Good morning, I would like to thank you to the Pearl Dettron, we are the Pearl Programming Leningers Dettron this year, because we are having talks from five and six, we want to show that we are still one family. Dylan will start, like every year we are not having a process between the talks, so if you want to pause the video, just leave after the talk, the speaker will set up during the questions. It's on the speaker to decide if there are questions or not, I think that's kind of how it works, so whenever you're ready.


Don't pack up your camera, until you have left the location, Joey McNally. Take your heart, Institute of Photography.


Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning And now for that moment you've all been waiting for a moment of musical togetherness Please turn to the words for our opening hymn or in gathering hymn Which you'll find inside your order of service welcome to Another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe nurturing environment To explore issues of social spiritual and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world I'm Steve Goldberg a proud charming member of this congregation And it is a special pleasure to extend a happy hello to any guests Visitors and newcomers, and I know we have a few today because we are welcoming some new members If this is your first time visiting First Unitarian Society You're in for a real treat and if you're interested in learning more about our special buildings We offer guided tours after every service just gather over here by the windows after the service, and we will take care of you Speaking of taking care of each other This is the perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that might intrude upon your enjoyment of the service So please take a moment to do that now and that goes for those of you watching at home as well And if you're accompanied today By a youngster, and you think that youngster might prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space We offer a couple alternatives for you including our child Haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some comfortable authentic Frank Lloyd Wright benches just outside the doorway in the commons And I'm sure you know that our service is brought to us By a dedicated group of people whom we call volunteers get you get to hear their names in a moment Please thank them Shake their hand give them a hug offer to share your umbrella today Our sound system is operated by Peter Daley our lay minister is Tom Boykoff Janine Nussbaum is the one who greeted you as you walked in the doorway today and Ostrom Nancy Daley and Michael Lossi are the ushers John twos is handling the foliage up here today making sure it's colorful and vibrant and the flowers behind me were donated by Co and Paul Williams and Richard and Sally builder John Powell will be our tour guide after the service Just a couple announcements before the service begins We've got some Generous programs here at First Unitarian Society during the holiday season so that people who Might otherwise not be able to enjoy the holidays are able to do so as a result of our support and our involvement with them However for our family holiday gift-giving program We've ended up with 10 extra families and we need your help to make sure that our elves can take care of their shopping And they're wrapping in time for the social worker pickup of these gifts on Tuesday And if we have any money left over from the program, it'll go to our eviction prevention fund Helping the holiday get a little brighter for even more people who need help We're grateful for anything you can do there will be an elf in the commons after the service I don't know how you'll recognize the elf, but I imagine the elf will look different from the rest of us But you can make your donation for the holiday gift-giving program also Remember to drop off your raps Labeled gifts for the family-to-family program today before noon volunteers will be ready to help you unload at the Landmark entrance and thanks for helping us give a brighter holiday to other people The only other announcement is we still don't quite know how many days until cabaret, but it's in the spring We'll get more information to you later Meanwhile, please sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning service. I know that you'll find it will stir your heart Stir your spirit and touch your heart and make stir your might touch your spirit, too But I know it'll also trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. We continue with the words of the English Romantic poet John Keats a thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness But we'll keep a bower quiet for us and a sleep full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing Therefore on every morrow we are reading a flowery band to bind us to the earth in spite of despondence of the inhuman dearth of noble natures of the gloomy days of all the unhealthy and or darkened ways made for our searching Yes, in spite of it all some shape of beauty moves away the pawl from our dark spirits Invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice And if you will join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in this morning's program Each morning we hold out our chalice of being to be filled with the graces of life Which abound air to breathe food to eat companions to love beauty to behold art to cherish Causes to serve they come in ritual procession these gifts of life Whether we deserve them we cannot know or say they are poured out And ours is the task of holding steady the chalice of being and now on this fine balmy December morning, please turn and exchange a warm greeting with your neighbor a little bit later this afternoon Some of us will definitely be walking in the rain And if the children would like to come forward for the message for all ages, I think you must be hoping it starts to snow pretty soon We'll dress the part anyway not much snow yet There's always the next year right Okay, so this is this is a story that comes from the country of China and China was ruled years ago by an Emperor Okay, and so the Emperor of China a long long time ago lived in a magnificent Palace the most beautiful palace in the whole world and the gardens that surrounded his palace were famous for all their many flowers and walkways But then beyond the garden there was this thick forest which stretched all the way to the ocean and in that forest There lived a bird that was called a nightingale and the song of the nightingale was declared by anyone who Have ever heard it to be the most beautiful song ever sung and books were written and read worldwide about the Emperor and his palace and The books would always mention this nightingale who lived in the forest But the Emperor had never gone into that forest himself and he'd never read any of these books So he didn't know anything about the nightingale But then one day the Emperor received a gift from another Emperor the Emperor of Japan It was a book and the book described in glowing terms The gardens and the Emperor's palace and the Emperor read the book nodding. He said yes That's all very very true. This is exactly what my palace and my gardens are like but then at the end of the book it said but the most Beautiful and lovely treasure in all of China is the nightingale And the Emperor was puzzled he hadn't heard of the nightingale And so he called his servant to him and said why have I never heard about this famous bird? The nightingale must come to my palace this very evening and sing for me And so the servant ran all over the palace asking about the bird But nobody in the palace had ever heard of the nightingale And finally the servant went into the kitchen and there was a poor young girl They are scrubbing all the pots and pans and he asked her and she said yes I know about the nightingale. I hear him every evening when I'm walking through the woods back to my own house Come with me. I'll show you where he lives And so the servant in half of the Emperor's court noisily followed the kitchen girl as she entered the forest However when the sound of the nightingale song could be heard everybody became absolutely silent No one had ever heard or imagined that there could be such a beautiful sound And looking around the servant tried to glimpse the bird What kind of a bird must make such incredible music? It must be an amazingly beautiful bird And the kitchen maid pointed up to a branch in a tree and it was this little dull brown bird I never imagined that the nightingale would be so plain said the servant The kitchen maid walked up to the nightingale and said my friend the emperor would like to hear your song It would be my pleasure said the nightingale thinking that the emperor was there in the forest with all the rest of them But the servant explained that no the nightingale needed to come to the palace But but it's best to hear my song amidst all the trees said the nightingale But in the end he followed the servant back to the palace But even indoors in that big palace the song of the nightingale was so Exquisite so beautiful that tears began to flow down the emperor's cheeks and the sight of those tears made the bird sing even more lovingly And so the emperor ordered that a golden perch should be made for the bird to sit on And that the bird should remain near him all the time Now the bird could no longer be free to go back into the forest But the nightingale was so moved by the emperor's tears that he agreed to stay Everyone spoke about this remarkable bird but then one day The emperor received another gift and it was a mechanical nightingale That was made to look just like the real one except that it was made of silver and gold and covered with all these precious jewels And it could be wound up and made to play the same single song over and over It is simply marvelous said the emperor's servants Now the people believed that the mechanical bird was much more beautiful to behold and More dependable than the real thing because it would sing the same song over and over Without ever making a mistake without any variation whatsoever Nothing was unexpected And so the emperor and his servants listened to the mechanical bird sing 33 times a day Until the emperor announced that maybe the bird needs to rest for a while And then While the mechanical bird was resting the emperor remembered the real nightingale and said Bring the real nightingale to sing for me again But