Hello, everyone. My name is Iris. I'm a software engineer from Intel. Today, I will together with Steve to deliver this topic to you. Hello, Steve. Hi, Iris and everyone. This is Steve, a Cloud Software Engineer from Intel. I am very glad to address this presentation with Iris here. Thank you. Okay. Let's first take a look at our today's agenda. We will first introduce some background information about our topic. Then we will tell you what multi-tenant challenges will be for service mesh. Then we will go through several options that you can use to achieve multi-tenant in-service mesh. Then we will go further to tell you how you can safeguard multi-tenant in-service mesh with Intel SGX. At last, we will do a demo about one-hour-hour solutions and do a quick summary about all the solutions we have shared in this talk. First, let's take a look at the background information. As you all know, edge computing is very important now, especially in 5G area. It provides functions like 5G slicing, packet processing for cloud-native functions and applications. In the edge computing scenarios, the resource is very constant. There will be multi-users running in the edge. We need to provide a way to make sure the resource is isolated between the multi-tenant. Also, service mesh is acting as an infrastructure layer in edge and cloud. You can offload all the traffic management, security, and telemetry tasks into the sidecar. There will be a central control plan that will manage all the configuration information for the sidecars. We need to take care of multi-tenant in-service mesh to support the edge and cloud scenarios. If we want to support multi-tenant in-service mesh, what are the challenges we need to address? Firstly, it's operational isolation. You need to make sure the service which belongs to one tenant doesn't influence other tenants. The other is config isolation. For example, if you make a traffic management rule, you need to make sure it doesn't influence applications running under the other tenant. The other part is traffic isolation. It means you need to make sure traffic targeted to one tenant will reach the tenant correctly and doesn't reach the non-related tenants' applications. The other part is identity isolation. If there are multiple users coming in the service mesh applications, we need a clear way to identify between these tenants to make sure the correct request has been handled by the correct tenant's application. The other part is there are multiple telemetry data in the service mesh. So how to make sure all this data can be isolated between tenants is also a problem or challenge. So if we want to support multi-tenant in-service mesh, the straightforward way you can think out is to make sure every tenant has his own mesh and own cluster. So in this way, all the isolation will be achieved natively because they are running in different clusters. But as we mentioned before, in the edge computing scenarios, resource is very limited. So it's always impossible to make every tenant has his own mesh or own cluster. So we went further to think about can we support multi-tenant in single cluster but in multiple mesh? So this is the picture that for this solution. So you can see there are two tenants, tenant one and tenant two. Both of them have their own mesh, but they are running in the same cluster, cluster one. So because every mesh has their own root CA, so it means the traffic between them will be isolated. Also in Istio, there is a discovery selector that you can utilize to achieve service discovery isolation for multi-mesh in the single cluster. So you can see in the left part when you install Istio, you can specify which namespace you are interested to watch to make the Istio D watch. So the left side is an example that the Istio D will only watch namespace which has the label environment equals IT. The right part is a sample that for the accounting department. But one thing we need to mention here is actually in Istio upstream multi-mesh in single cluster isn't supported. Because in every namespace, Istio D will create a secret to host the root search for all the tenants in all the mesh. So to support this solution, we actually have a patched solution to respect the revision in your service mesh installation. So if you are interested, you can find the link about the patched solution at the end of the presentation. But this solution, if you want to use this solution, it also has some upgrade issue. So in the future, if you want to upgrade your Istio in a newer version, it will have some problem. So we think it further to see can we support multi-tenant in single cluster, single mesh? So we need to solve the challenges we mentioned previously one by one. The first one is service discovery isolation. So in Istio, it provides a custom resource sidecar. So you can use it to achieve the service discovery isolation. In the left side, you can see there is a sidecar custom resource. It will allow applications running under namespace 1 to access applications running under namespace 1, namespace 2, and Istio systems. For all other namespace, it cannot access. So the right side is, for example, in your mesh, even in your mesh, when they are multi-tenant, there might be some global service that you want all your tenants to access. For example, some logging service. So in this case, you can define a global accessible service here. You can see in the egress host part, it is defined as star slash star. So it makes it a global service. Then for the config isolation part, you can