Good evening, I'm Pravelo Salazar, Director of the San Antonio Public Library. We have all the library staff, and to all of you, a very warm welcome to the earth and the library. This is a specialty meeting for all of us in the San Antonio Public Library, which is honored to be part of this event. San Antonio, as the city, is very fortunate to have so much talent in many areas. In the literary world, we have lots of talent. And so, when I reflect on San Antonio, but we have to offer as a city, we feel strong in the literary field that one cannot help but be proud of all the accomplishments of our drivers over here. And all of us are contributing to the literary world. So I feel very proud, and I'm very proud that we're part of the game of this event. Before I proceed with the introduction of our special guest, I would like to recognize some of our special guests for a year today. I'm going to start with our Chair of the Library, Port of Custodians, Jean Grady. Dan Nicholas, Board Member of Districts Representative District Kid, who is also here. I'd like to recognize Patty Ray, former Councilwoman for District 5, and now Member of the School Board of San Antonio National School District. Thank you for being here. Tracy Bennett, President and CEO of the San Antonio Public Library Commodation. Tracy, thank you for your support and for hosting this reception. I also want to recognize Jordan Bexler, who is the Chair of the Library Commodation Latino Leadership for the Library Committee. And speaking of this particular committee, I would like to recognize Dr. Alan Clark, who is the outgoing Chair of this very important committee. Welcome. I also want to recognize Katie Clayo, who is the Director of the San Antonio Public Festival, and she and her committee are working very hard to bring to San Antonio in April another fabulous Boat Festival here to the Central Libraries. I'd like to thank her for her efforts. Linda Harper, former First Lady, is also in the audience. And finally, a very dear friend, very someone that's very special to San Antonio is Carmen Tapoya, forward author, provider, and City of San Antonio forward, Gloria. We're so proud of you, so happy to be here. And my colleague, Felix Padron, who also contributed to this event, and without his help and the help of his staff, we couldn't make this event possible. So thank you, Felix. Thank you for being here also. One of the few individuals that got together, got excited from our staff, and he asked one of the first champions to really do something to recognize. I'm not going to introduce the special guest because someone else will be introduced. But there was a lot of excitement, a lot of passion bring together this forum. And obviously, by the very large attendance, we all feel very passionate about our guest of honor today. So at this time, I'd like to introduce Naomi Shihab Nye, who's the author of many books. She has been recognized, received many awards. She was also very dear to San Antonio, and is one of those talents that I referred to. Again, we're so fortunate to have her. She's also been a huge supporter of the San Antonio Public Library. I supported the Young Pegasus Youth Poetry Competition. Not only as a judge, but also as an advocate. So we're very fortunate to have Naomi be part of this program, and she will introduce our guest of honor, Naomi. Good evening. So wonderful to see you all here. Thank you for coming out. It's a very special day. I realized it may seem indulgent to read a poem of one's own when introducing another poet. But I have to. Please forgive me. This poem was written 33 years ago. It's called For Rose on Magnolia Street. You ask me to take off my shoes, and it is correct somehow, this stripping down in your presence. Do you recognize in me a bone, a window, a bell? You are translating a child's poem about the color gray. I float through your rooms, peeking at titles, fingering the laces you drape from your walls. The first place I visited you, a tree grew out of your bedroom, pulled up in the ceiling. Today there are plants in your bathtub. Their leaves are thick and damp. I want to plant myself beside you and soak up some of your light. When the street lamps cross their hands, when the uncles shuffle home from the market, murmuring of weather and goats, you lean into a delicate shawl. The letters people write you begin blowing in your baskets.  Soon you will tell us the secret behind our grandmother's soft hair. Well, she did, and she has told us so many things in so many ways and places. Her voice of humane and dignified curiosity, it says in the author's note for her exquisite new chapbook, begin here. Her deeply rooted interest in classical myths, folklore, family stories, and the history of both cultures that made her have been immense consolation and fortification in the lives of all of us. Thank you, Texas State Goethe Committee for recognizing her magnificence and naming her Texas poet laureate was a great act of wisdom on their parts. We are extremely lucky here in San Antonio to have not only our wonderful Carmen Tefuea as our city poet laureate and look at the other Texas cities jumping on our bandwagon to do the same and name their own. But Rose, as the first Latina, excuse me, how could this be? Ever named to the post, Niva Rose, opened a library for hosting this reading and to the Library Foundation and to Wing's Press for republishing her prize-winning again for the first time in the book, if you do not have it, get it if you have an old one and a new one and this beautiful new chat book. Thanks to Beck Whitehead and Leo B. and School by the Library Press, Southwest School of Art for creating such a glorious edition. We are always, always beginning here and again. Rose's poems teach us this. Romero for Bonanzi, who's here tonight, wrote a marvelous review of her work recently for the San Antonio Express News. And thank you, Steve Bennett, for including this poetry review in the paper. He described Rose's poems as having narrative ferment chiseled in long, elegantly looping learnings. He speaks of her affection for the Latin motif and also I think of this in her work as a kind of view or counterpoint attention. I love The Labyrinth by Lawn of Shoots, the cover of the book. I've always loved Rose's poems, Swallow Wings, which begins, I've been to church books. I'm an east side Mesken Greek and the ways she weaves together multiple mysteries, a flying oak and closed memories and silences, radiating possibilities, himming and stitching, diligently, decisively, patiently. Her poems sound read ring like no one else's. Their long lines linger in a reader's mind frequently popping up in memory just when you need them. This is a gift. She is richly original. Rose has never been a jitterbug slapdash look at me kind of brush. She has been the held note the long loving process. The way we all revive in radio. She has indeed shown warm light on our grandmother's soft hair and honored it, honoring all deep time in radiant understanding. She has encouraged the growing wellspring of children's voices, abiding in our streets and yards and schools and the voices of community writers, even those in juvenile detention, even those who have never been listened to before. She has fought on many fronts for increased literacy as she knows there is nothing more important. She has changed lives everywhere she goes. I know this firsthand because, oddly, people have often mistaken us for one another and given me there you changed my life testimonials. And they said, thank you, Rose. At various times, we need more braids but otherwise we find this somewhat weird. Rose could tell stories about all the work she's done as a Balliant Arts Administrator, a job she worked locally for many years for Gemini Inc. And in California for San Francisco's Poetry Center, where she was a staggers fellow and did all kinds of amazing work. She loved us for that while, but thank goodness she came back. Tonight, this magical night, she will bless us with her poems. Thank you, Bea, for this wonderful rose from your garden. Please welcome our homegirl, the Shining Rose of Poetry for all of the state of Texas. I need to go home. Thank you, Naomi. Thank all of you. Thank the library. Thank you to the Foundation. Thank you, DCCD. Everybody who works so hard to do this wonderful event is so, so deep in your reach. And so does my mom, me. I want you to dedicate this reading to her this evening. My mom is nine years old and she will tell you that whenever you ask her again even if you don't. I'd like to begin with a poem by the other son, Lorne Lariat. She was Lariat from 1947 to 1949 and that was many of you may have known her, Allie B. Carter. Paul Carter's grandmother. And she was, you may also know, she was the wonderful lady who lived in the house with the observatory on the auditorium circle.  So I want to read a poem of hers called Blue Reach of Space. Give me the blue reach of spaces that stretch to the rim of the sky and the far amber plain that traces the shadow where eagles fly. There is music in the lives of the bunnies and hymns where the hills are long and the wild burbunas are sunnets in the land of the cactus prong. Give me the blue reach of spaces where the winds are gluiting by where the earth looks up and faces the light of a boundless sky. If you can find this book it's a wonderful book. John Ligo edited the book together from a number of Miss Ellen's previous books. It's a wonderful book. It's called Now, Not Between. I'd also like to especially thank Vicky Anish of the library and Frank DeLong of DCCB. Either one of them could be here tonight but very hard on this one. Thank them very very much. I'm so sad that they're not here. I'm going to read a little bit from again for the first time but first I'd like to part the recognition of Miss Ellen's long-standing commitment to working for peace that she did for many many years and also because it's the way I'm pleased to open the names of women I think it is a prayer for peace. It's a poem of Takama Kamada Lee. It's translated by Peter Cole, Eliah Lajazi and Gabriel Levin and it's called Revenge. It's the kind of revenge we should all pray for. At times I wish I could meet in a duel with the man my father and raised our home expelling me into a narrow country and if he killed me I'd rest at last and if I were ready I would take my revenge but if it came to light when my rival appeared that he had a mother waiting for him or a father who put his right hand over the heart's place in his chest or his son was late even by just a quarter for me to make sense then I would not kill him even if I could. Likewise, I would not murder him if it were soon made clear that he had a brother or sisters who loved him and he constantly longed to see him or if he had a wife to greet him and children who couldn't bear his absence and whom his gifts were thrilled or if he had friends or companions neighbor to you or highlight from prison or hospital room or classmates from his school asking about him sending him regards but if he turned out to be on his own cut off like a branch from a tree without a mother or father neither sister nor brother wifeless without child without kin or neighbors or friends colleagues or companions then I would not add a thing to his pain within that alumnus not the torment of death and not the sorrow of passing away instead I would intend to abort him who I'd hasten by on the street as I'd convinced myself that paying him no attention in itself was a kind of revenge What's the Palestinian color for how valuable you should be looking at these? Very, very beautiful. I'd like to read a couple of things as I say from again from the first time some of these I haven't read it's a long time it's kind of a new experience to go back to them this is a poem called there has to be something more than