the real bird was no longer in the court being ignored. He had flown back to the forest But the best bird remains the emperor's servant declared And the emperor agreed and so the mechanical bird sat on a silk pillow and was wound up every day to sing its single song But of course it was a machine And what happens to machines when you use them too much? They break and so one day the mechanical bird broke No one was able to repair it and so it was brought out every once in a while on its silk pillow just to be admired Now a few years later the emperor of china became very very sick And the doctors agreed that he was so sick and getting so weak that he probably was not going to get well And so all day the emperor laid in his bed just waiting to die One night he was having horrible dreams And he awoke with a shout for someone to come and to play music and to comfort him The mechanical bird was brought out of storage and wound up but all it made was this mechanical whoring noise The room was still Tears of frustration began to flow down the emperor's cheeks But then the silence was broken by this beautiful song The nightingale had returned from the heart of the forest to sing for the dying ruler whose cries he had heard through the window And the bird sang song after song without any effort whatsoever and everyone in the room began to weep The emperor shoot everybody out of the room and looked lovingly at the nightingale Thank you. Thank you. He whispered With pride and with foolishness. I have ignored you and now it is you who come back to give me comfort How can I reward you? I only ask for one things at the nightingale Do not force me to live here in the palace Allow me to go home to the forest and I promise you that not a day will go by that I will not come and sit on the branch outside your window and sing for you You must only sing when you desire to do so said the emperor But the nightingale flew back from the forest every day And as he sang for the emperor he grew stronger and stronger and the doctors they were scratching their head Why was he getting better? He was supposed to die The emperor just smiled because he found the songs of this dull done colored bird to be a feast for the soul Better than anything else that he had in his ornate palace So that's the song and the story of the nightingale I wish I had something that I could play the song for you But maybe you'll you'll be lucky enough at some point in the future to be able to hear one from yourself So that's our our story for today. And now as you're going out. We're going to sing you out ourselves Selections this morning By Lincoln Perry who is an artist that works in many different media and has shown his work throughout the united states This from the american scholar An essay entitled states of change Herbert Hoover commissioned john flanagan to create a silver washington quarter dollar in 1932 during the depths of the depression Now from 1885 to 1890 flanagan had worked in a student as a studio assistant to our country's greatest sculptor augustus san gondes The creator of among many things the monument to general Sherman in new york city and the memorial to robert guldshaw on boston commons flanagan's apprenticeship served him well to judge from the quality of his quarter dollar Look at the coin as a tando that is a circular work of art And then notice how comfortable old george is in his round setting This tiny object is a jewel to be held lovingly in one's hand And now look very carefully at a more recent redesigned quarter The one i'm holding presently is from 2004 george resembles a fallen souffle His head is a series of unrelated marks fighting each other with no sense of harmony He has no volume no presence certainly no potential psychology Now i can sympathize with the artist's plight being told to cram in all those extra words on the face of the coin The new coins add quarter dollar The united states of america too in god we trust liberty and the year of issue But that doesn't excuse or explain that horrible head this truly grotesque coin Now turn each coin over Old george's accompanying eagle is grand Its full chest logically placed in the center its wings nicely echoing its curved cage My new coin happens to represent florida With a sailing ship some palm trees and a space shuttle all floating free of each other The images fill the circle indifferently with no real poetry of call and response They remind me of cheap carnival tokens Now i am not a numismatist But i like to think that i am sensitive to beautiful things and that my distress over our new coins Is more than peak peak or pickiness It's a sense that we are perhaps unknowingly Making our civilization more callous more disembodied less about contemplation than instant gratification Perhaps the little chunks of metal we carry in our pockets Soon to be replaced by newer versions or by chips embedded in our hands Could remind us of a choice between two approaches to life If only we would pay attention The second reading is a poem entitled Singapore by Mary Oliver In Singapore in the airport a darkness was ripped from my eyes In the women's restroom one compartment stood open A woman knelt there washing something in a white bowl Disgust argued in my stomach and I felt in my pocket for my ticket A poem should always have birds in it Kingfishers say with their bold eyes and gaudy wings Rivers are pleasant and of course trees A waterfall if that's not possible a fountain rising and falling A person wants to stand in a happy place in a poem When the woman turned I could not answer her face Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together and neither could win She smiled and I smiled What kind of nonsense is this everyone needs a job Yes a person wants to stand in a happy place in a poem But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor which is dull enough She's washing the tops of airport ashtrays as big as hubcaps with a blue rag Her small hands turn the metals scrubbing and rinsing And she does not work slowly nor quickly like a river And her dark hair is like the wing of a bird I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down the river This probably won't happen But maybe it will If the world were only pain and logic who would want it Of course it isn't And neither do I mean anything miraculous but only the light that can shine out of a life I mean the way that she unfolded and refolded that blue cloth The way her smile was only for my sake I mean the way this poem is filled with trees and with birds As I was leaving the meeting house the other afternoon The sun had just slipped below the horizon and the sky was awash with color Wispy red and orange clouds stood out against the fading azure field As I paused to admire a spectacle that's rather unusual for this time of the year Although I still had responsibilities to attend to the hunger for beauty So characteristic of our speeches prevail for just those few precious moments As Howard Gardner notes the pursuit of experiences that are beautiful constitutes a crucial part of life Particularly once one's basic needs have been satisfied But beauty's power to inspire can be felt even under conditions of extreme deprivation Even as one teeters on the edge of existence Victor Frankel survived the rigors of the Nazi concentration camp And for he and his fellow prisoners just staying alive was an all-consuming task But then one evening Frankel remembers when we were already resting on the floor of our hut Dead tired soup bowls in our hands a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run to the assembly grounds to see this wonderful sunset And standing outside we saw the sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky was alive with color The desolate gray mud huts provided a sharp contrast while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected that glowing sky And after a few moments of moving silence one prisoner turned to another and said How beautiful the world could be Experiences such as these can in fact help any of us get through a difficult day An encounter with beauty may compensate for disappointments For hardships that otherwise would leave us despondent and spiritless And this is as true for auditory as it is for visual beauty the reclusive philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein confided to one of his few friends That at one time the slow movement of Brahms's third quartet had pulled him back from the brink of suicide Here in the west beauty has generally been highly esteemed And in the platonic tradition it together with truth and goodness has enjoyed a transcendental status life's sumum bonum Truth goodness and beauty these are the ultimate ends the pursuit of which make life meaningful Whose acquisition renders it complete And moreover these three ideals are intertwined what is true is also beautiful What is beautiful must of necessity be good Recall these memorable lines from emily dickinson I died for beauty But was scarce adjusted in the tomb when one who died for truth was lain in an adjoining room He questioned softly why I failed For beauty I replied And I for truth the two are one we brethren are he said Now the ancients were quite clear about what exactly constituted beauty Whether the object under consideration was a temple a statue a coin an amphora or the human form itself It had to possess a certain balance and symmetry and proportionality An artist like lincoln perry whom we heard from a few moments ago still uses standards similar to these Engaging the beauty of an artifact And a structure like our own meeting house fulfills these same standards in many respects And in addition certain sights and sounds seem to have near universal appeal the song of a nightingale Or the sight of a colorful sunset But then that hardly means that we have reached A consensus and we know that any given era may recognize beauty where a previous or later one does not Today the works of the great impressionist painters fetch astronomical prices But 19th century critics dismissed them as amateurish and frankly ugly During his lifetime vincent van go did not sell a single painting And of those he gave away Many were simply discarded The arts howard gardener writes proceed along unpredictable historical cultural and individual tracks We can marvel at works of art, but we will not be able to come up with an algorithm that explains their meaning or accounts for their appeal Nor our beauty truth