utilize the export to field in virtual service, destination rule, and service entry. So using this way, you can achieve config isolation. Then the next part about the traffic isolation, Istio has a custom resource which is called authorization policy. So the best practice here is to first deny all the traffic between the mesh. So then you can gradually allow the communications between the namespaces. So you can see here, for example, it allows applications running from namespace 1 to access applications running under namespace 4. So this is a picture to demonstrate all the options we just mentioned. So in this picture, you can see there is only one mesh. There are two tenants, tenant 1, who owns the namespace team 1, and tenant 2, who owns the namespace team 2. Between the two namespaces, communication is broken. Why is the authorization policy? Also, it provides config and discovery isolation through export to and the sidecar. But this solution has some obvious disadvantage. So first, because you need to use the authorization policy to enable the traffic isolation, it will add additional iBack filters to your annual sidecar. The other part is, for example, if you have new tenants who want to unbound to your service mesh, or you want to deploy new workloads for your tenants, then the authorization policy might need to be changed to consume all these new workloads. The third part is that there is no identity isolation. So for example, if there are multiple user requests coming in, there is not a good way to distinguish them from the different tenants' workloads. The last part is actually all the applications running in the mesh. Even they belong to different tenants. They are sharing the same root cert. So this is almost unacceptable for most tenants because they don't want their root cert to be mixed with other tenants. So to solve the problem, the first one is identity isolation. We have this solution. It's called Auth Service Configurator. It's an Intel project, but I put the GitHub link here. So if you are interested, you can click here to take a look. So the basic idea for this project is because starting from ETL-19, ETL support external authorization, and there is a project called Auth Service. It's an ETL ecosystem project. So using these two combinations, you can define different OOS providers for different services according to different services, URL or parameter. So this also opens dots for us to support multi-tenant. So in our project, to support multi-tenant better, we have defined a custom resource, which is called Chen. In the Chen CR, a different tenant admin can define their own Chen CRs. Then there is a Chen web hook. It will do some validation to make sure the Chen CR is valid. Then after that, there is an Auth Service controller. It will monitor all these Chen CRs and we'll combine them together to and update the Chen information into the config map, which will be picked by the Auth Service dynamically. So using this way, we can support multi-tenant dynamically as well. Then how to solve the problem that every tenant has the root, same root CA. So I will hand over to Steve to take you through the journey. Hi, Steve. Thanks, Iris. And I will go on the option three about the multi-tenant in single mesh and the single clusters. And at first, I will describe the image in the slide. There is one cluster with single mesh and multi-tenant, tenant one with service A and tenant two D with tenant two with service D. And all these services are under the control of S2. And in the middle of the image, there is the Kubernetes API server. In the right side of the image, there leads some sign-up solutions for certificates of tenants. The first choice is sign-up operator, which means that you can develop develop your own operators to do the signing work. And the second choice is about the certain manager, which is an open-source project. And it has a complementary ecosystem. And you just need to use it. And the third choice is that whatever you can think about it, but all these sign-up solutions need to be watching the Kubernetes CSR all the time. So for the next step, I will give more details about this signing process. The first one is that the service of the tenant will send these two CSR to S2D. And S2D has the registry's authority server, short name for RA server. And RA server will take some actions, including validate S2 CSR from the service and then retrieve some information from the S2 CSR and then organize all necessary information to form a Kubernetes CSR. The necessary information will include such as the service name from the service and some involved variable, such as search-signer-domain info, which is configured in the configurations when installing the S2. And I will give them more details later. And the solution then will assign the Kubernetes CSR when there is a Kubernetes CSR. And the S2D will be notified and updated the Kubernetes CSR once the Kubernetes CSR has been signed. How? Okay. After all of these steps, the certificates of the tenants have been already now. Therefore, S2D can dispatch these certificates to specify the service sidecar. So that's all for the entire process. And you can see that there's no, there's some advantages, such as different receipt for tenants can be supported and no additional fail-to-edit and no additional config changes if new work notes added. However, in this slide, you can see that there are some clusters and one tenant, such as, for example, tenant one or tenant two, each of them have the multi-clusters and