very happy to be here. Especially given that I've been giving lectures at design conferences since the early 1980s. Please don't do the math. And so, design conferences from the 1980s, what was that like, you might ask? Well, I can tell you, it was kind of like this. I think you're all familiar with this famous painting entitled, Token Woman in Room Full of White Men, which is why I would like to thank Type-Con for turning the tables on this injustice and for taking us from here to here. Now, let's go to Italy, which is my biggest source of inspiration, both typographic and gastronomic, for as long as I can remember. Although, because I couldn't live there, I had to learn to make my own typographic oasis in New York. So I worked for Herb Blue Ballon, who as you could see was not afraid of hiring women. And then I went from there to become Art Director of Pantheon Books, where I had the great luxury of being able to experiment with a different period of design and type history on a daily basis. And I was on a mission, well, at that time in publishing, there were no risks being taken. Everyone seemed to think that Type-On covers had to be big and vulgar. But I was on a mission to prove that you didn't have to shout to capture someone's attention. And the cover I did for The Lover, I think is the best example of that. Marguerite du Rah, although a celebrity in France, was relatively unknown in the US. And in spite of that, and in spite of this very understated book cover, it became a runway bestseller, Pantheon's first, since Dr. Givago in 1958. So I think I proved my point. So the other thing that was going on in publishing at that time was that all the art directors in the industry were so poorly paid that they all had to freelance for one another.  It's just perfect for you. So that's how it was. One day it would be a fascist type. The next day, the universe died. The other thing that was going on was that there were really no reference books available on design or type history because Steve Heller, who was not yet my husband, hadn't written them yet. So I had to learn to create my own archive to draw from and I would do anything I had to do to avoid using traditional fonts. So basically I just sort of made them up. And this is arguably the worst book title in the history of book publishing, I think. The thing happens. 30 years later, I still can't tell you what this means, but it was actually a good book of essays by the then film critic of the New Yorker magazine. So I decided to use these little plaster letters that were designed to make your own home movie titles in the 40s and 50s. And you'll see this coming back again later. So little by little, I began to realize that there was, in fact, life after book publishing. And this was a call for entries that I did for Society of Publication Designers, which was done gratis, of course, in exchange for creative freedom. And since I'd always wanted to design an eye chart, this was the perfect opportunity for that. So 2,000 book jackets and 11 years later seemed to be as good a time as any to start my own design studio. And I quickly learned the two important lessons of having your own firm. One is that you should never depend on any one type of work or any one client. And two, you should never sit and wait for the phone to ring with the perfect job because there is no perfect job. The perfect job is the one that you make for yourself. And as a designer, you really have to create your own personal projects. It's really, I think, the only way that you'll ever grow and find your own design voice. So I started with what was closest to my heart, which was Italian art deco, which I had been collecting for decades. And this became a series that I did with my husband, Steve Heller, that was on Art Deco Graphic Design, starting with Italian and going from there. So the way we would work together is that Steve and I would collect and select the work together. He would do the writing and then I would design the book in the studio where I had two rules. One is that we would always put a woman on the cover, which was easy enough. And secondly, we would always design a typeface that would be drawn from one of the images in the book that had a unique letter form. So the books did very well, but eventually drifted into remainder purgatory. And eventually we decided to take a section of each of the books and put them into this compendium, Eurodeco, which had everything except a streamline, of course. And that was until recently, still in print. And then from there we did typology, type design from the Victorian era to the digital age and whatever didn't fit in there went into design connoisseur and many, many others. But in the meantime, after having focused on book covers for so long, I thought it was time to look inside a book and deal with the interior design. But there was one aspect of book design that always really bothered me and that was the copyright page. As you probably know, it's one of the first type treatments that you see when you open a book. It's usually on page four and it's all of this dreadfully dull, legal and technical information that has to be set line for line exactly the way it's given to you or so they say. So the first book I worked on was a gardening book and I set the copyright page in centered lines and I looked at it and I thought, with a few changes, this could look like a tree. So I tried it out on my son who was two years old at the time and he got it. So I figured I was home free but not when you're dealing with a copy editor who likes to play by the rules. So she was apoplectic at the idea of this typographic blasphemy and she said, no, no, no, it can't be done. I countered her with examples of historical reference because I certainly was not the first designer to ever contour type before. It still fell on deaf ears. Finally, I got the publisher on my side and I was able to get it through. And if it weren't for her, I wouldn't be showing you all of these now because once I had this one under my belt, it was much easier to convince the next publisher who tried to say no, which was this one. This was Poems to Edward Lear. A strange book called You Can't Be Too Careful, it was an Englishman who had collected newspaper clippings of strange ways that people had died. A pair of teeth. This was done with Art Spiegelman who I hadn't collaborated with on mouse. This was called Wild Party. Guidebook to the Best Tea Shops in the UK. Lost Words of Love. Writing New York and I was very lucky to have the Empire State Building right outside my window when I was working on this. And I'd always wanted to build the Eiffel Tower out of type. So this was perfect for the historic shops and restaurants of Paris. Photographs of the Twin Towers. And I think the only reason I agreed to design this book of photographs of volcanoes was so I could design the copyright page. Cuban Deco and a series of cookbooks, one on chilies and one on beans. And that was followed by these two for my client, Sarah Beth, a baking book and a breakfast and brunch book. And this is a book that I wrote and designed on artisan shops in Florence. Essays on Baseball. I don't know if you could see the gray stitching on the baseball, but it's there. And this was a strange one. This was the book about the effects of Nazism on the practice of dermatology. What it made for an interesting copyright page. So having grown up in an Italian-American household where the main topic of conversation every morning was what to make for dinner, it should have come as no surprise to be that I would end up working in the food industry. And this was actually a poster that I had designed for a talk I gave in Cincinnati many years ago. I had been to Cincinnati one time before this. It was a design competition. And I remember I had to fly out there very early in the morning, they picked me up at the airport and whisked me away to a beautiful art deco office building to the basement where the judging was being held. And I kept asking if I could get a cappuccino and it sort of became a running joke because there was no cappuccino to be had in that time in Cincinnati. So a couple of months later, I got a phone call from the president of the Cincinnati Art Directors Club to invite me to come out to give this talk. And the first thing he said when I answered the phone was, Louise, we have cappuccino in Cincinnati now. So I decided to make that the theme of my poster. And looking back at this, I realized what an artifact it actually is because not only was this done pre-photo shop, and if we had an extra hour, I could explain to you exactly how we did this poster.  And so basically what took two weeks or more then now could be done in about five minutes. So not only was this done pre-photo shop, but it was also pre-Starbucks. Also hard to imagine, right? So I decided to embrace the curious world of restaurants. And I quickly learned that in New York City, restaurants are the number one business most likely to fail. I also found myself dealing with a class of client that was about this far from Gangsterdom. That's the first time I ever saw a real gun. But on the other hand, I always had a table. Until the restaurant closed. So in the beginning, most of the restaurants I was working on all had unpronounceable French names and were owned by people who were neither French nor could they even speak French. Like a spas. And I decided to design this to look like a classic French enamel sign. And I actually convinced the client to let me have an enamel sign made for the restaurant. So when the restaurant closed, which is of course the punchline you're gonna be hearing a lot today. When the restaurant closed, I got to keep the sign in my kitchen. So it was win-win. This is a good example of what I call a default name because most restaurateurs think that they needn't be bothered with spending any amount of time coming up with a good name. They think any old name will do because the logo will make it look and sound good. So this is in the hotel Metro. So they came up with a very creative name, Metro Grill. And it didn't really have much going for it this place. It's on a very nondescript block in the West 30s, but it did happen to be in the garment district of New York. So I decided to make the most of that. And I had, I designed it and then I had it made into an actual stitched clothing label. Minimum quantity, 5,000. So then I had to find a few more uses for it because all restaurateurs wanna hear is this isn't gonna cost you anything extra. So I said, okay, well, now that we have these labels, we can use them on the menus and we'll use remnants from the upholstery fabric and it won't cost you anything. So of course they love that idea until we found out that there were no remnants. But by then it was too late, so. And Metro's were wasn't until fairly recently in Grand Central Terminal on the Mezzanine. So it was right below the beautiful constellation ceiling they have there. Now is an Apple store, unfortunately. But it was named after a trade line along the French Riviera. So I decided to make the business card into a luggage tag. So this was letter pressed on both sides of the card, which I tried to do whenever I'm designing restaurants because I think the tactile quality is something really important to communicate appetite appeal. And so that was the easy part. Letter pressing on both sides. The hard part was getting someone to put in that grommet and a string. But, so here's another restaurant with an unpronounceable name. A lot of people seem to think that the correct pronunciation here was art is anal. At least that's a way to remember it. So this is a French bistro specializing in cheese and I wanted it to look like a cheese label which are usually round, but this was too long a word to fit comfortably around the circle. So this was actually the business card that was die cut into the oval and I had to humiliate the client to go along with duplex stock, so it was extra thick. So that in the end, a lot of people thought that this was a coaster and they put their drinks on top of it. Here's another default name. It was called 92. Can anybody guess what street it was on? So when I went up for the first meeting at the construction site, I was paying extra careful attention to the subway mosaics which I've always been very fond of. And I went back with my camera and I photographed every nine and every two. And then we Photoshopped them together to make the logo. And of course, outside of New York City, you wouldn't be expected to know that this is a visual metaphor for the subway system. But there actually are people in New York who don't even know that there's no 90 second street stop. But by the time I finished working on this, I was convinced that there was one. And when I looked at the Photoshop file and I saw that there was a layer and outline, I realized that we had our children's menu. So this was given to every kid in the restaurant with a red, yellow and green crayon. And the client was very happy. He said, this will keep them busy for a long time. And it did. So remember that book with the bad title? So wasn't I happy when I got a call about this restaurant and cinema with a 40s theme? But unfortunately, the people who were making those little plaster letters finally went out of business. So I had to order these in plastic and ended up having to spray paint them and sand them down to make them a little less perfect. And I worked with the same photographer who did these photo montages. My favorite is the one in the middle. That's the dessert menu, fa. So this is my favorite Italian restaurant. It happens to be in Seattle. Has anybody ever been there? Yes. Yay, okay. Isn't it great? It's quite a lively atmosphere there. That's the only restaurant I know of that has a trapeze in the main dining room. So on any given night, there'll be a trapeze act and a cabaret and a fortune teller. So I wanted to convey that lively atmosphere in the design. This is the business card, which of course was printed in letterpress. So I was inspired by a collection of pasticceria papers that I'll show you in a moment. And I decided to insert all of these Italian verbs into the design. So it says things like cantare, balade, divertir si festeggiare, which is sing, dance, have a good time. And then I was approached by these people who said, we want to open up a restaurant that feels like a seafood shack that you would stumble onto while you're walking along the beach in New England, except that you happen to be in the east village of New York. So, and this is something that I would never do ordinarily, because from my book jacket days, my mantra always was never illustrate the title. You don't need to show a mermaid and say mermaid. But in this case, I wanted to break all the rules, so why not? And speaking of breaking the rules, I would never hyphenate a word in a logo like that, but this was the time to do it. So then when I opened a sister restaurant a few years later called Mermaid Oyster Bar, we flipped her and put a pearl choker around her neck. And then, and then they opened one pizzeria next door, pizzeria sireneta, sireneta means little mermaid, so we couldn't show her breasts. So an apron and a rolling pin had to cover them up. And here we get a double hyphenation, no less. So I love using mermaids in restaurant logos whenever possible. Spolia's a pasta restaurant that was originally in Nantucket and then decided to open another one in Manhattan. And when I first talked to the clients, they told me how much they loved heraldry. And I have a book of heraldic symbols that I love to look at whenever I need an idea. So I started looking through it and I found something with two mermaids and I thought, oh, two islands meant Nantucket in Manhattan, two mermaids, that makes sense. So I had an illustrator put this together with pasta on the shield and wheat in their arms. And Chiquito is a Basque restaurant in Manhattan and I was always looking for an excuse to use this style of lettering that was influenced by Spanish signage of wrought iron scripts. And Bedford Post is a restaurant in Nantucket owned by the actor Richard Gere. And I noticed from the first time I heard about it that it was located on the old Post Road, which I knew was the old mail delivery route between New York and Boston. So I finally had an excuse to design a logo like a postage stamp, I was very happy. So when I went to the first meeting, I brought some printouts of old postage stamps to show as reference and they loved the idea. So I said, okay, let's talk about imagery. And Richard Gere leapt to his feet and he said, oh, I've got a great photograph of my grandfather standing in a wheat field. And he acted it out.  And he said, yeah, I know exactly where it is. So sure enough, the next day they emailed it to me. And it was exactly what I expected. It was a small, grainy, gray, blurry snapshot. But that's why we have illustrators. So I hired Mark Summers, who's a wonderful scratch board artist who I've worked with for years. We put together the whole composition for him and then he scratched out the borders and everything. And then I showed it to the client in these four different color options, but they liked all of them. So we decided to print the series of business cards in all four colors so they would be collector's items. And Pearl was actually the original authentic oyster bar in New York City, which I didn't realize until after I had done Mermaid Inn, which turned out to be one of the copycats. But she never had a logo. She had been in business for 15 years with no logo. She just had a hanging sign in black and white that a sign painter had done. And so I decided that the only way to approach this correctly would be to design it in the same colors, black and white, same proportion and size of the sign, and make it look like it had been designed by a better than average sign painter. So that's what we did. And in this case, Claudette is a Provençal restaurant on Fifth Avenue and when I first met the clients, they said they really wanted to have a sign that was in raw iron. Now how often does that happen? So we actually had to design the sign first and then work backwards to make it into the logo. And Via Carotta is my favorite restaurant in New York, my favorite Italian restaurant rather. And it's owned by two very esteemed women chefs, one of whom is Italian and grew up on Via Carotta in her little town in Italy, which means Carrot Street. And they made it very clear at the first meeting that they were not interested in seeing a carrot or a street sign in their logo. The carrot I could do without, but the street sign I thought was a real missed opportunity, but I got over it. And instead I was looking at letter forms that I've always been enamored of from the Stile Liberti period, that's the Italian Art Nouveau period from the early 1900s.  And these are some of the other components. These are the coasters with the monogram. And this is the oversized menu, which just happened to fit perfectly into the back of these chairs. These are chapel chairs that the clients found online and ordered them from England without ever having sat on one. But it just so happens that they have a pocket in the back which was meant for a Bible, but it works very well for a menu. And this was one of the other options that I had proposed when I had the first meeting with them. I've been trying to use this device for a long time. It started with the Harrison in 2001. I thought it was a great idea. They liked it, but they said they really weren't the pasta-centric restaurants. So I just kept trying. And this was a proposed Italian restaurant in the IFC cinema didn't go for it. Svolia was a pasta-centric restaurant, but better that they went with the Heraldry. Friuli was, I just kept going. This was a, I believe that whenever you have a good idea, don't let go of it. Just keep recycling it. And eventually somebody will want to use it. So this was a celebration of the Friuli region of Italy in New York. This isn't even worth discussing. So if anybody in, if anyone is opening a pasta restaurant anytime soon, please see me at lunch. So when I was researching the Italian art deco book in Milan, I just happened to find myself one stifling afternoon in a Magazzino, a storage room that was filled with packing boxes and each box was filled with hundreds of little pieces of paper that were all printer's proofs from the 1930s. So needless to say, I was in a very happy place. And that's when I discovered these, the series of pasticidia papers. And these were just used to wrap pastries in the shops. And each one had its own distinctive design and they were really beautiful. And that's what made me wanna become a package designer. So when my first clients just happened to be Bella Cucina, which are all Italian inspired products, even though they're American and they live in Atlanta. But they're very good about hand labor, which is what I always try to do in package design. But most of the food packaging I do are makeovers because usually when someone starts with a food product, they don't have the budget or the know-how to hire a real designer. They usually hire an art student who is the daughter or son of a family friend or whatever. And then after a year or five years or even 25 years, they'll reach a point one day when they realize that the quality of their graphics doesn't measure up to the quality of the product. And that's when they call me. And I've learned, well, two things. One is that clients get very nervous at the idea of making a change. But I've also learned that you can change a lot as long as you keep one or two key elements, which is what I always tell them to make them less nervous. So in this case, it was just keep the rectangle and keep the color sort of. So we made this change. Then they sold the company for $100 million and they changed the packaging. Sarah Bess had been in business for 25 years and she was understandably very nervous about making a change. But I took one look at this label and I knew that the printer had been designing it. It reeks of Microsoft's word. I mean, why else would it say spread the word under Sarah Bess? And it's, look at that. It's italicized, underscored, ending quotes and it means nothing. So we, this was very, this was common sense. We kept the oval, we kept her name in upper and lower case and we just upgraded everything else. It was much better typography. We put her name on there, embossed on the glass rather than Mason, which made a difference. And then this carried over to her other products as well. And American Spoon had also been making jam for 25 years and but it's a different kind of company there in Northern Michigan. It's a family business and they have an intimate relationship with their fruit growers. So if the black raspberry crop is in good one year, they just won't make the jam. So I really wanted to communicate that human interaction into the logo.  And then I hired another illustrator to do all the botanicals for all their different product lines. So I thought it was ironic that it took two British illustrators to convey this very American brand. And then one more, Bonnie's, who was making these in small batches and copper pots so they really taste like homemade jam. And Bonnie had designed this label herself using a free font. So, but I thought the sentiment was right. She said she wanted it to feel like a jar of jam that you would buy in a market in the South of France except that, except that it wasn't. Except, and something that a French grandmother would have made and written on the label with her charming French handwriting. So I said, well, we can, we'll keep it in handwriting, but we'll make a font for you that was based on handwriting samples from the 1940s. And it got her into Whole Foods. So when I met this gelato maker, I told him that I would never walk into a gelato via with a logo like that. And it was true. And he's from Sicily. And I said, look, gelato is all about nostalgia. It makes everybody happy. And I showed him those pastichetti of papers and he got it. So that's what we went with which was adapted to the bags and these carts that they have all over the high line. And then they even imported a vintage fiat from Cinquecento from Sicily, which we decorated. So the only thing better than having a gelato client is having two gelato clients. And this also illustrates why I love doing makeovers because it gives me enormous satisfaction to clean up after someone else's mess. And that's what this was. I tried to talk them out of the name because this name is bad in both Italian and English. And they would hear nothing of it. But the only thing I think they were doing right was that they were putting it in this clear container. Although right there at the meeting, I scooped out all the gelato from this container and I put it into this one and I said, it looks a lot better, right? So I wanted to keep it in a clear container so you could see the beautiful colors of the product. And I also thought it was important to keep the label in more of a shape like this so you could see even more of the color. And then we color-coded the bands at the top. And this is what the freezer looks like in my studio on any given day. And I always make sure whenever I give a client presentation, if I'm showing a logo, I always schedule it in my studio in the afternoon and I serve gelato first and then I show the logo and it always works. And this was the first organic cracker on the market and the client amazingly enough was open to the idea of a vintage looking package. So everything that you see on this package is hand lettered, even the net weight at the bottom. Although what you see the stores now is not because we had an amicable divorce but that's how it goes sometimes. And this is an interesting lesson in package design. These two products were the best-selling products in William Sonoma for the nine years straight that they were carried in the store. These were sold exclusively in William Sonoma. And what I find fascinating is that this salt represents 12 cents worth of salt and it's sold for $7. What does that tell you about package design? And this is a series of cheese related for Marcus Samuelson, who's a very high profile chef in New York who has a great backstory. He was born in Ethiopia, was adopted by a family in Sweden and grew up there and then went to Switzerland to do his internship and then ended up in coming to New York and opening a restaurant in Harlem. So I had to find a pattern that would play out over that whole combination of nations and adapt the colors accordingly. So there's always something to drink in the studio. These wines were all imported from Italy and I wanted them all to look again like the Stile Liberty posters and actually make them like miniature posters themselves. And these are also all imported from Italy. Sfida was an interesting episode. Sfida in Italian means challenge and that's exactly what it was to design this label because it had all this copy on it which all had to go on the front and it had to be this very specific size and shape. So every now and then we have to design something that's not food related which is much less interesting to me. Although this was kind of nice. This was a monogram for Tiffany where they wanted, they said they needed something to be used as small as the winder of a man's watch or as large as a construction ship. And this is an Italian hosiery maker and the first thing I told them was, you can be like everybody else would do a paper label on your socks and tights but why don't you do something different and we can get a stitched clothing label because I have a source and it made a big difference. And Hanky Panky needs no introduction I believe. This is my dentist who has a very fancy practice on Madison Avenue with state-of-the-art equipment and he offers a free foot massage with every visit. So I decided he needed an elegant logo and this was a redesign for Paperless Post. I'm sure everybody's gotten an invitation from them. And then I use every opportunity to travel to Italy. So this was a little guidebook that I wrote and designed and photographed of artisan shops and restaurants in Florence and I've updated it twice now because all those stores go out of business by the time the book gets published. And then Italianissimo which is everything that we love and sometimes love to hate about Italy mostly love of course like hand gestures. And whenever anybody asked me why I've never moved to Italy I said I can answer that in three words. Fade la Coda which is the Italians inability to form a line as illustrated here. And this was actually a great project it was for Rizzoli International it was for the 150th anniversary of Italy and they chose the 10 great books that shaped the nation that they wanted all redesigned. So these are all mostly done in wood type in three piece cases. And these are some more recent books I've done with Steve we call this the S series. These are all images from our collection so it's script shadow type and wasn't I lucky that I found these a set of these letters in an antique shop just when we were doing this cover. Stencil and slab serif. And then I've been teaching at the School of Visual Arts for quite a long time. And this is something that they do every year it's a senior library so it's the work of all the graduating seniors in the graphic design department and every year they ask a different instructor to design the book. And it's carte blanche which is always really hard. So I decided to do it like a beautiful box of chocolates and boy did I fool a lot of people. Because those weren't chocolates in there that was a book cover. I also teach every summer in Rome it's a master's workshop in typography also through the School of Visual Arts. And Gemma was in the program a couple of years ago and so is Jan Ballard. This was the first subway poster that I did for SVA and I thought it'd be great to do it in mosaics and I thought well we did 92 so we know how to do it. But a 13 word poster is a lot harder than a two digit number. So and this was done in Photoshop tile by tile by the time my staff was finished with this we all agreed that it would have been much easier to have done the whole thing in real mosaics. But and after a two month run in subway it came above ground and was blown up to 38 feet tall to go on the side of the main building where it just so happened that the yellow arrow here points not only to the building but also to my studio. So that was the year of the biggest thing I've ever designed and the smallest thing but in the biggest print run. This love stamp was less than an inch tall and was printed in a run of 250 million. And I've yet to find one in register. And Jessica Hish was my senior designer when we worked on this. We did three of them at that time but it took them a long time to issue all of them. This came out the following Valentine's Day and for some reason the third one took another six years to be issued. And then the next subway poster was this one and since I knew that it was coming out in April and by then I knew that after another bad winter in New York everybody would be creating a dose of spring. I decided to make it into a seed package and it gave me a good opportunity to bury the SVA logo. Can anybody see where it is? Yeah, right, right there. So for the next poster I thought, because I hate working with somebody else's logo. Everybody does. So for the next poster I thought maybe I should just start with the logo and design from there. So I thought what would the logo look good in Boston too? Maybe chocolate. So we made a poster into a chocolate bar of course. So everything that you've seen here and more is in elegantissima, my monograph. Why did I do this book? So that I could do this copyright page. And from there I did these pencils that were inspired by my collection of Italian pencil boxes from the 30s. I especially liked the double-sided pencils that were usually red and blue for teachers to correct homework, but I much prefer red and black. And that was followed by colored pencils called tutti frutti and then brilante or metallic colored pencils. In the meantime, for all the years that I've been a designer I've been obsessively photographing signage all over Italy and sometimes in France and other places. And it was never meant for anything more than just for my own reference and enjoyment because of course I started shooting these in 35 millimeter slides and then I graduated to point to shoot snapshots. But as the digital technology got better and better I finally began to realize that I could consider putting these into a book. So I went back and I re-photographed as much as I could find and for everything else we had Photoshop. And when I went back I brought my secret weapon. No, it's not a selfie stick. It's a telescoping pole that gives me what I always wanted in life. Another three feet of height. And I went back to Venice to re-photograph all of these mosaics on the pavement. And before I even finished that one I was already planning the next because all of these signs were disappearing in an alarming rate and I felt like I had to document all of these before they would all be gone. So the next one was Paris and I thought that'll be much easier as just one city in the whole country but it's a big city and they have a lot of beautiful script neon that is disappearing very rapidly. So I had to try to track down as much of that as possible and then there are the mosaics which were much more difficult for them to remove so I concentrated on those a lot too. And the last chapter in the book is called Samo, Wordless Signs, which I've always been a big fan of and this is one of my favorites. It's a Lichienki fume, the smoking dog which inspired me to do this logo recently for a rotisserie chicken restaurant. And then finally I figured I had enough energy to do one more of these books and I had to do Barcelona because it's a modernista and deco paradise. And whereas in the other books I was concentrating more on just the sign, just the typography, but in Barcelona the whole facade was just so beautiful. And this is one sign that I was really looking forward to photographing. I had only seen it in a book and I had been checking regularly on Google Street View and I spent a lot of time with these books on Google Street View because I just sit in my desk in New York and I just go up and down every single street and you can find a lot of signs that way. So I went, as soon as I got to Barcelona I literally ran to this location to see the sign and this is what I found. That's what I said. I was devastated. I felt like I had missed the removal of this by a matter of minutes. So the next day I was interviewed by a reporter from El País, the Spanish newspaper and I was so, I was still so upset. That's all I wanted to talk about. And two days later the article came out and of course he mentioned it and a week later when I was back in New York I got an email from Angel Lopez who was the grandson of the original founder and he said, my family and I were very moved by the article. We just want you to know that if you ever come back to Barcelona we will remount the sign for you to photograph. So I went back immediately. The whole family came out for the event and I dedicated the book to them. So one thing I said I'd never do was design a font because for all these years I just designed the letters that I need for the logo or the book title or whatever and I have no interest in doing the whole alphabet or the numbers or the punctuation or the diacritics but how do you say no to the Hamilton Wood Type Museum and the Moran Brothers? Right? So this was, yes. And if you haven't been there you must go. So this was a future, an Italian futurist font that I developed into this which they made as a wood type and also it was issued in digital. And it was named Mardel after Mardel Dubek who was the longtime pantograph operator there who came out of retirement to cut this font and I actually got to see it in action which was very exciting. And this was a series of posters that we did that were printed there in letterpress. And then at the same time I was getting ready for my retrospective exhibition at the School of Visual Arts last year and there was this eyesore of a staircase that had to be covered in some way. So I realized that all I had to do was come up with 12 pasta names that were all of equal length and it works very well. And that was followed by a Montocatini which again was inspired by the Art Nouveau Italian posters that always featured this style of hand lettering with lots of ligatures. So we ended up doing 200 different ligatures for this typeface which was really fun. And then finally Marseille which is an Art Deco inspired, French Art Deco inspired font that is based on the original letter forms that I used when I designed the cover for The Lover oh so many years ago. So we have come full circle. Thank you very much. And see you next year.


What's good John she will rocks back out again with another video. We're about to check out who is the king of the frog splash now Hopefully they have Eddie Guerrero in this clip. I think he had one of the best frog splashes I'm not gonna lie to you. I hope they have Eddie Guerrero in this clip Ray Mysterio He has a pretty good frog splash as well. So I'm sure they will have them in this clip if they don't They're doing they're just doing a disservice to Eddie Guerrero, but I love you guys man We're almost at 20k. I appreciate all the love and support Cranking out as many viz as possible, man I'm trying to grow this channel as much as possible once They start opening up movie theaters. I'm gonna be going doing my movie review So be on the lookout for that once I get this Elgato I'll be able to do some more gameplays and I want y'all to be able to like Check out the rage I be getting from other players because I killed them Like I want y'all to be able to hear that and right now the way my setup is now you can't hear in-game chat audio So I'm getting things together that way, you know saying I can just diversify this channel on all the things I like to do as well. So love you guys little support. Let's get into it They got to have anything in this clip. They got to have them in this compilation. All right, Chavo. That makes sense Chavo has a nice Fox Blast too. Not bad. It's all right. It's okay.  That's a frog flash too. This is okay It's okay It's not bad This is not bad. He gets a lot of height on it. I hope they had a cook where he ended up cracking Brock Lesnar's ribs. I Think yeah, I think this I think they're gonna have it in there because he hit it. He hit it on Brock on the outside of the ring I don't know if you guys remember that summer slam Yeah Yeah, he gets a lot of height on it. He gets a lot of height on it They didn't show it. Oh I know D-Lo Brown had a frog splash. I don't remember that. He has a nice form not gonna lie to you The thing I remember D-Lo Brown from is just his entrance when he walks to the ring. He does his it like he sways his his head Coming down below if y'all remember that from D-Lo. That's the only real thing I remember from D-Lo Brown.  Geez, bro Oh, yeah, Christian has one too.  It's okay It's okay, I don't know it's okay. Yeah, I just I don't know I just not a big fan of his frog splash, not a big fan. It's just I don't know It's not bad. It's just I don't know it just I'm not I'm not a fan of it Kevin Owens is actually pretty nice and I go IT Kevin Owens frog splash is actually pretty nice, bro for someone that Whoo for someone that like I know y'all want me to say it That's a lot of weight for someone that big hitting that move with the form. It's it's pretty impressive I like his frog splash And it looks like a move that will put you away. It's like all that weight coming down on you was would Realistically like crush somebody like me. You know I'm saying but once again, that's a lot of weight I know y'all love when I say that shit Oh Yeah, I remember this. Oh, this is sick Now raise Raise is nice. I love Ravens here's frog splash. He's so small and it looks so Look at JBL. I like his frog splash. I like his frog splash, man Is it better than choppers?  I'm not to give it to Ray when he does the little pose in the air Yeah, I like that variation of his frog splash. I'm see if he can do it He doesn't do it all the time, but when he does it it looks pretty nice. There's a lot of balance man. I'll be afraid You know I'm saying That was a good match that actually turned out to be a very entertaining match Ray Versus Brock Lesnar and Dominic involved that was actually entertaining as hell I actually for a second believed That Ray was gonna get the job done like they made you believe somehow Ray was gonna win. I like this match This was very enjoyable. I enjoyed it Haria Gawari I'm never really I haven't seen too much of him. So I mean, this is nice though Yeah, it's not that bad Yeah, he has nice form on it. This is so crazy. You can hear the difference in crowd Not that one was really good.  Not bad It's not bad Yeah, it's not bad. I rock with it. I like the stereo spot frog splash They get a lot of height though They get a lot of height. Yeah, they get a lot of height on I remember when the Usos had turned heel that was like one of their best gimmicks, bro When they finally turned heel, it was so good, bro The Usos penitentiary as it was actually pretty good because they were always bubbly and good and and nice And then they turned heel.  I think I'm So far right now. He has my favorite one Bro, look at the form he gets off that the height Bro, he gets a lot of height off that bro. Yeah, I'm a I'm a it's Leo Rush's frog splash is Very good. It's so far my favorite one in this video That I've seen so far Jimmy snooker. I Know he has one as well. Oh He went back That's crazy how wrestling has changed, bro Like when you see back then when you saw stuff like that That it was amazing to see Yeah, like when you see something like that back back then it was It was crazy like I Look out. Look how the crowd reacts to that. It's such a simple move But back in it was just amazing Look at that. That's crazy. He got a lot of got a lot of distance on that one too Robin damson's nice to his was actually pretty good his I Hope they have the one where he ended up hurtin triple H I think he crushed like his larynx. I think that's how you pronounce it It was like it was something dealing with his throat.  I want to say it was the frog splash that he was doing Yeah, I believe it's like off the top of the pot But yeah, now RVD's frog splash was actually pretty good too His is actually good. He gets a lot of height and form on it You know what it's out of so far in this video Leo Rush RVD There's is like the best wise form and height Oh my god Oh I Hope they show it. I hope they had that clip Whoo, look at the height Jesus Just for that's a nice one too. He has he gets a lot of height on his too Whoo, he gets a lot of height look it Well, look how high he gets up on that. It's the height that I like about his To be honest with you Leo Rush Montez for RVD so far in this video They have the best ones I've seen so far for me personally. Look at the height Bro, it's with it. Whoo.  It has to be number one. Come on. It's Eddie, bro It's Eddie. This is when you win the championship Give me that. Oh my god. It's Eddie, bro. RP Eddie, man. This is easily number one. It's no it's no debate It's no more easily Easily no more for me Damn, man Easy hit it man. Ah, it's brain man so many good memories So many good memories, bro. Oh my god Jesus Christ, oh Man, bro Bad bar back memories for sure RP Eddie Guerrero I'm glad he put this in there. It had to be if you're gonna do a frog splash compilation And he has to be at the top. I'm glad that he put this in the video for me I might have to just off the ones that I like. I like Eddie's of course RVD's Leo Rush and Montez Ford Eddie's gonna be number one in my opinion. I'll actually have to I like I like Leo Rush's Over RVD's only because he's smaller and the form then I would give RVD and then Montez for those are my top four So I want to know in what order if from this video would you rank the their frog splash, man? I want to get y'all opinion comment down below. Let me know man Brought back so many great memories of love. It's a nice move not everybody hits that move and You know, I just I like I like moves like that like high flying moves like that But appreciate all the love and support wrote to 20k. I can't believe it almost there Love you guys so much appreciate you kicking with me. See you on the next one


Hello everyone, and welcome to another tutorial. This time around, we will be looking into creating a society website that any university society could use, with the help of the template provided in this github repository, which will be linked in the description. We can start by cloning or downloading the template through clicking this button right here. For the purpose of simplicity, let us choose download zip. After it has finished downloading, you should extract all files in your desired directory. As you can see, we have just acquired all of these JavaScript, HTML and CSS files, which represent the base of the society website. Personally, I like using Visual Code Studio for navigating and manipulating the pages. But it is up to you. A simple text editor like, for instance, Notepad++ would work just as well. We need to do one more thing before we can actually see the web app up and running. It is a project built in the React JavaScript framework, so we need to install Node.js, which will function as the website's server. You can get it from this link, which will be in the description as well. Using the default options, finish installing Node.js and restart your computer for the changes to take place. Let us see the website in action now. Start by going into the root folder, where you have extracted the GitHub repository. Here, click on File and select Open Windows Pirate Shell as Administrator. Now, check that you have installed Node and NPM by writing these two commands and running them. Node minus V and NPM minus V from Version. If all seems in order, we simply run NPM install, so that it gets all of the required libraries that the project uses. After the project prerequisites have been installed, use the command NPM start to start up the server. This will open your default browser and go to local host, which means that the server is on your local personal computer. And here it is, the website is up and running. Now, whenever you make a change inside the page, you'll be able to see the result in real time, after you refresh the page. Next up, let us discuss the structure of the project. It is split into three main folders, as this one, Node modules, contains all of the Node.js libraries. Let's start with public. Public contains the images of the website as well as the various other public resources that will use. For instance, here you add your own photos, available all across the website, to see. Meanwhile, the main bulk of the project resides in the source folder. Inside, you can see two more folders, components and pages, as well as various other JavaScript files. Of particular Node is this file, app.js. It essentially is the root of the project, and from which every other page gets called, using this React router. To add more paths inside the router is essentially adding more pages to the website. Let's take this news example. I've set up a path for it for slash news, so when I click this button, it goes to slash news and here it is. Also, don't forget to import the actual page first, inside app.js, otherwise it wouldn't work. And speaking of the website's pages, you can find all of them in this subfolder. First, we have the public home. In here, you should replace all of the lorem ipsum, as well as add your own paths to your images to be shown in this carousel. Note that you can change the appearance of every div and every other element by adding an inline CSS or a separate CSS file to your liking, as well as the pagination of the text. Another page of the website is the news page. It consists of five different panels, each corresponding to a news article. You can find them here. You can always