to spout off in front of the world, but in a way to create a structure for us to have that conversation and also to generate other such conversations. So our hope is that you will pick up the gauntlet, the chalice, the idea and have private or public conversations with your friends and colleagues really about the art of the theater and not about business and not about survival and not about field issues and so on. So we're issuing a May Day Challenge for the art part and you can write to the art part at HowlRound.com if you want to commit to having such a conversation in any context, a living room, a church basement, a theater on the subway, a bar. We were going to try and do that. We couldn't do that. And sign up for it so we can at the end of today we can read out the names of the people who have picked up the challenge and you can continue to sign up for it through HowlRound over the weeks to come. Awesome. Shall we dive in? Yes. Great reminder. Send comments, questions if you have them. And they can go to Twitter hashtag HowlRound or the art part at HowlRound.com or on the Facebook page of HowlRound. This is the auction. This is the pledge drive. So when we were last together before we took a break, we were talking about group creation and ensemble work. And so one of the things that we have in common is that we both kind of dedicated part of our lives to supporting others in their work to kind of help other arts organizations kind of thrive. And I did that at the network of ensemble theaters and you did that at Neutromatis. And so the key here where I'm going is like, so we started with this group conversation around ensembles in my time at NET. And so as we think about individuals, you know, so help me out with some terminology here. Because I think part of it is like we play right. Play right. Yeah, but you know, like solo performer, right, who can also be play right. Yeah. Like help it just kind of contextualize and just kind of define as we talk about individual, like what do we what are we meaning here? Well, okay, so unlike Mark, who came into NET with some terminology around ensemble and devised and practice and so on. I actually have given a lot less thought to what a playwright is in terms of how would you define that or solo performance? I guess by contrast, I would say that what we're talking about in the next half hour or so is people whose primary artistic operation happens at least largely in solitude. So I mean, I'm interested, you know, Daniel Alexander Jones, who's a wonderful defier of every category we could throw up, but who I met first really as a playwright at New Dramatists. I saw him lead a workshop for our students at the University of Washington School of Drama last year. And he began a solo performance workshop by saying, you actually never create performance alone. Solo performance is a misnomer.  And I'd say that's true of a playwright, too. I mean, why would anyone become a playwright if they wanted to sit in their room alone, as opposed to being a poet or a novelist where you literally don't have to interact with the people who are reading your work or people who read it to them? So I would say it's primarily but not exclusively work that is done alone, where voice is, and I'm just making this up, but voice is articulated by a person who's making the choices about how that voice gets articulated. So we were talking about group work before and the difference, say, between the voice of the Worcester group or Double Edge or Cornerstone or Junebug, you know, that who you're in collaboration with is going to determine the company's voice. Not so with a playwright. The playwright is putting words on the page and ultimately that voice will come through in someone else's tongue and teeth and mouth and a literal voice. But so I think that's it. I mean, I think about, I guess your question throws me a little. That's good. I guess what I think about it is, is that playwriting is an exercise of individual freedom. And collective work or collaborative work is a work of making society together. Interesting. That's beautiful. Yes. I mean, so in that individual freedom... I took a long time to get to that. I know, but I was so glad that we got there. That's really great. I mean, that's a keeper. But I think in this conversation about aesthetics, in the group, there's this collective aesthetic. And we talked about earlier about how process, my belief is that process leads to kind of aesthetics. And in the individual freedom, we're yet never alone. Like, where's aesthetics? Where's like the... Yeah. Well, this is, okay. So this is sort of around your question. I mean, so when I really fell in love with playwriting was actually after I got to Neutromitous. And I'll tell you why and how. So I mean, I'd always, you know, I fell in love with the plays I saw and read as a kid kind of thing. And the plays that I did, that thing about like being in Midsummer Night's Dream or directing Tartuffe or whatever, those are really powerful experiences because the language is in your body. But when I got to Neutromitous in 1996, there's a great library of all the current manuscripts of the writers who enjoy seven-year residencies there. And then there's an archival... There are archival shelves of past Neutromitous. And the first thing I did was I read my way through each of the current writer's bodies of work. And what I didn't really understand is how voice develops over time, how concerns are articulated over time, how bodies of work grow. And so when you talk about methodology or practice over time within ensembles, in a way, playwrights have a leg up because they are doing that from play to play to play. One play might be an answer to an unfinished question in the play before, or it might be a redirect from the play before. It depends on who the artist is. But there was something about encountering the work of then, I think it was 43 or 45 playwrights as it had been played out over three or four or five plays. Suddenly you see something that we never are privileged to see in the theater, which is a body of work altogether. And therefore a set of concerns in full flower, really. And immediately everything about the way I thought about theater changed because I wasn't interested in individual projects anymore, only the project of voice and imagination and self over time. It's fascinating because so much of the, I mean, like so much work is project-based, you know, like we're going to bring on this playwright to do this project or we're going to fund this project, right? And so, you know, in that where we started this conversation around sustainability, you know, I don't know if there's a question here as much as I'm just kind of just kind of stewing on body of work and how the individual artist has them. It does have that leg up because at a certain level you can you can just kind of make on your own, you know. But what about so, so like you're looking at these at these scripts, but what about like product, like the physicalization of that? Right. Like where does that fit in that development of practice? Well, I mean, that's the, that's going to be really dependent on opportunity, isn't it? Which is, I guess I want to go back a step before I try and answer that. Because one of the things you said made me remember an earlier comment in our conversation about groups, which is you work with the people you love. And there's something about, so I do on how around this Lovers Guide to American Playwright series, thank you. And I think what it is for me, it really is an act of love, but it isn't about projects. It's about the