multi-maches. However, all of these services in one tenant can be communicated with each other because all of them have been signed by the same signers, which created by their signer operations. And this is an extension and in this situation, it can benefit from our solutions. Okay. For the next slide, I will introduce about a state-of-the-art multi-tenants in service mesh. And as we know now, there are some multi-tenants and some service meshes, so there are some many additional private keys for each tenant's service. So how to manage this private key service? I think it's not popular property, it's unpopular to store them in the configuration files or some config map and secrets like that. So we import the Intel software guard extensions, SGX. SGX is a system of architectures enhancements defined to help protect application integrity and confidentiality of data and to withstand certain software and hardware attacks. And it can have the following items for protecting data. The first is protects against software attacks even if OS drivers, BIOS, and hyperriders are compromised. A second item is secrets. Secrets reminds protect it even when attacker has full control of all the platform. And the third item is prevents attacks like memory bus snooping, memory tampering, and cold boot attacks against memory contents in our run. The fourth item is provides hardware based as test station capabilities to measure and verify valid code and data signatures. So in our solutions, SGX will provide a trusted computing enclave where data and applications are protected independent of the operating system or hardware configuration itself. And every tenant will provide its own provide key in the enclaves. And enclaves will provide some handlers to user to get this rarely key. And as you know, SGX enclaves will help provide a more secure transfer between processes in OS. So there are some very secure installations between the confidential data and the consume data client. Okay, I think the next one more time if you want to know more details, you can see the more details from the Intel homepage. And then the next time and the next step, I will do some demo shows for us. At first let's make things either. That means one tenant with one name space and each name each tenant has two services, HTTP being service and sleep service. And I will share my screen for this demo. Yeah, as you can see, before I will run the demo script. Before we do something, we need to have one clusters because in our scenarios, there are one muscle node on one node. And you can see it's ready now. And then we need to make sure that our signer operation solutions is working well. In our scenario, we use the set manager and our signer solution. Then we need to, at first, we need to create the self-signed class issuer of set manager. It's a concept of set manager. And then there are for the name space bar, full, and issue system. Bar and full is our user username space and tenant space. And then we need to install issue. Before we install issue, goes through the configuration file for the issue. There are two sections for this. For this, the first is the environment. And I have mentioned, there is the environment variable, third designer domain. And we set the set class issuers, set managers at the venue. That means it will use the set manager as the designer. And an external CAE. And then the second section is about the overlays. We need to update the issue D cluster cluster role issue system. We need to gain more privileges for the set manager to sign the CSR, Kubernetes CSR. Let's install the issue. Installation is done. And now let's deploy in the workloads. As we have mentioned, every name space has one tenant and with two services. HTTP beans, service, and the sleep service. And the same things in full name space. Okay, everything is done now. Okay, now let's verify the network connectivity. It's between inside every name space, first in bar. As you can see, we will call the HTTP bean service. HTTP bean service in bars from the sleep bar. We get a response from the HTTP bean bar service. And it's available. The same things in the full name space full. We also got to get the response from the HTTP bean full. Now, we also support another way to do such network connectivity is verification. It's a Istio CTL. And you can use this command to do such verification. Istio, CTL, proxy, config, root say, compile. And the ports and name space and two ports and with their name space. And the result is that most of these services is available with each other. This is the inside the one name space. Another is about the cross name space. You can say we check the network connectivities from sleep.bar to the HTTP bean.full. And then the result is the connection arrow. And the same thing, the same arrow when we do, when we from sleep.full to HTTP bean.bar. And then let's also see the Istio CTL result. Okay, they are unavailable. So that's all the, that's all the very file inside one name space and across the name space. And we also, we also do summaries for this, all of these solutions. And in all these solutions, we have some compiler raisins between them. And the first, but the more important is that I also, I want to highlight is that the third one, assuring that slides. In the second options, single mesh, single cross-term, var, var, multi-c, multi-c, external, also, and sjx. We have mentioned that there are different routes, besides the different routes for tenants, no additional field to edit, no additional config changes if new or no added. We also provide identity isolation by the external or the authorization, and another is the sjx to make sure the more secure it. But then the cons is that there is additional customers they need it. So I think that's all for our today's presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.