everything and it has an epigraph from the blogger Mabachov oh everywhere all around the trees are Harlequin's words are Harlequin's so are situations and sums put two things together jokes, images and you get a triple Harlequin come on, play invent the world invent reality but there are things that have been torn away from office and we need to connect the shadows the pain as it goes along the soul and faded fragments we need to put as many old pieces as we can together to make something else in retirement as many times as we have to as long as it takes there is for instance this morning I've been running from for years my life floating off to Mexico sure that time was in abundant supply and leaving out me showing the nurses how to find the veins in his arms showing them access to the bloodstream the way only a junkie could know it leaving him with a splendid view of the Texas hill country and his own short live certainty of Harlequin's and most of his heart that would soon fall apart trust open to a series of blips scattered across a hospital a dream screen leaving him knowing which words are the last and how they should be spoken the story of death is infinite in its variety but the end is always the same this time it comes with the impersonal scratching a long distance line someone saying sit down and listen how he's gone I clutch the edge of a hard bed in a hot hotel room in an ancient country where there is nothing at this moment except a senseless dead-end present no past no future downstairs in the courtyard a woman with a face older than the first sign forgets and shifts corn into cakes intended only for the living the jaguar leaves his temple stone and godhood behind and lets his claws and teeth go soft with mortality the orchid suspends its sweetness high in the canopy as if there will be no tomorrow as if yesterday the young bride had not fixed love into her hair to that come this far to see time snag and heavy around my closest cousins still warm body to that come this far to watch him finally drain away in that slow motion torrent he had always claimed as his own rhythm today is six years to the day he was buried I know because Albert just called to tell me that he's a little bit drunk and that he's hooked up a batch of chicken pre-drilled and why don't I come a little over and the damned calendar never folds its hands and legs like the rest of us and yesterday was Father's Day this year is even a mere black mark precisely sitting apart in the hours between the sunday and its first-born ride and the fuel on Monday and we talked about growing old and how the body begins to falter and about the new camera that sleeps too comfortably and when not in use can fold down to only six inches on top of the car and about taking Uber and Sister Junior to their hometown in the battle to visit the gold pond and about how electrical engineers have impatiently taken over the function of real watchmakers without having an inkling of how to order the true message of time and about the sons who are left and suddenly there is something more than everything everywhere all around in the mundane inventions living and grieving in a way we are somehow bound together by this thing called family that each of us celebrates so differently but sometimes not so differently after all just one stop on the way to pick up a loaf of French bread to go with the chicken My friend and I we forget for the first time and this is from the Greeks so there could be silence this is a piece that's spoken in the voice of Odysseus it's pretty much hubris to write an agenda other than one's own but certainly to decide that one is Odysseus when female is how Texas is interested but anyway this is Odysseus he's speaking it's called Odysseus comes up with an alloy cure for time the epigraph is from Niko's cousin Zaki's his eyes dilate like a gold cap spread down his belly then swiftly sleep though motionless through the sky's dome and spy on the whole bastard world generations and more generations each one leaving its shadow on the next no wonder you've slowed down content to barely shuffle along you have scarcely a thought of flying except when I wrote your subject I know what you will say that it was easier in my day true, the shades haven't mattered quite so deeply most citizens still stepped fairly lightly under their loads and the goodly number among us flew with ease hardly making a mark on the air and yes, we flyers were the heroes nobody out about that but I keep telling you we work hard for it anyone who aspired to be lighter than air faced the prospect of everything from sirens to being turned into a dog for this trouble still needed gracefully willingly not like now it is when you have people contenting themselves with this or that fragment of memory a snippet of myth leaving the real adventures up to a bunch of musky old books hardly anyone reads anymore but wait don't go I really have to come here just to shame you the point is I think we can do something about all this come closer take off your dress let me touch you here and here no no pull away let them laugh let them make up their ugly stories about the dirty old wanderer who was once a hero and the crazy woman trying to throw off her blanket of shadows let them say we can't couple with time we can I tell you that we take closer to one another is one more hope for all of us there's some danger of course the world's clocks and calendars are scattered with the blood of worthy lovers but look what we stand to gain the chance to make all these paths we reach across tremble and explode with muteness the chance to pitch stars into the heart of everything the exclusive chance that you join me flying and become the mother of another first child one who will begin again one we will have made to tumble out of a way worried only one shadow her own let's say that this wonderful chapel that the original artwork of Baloch's original stituary is on view in the reception room so that you can see it and see in incredibly tiny stitches this woman was able to make very frightened very frightened this is called memory in the making a poet is dedicated to Mora de Segandes remember the tale where the maiden lets down her long charged deer for the lover he's climbed to her tower hanging by open credits by the very roots of her dreams this is not that story which even then was vague about who if anyone was stated no, we are just past what some call without ironing the American century at my university students who own beavers provide bikes into the fields for earth sciences while brown men from another country buy to other fields for food the students remember this the brown men that they are not the same I say this as plain fact though many hope sincerity has been cheapened for the next age a little girl called Shelly leaps on her way to the school bus she wears jellies cheap plastic copies of a Greek fisherman's hat sandal she spoke Spanish before English her Salvadoran lago her parents at work pink keys purple p-janes clanked against her boy's backpack she did not dream last night Tuesday she watches a family of lizards creeping around the leech trunk of a dead redwood climbs leech bones in the wedgerid ola of the sky I can't see children these days without asking what the old member of all this am I Shelly's Miss Francis strange neighbor woman who dressed me in shawls and sang sadly in German whose husband it was told went up in flames on the Hindenburg how do we know what will touch a child mark her forever remember the girls in their pale sun dresses remember the women they became and then there's the memory locked in the cells in the blood certainly potatoes are a kind of faith to the Irish also recall Poland someone's grandfather escaping under his mother's skirts this cliché all that's left of being Polish Jewish poor even so the moment still somewhere in the bone potato stubble smoke strong smell of a woman's skirts becoming cattle gazing at grandmother what did she know and how did she learn it and now we're everywhere and nowhere video phones internet no borders in the air fresh blood on the ground how to dance where does memory go in all this to work we wear we wear the black velvet hat that came with the dream loosen our tongues with the fire of roasted cheetahs the Greek women have slowly danced off the cliff of their village to keep out of the hands of the terrorists and here we are on the purple live of the unknown telling and telling and there's no such thing as going to near the sun each time and each time the first just past the close of the American century the child's plastic keys ran down the street and I wrote for for more than ever quite some time ago and as many of you may know Maury took over people's hearts and he would just walk into your yard and find things and well you just wouldn't know it unless you caught him after beating around would you and so he did that in our yard we were to go out for a couple of years now he planted poppies and it caused this homeland it's called a partial history of poppies for more than ever you plant a border of poppies in my yard visit on chilly mornings to keep vigil clutter that we all must do something for this world and I remember the red ones were sacred to Ceres when she was still called to meet her and would not give the world that its corn color the warm air that sprouts seeds until her child should come back alive from death trickster food over and over again she found her Stephanie without memory among the shadows barred with Hades for the months that hadn't been swallowed with his dark kernels this is how he got spring the glory that has left her life in the face of death the recurring poppies our faith in resurrection even though the vital tells of seeds that fall on stone and so will not grow even so each spring all freeze to the harshest island where's an adamant veil of poppies one bloom it is told for every drop of blood in her shed in war think of it that Troy wasn't the beginning or Hitler even close to the end that poppies contradict raising stubborn little fists all over the world yellow and Iceland white in Asia Latin America the Middle East ground in Africa everywhere the famous red that finally all blood is the same color if memory serves on Koli mastery it's not yet spring and there are poppies sleeping in rusty coffee cans the old woman who dampens the seeds each morning is not the grandmother of the 6 year old who won't speak since her insides were raped to shreds are her mother's junkie orphan he's another version of ourselves and the old woman the leap of the heart and I that imagines her to be the grandmother who might yet save the child these two are versions of the poppy of Demeter and Wadalupe and the choice among versions remains ours like the borders where we either meet where we either meet or come apart like everything we do to keep from falling on the stone I'm not like Wadalupe here and when I began my professional career as a journalist there's many, many words about and one of the things that I loved to do and still love to do is find albums of great stories and take down their stories as found poems and it's not my fault that some of those overs are in bars I mean that's my bad so you may remember that before Earl started revitalizing all around that area there was a bar on the left-hand side of the street coming in right around where Earl is and it was called I-Lower and they keep on saying this I-Lower but it was there and it was called the I-Lower and I pretty much took this down verbatim from Earl who ran the I-Lower it's called Pearl at the I-Lower on Broadway in 1975 named this place to fund the Devil that old stuff that I had in the hands of the Devil's work and some close calls in here but never nobody killed mostly just hard work and jokes getting a little tension on when I'm having trouble I could