person, the artist who is revealed through the work over time. So just whereas you're working with Cornerstone for however many years or another ensemble or your collaborator, Ashley Sparks, for example, and you're working out of a personal interpersonal love that's also an artistic sharing. I think the pivot that I experienced that I kind of wish for the theater in general to get out of this project by project mentality is pivoting to loving the writer rather than loving or disliking the play. And so this goes to your next question. What happens with production? Well, part of it is that playwrights wait so long for production that unless your August Wilson and your work is in circulation all the time and then the new thing comes out, there's so much space that nobody can see your body of work. And it isn't, maybe it is in the play, the way that a company's body of practice is in a production. But for a playwright, it's harder to perceive it because then there's the complication, the schizophrenia of playwriting, which isn't true for solo performers, which is, I write something and I give it to other people to do. Yes. Yeah, but in this conversation about aesthetics, that is for me a big question of, you write this world and others will interpret it. And it could be not what you wanted. Right. Right. And so in that, I'm just trying to understand and just to be transparent, Todd and I have had conversations about individuals and I will often kind of take more provocative stances on individual kind of writers, partly because my brain just kind of lives in provocation. And so like part of it is like, admittedly, in some ways it's so like, I just don't know how. So there's also like a fascination of, well, I share your, I don't know a little bit because I'm not a playwright.  So I think so there must be something in playwrights and I'm I'm debasing this on experience that actually prizes the society of others the act of making theater because they aren't strictly speaking just writers. They are makers of events. They are creators of blueprints or frameworks or maps or however you want to metaphorize it for actual events that happen between us when we're live together in a room. And actors and directors and designers have other skill sets that enable them to bring out things that are latent or nascent. And some playwrights that I've seen, they really just want, I mean, it's kind of the David Mamet thing, which I pretty well despise, which is like, actors don't need to do anything but say my work and play the actions. You know, but that's not just what actors do. And then there are writers who you see it. It's so beautiful. It's like they love nothing more than to get in the room with other people and hear the words and gather people around their ideas or experience because those people can get where they ultimately want to go is to the audience. So it is a kind of weird and schizophrenic work. But I would imagine that most cases it comes out of a real desire to make change in the world the kind that you can't clock if people are reading your novel in private and that theater is the thing they love. I don't know. I feel speculative about this. I mean, what do you, what's your question behind the question? Because I feel in a way that you're distrustful of playwriting. I kind of feel like I am. No, thank you. Thank you for saying that because there is something, there is something. So a provocative statement that I have made to Todd in the past is that I feel like playwrights, I kind of tend to view playwrights as editorialists. Not anything dismissive about it, but it's so centered around an individual. There's something for me, like there's something, I think about the Bible and there's something. I never think about the Bible. So bring it on. So I think about the Bible and there's this text that we will make something of. We will interpret. We will live out. You can take this thing and play the, say the lines and maybe do the actions and there's something. I think part of it's not distrust, but it's almost kind of reverent, like in an odd sort of way. It's such a mystery and kind of religious kind of sense for me that like I don't, this authoring of Scripture. Sure. So you see plays in a way as Scripture to be passed on rather than seeds for inquiry to be joined? I think it does. I mean, I think it's scripture at its best does both. Yeah. So, huh, so we're different people in the world, all of us, all of us, and some people do their best exploration in privacy, right? Yeah. And they go really deep. And there's something about writers and writing that is kind of the ultimate in individual freedom because you give permission to your talent to find its fullest expression. And then there's something about us as community members and people in a society who want to tell others. And there are something about some of us who want to share with others and then have them contribute their best contribution, right? Their talent and permission. So actors, for example, have given themselves permission to spend their lifetime in feelings and entering other bodies and identities. It's a different kind of freedom and a different kind of permission, but how beautiful to put it together. But I don't think of that as scriptural or dogmatic in a way, and maybe this is not what you're saying, or editorializing, because it's really just like, when do other people enter your process? And that's why there are playwrights who work with companies. There are playwrights who bring things to companies and then rewrite others who watch the work for a month or two months or 10 months and then go and write.  Exactly. Mixed blood. Yeah. So it's very central. You're not a hater. No, I know that you're not a hater. Yeah. But it's, I was kind of just kind of thinking about chewing on, like when you're talking about like individual freedom and kind of, and then this more democratic view, right, which was like, like, you know, like the solo artist versus the collective. Right. And, and, and there's something kind of cool in that. And I think, I think, I think part of it is, is, I, I don't know if I hide in the, in the, in the group, or if I just trust, like, you know, like, like, there's a, there's a kind of audacity of the, the individual freedom is a scary and wonderful and grave thing. It's totally audacious. Yeah.  And we should not do that. Or like, no, like, let's go deep. You know what I mean? Like, like, you're just, well, yeah, but they're both impossible in their own ways. Aren't they?  Do you know what I mean? And actually having to make society together. So it is, it's like, it's like, those are so hard. You know, I think a lot about this and Bogart thing, I think I've mentioned it to Mark, which is, and Bogart says that every play we make or every production is we're creating a model for how society might be. She says it better than that. But it's like, we're always modeling how to work together. I feel like the work of the playwright as a non playwright is different. It's like, it's almost like the work of the playwright is to see how far our humanity can go when free of all of those restrictions of actual people and actual bodies. And then the work is to put it in actual people and actual bodies. And yet every playwright is different. So I'm aware that as I'm talking about this, it's like, Anna Devereux Smith is a playwright, but she's using other people's words and intonations.  