Perfect. So these, the start of the meeting I guess is public comment. Do we have a raised hand from the crowd. Anybody anybody. I'm not seeing a raised hand so. I'll start with cherry for I guess. The, I think the biggest news for us is about poetic dialogue. As we discussed before, the reversal of. Of Robert Frost and Emily has been very upsetting for some. Citizens of town. And they've expressed. Excitement over this issue to me directly and to town hall. They've been like calling town hall. And they've been sending me emails and. Like doing some social media storming. And I've been in contact with the artist. From the restoration and he's. Like, I don't know how much I can say exactly. On an open forum because of. Like you're not supposed to talk about like medical stuff. But he is going to be fixing it. And I'm sure that he'll be talking about it. And I think. That's the figure of. His timing on his schedule on. On his. Ability to do the work that's involved in that. So. Like, worry not, it's happening, but it's just a matter of time.  Fixing it. Yeah. I've, I've told them immediately when contacted. I mean, I think that's all we can do and, you know, apologize for the mistake and, you know, as soon as the fabric or restore is able we will reverse it and put it back to the way it was meant to be and thank you for the concern and, you know, I don't know that we can do much else at this, at this moment. What even could possibly be done. We just need we need to reverse the the figures. I know, I know that that's the issue so nothing else could be done except to do it. Right. And then you said apologize that seems great. I mean fine. Did anybody notice that it was switched. I certainly didn't. A few people did. Yeah, they were very on our commission interested about it mission people knew. Is it possible for us to do it ourselves. I don't know. You need like, like specialty equipment to do that. It's like you got to like cut them down like through the rebar and then like welcome back into place. I think it's very intensive. Any of our skills, I think, or tool so that we own. The only other thought I have if it seems more urgent. I don't know what commit Kamal's schedule is, but is it we could approach the DPW. I don't think we could do it. But again, I mean, do you think with Kamal we're talking months and months or weeks. I don't think it's going to be months and months, but I can't say for sure. Because I don't like I don't even know if he knows for sure exactly like what his recovery time is going to be. Okay. How many people are upset. At least like three or four people. But they're like, very, they have a lot of anxiety about it. There's definitely like the people that are into it are very into it. Oh my goodness. Well, I'm glad people play such close attention. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to their continued enthusiasm in public art. Yeah. Yeah. Let's send them a solicitation for donations. Yeah. I'm sorry, you're sort of bearing the brunt of it. If you want help with anything. You know, writing text or anything, I can try to help you with that, but I mean, my, my sort of initial feeling is just, you know, I don't know what to do with it. But I just want to thank them and appreciate their interest and support. And we apologize and, you know, Yeah, like talking about maybe like trying to get a little article about it or something, but like, I'm not sure. I don't think for it for people that are worried about it. If you put an article in the paper, you're going to wind up with 20 to 30. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's appropriate to say this. Almost in a public form, particularly, but I have been just like keeping track of what happens when people in public controversies apologize. And the, I have noticed that what happens is it's taken as a mission and it just doubles down the criticism. It does not remove criticism makes it worse. No. But it is a mistake. And yeah, it was definitely not a mistake. Yeah, it's a mistake and it's embarrassing and we're sorry. And I don't know what more we can do other than to say it will be fixed as soon as the people are ready to fix the, you know, I'm not saying it's not a good thing to do. I'm just saying it's not a good thing to do for public relations purposes. Yeah. And frankly, you know, I don't think the public art commission is responsible for this. Either.  You know, we should have been there or somebody should have been there to see that the reinstallation.  And it's like your job and you've got work. You just can't make it to all these things. It's like, I would have liked to have been there myself, but I had work because it would happen during the work day. Yeah. Well, I am sorry that, you know, people got upset about it. That's unfortunate.  