and goodness as closely related to one another as philosophers and artists once insisted Certain expressions of beauty are notoriously deceptive Take glamour for instance We are drawn to and we admire the glamorous stars of film and stage But what attracts us often is not is a beauty that quite literally is skin deep etymologically glamour derives from a french word that originally meant Enchantment to be placed under a spell Glamour does not exist in and of itself jenny dickie writes it consists of yearning and of lies similarly A word that steve invoked when he was doing his introduction charm The word charming is often used to describe a beautiful and winsome personality, which of course steve has Those who possess this attribute have a talent for making other people feel good, which he does They are positive upbeat engaging and well spoken But charming people aren't always trustworthy or well intentioned He could charm the hind legs off a donkey is a familiar saying Charmers know that they can influence people that they can gain their confidence But charm is not a reliable indicator of either truth or goodness. Yes, in some cases it is The line between charmer and sociopath is very fine indeed Charm is charming, but just don't be charmed by it We know and love you steve These observations about glamour and charm are consistent with what the late unitarian universalist minister forester church had to say about the devil It is a mistake church argued to think of the devil as a repulsive being as medieval commentators once did The devil's trademark is not evil dressed as evil church says but evil dressed as good If we were to sketch the devil's nature and personality He is beautiful. He is proud. He is brilliant. He is clever in the ways of the world and he is a liar The habit of associating ugliness with evil and beauty with goodness Can leave us exposed vulnerable to exploitation and seduction by maleficent forces Forest church did not harbor a literal belief in satan Satan served as a legendary and literary stand-in for especially diabolical human beings adolf hitler and his Nazi henchmen for instance now We know that hitler was trained not as a politician But as an artist and he was as martin filler points out fully aware of the propagandistic power of the arts Colorful torch lit choreography grand architecture stirring music arresting poster art handsome uniforms All of these factored into the nazi's rise to absolute power They did much filler rights to support authoritarian might through the consistent artistic projection of strength order And beauty the point is as edifying and elevating as beauty might be we must remember that it isn't always trustworthy And it isn't always true And on the other hand because something strikes us as ugly Does not mean that we ought to treat it with contempt To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers The abstract artist paul clay once said indeed by linking beauty with truth and goodness We may be establishing something close to a false dichotomy which then causes us to devalue certain aspects of life a priori If the ugly is devoid of truth and goodness, why should we bother with it at all? The concept of beauty is itself based on a hierarchy that labels some things as undeniably beautiful And others is irretrievably ugly Now we know that a fair amount of recent art and music pushes back against our traditional assessments of beauty Violating previous canons of taste Much modern art deliberately presents itself as unbeautiful or as discordant To be sure traditional notions of duty still prevail But how our gardener points out that more and more physical and psychic space is now open to works and experiences That would be better characterized as interesting perhaps even awful But still memorable in their mode of presentation and inviting further exploration And so writing last august about his native land The indian novelist atish tasir commented on the illusory image that he and many others retained about their country India is a beautiful country. We tell ourselves But any honest appraisal would conclude just the opposite. Yes, there are splashes of beauty in india But today in india ugliness prevails Our environmental problems are among the grimace in the world tasir laments and abject poverty is everywhere And tasir says that as an artist he has found it very challenging to address the ugliness of a place that he loves so deeply Like mary oliver his impulse has always been to focus on the beautiful india of his imagination But he says the greatest aesthetic discovery of my life Has been to see the ugliness And then to find a way to write about it To find a lexicon for the ugly In the west as in india. We are also biased in beauty's favor But then western literature includes a number of cautionary tales that cut against the grain the princess and the frog beauty and the beast And in the arthurian legends the story of gallant sir gay sir gawain and his liaison with the repugnant dame ragnell And each instance that which is initially perceived as repellent Shelters an intrinsic beauty that will remain hidden Until its carrier is seen and accepted in his or her wholeness As treb Johnson puts it Daring to touch the unbeautiful We realize that not only are we not dragged down into something loathsome But that just the reverse occurs we feel empowered joy is connected with the other To give beauty to another person to a group of people even to damaged places on earth is to move past The fear and the revulsion that keeps us at a distance from life as it is And so johnson goes on to describe certain activities that were undertaken In conjunction with the 2010 global earth exchange Teams of people throughout the planet visited areas that had been made ugly Made ugly by clear cutting mining pollution and other indiscriminate forms of industrial activity And after going to these areas and surveying them Taking in and assimilating all of their ugliness the team members would then engage in small acts of beauty One such team in great britain visited a dump in a forlorn industrial park There was no evidence at all of plant or animal life. It just felt dead After an hour or so of contemplation in that bleak environment The men and women began gathering pieces of trash And out of them they created a sculpture And they sat there The late afternoon shadows lengthened No one wanted to leave After spending time there in such an intimate way lucy hinton later wrote I felt as if we had given something of ourselves to that place and it to us And by the time we did leave we felt like pioneers who had begun the process of breaking through some invisible barrier That until now had held this wounded place in some kind of soulless imprisonment We dreamed of returning Helping to break up the hard baked topsoil so that seeds could emerge from the surface crust And birds and color might eventually return once more It is true that philosophy and religion have historically advanced an aesthetic of the beautiful For instance christian iconography has invariably presented christ as Handsome strikingly handsome and mother mary as comely But what we need to remember is that jesus himself was drawn to lepers and persons with disabilities and those who were considered Unclean and untouchable by polite society jesus recognized an interview that eluded the myopic religious establishment Likewise buddhist statuary is meant to draw in the subject with its sublime sublime beauty buddhism free of shawan writes acknowledges the existential power of beauty It uses harmony and symmetry as a skillful means to strengthen the individual's aspiration And to enhance his or her spiritual practice, but buddhism doesn't stop there Because it warns us over and over again about holding these fixed views these habits of thinking and of judgment In order to acquire a clear accurate view of reality We have to be alert to the biases that we hold that color our outlook We must be as gina sharp says Aware that the basis for a beautiful life is a beautiful mind and that beauty comes from a mind that is capable of seeing things Just as they are moment by moment being able to repose in that The state of mind that i call beautiful is not possible if i am busy excluding things Joyce cornblatt Is an australian buddhist teacher and she speaks in a similar vein of wilderness mind A mind that recognizes change as the only constant And so oriented wilderness mind is able to appreciate the ephemeral beauty in things that are aging or decaying And it's by turning toward rather than away from impermanence That we foster a closer and more honest relationship with the world and with one another cornblatt writes This isn't always easy she admits Because we are culturally conditioned to turn away from to reject the old the damage the misshapen She herself suffers lapses as when her daughter's raggedy and doll A doll given to her in infancy became threadbare its facial features practically worn away Isn't the time we got you a new raggedy and she suggested to her daughter one day The daughter was aghast scolded her mother If i had an accident and my face was ruined would you get a new child? I love raggedy and justice she is My child's wisdom humbled me cornblatt wrote What aversions could withstand such clear-eyed devotion to the truth of how things really are So yes beauty does lie in the eye of the beholder we say But as that little girl knew at a more profound level and in the most significant sense Its true home is in the soul of the beholder Blessed be We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope And to this time and place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken cells We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past And we seek here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared And so now we would pause to acknowledge A message from dory lightfoot Her father-in-law died in columbia last friday december the fourth And her husband had traveled there for the funeral. So we share in the sorrow of that family's loss And lorna erinson writes that url banks her brother of mckinney texas Recently died due to complications of a massive stroke that he had suffered earlier this year And our very warmest wishes to lorna and we would also note that Lloyd egan's father just died this this past week in in milwaukee after a somewhat lengthy illness And a long period of decline and we wish the best to pat and loyde And finally