Lynn Nottage is a playwright who works in such different voices all the time. And there are playwrights who write from themselves in a naked way. And playwrights who are deeply obscured in their work. So like, because like, because it's so it can, it varies by individual, and there's so many individuals, you know, like, and you, like, I'm curious about like practice and support and sustainability and deepening practice and how to the individual, the individual human being versus the body of work. Is there a question in that? I don't, I don't know.  You know what I mean? Like, like this is where it feels like I don't have the right words. Well, here's how I think about it. So, and I don't know if this is your question or not. I think about the work of supporting playwrights as supporting the flowering of every unique being. Do you know that, and that is something that flowering, for example, isn't, that's a word that I'm using is something that happens over time. You know, so these guys, you know, open in a minute or a day or whatever, but our as unique beings in the world, we open over the course of whatever time we're given, as opposed to say group work, which is about the flourishing of our social beings to a certain extent, and what we can do in society with one another. And at a certain point, playwrights enter that society as well when they give their plays to others to do. So I think about playwright support and playwright loving and looking at bodies of work as how is the writer flowering over time. And I actually don't care about individual plays as much as I care about the making of bodies of work. And so what that means that if you're a person, and now we're talking about Todd, we're talking about me, if you're a person that works with playwrights, what you care about is like making sure they go back to their desks, making sure that that body of work goes fine. You don't care about fixing or perfecting a play, except as it's the expression of where they are at this moment in their lives. Do you know, it's really different than being a curator or producer and caring about the project. So I don't, I guess that's not answering. No, I mean, I think this whole conversation, this specific conversation for me is just kind of wrapping my brain around in this talk that's about aesthetics and practice, trying to better understand ways to enter that examination. And then I think like things that have been really helpful are just like thinking about bodies of work is really useful, thinking about kind of that individual and society really useful as just, you know, as somebody who, again, works a lot with playwrights and plays and loves it. And at the same time, also, it just slightly feels a little out of reach sometimes for me. Yeah. And like how to look at it or how to look at it beyond just to play it. And then, and so when I look at a body of work, then, how to make it. But it's so weird to me, Mark, that we're having this discussion because you are a person who surrounds yourself with, we were talking at lunch about, if you don't mind my saying, a kind of free floating ensemble of colleagues and friends that Mark has. That is a commitment to people's flourishing over time and their commitment to you. So that is, it's the same work, which is all of our work on this planet, which is where it is, feels to me like scripture or something, which is our job is to be the best of who we can be with the talents that we bring to the table, to give full permission to those talents and and articulate them to the extreme and beyond if we can. And so, I don't know where to even go with that. I think that's, I think you arrived. We do have two comments and one commitment, but we can get to that later. Do you want to? Great. One last thing before we switch to comments is that it's fast. I mean, one of the things I marvel about you is like, is just like, you know, we started this conversation with, with just love of the field and the form and the theater, the arts, the art form. And, and it's so, it's so great because like, because one of the things that you're also an ensemble guy, like you are so collective and, and, and your love and support for the individual. And you, and I, as I hear my, these words coming out, I don't, I don't at all want to paint a dichotomy or zero somewhere just like this or that. Cause I think you're, you know, I just thought you were writing a Valentine to me. But, but it's the, but there's something because like, even as you talk about the individuals, you know, you're, you're looking at it collectively. Sure. And, and, and the, and that you kind of like are holding up the individual within the collective of, of that. Maybe there's a point there, maybe not. But the one thing that before we ran out of time is I also want to talk about, so we've been talking about playwrights, but what about like the solo creator, like the Daler Landersmith or the Luis Alfaro's or the Daniel Alexander Jones. But they're all playwrights. They're playwrights, but sometimes they write on their own bodies for their own voices and sometimes they write for other people. So all three of us look at that differently. Like in this conversation about how do we look at the work? How do we approach the work? How do we end this work? Is there a difference? Does it matter? I think now's the time to turn to our comments. Great. We, we have one from Lisa Shadak. Hi, Lisa. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and dialogue. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. Geez. Ensemble-wise, there is a magic that comes from working, dreaming alone and sharing it with collaborators the next day to develop it together. It's an immediacy to that too. Yeah. But I wonder if the process of a playwright working alone and creating a finished product for others to translate is a system that is outdated now. Okay. He's going to make me answer. Thank you. You know, I, again, I don't, I don't think that a playwright creates a finished product. They create a roadmap. I mean, Ryan McNally creates maps, but they lead you places and the maps change. I think, yeah, there's a kind of sense that, oh, playwriting is old-fashioned, but it's actually the same thing. I mean, I guess this goes to Mark's last question too, which is in my belief, and this is where I'm just like holding forth, we create theater, which, whether it's created for play, by playwrights, whether it's created in rooms by ensembles, by solo performers, by singers, improvisationally or whatever, theater is always about us being in a room together in the end with performers and spectators, or performer, somebody watching and somebody doing. And the event is always the space between us. And I don't think the, this is my resistance to the implication that playwright is outmoded or old-fashioned is the goal is the same, which is to get us in the room together, maybe the sense of text as a univocal thing feels a little old-fashioned, but playwrights actually write for other people to speak in many voices. So there's a sort of dissemination of voice that happens among playwrights. So I think we're all working at the same thing, which is what Mark and I are trying to do here, which is like what is happening between us today in this space and what translates or carries to you and what is your presence due to alter us, because we're all engaged in the same things which are defining our humanity and defining our community. Yeah, drop. I'm Laurie McCann. Welcome back Laurie. I'm remembering an amazing weekend of Thornton Wilder's body of work at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Classics in Context back in maybe 1997. Each piece performed or read or discussed bounced off each other with such resonance, reverberating still for me. I'm encouraging theaters to consider such big undertakings for other living writers. Paula Vogel's body of work comes to mind. Shakespeare theaters do this, of course, and then there are other such undertakings, I'm sure, but it's such a wonderful way to honor a playwright's body of work and signature theater. Profile theater in Portland. There are others, yeah. I love that idea. Yeah. Because then you can really, the demand is to look at everything in a way that when you do it with Shakespeare, I mean you mentioned, Laurie mentions it. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's great. I mean my dream is that you walk in a theater and somehow temporally it works that before you get to the stage you have walked through two or three other pieces by the playwright whose newest work you're about to see. That somehow you've absorbed that so you can see that work. You know, you can do that when you're home with a novel. You can read, you know, Laurie Moore, Philip Roth or Toni Morrison and you can go to the shelf and see the other nine books by them that you read before. I think about like the Nobel Prize, you know, like we're going to look at a body of work and just kind of lift that up and how, you know, yeah, how to continue to do that. I have one last question because we're running out of time and there's so much here. Riders, but I just forgot it. You know, I have a theory that I'm making up on the spot right now is, you know, so I feel like in my question, kind of like leading this kind of conversation and maybe partly in Lisa's like, I don't at all hope that I put you kind of in any kind of defensiveness or having to defend this writers because like I said, I love writers. I came to this because of individual voices and reading those scripts and being transported into these worlds and it's the best. And I wonder about our kind of cultural, socio-political moment where there's just a distrust of other people. And the idea that I'm entrusting an individual versus like a group that, you know, and not that the group is any probably less safe truth to be told, but I wonder if there's something in that. It's so weird to me that you're saying that at this moment. I get it because we are, especially when you say our plays editorials because we're so worried about opinion because opinion is like always in our face. But we also live in a moment where people are just gobbling down memoirs and plays are not memoirs and they're not editorials. They are again, they're dispersed, vocally dispersed objects. And so what is that? Is it a mistrust of the written word? Is it as opposed to something that's more fluid and not set? Is this why, I mean, I don't know if it's true, but it certainly felt true a few years ago that improvisation is like really important at this moment. I don't know. I do, I mean, I keep, I'm curious too about Lisa's Shaddick's question and wish you were here in the room with us too, because I'd love to know more about it. It's like, what is that distrust? Is it a distrust of typewriters? Is it a distrust of written word or expertise or something? I mean, you and I are living in that fear. We're sitting here trying to do everything we can to mitigate the fact that we're like experts or we're like, and yet we still live our lives and we've done a lot of stuff. We have things to say, but we don't want anybody to take it as like anything. Yeah. But I feel like there's something like, I think there's something in that, in this, you know what I mean? And it's probably a much bigger thing that we're not going to pack in the zero time that we have left. But I do want to just kind of put that out there, because maybe somebody will pick it up in another, maybe during the May Day Challenge. Yes. And we have one commitment, another commitment for the May Day Challenge. Who is it? A host of people in, that's Shireen in Detroit. Shireen and Jake. And a host of people. So yay! We got to keep a list so we can say at the end. So we're going to be back in 19 minutes. 19 minutes. And we're going to be talking about civic impact, social engagement, community engagement, civic, the aesthetics of civic, all that stuff you just said. Thank you. See you in a few. Bye.


Item number, SCP-519. Object Class, Safe. Special Containment Procedures, SCP-519 is to be kept in a standard storing room, 5x5 meters in size. It must not be connected to a phone line unless experiments are being performed. Description, SCP-519 is a Model 7 Southwestern Bell Phone Box, with heavy graffiti. Its displayed phone number matches that which it would have if it were in service. It was recovered from an abandoned mall in Wacken, Missouri, following rumors of a talking telephone box. When the handset is lifted, the user is greeted, with variations according to season and time of day, by a voice, asking for the correspondence name or phone number. The voice is of indeterminate gender, though most users perceive it as belonging to the opposite gender. Dialing the desired number instead of speaking into the handset causes the voice to become...petulant. Any person may be requested, as long as a phone connection to a phone dedicated to that person can be reasonably established. Phones called may include blacklisted numbers, and similar phones that are not supposed to receive calls, etc. Should that be the only phone used by the person on a regular basis? Calls a number, with the exception of 1800, 911, etc., or person has been requested. The appropriate rate, which are accurate as of 19% when the mall was abandoned, will be demanded before further actions. Vocabulary and speech patterns of the voice vary greatly, but appear to roughly match those of the user, with a few exceptions. During the entire conversation, the user will never directly hear the person they have called, instead having their speech reported by the voice. Conversations appear normal from the other end of the line, with speech addressed to the SCP not heard. What is heard, however, might not reflect the exact words used by the speaker. The voice will often comment profusely on the intent of either speakers, and even mock the user, in a devil or angel on the shoulder fashion. Its overall personality varies, from sarcastic and misleading in reporting, to bubbly, and ridiculously willing to trust the interlocutor. Interrogating the voice itself makes it grow increasingly aggressive in its refusal to answer. Always along the line of, I'm only there to repeat what people say, until the conversation is cut, and a busy line tone begins playing, at deafening level. Hitting or damaging the box will lead to the same result, although it has displayed the ability to discern whether or not the speaker is responsible for such actions. Only well-defined persons or numbers are accepted. Random or purposefully invented names will fail, but not, for example, reading a random name from a phone book. One can request family members my relation rather than name, my mother, my cousin, and even if there are several possible options, the intended recipient will still be called. Requests such as, that girl I met yesterday, unless a number or name are known, will be sneered at by the voice. Requests for fictional characters will lead variously to the phone reaching actors who prominently played the characters, homonyms, or the creator of the character. Calls can only be done to a phone line that can be described as normal for that person, such as a house phone, cell phone, or office work, although the line being blacklisted is not an impediment. Phone calls have carried through strictly internal systems on several occasions. Similarly, SCP-519 appears able to bypass all automated phone systems, to the point of immediately connecting to the desired department of a company, even if only the phone number was requested. It is also able to connect to phones and locations where no signal should be able to reach. Addendum 1. When requested to call SCP-145, SCP-519 retorted, that line's occupied dude, always was, and refused to expound further. Incident 519A, on Agent M unexpectedly requested a call to SCP-400ARC upon which the voice commented, oh boy, before apparently establishing a connection. Dr. immediately entered the experiment, and both were later disciplined when it was found that SCP-400ARC had begun ringing at the same time the connection was established. Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-518, the Transinformational Tomb of Asa Rutledge, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