Honestly, it's just an honest mistake. Why is it a misogynistic conspiracy just out of. Because now Robert Frost is on the bigger rock. Oh, jeez. So it comes off. Did they ever mention how preposterous it is to begin with that they're sitting there talking to each other. Well, I think that's like the art, artsy poetic part of it. Oh yeah. You know, there's, there's people that have passionate views in town about things. And I guess that's good. That's always good. Yeah. Yeah. It's what makes town our town. Yes. I like that it adds a little flavor. Well, that's too bad if they don't, that shows they really feel bad about it. They'll get over it. I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah. Like I said, they'll get over it. We'll get it fixed as soon as we can. And, uh, yeah. So Sean, if you need support in anything, let us know. All right. Thank you. It's been a little rough. No, it's an lawyer. Let me ask a question. Who's coming minutes. Oh, hopefully you are. I am. I just didn't want to keep them if I could get out of it. That's why I didn't say I'm keeping minutes. I was like helping somebody say I am. Thank you, Jim. All right. And Jim, speaking of Jim. Um, I've been in emails exchanges with, um, Angela. And she. Said that there's, you definitely count, even if you haven't been officially appointed yet because, um, because of the way things work.  It hasn't actually already happened yet. Cause that was like a last month that she told me about that. Okay. But even though, you know, the pandemic is pretty much over. I think there's still a lot of crunch going on in town hall. As far as. Getting all the different. Seats filled and such. I know for a fact I met with a candidate. A couple of months ago now and, um, they've filled out the forms and all that. To be appointed. Any time now. And they're a great person. They've got, um, some art management experience. Oh, that's good. Yeah. I want to do is take pictures. All right. So. All right. On the agenda, I also have the North common. I think it's going to be, um, which we don't really have any work going on on that right now, because like it's not even really underway, but I have it on the inside that there is going to be. A tree hearing for the, for the merry maple. At the end of the month, I think it was. And they said it's actually really going to happen for real this time. So. That means they are pushing forward with the North common.  I think we'll have to work like very closely with the town. And the planning board to figure out. Like how that's actually going to unfold with the percent for art. Does the North common. Um, I guess the funding has been strapped down in there. Really doing it. So our minds should be like getting ready to think about like what. We can do with percent for art on that. But that's going to be like a big thing. I think we'll have to work like very closely with the town. Um, Does the North common, um, qualify for percent for art? I believe so. Isn't it a million? It's a, I thought it is a million dollars or more. All right. I'm going to have to check in on that. There's a significant limit. Um, yeah. For some reason, I feel like the North common. I'm just making this up probably was like 800,000. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We should just verify that. Um, Okay. That it qualifies because yeah, we'll want to get. Something, something planned. If it does. Yeah. All right. And then I guess the. The big thing is the boltwood gallery. Project. And the, um, Making it public. That's the $10,000. Thing that we will be working with the, um, planning board. With. And Maureen Pollock, she's going to be. Like formulating a, a meeting with like a bunch of different people of like different aspects of town. And we're all going to meet. You know, including. Like, I mean, I'm not sure if it's me or anyone else who's interested in representing the art commission too. Um, and talking about like ideas for projects to use that. Cause like the money needs to be spent next year, but the plan for how to use the money is due at the end of the year. Like the end of December. This is a percent for our project. No, this is a making it public. A $10,000 project. I want to say the mass cultural council. It's that one that, um, that bill got that training. He went to like this big training in Boston. Maureen. That worked out well. Could, could, um, I'm sorry, cause I've, I've. Haven't attended a meeting in, in a little bit. Um, is there something to read about that? Or could we invite Maureen to our next meeting to fill us in on, on it again? I need a refresher. Okay. Yeah, I'll talk to Maureen. Okay. That would be great. Um, I just love to. Sort of remind myself what I remember Bill talking about it, but, um, it fell off my radar. So. I just like to get a better sense of it. And, and what is what we've promised in the grant and what we can do. And. If you'd like. If you'd like me to look up percent for it, I may be able to find a limit easily. Oh, and. Well, this is not percent for it. This is like. No. I was worried about making it public, which is a different program. Yeah, I realized, but, you know, I move slowly. Okay. Did we get sent the grant? Did we get sent a copy of the grant? I haven't, I haven't seen like any paperwork on this at all. Actually, I think it's all on Maureen's desk. Oh, well, if she can shoot, you know, if there's a way to share it with us, then we, I can't talk about things or not. I don't know what I'm talking about. I can. Yeah. Like I had a meeting with Maureen and mostly she was just saying, I don't know, I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about. But I think we are going to be. We are going to be. More of like an advisory kind of, like, it's going to be. We're going to be contributing ideas and we're going to be doing stuff like that. But as far as like actually. Like. Doing the paperwork. I don't think we're going to be doing it. Wait a minute. So. That's kind of discouraging, frankly. We don't have any money coming to us. And so we're not going to have any actual authority. She said that we are going to have authority in this. We're going to have like a big voice in the room for. For what the project is. And how it goes. Are there any ideas floating around already about. What it might be. Where it is. This is too vague. For me. No, there's no. Yeah. The, the initial meeting that she wants to set up. Is going to be. Like a brainstorming session. Talk about. Like what would be a cool project or projects or. What have you. Okay. Like my idea, one of my ideas. Is. Have like a. Like a arts hike through the. Robert Frost trail, where like different spots on the trail have like different artistic. Interests, you know, like maybe if someone. We're saying in poetry or. A band or maybe some sculpture. Or like a, some sort of interactive. Art project with. Some sort of. Autumn leaves or something. I don't know. Just those are just like some ideas that I had for like getting people out on the route for us trail and enjoying like the foliage during. For like maybe during indigenous people's day. I have like some sort of like autumn festival to draw people. Into Amherst. Cause there's a lot of money floating around. Out there in the world when. From, from, you know, two orders dollars. For. Yeah. So like, you know, why not. Yeah. So anyway, we can like get something out that would attract them to the other artistic things in, in Amherst. And maybe have a tour of the other things we funded. Something like that.  That would explain all the different things that. We've. Been fun funding that they could go look at. Something like that. So we could get a little. A little publicity for ourselves and also for art. Same time. Yeah. See the trouble is people, you know, I don't know that we're really that well understood. And if we could. We could do something significant while we're working on making it public that would promote the arts and Amherst and also get our name known in connection with promoting the arts and Amherst. It might help us in the future. Yeah, this has got me thinking maybe we need a brochure just about us, you know, like, right? Who are we? What are we? What are we doing? Yeah. And a list of projects, you know, like we could direct them to the. Quite dialogue. And stuff like everything that we have out now, we could have in. In the brochure that they, we could give them directions how to get there. And that would give a purpose to the brochure. And make it timely. We used to have a brochure. I mean, we still probably have copies of it. Out there somewhere. But when I joined the commission and. Oh my gosh, six years ago. They had just printed a whole like walking tour brochure. That'd be good. I just heard about a man who moved here to, or either a town near here. Who is a freelance person who. Makes his living in something called dream delivery service.  And he's a great writer. So they're great dreams. You wish you had them. When he located here. He now he's planning to do tours. Freelance. Of public art. And I don't know. I haven't talked to him personally. This was somebody told me about him getting ready to do this. And it was interesting to talk to him to see what he had in mind. You know, because, because I don't think he even, he's not from here. So he doesn't know even what's available. So this brochure would have been something my friend could have given him. That would have been a gesture of welcoming him. So, yeah. So it sounds like a good thing to have. Yeah. So it's, can we put our hands on the old one? So it. See the song. I don't know how to go about doing that. Who's got access to the old minutes of the public art commission. Is there a searchable database that we could go in and put. Brochure in and see if it popped up. I won't be in the minutes. Yeah. And like the closest thing we have to that is our Google group now, which I've been putting stuff in, but that, that predates the Google group thing. So it's not in there. I bet, I bet Eric might have boxes of the brochures. I remember I had a box because I put, I put them at the museum and at Atkins and a few places around town, but. Yeah, I've done that too. I had the brochures and put them in places. But I don't have any left. Maybe they're at the bid, I think. Yeah, I could see them having a box down in the basement of the bid or something. Yeah, I think that's where they got. I remember bringing them over to the bid. Oh. Yeah. I'll email over there and see if they have any. That's right. I do remember doing that. So I bet they're there unless they cut tossed, but. Somebody could like contact Eric Brody and see if he has them too. By email. And then there's also the fact that we must have gotten them printed somewhere. And I would guess it was, it'd be that place right on. Right across from the common. There. Are you talking about collective copies? Yeah. So I wonder if they would have like, you know, PDF or something.  Okay. So they know them. And I can check and see how many copies they've sold lately. If any. I know I'm getting off topic here, but when I searched for making it public in my emails, which nothing came up. I do see from April, that bill submitted a grant. To the Amherst cultural council for $5,000. For the portal gallery. We get our five grand. I don't, I don't know if we've ever heard. Yeah. I thought he got 2000 for that. Okay. We did. Okay. So that's not enough. Okay. Okay. So that's not enough. Which. Has to be our next thing that we talked about it. We got to talk more about the portal gallery. Okay. Cause like we're getting. We're getting stuck at the. Trying to do the call for artists with nobody. Managing the actual call for artists. Like there's. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's going to work. So that they could be able to do that for us, that sort of thing. But it's not built yet. So that's not an option for this year. It would have to be like actually managed by somebody on the art commission. And it totally can't be me because I'm too bogged down and a million other things. Is there anyone that would want to take that on? Or would we be more interested in. The work that we did. We did. Invitation sort of. Manor. And Bill is off officially off the commission. Yup. Okay. So nothing has been done about it at all. Except when we talked about it last time, which kind of left it up in the air. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what other than I've talked to town. I've talked to the town about it. I've talked to the town. I've talked to the town. They're. They want to be able to provide that service for us. It's just, it needs to be built. And the service would be the dissemination of the call. It would be like the building of like. The structure of it. So that like. Like the. Technical structure of it. You know, in. You know, You can submit their things and then they, you know, and then they could be managed from there. Okay. So they're going to build that and then use it. And you want one of us to provide the copy that goes with that. That meets the requirements of a public call. No. I'm not asking that anyone right now. I'm just saying if somebody would want to take that on, they could. I don't know what it is. We don't know what the it refers to. What do you mean? You said they could, you could take it on. What is. Like, like build an entire call for artists. Which would be like, you know. Making a. Internet space for people to submit. Or be, or have it over your own email. Or have it like, and just have people submit files to your email, but it seems like that would be a nightmare. No, you can't do it. I don't think this. I think something like this needs to be an official. Email, not a personal email. Right. Well, that's why. Yeah. I think it would be better off to do, have the town do it that way. Oh yeah. Absolutely. If they haven't posted their submissions on the town and then you need us to review the proposals. So if the town's willing to build a cyberspace. What the artists can submit proposals, then when they submit proposals, if they could have it automatically notify us that the proposal has been submitted. And then if that's possible, that'd be great. And then one of us can be or more can be designated to review the proposals and bring them to the committee. Am I accurately summarizing what we need? Yes. It's just that that doesn't exist yet. But it's been asked. It's been asked of the town and they're looking into it. There's like ones that are already built that they could get like subscriptions to. And they're reviewing. Different ones of those. It's like it's not top priority for them. So I don't know. The next action item seems to be to coordinate with the town to get them to build or rent or have somehow acquire. The commission space. It's a website. I will tell you this, I have, I don't know if this is crazy, but I am helping a teenager who is probably the brightest kid. I met. Maybe ever and I met a lot of really bright kids because I'm a mock trial coach at a magnet school for really bright kids. And he does web design for business for short money. So. You know, if you were interested, I could see if he could build something for us. If the town would do it. I mean, it would be a way of solving budget problems if there are any, but he's untested. Yeah. 16 years old. Well, that is interesting because, you know, with the grant money. I could check with the cultural council to see if we could use some of the money to pay him to build this. So that, you know, because it is directly affecting our motion forward on getting the, the right art into the portal gallery. Right. You would need a computer to host it on however. And that would be the town's computer. So I don't know if that's going to complicate everything totally. I guess they're not going to allow that. They're going to want. They're going to want to do that. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking, but the problem is I'm told that, you know, they're not putting a priority on it. We need it. What's the debt. When do we need it by. Shoshona. I'm not entirely sure it might be the end of the year. Okay. And, and who is your contact at the town hall. Your contact at the town hall. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And she said it wasn't a priority. I can't say that she exactly said those words, but there's definitely like bigger things on her plate to deal with. Like really big things. So. Like my expectations are to be patient. The last time the commission put out a public call. It was probably before the pandemic because we used to put out public calls for the town hall gallery. And so how was that handled. It just went to one person's email, I believe. Some or two or two. No, I think it went to the info at public art. Amherst.gov or site. I think we had don't we have a general mailbox. That would be good to know on the town website. Yeah, that would work. Why can't we just do that. Yeah, I guess the heck with the heck with the building the website in three years. Why don't we just create a piece of paper that's the call and email it out. Then one of us is going to have to manage that and it can't be me. That email. things. If we just get it done, we'll get the manager later. That's my thought right now. If we could have something on paper that was created that was sent, if we have a mailing list that we know where to send it, and if we have that email info at publicartcommission.com, then we've got the structure we need to get the job done. Then once we know we have that, somebody's got to be willing to look at the email that goes to info at publicart.com. Those are two. We do have a live link. It's publicart at amherstmass.gov. That's good. Yeah, and those emails get bumped directly to my email. That's essentially like emailing me. I can't do that. There are programs you can get that you can tell that when you get something that has a certain ray on it to forward it to whoever. Okay. So it could automatically be forwarded, or you could change who gets info at publicart.com. You could change that who gets the emails, and then that person could forward you the ones that you need and keep the ones that they need. Do we have someone that's willing to be this person? I can't volunteer to do something that I don't understand, you know, because I don't even know what it involves or how it's really set up yet. I'm happy to try to do something when I understand it, but not now. Okay. So let's get the call to artist done. Let me see if this works for you. So we get the call for artist done. We've got the communications problem solved. If we have the call for art done, will that help you? I would like to read what your previous call for public art said, because then I'm not starting from scratch or not having to do a lot of research that has already been done, I assume, by the commission before 2020. Right. So the next step is finding the last couple of calls for art so we can look at them. So how do I, where's that? So we need to find that for the next meeting. Yeah, if they've come through my hands, they would be in our Google Drive. Okay, so can you look at the Google Drive? And then I will look at some other place we said there might be, what do we say? Other than Google Drive, where would it be? In our Google documents. Yeah, but forget those. Yeah, because that's probably too recent. But going back into history, where do we find this stuff? It would be in the minutes. Right? Am I right? And where do I find the old minutes? And so how do I find the old minutes are on the town website? So I can go to the town website and just do a search for them? I don't know if you can do a search in it. I have to look. I'm just looking at the town website now and we have to take a lot of people off of our list because we have a lot of people up here that are not members and... Right now? Yeah. But I don't mind going through the... Bill, Shelley, none of those people are still on. My term actually expired last year. Well, I didn't try this year, but they tell me I can, in a moment of insanity, I said I would re-up and so they're working on it. So if you Google the Amherst Public Art Commission, the commissioners are James Barnhill, Ellen Keeter, Shoshana King, and Darryl Warr with three vacancies. So Ellen, you have volunteered without remembering that you did it? They just said because of COVID, I could stay on, but I don't know if it was a three-year term or I don't remember. I don't mind as a project trying to dig through the old minutes and see if I can find a cause for art in the past. I can also call Bill because he probably has... Amy would be probably the most... I'm looking here at the minute. Amy would be more likely to have that kind of stuff. Yeah, all the minutes are on the website. And Ellen, you're right. The under member info lists all these people who aren't on any. Right. Yeah, because I've got nothing in our Google Drive about it. Well, I think it's possible to find a call from art and if you can't find a call from art from us, we can find one from somebody else, I imagine. I'm sure, yeah. Because Gigi's been on the mass funding. She knows everybody in the art field, my wife. And I could see if she can... You know, one way or the other. So let's say that I'll try to find one myself and if I can't find it in two weeks, I'll send an email to everybody and tell you. Okay, that's great. Thanks. You know, there's a list listed on here is tour Amherst art destinations. And is that relevant to the brochure you all were talking about? Yeah, yeah. That sounds like it. There's also you can download a printable brochure, it says. Where is it? Can you download that? Can you send us a... Can you put that link up on now? I just Googled Amherst... I'm just at amherstmass.gov. And it's on the website. Then I went to the public commission site and then you can just flip through it and you'll see all of this. And I didn't ever download that brochure. So yeah, yeah, it's on here. So I don't know what it looks like. But I'll look right now. It looks exactly like the printable brochure. Yeah, you can download it. That's exactly it. Yep. Did y'all make this? I joined the commission in 2015 and it was just updated then. So that was probably the last time. It's got a map and it's got... I've already got two windows up because I'm taking minutes. Would somebody be willing to email me that link or the brochure itself? Please. Sure. I can't go digging. If I go digging and look for it, I'm going to mess my minutes up something fierce. I can send it right now. