Hello everyone, and welcome to our talk, Kubernetes from Scratch for Neuroscientific Research. So a little bit about the agenda, so we will first tell you a bit about us and the target audience for this talk, and then how did our interesting Kubernetes start, and then a bit about prototyping Kubernetes and our organization's infrastructure overview, and then how it is to run a Kubernetes cluster and do maintenance, and then the use cases that we have within the organization, and the process of migrating to Kubernetes and how it is from a Kubernetes user's point of view. So about us. My name is Karolina Lindquist, and I work as an SRE at EPFL in the Blue Brain project, and I'm in the team for Neuroinformatics Software Engineering, and my team is developing a storage application for Neuroscientific data. Hello everyone, my name is Daniel Fernandez, I'm also an SRE. I've been in the Blue Brain project for the last three years as an SRE as well, and I'm in the core services team, and we can think of us as a small IT department for the organization. We take care of different IT services for the users of the Blue Brain, and we are a small team of six SREs. So a little bit about our organization, the Blue Brain project. The ultimate goal is to digitally reconstruct and simulate the mouse brain, and also pioneer simulation neuroscience, and we hope that it will better help the understanding of the human brain also with some potential applications in health and disease research. And as you see from the organization chart, we are coming from different parts of the organization, and this was done as a collaboration. And about our presentation. So we want to give you some ideas for how to approach an on-premise cluster setup, and these ideas can also be applied to a cloud environment, and it's more intended as giving you some pointers to start, and also some of our slides might have a lot of text, so we should also be able to use them as a reference after this talk. And some useful prerequisites, since this is the 101 track, is basic knowledge about Kubernetes architecture and basic knowledge about some resource type, and some knowledge of Helm and Helm chart is a plus. But again, if you haven't learned about this yet, you can always come back to our presentation later as a recording. So how did our interest in Kubernetes start? So within my team, we were using OpenShift, which was the organization's container platform, and in the setup that we had, there were some features that were missing, for example, flexible language configuration as NGINX was doing it, and using Helm charts was something that we wanted to do, but at that point it was not possible. And then we started realizing together with the developers that Kubernetes, vanilla Kubernetes might be a good solution for us from the developer point of view. So we started a bit of prototyping and figuring out how to deploy Kubernetes on OpenStack, and started creating an Ubuntu-based Kubernetes cluster for internal testing. And then we did some documenting of the installation and the deployment process, and then we presented our test results to Daniel's team and started discussing the next steps. And as you can see from the timeline, this internal testing already took a few months, but we had a prototype and some use cases that we wanted to do that we could hand over to Daniel's team. Okay, so I would like to start my part of the presentation talking about the BlueBrain project infrastructure, and as you can see on the slide, we have three different data centers. First one in Lugano, where we have our supercomputer. We also have an 8-petabytes spectrum scale for scientific data storage, and a TSN system for back up on tapes. We have another one in Lausanne, where we have our disaster recovery storage based on NetApp. And finally, we have another one in Geneva, where we have our private cloud based on OpenStack. And this is where we run most of our services from, including Kubernetes. Also in Geneva, we have a little bit under 4-petabytes of enterprise storage based on NetApp. And this is the catalog of services that we offer to our users in the organization. So as you can see, we have things like OpenStack. We have Puppet. Puppet is our configuration management tool that we use to configure and install all of our services. We have things like GitLab, Jira, Confluence. We offer several different databases technologies to our users, authentication via key clock and all that monitoring stack of tools. And all of this I just mentioned is all virtualized and all on-premises. So with this in mind, let's talk now about the situation we had before Kubernetes. So before Kubernetes, we were running the open source version of OpenShift. So OpenShift Origin 3.11 based on Kubernetes 1.11. And by the release date, you can already tell that it was getting quite old at the end of 2020. One problem that we had is that people who work on this deployment had left the team already. And also it was relying on an Ansible Playbook. This is not a problem per se, but as I mentioned before, we used Puppet for configuring all of our services and OpenShift was just the exception. Because of the way it was deployed, day-to-day operations were tedious and cumbersome. So things like adding new worker nodes or changing the guad of a project required several different steps from the operators and it was quite error prone. And finally, it didn't have support for some of the features that our users were starting to request. Things like HelmCharts, GitOps, or a more modern Ingress. So this is why a change was needed. So at the beginning of 2021, this is when we started this proof of concept based on vanilla Kubernetes. In this case we went for Kubernetes 120 with container D and run C. And since the beginning of the POC we had a few things clear. We wanted to be virtualized running on our existing private cloud OpenStack. We wanted to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux system and of course with SC Linux enabled and set to enforcing. And we would use Pappet for the installation and initial cluster configuration. So no difference with any of our other services. And also we would like to use some kind of GitOps approach to automate the configuration of the cluster. As you can see there, there is a little timeline. It took us around three months to get the first version up and running. And then starting in April this is when we tested it internally for around six months. And then in October we decided to invite some external users to this proof of concept Kubernetes cluster. And then in December after some testing we decided that it was production ready. And after that this is when we started the commissioning of OpenShift. So this is some of the features that we offered back in 2021 with that first Kubernetes production cluster. As you can see it was based on Kubernetes 1.21. For the CNI we went for Calico support for Ingress NGNX controller, authentication via key clock. For the CSI we went for Trident since we were using NetApp as the backend. Kiverno, support for Helm charts GitLab registry, since we were already using or installing having a GitLab in-house. Support for VN spectrum scale, VNFS mounts, flags encrypted secrets with Mozilla SOPs and SERT manager. So it's the Q3 of 2021 and we had this new Kubernetes cluster up and running but we were also running the old OpenShift in parallel. So at that time what we did is we audited everything running on OpenShift and we contacted the responsible for those deployments and luckily a majority of those users those developers they managed to migrate their applications by themselves and in most of the cases it was just a matter of exporting the resource as a Jamel file and then re-importing it back into Kubernetes. Unfortunately for us there was no way to automatically migrate the volumes from OpenShift to Kubernetes although in both cases we were using the same backend NetApp in this case the driver was different so an automatic migration was not possible. So what users needed to do is basically copied the contents from one volume running in one system into the other. And finally we also needed to migrate the container images and this was an easy migration what users needed to do is push the already existing images into the new registry in this case GitLab. So about our cluster deployment as I said is 100% on premises 100% virtualized running on open stack for the operating system we are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 although at the beginning we started with 7 and around 1 year ago we made an operating system upgrade the current version of Kubernetes we are using in production is 125 so that means we did 5 upgrades in the last 2 years and we tried to run n-1 version of Kubernetes in production being n the latest stable of Kubernetes. Currently we have 2 different clusters brought for production and depth for development architecture wise they are both the same we have 3 control planes of both of them where we also run HCD and n amount of worker nodes yeah both clusters they have the same configuration this is enforced by Puppet and then by Flux but of course in depth we have fewer and smaller worker nodes so we don't waste resources there since config wise they are both clusters identical we encourage our users to run some of their test workloads on our depth cluster so every time we change some configuration file or we upgrade the Kubernetes version they realize if they need to change something on their side first there so about the usage with this slide you can get a pretty good idea of how big our production cluster is we have around 500 allocatable cores at the moment a little bit under 1TB of allocatable memory and a little bit over 1TB of requested storage it's not here on this slide but if you're curious we have around 450 pots so let's talk now about multi tenancy because this was a very important concept for us because this comes out of the box in OpenShift via OpenShift projects and we wanted to have something similar in Kubernetes since we were using Flags to configure our Kubernetes cluster we based this multi tenancy configuration on that repo the Flags 2 multi tenancy repo although we ended up changing it so much it's basically a different thing but it was a good starting point and the way it works is it's team in the organization gets their own namespace and then we define some resource quotas per namespace so we can limit the resources they can use and then for authorization there is a role binding referencing an LDAP group and then each member of this LDAP group gets admin access within that namespace and when the user is logging the user the groups the user is member of are passed in the IDS token as a claim another thing we implemented is this isolation between pots so by default we have a very restrictive network policy that basically blocks all ingress and egress traffic and we wanted to have it like this so our developers need to make a conscious decision if they want to open access from and to their pots and finally we offer optional Flags integration for those teams that they would like to start using Flags let's talk now about the installation so as I mentioned before we did it with Puppet so for this we used the Kubernetes Puppet module developed by Puppet Labs and if you are familiar with Puppet this is not the typical Puppet module it comes alongside with a container image that basically generates the certificates and some of the HERA configuration that Puppet will apply and yeah this tool is Qtool and you need to keep this in mind in case you want to reinstall the cluster in the future because this certificates the HCD and the Kubernetes certificates are generated before the installation with the IPs and host names that you specify so if you want to reinstall the cluster you may need to also regenerate the certificates but as you can see the usage is quite simple you just need to specify some variables things like the operating system you would like to install Kubernetes on in our case Red Hat the version of Kubernetes and the container runtime your CNI of choice in our case Calico with the Tigger operator and its version and things like the HCD initial cluster HCD IP and the advertised address you run this command Jamel files its one per control plane node and one common one the common one, this Red Hat of Jamel is basically what we specified before as you can see is this HERA variables format and its the values we specified before and this file is truncated but as you can see it also generates the certificates and stores them as variables and just to finish with the installation part here is divided into two different parts so there is one first part done by Puppet and then there is a second part done by Flux with the help of Helm so the first part done by Puppet is also divided into two parts the first four steps are done by the module so the module makes sure that the certificates are created on the nodes it bootstraps an initial HCD cluster and installs Kubernetes in this case it uses QBADM under the hood and it does the init and join worker node or a control plane and finally installs and configures your CNI of choice as I said in our case Calico and then we wrote some custom Puppet code that basically does the Flux bootstrapping and enables OIDC authentication so up to this point this is where you have a minimum working Kubernetes cluster and this is when Flux picks up and starts installing and configuring things like Qverno plus all the cluster policies third manager Trident Kubernetes dashboard etc etc so how is it running Kubernetes clustering in production so I must say that for us the operators the overhead is quite minimum nowadays things like water changes are all managed with Flux so for us it's just a matter of changing a file and then pushing the changes and then Flux will take care of the rest creating new worker nodes as simple as creating a new VM put the VM in the right host group and then Puppet runs and that VM will be a new worker node part of the cluster in a matter of minutes for cluster upgrades we do them in place so that means that we upgrade every single element of the cluster and we do this of course with Puppet and some helper scripts that we wrote and it's as simple as changing one of those in that file that I showed you before pushing the changes then Puppet runs and things like QBDM QCTL and QBLET they get upgraded it's just slightly different if you are upgrading a control plane node or a worker node for control planes we also need to run that command so we use QBDM upgrade command and for the worker nodes we use one of those scripts that I mentioned before to drain the node first so we make sure there are no pods running there then we run Puppet so the upgrade actually happens and then when everything is fine we encode on the node so how is my team migration into Kubernetes and the future plans we have for the cluster so it's true that we have this cluster and we offer it to the organization but we run most of our services still nowadays in VMs on open stack but these are just some of the examples of applications that we are already running in Kubernetes so we have things like the give blood runners we have some dummy applications to verify the cluster status some slackbots open search and various permitted export and for the future plans we would like to have we would like to have some kind of cluster autoscaler so ideally VMs on open stack will be deleted or created depending on the cluster node and we would like to have service mesh probably with link rd we are interested in having an empty ls in between pods so the overall experience is very good we are very very happy with Kubernetes it's true that at the beginning you need to get used to looking at huge jammal files and some of the flex core concepts but it's definitely worth it one of the fears we used to have before moving into Kubernetes is that our users would miss the fantastic open shift web UI but in the end it was not the case and our developers they are happy interacting with the cluster via kubctl lens kai9s or even the kubernetes dashboard and if you are in a similar situation we were a couple of years ago and you are thinking bringing Kubernetes into your organization one thing that help us a lot or help our users a lot is to write some easy to follow how to guides with things that your users would need to do on a day to day basis things like how to connect to the cluster how to use the Kubernetes dashboard or a quick start with flex and I will continue the presentation with the users point of view so as I mentioned before I work in the team developing BlueBrain Nexus which is the main data management platform for BlueBrain project to organize all of the Neuroscience data and it has a backend for knowledge graph management and then a web interface for more user friendly access for the scientist and it's fully deployed in Kubernetes and there is a link to the application if you are interested in learning more about it so the BlueBrain Nexus infrastructure consists of several different components there is the delta backend and fusion frontend and then there is the storage part and other backend components like elastic search, blaze graph as the knowledge graph and post-crescule for data storage and then key cloak with its own post-crescule instance and we collect metrics with the permit use and then visualize them with Grafana and also visualize some of them with Kibana and then we use alert manager for alerting and sending alerts to Slack and all of this is deployed in Kubernetes so before in our old setup when we had to make a change we first had to use the OZ apply F command to apply the change to our OpenShift cluster and then there was the second step, the manual to commit your changes to Git so this was a quite error-prone process that we wanted to improve because somebody changed something in the cluster, forget or not have time to commit it to Git so this is something we wanted to improve and now we are still storing our configuration in Git but we are using Flux for a more GitOps approach so it will pick up the changes and then apply them in the Kubernetes cluster for us and some other new use cases that are now possible in the new Kubernetes setup is to have Git as an actual source of truth and then use Flux as for the automation part and we can also start using Helm charts and some flexible ingress configurations with NGINX and we are using Mozilla subs to encrypt secrets and storing in Git and for the daily operations again from a user point of view so we have two different Kubernetes cluster in the organization there is the dev cluster and then there is production cluster so in the dev cluster we have a replica of our dev environment where we can destroy it completely delete backups and see what happens or test some other new features or test Kubernetes upgrades and how it influences us and then there is the Kubernetes production cluster which is more rainbows and unicorns so it has a dev staging and production environment but it's more for the software developers to test their new features in dev and then for external users to test the features in staging and production is for production and as an example if you want to move into Kubernetes what you would need to do to port your applications to Kubernetes so first you would need to decide how you want to deploy your application some alternatives are to find a Helm chart or create a Helm chart if nobody has done it yet or you just create the necessary Kubernetes manifest like if you just need a deployment and service an ingress configuration if you have something very simple to deploy and then you need to go through the steps configuring and testing the Helm charts or the Kubernetes manifest so you deploy them in your dev cluster or dev environment and then keep resolving any errors that might appear because if you take a Helm chart it might not work like right away and the Helm chart quality also varies between one Helm chart to another so you just need to test that it works for exactly what you want to do and of course in storage ensure that the storage and the network configuration works and add some test data in your application and finally you can apply your working configuration to some other environments if you store your manifest and charge ingit it makes it easier and then you can use Helm chart and flux to to scale your applications to other environments and the migration process for a user if you are migrating into Kubernetes from somewhere else so first you need to learn about Kubernetes and it can be quite a lot to take in but don't worry it's doable so you can learn about Kubernetes and the overall architecture and then some research type for example Royal based access control and network policies and then you go into the testing and development phase which is more what I was presenting in the previous slide so finding or creating a Helm chart or the manifest to deploy your application and then actually deploying and testing your application and then deciding also how to use your available namespaces and Kubernetes cluster and then looking on how your organization is setting up Kubernetes and using it and then you need to plan and test and execute the data migration so do a backup and then migrate the existing data to a new environment and depending on how your application is set up it may require some downtime or not and of course keep a backup of the old data in case it's needed at some point after and then finally you switch to the new environment at some point so you verify that your application can connect properly, notify users and then finally start routing traffic to your new deployment so some things to keep in mind throughout the migration process so quite a lot of time was spent on prototyping and testing and also Kubernetes version has about one year of support so make sure that you also test operating Kubernetes and include that as part of your process and also consider and test existing use cases so talk to the user so this is something we did a lot my team with the developers talking to Daniel's team core services who are the operators and making sure that everything works and then allocate some time to train your teams and ensure that it's easy to use rollback changes if needed so if you use something like githops you can just revert the commit if you committed something that was wrong and also something like network policies and rollbase access control and the ingress configuration might need some adjustment to each other so it's good to understand how this component works in Kubernetes and I'll link to the documentation here if you want to read more about it and also beware of internal networks in a company, if you have a company proxy you may need to set this HTTP proxy or HTTPS proxy or the lowercase version this environment variable in your virtual machines or where you're running Kubernetes and maybe also in your applications or help charts so this depends on a strange connection issue like you're not able to clone a git repository to your pod for example then this might be something to look into and help chart quality varies a lot so again it's a matter of really testing and trying it out and see if it works for you and of course set up monitoring and alerting and dashboard to keep an eye on your applications to make sure they work so as a summary start port typing as soon as possible because that's the only way you can start figuring out what problems you will hit and how to fix them and set up a collaboration between the users and operations team so that you can understand what use cases you have and how to solve them and also evaluate the decisions against the needs of your team and organization because Kubernetes has a quite big ecosystem so you may start to make a lot of choices upfront like Kubernetes clusters or namespaces for the users or what container network interface should you have or what permissions do the users have in the cluster and usually a good thing is to use a standard alternative unless you have a reason not to for example if you want a specific feature from your networking plugin or if you do some benchmarking that's a good reason to not use standard alternative and ask for help in the Kubernetes and CNCF Slack instances because there is thousands of people there who are happy to help you with any question and benefit from all the automation possibilities that the Kubernetes ecosystem is offering and finally become a Kubernetes and present what you did at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon so yeah that's it for us if you're interested in this we're actually hiring and if you have any questions come talk to us thank you


the ball striking, every single game he comes in. I think the impact, average close to 40 with a strike rate of 235. It sort of went under the radar because of the little deliveries he faced, and that top order was so strong. But I was one advocating for him to come up the order. I think he is so valuable with batting hand just because of the clean striking. I think back to Russell Pollard in those days when we dominated T20 cricket. Shepherd fits that more perfectly, and he continues to show if he comes in a bit earlier with his team in some trouble, he can show enough batsmanship to get them out of there, get into the last five, and then go berserk. It was unbelievable to watch him this season, both ball and bat. And as you mentioned, I think the way that this Westernese team is sort of coming together, it's very exciting for the next work up.


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards, and I am doing 2022 tops museum collection Baseball hobby six box half case number 17 pick your team got a list of the names and the teams next to me gonna read them off And we'll get started and you be with the Dodgers and you see Padres Benjamin V Guardians Brian J Cardinals Brian P Tigers Cameron V twins Chas a Orioles Giants Colby M Marlins Don L with the Rockies and the Brewers Eric S Angels Joseph C Phillies Joshua R Nationals Keith M Metz Martha L Diamondbacks Michael B. Rays Miles H. White Sox got Nicholas P with the athletics Nick D with the Braves and Blue Jays Patrick G with the Mariners Marlins Phillip M Cubs Scott F Royals Scott W Yankee Stephen K Astros Suzanne P. Reds and Rangers so thank you again everyone and let's go ahead and get started on this See some big hits here. All right guys got to show some love to museum PYT number 18 Um, what's up Vostaris probably I once the product is confirmed to come out That's usually when we list breaks. It's usually a few days in advance as well So empty got eight to go on the next one got that baby filled up then we got 10, uh, clearly authentic and then 10 box Tuesdays empty here we go para mini box one No problem Jeter got a canvas collection of Donnie baseball We've got patch going to the twins 14 out of 25 Byron Buxton Nice one there And J rod copper rookie there you go mariners Big Clemens judge got Yanni Hernandez rookie dual jersey auto 74 out of 74 very weird numbering for the rangers. There you go rangers Then we've got blue Ichiro 53 out of 150 on the back When you'll cruise based rookie Dela Cruz got lords guerrilla that is 25 out of 35 Two colored patch for the blue jays. There you go blue jays and shipper got redemption everybody I'm gonna pull from the back here Pose al tuve We've got archival autograph gold parallel of wonder franco Congrats raise Let's go Congrats Tampa.  Let's go Michael. Congrats buddy Huge redemption right there. We will take a wonder auto every day and what else show Twice on sunday. That's what I like to hear right there As rich said in chat there is still 20 to go for 10 box Tuesday We've got one more break after this then we've got clearly authentic 20 box case and then we've got a um 10 box Tuesday loaded 10 box mixer tonight gonna be fun Rendon Rendon Hoskins got uh mookie bets that is Uh 56 out of 75 quad It's up dean. It's up dean and 43 out of 50 vedal brujan rookie. There you go. Michael eat in a little bit with the raise there Always take a vedal brujan as well Six to go on the next break awesome Price all the teams are on sale for museum collection py team Got ricky henderson going to the a's that is 218 out of 275 jersey jersey bat Congrats athletics And babe ruth copper nasty empty Trying to work here sam's distracting me. Sorry dean We've got canvas collection. That is erin judge Got zack rinky one out of 10 on the three colored patch astros nice hit for you there strobes And we've got orinado on the copper Last mini box of box two Five to go breaks next man spots are flying in. Thank you guys so much Wander rookie johnny bench. We've got mark molder 221 out of 299 a's on the archival autographs So michael, this is the parallel you will get for your wander right here numbered to 25 That's a huge wander And miggy. Oh, yeah, no problem. Listen for stuff to sale on ebay Yeah, I got you man. That's always a fun thing to do for sure Listing stuff on ebay Yeah, absolutely squirrel. No problem. It's kind of something we always do just uh You know completely minimize any problems that could happen Empty Waters are hustling in right now Scherzer Jackie, we've got a ramus ramirez that is seven out of 25 cubs Heck, yeah Jersey jersey jersey on the triple And jacky on the copper. I appreciate that mike Yeah, absolutely. We try to keep it as uh as professional and you know as I guess issue free as we humanly possibly can you know Got canvas that is reproduction tatsis. Corbin burns 50 out of 75 Quad jersey brew crew there you go brewers posie on the copper Yeah, no for sure. Appreciate that Yeah, it's definitely like when I when I started uh, like training to break like that was one of the big things that was kind of Told to me is to make sure to show the empty box at the end Uh, say a Suzuki base rookie. There you go cubs Ernie banks got francisco lindor seven out of 50 on the black jersey.  Metz and zander on the copper Abrams flake snail got uh canvas collection artist proof jazz chisel jr. Marlins There you go colby with the marlins. These are limited to 50 right here They are not numbered, but they are limited to 50 with the artist proof nice hit And cow ripkins 17 out of 50 on the red Yeah, nice one there Congrats colby On the chisel reproduction canvas collection five to go still here Oh, we have an upside down box. Is that mojo right there upside down box mojo? question mark exclamation point Control alt-elite Killabrew with all brujan here col. We've got another francisco lindor this time 85 out of 99 quad bat-bat jersey bat And steven schrossberg 74 out of 150 or no hit. Let's hope let's hope big hit out of the upside down For sure for sure for show for show on that Got hosé barrios. That is 42 out of 50 blue jays meaningful material Pujols copper vado that is 19 out of 99 jersey number on the purple.  Let's see some bangers here I want shawn working overtime on magging We've got canvas collection. That is yari molina reproduction Nice one there cards. We've got auto Uh archival autographs five out of 25 yordan alvarez. There you go astros Nice hit there for the stroves on the air yordan copper frankie lindor All right guys, this is the upside down box. Let's see what we got right here We have upside down box mojo Hmm Something thick come on baby louis robert my trout flattie g Byron buxton 16 out of 25 look at the patch on the top right and the bottom Wow nasty patch for the twins.  Exactly. Thank you shawn For reminding me on that one I've become a left-hand uh garnish store now, so I apologize Still at five. What's up chris jay What up got keston here a kestady that is 38 out of 99 brew crew Bat jersey bat jersey and chris brian as a rocking five to go breaks next Empty I'm gonna see some fire come out of here. I know that The grom tautis. That is canvas collection of salvi perez reproduction Brandon. Wow on the dual Jersey auto 64 out of 399 rays. There you go rays and salvi perez again 90 out of 150 on the blue. There you go boils George curvy brandon marsh got yanni hernandez 31 out of 35 nasty three colored patch. There you go rangers and hobby bias jaren durand rookie hank erin griffy We've got matt manning archival autographs rookie auto for the tigers Congrats on that one tigers And clayton kershaw on the copper to end it. Let's tweet out this next break really quick guys Number 18 is museum collection 18 Four to go four teams to go Four to go and we will get breaking on that Prices are all or all teams are on sale Empty CJ abrams. We've got hunter dozier dual jersey auto eight out of 50 royals Royals hitting pretty well here There you go royals and cow rally nice big dumper on the back Yeah Jackie zander seya sezuki On the base rookie. We've got you darvish. That is 83 out of 99 Pinstripe jersey pinstripe jersey. There you go. Padres and mr. Mr. Padre Tony glen topper on the back like snow mariano rois lewis Ian hap that is six out of 25 three colored patch cubs nice hit their cubbies And tautis on the blue 137 out of 150 padres Last box of the break. Good luck here everyone for seager. Ichiro We've got canvas collection Jose consaico For the job or for the orioles will clark 125 out of 125 on the bookend There you go. O's and copper altouvet That'll do it for the break. Give me one second and we will do a quick recap here We've got six out of 25 jersey or patch for the cubs Ian hap Out of 99 for the padres, uh, you darvish out of 35 rookie for the rangers yanni hernandez Kesson here at a 99, uh, brewers barrios to 50 for the, um Blue jays francisco lindore to 99 metz francisco lindore to 50 metz corbin burns to 75 brewers cranky to 10 for the astros mookie bets to 75 for the Dodgers lords very l jr. 235 for the blue jays firing buxton to 25 twins Got our autos coming up here will clark 125 out of 125 orioles Hunter dozier to 50 royals We've got map manning rookie autos two 99 tigers We've got brandon lough to 399 on the rays got firing buxton with a nasty logo patch to 25 twins Uh, you're on alvarez the 25 astros Aramis Ramirez to 25 there you go cubs on the throwback mark molder to 299 a's Ricky Henderson to 275 a's and yanni hernandez the 74, uh For the rangers we had this nasty wander franco archival autograph gold parallel for the rays Congrats again on that one michael Thank you again everyone next up. We've got some more, um, museum so sit tight


We kind of wanted to come and take a look at what Challenger Brands are doing now since we were a Challenger Brand at the time that we were founded. I'm the only brand person at my company, so I was really coming here for a little bit of mentorship, hear what everyone in the industry is talking about, things that I should be pushing at my company as the main champion for brand marketing. I was just excited to come and learn more about, you know, what Challenger Brands are doing and how we can think about that in the context of us being a pretty long-standing brand ourselves. Well, what was interesting to me is that we're a 100-year organization and I was looking for new ways to kind of infuse some things that Challenger Brands are doing into our brand. Loved it. Loved it. Like, I can't get it to everything I want to get to, so I'm trying to, like, pick and choose. Had Week, Brand Week do a really good job of bringing together thought leaders. And so the format of the show allows for kind of deeper conversations. I really loved it. I thought the presenters were all great. I loved the curation of the inside sessions, so I definitely loved our time here. I saw Levi's, which again is like a 150-year-old company, so seeing how they've done it, seeing how they've changed it and making sure their brand stays relevant was amazing. I really liked Kelly from Hulu. I really liked how she said that performance working is kind of table stakes. Hulu was just exceptional. Culture is like such a huge part of how these Challenger Brands stand out and compete, and I think that's a really interesting space to play in as a marketer. Despite the differences between industries, there's so much commonality and things that we can all kind of build and work towards.