Good morning. We are sailing into the second day of our workshop, just two announcements. First, there will be a small reception on Thursday after the poster session at the open terrace here in the main building, the precise time to be determined. And second, this is more important, if you are presenting a poster, there will be a piece of paper outside this room. Please put down your name so that we know how many of you, so that we can count the space for posters. Right, and with that, we start our first session, and the chair of the session is Michael Arkyselov, ICTP. Good morning, everyone. We start session of Magnetism 1. There are two talks, and the first talk is given by Gabe Epley from ETH. Now, please. Okay, it's a great pleasure to be here, and I really want to thank the organizers for inviting me. It's, of course, an even bigger honor to be here, because of Pierce Coleman's birthday. It's too bad that he won't be here, but even though he's not here, I just maybe want to, you know, because there probably will be too many after dinner speeches on Friday. I just say a few words about Pierce. Actually, Pierce, I've actually known for a very, very long time. This is a picture, as Premie was saying yesterday, she kept referring to the last millennium. This really is the last millennium. This is in 1987. We were actually both at a meeting in Bangalore, and those of you who are old enough can remember some of the people who are circled. You'll notice here, for example, is Phil Anderson, the Chandra Varma. Back here is a young man, and if you actually blow up that young man, that is the person we're honoring today. That's Pierce in 1987. Next to him is this year, which I had thought that Phil Anderson was his thesis advisor, but maybe this was a surrogate thesis advisor when Phil was inventing the RVV theory. So this is what Pierce looked like then. Actually, since that time, actually first met Pierce in the early 80s when I was at Bell Labs, and he used to come down from Princeton because Phil Anderson was also at Bell Labs, and we had many chats. Actually, these many chats led us to actually a very, very productive collaboration over the next decade or so dealing with the issue of quantum criticality, and in particular, trying to understand essentially what happened, the different kinds of quantum critical points you could get with an antifuramagnet. In fact, here's a sort of a conventional quantum critical point where you cross over between an antifuramatically ordered state and a paramagnetic state as you might think you do in chromium. In some of the heavy fermion systems, however, you would form some kind of a strange unbound condo state which would essentially exist just at the quantum critical point and give rise to all of the funny transport properties. This figure essentially became our icon for guiding our research for something like a decade. We had a lot of fun trying to study this problem which I think is still with us today. Now, of course, there have been many other social occasions. I just want to finish here by saying happy birthday to Piers. If I do get a chance, I'll make a few more personal remarks on Friday, but I think the great thing about Piers and that comes through I think in this picture is sort of his unbridled enthusiasm at both social occasions, but also at sort of doing serious science and basically the idea is that even though science is serious, it also has to be fun. The whole creativity, I think Piers' particular creativity, derives from essentially this spirit of having fun. And I'm hoping that actually I'm hoping that everybody here at this workshop is having fun thinking about the new developments in physics going forward, the way we were having fun together with Piers thinking about quantum criticality. Okay, so let me get to the hard stuff now. And this is not so hard. Let's just talk about some new science that we've been doing over the last year or two on magnetism and try to relate sort of all these concepts, interesting concepts of topology that have been so fruitful for electrons to magnetic systems. And the collaborators here are especially Alexander Bolatski, who is basically various institutions. And I won't list them all, but actually they're all sort of listed here. And then his various students and postdocs. Also, I'll show some work that we were doing or I did with Angelos McLeese in London, the LCN, and also with collaborators from both the LCN and EPFL. Something you already know, I don't need to show this, graphene. So of course, everybody has heard this many times before, is graphene is this interesting substance where at the Fermi level you can have essentially Dirac particles and the dispersion is given by this famous comb, which exists at the k points in the Brion zone. So that's Fermion, so not very new, not very exciting. This is also not very new and not very exciting, but people tend to forget is that, of course, in the single particle picture, the dispersion for phonons and electrons is essentially the same. You have for phonons also this type of Dirac-like phenomenon, also at the k points because you solve exactly the same equations when you look at the motion of the masses as you do when you look at the motion of electrons. Here, actually the red lines are just simply the calculations for an isolated sheet, and then these black points are real inelastic actually scattering data on a piece of graphite. So people tend to forget that the phonons and the electrons look the same. You can, of course, also create any kind of honeycomb lattice find these Dirac-like cones. Basically the reason they arise is that I have a number of a lattice, and then if I have proper symmetry protection in this number of a lattice, I can get essentially a bank crossing at the k points. You can even do it for artificial materials, such as quantum dots, where you can look at essentially exotongue polar condensates, for example, on such honeycomb lattices.  