just pick the guy up on one of them stools and pitch him out Jake my first man in me opened up here and he worried that somebody delicate as me looks little of a thing should be in this line of work you know and the guys here know it Nick in this place was a joke a good one I've been telling them for years you got it in this business light and upload some for these boys used to there was more business that was still remainin' the street we stood right out on that sidewalk once me and my Jake had watched Teddy Roosevelt and their rough riders on great downtown Fort Smith a lot of them boys come in here some boys always have still if you come in you're still in one of them discos soldiers have come back in here years later back on a visit and I'd call their name even if they'd lost some here and put on some fat amazing what you've done my name ain't been pearl they call me that after the bird began in the street it's alive and I'm going to read one more and again in the manuscript um Henry Cruz he's one of my favorite poets one of my masters has a book which is truly called Tell Me Again How the White Hair and Rises and Plies Across the That Twilight Toward the Distant Islands and in this book he has a poem called Up Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets and he writes to the Classical Chinese Poets as his master so I have taken a leave from that and have written to Hayden as my master and the poem carries an epigraph from his poem when everything happens at once no conflicts occur letter to the master on the possibilities of timing master yesterday in Chinatown my eyes kept leaving the teeming streets miles of trinkets to turn up toward the balconies floating there bright and intricate as the undersides of the sandstorms how comfortable with the thousands of years one must be to lean a wet string lock over a railing of gilded dragons how precisely faithful like it does when I stood shifting my weight in the chill listening to an old chasman doing mingas in a doorway how he said he's forgotten the names of the notes now just raised the music and up it went that music alongside dense voters of herbs and incense keeping precious time until I swear I heard huge wings beating as if from every shop and alley ancient cranes silk, jade, paper, bone were rising toward that kind of memory that promises just the right timing my friend Xi says the Chinese idiagram for tree can mean many things in time two trees take the shape of a forest simultaneous light and shadow becoming a thousand doorways all opening into the world all opening out and I'm in a library foundation and I think Rose is all the people being here tonight and look at this room so the library is all about information and poetry and just wiggling around to invite you to the idle hour next door after that first I'd like to present Rose with a look at Julie and I know when you go next door you'll see our beautiful Julie that is in commemoration at the library so now I'm sweet so thank you Miss Rose I want to thank everyone for coming and please go next door and enjoy thank you when you were over in Europe did you ever do any speaking as speakers former in Hyde Park actually I wasn't allowed into England I didn't have enough money did you have to have a certain amount of money or do you have a lot of training in England now I didn't have that do you do much grind for if you're mostly on grind mostly on grind do you do a lot of internal grind oh ok are you aware of how it's basically as a margin to set up you're down down here which is why four days out of the week usually nothing's going on yeah well check out some of the license fees to set up any class that I was lucky enough to set up you need to jump to campus with your drone papers drone papers we're going to adjourn bye


Well, I stand before you as a tenured faculty at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, convinced of actually, it does exactly that. So I want to tell you my story. It starts in 2011. I was invited to an interdisciplinary brainstorming program at, in Boston, I spent two days working with a variety of people from a variety of different disciplines working on really wicked problems like how the heck do you get medical professionals to actually wash their hands the way they're supposed to. And before we started doing anything, the leader got us all up and we did 45 minutes of improv games, variety of games, yes stand, et cetera, but it wasn't the games that made the impact on me. It was what the leader said afterwards. He said, look, we're here to be brainstorming, to think outside the box, to come up with new ideas, to not block each other's ideas. Yes, and works radical acceptance. And radical acceptance is a required mindset for what we want to be doing right now. And it was that link that's what stuck with me, the idea that I needed to be in a particular mindset to achieve my own goals. I came back from that workshop, excited about improv, I took a bunch of improv classes, learned short form games, liked them all, loved a few. The ones I loved were the ones that I could see connections to my identity as a faculty member, where I could see the connection to building collaborations with people who are different from me, navigating the status hierarchies of academia, and we have plenty of our share of status hierarchies in academia, and being persuasive and convincing when I wanted to reach out to my students or at a conference. So as I've become interested in using improv to teach communication skills, I build this idea of game skill links into the way in which I introduce it with academic audiences. We call it, my colleagues and I at Michigan, we call this scaffolding, and this is a term that I've heard many times here already at this A&M conference, but the way in which we think about it involves pre-exercise questions that focus on motivation. What is it that the audience already cares about that we're going to be connecting to? And then post-exercise reflections that cognitively and explicitly build that link. I want to give you a couple examples. First is a game I recently published about last year in the journal Science Communication, which is an adaptation of Half-Life or a scene replay called Half-Life Your Message. It's a message prioritization exercise in which, instead of trying to cram the scene into shorter and shorter time intervals, you have the speaker talk for 60 seconds about their topic, and then immediately, without reflection, without planning, do it again in 30. And then immediately, without reflection, do it again in 15. And then when we get going, we push them to eight. Now, pre-exercise, before we have them do this, I ask them, when does it matter to have one point? The eyes go up, well, wait a second, I want to be clear about what my main point is in my grant and I want to be clear about what my main point is when I'm doing my elevator speech or when I'm trying to get the lecture clear to my students. And so that motivation gets there. And then we go through the exercise and they do this. The natural tendency of academics is to focus on, did I get the right thing? Did I say the right thing? But that's not where we go. The post-exercise reflection is focused on, what did you learn as you were doing it? And they always say things like, I learned I started in completely the wrong place. I learned that I didn't get to the point until five seconds before the end. I learned that I wasn't even talking about the thing that most matters to me. And that discovery is the takeaway from them. It's not where they ended up. It's the idea that in three minutes, literally, they could work that exercise, that mindset of message prioritization. And if they don't like where they ended up, they can do it again. Second exercise that I often use with academic audiences is instant expert, which I got exposed to through Brian Palermo's chapter in the book Connection. Now, it's not hard to convince academics that doing question and answer is a skill they need to work on, but most academics think about question and answer as being about do you know the answer, the content. I want them to be thinking about this from the standpoint of themselves as a presenter. So when I introduce instant expert, I always demo at first. And I talk about, I go through and they give me, I'm the world's expert in how birthlies cause hurricanes or whatever. And I run it for five minutes and take question and answer. And then I pause and I ask them, did I look like I was an expert? And they all go, yeah, you look great. You really knew what you were doing. And I say, you know, I don't know a single thing about this. So what did I do? What behaviors did I do? How did I move? What did I do with my voice or my body? And that's the pre-exercise question that I really want to get at. Because it shifts them out of the content space and shifts them to thinking about what are they doing when they present. Then we run the exercise in small groups. Then after each round, the conversation becomes, what did you do? Did you like what you did? What did you want to be doing? And so it becomes the shift from being an effective presenter is about being the expert. To being an effective presenter is about embodying expertise, embodying the way you want to be carrying yourself. And that often is an eye-opener for the students and for the faculty who I work with. Now, this idea of scaffolded improv is in some sense more structured than what I've seen here at this conference. It really focuses on being very explicit and cognitive about why we are doing this and what the takeaway is. But my experience is that that linkage is what they hold on to. And that's the value that they get through this process. So I don't want to take ownership of this. Obviously the idea of scaffolding improv is an idea that's been here for many years and will continue to be here. I also own a debt to my colleague Dr. Elise Auerbach who is at the University of Michigan's Office of Academic Innovation. She was a person who really worked with me from a science communication standpoint to think about how do we take this game of half-life and shape it into something that would be palatable and really exciting for an academic audience. But I leave you with this. I try as much as possible as an academic, as a scientist, trying to convince others that communication skills are an important part of what it means to be a scientist and an academic. That it's not just about the game. It's not just about the experience. With this audience at least, you have to build that link. So they then see how doing improv is the solution to the problem that they already care about. Thank you.


Like I used to love the word motivation, but then I started getting emails from people asking me, they say, I'm searching for motivation. I wake up sometimes and I just don't have it. As if like this motivational fairy comes in Sprinkle's motivational dust. And if you're lucky, you wake up and you have motivation, right? Like that's the way most people view it. But I don't think people are really searching for motivation. I think what people are searching for is drive and willpower to do something when it needs to be done. Because most of the time we're just holding our self back. The only reason why we're not as successful as we want to be is because of the fact that we're just holding our self back from being there. And so the thing about motivation is it's very fleeting. So sometimes I'll have motivation. Sometimes I won't have motivation. But if I have a goal that I strongly believe in and that I really want to get to, then if I wake up in the morning, I don't have motivation, it doesn't matter. Because I'm so driven towards my goal that I'm gonna get it done anyways. Even if I don't want to, even if I'm tired, I'll chug a cup of coffee and just do it anyways.


