Act four of The Sea-Gull by Anton Shekhov This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Act four. A sitting-room in Soren's house, which has been converted into a writing-room for Treplife. To the right and left are doors leading into inner rooms, and in the centre is a glass door, opening onto a terrace. Besides the usual furniture of a sitting-room, there is a writing-desk in the right-hand corner of the room. There is a turquoise divan near to the door on the left, and shelves full of books stand against the walls. Books are lying scattered about on the windowsills and chairs. It is evening. The room is dimly lighted by a shaded lamp on a table. The wind mones in the treetops, and whistles down the chimney. The watchman in the garden is heard sounding his rattle. Medvedenko and Masha come in. Mr. Constantine, where are you? Looking about her. There's no one here. His old uncle is forever asking for Constantine, and can't live without him for an instant. He dreads being left alone. Listening to the wind. This is a wild night. We've had this storm for two days. Turning up the lamp. The waves on the lake are enormous. It is very dark in the garden. Do you know, I think that old theatre ought to be knocked down. It is still standing there, naked and hideous as a skeleton, with a curtain flapping in the wind. I thought I heard a voice sweeping in it as I passed there last night. What an idea. Come home with me, Masha. Shaking her head. I shall spend the night here. Do come, Masha. The baby must be hungry. Nonsense. Matriona will feed it. It is a pity to leave him three nights without his mother. You are getting too tiresome. You used sometimes to talk of other things besides home and the baby, home and the baby. That's all I ever hear from you now. Come home, Masha. You can go home if you want to. Your father won't give me a horse. Yes, he will, ask him. I think I shall. Are you coming home to-morrow? Yes. Yes, to-morrow. She takes snuff. Trepleaf and Paulina come in. Trepleaf is carrying some pillows and a blanket, and Paulina is carrying sheets and pillowcases. They lay them on the divan, and Trepleaf goes and sits down at his desk. Who's that for, mother? Mr. Soren asked to sleep in Constantine's room tonight. Let me make the bed. She makes the bed. Paulina goes up to the desk and looks at the manuscripts lying on it. Well, I'm going. Goodbye, Masha. He kisses his wife's hand. Goodbye, mother. He tries to kiss his mother-in-law's hand. Be off, in God's name. Trepleaf shakes hands with him in silence, and Medvedenko goes out. No one ever dreamed, Constantine, that you would one day turn into a real author. The magazines pay you well for your stories. She strokes his hair. You have grown handsome, too. Dear kind Constantine, be a little nicer to my Masha. Still making the bed. Leave him alone, mother.  A woman, Constantine, asks only for kind looks. I know that from experience. Trepleaf gets up from his desk and goes without a word. There now you have vexed him. I told you not to bother. I am sorry for you, Masha. Much I need your pity. My heart aches for you. I see how things are and understand. You see what doesn't exist. Hopeless love is only found in novels. It is a trifle. All one has to do is to keep a tight reign on oneself and keep one's head clear. Love must be plucked out the moment it springs up in the heart. My husband has been promised a school in another district, and when we have once left this place I shall forget it all. I shall tear my passion out by the roots. The notes of a melancholy waltz are heard in the distance. Constantine is playing. That means he is sad. Masha silently waltzes a few turns to the music. The great thing, mother, is not to have him continually in sight. If my Simón could only get his remove, I should forget it all in a month or two. It is a trifle. Dawn and Medvedenko come in through the door on the left, wheeling Sorin in an armchair. I have six mouths to feed now, and flour is at seventy kopecks. A hard riddle to solve. It is easy for you to make light of it. You are rich enough to scatter money to your chickens, if you wanted to. You think I am rich? My friend, after practising for thirty years, during which I could not call my soul my own for one minute or the night or day, I succeeded at last in scraping together one thousand roubles, all of which went not long ago, and a trip which I took abroad. I haven't a penny. To her husband. So you didn't go home after all? How can I go home when they won't give me a horse? Would I might never see your face again? Sorin, in his chair, is wheels the left-hand side of the room. Paulina, Masha and Dawn sit down beside him. Medvedenko stands sadly aside. What a lot of changes you have made here. You have turned the sitting room into a library. Constantine likes to work in this room, because from it he can step out into the garden to meditate whenever he feels like it. The watchman's rattle is heard. Where's my sister? She has gone to the station to meet Toregorin. She will soon be back. I must be dangerously ill if you had to send for my sister. A nice business this is. Here I am dangerously ill, and you won't even give me any medicine. What shall I prescribe for you? Chamomile tea, soda, quinine. Don't inflict any of your discussions on me again. He nods towards the sofa. Is that bed for me? Yes, for you, sir. Thank you. The moon swims in the sky tonight. I am going to give Constantine an idea for a story. It shall be called The Man Who Wished, Lom Kiavulu. When I was young, I wished to be an author. I failed. I wished to be an orator. I speak abominably with my eternal and all and all, dragging each sentence on and on until I sometimes break out into a sweat all over. I wished to marry, and I didn't. I wish to live in the city, and here I am ending my days in the country and all. You wish to become state cons learns. You are one. I didn't try for that. It came of its own accord. Come, you must admit that it is petty to caval it live at sixty two years of age. You are pig-headed. Can't you see I want to live? That is futile. Nature has commanded that every life shall come to an end.  Your thirst for it is quenched, and so you are calm and indifferent. But even you dread death. The fear of death is an animal passion which must be overcome. Only those who believe in a future life and tremble for sins committed can logically fear death. But you, for one thing, don't believe in a future life, and for another, you haven't committed any sins. You have served as a counselor for twenty-five years. That is all. Twenty-eight years. Trep leaf comes in and sits down on a stool at Soren's feet. Masha fixes her eyes on his face and never once tears them away. We are keeping Constantine from his work. No matter. Of all the cities you visited when you were a broad doctor, which one did you like the best? Genoa. Why Genoa? Because there is such a splendid crowd in its streets. When you leave the hotel in the evening and throw yourself into the heart of that thong and move with it without aim or object, swept along hither and thither, the life seems to be yours. Their soul flows into you, and you begin to believe at last in a great world spirit, like the one in your play that Nina Zarechnaya acted. By the way, where is Nina now? Is she well? I believe so. I hear she has led rather a strange life. What happened? It is a long story, doctor. Tell it shortly. She ran away from home and joined Trogorin. You know that. Yes. She had a child that died. Trogorin soon tired of her and returned to his former ties as might have been expected. He had never broken them indeed, but out of weakness of character had always vacillated between the two. As far as I can make out from what I have heard Nina's domestic life has not been altogether a success. What about her acting? I believe she made an even worse failure of that. She made her debut on the stage of the Summer Theater in Moscow, and afterward made a tour of the country towns. At that time I never let her out of my sight and wherever she went I followed. She always attempted great and difficult parts, but her delivery was harsh and monotonous and her gestures heavy and crude. She shrieked and died well at times, but those were but moments. Then she really has a talent for acting. I could never make out. I believe she has. I saw her, but she refused to see me, and her servant would never admit me to her rooms. I appreciated her feelings and did not insist upon a meeting. What more can I tell you? She sometimes writes to me now that I have come home.  She never complains, but I can tell that she is profoundly unhappy. Not a line that speaks to me of an aching, breaking nerve. She has one strange fancy. She always signs herself the seagull. The miller in Rusalka called himself the crow, and so she repeats in all her letters that she is a seagull. She is here now. What do you mean by here? In the village at the inn. She has been there for five days. I should have gone to see her, but Masha went there and she refuses to see anyone. Someone told me she had been seen wandering in the fields a mile from here yesterday evening. Yes, I saw her. She was walking away from here in the direction of the village. I asked her why she had not been to see us. She said she would come. But she won't. Her father and stepmother have disowned her. They've even put watchmen all around their estate to keep her away. He goes with the doctor toward the desk. How easy it is doctor to be a philosopher on paper and how difficult in real life. She was a beautiful girl. Even the state counselor himself was in love with her for a time. You old love lays you. Shamrafe's laugh is heard. They are coming back from the station. Yes, I hear my mother's voice. Arcadena and Dragorin come in, followed by Shamrafe.  You are still trying to turn my head, you tiresome old man. Desorin. How do you do, Peter? What's still ill? I was silly of you. How are you, Miss Marsha? So you recognized me. She shakes hands with him. Did you marry him? Long ago. You are happy now? He bows to Dawn and Medvedenko and then goes hesitatingly towards Trebleef.  Trebleef gives him his hand to her son. Here is a magazine that Boris has brought to you with your latest story in it. To Dragorin as he takes the magazine. Many thanks. You are very kind.  Everyone in Moscow and St. Petersburg is interested in you and all ply me with questions about you. May ask me what you look like, how old you are, whether you are fair or dark. For some reason they all think that you are no longer young. And no one knows who you are as you always write under an assumed name. You are as great a mystery as the man in the iron mask. Do you expect to be here long? No, I must go back to Moscow tomorrow. I am finishing the novel and have promised something new in the magazine besides. In fact it is the same old business. During their conversation, Arkadina and Paulina have put up a card table in the centre of the room. Shamriff lights the candles and arranges the chairs, then fetches a box of lotto from the cupboard. The weather has given me a rough welcome. The wind is frightful. If it goes down by morning I shall go fishing in the lake, and shall have a look at the garden and the spot. Do you remember where your play was given? I remember the piece very well, but should like to see again where the scene was laid. To her father. Father, do please let my husband have a horse. He ought to go home. A horse to go home with? You know the horses have just been to the station. I can't send them out again. But there are other horses. Seeing that her father remains silent. You are impossible. I shall go on foot, Marsha. On foot in this weather. She takes a seat at the card table. Shall we begin? It is only six miles. Goodbye. He kisses his wife's hand. Goodbye, mother. His mother-in-law gives him her hand unwillingly. I should not have troubled you all, but the baby. He bows to everyone. Goodbye. He goes out with an apologetic air. He will get there all right. He is not a major general. Come, let us begin.  We shall soon be called to suffer. Shamrafe, Marsha, and Dawn sit down at the card table. Tidra Gorin. When the long autumn evenings descend on us, we while away the time here by playing lotto. Look at this old set. We used it when our mother played with us as children. Don't you want to take a hand in the game with us until supper time? She and Dragorin sit down at the table. It is a monotonous game, but it is all right when one gets used to it. She deals three cards to each of the players. Looking through the pages of the magazine. He has read his own story and hasn't even cut the pages of mine. He lays the magazine on his desk, and goes toward the door on the right, stopping as he passes his mother to give her a kiss. Won't you play, Constantine? No. Excuse me, please. I don't feel like it. I'm going to take a turn through the rooms. He goes out. Are you all ready? I shall begin. Twenty-two. Here it is. Three. Right. Have you put down three? Eight. Eighty-one. Ten. Don't go so fast. Could you believe it? I am still dazed by the reception they gave me in Karkov. Thirty-four. The notes of a melancholy waltz are heard. The students gave me an ovation. They sent me three baskets of flowers, a wreath, and this thing here. She and clasps a brooch from her breast, and lays it on the table. There is something worthwhile. Fifty. Fifty, did you say? I wore a perfectly magnificent dress. I'm no fool when it comes to clothes. Constantine is playing again. The poor boy is sad. He has been severely criticized in the papers. Seventy-seven. They want to attract attention to him. He doesn't seem able to make a success. He can't somehow strike the right note. There's an odd vagueness about his writings that sometimes purges on delirium. He's never created a single living character. Eleven.  He is asleep. The Councilor is taking a nap. Seven. Ninety. Do you think I should write if I lived in such a place as this on the shore of this lake? Never. I should overcome my passion and give my life up to the catching of fish. Twenty-eight. And if I caught a perch or a bass, what bliss it would be. I have great faith in Constantine. I know there is something in him. He thinks in images. Histories are vivid and full of color, and always affect me deeply. It is only a pity that he has no definite object in view. He creates impressions and nothing more, and one cannot go far on impressions alone. Are you glad, madam, that you have an author for a son? Just think I've never read anything of his. I never have time. Twenty-six. Trebleef comes in quietly and sits down at his table. Tutor Gorin. We have something here that belongs to you, sir. What is it?  Did I? I don't remember. Sixty-one. One. Trebleef throws open the window and stands listening. How dark the night is. I wonder what makes me so restless.  There is a draft here. Trebleef shuts the window. Ninety-eight. See, my card is full. Bravo, bravo! Bravo! Wherever he goes and whatever he does, that man always has good luck. She gets up. And now come to supper. Our renowned guest did not have any dinner today. We can continue our game later. To her son. Come, Constantine, leave your writing and come to supper.  I'm not hungry. As you please. She wakes Sorin. Come to supper, Peter. She takes Shamriff's arm. Let me tell you about my reception in Karkov. Paulina blows out the candles on the table. Then she and Dawn roll Sorin's chair out of the room and all go out through the door on the left. Except Trebleef, who is left alone. Trebleef prepares to write. He runs his eye over what he has already written. I have talked a great deal about new forms of art, but I feel myself gradually slipping into the beaten track. He reads. The placard cried it from the wall. A pale face in a frame of dusky hair. Cried. Frame.  He scratches out what he has written. I shall begin again from the place where my hero is wakened by the noise of the rain, but what follows must go. This description of a moonlight night is long and stilted. Dragorin has worked out a process of his own and descriptions are easy for him. He writes that the neck of a broken bottle lying on the bank glittered in the moonlight and that the shadows lay black under the mill wheel. There you have a moonlight night before your eyes, but I speak of the shimmering light, the twinkling stars, the distant sounds of a piano melting into the still and scented air, and the result is abominable. The conviction is gradually forcing itself upon me that good literature is not a question of forms, new or old, but of ideas that must pour freely from the author's heart, without his bothering his head about any forms whatsoever. A knock is heard at the window nearest the table. What was that? He looks out of the window. I can't see anything. He opens the glass door and looks out into the garden. I heard someone run down the steps. Who is there? He goes out and is heard walking quickly along the terrace. In a few minutes he comes back with Nina Zarachnya. Oh Nina, Nina!   I felt you would come. All day my heart has been aching for you. He takes off her hat and cloak. My darling, my beloved has come back to me. We mustn't cry, we mustn't cry. There is someone here. No one is here. Lock the door. Someone might come. No one will come in.  Lock the door. Tripoli locks the door on the right and comes back to Nina. There is no lock on that one. I shall put a chair against it. He puts an armchair against the door. Don't be frightened. No one shall come in. Gazing intently into his face. Let me look at you. She looks about her. It is warm and comfortable in here. This used to be a sitting room. Have I changed much? Yes, you have grown thinner and your eyes are larger than they were. Nina, it seems so strange to see you. Why didn't you let me go to you? Why didn't you come sooner to me? You have been here nearly a week, I know.  I was afraid you might hate me. I dream every night that you look at me without recognizing me. I have been wandering about on the shores of the lake ever since I came back. I have often been near your house, but I have never had the courage to come in. Let us sit down. They sit down. Let us sit down and talk our hearts out. It is so quiet and warm in here. Do you hear the wind whistling outside? As Turgenev says, Happy is he who can sit at night under the roof of his home, who has a warm corner in which to take refuge. I am a seagull, and yet, no. She passes her hand across her forehead. What was I saying? Oh yes, Turgenev, he says, And God help all houseless wanderers. Nina, you're crying again, Nina. It is all right. I shall feel better after this. I have not cried for two years. I went into the garden last night to see if our old theater was still standing. I say it is. I wept there for the first time in two years, and my heart grew lighter, and my soul saw more clearly again. See, I am not crying now. She takes his hand in hers.  We have both been sucked into the whirlpool. My life used to be as happy as a child's. I used to wake singing in the morning. I loved you, and dreamt of fame. And what is the reality? Tomorrow morning, early, I must start for Elts, by train in a third-class carriage, with a lot of peasants, and, at Elts, the educated tradespeople will pursue me with compliments. It is a rough life. Why are you going to Elts? I have accepted an engagement there for the winter. It is time for me to go.  To cease from loving you is beyond my power. I have suffered continually from the time I lost you and began to write, and my life has been almost unendurable. My youth was suddenly plucked from me then, and I seem now to have lived in this world for ninety years. I have called out to you. I have kissed the ground you walked on.  And the smile that had illumined for me the best years of my life. Why? Why does he talk to me like this? I am quite alone, unwarmed by any attachment. I am as cold as if I were living in a cave. Whatever I write is dry and gloomy and harsh. Stay here, Nina.  Nina quickly puts on her coat and hat. Nina, why do you do that? For God's sake, Nina! He watches her as she dresses. My carriage is at the gate. Do not come to see me off. I shall find my way alone. Let me have some water. Trebleef hunts her a glass of water. Where are you going? Back to the village. Is your mother here? Yes. My uncle fell ill on Thursday, and we telegraphed for her to come. Why do you say that you have kissed the ground I walked on?  She bends over the table. I am so tired. If I could only rest, rest. She raises her head. I am a seagull. No. No. I am an actress. She hears Arcadena and Dragorin laughing in the distance. Runs to the door on the left and looks through the keyhole. He is there, too. She goes back to Trebleef. Oh, well. No matter. He does not believe in the theater. He used to laugh at my dreams, so that, a little by little, I became downhearted and ceased to believe in it, too. Then came all the cares of love and the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning. I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice. You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting. I am a seagull. No. No. That is not what I meant to say. Do you remember how you shot a seagull once? A man chanced to pass that way, and destroyed it out of idleness. That is an idea of a short story, but it is not what I meant to say. She passes her hand across her forehead. What was I saying? Oh, yes, the stage. I have changed now. Now I am a real actress. I act with joy, with exaltation. I am intoxicated by it, and I feel that I am superb. I have been walking, and walking, and thinking, and thinking ever since I have been here, and I feel the strength of my spirit growing in me every day. I know now. I understand at last, Constantine, that for us, whether we write or act, it is not the honor and glory of which I have dreamt that is important. It is the strength to endure. One must know how to bear one's cross, and one must have faith. I believe, and so do not suffer so much, and when I think of my calling, I do not fear life. You have found your way. You know where you are going. But I am still groping in a chaos of phantoms and dreams, not knowing whom and what end I am serving by at all. I do not believe in anything, and I do not know what my calling is. Listening. Hush. I must go. Goodbye. When I have become a famous actress, you must come and see me. Will you promise to come? But now... She takes his hand. It is late. I can hardly stand. I am fainting. I am hungry.  No, no, and don't come out. I can't find the way alone. My carriage is not far away. So, she brought him back with her? However, what difference can that make to me? Don't tell Trigger in anything when you see him. I love him. I love him even more than I used to. It is an idea for a short story. I love him. I love him passionately. I love him to despair. Have you forgotten, Constantine, how pleasant the old times were?  How a feeling as sweet and tender as a flower blossomed in our hearts. Do you remember? Oh, men and beasts, lions, eagles and quails, horn stags, geese, spiders, silent fish that inhabit the waves, starfish from the sea, and creatures invisible to the eye, in one word, life. All, all life, completing the dreary round said before it, has died out, at last. A thousand years have passed since the earth last bore a living creature on its breast, and the unhappy moon now lights her lamp in vain. No longer are the cries of storks heard in the meadows, or the drone of beetles in the groves of lines. She embraces Trepley fompetuously and runs out onto the terrace. It would be a pity if she were seen in the garden. My mother would be distressed. He stands for several minutes, tearing up his manuscripts and throwing them under the table, then unlocks the door on the right and goes out. Trying to force open the door on the left. Odd, this door seems to be locked. He comes in and pokes the chair back in its former place. This is like a hurdle race. Arcadena and Paulina come in, followed by Jacob carrying some bottles. Then come Masha, Shamrafe and Dragorin. Put the claret in the beer here on the table so that we can drink while we are playing. Sit down, friends. And bring the tea at once. She lights the candles and takes a seat at the card table. Shamrafe leaves Dragorin to the cupboard. Here is the stuffed seagull I was telling you about. He takes the seagull out of the cupboard. You told me to have it done. Looking at the bird. I don't remember a thing about it. About a thing. A shot is heard. Everyone jumps. What was that? Nothing at all. Probably one of my medicine bottles has blown up. Don't worry. He goes out through the door on the right and comes back in a few moments. It is as I thought. A flask of ether has exploded. Spellbond once more I stand before thee. Sitting down at the table. Heavens I was really frightened.   Looking through the pages of a magazine. To Dragorin. There was an article from America in this magazine about two months ago that I wanted to ask you about among other things. He leaves Dragorin to the front of the stage. I am very much interested in this question. He lowers his voice and whispers. You must take Madam Akarin away from here. What I wanted to say was that Konstantin has shot himself. The curtain falls. End of Act 4. End of The Seagull by Anton Shakov.


Hi, this is Dr. Maruthesh. I'm a consultant laparoscopic bariatric surgeon and a laser proctologist at Manipal Hospital, Malaysia, and Bangalore. Today we are going to talk about conditions affecting our back passage. There are mainly four conditions. First one being hemorrhoids, commonly known as piles. Second one is anal fissure. Third one is anal fistula. And fourth one is pilonatal sinus. Coming to the first one, hemorrhoids or piles. It affects majority of the population. It is caused by an increase in abdominal pressure, mainly from constipation or excessive heavy lifting or inhuman during pregnancy. Condition can easily be avoided by passing the motion without putting pressure. Nowadays, instead of doing a open surgery, we do the laser surgery and you can be discharged on the same day.  It is characterized by a severe pain on passing motion. It is also caused by constipation. Now it can be easily be treated with ointments in about 70% of the cases. Failing of ointment during the condition, we can look for a laser surgery. The third one being the anal fistula. It is a complicated condition which can be treated instead of a open surgery by a laser surgery with the modern day techniques. The last one being the pilonatal sinus. It is caused by the ingrowing hair inside the once natal cleft. Even that can easily be treated by a laser surgery which can be done as a day care. Thank you.


Wel, ddweud am ymlaen chi, i gael ymddangos yma, yn ymddangos hefyd, yn Yn Ysgrifennu 2016. Rydyn ni'n Pauline Ward. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'r Cymrydau Yn Ysgrifennu. Yn ymdangos hefyd, ymdangos Gavyn McLaughlin, yng Nghymru Llywodraeth, ac ymdangos hefyd, ymdangos hefyd, yn ymdangos hefyd. So he's brought some fresh ideas to the University, so please welcome Gavin. Great, well welcome everyone to the Repository Fringe 2016 Welcome to Edinburgh and to the University of Edinburgh on this beautiful sunny day. As you well know it's always beautiful sunny up here in Scotland for those of you who live here. So my task is to introduce the repository fringe which is a fantastic event and thanks again all for coming. We have two days of really intensive workshops and presentations and discussion and I hope you take a lot of things away from this repository fringe. So my short time up here I thought that I would talk about a couple of things. First and foremost, why are repositories important? Why are they so important to us and why are they increasing in importance? So there's the obvious, Ivan, which is compliance with funders. For those of you from the UK, obviously there's increasingly stricter rules in terms of compliance. Obviously, REF 2021, with Lord Stern's review looms in all of our minds. I see smiles around there as everyone starts preparing for the next REF. And in some ways, even more important than it was in the past with the potential and unfortunate loss of the European research money because of the recent referendum. So REF becomes even greater in our minds, potentially in some ways. Also, impact is incredibly important. We know that in the REF and overall in most of our university's objectives, the impact looms very large, including being able to actually demonstrate impact. And I think that's something that repositories really provide in a very major way. Collaboration is another really key area of importance in repositories. Being able to go ahead and collaborate really worldwide through the use of repositories is important. And reuse is something that's been talked about for a long period of time, and it's something that's really starting to come to the fore. You'll see on the program today that there's a lot of talk about open educational resources and open. And I think it's not just in the research area, but also very much in the educational area where reuse becomes so important to everyone and the community, especially in the reuse of really high quality educational material because of the great expense in making that material. Absolutely, it should be reused. Another item that's kind of near and dear to my heart is accelerating the research in educational life cycles. And I see repositories as one key area and one key tool in that. The government is looking for faster results in the research. And of course in education, education from a life cycle standpoint, especially the educational material, is moving even faster. So how can we possibly keep up? Well, repositories and open educational resources are one such method. Reproducibility is another area that's just starting to emerge. It's sort of from the dark corners of research that comes this question of reproducibility. There's been some very interesting research on research that Stanford and a number of other universities relatively recently that throws into questions the reproducibility of quite a large chunk of the research that our universities have produced. And I think that that question of reproducibility, well, is it even practical, is it cost effective, how can we prove the reproducibility of our research, is a question that will come more and more as time goes on. And I do think that that's going to be an emerging area where we're going to be questioned by funders, by the government, by the public at large about the reproducibility of our research results. And obviously repositories, especially research data and research repositories, are one answer to the question. I think another really key area that repositories help us on is recognition of the data creators. Now there will be quite a lot of you in the audience today. And it was very interesting in Lord Stern's review that this was an area that came up and that was about recognizing the data creators, not just the discoverers in research, but the actual data creators for the incredibly hard work they do and their impact in influence on science. And repositories, the measuring repositories, the impact, the amount that certain data elements get used is one way to go ahead and measure and recognize the data creators and the data itself, which more and more over time becomes important. Also citizen science and broadening participation is really key. The public gets more and more engaged and one way they can get engaged with us is through our repositories. Finally, industrial engagement. Obviously it's kind of the nirvana for many educational institutes and other institutes to go ahead and increase the level of industrial engagement that they have with the commercial sector. And it's very, very important that we do that as well. And again, repositories play their role in that area. So today in the repository fringe and over the next two days we have three themes. We have a theme about open educational resources and I've talked about just how important they are. We have a second theme called the nuts and bolts of open, which is a really exciting theme that gets right into nuts and bolts of why and how we go ahead and create open resources. And then finally a theme about making a difference with data, the impact and the sheer power of the data that we have in our repositories. It's very important and there's a number of workshops and talks across those three themes. And I think they just show the broadness of the repository fringe and just really the excitement level and number of things that we have going on. Now out of the last repository fringe there were a number of interesting questions that arose which I'm not sure we completely answered and maybe it'll take years for us to answer. And so I thought I'd just list some of them up here. Just to get everyone's mental juices flowing and your thoughts flowing about some of the unanswered areas. I mean one of them is who beyond the academic community is currently using data from the institutional repositories. You know obviously citizen science, the public at large, industry, there's all sorts of areas that we would like to get heavily involved. Where or who are the un-top audiences for research data in the institutional repository? A somewhat similar question. And how can repositories help researchers tell a story of their data? Because often there's a story in the data itself. And I think that's a really interesting one. How can repositories help researchers achieve impact with their data? And again this all important notion that we need to go ahead and demonstrate impact, just the level of impact that we've had. And then finally what should our vision be for the repository landscape of the future? Probably the toughest question, gazing into the future and trying to understand where the repositories are going in this very great complex world. So part of my role is to thank our organizers and our three organizers today are the Digital Creation Center, Adina and the University of Edinburgh. So thanks very much to all of them to helping to organize this event over the next two days. And I'd like to also go ahead and thank our supporters, Figshare, Archive and Gys, E-Prince and Oridio. Most especially just like to mention that Figshare helped support the drinks reception that we had. Archive was supporting the mid-morning coffee breaks as well as the Hollywood and Salesbury rooms. Gys supported the posters and E-Prince the lunches that you're going to have and the coffee breaks. So once again, thanks very much to our supporters that made this event possible. Just a little bit of housekeeping. So first and foremost, no one can survive without Wi-Fi, of course, and we have key surf here. You can follow the instructions given on the signage around the venue to get on to the Wi-Fi. There are no scheduled fire alarm tests, so if it does go off, everyone exits through the doors, including me. We'll make sure you get heard and done here safely. And you'll also be able to vote for your favorite poster. You've seen the posters in the venue area outside of here, and you'll be able to vote for your favorite posters on Google Analytics website, and the URL is up there for anyone who wants to go ahead and note it. And then finally, of course, please feel free to tweet your thoughts and comments and ideas about the repository fringe on our fringe 16. For those of you that can offer comments, it's just a really great way of getting some of the collective ideas, comments, suggestions, ideas, and everything of that nature. So that's all I had to say today. But again, very, very welcome to all of you at the repository fringe 2016. I will now hand over to Ann Marie, who will take it from here. Thanks very much.


I know, it's terrible. We're free! I know. I know. I know. Tell us how you really feel. I can go back to organizing. Yeah, yeah. Local. All right, if everyone wants to, like, be ready to listen to Sonya, it was amazing going to deliver our speech. I just wanted to say thank you everybody for coming out and being here all of the three days or as many days as you're here watching and it was a really good conference. It was a lot of work to put together and I am super proud of everyone who needs to be at the board for coming together and doing this all. It was a really good turnout because the board is actually really good at organizing things. Yeah! And I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who needs to be at the board. It's been doing that and it's been great and I'm going to stop hogging the mic and hit it over to stuff kind of. Victoria, how are you? Sorry, I didn't know what to talk about. Yeah, thanks so much for the time and space to talk to you. So after the talk, we'll be for recognitions and you'll finally learn who finally won for mascot. So if anybody's bored or whatever, don't wander out because I know that's the thing you really want to hear. So when I started putting this together, I thought to myself, I realized that when I'm watching other people talk, the thing I'm most interested in is their personal story, especially here. Because I know I'm interested in zoning and planning and city building, but still even after three years, even though I've met so many other people that are also passionate, they're still part of me that's like, this is a really weird topic but why do you care? So that's what I'm most interested to hear about that. And also, because the thing is, we've talked a lot about how to communicate with people who don't agree with us. I actually think that we should really always be focusing on how to activate people who already agree with us.  You actually know that's like the first commandment of all organizing. But the reality is that we are not really, you know, it's some combination of personality and values, experience, lived experience, and then sometimes the right data point at the right time that convinces us. But really our experience and values is what does the most. And so, you know, I think it's important for us to like think about what in our personal story like makes us pro-housing, and also realize that when we're talking to people who aren't, they're so convinced because they also have some personal experience that leads them to feel sure that they're totally right. That's why I titled my talk, why I'm so sure I'm right. Anyway, so for me personally, what this is is a, you know, Google Maps. This is the block I grew up on in Germantown, Philadelphia. And on this block, so this being eight stories is technically high-rise public housing. Although some people think high-rise, you know, eight stories too short. It's owned by the Housing Authority. This is actual public housing. Under this tree, you can't see. This is like a half-way house for recovering male drug addicts like in their 20s. This is actually a public school. The state of Pennsylvania bought it from a private school. There's a doctor's office. This is a private nonprofit subsidized low-income senior housing. These two houses were monster homes when they were built. But then they've since been broken up into like six apartments each. And then these are twins. This is a twin. Oh, this is an apartment building, four-storey apartment building with 32 apartments. And then my house is the only detached single-family housing block. Don't tell anyone. But the point is that besides a marijuana dispensary, the block I grew up on contains every single type of thing that people are sure are going to ruin their neighborhoods and ruin their lives. And so if this is from, I mean, from the cradle, you can imagine, I didn't even find out that Sony existed until I was well into my teens and I was very surprised. I was shocked because when I went to Outlaw, all this stuff that worked out perfectly fine, I could hardly imagine it. Oh, yeah. So there was another thing that I feel like very privileged to have had a lived experience that let me in, you know, on, it was a mainstream idea that I knew wasn't true because of my experience. So this is a picture of Philadelphia. And you can see it's kind of shaped like a lot. And my neighborhood, this star means nothing. The place I grew up is like kind of around here. But like keep that shape in mind for a second. So this is a, you know, grace, this green is black people and orange is Hispanic and the blue is white. It's a pretty segregated city. And again, so I grew up like right around here. And I liked my neighborhood. I thought it was a good neighborhood. But my whole life, when I told people where I lived, people would say, oh, Germantown, that's a bad neighborhood. And first of all, it's very rude. I can't believe that people just naturally will say that in the conversation. But second of all, I mean, I eventually asked my mom, why do people think our neighborhood is bad? Like we live in Germantown, not Nice Town. And Nice Town was the next neighborhood over that was actually bad. And my mom was like, Sonya, they don't know. Like they've never been to any of these neighborhoods. To them, it's all just one big black neighborhood. So, you know, and I realized that if I hadn't grown up in a black neighborhood and hadn't witnessed people who had no idea telling me that it was a bad neighborhood, knowing that it was good, then I wouldn't know either. You know? I don't know. You just take the granted. People are like, oh, it's a good neighborhood. It's a bad neighborhood. I've never experienced that. I have more pictures. I kind of do want to take all those. Have the pictures. Rip, Sonya. I don't want to rip. Like, moment of silence. I was raised quicker, so we had a lot of moment of silence. It was just really excited. It was so happy. It was also incensed, but it was registered. It was like, what?  And it's really true. I mean, white people and white people, equally, you know, all things being equal, two different neighborhoods will judge the black neighborhood to be not as good, which is one of the things that devalues black land. You know, when you see these charts about how the network of white people, the network of black people, a big part of that is that black people just don't own as much. But the other part is that if you're black, conditional on that, likely you own property in a black neighborhood and just regular prejudice devalues your property. Even though a lot of those neighborhoods really are the best, they're like well connected to transit. You know, they have beautiful housing stock. While we're ripping, I'll second that. What? Atlanta has pretty high home ownership rates even amongst the black families. But in the after the Great Recession, you saw like the home values of white people kind of rebound where they were, where it's a home values. And like well to do black neighborhoods have like continued to like slide down sort of like maybe like 60 to 70% of their pre-recession crisis that is kind of floating there. Which is why my parents' houses are cornered despite there being like two relatively well paid professionals just like it's attractive. The American bring doesn't work for black people. Yeah, and it operates at the, I mean, I was a base. So when I looked at my so called, before I started this, I had a close friend who was a developer. He was kind of going out on his own trying to do a thing. And getting invested, it was so obvious on the ground that the type of people that control 100 million dollars, you know, to do a construction loan are more conservative than the most conservative young.  Anyway, oh so the other thing, this is the third thing that like really shaped my experience was living in a city where population was continually dropping. Right, so Philadelphia was the best thing since sliced bread for like 100 years with a huge anxiety. And what is it, so what does it look like when you're losing more than a quarter of your population? This is what your city looks like. That's abandonment. You know, this block isn't totally abandoned. People live here, you know, but either side the houses are abandoned, filled out. This is nice now. This is between my neighborhood and the subway on my way to Center City.  Like you live and you're like, well, yeah, there's a lot of empty stuff. A lot of extra. This is another one. This one's I think kind of pretty. Oh, this is another thing too. Sorry. You know, nature does not care about what you built. So like EIRs, I kind of laugh that a little bit. Because as soon as you guys walk away, I wait five years and nature doesn't care about the EIR. It's like your thing. The other thing is too is when people say a place is overbuilt. I'm like, I don't think you know what overbuilt is. If you build and there's people in it, it's not overbuilt. This is overbuilt. So when I, in 2001, I graduated high school in 2000. This was a huge victory. Right? Mayor Street took off this and the city celebrated because he put together this $300 million fund to tear down 14,000 buildings. You know, it's different people's cities are different. We're struggling in San Francisco, you know, to build 3,000 houses per year. And our city was at a place, and this 14,000 was really a drop in the bucket. We needed to tear stuff down. That was our problem. And Philadelphia is not all depressing. This is beautiful. This shows the most beautiful place ever. And this is beautiful. This is expensive neighborhoods. Obviously, great debts. And this was all created with that design. I do think, especially because this is a national audience, I really do believe that, you know, me starting to organize people and feeling strongly coming to San Francisco was because it was very much a conversation between different parts of America, you know, that there's a lot of parts of America that are like Philadelphia that were losing population. And then there's, you know, parts west of the Rockies that are gaining population. But what happened, my organizing was kind of, couldn't have happened without somebody from a city that was losing population having that be our crisis arrive here. And so my organizing in the Bay is very much like a conversation between those two types of cities, I think. And I think that we nationally, like we need to try to figure out how to have this conversation. So NIMBY sound like they're organized centrally because they have all the same parking points no matter where you go. But they're actually not. So it's not clear who we really talk to, but hopefully we figure it out. One thing that's frustrating here in the Bay is that people don't really seem to realize, we don't really, you know, get it. In some particular city, there's a fancy part of the city, a rich neighborhood, there's a poor neighborhood. But nationwide, there's rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, right? Like our rich neighborhoods are the Bay, you know, L.A., New York. And evidently, I think this is a oil town in South Dakota. I'm not sure. North Dakota. Oh, North Dakota, I'm sorry, you guys. So what this map is, this map is from the United, what? It's Sun Valley, it's Suburban L.A. Oh. Wait, what? Suburban L.A. It's sprawl. It's sprawl, yeah. Stop that. Let her finish, let her finish. So this is from unitedforhomes.org, which is the website that the National Low-Income Housing Coalition put up to support HR948, write it down, HR948 at Google it. It's a mortgage income, sorry, mortgage interest tax deduction reform bill. Because the mortgage interest deduction is a subsidy basically for high-income people. Why are we doing that? And this is to show the percentage of mortgages over half a million dollars. So in these red areas, the percentage of mortgages over half a million dollars is between 20 and 50 percent. And then the yellow areas are the second highest and the dark blue is the third and then the turquoise is the fourth where there's almost no mortgages. So this is the map I used to show though that there's a lot of people in the Bay Area that feel like they're middle class because their house is like the middle cost. But you can't just compare to San Francisco because people are moving all over. San Francisco is a rich neighborhood compared to the rest of the country. This is another illustration. Somebody was tweeting about when Kid Rock is running for office. This is the $1.3 million estate where Kid Rock grew up. So luxurious, right? I was like, huh, $1.3 million estate. Kid Rock, I think you're rich because this is also a $1.3 million estate. And this is just the first floor. This is a condo. You get half a house and it has access to the backyard. It's nice. It has that even short walk to Dolores Park. But one thing I really feel, I don't know exactly how to make this intuitive and vivid to people, but I really want people to feel and notice that this is a $1.3 million estate. This is a $1.3 million estate and it's not because there's something magic or funny money or anything. Because in some sense they really are equivalent. You can get a lot of land and these markers of successful life, like a tennis court on site, that's accessible to you. But if you live here, then you're far from a major economic center. Or you could be close to a major economic center and you don't get as much land. But it's a trade-off and they're equally valuable. So please this year, try to think about how to explain that to people because I don't really know exactly. So it's only going to get worse or better depending on your point of view. So what's happening, we have people moving from all of these places to the big cities because that's where the opportunity is. And maybe ordinarily, you would think that maybe people would go back to where they came from, if prices were too high, if the incumbents were successful in not building housing, maybe people would just start to give up and a lot of people do give up. But there are actual changes happening