And so basically this raises a question is that there are fermionic systems, but actually they're just electrons, for example, in graphene and it's analogs, but those are fermions with long-range interactions, and there's an interesting question of if when you start to deal with interaction effects, the similarities between the bosonic systems and the fermionic systems go on. So from a spectroscopic point of view, I've just shown you there's really no difference between the fermionic systems and the bosonic systems you get essentially for essentially these linearized excitations, there's no difference, and it's really fair to ask is there any difference when you when you put in interactions, is there any difference when you think about the statistics of the quasi-particles that you're interested in. And so the rest of the talk I'm going to, I'm going to deal with this, deal with this question. So I'm going to talk about the nonlinear effects, so linear looks boring and the same, what about the interaction effects, and what about the surface states, edge states? Okay, so the key thing of course is in, the key thing that gives rise to these cones is the fact that you have a number of alattes. Once you have a number of alattes, of course the block function is no longer just simply a scalar, but it's an interesting vector which then obeys in particular simple cases the Dirac equation or more complex cases some kind of a while equation. So here's a number of alattes, and when you think about magnons, of course you can convert the Magnon problem into any of these other linearized excitation problems using the Holstein-Premikoff transformation. So you start off here with the usual Hamiltonian, and then you essentially write the spin-raising and lowering operators in terms of basically bosonic annihilation and creation operators. And then the crucial thing here that there's z actually is s minus a dagger a, which of course produces a nonlinearity, which you throw out to first order. But if you keep only the linear order terms, then you have a Hamiltonian, effective Hamiltonian in these degrees of freedom, which of course exist on the two sublattices, so if you wish there's an a and a b for the two sublattices. And this Hamiltonian consists of essentially just j times s, and then this term here, which encapsulates the momentum dependence, the interesting momentum dependence, which gives you those Dirac bones at the k points. And then there's a diagonal term here, which is 3. That's actually not going to be unimportant. So this is just a standard thing, and this is how you convert your eigenvalue problem for the spin case into an eigenvalue problem, which looks very similar to that for fermions or in fact for phonons. So there's a 3 that's important. There's a diagonal piece. And that gives you, excuse me, yes, yes, I'm expanding around the fermi-dentagrastate. So that's what you get. So this is why you get the same thing that you got before. The 3, the 3 there, which is the diagonal term, which effectively comes about because you can have multiple occupancy if you wish of the sites rather than single occupancy. It just shifts the energy of the spectrum, and you just get, again, this famous form as if it were graphene, electrons and graphene. Now let's think about the interaction effect. So there's a rather famous result for the, for electron-electron interactions for the, for graphene, which I just summarized here, is there are, in fact, self-energy corrections due to the Coulomb interaction. And that's, the calculation is actually just shown here. It just comes about from this diagram. You get essentially a creation of electron-hole pairs mediated by the Coulomb interaction. At the end of the day, though, you get what amounts to an integral basically of this, of this form here. And of course, that form gives you a logarithmic correction to the velocity. So in fact, the velocity with electron-electron interactions does, is actually not constant as you go towards the Dirac point. It actually diverges logarithmically. Effectively, you're just dealing with a 2D transform of a Coulomb potential. And what this means is that you don't have a Dirac cone, you actually have a Dirac hourglass with the interaction effects. And this Dirac hourglass was seen already seven years ago by Andre Geim. He actually measured the velocity, which you can do by changing the chemical potential with a gate. And sure enough, it more or less agreed with this logarithmically diverging effect that was predicted. Okay, so we know, of course, that with the magnons also, there are these corrections. Remember, I said that SZ actually was involved actually not an A dagger, but an A dagger A. So there's a number operator. So when you reinsert that into the original Hamiltonian, you, of course, generate terms which are not just quadratic in the AMB sublattice operators, but also actually come in to higher order. And so we have to start thinking about the correction terms here. Their correction terms, of course, has been raising and it's been lowering operators as well. And so you can start to expand the Hamiltonian in these operators. And you get, of course, all manner of terms, particularly get all these fourth order terms, which essentially couple the two sublattices together. Notice that they never appear by themselves. So you never get an A to the fourth type term to this order because, of course, we're dealing with only the case of nearest neighbor interactions. And the nearest neighbor interactions are strictly between the two sublattices, not within a particular sublattice. So you have all of these extra interaction terms. And, of course, here we have well-known processes from just many body physics to try to correct the self-energies. And, of course, you have a heart tree diagram, which, as you'll remember, just simply produces a shift of the energy. And then you have these rainbow diagrams, which we'll talk about a little bit more in a moment. And so we go ahead and calculate this as the heart tree correction. This is just this shift of the self-energy. It scales essentially like the population squared of the magnons, mainly the zone center magnons. And the correction term is exactly this. That's the interaction. That's the spin. And that's pi. You can see, of course, that as s gets smaller, the corrections get smaller. Got bigger. This goes as one over s to the third. Okay. So that's what we've got. Now, what about this diagram? So this diagram, again, is quite simple to write down. It's simply self-energy correction here. Again, scales essentially like this population factor times a matrix element divided by this energy denominator where energy has to be conserved, going through this in here. And in other words, one can then consider here that, of course, you can calculate both the real and imaginary parts of this.  You should remember that if I have a Bravais lattice, such as a square lattice or a cube, Dyson showed essentially that the correction, this correction here, again, was simply a constant. And so let's look at these two. Let's just try to understand how the calculation actually works out. So here are the two integrals that one can consider just to think about what's going on. So this is the real integral, which has matrix element effects plus this energy conservation, energy conserving delta function. And this is just this density of states, which just takes account of the delta function without thinking too deeply about the matrix elements. Of course, you know that from ferromagnets of matrix elements generically are weakly momentum dependent if at all. So if you want to build intuition, really, you can build intuition just by looking at this particular integral. And so one can then go ahead and calculate these two functions. The solid lines are just simply the density of states. The dashed lines have the matrix elements in it. You can see that there's actually relatively little difference. To get even more sort of into this understanding of what's going on here, because you can see that when you calculate those integrals, there are actually quite a few singularities in momentum space. These are van Hove type singularities, which are gotten essentially from kinematic constraints. So all of the singular behavior here, you see both in the density of states and in the matrix element weighted density of states, which