Hi friends, welcome back to my channel and a very special welcome. If you're new here, my name is Jen. I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I follow weight watchers and I track calories and macros. Happy Monday, it is a Monday, so it is meal prep day. I'm so excited to share these three recipes with you, muffins, cupcakes, chicken patties, pickled cucumbers. We have a lot in store for today's video.  Make sure you're subscribed and your bells turned on because I do a meal prep every Monday and I also upload five videos per week. Check out the description box down below for nutrition coaching where I offer personalized to you macros and calories. Highly recommend, this is how you make sure you're eating enough, getting in your protein and being successful with weight loss and I have one-on-one coaching for accountability and if you would like to chat with me directly. All three of today's recipes are on my recipe website which is also in the description box along with my links and discounts to my favorite things and my Facebook group, come join us there. We would love to have you. So let's head on into the kitchen for this week's meal prep. So the first thing we're going to do for meal prep is go pick a fresh lemon from my lemon tree. They're actually almost completely ripe. I mean, we're getting nice and juicy and soft. I did pick a couple and have been putting them in my water and so we need to find a really soft, juicy one for our recipe. This one is smaller but it's pretty soft so let's grab that one and then I'm going to pick one more and that way I have some fresh lemon for my water. While we're outside, I'll share with you guys a new addition to our patio. Isn't this adorable? This is from the brand tailored canvases. They have fully customizable canvas wall art.  I decided to go ahead and have one made for our patio. I think it looks really nice on the wall of our house and it matches perfectly with our patio furniture. So it says welcome to the Clayton patio established 2022 since we bought our house in 2022. They have canvases for everything, kids rooms, your entire home, living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, outside canvas for your front porch.  When I was picking out my canvas, I had so much fun looking at their website. There are endless canvases to choose from. Some of my favorites were the ones for the living room. You can put your last name when your family was established, whether you have boys, girls, both. They had things for lake houses and cabins and even gothic signs. I thought that these were absolutely adorable and then they had some really fun ones for the kitchen, especially if you love coffee or farmhouse and then I perused the gym section as well. I have to say my favorite sign in that section was the one that says you didn't die because this is legit for anybody who works out on a regular basis, but they just have so many great affordable canvas options. And again, I just think it looks really nice on our patio and I am very impressed with the quality of tailored canvases. So I will go ahead and link them down below for you guys with a discount code. And we have a little good action happening here. This one's rolling around on his back. So you're having a good time? Yeah, you're having a good time. And then these two, we got our lemons. Let's start our meal prep. For breakfast this week, I am making lemon zucchini muffins. I am so incredibly excited for this. You saw that I was able to get a fresh lemon off my tree in my backyard. That always makes me happy. I can't wait for all of them to be right. I give lemons to my neighbor, my mother-in-law. I love lemon in my water. So that is one thing in my yard that I love. So let me show you what's in the recipe. So you're going to need some all-purpose flour, some powdered sugar alternative. I always use Lakonto. They're granulated, all of their sweetener. So this is the Lakonto powdered. They are made with monk fruit and for me they taste the most like regular sugar.  You're going to need salt. I will also link my gravity-fed salt and pepper grinders. I get asked about these a lot there from Amazon, super affordable. This is the Lakonto granulated, unsweetened applesauce, a fresh lemon, vanilla extract, two eggs, a medium to large zucchini, and some baking soda and baking powder. The first thing I'm going to do is grate my zucchini and then zest my lemon. Make sure you set your lemon aside because we're going to use the juice as well. So the first thing we're going to do is put two cups of flour into a bowl, two thirds cup of Lakonto granulated, salt, about a half of a teaspoon of baking soda and one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Give that a good stir. Make sure everything is combined. We're going to add one half of a cup of unsweetened applesauce. That's our oil replacement. Two eggs, the lemon zest. Squeeze in one half of your lemon. That's going to be about a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half of lemon juice and then about a teaspoon of vanilla extract. You want to stir this just until combined. There may be some dry patches of the flour that is just fine. Definitely don't over mix. Then we're going to add in our grated zucchini. It was about a cup and a half. And then again, we're just going to stir until combined. Make sure you're not over mixing. We're going to let our batter sit for about three to five minutes. The zucchini will start to release a little bit more liquid and then we'll give it one last stir before putting it into our muffin pan. But pull out your muffin pan, spray it with some nonstick cooking spray and then we are going to go ahead and scoop out 12 muffins. I have my oven preheating to 400 degrees. We're going to bake our muffins at 400 for about 15 to 18 minutes. About 15 minutes in, we'll make up the glaze because these yummy muffins have a glaze. So for the glaze, super simple. I have half of a cup of Lakonto powdered. And then I'm going to use the other half of my lemon and squeeze in some fresh lemon juice. Now just do a little bit at a time and then stir because we want to make sure that we don't add too much liquid to the powdered sugar because again, we're trying to create that a little bit thicker glaze that we can drizzle over the muffins. So this is the perfect consistency. See how it's still a little bit thick but yet you can still drizzle it right on top. Look at how amazing these muffins look. They smell so lemony and delicious. We are going to allow them to cool completely before we glaze them. My muffins are cooled. I have my glaze and I'm just going to drizzle that right on top. Look at how incredible these look. Oh my goodness, you guys, these are bakery muffins for way less points and calories. And like I said, they smell so lemony and that zucchini is a great way to sneak in vegetables and adds a lot of moisture to the muffin. So I will go ahead and put points, calories, macros here on the screen for you.  I have been craving pickled cucumbers. You know the kind in vinegar with the red onions. My mom used to make those when I was a kid and I loved them. So I'm going to make those as a side with my chicken burger. So let me show you what's in the recipe. I have no idea why I have flour out. You do not need flour for the recipe. What you are going to need though is some fresh parsley, green onions, minced garlic, salt and pepper. You can have cayenne pepper or red pepper chili flakes if you wanna give it a little bit of a kick. I do not, so I'm going to omit those. And then of course you'll need a pound of ground chicken. And then for the cucumbers, you'll need vinegar. I like to do a mix of regular white distilled vinegar and apple cider vinegar. Any cucumber will work. I actually have pickling cucumbers that came in a produce box for my community. So I'm gonna use those up. Some dill, bay leaves and then a red onion. I'm going to start some chopping of my parsley, green onions, red onion and cucumbers. So I'm first going to make my pickled cucumbers so I can get these in a mason jar and get these in my refrigerator because I wanna have some today. So the first thing I'm going to do in a pretty good size bowl is put in my sliced up cucumbers. I did cut up that entire bag. And then I'm going to add about three cups of distilled vinegar. And also two cups of water, salt and pepper, some bay leaves. I'm going to do, I don't know, two or three bay leaves in there. Some dill, minced garlic, my sliced up red onion and a good size little scoop of green onions. And then with the fork, I'm going to mix this together really well. I want to make sure that when I put these in the fridge to start to pickle that all of the cucumbers, onions, everything is under the liquid. And I would recommend stirring or shaking up your mason jar while they're pickling. I have a feeling that I have too much here for a mason jar. So I'm actually going to just put some saran wrap on my bowl, throw it into the refrigerator. And then here in a couple of hours, I'll give it another quick mix as it's starting to pickle. But this looks so good. I'm so excited. Now let's put together the chicken burgers. I'm actually going to bake mine in the oven. You could pan fry these, air fry these, whatever your preference. So I did do one pound of the ground chicken. I'm going to add a little bit of minced garlic, salt and pepper. Our chopped up fresh parsley and our green onions. Like I always say, the easiest thing to do is to go in with your hands to mix and form the burgers. So I did spray a quarter sheet pan with some non-stick cooking spray. And I'm just going to reach in and mix everything together.  So I'm putting my four burgers into my oven at 375 degrees. I'll probably flip them midway through cooking. I just pulled out my chicken burgers. These look and smell so good. I'm going to allow them to cool for a couple of minutes. I'll package them up and I'll be back to share with you my total lunch, points, calories and macros.  I have my cucumbers pickling. I can't tell you how excited I am for lunch this week. I'm going to get in some veggies, lots and lots of protein. I'll probably add a fruit to this. But I'll go ahead and put points, calories, macros here on the screen for the pickled cucumbers. These are obviously not going to have any points. And one side note on the cucumbers, you can add a little bit of sweetener if you want to take away a little bit of the tang from the vinegar. That's optional for you. For a sweet treat, I am making a chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I mentioned in my grocery haul, I have been craving cupcakes. And this is just a healthier spin on them. But there's some ingredients that may surprise you in here, but we're going to be using some natural sweeteners and just a different way to get that fluffy, moist cupcake. So let me show you what's in the recipe. First, you're going to need flaxseed meal, protein powder of your choice. I'm using my favorite, which is ascent. This is the native fuel, micellar, casean, protein and vanilla bean. I love ascent. They have nice clean ingredients. They're affordable. I have the chocolate, the lemon, the vanilla. They're delicious. I buy them right off of Amazon. So I'll link them down below for you. You're going to need cocoa powder, frosting of your choice. You can make it homemade, but I'm going to use the zero sugar frosting from Pillsbury, canned sweet potatoes or sweet potato puree, whatever you have. Flour, again, I'm using Loconto as my granulated sweetener. Vanilla extract, baking soda, cornstarch and some fresh dates. I almost forgot. You'll need some unsweetened applesauce and some salt. So I went ahead and added five dates and my three-quarter cup of mashed up sweet potato to my magic bullet, along with a couple tablespoons of water.  You can always add more water if needed. So here is the sweet potato date mixture. Go ahead and set that aside and let's start putting together the cupcakes. So the first thing we're going to do is add half of a cup of unsweetened cocoa to a bowl and then about two thirds cup of warm water, not boiling water, but warm water and then whisk that together until all the cocoa powder is dissolved. Then we're going to add the sweet potato date mixture directly to the cocoa powder and water and then whisk that together. Now I'm going to add in some dry ingredients. So I have one third of a cup of Loconto granulated, one quarter cup of ground flax seeds, one quarter cup of cornstarch, two thirds of a cup of all-purpose flour and one third of a cup of your protein powder or in my case, this one scoop in the scent is about a third of a cup. Also going to add in some salt and a teaspoon of baking soda. Give that a mix just to incorporate the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients. And then I'm adding one teaspoon of vanilla extract and a tablespoon of unsweetened applesauce and then stir to combine. So I sprayed my muffin pan with some non-stick cooking spray and I'm going to scoop out 12 cupcakes. We're going to bake these delicious cupcakes for about 16 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. I just pulled out our cupcakes. Oh my goodness, we've got a bakery happening in my kitchen. I am going to allow these to cool completely and then we will frost them up. I am ready to frost my delicious cupcakes. So I am going to add some of the zero sugar frosting to each cupcake. I will tell you that this frosting, I did try it because I wanted to see if it had, I don't know, a weird aftertaste. It's really good. In my opinion, it tastes just like the regular frosting. Just maybe not as sweet, but still very fudgy, very chocolatey. And I'll tell you, picking up these cupcakes, they are so soft. I think it's the sweet potato puree that makes them really, really soft. But I mean, who doesn't love a frosted chocolate cupcake? I mean chocolate frosted cupcakes for the win this week. I didn't use all the frosting. There's still a decent amount left in the container. And I piled on the frosting. So I am so excited for these. Like I said, we are getting sweet treats, decadent meals this week for super low calories and points. I will go ahead and put all the information here on the screen and on my website, I will include the information without frosting. If you want to make your own or use less frosting, I'll give you the nutritional information as well as points for just the cupcakes. Thank you for joining me for another weekly meal prep. I hope you are as excited about these three recipes as I am. I can't wait to have them all week long. Don't forget, all of the recipes are on my website, which is down in the description box, along with nutrition coaching, links and discounts to my favorite thing. And don't forget, come on over, join our Facebook group. We would love to have you. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.


Hi, I'm Emily Park with 350.org. Did you know that in 2021, just four US banks contribute over $181 billion to the fossil fuel industry?  Just last month, 350.org came together in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to tell the US Federal Reserve, the referee of the American banking system, that we need to stop the flow of money to fossil fuels if we want a livable future. It's not a radical idea. The International Energy Agency stated that there must be no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects starting today if we're to reach net zero emissions by 2050. And you know what? Our words made a difference. A few weeks ago, the vice chair of supervision of the board, Michael Barr, announced that next year, the Fed will be analyzing lender's financial climate change risks and will begin to determine how to manage the risks that climate chaos poses to the stability of the US economy and to our lives and livelihoods. These are some great first steps, but this is still just the beginning. We're going to continue to urge the Federal Reserve to take stronger, more decisive action to end the funding of climate chaos. That's why we showed up at the global climate strike in Chicago. Friday, September 23rd, is a global day of action for people to unite and to declare to the governments and the corporations of the world that they are not doing enough. And we will hold them accountable.  And just a couple of weeks ago, the Federal Reserve's vice chair of supervision announced the Fed is finally going to start analyzing financial risks of a climate crisis. We're thanking the Federal Reserve for taking steps to protect our economy from the climate crisis. And we're here to remind them that the hundreds of thousands of young people marching around the world today are counting on an end to fossil fuel financing. Join us and find out more at fossilfreefederalreserve.com.


Hi everybody, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with 2022 hip parade goat young slugger's edition series 5 10 box random box Break number one or the the only break we have for now But keep your eye out on jaspyscasebreaks.com. We're always getting stuff from hip parade So it's a random box breaks.  We're gonna open the case number the box is 1 through 10 then randomize your names Thanks to this group here for getting into it Randomize your names as it randomized you a number and then we'll rip open the box and we'll see what you get So let's pop this baby open. There's the case right there The parade baby goat young slugger's edition both sides anyway packed full of hits So you can see all the numbers Right there Now let's assign you a box number. It's randomized names and numbers four and a three seven times names and numbers one two three four five six and seventh and final time Carl down to Steve and That that's the order. We're gonna break as well four and a three seven times for the numbers one two three four five Six and seventh and final time. Good luck eight down to two Alright Carl with eight and ten Stephen with one Carl at seven and six Steve Birch with five Jason with eight Jonathan with three Michael with nine and Steve Birch with two So give me a moment here. You can if you're rewatching this video you can fast forward through this problem just printing out labels I Can sleeve these up and put them in the shipping queue first up first couple actually is for Carl eight and ten There's eight right there Eight and ten graded card right out of the gate and it's Vlad Guerrero Jr. Sepia refractor from 2019 top scrim baseball PSA 10 rookie Vlad Jr. Nice next one for Carl good luck is Juan Soto From Gypsy Queen Baseball from 2019 Gypsy Queen. It's two great Young sluggers this is hip-rate young sluggers two great young sluggers going your way All right good start Carl. We'll come back to you for another couple boxes in a bit next up is Steven flat Then back to Carl after Steven Steven box number one Rex saying she says to do keep the cubs got NL rookie of the year Who got ale rookie of the year? Or of the month. All right another graded card The next young slugger for Steven flat is Juan Soto again from 2018 tops now. That's rookie Juan Soto. That's a PSA 10. All right. There you go Steven No, Steve Kwan for the al that makes sense. All right Carl another two going your way Box six and seven there there it is six and seven Spot of the PSA 10. Good luck, and it's Fernando to T's Jr. The motorcyclist Rookie card 2019 toms chrome baseball PSA 10 Yeah, no, yeah, Suzuki and Steve Kwan. No, uh, no cars for them in in the US Which I kind of like actually They're in fewer products Probably help the value Is my guess? At least for the flagship products. All right next one for Carl Final one for Carl There's another graded card PSA 10 and it's another rookie from 2019 tops complete set Vlad Guerrero Jr. right Thanks Carl for getting in Think you had four. Yeah four boxes Four nice hits going your way Steve Birch Think just two boxes for you Two box five first And you've got another box towards the end and your box two at the end Let's do box five first Got a graded car PSA 10 Boom Ronald Acuna Jr. A bowman first nice out of a 2017 bowman mega box Good time to get this. He's back in action and hopefully we'll Get back to his his slugging ways. That's what we need to see Jason with box four Love Jason Got a graded card for you here PSA 10 The young slugger for you is Fernando Tetease Jr. From 2019 tops gallery Rookie Tetease Jr. It's a cool look. There you go. Thanks, Jason Oh, thank you. All right, Jonathan box three Good luck It's a Juan Soto PSA 10 from 2017 bowman draft I think that's on the that's that's sort of scuff looking mark right there I think that's on the slab itself not on the card Looks like we need some sticker residue or something like that, but very cool, Jonathan Nice Juan Soto Yeah, I think it's I think it's only these players It's possible. It's only those four those four players, but various years and various grades Michael with nine Triple relic and autograph from museum collection baseball. Vlad Guerrero Jr 58 out of 124 Dig that museum collection on a thicker card stock as well A piece of his lumber in the middle And last but certainly not least box two Christy birch The second box. Good luck Let's see what we got It's a graded card PSA 10 2018 tops Allen and Ginter Ronald Acuna Jr rookie Ronald Acuna Jr always nice to see that PSA 10 Certainly makes a big difference between nine and 10. That's for sure Nice. Congrats Steve. Congrats everybody That was a random box break So everyone's guaranteed something and everyone got one of these nice young sluggers. I'm Joe for jaskiescasebreaks.com We're always getting hit parade or wall always looking out for hit parade always trying to buy up some hit parade As they are available. So always check the website jaskiescasebreaks.com for that. I'm Joe for jaskiescasebreaks.com I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye. Bye


This week, this YouTube channel turned two years old, and while I spend every minute of my life discussing marketing with other people, let's be honest. Personal reflection often brings on the grayest revelations and reminders of what is actually going on. So this video, I'm going to discuss a few lessons of building a fanbase from scratch that I was recently reminded of upon looking back at building this channel. Hi, I'm Jesse Kennett, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fanbase from zero to 10,000 fans, and this is Muse Formation. So the first lesson I was reminded of I want to discuss is similar to the one I started with last year in the video I made just like this. If you recall last year, I pointed out that when I started this channel, I made an agreement with myself that I would post two videos a week the entire year and then decide what I should do from there and if I should keep going with this channel. And for musicians, I suggest doing the same of committing to eight to 10 months of consistent sustained promotion and then really giving what you're doing a hard evaluation since just releasing one or two songs isn't enough time to see the effects of pushing out your music constantly. So last year, I'd set out with a goal of 10,000 subscribers by year's end, but I came up short with only 5,000. But the agreement with myself was I would keep going if it was showing benefits to my life since putting a number of followers or views as a goal is kind of dumb. Since if you watch this channel, you know tons of artists have tons of streams on Spotify but no fan engagement or they get some other great benefit from their music that makes it worth it to do. I felt amazing about the community I'd made so there was no question I would keep going when I evaluated this last year. But I think it's important to have that temperature check with yourself. For musicians particularly, if you're doing my release strategy of putting out a song every two months, I think particularly every three songs, you should have a check-in about what's going great, what's going on, maybe what's going bad and particularly if you're having a great success with something, you should really get under the hood and examine it and figure out how to make it an even greater success. I'll talk about what happened with my great success and what I learned from it this year, but it's also important to keep going for long enough for you to possibly grow and not check in too soon. But let's talk about this check-in I had. So last year, I got to 5,000 subscribers right about this week last year and this year I'm at just about 27,000. So a little over five times growth. And while I'm super proud of that, last year I had about 15 times growth. And now, if we talk statistically, that was easier since the distance between 300 subscribers I had on day one to the 5,000 of year one compared to 5,000 to 27,000, well that's a lot more people. 22,000 people in fact. All of this to say though that I know so many of you are frustrated and I know I talk about that the first 10,000 fans all the time. And a lot of this is because those 10,000 fans after you get them it becomes so much easier to build if you maintain consistent sustained promotion since those fans help spread the word about you and give you a platform and you start having people ask you to do things as opposed to you always having to ask them. And that's the distinction I always make about when you hit the 10,000 fan mark is that people will start giving you opportunities instead of you having to chase them down all the time. But what also makes it so much easier after you have those 10,000 fans, as I talked about in the last video there's just more data for algorithms to see who they should recommend you to as well as an audience who will boost you up and just get so much more easy and fulfilling as things go forward. So remind yourself that when the hard gets hard. I also crossed a million views on this channel which is a really cool metric but really doesn't matter much if people don't stick around so I haven't really focused on that in my building. But I fell short of that 50,000 subscribers goal I wanted to get 10 times growth from last year but I fell short by just a little less than I did last year so gains. So I've decided to do a less modest goal of getting to 100,000 subscribers this year since that's only four times growth. We'll see how that goes but I think it's important to have something to keep pushing for and while I won't stop doing this channel if I fail I will reassess my strategy heavily if I don't get there and since I didn't make my goal this year I want to talk to you about the lessons I learned about how I failed and how I'm going to change. So lesson two is one of those lessons and I'm sure you've had this in your life where you can give the advice to someone else but you know damn well you're not taking the advice yourself. In like half the music marketing calls I do with DIYRs I have to tell them they should have at least two singles of lyric and music videos done in all the content and then four more songs mastered and finished before you even start promoting song one. So if life gets the best of you your director takes an extra month to finish their edit you won't slow down your consistent sustained promotion and lose momentum. I know very well consistency is one of the most important things but since this channel is the fun I do outside of work it doesn't always take priority. So somewhere in 2020 I stopped being eight weeks ahead on these videos and truthfully as I've mentioned before I work in politics as part of one of my day jobs and let's just say from the end of that election last year to January 22nd some weird things happened that I had to work on and frankly I was pretty burnt out afterwards. I had lost so much sleep my doctor told me my physical health was really bad. I stopped exercising it was all too much and after this channel had its biggest explosion of viewers and things really started to take off because I didn't have a ton of content banked I lost momentum and all the big views I was getting and my peak growth it died down and honestly it really hasn't come back and it's been a lot of months. Sure this channel is still growing at a great pace and things are going well but man after I released that video on NFTs being the future of music so many of you saw what I was doing and went down the rabbit hole through my content and so many of my videos got into the algorithm and I just saw explosive growth. In one month I tripled my subscriptions and within 90 days after that instead of posting weekly I was only posting once every two weeks and just like that my channel growth went back to the speed it was going before I had that big hit of a video which is cool but I want that high of when I was really killing it and to keep growing off that and have massive growth and while I tell everyone you got to stay ahead on your content since some weeks life's going to hand you heartbreak, covid or a move or an injury if you're weeks ahead on your content no one will see your consistency break and unfortunately these algorithms are everything and they love consistency seriously the reason I had that big win with the NFT video was because the algorithm picked it up and that's the case for most of the time content takes off so here's the point what I'm doing with my life this week before I head out of the country to relax for a while is I'm going to get 12 videos ahead so I'm never faced with this problem again I learned my lesson and hopefully you can learn from me and the countless musicians who've told me because they weren't ahead on their content and they had a song blow up but they took too long to follow it up they never got that momentum back well you don't want to be that person. Lesson three so like I said that NFT video was a big win for me it has almost 120,000 views and it's changed the channel's reach in a huge way and one of the lessons I learned from it was that video happened right after I got this room I shoot in I had been looking at other youtubers who did what I did and realized I really needed to level up my look now it's not like my old sets were that bad but it didn't help we were in a pandemic and I moved where I shoot three times in like nine months so my set options weren't always ideal but a big lesson that I learned that I see in music all the time in that so many of you are writing great songs you're kind of ignoring some of the quality differences that would really level you up like mixing and mastering or maybe you need a better vocal mic so I employed a photographer friend and got this place well set up and continued to buy a lot of equipment since I feel my content was great in fact I'm confident my content's much better than most people who do what I do but it wasn't hitting the views I wanted and sure enough right after I started filming in this room my numbers went up considerably and if you feel your songs are banging taking a good look at whether your mixes or masteringers can be improved is really one of the more crucial things that you should be evaluating from time to time it's important to continually check in with yourself and figure out what's your weakest link and then invest in making it not weak anymore lesson four was another one I was pretending not to know we have to remember it takes a few times of hearing your name or your songs before people get tipped to checking it out never mind becoming obsessed with it which could take a few more times I think of this recent experience I had where I found my new favorite artist of 2021 underscores I got their songs played for me a few times on Spotify radio wasn't loving it then one song clicked and I heard another song on a tiktok trend and liked it so I hit play on the LP and then after that I never stopped listening and they became my favorite artist of late 2021 while the button to go deeper on them was right there on Spotify all those times radio played me them but there's something about hearing someone in another place that makes our brains feel like we should go deeper so I left tiktok and went back to Spotify and then listened to their LP even though I could have done that the numerous times Spotify radio played me them we all know that seeing a sticker around town or a shirt could be the thing that finally makes you check out that artist I took this to myself and realized my other disdain for promoting my work on other social media has to come to an end I realized I could do a lot of things I'm interested in on tiktok since I don't always have 10 minutes of thoughts on a subject and sure enough it's off to a great start and as an aside I've told you all there's no platform that offers growth and listeners faster than tiktok and a great example of that was that it took me 30 days to get a thousand followers unlike the 90 days it took on youtube and then two weeks after that I had 2000 since one of my videos took off by the comments I get a lot of people are finding my books and youtubes from tiktok and yet again remember this is where people are going to be entertained and find their tiny genre niches and if you could find your community here the time is now right now for big growth and that window will inevitably close my only regret is not joining tiktok sooner since I'm seeing the benefits of tiktok introducing me to new people every day and the lesson I've learned here is is being on other platforms as long as you don't spread yourself too thin and be on every platform with all the same content can really bring back a lot of traffic to what matters most to you okay that's it I hope you all have a happy holiday if you enjoyed this please like subscribe and leave a comment below I answer every comment so feel free to ask away any thoughts you have if you enjoy this video you will surely enjoy my more exciting content so click on one of the three playlists now on how to go from zero to 10 000 fans or how to get your music noticed or how to blow up on Spotify in 2022 thanks for watching


Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here with Dennis Wang of the C. Grant College at UH Manoa, and we're going to talk about eruptions. As a matter of fact, title of the show is, Update, Eruption Update from the UH C. Grant College. We're going to find out stuff that he is working on, an update of his book. We're talking about his book and we're talking about what we may have learned over the past few weeks on the eruption going on on the big island. Welcome to the show, Dennis. Okay. Well, it's good to be back. Yeah. It's actually our fourth time on the show. Yeah. Well, you're regular. You should be irregular. I don't know. Because we have to follow what you are doing and learning. You are our guru as far as earthquakes are concerned, and hence the book. The book is called Homeowners Handbook to Prepare for Natural Hazards, and I think what you mean by that is earthquakes, huh? Well, if you look at the back of the book, the main ones we're covering are hurricanes. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, all of that. Right. This is the book you're holding is an interim update. We tried to get something out before that could be used for this hurricane season, but we're doing a full update, which would be version four, and it would also have volcanoes and climate change in those hazards that we're going to cover. So refresh us on what's in the book. Okay. So, you know, I want to have this book handy with me. Yes. I want to look at this book before the event, not at the moment of the event. That's right. I want to prepare. This is a book about preparation. In fact, it says that homeowners handbook to prepare for natural hazards. That's right. Well, okay. So what's in here is in the first part, we give a scientific explanation, but we explain it for the layperson what the different hazards are about. So we'll explain hurricanes and tsunamis, you know, and we'll give some information on the geographical extent of the different hazards, okay? And then in the next part of the book, we cover emergency supplies and evacuation planning. It's very important. People have an evacuation plan and it's not as simple as just a lot of literature will say make a plan, but it's a lot more involved in that. I mean, people shouldn't know the difference between tsunami evacuation and hurricane evacuation. Oh, sure. Yeah. So different for the different risks. And now volcano evacuation too, right? Yeah. All different. Yeah. Let's go back for a minute, though, the supplies. Yeah. I really want to dwell on that for a minute. Sure. By the way, I just watched this movie called The Way It Ends. Okay. And it doesn't end, but it's a story about a huge seismic event in Seattle. Oh, okay. And it's about the story of trying to get to Seattle to save somebody. And it's very realistic. And you would love it because I know you think about these things. It's about seismic events and it's about saving people and it's realistic. The Way It Ends, it's on Netflix now. Okay. I'll have to watch that. Yeah, you will. Okay. So anyway, so if I'm fixing my cupboard and I'm going down to Costco or wherever I go, what do I need to be thinking about to prepare, to get supplies for one of these possibilities? Okay. The standard now is 14 days of non-perishable food and water. And I give some tips. We put some tips in the book. So for example, non-perishable food, personally, I never put things in my kit that I'm not going to use or they're going to expire. I usually put things out of a long shelf life, like three or four years. And I also, if you look at some of the food that you buy, it'll have very fine print, very difficult to read and especially have some supplies. So when as soon as I buy it, I'll take a Sharpie and I'll put the month and date and year it was bought and then put it at the bottom. Yeah. In terms of water, you're supposed to have two weeks supply, 14 days of water per person. So a family of four is supposed to have 56 gallons of water. You go to Costco or Sam's Club and buy a case of water. There's five or six gallons in that case. So you would really need 11 cases, which is hard for the average homeowner to do. Is it drinking, washing or both? Both. But the point is what I do is, and what we recommend is you buy your water and the cases as much as you need, but also supplement it with other things. You could use garbage cans to store water and Amazon sells these plastic liners called water bobs. You could put them in your bathtub and they hold 100 gallons of water at a time. Just close them up or it remains open. It's closed and perfectly sanitary. It remains folded and then if there's an incoming event, you just fill that, put it in your bathtub and fill it up. Where is that now Costco, you say? Amazon. Amazon. Yeah. And there's several makes of it and there are really a lot of different products you could get to store water. So probably one thing, I mean there's a lot of lists. So take a look at the list. The other thing I just want to mention is medication. If you're on medication, make sure you have like an extra 30 day supply during hurricane season. Yeah. God. We hate to think of these things. We hate to contemplate the possibility of a 30 day hiatus that way. Yes. But you know, I think with the volcano and we'll talk about that shortly and a lot of people have a lot of interest about the volcano now. It's on the news. But that teaches us a lesson because these things can happen.  And you would look at it and you would think, no one would think that their location, their house would be under 20 feet of lava two weeks later. You know? So these things will happen, especially if scientists indicate there's a risk and scientists will generally know when there's a risk, then people should listen. Yes. Yeah. Just a footnote on Sea Grant College. Sea Grant College is all about this kind of thing. This book is a product of Sea Grant College. That's right. The Sea Grant College does things like this book. That's right. You sell them or give them away. They're for free. So there are 25 partners in the book and they support the book. They make contributions. They allow us to print. We've gone through nine print runs with 75,000 copies for this book. And then... It's a real public service to do this. And actually, this one just got printed a week ago. This version 3.2, this is our interim update for this hurricane season. And this was actually paid by one of our partners, Coastal Zone Management Program. But as funds become available from the different partners, they contribute and we print the book out. And it's public service. Consistent with the recognized obligation of the university to do public service for the community. This is a very valuable piece. And it's hard to find this information just looking around. That's right. We try it. That's the purpose of the book. Because there's so much information out there, we try and filter it out what's most relevant to the homeowner. Yeah. Well, let's start on that part of the show, which deals with the volcano and the eruption. Okay, sure. So, why don't we just start? Maybe we could take a look at some of these pictures and we're on this little stand. Okay. So, you could get your main information for the volcano from the USGS Hawaii Volcano website. Okay. So, this is a picture of, you can see on the lower corner, there's the Big Island, there's Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Kilauea and the East Rift Zone. And then there's a little box on the southeast tip of the Big Island. That is the East Rift Zone and the area where there's a lot of volcanic activity. What you see in purple are historic flows. So, there's an 1840 flow. And then there's a, see where it says, Vacation Land Hawaii. Above it, there's a 1960 flow. And below it, there's a 1955 flow. Again, like we mentioned, scientists can tell you when there's going to be risk. And it would be expected that there would be some risk from volcanoes. And the last thing I want to point out, all the red is lava flows that have occurred after May 3rd of this year. So, you can see where it says Vacation Land Hawaii. If you look closely, you'll see the outline of the coast. The lava has gone a mile past the shoreline in that location. And there are a lot of houses that used to be there. Yeah, so would things in this book have helped the people? Well, it would have. The key thing is there's not a lot you could do for lava. I mean, another component of the book is how do you make your house strong and there's nothing you could do for lava. So, but it would have helped in terms of them helping to make them have an evacuation plan. Because everybody should have an evacuation plan for the different hazards, whether it be a tsunami, hurricane or lava, especially if you're on the Big Island or Maui. Right? Let's talk about lava for a minute, just a minute. How does that plan differ from flooding, from earthquake, from hurricane? How does that plan differ? OK, it's going to be different. They're going to have some warning.  Probably, a lava will be similar to that. You'll have advanced notice. And the key is to listen to your emergency management or civil defense agencies. OK, you should also, as part of your evacuation plan, have an evacuation kit where everything that you need to sustain yourself for a period of time is in that kit and also your important documents. OK, for some hazards, there's going to be very little warning. One, an earthquake. Two, a tsunami. And those are in the book. We do have evacuation planning in chapter three of the book. And for an earthquake, you drop to the floor, go under a table to cover up and hold on. And then after the shaking stops, you leave the building. And for a tsunami, everyone should know, especially for a local tsunami, if the shaking is strong enough that you can't stand, you should move up land inland. So those are the key things, and they're all in the book. I want to keep them in your head, though, in case anything happens quickly. That's right. So should we? Yeah, let's go to the next picture. OK, OK. So what we have here is Lailani Estates. And along the East Rift Zone, I think there are like 27 fishers. Not all of them are active. And the big one is Fisher 8, where all the steam is coming out right now. And then just to the left in that picture, you'll see 9, 10, 11, or 12. But those are no longer really active, just steam coming out. But that is where most of the lava is coming out and impacting Lailani Estates and then flowing to the coastline and eventually reach Capoho. And it's migrating also to the south. So it's just like the movies, when you see the fisher coming at you. You see the two halves separating. You see a chasm growing between.  And it's coming up from the bowels of the earth, and it's coming at you. Is that what it looks like, this fisher business? Somewhat. And I think we'll show you, because I actually have a picture from the year. Don't show me yet. OK. I'm going to make a cliffhanger out of it, literally. Literally a cliffhanger. Let me take a short break and come back. And we're going to see this fisher. And we're going to see the problems. OK, so I'll be right back. Aloha, I'm Jay Feidel, one of the hosts of Asia in Review, which is broadcast Monday afternoons on thinktecawai.com.  We work hard to bring you the most interesting subjects and guests who will raise your awareness. Please join us Mondays every week on Asia in Review on thinktecawai.com. And also on YouTube and iTunes. Thanks for watching. We'll see you then. Aloha Sheshe and Sajian. Aloha, I'm Jay Feidel, founder of thinktecawai. And I'm Andrea Gabrielli, the host for Young Talents Making Way. Wait a minute. This is not a new episode, is it, Jay? No, it's not a new episode. That show is over, Andrea. So what are you going to do now? Why don't we have a summer edition of Young Talents Making Way, where we focus more on education as a mean for our young talents to max out, becomes role models, and achieve their dreams. What a great idea. So when do you want to begin, Andrea? July the 3rd, 2018, Tuesday at 11 AM. Young Talents Making Way summer edition. Stay tuned. OK, we're back. We're back with Dennis Wong of Sea Grant College. And we're talking, we're doing an update on the eruption. We're learning. We're always learning. Sea Grant is always learning. OK, you had some pictures about fishers. OK, well, let's look at some of these, OK? So the first one here, it's just a house in Leilani Estates. And you can see this house is right near Fisher 8. And there are some houses that are just at the border, this flow that apparently OK. But even then, there's a question of whether they'll be functional after the event, because the infrastructure is impacted. There's no electricity. The roads are blocked. Some houses, there's steam coming out of the house. But take a look at this house. It actually has a green roof if you go out there, because I'll go to the next picture. OK, here's your Fisher, Jay. Fisher 8, going through Leilani Estates, and you could actually see that house, that greenhouse. I'm going to point to it with this. Oh, it's right. OK, it's right here. Right there. That's the greenhouse that you saw in the picture before. And you could see the lava coming out of the Fisher. And it's actually flowing over 20 miles an hour. You can't outrun that. No, that's right. And it's very spectacular. It glows like that. You could see it glowing like that during the day. And then at nighttime, it's really spectacular. Yeah. Well, that must be terrifying if you're anywhere near it, because you don't know exactly where it's going to go. That's right. And what's astounding and really hard for people is, let's see. OK, well, I don't have it here, but the Fisher is open right up in the middle of a subdivision. So it's like movies. Right. That's right. Can kids just do a warning?  There was warning. I mean, this is Fisher 8. So the number of the first one, Fisher 1, 2, 3. So this is all, it all started May 3, OK? And the Fisher's open up. Different ones open up each day, and they give it a number. I think they're now 27. But it went to 27, and then 8 wound up becoming the most active, OK? So there is warning. Always listen to your civil defense and emergency management, and always have an evacuation plan. Yeah, well, I'd want to get out of there sooner than later. And then also the other thing is insurance, too. Well, you can't get insurance once the thing, once the eruption starts. Right, right. Well, let me ask you this, though. You said that 8 was worse than 7, 6, 5, 4, and so on. Is it, am I right to conclude that at least and through 8, it was getting worse. It's been getting more violent, yeah? Yeah, it's been flowing once the lava started going through 8. And you should really check with USGS on this. But it appears that the flow has been going much stronger than before when it was going through the other fissures, OK? And also the earthquake activity, because you're looking at two things now, and this is where we could really make a difference, is the lava is happening in nearly a lot of the states in these fissures. But a lot of the earthquake activity is happening back in Volcano Village, Kilauea. And a lot of the volcano visitor centers closed. There's still people living in Volcano Village, and they're subject to earthquakes like magnitude fives almost every day. And it's very, I was going to show a video. And actually, if people, when they Google the homeowner's handbook to prepare for natural hazards and go or go to the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College program and Google it, and they go to the handbook website, we have four files on post-imperial. And we're going to cover that shortly. But one of them is a video, by the engineering department at University of Hawaii. And it shows what happens when houses on these post-imperial structures are subject to continued earthquake shaking. Well, that's directly in line with your preparations in the book. Right, because a major part is strengthening homes for the different hazards. Not a lot we could do for lava, but there is a lot we could do for earthquakes. And thanks for inviting us, because we really want people on the Big Island to start thinking about this and actually start even if they can start doing it right now. Yeah, because the reality is it's a sign curve. It's going to repeat. It's going to loop. What's going to happen is, OK, if things to settle down, some people will leave, other people won't leave. And then there will still be a neighborhood of some kind there. And people will build new houses, because insurance companies will insure them. And mortgages will finance them. And then at the end of the day, this will happen again. I mean, don't you think? Not right away, but over time. It'll happen again. But the thing, too, is no one knows how long this eruption is going to last. It could last another week. It could last another three months. Could have lasted five years. It could last. It could. I mean, you could talk with the USGS. And we actually are doing a volcano section for the handbook. And we're working with the USGS. But no one really knows how long this volcano will last. And as long as the lava keeps coming out, there's still going to be earthquakes. And all of these earthquakes over time are going to affect these buildings. So maybe we should. Go on, yeah. And lava bombs, too. We didn't really focus on lava bombs until it happened on that boat out there. That's right. But that's pretty serious on lava bomb. It's really a bomb, too. It is. Because the super hot lava hitting the water. And actually, on the next picture, you'll see exactly that. Because this is what's happening. OK, so this is the lava traveling, I think, six or seven or eight miles to the coastline. At a speed of 20 miles an hour. Yes. And it's changed past. This is Kapoho Bay. And you can see the lava hitting the coastline here. Now, since the lava started flowing, the shoreline has migrated over a mile. Oh, the lava has built it up a mile. Yeah, it's gone out a mile. And here, let's go through another picture. Here is what Kapoho looked like five days before the eruption. We went out there five days before the eruption, the photograph. But the reason was, we really did a study in the area 12 years ago to study subsidence. And the area was subsiding, like, one centimeter a year. And we were studying it for. Does this tell you anything? Yeah, well, it's very unstable, right? But you could see these houses. Because that was April 28, five days before the eruption. And then you could see these are the same houses. Now, the lava has reached these houses, like, two or three or four. I don't know the exact date of this photo. But this is, like, online on the website. It's on, like, a lot of TV shows. But you could see how the impact is. And again, what we're trying to get across is, scientists pretty much can predict where the risks are. And when scientists say there's a risk, people, everyone should listen. Homeowners, planners, and. Well, let me ask you this, Dennis. I mean, if scientists can predict the risks. Somewhat. Somewhat. It depends. And it depends on the hazard itself, too. Sure, of course. Yeah. And you can, and a lot of the prediction is based on what happened before. It's historic. That's right. If you look at what happened before, you can figure out where the risk is now. So if I have a house, just like there at Pahoa, and the lava comes and destroys the house, it buries it and or burns what's not buried. And then it stops. Then the eruption's over. And I go back six months, eight months, 10 months, 12 months later. And I say, well, it's my land, for better or worse. I want to build another house. Is this advisable? Because historically, the lava came right down that channel. Or am I being silly? Well, yeah. It is a risky area. I'm not going to get too much into who could build it or who cannot. And even who owns the land? Because it's not really settled. It's not settled. Supposedly, when there's a lava flow, according to old common law cases, it's like the state owns the lava. You get what's under it. Yeah, but the point is, I mean, do you really want to take that risk? The issue is raised, for sure. And it's like there are lava flow maps that put out by the USGS. So this area is in the highest lava flow risk, yeah. In the whole state, am I right? Yeah, because in terms of lava and earthquakes, the greatest risk is the southern part of the Big Island and then the northern part of the Big Island, then Maui. Because just the way the Hawaiian Islands are formed, being over a hotspot geologically. Got more pictures? Sure. So, OK, so what we could really make a difference is earthquake activity. So there's a lot of people in volcano village that are seeing impacts and damages from earthquakes. Like, some parts of their wall are starting to separate. And you don't have to be in a lava flow to have an earthquake. Right. It could be fairly removed and remote from the actual lava. Right. And so this is a report on a post-imperial structure by two structural engineers, one Ian Robertson at the University of Hawaii and another by Gary Choch, is also a structural engineer. So they did this report in 2009. And it's 75% of the, roughly, 75% of the houses in volcano village are on post-imperial. And they're getting magnitude 5 earthquakes almost every day. And like I said, on our website, we have a video that shows what happens when these post-imperial structures are subject to repeated. What happens? They start, they come off their post. They might just shear the post right off. Well, what happens, let's see if we can see on the next one. OK, see, on the upper left picture, OK, that's a post-imperial structure. So there's a big concrete block. And then there's a smaller concrete block, which they call the tofu block. And then above that, there's a termite pan. And above that, there's the post to the house. And there's no connection between any of those elements. It's just held by friction. So when the house starts shaking, the thing starts going like this. And eventually, it migrates right off the block. And then once it comes off, the house takes a lot of structural damage. Yeah, so there was a way to retrofit. And it was described in that 2009 report. And then we did a demonstration project for Pearl City because it's even easier to do it now with all these new products and connectors. I'm not going to go into that, but the demonstration project is also on our website. And we encourage people on the Big Island to consider doing these retrofits. The only difference between Oahu and the Big Island is Big Island's on a greater seismic zone. So they may have to build shear walls also on the corners. But they do the same thing with the post-imperial retrofit. Earthquake can happen anywhere in the state. Right. But eruption is mostly limited to the Big Island. But earthquakes can be anywhere, yeah? That's true. But the greatest earthquake risk is on the Big Island. Yeah, OK. OK. Now, what's the mechanics? Look, here's a perfect example. OK, let's look at this. OK, so this is a house in Volcano Village. And you can see the post-imperial structure with the post just sitting on that termite pan, the tofu block, and the concrete block. It's just held by friction. And if there are all these repeated earthquakes, say there's earthquakes for another five years. So that's why I'm saying we're saying that people, they should consider doing some of these retrofits as soon as possible. So what's the retrofit involved? Let's go to the next page. OK, so there are all these different hold downs. And let's see if I can point to some of this. So what it is is you take a 2 by 4's and you scab the space in between the post and the tofu block so that they're flush. And then you take the hold down and attach it to the 2 by 4 and the post. And you drill holes into the hold down into the concrete foundation. That's what it is. I could do this. Yes. And this is cheap. The materials are cheap, nearly nothing. Yes. We do recommend that before they start, they see a licensed structural engineer. So there are a few in Hawaii County already. And they should also contact the Structural Engineers Association. Once they do that, they could either once they have the proper direction, they could either do that themselves for some of the retrofits or hire a contractor to do that. OK, but it's not complicated. This one's not complicated. Yes. This Pearl City house was not done by a contractor. OK. So let's make this the last one because we're almost out of time. For OK. What do you want to show on this one? OK, I just want to explain to people the concept of a continuous load path. So this is essentially tying the roof to the wall. And then the second floor is connected to the first floor. And the first floor is connected to the foundation. So it's almost like you take a chain and throw it over the roof of the house and tie it down. But instead of the chain, which is external, it's all internal by the building codes. So that previous example with the post-impaire for the single-wall house, that was one part of a continuous load path is tying the house to the foundation. And then for a single-wall house, all you would do is tie the roof to the wall. OK. That's in that on the handbook also. Yeah, you have drawings and you show the devices that are suggested. But I take it from what you say and from the fact that these things are available, that they reduce your risk substantially of having the house come off the posts or having the house somehow shear and fall down in an earthquake. Yes, very substantially. Take a look at the video. It's only like 10 minutes long. OK, because there's a lab example of what happens when there's seismic shaking and there's no retrofit. And then when they do the full retrofit, there's no damage at all. Big difference. Big difference. And then also the same thing with all the other measures. Hurricane clips we want. And the reason I mentioned the load path and hurricanes and earthquakes, it's because the mitigation is the same for both of them. For an earthquake, you reduce damage by making sure your roof is connected to the foundation and the foundation strong. That's why we concentrate on the posts and PR, because that's the weakest part of the Big Island. Same thing with a hurricane. And it is hurricane season now. And the Big Island was hit recently by a cell, which wasn't a hurricane. It was a tropical storm. But that was a few years ago. So they got to consider that also. So a lot of these things we recommend have a dual earthquake hurricane benefit. Well, you know what they say, Dennis. A stitch in time saves nine. OK, that's right. Dennis Warren, see Grant College. Thank you so much. OK, thank you. We'll do it again. So.