Hello everyone. My talk is the webs and the tropical coordinate on the surfaces. So it's a joint work with Daniel Douglas at EO. So a web, a tree web is oriented graph on the surface with trivalence interior vertices such that the tree oriented edges at each interior vertex point outward or inward. So the study of tree webs is started from 19th by Kuberger. He introduced tree webs or he called spiders to study the SL3 environment tensor products of irreducible representations of SL3. And it fits into so-called pivodab category. And I prefer to avoid these abstract mathematics but engage into more theoretical sense. So here is a picture of tree webs on this R square. So you can see there's only trivalence vertices in the interior and all the points, interior vertices points outward or inward. So you can think of these points pointing outward are black vertices and the the points point inward are black vertices. So it's like you move from one side to the other.  So people study so-called networks or spin networks also have these similar stuff. There are many fields of mathematics relevant to this kind of picture, not only the study of representation theory. Here is another example of webs on the west puncture torus. You can think of the punctures at the corners and you glue the two sides, two opposite sides together and you get a torus and puncture at these vertices. And you can see there are circles and there are trivalence graphs. So Fountain and Cosmere and Kuberberg relate the webs to the so-called affine building in geometric representation theory. So first picture is a web on a disk and the second picture is the dual graph of this web. And this dual graph so-called discolored is a relevant to this affine building. And another research is a direction is by Fomin and Koliasky, they investigated cluster algebra structure of classical rings of Neuronal SO3. It's also run through the on the work of Kuberberg and then they found the basis of webs to parametrize the these tensor environments. And this is an example of Grassmanian 2, 4. And then because it's a graph, you can think of it's a skin algebra on the surface. So Shikoran from a study of SO3 skin algebra on the surface means that links graphs on the surface with some relations. So one, two, three are the relations. The minus in these relations equal to means that the miss term is equal to zero and the miss term also equal to zero. And when you have the two, this third relation will have two curves crossing each other, one on the top of the other, then it will resolve into the sum of these two terms in this way and in this way. So our approach to study the trail webs is actually inspirated by in the folk and the Gonshov duality and the so-called mirror symmetry on the higher tectonic space. So without knowing all this abstract work, I prefer to use in pictures to show what it means.  So this is a tris puncture torus and the genus is the number of miss holes and the holes is the number of miss circles on the boundary. And when I say it's a topological surface, miss holes can be filled by a casc region. So this casc region goes to infinity. So these two things are equivalent in sense of topology because we think about continuous motion of miss pictures in the space. So we study the modular space to parallel modular spaces was a variation of the repetition variety. The repetition variety can be think of you have some geometric structure on the surface, you put a matrix on the surface and this pair of modular spaces have a duality. It means that the ring of regular function of one space has a canonical linear basis, matching class group is currently parametrized by the top of point of the dual space. So without knowing this abstract word, there is only one word to see. It says that the observables of the one space are parametrized by the lattice at the infinity of this dual. So without considering the matching class grouping equivalence, the conjecture is actually so by Gross, Hecken, Keohen, Konsevich and also by Ganshaw and Shen in this case. So what I'm going to present our work is we follow a beautiful solution originally by Falk and Ganshaw for the simplest case G equal to Pdl2 using substance transversely made nominations. So for G equal to Pdl2 on the surface you just put a hyperbolic matrix which is a negative one curved matrix. So firstly we can think the question in your mind is that in our earth it's a sphere, topologically it's a sphere. There are many many cast means black dots on the earth and you want to draw the webs on the earth and you can move these webs around smoothly but you cannot cross these dots. So how many are there these webs on earth? How can we classify all these kind of webs? So this is the question in our mind. So here I give an ideal translation of this model. So here is a false puncture sphere and the ideal translation on this false puncture sphere is just the arcs connecting these dots and there is no two curves homotopy to each other. You cannot move you cannot move smoothly from one curve to the other connecting to these dots. For example you cannot move from here to here and this is ideal translation and then we flatten the edges. For each edge we flatten it to be two edges. So actually we double the edges and then we have triangles ideal triangles in the interior and then we have bi-gones in between the two ideal triangles and then we put the webs on this surface and we can actually put it in good position respect to this ideal translation. So how we do that? So when we have these blue eyes represented the web, when we have this kind of picture because the intersection number of this blue line with this bi-gones fold we can move these dots smoothly to here to get intersection number only two. So we decrease the intersection numbers in this way and actually we can do it so that the intersection number is minimal and all over the good position also means that the restriction of the web to each bi-gones is a ladder. The ladder is something like this. So we put sin plus or minus on each side of this bi-gones and there is a way to connecting the two sides uniquely by a single bi-lider and then all over the restriction of the web to each ideal triangle is a oriented honeycomb with oriented arcs in the corner. It looks like it looks like the picture below. You have a lot of honey-gones in the middle and you have a corner arcs here and actually generally you have some arcs here and the restriction, the good positions is that we put edges, this edge into the bi-gones and then push this honeycomb into the triangles and topologically we can do that smoothly. So here is a picture in the in a square how the picture looks like generally. So each triangle is a honeycomb with a corner arcs and in the middle is a ladder and the way we parametrize these kind of geometry object is by assigning numbers for each ideal triangle. We assign seven numbers and the way we assign it is by putting, if we have a arc going from here to here, we put one on the left and put two on the right and if we have a junction, a trigonal vertex in the middle if it goes in, then we put one on the left and two on the right and the middle is three and if it goes out, we put one on the left and two on the right and middle is three and then we glue all these numbers together on each ideal edge is identical and actually we assign this a web because we can represent this kind of honeycomb by this trivalent vertex, simplified version trivalent vertex with an integer number x in the middle. So if you need to go out, we put x equal to the number of intersection numbers of this edges go out with this edge. Here is tree, we have the tree arrows going this way and x we put tree. If it goes in, we put minus tree and then we count the number of corner arcs then we get the seven numbers corresponding to these seven numbers and actually the assignment here is bijective with this assignment here. So next WS be the space of reduced tree webs up to equivalence. Here reduced means that you cannot resolve by the skin relation mentioned before anymore. These webs are the basic ones. The other webs are just the combination of these basic webs and we show that given an ideal translation, there is a well-defended bijection from these webs to a polyhedral convex cone. So the polyhedral convex cone is studied very frequently in the computer science in linear programming. So here the example is just a lattice in the polyhedral convex cone is sub-ordinary to a family of inequalities, so called polycentile inequalities. So this lattice can be understood as in the tropical positive real points of a modular space. So actually you can think about this WS observables of the modular space and the city at the top of a lattice at the infinity of the dual of the modular space. And also this equivalence is very natural in the sense that it is a mapping class group recurrent. So how to describe these inequalities? We can use this Ramby's drawing inside the each triangle and we can put a polynomial respect to this Ramby's. And then we can obtain the collision tau inequalities by taking the tropicalization of this function. These are just the tropicalization just by taking the the plus with a minimum and the multiplication with a plus and division with a minus. So to prove the mapping class group recurrence we're using actually the new unique here about the basis of the lattice in linear programming such that the lattice is spanned by this basis with no negative coefficients. So we found actually we found a big digmization of this lattice of this convex polyhedral cone with 14 two sectors. So each sector is a linear isomorphic to a cut-tron. Each sector corresponding to 12 webs. Thus we will define the total type of the huge sector by these 12 webs. And actually the interior of the sectors are disjoint. And the sectors are separated by co-dimension one walls. The topological type of two sectors differ by only one tree webs if and only if we're sharing a co-dimension one wall. So here is a picture for the reason why there are exactly 14 two sectors. We don't know the deep reason why 14 two but we we get 14 two by computation of these geometric pictures respecting these geometric pictures. So actually it's unknown the relation among the web basis and the concha machine spaces through geometry, sataki and also across hacking, kill, conserving, data function bases. There are many further work to do after this. Once in relation to the application mathematics is that maybe it's mostly written to so-called optimal transports. So you can see the details in the archive version of this work. Thank you.


Jake, Maryfield homerun aside, are you pleased with your performance this afternoon? Yeah, I am. I felt better. I felt like I was able to kind of go from one pitch to the next and just kind of continue to move on. I felt like the execution was better overall and the confidence was better too. You got a lot of swings and misses today. Was there a particular adjustment that you made in between starts? I mean, we've been working just trying to be more consistent. But I did feel good about being able to mix it up a lot today and execute on more of my pitches. You mentioned the confidence was better today as well. Had that taken a hit the last couple of starts? Well, I think I just pitched with a little better tempo. You know, I'd like to say the confidence is always there, but it's also nice to get some results. But I feel like I'm at my best. I'm at my temples a little bit quicker and I felt like today I was moving along and kind of rebounding and just moving on to the next pitch a little better. After the game in Baltimore, we asked you a lot about your fastball and how much it was getting hit. How encouraging was that pitch for you today? Yeah, I felt stronger with it and I think that was probably because I was able to mix in some of the other things with the change up and the slider. So, you know, that helped, I think. You said the pitch to Mary Field. I didn't think that was a bad pitch necessarily. Was it where you wanted it? Or was it just a matter of him putting good swing on it?  I don't, you know, I'm responsible for that. I was the one that threw it. I was the one that threw the bunt. I was the one that threw the slap through the hole and I threw the ball out of shoulders and hit it out. So, you know, it is on me and I accept that. But as far as how I threw the ball, I feel better than maybe the results. What do you appreciate most about Luke Ford? You know, he's intense. He brings, you know, he brings his passion to every at bat. He doesn't give at bats away. You know, it's fun to see him excited after that one. That ball went a long way. What was going through your mind after giving up that home run and per loop to come back and get you guys to lead right back? Um, you know, I was just trying to continue to make pitches. That's why I think, you know, the game was a little better today.  But we put up some runs lately and, you know, that's fun to see for sure.


I'd like to welcome Ann Cohn to the Haydashbury Oral Video History Project. Welcome Ann. Oh, welcome. I'm glad to be here. Thank you Rebecca. Okay.  Where were you born? I was born in Los Angeles area in Glendale. In fact, my dad still lives in the same home I was born and raised in. Wow. What's your father's name? Allen Bundt. So I was Ann Mary Bundt. Wow. Beautiful. And your mother's name? Nettie Virginia. And she is with us as president? No, she's passed away. My mom was quite an artist. She was a singer, artist, and it's something that's handed down. Grandparents, great-grand, all the while. Were filled with amuse. Wow. What, your grandparents, where were they from? Let's see, Germany. We have a good old German stock, English stock, that's where they are. And I moved up to Southern, from Southern California to San Francisco when I was about 20 years old. Okay. Had to move away from the home. And what, about approximately what year was this? This was back in 1966. I moved to Walnut Creek, and I was a hairdresser. Oh, wow. And during when the 60s were happening and you guys were growing long hair, I was busy cutting it. No, amazing. And then my husband was killed in an automobile accident in December 13th of 1969. Wow. So about six months after rushing to get home to start dinner and remembering he was gone, I leased my house out and went hitchhiking around the country. Wow. Before that time, I was pre-conservative Republican. Wow. And I had to use 22 when he died. Wow. And he was in a coma for a couple weeks, and I had to tell him to turn the machines off and his brain flat. So that was hard. That was a big one. That was hard. And you were looking for person butterflies? You were looking for someone white? Just happiness. Right. And because I had gone right from living at home into marriage, I didn't know too much about this world. Right. So I was on a quest when I went hitchhiking because I knew that there was good in every single person alive, and I was out to find it. Right. What brought you back to San Francisco? Well, first of all, I ran out of money. And then I got a job managing a beauty salon. But then, from then, I started wanting to real estate because I got married. You met someone? And met somebody else. And then I was Ann Peters, and I'm getting it mixed up. That's okay. I haven't had anybody ask me these questions before, but I haven't been interviewed before. So I'm glad we're doing this. So anyway, I met my children. Quite a joy. Yes. Thank you, Rebecca. You're welcome. I met my children's papa, Steve Oliphant, and married him. I was 25, I think, something like that. I had two children. What are their names? Patrick Oliphant. He's now 29. And my daughter, Christy Oliphant, she's 25. Beautiful. Right. And Stephen and I were together about 10 years, 15 years. During that time, I did wigs for a local theater group. I was a head whip girl. And I also headed up a lot of children's art programs for our city of Oliphant Creek. I would get two, three, 400 children together and we'd do art. And I did this for a number of years because it was just fun. I really like the muse. I'm my mom's daughter. That's right. And the best thing in children is always to face off. Yeah. And so then Stephen and I did divorce. I don't remember the years. Divorce tears I never remember. That's necessary. No, I remember. And when I remember people, I always remember them fondly no matter what happens. Yeah. Because why not? Why not? It's great that way. And then I met Alan Cohen in 1986. This is a photo of Alan. I'm going to, yeah, this is a photo of Alan Cohen. This was taken at Cal Theater for the Jan Carowick benefit. I love this photo. And I'm going to show you a photo of Alan and me and Christie at the 20-year anniversary of the summer of love. It's a great photo. Young and beautiful. You're still young and beautiful. I was so at awe. Of course. For our young. I spent most of my life just taking care of my family. Yeah. I never just wasn't the rock. I wasn't a rock and roll girl. Right.  I love the silence because I find that the silence and the city noises is beautiful music. And I always like to live where I am right now. At this point in your life and even a little earlier, did you find yourself drawing? I know. I just really don't know how artistic you are. I found a drawing. In fact, how I found the drawing, because before that I did a lot of, I make a, I'm a singer and I compose music. Children's music I mostly do. And now I make it up on the moment with the children. But I found it was so expensive to record the music that it wasn't a way for me to really get out what I needed to. So I started doing black and white drawing because for six cents I could reproduce it. And so I didn't have to worry about the recording. So you would see me out at music venues and I'd be sitting here down like this just drawing. And I, I loved it. So I did line drawing. Love to see some. Here's a picture of Alan right over here. And Tony Seldin is here. And this would be Jerry Nicosea and George Mikowski. We used this for posters.  That's amazing. Yeah, that captures it. Yeah. On the other side I illustrated, not only did I illustrate Alan's poetry, but I illustrated Tony Seldin, the Vagabond poet. One of Alan's dearest, dearest friends. Let me show you another picture. Oh, here's another one that we used for a benefit. Not a benefit, one of our shows. We did a lot of shows. We put back Alan musically on the stand-up bass or guitar. So you play guitar? Yeah, I do. I play on different strings. I play harp, guitar, and bass. Wow. Yeah.  And he, with the Oracle, it was all about having collaboration of the different muses. Well, he did that in his own life. He liked doing that. So he had me play the stand-up bass or the guitar. In fact, the first time I played the stand-up bass after many years was in front of 20 or 30,000 people at the, at this event, the 20,000. Oh, wow. I didn't play that well. And there was a great sound man. And who knew when I was, had great licks, he turned me up. And when I sucked, he turned her down. He was great.  And my children were five and nine when Alan. And I met, in fact, here's a family photo. Here we are. It's a great photo. And it was about the time Alan is here, was growing back. I had cut his hair shorter. It was a great show. Yeah. Yeah, I liked that picture. There's something to be said about being so close. It just changed my whole world because I hadn't, I spoke with the children and I did my, you know, whatever music I was doing. So being out in the world, it was a little bit uncomfortable. And Alan says, no, they're going to love you. It'll be okay. And he was such a sweet man. Yeah, he was. I wanted to talk a little bit about Alan's poetry. But it seemed, I mean, you weren't here in the 60s, but through Alan, who, what the 60s was so much part of Alan, you got to relive it in a lot of ways with the friends and the people in the community. I mean, I can't imagine, I feel I'm part of this community, but I can't imagine you not in the community. Yeah. And through Alan, you were able to relive some of the 60s and get the feeling and the essence of it. Well, what I liked about it is that I really didn't know any of you through your fame. I knew you. And I really, because I don't really care about fame. Exactly. And so like right now after Alan passed away, March 29th last year, one of the, one person that's really helped me a lot is Stephen Levine. And he is an author of many, many books on death and dying, a very spiritual man. And he actually, he was one of the editors of The Oracle in the 60s. But I've gotten to know these people with just their, and I prefer knowing them personally than with the fame anyway. It's comfortable. It's really interesting. It's almost a calling. And then Alan's legacy is left in your hands. It certainly is. I call this Alan's baby blanket. When I met Alan, he was living on 26th and Irving. And this had all the different oracles wrapped in, were all wrapped in this, in this tie dye from the 60s. What was The Oracle for people who don't know? It was a visionary newspaper. I brought one that was solutions and quests and artists and writers that came together. An Oracle staff that put the art and poetry and writing together in a fashion that it made it beautiful. Solutions that were beautiful. It wasn't complaining about what we don't have. It was looking forward. And so hopefully that people would embrace these values that we felt so strong with and want them to be all over the world. Exactly. Yeah. Not the bad news, but the hopeful news. Yeah, the good old The Oracle. Do you know how often they came out? They were supposed to be coming out every six weeks, but I think it did end up being a little longer than that. You know, Rebecca, you're asking me the questions about The Oracle. That's when I want to call up The Oracle staff and say, come on. Answer the questions for me. Well, we will. Because Alan, in our lives, Alan was actually a fairly private man. And when we were at home, I was busy doing my work. He was doing his work, and we were just living life. And I always stepped back when we were in public so he would shine. So I wasn't trying to take ownership of his world. So when he passed, I got ahold of The Oracle staff. Wonderful staff. Wonderful people, I've got to tell you. And we've been emailing. We've been trying to revisit The Oracle again in doing a new publication, a new Oracle. And I've been spearheading it. And when I make mistakes, they're so sweet. They're just wonderful people. Yeah, it's true. It's a destiny that you've fallen into. I want to ask you a little bit, Alan. From living with Alan, learning. Do you know when Alan came to the Hadesbury? Do you know anything about his experiences here? How he became part of The Oracle? Yeah, I do. He actually came to North Beach because he's a poet. And he wanted to be part of the beatnik. But by the time he got here, it was already dissolving. And he went to City Light's bookstore down in the basement and ran into a high school friend, Steve Walser. And Steve Walser was living in The Hate and offered him a place to stay. So that's how he came to The Hate. And he, at the time, shortly after that, he met a woman named Maury. And they fell in love. And one night, Alan had this dream of a newspaper being read all over the world in rainbow colors. And he told Lori about it. She went out on the street and told people about it. And the rest of it is history. Yeah. Amazing. Alan had many parts to him that a lot of people don't know. I knew him also and loved him dearly. And he's a writer. Can you tell us anything else about the Alan you know that maybe the world doesn't know? I have to tell you, there was a time when Alan was out in the city magazine. And I watched him edit it. Do you know how he edited it? He would cut it apart and not add any words and he would just put the puzzles back together. He was incredible at this. Layouts. The way he would lay them out. And it was excellent. Alan was a midwife. When he left the 60s, the Haight-Ashbury, he moved up to a commune called Table Mountain. And he became a midwife. In fact, he wrote this book called Childbirth is Ecstasy. Wow. And he, in this book, he delivered his son River. I'm going to show you a picture of him. This is, the pictures were, it all came about Lori. This is Lori, the woman I told you about. She was just about starting delivery. Alan was going to be the midwife. Steve Walzer, the photographer, who lived down in San Francisco, happened to be coming up there. And he took these pictures. This is Alan. And this book, I think they sold like 500, 500 to 1,000 copies, but it was shared just like the Oracle Different Midwives would share because this book is pretty explicit and it's colored in the photographs and the poetry, it was explaining where it's a little bit long. No, it's definitely out of print. Yeah, that was quite a book. And Alan also was very, like I said, was very serious about his poetry. Here's a picture of Alan reading his poetry. You can see Alan right here, right there. And then this is Emmett Grover. Okay. And I brought this, and then also I wanted to bring throughout all Alan's life, he's been writing. Here's a picture of Alan in the basement of City Lights Bookstore reading poetry. And then later on, Alan really did a lot of music accompanying with George Mikowski. I think you interviewed George. Great to give him a hug this afternoon. He's contributed a lot. Yes. And I think, where is this photo? This was taken, I believe, when we did the 25th anniversary of the Summer of Love, and that would have been on the soccer field. Was that when we did that? At the beach. Yes. And that was a great show. These have been great shows. So Alan loves to, in fact Alan did a put together an opera with a woman on this poetry. And the world is a butterfly's wing. Wow. But writing was, in his poetry, what I'd say was his big passion. And wanting to start the Oracle up again. Yes. That was something, because that was bringing the muses together to have the burst of energy that makes people stand up and take notice. And then take action. And take action. Yes. Would you like to read something of Alan's? Oh, yes, I would. I think what I'm going to do is one of Alan's dearest friends was Tony Selden. And I'm going to read a poem that Alan wrote about the Vagabond poet. Here he is back from Baja on his way to Denmark, the fandom Vagabond poet. He's welcome everywhere. 72 invitations to stay in Scandinavia. A cabin offered in Mendocino. Performing his magic act at this very moment on stage for his last appearance in America. His poems flow around the world. Watch out, Melancholy Danes. Here he comes for dinner with his laundry, tossing Caesar salad with his videos, poems and tales. The Vagabond poet leaps across borders and continents. Alan was true to his friends. And he wanted to help people with their muses and things in their life. I can't tell you how many times people have said, if it hadn't been for Alan Cohen, I would never have done the writing that I've done, or I would never, because he was like a father to a lot of people without any reason to do it other than just the joy of doing it. He didn't have a word. He was very passionate about it. He's a very passionate man. And when he tells you he's going to do something, you would do it. But getting him to commit, that was one of the main reasons why he wouldn't commit unless he knew he was going to do it. Exactly. Very honest. He worked with me in my school. The children loved him. And that was great. That was a great experience. He was very lenient with him. At first it would drive me nuts because he'd say, why can't they just take their hot wheels and drive them down the hill?  Kind of there was a part of him that was very serious and then there was another part that was very alpha. Childlike. Childlike. That's right. In fact, after the 60s he sold crystals at the Renaissance fair and he'd wear this hat. Or he would sell fruit and come have some papaya get higher with papaya. And he was... See a lovely picture you have there. Is that taken on H Street? Yes. This is a picture of Alan on H Street. With a friend. Yeah, Gene Anthony did this photograph. Great. In fact, Gene Anthony and Alan did a series of shows over at the Roxy. Slide shows. In fact, it was through that series of shows that we ended up getting the publisher that did the facsimile of the Oracle which is the Oracle and the entire 12 issues plus the full start. And it came about from Gene Anthony. That's wonderful. Yeah. Alan was a pretty handsome man. That's... It looks very familiar. The green backpack. Yeah. Oh yeah. Would wear that all the time. This backpack? Yeah. Alan would be... Because you know Alan never drove. Right. Exactly. He's from New York and so he never drove. If I ever... I asked him to take the wheel for me one time and he drove the car like this. My children helped Alan. You're right. When we'd go on trips together with the children, we would start stories and it would go around from Patrick to Christie to me to Alan and we'd just make up stories. Oh, that's fine. Our lives were really based around creativity. Yes. And Alan and I made a pact that I would... I would work with us. He'd work with me in the school and he would teach me how to learn how to make money with my artwork. You have some other photos there? Oh, there's a... Did I show you... Oh, right. I didn't show you this... Oh, yes I did. Yeah, we saw that one. And I think we did... I did show you that other photo of them. These are... This was the last book that Alan... book of poetry that Alan and I did. It was the first time we collaborated with the art and the poetry throughout the entire book. This was... came out in October of last year and when they did the benefit for Alan... So he never saw it completed? We did see it completed. He did see it completed. We just never really had a good understanding. We didn't get to do that. You did that? Right. In fact, we were going to have the book signing over there at the Great American Music Hall but it ended up being that Alan had his liver transplant. Right. Right. This was the book... That's great. Book of hats. Where are many hats? Yeah, and this was a book when Alan... Every time Alan and I set divorced and we were divorced for two years and we... about six months after we divorced we became close friends again but while we were divorced Alan put out this book called An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind and this was a collaboration again of poets all over the United States that would send in their work and Alan would... They put it in... He put it in the book. He published this with Clive Manson. Wow. He really did spend his adult life wanting people to collaborate together. It's a way of joining. It's a way of joining. Gathering and joining. It's a very peaceful positive energy. Yeah. A way to create peace and communication and understanding. Yes. There was a time when Alan was having sleep deprivation and there was a mockingbird that woke us up about two in the morning and it kept waking us up and Alan decided that he was going to see about having the mockingbird stop this so he got up about two in the morning and went and got a flute. Well, he had a flute. And the mockingbird started the singing and he played the flute back to the mockingbird and she did leave. Oh, wonderful. He always had a very peaceful way of dealing with situations. Then you guys remarried? We remarried. When we separated in divorce, I told Alan that if he ever got sick because he had to see he should come home. And so when Alan got sick he came home. That's love. And we remarried.  No, two minutes is a lifetime. What I would like to say I want to say thank you so much and I'm Rebecca Nichols, I'm the moderator but I want to say thank you much I want to ask you a question if this tape is watched in the future. I see a lot of passion here. A lot of love here. It's like the the altar's been in to you. For some reason it's come in your hands and his memories. How would you like Alan's works thought of in the future? How would you like 50 years from now when something is up in red and when people punch in the libraries Alan Cohn his memory how would you like him how would you think he would want to be remembered? I think the way he's been remembered now and like I said he's like a father figure to a lot of people and he holds the muse near to him and love, compassion and harmony these were very important to him and they're very important that we look for the good and vision the good and not worry about they not think about how things are going wrong and I think that through the Oracle and through Alan and the other Oracle staff this is extremely important and we need this more this year, next year 50 years from now peaceful people that laugh when there is an obstacle laughing will make the barrier go away and there'll be no barrier and I think that that's I think for 50 years from now people watch this piece they will also see the strong woman behind the great man just a little poem just a second this is a poem I wrote since Alan passed I wrote this one songbird rides the waves around her her song reflects her surroundings oh sweet bird let your song be one of easiness one that joy and good health is plentiful let the heavens rejoice with this new found love in our world she brings the shrill that is destructive to all sing your love song for diversity so all mankind will be in harmony with you beautiful thank you Rebecca and I hope the future you write many more things I can see you're inspired and we will be in a relationship I think well in the future to document all of this stuff spread the inspiration and the light and the words and the future generations will benefit from this community that has contributed so much to the whole I want to tell you thank you


Emotional intelligence, EIC, is a set of skills that enable individuals to recognize, understand, and manage their own emotions as well as those of others. It has been found to be beneficial for nurses in many ways, such as improving patient outcomes, increasing job satisfaction, and reducing burnout. EIC can also help nurses develop stronger relationships with patients and colleagues, leading to improved communication and collaboration. This article was authored by Abdulaziz Mosin-Alsafiani, Omar Ghazi Baker, and Yasir Mosin-Alsafiani.


For everyone, I am James Milan. Welcome to this special edition of Talk of the Town. It's special why because we get to do an ACA update, ACA, Arlington Center for the Arts. One of the major institutions in town and a partner of ours who we get to check in with regularly throughout the year. We're delighted to do so. We are very appreciative of being able to get out of our own digs and come and see what's going on at ACA. I am joined by Tom Formicola, the Executive Director of the ACA and the Operations Manager, Pam Shandley. How are you both? Very well. Good to be here. Thanks for having us. I hope so. It has been a little while actually. Good to have you here. We are delighted. So this is the first of, we hope, many to come visits to your space. And we will talk about what we can see around us shortly. But these updates follow the same kind of, it's not a formula, but we have our model. We want to know if there's anything you want to share from things that have happened before. Since we last spoke, I would welcome you to do so. I hadn't prepared you for that. So if not, we can just move right into what people can anticipate moving forward. How could I not mention 12 long weeks of camp, 12 long, wonderful weeks of camp. Yes, of course. You forgot that. Essentials. We had a great year. We served almost 1,300 campers this year, which is like, those are record numbers for us I think. And we had a great group of teachers and a fabulous group of counselors, many of them teens from the local high school. And we trained some interns who are going to come up back to us hopefully and be interns in future camp programs. And just great interactions with kids and their families and just so proud of that work and all that we did to make that happen and to provide opportunities for kids to create and to share. Yeah, I have to say I was back and forth by this building on a number of occasions throughout the summer. And man, there were kids everywhere. Yeah, there were kids everywhere. All right, so that's an excellent summation of the most, well not the most important, but an impactful last recent thing you did. And we hosted a jug band festival at the Arlington Beer Garden on September 30th. That was a great big success despite the gray weather. It didn't rain. We were biting our bottom lips and holding our breath and crossing our fingers. But it didn't rain. And like there were between by all accounts, 300 and 400 people with us that day that came to here, three great bands and Pam led a DIY instrument making workshop. And then the kids that made those instruments got to to play them as part of a jam session with professional musicians and shakers. Yeah, I mean, I only caught the last hour and a half of it, but it was packed. Yeah, it was great. You know, the beer gardens are popular thing, but combining those two was just absolute magic. Yeah. The music was really good. Friends of not only grill and American beverage and the Arlington Historical Society for making that possible was a great partnership. We loved working with them. All right, let's talk about what what is coming up or what is going on right now. Feel free to jump in. I will say we are in the midst of our fall term. We started in mid September and it's going great guns and we our enrollment is building term after term. It's it's so great to see. We have every term. It seems like we have more students than the term before and we've been running more classes and you know, it's fabulous. This term will run through about the middle of December and there are opportunities for folks to participate in multi session classes as well as, you know, one day workshops. There are a couple of two session classes as well. And you know, people sometimes think, oh, I missed the registration deadline. All the classes start in September. Not true. The class is always starting and we have a bunch of I brought a cheat sheet with me because I don't want to forget anything. Of course you need a cheat sheet with all the stuff we talk about. Lots of stuff happening through November. We have a natural dying that's going to dive into like history as well as practice. We have a linoleum printmaking class that I just realized this morning. I guess I guess I didn't read my catalog closely enough. I'm super excited about the memoir writing class that we have that's coming up. It takes its inspiration from food and identity. And so folks that are really interested in food and that's a rich story to tell. Yeah. So I'm really hoping the registration for that is is robust. We have a favorite music appreciation class that's starting up in November. And we're looking at Russian composers this term. Dottie Burstein is the teacher. She's always fabulous. Her students love her and we see her, you know, year after year. And then there's embroidery. We have drawing dragons for the kids. I got to say, it's, you know, just even as you guys have described a few, a sampling of the offerings that that are available, just the breadth of the expansiveness by which you see center for the arts. Man, there's just that that gives you plenty of space in which to work. And boy, you guys are plumbing a lot of those different corners. I got to say. And we're gifted that we have so many talented teachers as well. Yeah. So let me ask you about the classes. Is is the enrollment for those kind of every everyone from eight to 80? Yeah. In general, actually, it might be like six to 80. So there are are there classes that are specifically like in each term, are there classes specifically intended for kids? You mentioned one. Yes. So for our adult classes, if you're 16, you're old enough to register for an adult class. And that's to make room for like some more serious art students that might be on the younger side. And and we have after school programs that are particularly designated for children and programs that are specifically designated for teenagers so that they're in groups with their peers. And we've been doing a team clubhouse on Friday night for years. That's fabulous and always like a favorite of ours. But also like, you know, we generally find that if there are some teenagers that find their way to that opportunity, that they participate in it term after term after term, which is just a joy to see. Yeah, there really are an awful lot of things that you guys do of all sorts, not just providing education, but this educational piece. I'm not sure if people are well enough aware of just how many courses are offered through the course of a year. And of course, how easy it is to get here and do that. Yeah. And of course, like, you know, we run on two issues and so folks will pay two issues for those programs. But we do a lot of free programs through the year. And it's not it's not on my cheat sheet because I forgot to put it on there. But we're also going to be recruiting any day now if we haven't started already for our Teen Artists on the Issues series, which I've talked to you about absolutely. And every year that theme changes. But that's a free opportunity. We don't want there to be barriers to participation. We want involvement by young people who have something to say and are looking for a creative way to say it. And this year we're doing spoken word poetry. And so it's a 10 week program. It's free by application. And we're looking to collect a diverse group of teens who are really ready and interested in grappling in issues that they really care about and finding expressive ways to creative ways to express them and also to engage with the general public in discussion about those very issues. So we're we're in process with that. My recollection is that that will happen. Is it in the spring? So we've moved it. OK. So that program this year is going to run from late November through early March because we heard from our teenagers and from their families that like the late spring is just so chock full of other things that it's hard to make the commitment that you need to make in order to be able to see that program through. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that that's a great move on on your guys part in that way because I do think that I love the structure. We've talked about it before this combination of you finding a different artistic medium in which to operate each time and a different set of issues on which to concentrate. But always providing enough support and enough time for the kids to actually get something done and to get to know each other and feel comfortable with each other to be able to like sort of talk about those issues straightforwardly and honestly. And I'm glad that since it wasn't on your cheat sheet and everything that that given that it's going to be starting in November this year. That was the time to be talking about. So I'm glad you mentioned that. All right. Let's what's next. I should mention that our winter term will start in January that the catalog comes out in just a couple of weeks. And it will include our February and April Vacation Arts Camp programs. So by mid-November people should be able to begin to register for programming in the new year. What's next? Are we all done? No, I don't think so. We're going to talk about that next. Do you want to talk about it a little bit? Well, no, you can talk about it, Tom. You're the leader. But it's a future illustrator. Yeah, which is our current exhibit. It just went up on the walls. Yes. It is with us through January. This folks can see this behind me, right? This is actually a film that we've just sort of paused so it doesn't make everybody's eyes. That's right. It works much better as a still. Yes, but it's fabulous. And and the artist is Allison Power. And we're so proud of the show when we're so proud of all the work that's being presented in it. And so I really encourage people to come in.   Given, yes, given the obvious, given everything. And I'm happy to say that it balances. I mean, it doesn't ignore anxieties, but it balances anxieties with hope. I think that that's great. And it reminds me of I'm not sure if you guys had a role in the climate futures, you know, that is all over town. But again, that was kids looking at the future in a certain way. And I my expectation was that that was going to be quite doom laden in many ways. And it was really balanced between things that we do need to be worried about and do something now and other things that's, you know, that clearly recognized that there's optimism is warranted. Yeah, we didn't have anything to do with that. I can't take credit for that. But Cecily Miller, who does great work, was really at the helm. And I don't remember who the artist was, but it was a great project. It was. And we don't need to be talking about somebody else's project by any means. But they do great work, too. They do great work. And, you know, the point is simply that as you're looking towards the future, it's just a great point that you made, which is, yes, we may all be feeling or we may we may be tempted to to ascribe our own feelings of concern and anxiety, project that on to others. But we need to remember, hopefully, younger people are feeling, you know, all so hopeful about things and all of us can use a dose of of the good stuff. Yeah. All right. So that's that is going on now. Anything else that's going on now or are we so I think that you know that we have just published our strategic plan and it's available on the website for folks to go take a look at whenever they'd like. And we're super excited about it. We've spent actually more than a year developing it. And there was a committee made up of both board representatives and staff representatives. And then there was lots of opportunity for board and staff to, you know, interact with that committee throughout the process. And lots of input as well through surveys and interviews and focus group sessions with various community members, including like, you know, people who take advantage of our programs and our, you know, peers that are doing this kind of work in other settings and and partners that we work with throughout the year. So we really took our time and and really had a super thoughtful process that was really gratifying every step of the way. The plan is is is really about sort of shoring ourselves up financially and and building our capacity and deepening our program. So a lot of it is about infrastructure. A lot of it is about like making sure that we are running a sustainable organization that that we can be confident has a place on the future cultural landscape of our town. And while we're doing that, we want to make sure that our relationships are are growing and expanding and that we're listening to the community. And there's a priority for inclusion. And so we really want to be sure that we are reaching out in meaningful ways to communities that are underserved or underrepresented and making sure that they know that they are welcome here and making sure that there are things here that they are interested and want to be engaged in. And the only way to do that is not to guess, but like, you know, develop relationships with those communities and and and mutually. You know, build something. Yeah, I mean, it sounds ambitious as a strategic plan should be in many ways. But definitely important important work, especially this idea of expanding the reach of the ACA to people who may not know, people who may not feel included at the moment, but who you want to include, et cetera. It sounds like a project that will take five years. Dedication. It's a roadmap for five years. Right, right. And there's a lot of work to be done attached to it, of course. But that sounds like the right vision.  And it's, you know, it's ultimately about creating a space that, you know, where it's possible to explore the arts and to make something and to share it with others. And we want everybody to be a part of that. But it's also we're we're continuing that strategic plan. And right in our we're thinking about what we're doing more strategically and how does it fit with our goal and moving forward? I mean, it's super interesting. You know, I actually don't have direct experience with the strategic plan before and I wasn't skeptical, but I had some healthy bit of skepticism about how it would like impact our like day to day operations. And I have to say, like I have been surprised a little bit, but really happy to report that I reference the strategic plan nearly every day. And it, you know, it does focus us. It reminds us like what our priorities are. And it helps me to like it helps me to fundraise. It helps me to communicate about what we were doing and provide a context for what we're doing and why we're doing it. And, you know, that's it's super exciting. I mean, right down to like, you know, building an agenda for a board meeting or a staff meeting, like, you know, we have a lens, a new lens for looking at a lot of things that we've been doing all along, but we're understanding better how they fit into the big picture of what we do. And people, I'm sure your organization is is very similar to ours and many others in this way. If people understand what the priorities are, then it makes it much easier for them to make the decisions that you don't want them having to turn to you or to you every time to make. Yeah. And we all need reminding of the priorities. I mean, there's always going to be competing priorities. Exactly. And so we all need to be reminded about what we've committed ourselves to. Yeah. So, you know, again, as I've said about other things, I'm, you know, I sound like a cheerleader for the ACA, don't I? Well, I kind of am. But I think that that sounds very promising. It really does. It also sounds like a lot of work has been done already because as you describe it in a couple of sentences, there's no way for people to understand just the sheer amount of time and listening to each other and working through things that you don't necessarily agree. All that is part of this strategic plan process that is invisible to the rest of us. But, you know, I've been through a couple, as you can probably tell. And again, it's it's it's it's quite an investment of time and energy collectively. And so I'm glad to hear it. So I hope people will take the time to go read that plan. And if they're really excited about it, I'm hoping that they'll take another step, which is we're in board recruitment season right now. And so we're looking actively looking for new board members. And there is some information about board membership on the website. And there's also an application for folks to fill out that just asks them essentially, like, you know, why they're interested and what they like about the ACA and if they've been engaged before. And, you know, that's meant to just sort of open up a conversation about, you know, what board membership might mean for them.  It's an opportunity to explore the possibility. And and so I would encourage folks to explore the possibility with us. We're taking applications through November 15th and we hope to elect a slate of new board members, probably three to five folks at our annual meeting, which I think is on December 13th. OK, which is a Wednesday, which is a Wednesday. So it is a step by step process or a multi step process. And this is step one for folks. That's what they should understand. Yeah. That's right. OK, great. I don't want to short change you, Tom, but we've got about 10 minutes left. Or so I want to make sure that young Miss Shanley here gets her full. So I'm going to talk about Arlington Open Studios. This is our 25th year and we have over 75 artists at two different locations Town Hall and here in this building at 20 Academy. So that's sort of the overview and I'm going to drill down into more specifics at Town Hall. We have Tom, you've done a lot of work on this so you can pick up the baton and talk a little bit about music on the steps. Yep. So we're working for the second year with Tino D'Agostino, who's a board member of the ACI, I'm proud to say. And he's bringing his band, Spajazi, to play a set. And there are also going to be some student musicians from the high school playing some sets throughout the day on the steps of Town Hall, whether permitting. Well, and people may know Tino's name because, you know, he's he's involved with a lot of stuff here in town. But he is that he is a prominent member of the music department at the high school. I believe it was director of instrumental music. There you go. He's the director of instrumental music and responsible for a whole lot of good experiences on the students parts and on the audience part. Back to you, Pam. So so you've come into Town Hall, you've heard the music, you entered the building, there's about 35 artists on the ground floor and they range from woodworking, ceramics, jewelry, a lot of fiber artists this year, more than ever, as I recall. And painting. There's a wonderful embroidery artist that we have. All that will be a Town Hall on the ground floor. And then a short walk upstairs or an elevator ride. There'll be another 10 or 12 artists. Black Joy exhibit will be going on three artists for that. And then we'll have a photographer, again, another jeweler, paper sculptor, which is a really wonderful artist quilter. So wide range, but be sure to go upstairs. And then it's a short walk, not even a block, to come up here to 20 Academy, this beautiful building. And we will have Harvard, Alpaca Ranch outside 20 Academy. What? Just a little tent. I'm super excited about the Alpacas. The Alpaca Ranch? They're going to bring Alpacas. Pretty sure they're not. And I'm telling the town that they're not. So we're hoping they're not. But they.  But they're out in Harvard Mass and they have an Alpaca farm and they're going to bring raw wool that they get from their Alpacas. And also some products that they've made hats and mittens and other things because they were very enthusiastic about being outside. So I assume they're going to be wearing their wares, right, demonstrating how well they work. So that's how we'll be greeted at 20 Academy and you come in there and then we'll have another about 30 plus artists on that floor. And the range there is just as diverse as a town hall. We've got metal works or collage. Some of you does these wonderful stones that are all painted like mandalas and some. We have about 15 to 20 new artists for Open Studios. We have a lot of returning artists, which, you know, worms are hard because they like us enough to come back. But and 15 and 20 to 20 new ones as well. Wow. So the sad thing is this year we were we listened to our artists and we limited to the town hall and the community center on the on the ground floor where it gets the most traffic and we and that's where we limited. So we had a few less slots than I would like to. But we had more artists than ever submitting, which was kind of ironic. So you'll have those artists, Open Studio artists on that on the first floor of the community center, then take a short elevator right up or climb the stairs like Tom and I do every day and to the third floor, which is really the home for ACA and we'll be having this gallery exhibit and in it will be our poets. Steve Ratina and Jean Flanagan have a gather a bunch of wonderful poets to read. And that'll be going on in the afternoon in the morning. Margaret Moody, who's one of our studio artists, will be doing puppet shows early morning to early afternoon. And then if you walk down the hall, we have a nature photographer, Rick Ulick, who's also a member of the Mystic River Watershed Association. And he is a wonderful wildlife photographer and captures these animals. He sits in the woods for hours to capture this. So it's it's a beautiful exhibit and he was here last year and he's got new additions to what he did. And then the Mystic will be open and they'll be having sort of an open house. And as you travel down the hallway, you can peek into our ceramic studio and we'll be having demos all day. So just drop in and peek and see what's going on. And I believe that covers all the action. How many artists altogether? About over 75, about 78. Wow. Yeah. And and we had 2,000 people come visit us last year. So we're expecting about the same again this year, maybe even a few more. I have to mention that like this is a great big project and the work starts for this in the spring. And and Pam is does amazing work all like all summer long in the midst of camp. And we would be remiss if we didn't mention our colleague. And I mean, she does an amazing job with all the art.  So people can prepare for for coming in, you know, exactly. You can get a pretty little context of what's to come and then kind of make a beeline for the artists that you're right. And then along the way, you might see people like that. Exactly. No, the joy that you might have. Oh, and then of course, Tom worked with to get all the music lined up because you're right up your alley. And then we also have Michael and Kat and Delia who just like support and because there's a million pieces that go on. This is a huge undertaking. We, you know, we do understand that. And it does seem like a really good problem. I mean, nonetheless sad, as you mentioned, that some artists that you'd like to include, you just didn't have space for. But it's a good problem to have, in a sense. And I have to say that people do, you know, this is one of those, you know, I don't know what you call like red letter days on the calendar for for folks and the on their the beginning of the holiday calendar because I got to say in my own household, as I mentioned to you, our weekend plans are our weekend travel plans have been altered to accommodate being able to go to the open studio. So and I would be remiss to say that this year, because of Veterans Day Falls on Saturday, we didn't want to. We didn't want to do it. We want to show respect for the vets. And so we're doing it on Sunday, which is the first time we've ever done it on a Sunday, which happens to work well for our travel plan. So I appreciate that. But I guess they're celebrating it on Friday. But I guess people have Friday off. So it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but we're at the end of the weekend. So you can go and have fun, travel, whatever and then come back to open studios, which runs from eleven to five Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Yeah, no, that's important to remind people. It's definitely a difference. But again, I appreciate the timing for that this year. Anything else you want to add? I think I've covered it. Look for this beautiful brochure. It's got features all of the current artists. And it's again, Annalise made this and it's beautiful. And those people will be able to see those all over town, I would imagine. And be reminded if they need to. We're looking for volunteers to help put these posters up. We're also looking for volunteers the day of open studios. It could be a leader, cheerleader, whatever. But it's a really important because we found that having folks there to show people which door to enter. Sometimes these buildings as beautiful and historic as they are are a wee bit of a maze to go through. So we'd like to have somebody at each door kind of like, yes, you're here. Yeah, and I have to say, you know, if you if if the idea of taking that first step towards board membership is just a little too much for you at the moment, well, there's at least volunteer opportunities that are smaller. You want to come work for us, James? I think I am now that I think about it. So it is always a distinct pleasure to talk with you both. And I appreciate it. Pleasure back at you. We really do. I have been speaking with Pam Shanley, the operations manager. And I'm sorry, the operations director, excuse me. Who knows, right? I know you guys are all caught up in your titles. And Tom Formicola, the executive director of the Arlington Center for the Arts for this ACA update as part of our talk of the town. I'm James Milan. We really appreciate Tom's time and Pam's time.  And we expect to see you guys out there for one or more for talk of the town. Appreciate you joining us. We'll see you next time.