is the self energy. You see them in both terms. And what you can see is there are singularities at these important symmetry points in the zone. And those singularities appear in both functions, both the density of states and the self energy. So basically you're dealing with van Hove singularities. And these van Hove singularities come about in a way that's shown diagrammatically here at left. So you have to be a little bit careful here. So there's various colors here, which correspond to different momentum points in momentum space. And then what I'm showing you here is coded to the same color as the contours along which that delta function enforces energy conservation for those particular values of the initial Magnon energy momentum. And what you see here is that as you, depending on whether you look for, let's say, the up to the up down band, remember there are two bands because I have two sub lattices. Those are the AMD operators. In this case, these contours evolve a particular way as I move through the zone, as I change the colors here. The most interesting one is going to D plus D. So that if I move, for example, from this point in K space, this is the contour where I find the spectral weight, which matters for the self energy. Then if I just move a little bit over here, that contour comes across. And then the purple one at the K point jumps here. And when, of course, there are these jumps in these equal energy contours is where I have my von Hover singularities. So I have singular behavior. In particular, I have singular behavior at the K point at the end of the day. And so one can ask, here again, it's just drawn in more detail what these rainbow terms do. And I just showed you now just not just the imaginary part, which was shown before, but also the real part. Again, I see these singularities in the real part. And I see this curious sort of double singularities near the K point. So there's this minimum and then these two maxima around it. So that's a rather curious structure, very different from what I get for Coulomb interactions for the electrons. And so if I really blow up the region near the K point to look at the many body renormalization effects, what I see for the Coulomb interactions and fermions, I see this hourglass shape, logarithmic, whereas actually I see something very different for the magnons. I actually still see, of course, a shift in the Dirac point. I see linear behavior at the going through the Dirac point. And then I see these odd looking singularities coming from the van Hove effects, which I just described a minute ago. So there seem to be very different many body effects in the case of the fermions on graphene versus the magnons on the same honeycomb lattice, even though I started off, of course, with the lowest order, the same excitation eigen frequencies. So a question is, does this have anything to do with reality? Well, it does. It turns out that about 50 or 60 years ago, these materials are very popular. These are transition metal trihalides, which consist essentially of a honeycomb layers of transition metals are indicated by the gray spheres, which are sandwiched essentially between layers of the halides, for instance, bromine or chlorine, which are denoted in purple. So I have a nice Fonderwals magnetic analog of graphene. And the renormalization of the spin waves in these materials was a topic 50 years ago. This is a paper from 1971, when I can make the usual remark that most of you were not born then. And I was not even, I was still wearing short pants. So this paper actually, when we started, when I last checked, actually was cited only five times. It's actually a very, very pretty paper. And what these guys did is they did neutron scattering measurements on a very large crystal of this material. And they did the usual thing. These are just neutron data. They don't look any different today than they looked then. You fix, for example, the momentum, scan energy, and you can see the eigenfrequencies, you can see peaks just like people do nowadays. So nothing has changed. The mass of the neutron hasn't changed. And neither has its spin, which is crucial for these experiments. And they actually had this diagram in the paper. This is direct crossing here. And this is the k-point. And what they found was when they measured the eigenfrequencies near that k-point, they found very curious behavior. What they thought was very curious is here is the k-point indicated by the red line. And they saw a renormalization and, of course, the error bars, because these days are pretty large, but what you see is there's a fairly substantial renormalization of the spin wave energy, which is quite momentum dependent near the k-point. And then it looks like there's a maximum just a little bit away from the k-point and then it goes down again and then there are large error bars here near the gamma point. Okay, so that was not explained at the time and just parked. And when we picked this up again and did our theory, we then actually tried to overlay the theory, which has, of course, exact coefficients out in front. And here I've just re-plotted the data from 1971. And this is the theory with all these van Hove effects. And sure enough, the van Hove singularity actually counts precisely extremely well for these old data. So this is the renormalization, the renormalized dispersion relation near that point. So actually the interesting thing here is you could say that the renormalization of essentially a Dirac particle due to many body effects was first measured 50 years, in this case 40 years, before Guy measured it with his collaborators for fermions and graphene. To say the other interesting thing is the citation index is a very interesting guide to what you should be looking for, new physics, and you should be looking at papers with very few citations and exhume them 50 years later. This is actually a very beautiful paper. Yeah, yeah. No, I think they didn't, they just simply didn't have the ability to do those, no, they tried going beyond. But they, if, Silverglitt, they did try to do calculations, but I think they were just not able to do the integrals. But they knew you should be doing those integrals. Of course, Holstein-Premikoff thing existed when you and I were wearing short pants, when you're very small. So it's an amusing sort of history of science thing, but it's also amusing just to read this whole paper because there's a lot of physics there, which these guys actually understood. But basically that resolved that old mystery. Okay, now what happens when these bows on them? So this is the sort of the next order in this theory. What happens, of course, when the amplitudes become even larger?  