modify this, by adding or removing the panels or the data inside them. Let's say I need more news panels, so I simply multiply the existing ones and see that they get shown in real time. The last page of the website is the user page, only accessible if logged in. It contains all of the various events of the society, plus some additional functionalities. For instance, you can log out, as well as add new events of your own. For each event available, you also have a button to enroll to this event, meaning that you join it. And it increases the number of people that are going to that specific event. One thing to note is that you should make the add event button available only for admin users, so that not everyone can add new events. Similar to the pages subfolder, there is a component subfolder. Inside, you can find common elements of the various pages that are stored away, and thus being able to use them in any pages only once. For instance, the footer and the nav bar, can be found right here, and are common across all of the pages. You can always add another button and the such and date appear updated in all of the pages. To add a component to your page, you first import it in the header of the JavaScript file, and then use it in the return of the render function, like so. If we take this line off and save the page, you will see that this page doesn't have a nav button anymore. And now it's back. I will also point out the existence of the checkbox dialog component. In the website, it can be found by clicking register and the hyperlink here. It opens up this popup in which you should update it with your GDPR policy. Now that we have glossed over the structure of the website, you may wonder how can we authenticate, get, add, or even enroll to events if we run the server locally. Well, the answer is that we are using Amazon Web Services as back-end, and the link resides in app.js with the form of these five global variables. For instance, pullDataConfig is required for the secure authentication, as well as each API URL is linked to an AWS Lambda function, which can be found in the third folder of the project. Right here, to clarify the getEventsLambda function returns all of the events in the database that are in the future due to this line. The postEventLambda function adds a new event to the database with this set structure. And finally, the enrollEvent function adds one to the enrollCounter of one given event. And you do that by giving the date of the event, which is the primary key of that specific database table. The process of setting up these functions, as well as the database with the required structure, and the user pools used for authentication in Amazon, is thoroughly explained in a separate 10-minute video, which is linked in the description. Note that you will have not one, but two user pools, one for admin and one for regular users. As for the Lambda functions, you will essentially be pasting the three functions from the project repository here. After following the other tutorial, you will end up by having your website inside a storage unit at Amazon, which is similar to OneDrive or Google Drive. That broadcasts access to it publicly to a new URL, where everyone can check out the web app, which can be found here. This instance of the website is available publicly to anyone with this link. And don't worry, this rather cryptic URL can be easily changed to create a custom domain name of your choice by following a simple tutorial from Amazon, which will be linked in the description as well. All of these services are well under the account credit you receive by making an Amazon account with your university email through AWS Educate. Although this option does imply a couple of days delay for confirmation. Alternatively, you can use a regular AWS free account tier, in which you will have to input some credit card credentials to access the free credit. It is up to you. In conclusion, please refer to the GitHub readme, whether there are any uncertainties. As there you can find an explanation for every page and component, as well as the various useful Node.js commands. Thank you for watching and once again, please check out the other tutorial to set up the database, user pools and functions properly.


The Patriots new regime with its first big signing in New England. The team has agreed to re-sign tight end hunter Hunter Henry to a three-year 27 million dollar deal with reportedly 16 million of that guaranteed Henry. A team captain in 2023 was scheduled for unrestricted free agency after playing the past three seasons in Foxboro. He got 42 passes for 419 yards and a team-high six touchdowns last year. I mentioned it off the top of the show. Welcome to our Bella early edition. I am training Casey at Longside our Patriots insider Phil Perry and from the Boston Harold Andrew Callahan Phil. This seems like a good move for the Patriots. Maybe a little more money than they you know would have had to spend or they were a good team but you know a good deal nonetheless. I think it's a good deal for Hunter Henry and it's a smart move by the Patriots to make sure they keep him around. This position is one of their many glaring needs but to make sure that you bring back a guy who was a captain last year as a leader in that locker room for a locker room that could use as much of that as they could get honestly moving forward. Somebody who's going to be dependable in the past game for whatever quarterback they bring in next. Yeah if it's an extra couple of million dollars versus what he might have made on the open market with another team Andrew I'm totally okay with that. You've got more than enough money to spend and it's worth baking in that extra value that Hunter Henry brings to your team understanding how your team is structured right now that is totally worth it. I think it's a smart move by Elliott Wolfe and Andrew I'm here. Here's how simple this is. The Patriots have one tight end under contract. His name is the Michael Petway. You might not have known that. The other part is Hunter Henry was the best tight end in the market and when you have no players available in-house to start or even be a backup go get the best guy at that position and for Hunter Henry who's familiar who comes back in a deal that okay he might have been two or three million dollars overpaid. Hey that's going to be part of the tax and I know Phil and Trent and you've talked about before as well for the Patriots. It's also better than overpaying for a receiver which instead of two to three million might actually be five or six per year. I think this is a great deal. Any concerns any drawbacks to making this deal Andrew. Sure I mean you look at that two to three million maybe that's a difference between some signing some other players but I think you got to start somewhere right and this is the most glaring need in terms of just raw numbers. How many players do we have a tight end? It's one. Okay at least the receivers you've got bodies there so for them I think you look at the opportunity cost it's small but it's offset by something we didn't even mention already. He gets to recruit other players. He's got respect around the league his toughness his production it's just going to be a matter of okay they get to Thursday maybe next week and go while we ran out of our budget maybe we should have given Hunter eight or nine million. I just want to explain for people because we have talked about this type of thing in the last few weeks but when Andrew talks about attacks or two to three extra million I spoke to a cap specialist Brad Spielberger from Pro Football Focus does a great job pegging values. Great guy. On a recent podcast and he said he might make Hunter Henry might make a deal that ends up paying him six and a half million dollars per year not nine million dollars per year which is what the Patriots are giving him so that quote unquote tax might be hey we know on paper this ain't a championship situation right we got questions at quarterback we've got questions all over the roster you know do you want to be in Massachusetts where you're paying taxes that are a little bit different than if you'd be in Texas or Florida or Tennessee or somewhere else like that's the kind of tax they might have to pay trendy for a variety of free agents to make sure they get guys coming to New England it's something that ellie wolf acknowledged I asked him about the specific I guess a possibility at the combine and he said yeah we might have to pay a little bit more but that's usually how free agency works guys go where they get the most money so should they maybe have waited for and let him hit free agency and then he knows when he gets out there which is only five and a half six and a half and then you bring him back at that number without him the smarter poll no I think because Andrew's point is a good one he's also he just so happens to be the best tight end available and so if you can keep him off the market and make sure you keep him in the house without risking losing him to somebody else you go ahead and you make that move what does this indicate to you and you're going forward about how they're going to approach free agency I think they're prioritizing their in-house guys everyone knows they have the money but you at least want to start with the players that you're familiar with right like the big risk when they spend all that money in 2021 is you're bringing in Jalen Mills and you know Nelson Agle and all these guys you've never met with before you just threw a bag at him said your tape looks good come in but you don't know how they fit exactly you know how hunter Henry fits if they get a deal done you know how Kendrick born fits you don't have to bring back everyone Trent Brown probably gone but I think there's an advantage here bring some guys in who can recruit that you want that you can keep the foundation that we've heard so much about with Gerard Mail


Hey, this is Brett, and this 2012 Ford F350 Crew Cab Long Box Dual Re-Wheel Lariat is stock number 13771Z. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, you're new and used heavy duty truck headquarters this 2012 Ford F350 has the 6.7 liter power stroke diesel engine. It's paired up with the six-speed automatic transmission. This truck has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change on the fluid tab and checked and topped off and it is 100% ready to go. I'm going to go all the way around in this video inside underneath, start it up and take a look under the hood to give you the most accurate representation of the vehicle possible. Tuxedo black metallic is the color and I shoot all my videos in 4K so if you have HD capabilities turn them on now because it is your best way to check out the quality condition options and cleanliness of the truck before seeing it in person. And if you like the video you can subscribe to my YouTube channel which is youtube.com slash summit auto click the bell notifications you'll get updates on the videos I do each and every day as well as access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle walk arounds largest catalogs of vehicle walk arounds on YouTube. Comes with the polished aluminum 17 inch wheels and it has Cooper discoverer HT3 tires. These are LT24575R17s and they have a very good amount of tread left I would say 80 to 90% of the tread left on those tires. Frame and underbody looks pretty good for a 2012 from Wisconsin this is a one owner clean title history clean car facts truck. From bumper is an excellent condition lower valances in nice shape as well you do get the factory fog lights the nice chrome trimmed grille. The hood is in fantastic condition I didn't see any major dents or dings on there does come with the cab lights up top passenger side front fender excellent condition as well no dents or dings on there and the passenger side front wheel no major scuffs or scrapes. As you go down this side of this 2012 Ford F350 take note of how clean that body is how reflective and mirror like that paint is I take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the truck you can see the truck hear the truck and of confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here so when you do get here there's absolutely no surprises and you can make a smart and informed buying decision from wherever you're at and if this video helps you make that buying decision let your salesman know that you saw the video that it was helpful and that Brett sent you back wheels look pretty good as well back tires have just as much tread as the front tires does have the camper package with the anti-sway bars see the box rails all look really good on this truck that's what you want to look at on older trucks so that that box isn't rotting off but looks really good frame and underbody looks really good has all the remaining factory exhaust and a lower rockers and cab corners all look pretty good on this truck as well does come with the factory chrome step bars the dually tub is in really nice condition as well coming around to the back the rear bumper is in great shape get the backup parking sensors full towing package of course with the receiver hitch four pin and seven pin wiring and the tailgate is in very nice condition as well paint is very shiny and reflective take a look at that tuxedo black it's got a lot of pearl metal flake in it purples blues greens really a cool color comes with the spring bed liner fifth wheel bed rails seven pin wiring in the bed and the bed itself is in very nice condition and that spring bed liner goes on to the tailgate as well that tailgate shuts nice and solidly coming around to the driver's side just as nice as that passenger side didn't see any dents or dings in the box dually tubs in pretty nice condition for an 11 year old dually tub back wheels in excellent shape as well and down the rest of the side of the truck doors cab all look really good does have the driver's side door code entry we do have the code for this truck and if you ever want to figure out what your code is for your 11 to 16 super duty in the upper right hand part screen got a video showing you how to do that once again that front fender no dents or dings does have the power scope mirrors they power fold in power telescope out they're heated have built in directional signals in them and i'll show you how those work in just a second inside the lariat package gives you the black leather bucket seats both these front seats are heated and cool no rips or tears on the seats both are also power factory floor mats power pedals auto headlamps tilt and telescopic steering wheel power windows locks and mirrors and memory driver seat you can see these mirrors do power fold in like so i was like showing both sides so you know that both sides are working properly and the uh telescope telescopic feature the ignition has to be on this i'll show you that in just a second back seats are just as nice as front seats no major rips or tears back here you do get the power sliding rear window with built-in rear defrost you get a storage bin underneath that locks with the ignition key and you get storage behind the back seats a little bit of storage and you also have the factory floor mats back here and 110 volt 150 watt plug-in child safety locks on the back doors and the inside and bottoms of the doors all look really good cab corners on this side look pretty good as well before we hop inside i'm going to show you the tire and loading information sticker as well as the vinn sticker all right really a nice truck for an 11 year old truck and inside you get the built forward tough animation there you can see this one has 56,548 miles on it instrument cluster is very nice and clean comes with the weather wrap steering wheel cruise controls and information center controls on the left volume and bluetooth and radio controls on the right and those mirrors i wanted to show you they do telescope in and out and both sides working nicely this one comes with the cd player turned out four-wheel drive dual climate controls heated and cooled seat buttons factory brake controller for four auxiliary up-fit switches you get four cup holders here and you can remove these for different storage options traction control system sync system which connects to your bluetooth cell phone as well as an aux and a usb jack passenger side floor mat and seat are in excellent condition smells very clean inside this truck i don't think it's ever been smoked in and the headliner is in great shape as well you do get map lights right there power side mirror window controls and home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems let's start it up and take a look under the hood starts right up no check engine lights or anything like that i would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this hd video you've been able to verify the quality condition options and of course cleanliness of this truck all the way around inside and out under the hood we have the 6.7 liter power stroke diesel engine engine base very clean runs very smooth once again this truck has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off has six very new tires shocks are doing a nice job holding that hood up and there is the emissions sticker and for the age and miles on this truck i would highly recommend it from a quality and condition standpoint and to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 550 new and used car's trucks scvs minivans wranglers half tons three quarter tons one tons you name it we got to go to that website right there summitauto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle all at summitauto.com and if you'd like to check out more hd videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto click the bell notifications and we'll update some videos i do each and every day here at summit automotive in fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to my youtube channel in the upper left a link to more f350 videos i've done in the upper right link to this vehicle on our website and a link to one of our latest youtube videos in the lower right click those checks out we're super excited to help you with this ultra clean 2012 forward f350 crew cab long box duly larry it in tuxedo black metallic thanks again for checking out the video remember to like subscribe and share on the youtube channel i really appreciate it thanks again


Introduce this notion of improvisation as spiritual practice and we got to start with this word spirituality. It's kind of a tricky beast And I think of it kind of like a chameleon really depends how what the word means what the word means Depends on your background on the background. You're looking at it, right? it depends on your own eyes shifts around a lot and Some would say we shouldn't really even try to dissect it that doing so damages it If you go to the each chain the great book of Chinese wisdom, it says the Tao that can be named is not the real Tao So there may be truth in that but I also think there's value in taking a stab at words that matter to us and I Think this might matter to us, but some of us might have resist resistance to it So I want to start by saying I don't think of spirituality as the same thing as religion The the root of the word religion religio means to tie back or to bind to tie back or to bind so you might think of religion as like a shared set of beliefs practices rituals that tie us back from the things we don't want and Tie us to the things we do want and So yeah, you can see that there's some danger in that right? I mean we get constriction with religion We get division with the religion sometimes But we also get support for life's up and downs and we're connected to something a network that matters and and allows us to cope with difficulty But I want to submit that this spirituality is something different. That's a personal experience It's a fluid experience. It's a lived experience. So that's what we'll explore a little bit of this morning And I want to start with a story. This is a picture of me and my siblings. I'm on the right It's my brother David and my sister Jennifer. This is when I was about 13 years old Just about the time that I went to visit a woman named Carol Glover Carol was a woman who came to live with us when my parents got divorced when I was five and She became a great friend and like the second mother to me And I went down to North Carolina to visit her partly because I hadn't seen her in a while But also because I was a fan of North Carolina basketball. I was when Michael Jordan was playing there but I took my first flight alone to North Carolina and When I was there, she told me a story that she hadn't told anybody else and It was one that really affected me and my own understanding of spirituality Carol was with her friend Terry and they had just seen a concert in Providence, Rhode Island actually the village people and Earlier I had a slide of the village people, but I thought that'd be a little too much. Okay They saw the village people in Providence, Rhode Island and they went We're driving to Keen, New Hampshire and so it was late at night. They're both tired and Carol turned to Terry and said, hey Are you okay to drive? I Know you're tired and Terry said, yeah, I'm fine and Carol said, okay Let me know if you need me to take over. I'm glad to do it so Carol fell asleep and she started dreaming and who knows how long it was really in Her dream she got this sense of foreboding that there was something really wrong and then in her dream she saw a hand on her shoulder and Felt the hand on her shoulder and she looked at it. It was a strong hand and she had the sense that it was a caring hand and That hand shook her so much in the dream that she woke up And when she woke up she looked ahead of her and saw that they were headed towards a boulder She turned over to Terry and saw that Terry had fallen asleep So she quickly yelled to Terry Terry wake up Terry woke up slam them the brakes and they came within inches of the boulder. I Heard that story and was stunned. I'm still get chills to tell it And it wasn't just that it was that that night when she went home You know they sort of gathered themselves and dealt with the adrenaline made the trip back home Carol took out a piece of paper and a pencil and drew the hand that she had seen and she would be the first To tell you that she's not an artist And yet this hand and I'm hoping you can see it is one that I've when I saw it I thought the detail and the vitality of this drawing came through the page as if it were animated by something else Both pieces of this story the the experience in the car and the drawing of the hand spoke to me of what is this? mysterious thing that keeps us alive What is it is it God is it light is it life is it love is it I don't know I don't have a name for it but it's something and Cool, and that's about it, right? And so this is my my own understanding of spirituality come speaks to and from this perspective And so I want to put this for it as a working definition of spirituality That it's the whole person practice of awakening Feeling and expressing a connection to larger mystery by whole person I mean the chosen parts of us and the given parts of us I Mean the parts of us that we like and the parts of us that we don't like the savory and the unsavory all of it By practice, I mean it's something intentional that we commit to Like a religious practice or like a practice for performance. We come back to it again and again for improvement Awakening I'm suggesting that maybe there's a part of us that is lying dormant. We don't know yet But we're calling it. We're saying hey come on. They put that hand on the shoulder wake up But it's about feeling it's about our mind, but also our body and our emotions. It's our whole person And it's about expressing it giving voice to whatever it is we find the joy the despair the excitement the confusion And again that we're connecting to this something larger this unnameable thing The whole person practice of awakening feeling and expressing a connection to larger mystery So again, we could choose a different definition. This is the one I'm going with today for our sake, right? So then you say all right, but how is improvisation a spiritual path? And I know I've got a bunch of you already going there and probably already have I know many of you already do But I want to put forward at least seven ways that we could consider improvisation a spiritual path The first is that we're exercising an ethic if you take any beginning improvisational theater class and I imagine in any of your applied improv Experiences we have all these principles slow down simplify Connect with your partner Be ready for change These are principles that help make us help us build better scenes and they help us build better lives as well So we get this Set of guidelines and principles that can keep us walking a path where we become good human beings We become good to each other we become at peace moving through the world The Hindus have believed that the world was created through lila or divine play and any improv scene no matter how poignant or Disturbing has an element of this like okay. What do we got? What's coming? and I would submit that this is an attitude about life that helps us live a vibrant joyous life as well when we're in improv and We're dancing around with this stuff with each other We're engaging this part of ourselves that is connected to that fundamental mystery You'll hear me talk about this one a lot if you know me and other circles Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention on purpose to the present moment with curiosity and kindness Paying attention to the present moment on purpose with curiosity and kindness. That's one definition Again improv trains us in this In order to be a good improviser one needs to develop this kind of awareness and attention and open-heartedness When we do this in our real lives colors become clearer Feelings become deeper tastes become richer We expand to more of who we are and what we can be many religious traditions talk about interdependence in Islam you'll hear about unity in Buddhism you'll hear about Interbeing if you turn to the world of science you hear about ecology or Mirror neurons there is a fundamental truth that we are interconnected with each other and with all things and Improv is like puts us in this nest of interconnectedness. It says go experience it Right. I make an offer. I am affected someone else makes an offer. They are affected anything affects everything else that's happening in that moment This image is of Indra's net an image from Hinduism of a net that covers the whole universe And at every node of the net is a bead That reflects every other bead So at any point in the net of the universe you can find everything else We are stitched together Carl Jung described the shadow as the part of ourselves that we have hidden or disowned we don't want to admit and If we always deny it it becomes dangerous it can leak out through projection or rupture and cause great damage If we integrate it it becomes a source of power and depth and humor and peace Improv gives us the chance again to face this and play with it in a way that is real but less risky We get to play the the nasty character my buddy Lisa who's a great improv teacher Lisa Roland Was working with me and she said you know, you're really good at playing the nice generous character I'm really good at that. She said how about playing the nasty guy? How about playing the villain? So this has been like a three-year project since she gave me that note I'm still working on it But I did get to play some villains a few weeks ago and it was actually quite refreshing Integrating my shadow the world is paradoxical when we look at that mystery we find paradox You can say how is there a loving God and so much suffering How can we be this tiny speck in a universe and matter have this sense of inherent worth that we do? How does that make sense? We is one of those things true or is the other We face the same thing in improv should I push the scene forward or should I let my partner lead? Am I just being present in the moment or am I paying attention to the narrative arc of the story that has to unfold? Right, and of course the answer is yes and we're doing both of those things and Maybe we're toggling back and forth so quickly that it just becomes one thing Like a murbier strip you follow the trail around this. It's all one thing happening at the same time and yet it's a paradox and Then I also want to mention that of course and this may be the most direct way that improvisation could be considered a spiritual path to me is that it puts us in direct contact with inspiration in Any moment of creativity when we get an idea Where is that thing coming from? Maybe it's a constellation of our experiences and our histories and our training But okay peel all that away then where does it come from? We move to you know these games and exercises or scene work. We move too quickly to do it logically it's coming from somewhere else and The word spontaneous the root of word spontaneous is about making a conscious choice a free will action and In this case, I would say that spontaneity is putting our choosing with free will to be in the space of creativity of not knowing and So improv does this for us So to come back and review these seven Improvisation is a spiritual practice. It allows us to exercise an ethic. It gives us a way of moving through the world That invites us to dive into this divine play that we're not just having a good time We could be but we're also connecting to something larger than us in it Gives us a chance to practice mindfulness in an active playful way We celebrate and experience our interdependence directly We have the chance to face the shadow to engage paradox and to open to inspiration So I'd like to leave you with for Four pieces of an invitation The first would be to wake up. I hope but maybe this talk this little snippet of thought Can be like a hand on your shoulder not necessarily that you're hurtling towards danger But that there is a possibility with an improvisation for a part of ourselves to be activated that may have been lying dormant It may have been sleeping and it's really fun to step into this realm if you choose to The second invitation is to collaborate. I would love to work with you. I would love to hear your thoughts Even if you think this is complete lunacy Tell me why tell me how I'm leading a couple workshops later today would love to see you I'd love to work with you later at some other time If you choose to step into this realm, I also encourage you to pay attention. There are little pieces signposts guide guide Angels that show up along the way that give you meaning Seek them out Play with them. See what they're trying to say pay careful attention and lastly With whatever you find Bring the rest of us along We're just at the beginning Of exploring this connection between improvisation and spiritual practice as a wider earth community and I've been doing it for a few years. It is rich and wide open. It keeps getting wider and wider So we've got a journey in front of us to have a lot of fun on I hope That you'll join in. Thank you


Hello, hello everyone! My name is Laura. This is my channel, Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video, which are quick and easy completed series that you can read for the Continuous On coming up. My announcement video, I am again hosting the Continuous On this year. It is a two-week read-a-thon in the month of April focused on reading series, continuing series, catching up on series. This includes duologies, trilogies, and you know, quartets. This also includes companion novels as well, so if you are a romance reader and your favorite author has a bunch of books in the same universe that are companions, but not necessarily you need to read one after another. Those also count. If you are interested, I will have the announcement video linked down below for the two weeks in April. So go ahead and check that out. And hey, while you're down there, feel free to subscribe too. I have looked at my shelves and looked at all the series and duologies and trilogies that I have, and I've come up with a list of series that I think you can fly through pretty quickly in two weeks, whether it's because they're short or they were, they really drew me in, so I was able to read them quickly, so I think you would be able to read them quickly. These are also all completed series for the most part. There's only one on here that might not be completed. But it's it's more of a companion, and so if you like catch up with everything that is out, I would consider that completed. We are going to start off with the duologies. If you like banter and romance, but also fantasy and adventure and you're getting into the mood for some summer reads, I would recommend The Daughter of the Pirate King duology by Tricia Levenseller. They're two pretty short books and they hooked me in very quickly and they did not let me go. I'm pretty sure I read each book within a day, so I was able to spend only two days on these, and the only reason I wasn't able to finish them in a shorter amount of time was because I had gotten the audiobooks and I had to wait for the audiobook for the second book from my library. But yeah, these are short. They they move so quickly. Again the banter between the characters just I could not put these books down and they're really great to get into the summer mood because it's Pirates and Daughter of the Simon Queen. This would be a great one to start off with. Next up, if you're more into mythology style, fantasy, adventure books, I would then recommend The Blood of the Stars duology by Elizabeth Lim. So again, it is another duology that's fairly short, but this is kind of Mulan meets Project Runway. You have your main character who is a tailor, but she isn't allowed to really kind of own her own shop. It's quite sexist in that way. But she dresses up as a boy in order to enter the tailor competition for the emperor. And then that's like the first half of the book and then the second half of the book is an adventure and it's really cool. And then it continues on into the second book. Again, I read these very quickly. I thought the mythology was so fascinating to read about and again, they're short. So this would be another duology that I would highly recommend to pick up if you haven't already. Elizabeth Lim does have another duology. The books are quite a bit thicker, but they captured me so much. It's the Six Crimes and Cranes duology. So they're not on the list, but just thought I'd mention it because if you did already read and enjoy Spin the Dawn, then maybe look into Six of Cranes because Six Crimes and Cranes, because if you liked Spin the Dawn, you're gonna love Six Crimes and Cranes, which is another completed duology. Now, these next ones may look a little more intimidating, but that is because they are tall and hardcover. But don't worry, the print is fairly big. So I recommend the Crown's Game and the Crown's Fate. This is by Evelyn Sky, and this is kind of Night Circus meets Russia. Basically, you have these two magicians who are kind of pitted against each other secretly to see who will become the next enchanter slash right-hand man of the Tsar. And with the war between Russia and the Kazakhs potentially coming to light, the Tsar is in need of a new advisor and especially powerful enchanter by their side. So it is a competition throughout these two books between a boy and a girl of who will become the enchanter for the Tsar. They're not actually that long. If you like competition books, I think you will fly right through. Now, the final duology is one I'm going to recommend, but I don't own the second book, so I'm just putting that out there. But if again, you're really into fantasy and adventure, like I am, Read Blade of Secrets and Master of Iron by Tricia Levenseller. I know it's another Tricia Levenseller duology. Surprise, surprise, but when I bought this book, it was a lot shorter than I thought it was going to be. And Master of Iron isn't that much longer. I mean, it's a little bit longer, but not that much. You have a main character who is a blacksmith, a magical blacksmith, but with pretty bad social anxiety. And she ends up making this weapon for who ends up being a warlord. And she's like, this weapon is way too powerful. I can't give it to this warlord. So she and her sister and a couple other people kind of go on the run and figure out what to do to keep this magical sword out of the warlord's hand because she can't destroy it. Like, that's not a possibility here. So I loved this one so much. The representation was amazing. The characters were so good, but I'm a plot driven reader and I loved this so much. So if you need like a good, well-rounded fantasy world and a good duology that you're gonna finish in two weeks, latest secrets, for sure. All right, next let's move on to trilogies. I have just a few trilogies here to recommend. The first one has been all over Booktube, so I won't spend too much time on it, but it is Kingdom of the Wicked by Carrie Manuscalco. I flew through this series so quickly. Again, it was another like reading a book a day type situation where I just could not put it down. The first book is YA. The second and third are definitely adult and adult romance and that lots of smutty scenes, but that's honestly why I got through it so quickly, probably, because I loved them. I loved them. So I think that's why I was able to read through it.  You won't regret it. It really does live up to the hype. So, okay, that's all I'm gonna say on that one. Now, if you like puzzles and mystery rich families with a little bit of drama, then if you haven't picked up this trilogy, you definitely should. It has a companion book that just came out. I would say you can read just the trilogy and say it's a series completed or a trilogy completed. You don't have to read the companion to fit that, but that series is the Inheritance Games or the Hawthorne Legacy Trilogy. I only have the first two books here, the Hawthorne or the Inheritance Games, the Hawthorne Legacy, and the Final Gambit. It's red, fun. But this just kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the whole book. What was gonna happen? Who did what now? How is that coming to light? Oh, my word. Who is this person? All that bangs around at you when you have this girl who lives with her sister and they're kind of struggling to get by. She gets told that she is actually the sole inheritor of the Hawthorne family estate and basically fortune and business and all of that. So she's like this random rich family who she seemingly has zero connection to, has left her every the grandfather has left her everything in his will and he just passed. So she goes on down to Texas and the hook is that she inherits everything if she lives in the house for a year. So lots of family drama, lots of secrets to uncover. The house itself is full of so many fun puzzles and twists and turns. So if you haven't read this and you want a good like mystery trilogy to read during the continuous on, this I would say is a pretty good one to start off with. And then the last trilogy that I'm going to recommend to you goes back to it being a mythology based fairy tale trilogy and that is The Bear and the Nightingale by Catherine Arden. So this trilogy I read it fairly quickly but that's because it's short. You know these three books are not very long. It has very lyrical beautiful writing which isn't per se my type of thing it would actually slow me down but if that is something that you enjoy you love like the beautiful descriptions and storytelling then this would probably be a good trilogy for you to pick up. Again it is Russian folklore you are following this girl who her mother passes and she kind of gets in touch with like the snow king-esque kind of character like I pictured just like Jack Frost and she just kind of lives her life and does what she wants to and I don't even know how to describe. She just she just goes through life and living almost as a fairy tale. This would be a fun trilogy to pick up I would say. Now I have only one series recommendation and it's actually a series of companion novels and this is for all of my romance readers and if you've been following my channel for a while you know I am obsessed with this series and you also might know that it does actually have a companion book coming out so it's a series of companion novels and there's going to be more coming but they're not out yet so that's why I'm saying it's completed because if you I'm more so using this as an example of if you are catching up on a series and you complete everything that's out I would consider that you completed a series unless it's one book okay if you read like one book of a duology that does not count no but anyway so the series I have to recommend The Bromance Book Club by Alyssa K Adams so I actually have books one two three and five I do not have book four yet which book one and book four are my favorites um but yes The Bromance Book Club undercover bromance crazy stupid bromance and goodness a very merry bromance and then the fourth one is um isn't it romantic I absolutely adore I read them so quickly and I actually just did a reread of The Bromance Book Club just the first one and I read it in a day and I still loved it I still rated it five out of five stars so if you don't know what I'm talking about this follows a group of men typically professional athletes or there's a country singer or you know slightly famous men kind of more well known richer men who read romance novels to better their relationships with their girlfriends fiancees and wives and it's amazing because they are breaking down toxic masculinity and just can't even because it's it's hilarious it's a very funny series to read but it's also like meaningful and heartwarming and challenging all wrapped up into one contemporary romance and it is adult so just saying um adult romance contemporary this would be a really good one to read and those are all the recommendations I have for you today if you like this video give it a thumbs up comment down below if you are participating in the continuance on again I will have the announcement video linked down below because I did make quite a few changes from last year so make sure you watch that to get all of the changes explained and so you can have access to the badge documents and everything like that while you're down there feel free to hit the subscribe button and hit the bell to be notified I post twice a week typically on Sundays and Wednesdays and then also have bookish social media linked down below where I post things on Instagram and whatnot and you can keep up with what I'm reading there as well so again thank you all very much for watching and until I see you in the next video I wish you happy reading


Did you know that vocabulary is more important than grammar? If you have good vocabulary, you can communicate successfully even if the grammar is not completely perfect. However, one common problem is learning new words and then forgetting them. So when you want to use a particular word in conversation, you can't remember it at that moment. How annoying! Does this ever happen to you? The reason for this difficulty is that most students try to learn vocabulary by studying lists and dictionaries and memorizing the words. But this is not effective unless you naturally have a very good memory. The best way to learn vocabulary and remember the word successfully is to learn new words and use them immediately. You can do this with a very simple exercise. Every time you learn a new word, for example from an English lesson or an article, write it down in your vocabulary notebook. Writing is more active than just reading a definition. You should write the word, the definition in English or translation, one example sentence from the article or dictionary, and one example sentence that you create. Imagine you just learned the word, generous. Write in your vocabulary notebook. Generous. Adjective. Definition. When a person gives time or money freely. Example 1. From the article. Thanks for paying for my dinner. You're very generous. Example 2. My example. My brother is generous because he volunteers at the animal shelter on weekends. It's best if your example sentence is true or relevant to your life because this creates a personal connection with the new vocabulary word. Next day, read your vocabulary notebook again and try to add one more example sentence using the new word. This helps establish it even better in your memory. These two simple steps, writing the word and using it immediately, help your brain remember and help you use new words. Do you have a vocabulary notebook? If not, start one today. Your action item for today is to read a text in English, identify five new words and do this exercise. Write the word and its definition and use it immediately in an example sentence. This is a very simple strategy but it makes a big difference in helping you remember new words and improve your vocabulary faster.