patricia leonardy a longtime member of this congregation died earlier in november and her memorial service for those who knew patricia and want to attend will be held in a landmark auditorium Next saturday december 19th at 1 p.m In addition to those mentioned We would acknowledge all of those unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us And that as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts Let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and of hope And so by virtue of our time spent together today May our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded And now please join in the giving and receiving of our offering And as you can see your gifts today will be shared with briar patch youth services Which does very important work for young people in our community. Please be generous As part of our services this weekend We recognize those individuals who have formally and officially joined first unitarian society since last may Overall 26 individuals have taken that step And at least a few of them are in attendance at the nine o'clock hour Member of this congregation is on one hand Fairly straightforward one generally attends a series of orientation classes Signifies their intention professes agreement with our uu principles and f us's bond of union And then enters their name in our membership registry in terms of actual actual preliminaries and mechanics That's all there is to it. No immersion. No anointing with oil. No doctrinal tests to pass But then we would need to ask why would someone want to do such a thing We joined in the first place because we believe that the promotion of liberal religious values Will make a difference in the world That a strong unitarian universalist movement will help to make our community and our planet a more peaceful and enlightened place We make this commitment because we do believe in the transformative power of this tradition We joined because we want to be part of an enterprise that can elevate humankind ethically And at a personal level fulfill us spiritually We join also because we hunger to be in relationship with people who like ourselves Regard religion as an open-ended ongoing quest for deeper meaning and more honest and authentic religious connections As members we are responsible for strengthening this institution so that it can perform these life affirming tasks We agree that religion is as much a public as a private affair And intensely communal as well as an individual commitment. We honor our responsibility when we do the following Make an effort to learn about our tradition its history and its theology in order to understand what it really means to be a unitarian universalist Make generous ungrudging contributions of time talent and treasure Trusting that when we give from the heart we grow in spirit Make a good faith effort to participate in the open democratic process by which this community orders its affairs We should be prepared to become active citizens not just passive consumers of service in keeping with our denomination's long-standing commitment to congregational empowerment This is not a casual commitment that we ask people to make And that is why we take the time twice a year to recognize and to celebrate those who have accepted these solemn responsibilities For themselves And now Ann Moser will read the names of those who indicated that they would probably be here at the nine o'clock hour Thank you as I call your names. Please come up with your insert from the order of service today Ginny and Garrett Hughes Alicia and matt anderson Cassie and mike Lotter with Good morning To our new members Do you accept the responsibilities and freedoms associated with membership in a unitarian universalist congregation? Do you pledge to support this religious community with your words your time and your substance? Are you willing to join the members of first unitarian society in a common quest for religious and spiritual understanding and for the common purpose of living reverent and compassionate lives? And to the congregation Do you accept these people into our into this community as companions in the spiritual journey? Do you pledge to rejoice with them in times of happiness? To grieve with them in times of sorrow and to share with them all the blessings of our free faith We do and now let's read the continuing bond of union We the members of the first unitarian society of Madison Desiring a religious organization in the spirit of jesus of nazareff Which shall make the integrity of life its first pain and leave thought free Associate ourselves together And now we will offer to our new members the right hand of fellowship and ancient tradition and a symbol of full inclusion in our community The flowers probably have symbolic value, but if not, they're still beautiful And Let's give our new members a big hand And as they are returning to their seats, I invite you to turn to our closing ham number 330 and please be seated for the benediction and the postlude we close with these words from the navajo tradition In beauty may I walk all day long may I walk Through the returning seasons may I walk Beautifully I will possess again beautiful birds beautiful joyful birds On a trail marked with pollen may I walk with grasshoppers around my feet may I walk with dew about my feet may I walk With beauty may I walk With beauty before me may I walk with beauty behind me may I walk with beauty above me may I Beauty all around me may I walk In old age wandering on a trail of beauty lively may I walk In old age wandering on a trail of beauty living again may I walk It is finished in beauty It is finished in beauty


This totally free city sample from Epic Games for Unreal Engine 5 is actually pretty incredible It's got lots of great learning resources in it, but it comes in at 100 gigabytes for a download So obviously not everyone will have enough disk space or internet bandwidth to be able to download this and you may not Even have a powerful enough system to even be able to run it Well, I've already downloaded it and I can kind of run it on my RTX 2070 Super So I'm going to go through this and show you some things from a filmmaking aspect that might be valuable for you So jumping right in you can see that this project is using the world partition This is nice because you can just load in portions of the map without having to load the entire thing into memory It also includes a couple of different maps one for the full the big city and one for a smaller city as well as a few other Example maps for the vehicle tests and the buildings and the mass crowd so jumping over to the recommended specs These are some pretty heavy specs and it's no joke this thing stutters on my system And I have all of this stuff except for a 2070 Super instead of a 2080 and then there's the massive file size I mean 100 gigabytes is quite a bit to ask for a moderate system or a laptop I had to clean up my terabyte internal drive just so I could download it Luckily, if you only care about the buildings or the vehicles of the AI crowd you can just download those projects individually So after opening up the small map and loading in some tiles on the partition map This is what it looks like obviously this is sped up just a little bit so that you don't have to watch me Just walk around but as you can see this is pretty detailed and great from a filmmaking aspect You've got this whole city that you can begin to tell stories in You can go into a window or something like that You could start your story from one of these rooftops and then zoom down to street level I really love how it's just already populated with moving cars and walking people and it just looks really cool So speaking of walking people this is the example of the mass crowd map This generates a full crowd that just kind of walk around on their own. They do different things based upon the AI paths You can look at lots of this code here and you can see how they've done this It's great learning example for blueprints and just kind of generally poking around and looking to see how they made all of this Of work There's even an example of how to create a flea trigger so that whenever you walk over it everyone runs away from you So when you start this map the buildings are just kind of blocked out because the focus here is on the AI and the walking crowd And the cars the car will stop if you walk in front of it The people will walk around you if you walk in front of them if you walk over this little block right here This is the flea trigger notice that everyone starts to walk away from me whenever I run over this block So this would be great for filmmaking you can trigger something with an event from the sequencer and make everyone run away at a certain Time you could dig into the blueprint code for this flea trigger And you could add it to an explosion or something if you want it as well So the vehicle test map is a lot of fun They've already kind of built this whole driving game out for you here with your speedometer and everything You hop in the car and you know, this looks pretty neat. I think you probably could switch out the cars I just messed around for just for a minute by driving this thing around I'm just using the keyboard a mouse here to drive this car around But you can see as it interacts with other obstacles it bumps over these things and the car will actually take some damage Let's see. Let's jump this ramp. Let's see what happens here So first off my fender hits and that gives me a little bit of damage and then yeah, all right, so crash there we go and A little bit more damage to the car you can spin around it's got pretty good handling I like how that looks fairly realistic so you can see how you know if you're using this for like a chase scene or something in your film You can see how this would look pretty cool like you had the right lighting and camera angles and everything attached to this Well looks like I've crashed my car and now I'm stuck in my reverse doesn't work So I guess that's game over There's also an example of the blueprint to make your character get out of the car with the animation And all of this is just built in and you can exchange this out with any other metahuman So my verdict is if you can run this on your system and you have the disk space Yeah, you should download this and check it out if you can't you should try the smaller projects at least for the crowd and the vehicles I think this is a great resource for creating some short films in a city environment and I'm excited to use it myself