I'm just going to breeze through this because here, of course, in one dimension, you enter the regime of solitary waves. In two dimensions, you enter the regime of sort of large-scale discommensurations. You enter an interesting regime of nonlinear dynamics. And one can ask this question for the bosonic systems. In this case, actually, we tried to answer this question for graphene, which is being stretched. Okay, and it turns out that graphene, which is being stretched, if you do molecular dynamics on it, actually has, in addition to the linear excitations, has these nonlinear solitonic-type excitations, which look like that, essentially, which look like very, very large waves. And with very, very large displacements, and these large displacement waves, solitary waves, actually show up when you essentially stretch, essentially, when you stretch the material and you look for the elementary excitations just in the molecular dynamics calculations. And actually, if you look, you find out that there are very long-lived, actually, large-amplitude excitations, which are not simple phonons. This is now for phonons. We suspect something similar might happen for the magnons. So we're expecting that there might actually be nonlinear phenomena in these especially low-dimensional magnetic systems, which will be analogous to this. Now, the reason we were working on this problem with phonons was that we were interested in the amazing ability of graphene, actually, to carry water bubbles on its surface. And this was related to the problem, actually, of using graphene in biological sensing systems and water filters. But the main point here is that, in addition to the spin waves, the spin wave approximation does not account for all of the qualitative features that one would expect. And we're certainly hoping people will look for the nonlinear excitations in the magnetic van der Waals solids. Okay, so what might these nonlinear excitations be good for? Well, as I was saying before, these nonlinear excitations are very good for carrying water. We suspect that perhaps in the case of the magnetic systems, they may be good for carrying charge around. I won't go into this because I'm running out of time. In fact, there's another interesting thing about these large amplitude ripples, rather than the low amplitude phonons, is that what we discovered a number of years ago is that if you have large amplitude ripples, you can actually destroy charged NC wave states in graphene, which are present when you have very flat pieces of graphite. You could get beautiful charged NC waves. Whereas if you crumple the graphite, in other words, if there are these large amplitude excitations, actually you can get, you actually destroy the charge density waves, which implies again that if these ripples are moving around, these nonlinear, the soliton type excitations, which arise when you go to nonlinear order, are strongly coupled to the electronic degrees of freedom. Actually, we think that might give rise to some interesting new physics over the next few years. This just shows the same picture in reciprocal space, and this shows essentially the two classes of samples. This is two types of doped graphene. They're all doped in the same way, but the samples which have charged NC waves are the ones where the fluctuations, the surfaces are very flat. There are no ripples around, whereas the ones which don't have charged NC waves have surfaces with much greater roughness. It just shows the height spectrum of the material, which you just measured with STM in this case. If you have a very rough surface, there's no charged NC wave, lots of ripples, lots of these nonlinear excitations, very flat, you get this. I think there's going to be some interesting electron phonon and electron magnon physics coming up soon in this field. The other thing, of course, that's happened recently as people have rediscovered, not just themselves, have rediscovered these transition metal trihalides, and they find very curious ferromagnetic behavior and also layered anti-ferromagnetic behavior in single flakes of chromium triiodide. These materials have come back. They have very, very large optical rotations, so they're very amenable to doing physics. Again, the transition temperatures also depend on the number of layers that you have, so there's some detailed physics to do with the couplings between the layers as well. Just wanted to introduce this topic a bit. Let me just conclude with one particular and very simple demonstration of where fermions and bosons are different, going back to that three that I mentioned at the beginning, different between the graphene and these layered honeycomb ferromagnets. This is, again, the honeycomb lattice, and I have two sublattices. Now, if I think about assembling this into three-dimensional structure, what I get is, of course, the possibility. These are the different stacking sequences that I can have, A, B, A, B, C, and so on. What you'll notice in particular is that if I think about that last layer, that last layer could have one sublattice, for instance, in this case, the blue ones in the last layer could be decoupled from everything underneath. So I have a surface, I have one isolated sublattice at the surface, B sublattice. So if I think about the, now, the consequences of that when I have bosons rather than fermions is, of course, that if I consider this, this Hamiltonian here, of course, I have my usual in contrast to what happens for the fermions. Of course, I have these off-diagonal terms as always for the fermions, but in addition to that, I have this famous S plus, this famous term derived from SZ, SZ. So what that means is that I do have, actually, a B sublattice term living by itself at the surface, which is not present in the fermionic case. So I have a B sublattice term, and of course, that B sublattice term now, this diagonal term is missing in the case of the fermions, but is present in the case of the bosons. That's that three. And of course, that three, combined with a weak coupling down below, actually gives rise to a dispersive surface state, which is non-dispersive in the case of graphene, but is dispersive in the case of the magnons. So I could get, actually, surface magnons, which are qualitatively different than what I get for the surface fermions in the case of terminated graphene-like structure. And of course, you can do this all by, you can check this for yourself by doing sort of a classic slab calculation. And again, the key point here is that I have this three, which is not zero. And as I say, when you do this slab calculation, you get what I just showed you, and I think I'm about to run out of time. Of course, this, what the slab does for you also, it tells you how this k point wanders around in three-dimensional space as a function of kz. So it twists around, and of course, that twist as it goes around is related to the chirality of the interaction so what this means, among other things, is that if you had, for example, a Jozinski-Maria interaction, you would break the degeneracies between basically right-handed and left-handed polarized k point trajectories, and that in turn would actually also gap out the Dirac spectrum at the k point. Okay, so let me conclude. I've shown you sort of the excitement now of moving from fermions to bosons. Bosonic Dirac materials actually are not exotic at all. I would almost claim that they're much more common than the fermionic variety. There's so many things. There's phonons, polaritons, magnons, and particularly we've recently rediscovered these transition metal crihalides, which are fattened walls materials, so you could isolate them and do all kinds of physics with one, two, three, and four, and so on, and layers. Combine them also with other founder walls materials and heterostructures, if you like. There's a lot of new physics, including dispersive surface states, which did not exist for the simple graphene model. I've also shown you that there are corrections to the self-energy of a very different kind that you can discover in these materials, a very different kind than you can discover for the electron systems. The last thing is that solitons, actually not only do you have sort of interesting corrections to the linear theory, you also have nonlinear excitations which show up at large aptitudes, and these actually have some, if you wish, practical use. They can carry water, but I'd like you also to think about how they might be able to carry charge excitations along. Thank you very much.