that I think would interfere with that. One is climate change. If it's true that parts of the country, I mean there are some parts of the country like Florida that are probably going to go under. There are other parts that maybe become too hot, too hot to live in. Then places like the Bay that are temperate, it's just going to be more people wanting to live here. Oh, they're supposed to be a couple degrees by the end of the century though. Who knows? We don't know, right? So that's one of the things maybe. The other thing is, if our generation becomes permanent renters, then we're going to be a lot more mobile. We're not going to be stuck in any place because we bought there. And then the other thing is, if changes in the economy might create permanent freelancers. Changing jobs, we thought when the internet was invented that it would allow people to work remotely. But we're finding, I think the opposite is the case, that if you are hustling, and if you have many, many jobs and many clients, it's so much more important for you to be in close proximity to people because you have to be networking. You don't have to show up in person. So this is Google later, the nature of the firm, which is an incredible essay that predicts that as transaction costs go down, as it becomes easier to find and identify the people with skills, and it is now that you need, that the idea of the firm is working for one place forever is going to become less and less relevant. Here's that 1937, and I'm amazed every day watching it kind of come true. So this is the last, this is actually the fact, right? There's only one fact in this whole presentation. But this is another thing that I think is really mind blowing. It's the kind of fact that can maybe start to make a person, you know, have to shift their point of view. So in 19, the people that were born in 1960 are 57 now, right? The whole population has more than doubled since they were born. Doubled. And so these are the people that are, you know, kind of the age range that are fighting, building new housing. But if you think to yourself, you know, when I was in between the time I was like eight years old and now, the world population has doubled. Ask yourself, has the population of my community doubled? And if not, why not? You know, knowing that there are places like Philadelphia and the Rust Belt and, you know, Buffalo and where the population has gone down, there are other places where what you should expect is that your neighborhood is more than doubled. There are places, obviously, like where no one was living and huge cities have been built that are, you know, absorbing this, mostly in other parts of the world. But yeah, overall, the population has doubled and you have to ask, has my area doubled? If it hasn't, why not? And why am I entitled to live somewhere that's not, you know, building its share of housing and absorbing its share of population and race? So thank you very much, you guys, for caring about this issue and working so hard and in particular, you know what? Actually, I want to have just, this is the recognition part of it. I want to recognize the person that came here from Brothers Away, the movie guy, and also from the place that's had this problem for the longest. So I'm reading from something that was published in 1668. Oh, no, 1665 that was published. It's a little bit of a boring quote, just kind of the point. And the year is 1660 and 61. Excuse me. There ought to have been built above 26,000 houses in those 25 years. Oh, he was talking, okay, he was talking about, never mind, the previous 25 years, which is above 1,000 houses a year, the lodges increase, which are much more than have been built for it appears that Mr. Morgan's map of the city, there have not been built in this time 8,000 houses, that is not 300,000 houses one year with the other. But this is certain that there are no more houses built every year than there are occasioned for because there are tenants for those houses when built. Could have been created yesterday. Because you're part of a conversation for the last 400 years or discouraging, because you might realize that 400 years will still be having this problem. But yeah, so everybody that put this together, I'm just going to read everybody's name. So you've got to applaud the entire time. Victoria. Thanks for coming.


The Lagos state government says 27.3% of its entire 2023 budget amounted to 482.86 billion era will be spent on modern infrastructure. Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget Samuel Egubbe announced this to journalists during a press conference in Olaosa Ikeja, plus TV news correspondent Love Ikeko Koyedekon reports. Akosu would describe the plight of Benwe pensioners as worsening by the day over unpaid salary areas and its upshoots from Nigeria Union of pensioners, said. This briefing paves the way for further analysis of the Lagos state's 2023 budget by officials led by the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget Sam Egubbe. Christianed budget of continuity, Egubbe said it was prepared to continue the good works of the Babajidi Sawulu administration. The Commissioner explained that 13% of the budget is allocated for provision of affordable and world-class education, healthcare and social services to make the system accessible and affordable for the teaming populace. The aspiration is that Lagos will have reliable and sufficient infrastructure that meets the needs of a 21 century city. The state is totally committed to ensuring that we grow our stock of infrastructure in transportation, in education, health, technology, food processing and sports amongst others. Egubbe further gave a breakdown of the budget analysis. We have allocated a total of 552 billion in human capital development representing 31% of the total budget. Included in this is the budget for education of 157 billion, health 149 billion, our personnel costs 228 billion and various other social interventions of about 18 billion. The commissioners for health, education, finance, transportation, works and infrastructure spoke on areas that affect them. We intend to improve government services because government revenue is not just about taxes. When we improve government services, government can charge on its services to the people and people will be happy to pay because they are getting value for money. We are planning to continue to invest in technology in schools, we are planning to continue to build up our science labs, sports facilities and so on and continue training our teachers. Projects like regional road will still continue and we hope that by the grace of God we should be able to finish that end of this year. Projects like my weekly shower will also try to round up that. The 1.76 trillion euro 2023 budget is made up of 1.020 trillion euro for capital expenditure and 748.097 billion euro for the current expenditure, including debt servicing. The total revenue dependent budget is estimated at 1.418 trillion euro while the deficit funding requirement is 350.411 billion euro.