So what we have here is our savory chocolate meat. I'm not gonna lie, we have spent so much money at so many Asian restaurants. It is fresh chicken time.  Three unique Fung Bros items that are going to be on the menu here at Five Spice on Mulberry Street. Food from the East continues to dominate the New York food scene. Everything from a Filipino street market to Hanoi style Fuga, to even us revealing our very own Fung Bros dishes at Five Spice. This is Asian food you do not want to miss in New York City. Our next Asian concept is a Queen's staple that has now made it to Manhattan to Canal Street Market. We're talking about Beetong, Hainan chicken. This is famous out there. It's super juicy. It's very hot. Let's go try it, man. Kaomungai. Guys, Beetong is actually a border town in the southern part of Thailand. It's right next to Malaysia. It's super fresh, super juicy. It looks a little bit pink, you know, people who are not used to seeing that type of chicken, but trust me, it's delicious. You got to try it here. What I like about Queen's spots is by design, they are more authentic because starting in Queens, they don't have to cater to the Manhattan market. So to have an authentic Queen's spot come to Manhattan, you know it's going to be good. Check it out, Beetong. So what we have here is our savory chocolate meat. What do you mean by that? What we call Dinuguan in Tagalog. It's pork, blood stew. We pair it with our buto. It's a Filipino rice cake. So the sweetness of this pairs really well with the savory nest of the pork blood. Little tangy, savory, sweet. Dinuguan is a polarizing dish for a lot of people because it's pork's blood. So obviously the whole idea of it, I can understand, doesn't sound the most appealing, but it's pretty good.  To have a good Dinuguan in Manhattan is very, very rare. It almost feels like this is only something you would get in Queens or Jersey City, maybe. It's pretty cool that they're doing it here at Canal Street Market. Follow them on Instagram. We have some authentic Filipino street skewers going on right now at the Sosurap Papa. Very, very authentic. Look at that. All right, we got Esau. We got the chicken and tested. This is one of their signatures. Is that either? Yeah. I'm gonna say this. I like chicken and testing a lot better than even pork and beef and testing. I'm looking at a rice croquette, but it's like a rice baseball. Yes, that's about it. What are you about to do with it? I'll show you right now. This is our sea stick right here. Got out to ramen certified. He actually made this dish really, really popular for us. And then this is our cucumber salad, vinegar base. So this is a fusion. I was trained with an Italian lady. We used to make the arancini together. When she went back to Italy, I was so sad that I was like, I wanted to incorporate her. So this is my way of honoring what she's talking. Thank you so much. Thank you. Enjoy. This is the first time ever having this dish. Big old rice croquette with seasig and a nice little salad right here. So we're here today at the Ube Fest. From Tito Papas. These are Ube Napa Pono Canolis. You can taste the Ube. This is one of the best canolis I had. Italian, Filipino. That's a mix that I did not know worked. But after trying a couple concepts, it works really well. What's going on, everybody? As you know, a little while ago, we had talked about getting our very own unique Fung Bros. items here on the menu at Five Spice on Mulberry Street in New York City. And we were talking to Alex, the owner of Five Spice, and I was like, honestly, I like this spot so much. I always come here when I'm on the street. Like, I would love my own menu item. And guess what? Today is the day that the team is going to show us what they've been working on. We are talking about three brand new items with our suggestions, our recommendations. We're on Mulberry right now. One of the coolest streets in New York City. Hands down. Let's go inside. I'm excited. All right, everybody. This is Ksenia from the Five Spice team. What have you guys been working on? So we've been working on a couple of dishes. Super excited. One of the new dishes is actually my favorite thing on the menu now. Super delicious. Excited to get you back in the kitchen to meet up with Alex. And let's go. All right. All right, everybody. We have our three dishes here that are pretty much done. We're sitting here with Alex, the owner and chef here. But what do we got here right now, David? We have the fried catfish bunny, right? And we've got Brussels sprouts in it. I love this combination because I'm always ordering the Brussels sprouts anyway. And of course, you've got the bun quake, which is a breakfast tomato thing that actually comes, I believe, like you said, you know, from the French influence, from the Spanish influence, all different types of influences that have created this incredible fusion cuisine that is now Vietnam. So we're going to have this for breakfast. Alex, you said we have a decision to make right now, right? Yes, sir. This is a game time decision. We got to decide if we want the regular mayo or the spicy sriracha mayo. Mayo goes perfect with everything. Obviously it's a staple, but then you add a little flair, a little different kind of nuance into it. It brings a totally different taste. What do you recommend, man? How do we test this to make sure we're making the right decision? The best way to test anything is to eat it. Try both. All right, David, since this is going to be your sandwich, this is going to be the David, probably. You make the decision, man. David is deciding which mayo to use in the sandwich right now. Okay, he likes that one. It was good with the regular mayo. Let me know. We got to see. Hold on. Let me just take some of the bun coin. Oh, you're pouring it? Yeah. The bun coin. I'm the bun-meat. Ooh, wee. I got to go with the regular mayo one. I love this sandwich. I already love the Brussels sprouts. I already love the catfish bun-meat. And actually, and recently, we just had bun-meat chow, which actually is a Vietnamese tomato-based breakfast. And that tastes almost exactly like this bun-queat. So I got the bun-queat. I got the catfish. I got the regular mayo. I got the Brussels sprouts. That's a winning combination of me. How do I put my name on this? Can we do it? Can we do it with the consomme? Of course. And all of the honesty, but you just call out all my secrets. That inspiration was bun-meat chow. Bun-meat chow, guys. If you ever had it, it's this sizzling plate. You get bread with it. You get the pate. You get all the tomato. It's great. I love that we're at this point. And I love that five spices are part of this movement to expose people to even things beyond pho. We're talking about bun-meat chow influences in a bun-meat. It only makes sense. All right, everybody. One dish down. This is the second dish. This is the brisket bun-meat. This is taking the brisket that you guys use in a lot of your pho dishes, putting it into a bun-meat. I mean, look how juicy it is. It's made with the pineapple compote. So it's going to have some sweetness thinly sliced. Man, it almost looks like a French dip. So I'm just going to eat it by itself. And then I'm going to try it with the consomme. Yo, Alex, this was fire. Like, it actually did taste kind of like how I thought because it has that sweetness. It also has the sweetness from the carrots and the daikon. And then the beef is super juicy. And there's a little bit of spice. But you know, I always love the idea of French dip. And of course, you know, Vietnam has that French influence. So the French dip makes sense. Alex, honestly, I think this sandwich is ready to go, man. With the little consomme on the side, I think people are going to find it interesting. I think you guys are going to love it because it's just so different than anything else that you can get right now. So I'm excited for this one. Having you guys critique how well it is means the world to me.  You guys are the best critique for anything that we can possibly do. Oh, man! Thank you for what you did! Go, man! I'm not going to lie. We have spent so much money at so many Asian restaurants and for you to respect our opinion. I appreciate that, man. Thank you, thank you. All right, our last dish here are the brisket fries. They're looking kind of like a mixture of poutine and carne asada fries. Explain to us what's going on, Alex. Yeah, so basically it was an idea that I always wanted to say fries. It's simple. It's a staple in every kind of sandwich or whatever. How do you make it more interesting? How do you give out our own twist to it? We braised the brisket in the same way as we do in the sandwich. Ten hours in the fall broth. We took that out, kind of marinated its own flavoring. Add a little Mexican salsa into it on top of fries. And then you got an option of adding a little consomme on top to make a poutine or just eat it as it is. All right. Let's go in, guys. The brisket fries. That's good. Whoa! That really works well, guys. If you guys are looking for the next thing after carne asada fries, I think the beef brisket fries is it. This dish tastes like California. All right, everybody. It's official. Those are the three unique feng bros items that are going to be on the menu here at Five Spice on Mulberry Street. So please look out for it. Follow Five Spice on Instagram. Follow us on Instagram. And if you want to join in on this special late night launch party that we will personally be at, then buy a ticket through the Apollo app for October 27th. But all three feng bros dishes will be on the menu starting Friday, October 28th at the Mulberry location. All right, everybody. I'm here at Chihiro Tea. It's a new tea spot that's using a lot of Taiwanese tea and doing a lot of things a little bit differently here. So this one is a Thai green tea. Let's see how special it is. Definitely more robust. I can feel the Thai flavor has a little bit more lime in it. It almost does taste like a Thai dish. Definitely more robust in flavor. What I think is cool about this spot is that it's themed after spirited away. They play a lot of J-pop here. They have humidifiers. They have pure air purifiers. They have a lot of USB cords and a lot of places you can charge your phone. So they really just fitted it out with all the latest tech. We're here with the owner, Jerry. Jerry, can you describe Red Feather? Yeah, so we just opened up a couple of weeks ago. This is an Asian fusion spot more focused on Southeast Asian. Our chef, she's a Filipino. She's our head chef. Her name is Pia. She's worked at numerous Michelin star restaurants. Rouge Tomah Public and Soho and Paris Street. She kind of came here and started her own concept. Brought a lot of her Filipino roots. All right, we got round one here at Red Feather. This is one of their premier dishes. This is a garlic milk bread. Milk bread being from Japan, but this is kind of like fused with the garlic bread side of it. Parsley and lots of mozzarella. Look at that stretch. I love garlic bread. I love garlic knots. It's a mixture between Japanese milk bread. You got Filipino panna salt and Italian garlic bread. Guys, there's all this cream in the middle, in between.  This is delicious. All right, here we got a bamboo salad with some fried lotus chips on top. I'm always excited to try Asian themed salads because traditionally, especially in East Asia, there's not that many salads. What I really like about this bamboo salad is it actually tastes like the inside filling of a poppia. A poppia is oftentimes a food I think you can find in the Philippines and also Malaysia at the hawker stalls, where it's kind of a roll and it's just sweet and peanutty. Really easy to eat. Great way to get your veggies in. Here I got my mains. This is a brandzino. I'm excited about that. Here we have the crispy pork. This is going to be like a crispy pork kawali, the lechon kawali from the Philippines. And then here you have the spicy gochujang crispy shrimp. And then of course, scallion oil rice, which I love. Let me go for the shrimp first. Cooked to perfection. Very crispy. The rice is delicious. Their carbs here are on. One of my favorite dishes from the Thai and the Filipino cuisine is the crispy pork. Everybody got their own crispy pork. Let's check this out. I'm going to get more Filipino vibes from this dish. I love to see other Asian Americans take on the task of doing Asian fusion, not just the no-boos and Budakans, but Asian fusion can be complicated and can be risky, but man, I think they're on the right path. And this is really good. I mean, check out this brand-zeno. Super crispy. A little burst of like that kind of like Southeast Asian citrus flavor. Lemon grass rice. This is a perfect pairing, man. Of all the mains, I got to go with the crispy brand-zeno, man. This is delicious. Anytime there's a brand-zeno on the menu, I want to see how they did it. Shout out to Red Feather. They are doing Asian fusion right. We got this ube lava cake. Let's go in. I have a hunch that maybe a Filipino chef is really well-fit to do a lot of Asian fusion because they themselves kind of are a little bit of a fusion, you know? Yo, it almost tastes like a ube cheesecake with a little bit of ice cream. This is good. Coming to Red Feather, guys. Next up are new Asian concepts in New York City, Andrew. We've got a Southeast Asian slash East Asian themed market. And it has some really boutique stacks that you cannot find at just like your regular Asian grocery store. Yeah, they all have a lot of different flavors of everything from high chews to different sauces. They have a lot of Southeast Asian sauces. They even have some Asian American brands too. I know for me, something that caught my eye, Andrew, is they have brown sugar choco pies and they also have blue almonds. Everybody knows that flavored almonds are very popular in South Korea right now. They've got some crazy candy shell coated blue almonds. It's called Peng Peng Almonds. Starlight Peng Peng Almonds. And of course, choco pies, everybody loves these, you know, brown sugar milk tea. How can you escape it? All right, this is a heavily curated little market. These are things that you're not going to find at your Chinatown market, for example. You've got Sriracha potato chips. Okay, you've got wind coffee supply. Shout out to Sara, wind out of Brooklyn. And then you've got different types of high chews. High chews now have fruit and they have the sweet and sour version. And then they've got almsum and all these other Asian American brands and chili sauces. They've got papadelics, Andrew. These are quasi-psychedelic mushrooms coated in twisted Thai chilies. Continuing with the trend here at Southeast where you've got something Southeast Asian. You've got something East Asian. I went and picked up the Thai chili papadelics. I'm not saying these are psychedelic mushrooms from Thailand, but I'm sure they're designed to give you that vibe. And of course, you've got the brown sugar choco pie. You know, brown sugar is such a dominant flavor over the past couple of years from Taiwan. Not necessarily Asian, but implementation is Asian. All right, guys. I want to try my Sriracha trip. Pretty self-explanatory, but I've never had it on a thick ruffles. Let's check it out, guys.  I got a papadelic. Listen, guys, not every single boutique hipster Asian snack is going to be a hit. There's going to be some misses and there are going to be some ones where it's just like hyper-dependent on your own taste buds. But it's important that we try, even if we're swinging, we miss, because that's what it means to support the culture. All right. Next up on New Asian Concepts, we have a new dish here at Saigon Social. It is the full guy Hanoi style with the big, thick rice noodles. This is very, very hard to find in New York. In fact, in lower Manhattan, this might be the only spot to find this dish. So let's try it. You have the chicken here. You're going to dip it in the nukchom. I love the broth there. It's delicious. And again, this is a very, very rare dish to find in New York City. I hope it gets more popular, though. I would love to see more chicken full out there. Our next dish here at Saigon Social is the Comtam plate. Is it the broken rice plate? You've probably seen this before because it has the steamed egg quiche here and the pork shoulder. Obviously, you can find this dish everywhere. This is the elevated version. This is $25. So, of course, you know, the traditional stuff is always good, but you just want sometimes a more expensive version, you know, with more bigger pieces of meat. Next dish we got that you cannot find at any other restaurant is the soft-shell crab bun meat. As you can see, the meat is on the inside. It has a little bit of the spicy sauce here. Let's check it out. That was the best soft-shell bun meat I've ever had. What I love about soft-shell crab is that it's really not really about the meat. It's really about the shell. That's crazy, huh? So, if you're visiting New York, definitely check out Saigon Social because they are doing some things with Vietnamese food that you don't find everywhere else. Our next Asian concept is whistle and fizz. Andrew, they're trying to bring what over from Japan? Nitrogen, citrus, coffee from Japan. So, it is owned by Asians, and they're just doing a lot of event-to-stuff here. I have the mango-nitro fizz with boba, of course. And then, David, what do you have? I have a coffee lemon fizz on the bottom. In Japan, all over Asia, they do really wacky stuff with coffee. They'll infuse it with nitrogen, grapefruit, all types of stuff. I'll pop up some photos, but this is just like step 101 to Asian coffee. Will this be big in America? Can citrus coffee be big in America? You let me know in the comments down below. Guys, man, this is good. I like it, but they said it's very difficult for people to understand from the Western market what this is. This is pretty good. It's fizzy. It's mango-y. I have no complaints about the boba. I think they have very high-quality stuff here. So, you know, if you're around NYU, definitely check it out. This is it, though. This is it. Andrew, this takes me back. Beijing or Shanghai? Shuangjing Starbucks. Right next to Doe Shanghai on 88 Tong Ruan Lu, and it tastes just like this. This is pretty good, guys. Definitely get this. This is a drink that is really only popular in Asia. It's not that big in America yet, but it might get bigger. And our next brand-new Asian concert in New York City actually brings something from Midtown more than K-town 32nd, 33rd to the LES. Presenting chicken here in the LES, and they got boneless white meat Korean fried chicken. Now, this is different than obviously your bonchons, where they'll have the bone and everything. It'll be twice fried. I think it's still cooked in the Korean style, but they have a lot of different types of flavors here. I feel like we're getting to a point now in the Korean fried chicken game in America where you got different styles. Yeah, and I think that maybe Koreans just doing fried chicken is such a ubiquitous idea. They don't have to make it the KFC style. Yo, look, they have a tornado. But see, that's not what you think, because you have a dirty mind. It's actually a potato tornado. The rice bubble. I don't even know what that is. I'm getting it. We are going to find out chicken-new Asian concert in New York City. Okay, here we have the garlic-holic chicken. What do we have in here? Based on sweet soy sauce inside, and then some green pepper and red pepper. It's extremely spicy. Oh, it's very spicy. Okay, and is this dark meat or white meat? Dark meat. Oh, I'm excited. Yeah, we use fresh chicken thigh. Yes, chicken thigh. Oh, say no more. I thought it was white meat at first. Say no more. Thank you. Bursting with flavor.  These are the rice bubbles. Yo, honestly, chicken is good. I'm going to go ahead and give that chicken like a five out of five. Chicken is good, man. It does actually taste like some Chinese dishes I've had before with the soy sauce and the garlic and the spices. For me, I love it. Here we got the sausage and rice bubble, aka sausage with the bokeh fried. Ooh, lathered in sauce. Reminds me a little smoky length.  Listen, guys. I think it was only a matter of time before the LES, which is obviously a heavily Chinese neighborhood, got more Korean restaurants because, you know, I think a lot of Chinese consumers really like Korean, South Korean soul street food products. I'm just glad to see that spots are opening up with good quality. Hopefully people will find out about this spot and will like to come here because I can tell you this between the chicken and the fresh fruit smoothies, the spot is pretty good. Check out chicken. All right, you guys, we're at Steam. This is a Shanghainese restaurant in Grimwich Village, owned by a guy from Hong Kong. This is called Xiangtang Jian Feng Guo. This is a brand new dish. This is essentially a mix between a empanada, a fried jiaozi pot sticker, and literally a roast beef dip. But, you know, this is the Xiangtang, so let's get into this. Honestly, it's almost like the mixture between a one-ton and an egg roll inside of a fried empanada from, like, Colombia or maybe Venezuela. So, man, with the dip, I'm telling you, this is something that I can see non-Asians liking in particular. It's good, though. All right, you guys, we are looking at a beef xiaomai, xiaomais, xiaomais in Cantonese, typically, our pork, pork and shrimp. This one's beef, you know, for those who do not dig on swine. It looks almost like a aoyoyun, which is just a beef ball with some cilantro inside of a wrap. You know, it goes to show you at a brand new restaurant like Steam, they still can be inventive, and I honestly think this is a little bit less inventive because it's actually a mixture between xiaomai and just a beef ball, but this right here with the dip, this is something new that I think non-Asians are actually really, really going to like. This is like a mixture between a guo te and an empanada. It could be a guo tinada. All right, you guys, our next Asian concept, Andrew, is actually not Asian-owned. It's a broth spot that was really trendy a while ago, but they sort of expanded into more like solid foods, and they actually got a couple Asian flavors on the menu. Here we have the Thai curry with added chicken, and then you have the classic chicken or rice, but added kimchi. Now, kimchi is an option here.  This is really interesting, Andrew, because they gave me an immunity ginger miso soup on the side, and I'm not going to lie that kimchi add-on for $3. They gave me, like, three pieces. Yeah, that was expensive. That's some high-quality kimchi, though. That is the most expensive kimchi add-on I've ever paid for ever. Bring bone kimchi. All right, go check it out. And actually, these salads, they remind me of the salads you get with Japanese teriyaki. All right, I'm interested to try this Thai chicken curry. It has, like, guac and everything on it. This is interesting because they call this chicken or rice. It was influenced, I believe, by the Mediterranean Middle Eastern style but they mix it with Asian. Aren't you guys, the mainstream broth spots doing Asian flavors? It does taste like one of those, like, commercialized, office Asian spots, but the broth tastes Asian, the salad tastes Asian. The chicken and rice actually tastes like a 50-50 mix between the Middle Eastern style and a Korean bowl. What they do really well here, it's just making everything kind of taste like you can mix it together, and I think that's what's always interesting about bowl spots. So I'm going to say, guys, Thai curry bowl, there's nothing wrong with it. I like it. I got to try yours, but overall, I give this, like, a solid score. And yeah, the Thai curry, I mean, it definitely tastes like Thai curry. It's somewhat authentic. So I'm not going to lie, Andrew, both of these bowls were about $20 each. There's not a lot of food, but I'll tell you this. It was pretty interesting being in there. I saw a bunch of people that I've never, ever run into before. So, you know, you never know who you're going to meet at the bone broth spots. The quality's there, though. I mean, I think the way that they incorporated the curry and the level that the curry and the kimchi are fairly authentic, even though maybe it doesn't mix perfectly well, I got to give them some credit. But man, 20 bucks is a lot. You guys are looking at a $10 Ube matcha macadamia nut latte here from Cha Cha Matcha. $10. You know, this spot is owned by the children or I believe the heirs to the Hard Rock Cafe Fortune.  I just think that, you know, they saw something that they liked and they had the money to do it. But I thought they did a good job. All in all, I would say that this does taste a little bit commercialized, but clearly it is a great way to introduce the market. Hopefully they'll get into more of the authentic Uji ceremonial matcha stuff, but I don't know.


QuickBooks Desktop 2023 Statement Charges Let's do it within 2-its, QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files, and more, like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all of the content on it. Here we are in our QuickBooks Desktop Sample Rock Castle Construction Practice File provided by QuickBooks. We're going through the setup process we do every time, maximizing the home page, going to the view drop-down open windows list on the left-hand side, reports drop-down company and financial looking at that P&L profit loss income statement tab 010124 to 123124 the date range January through December 2024 and then we're going to customize the report or IM fonts and numbers so I can change the font size up to 12, okay, yes please, okay. Opening up another report, one more report, company and financial, this is going to be the balance sheet standard date range or change in the date 123124 the one date customized in that report so we can change the fonts and the numbers to 12, okay, yes please, okay. So this is the setup process we do every time back to the home page, we've been focusing in on the customer cycle, which could also be thought of as a sales cycle, the revenue cycle, the accounts receivable cycle where at the end of the day we're hoping to have an increase to our checking account typically from goods and services we provide to the customer. Now we're going to consider this alternative arrow chart you can see down here that it goes up to the receive payments and then the deposit so most of the time when we're billing a customer we're going to be creating an invoice that's what will be done for most types of businesses but it's possible that you want to create a charge possibly some kind of recurring charge without the creation of an invoice to do that we could go into the statement charges so for example possibly we have just a recurring charge that we don't want to create an invoice for and we want to put it directly into this item here which looks kind of like a register you also might get here we can close this back out by going to the customer center which you could go to here or you can go to the customer drop down customer center and if I choose an individual customer let's say this customer here and I want to look at that detail I can go to the more options down below and I can look at the statement charges down here which once again will give me that that information in this format a register type of format I can close this back out let's choose one that has a bit more activity going on let's hit the drop down and say I want to see customers with open balances and pick one this one's got a little bit more stuff let's pick let's pick this one and then let's go to the manage transactions let's go to the statement charges and then we can enter something directly into this format let's do it once again in the in the next year so it'll kind of stand out so I'm going to make this as of 03 this time 1525 because the last year that we've been working in in this sample file was 2024 and then you can enter the data in here so we've got the item we could still add an item let's just add another item this would be similar to entering something on an invoice I'm going to just make it a service item I'm just going to call it item three to make it easy item three I forgot the three I just called it item and so then we'll just call it item three and let's say it was for $500 we're not going to have any tax applied to it let's make it just $50 no tax applied to it so I'm going to say none and then the account I'm just going to take it to let's take it to another account let's call it monthly let's just call it fees income or something like that I'm going to set it up I'm just going to call it an income account there it is okay okay so there we have it tab tab so there's the item I'm not going to put a class that's going to be a specialized area you might not have classes on your file unless you turn the classes on and then if I say okay let's record it so there we have it closing this back out if I look at the detail in this format now we've got this statement charge there's the statement charge of the $50 if I double click on it goes directly to the register if I then go to the reports and I take a look at this from a report format on the balance sheet we now have the accounts receivable going up with the statement charges let's change the dates on this thing hold on this is as of 123125 let's go into the receivables here change the first state 010125 okay and so there's the statement charge $50 double clicking takes me to like that register format closing this back out the other side going to the income statement income statement left hand side we're going to say this is as of 010125 this time to 123125 and now we've got that fees income so we took it there directly so there it is so that looks correct and then if I look at the sub ledger report which is similar to what we saw in the customer center reports drop down and we go into the sub ledger for the accounts receivables which is customers and receivables and we look at the customer balance detail then we have that particular customer I don't know which customer it was which was $50 it was the customer of Birch Birch Birch so we've got down here Birch there it is there's the $50 right here okay and then the point is that the point at the total of this 93.5793 ties out to closing this out the balance sheet the 93.5793 and then you can carry this through as you normally would go into the home page the next step we're going to bring this up to receiving the payment which would be a similar process as going from the invoice to the receive payment which you can click on here type in the customer so we could say let's go in here and say we have Birch and so there it is and it pulls in just like an invoice would and we could check off that item we're going to put this into undeposited funds in a similar way as with the invoice so I'm going to say all right let's save that I have the save button because I've expanded the size of this thing so I'm just going to X and then say save that way should have a save and close button at the bottom and then we're going to go back to the balance sheet and we're going to say double clicking on the accounts receivable 010125 so now we've got the $50 for the accounts receivable I put the wrong date on it didn't I so let's go back on over to the home page and let's go to the receive payment I'm going to go back back there it is I'd like to change the date to 01 what I say 03 let's say 20 025 let's do that close it save it and then go back to the balance sheet double click on the accounts receivable 010125 so there it is going in and out like we would expect it to be doing that's also going to happen on the sub ledger and the customer center which will support that so here's the statement charge and the payment if I go down here and I look at the statement charges in this format so now you could see those those two going in and out in like a register type of format closing this back out the last step would be that we might receive the payment if I go back to the balance sheet just in a similar to the home page in a similar fashion here we can go to receive payments and then say we're going to take that $50 and receive the payment and say okay and it's going to go into the checking account let's make this as of 03 2025 it's going to come out of undeposited funds and go into the checking account here saving it and closing it and then going over to the balance sheet and we can then see in the checking account date range 01 0125 to 1231 there's the $50 going into the checking account and it's going to come out of the undeposited funds account 01 0125 coming out of the undeposited funds closing that back out so to me I think most people if I go back to the home page will generally use you know an invoice instead of a statement charge but maybe in some cases if you've got like a reoccurring charge or something like that you don't want to create an invoice and just want to go right to a statement then you can you could use that format and you can see again that it goes into kind of like a register type of format here


Good morning. Thank you for coming early in the morning and gave up your sleep to listen to me. I hope you'll find it useful and ours. I have been doing research in temporal databases since 1985. That's when my first article appeared in ACM-SIGMAT management of data conference. In those days, temporality was an academic curiosity and it is really interesting and somewhat gratifying for me to see that temporality is moving in the mainstream of information technology. That's really an exciting development. Actually, my talk will be somewhat cursory without going into details. I'll touch on many topics from basic concepts to modeling temporal data, temporal operations, temporal cura languages, expressive power of temporal data models, integrity constraints, and designing temporal databases. Of course, that would be half a day or a day-long presentation. I'll briefly touch on them. Feel free to interrupt me at any time to ask your questions or to make your comments. And also, this is a very conceptual presentation, unlike the other postgres presentations. So I promise you that you'll not see a single line of postgres code. Well, why do we need temporal databases? Here you see various cases that I have cut and pasted from an IBM website that introduces temporal databases. Like in an internal audit, you need to see the transactions in the last five years. Or pending laws requires that in a hospital, the patient treatment before another treatment started. So they all involve temporality. A client files a claim to insurance company and the claim needs to be processed according to the policy specifications that were valid when the incident occurred. And that certainly requires temporality. And here are some other cases, and I don't really need to go over them to convert you. I guess you all see the need. Here are some transactions that involve OLTP as well as OLAP. And of course, typically in a database environment, the database is geared to OLTP. But of course, OLAP functionality is also highly desirable. It is more desirable than in the past today. Well, what is temporal data? Actually, our intuition tells us that the data is something current. However, if we scratch it a little, the data really has a temporal dimension. The data has a temporal context. And nowadays, of course, big data is the hot topic. And what fuels big data is high volume, high velocity, and high variety. When we add temporal dimension to the data, then it becomes long data, as suggested by Samuel Eddinson. So truly, long data is feasible today. We can store, retrieve, and massage it. What are the characteristics of time and data? Clearly, it is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. And in today's technology, we have the capacity to capture, store, and process it. And definitely, it is essential for every aspect of human decision making, regardless of whether it is economic or industrial activity. From prediction to analysis, strategy, accountability, etc. Well, how do I see time? Actually, you can visualize time in different ways. And I will propose you a simple visualization. Time starts at relative origin, let's say zero. And it progresses as the clock ticks. And the current time is represented as now. We can use the calendars values as you see on the second line. Or we can use integers, zero, one, two, etc. Because the calendar times nicely maps to integers. And of course, time granularities, we are well versed in them. And the conversion from one time granularity to another time granularity is very well explored. Now, how we visualize time and data generation? Here is a simple example, as you see. At the top, you see the timeline. And to make things a little abstract, I don't know why I did it. Instead of using zeros and ones, I used time, instant zero, time, instant one. That doesn't really matter. And events take place as the clock ticks. As you see, event E1 took place at time point two. And event E3 took place at time instant E5. Now, events generate data, and we're able to capture that data. In capturing the data, we have to connect the data values with the relevant time. Here are three choices available. Our intuition tells us that the events occur at time instances, like the first one here at T2, event E1 took place. And at T5, event two took place. So as an example, for instance, let's say an employee started working at 1.2014 in the toy department. Of course, this is very intuitive. However, for capturing the temporal reality, it is incomplete. And a better solution is using time intervals that are designated by a lower and an upper bound. And if you look at the example, the toy department, actually the employee in the toy department, worked from 1.2013 to 5.2014. And of course, this is a very compact and complete representation. Still another possibility is using temporal elements that was introduced by Shashi Gadia, a prominent researcher in temporal databases. And here, a temporal element, as you see at the bottom line, is nothing but a union of maximal intervals, designating the time of event. What are the data types that we are dealing in a temporal database? Actually, in reality, we can identify three types of data. The first one is stepwise constant. That is, an example is a salary. The salary value is valid for a certain period of time. And the changes are abrupt and stepwise. Still another type of data is like sales that are valid at a time instance. A third type is analog continuous data like the voice. So in a temporal database, we have to deal with all of them. Now, when we consider temporal data, I will use the relational data model as a presentation medium. Typically what you see at the front is a simple table, employee name and salary, right? And the current snapshot is within the circle as you see it. And behind the current snapshot, there are the past values. So as you see, there is a third dimension. So that is how the reality evolves. Actually, we typically see it as snapshots occurring one after another at the clock ticks. In any temporal data modeling, the challenge is how we represent this three-dimensional structure, whether it is an object-oriented database, a relational database, entity relationship, whatever data model you are using. So the time you see here is actually called valid time that shows the validity period of the values. There are other names for that, like business time, logical time. For instance, in IBM DB2, it's called business time. Even effective time, if I remember correctly, is used. Now let's look at the evolution of the data over time. Now 1114, this is the three-dimensional structure we have. Now let's look at a transaction that happens at 6114. N got a promotion, the salary moves from 12k to 13k. And Tom got a promotion, the salary is from 15k to 16k. And as you see, they are the current values. And if I have drawn my diagram correctly, the previous values should be behind those values, right? But I was not that prudent in drawing the picture or the diagram. Now let's continue with as the clock ticks. And now there is a correction at 9114. The correction says N salary was not 14k, but it was 14k, but not 13k. And similarly, Tom's salary was 17k, but not 16k. And as you see at the current snapshot, it is shown. What we see actually in the database is a correct and complete history. Now if you ask a question as of let's say 10114 about the salary of N and Tom, you'll get this. This is the correct answer. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. You'll get this. is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is


There are some people you should never socialize with, be within a social setting on your own because when you're on your own with them it's only then that they feel safe to start pouring out this negativity or toxicity or divisiveness or gossip and they wouldn't dream of doing that when others are present in the room with you. There may not be a bad person to be around per se but you know the bad version of them tips out when they have you on their own. So to keep them in your world and to survive them as it were relationally, to manage them relationally, only ever be with them with other people. And you have this marine's motto between you, non-left behind. We arrive together at the house and we leave together from the house, none of us are left on our own to be cornered by them. Who do you have in your world that you need to make that decision about, use that wisdom about, never be with them on your own and then it's a manageable person in your life. I learned this the hard way, trust me.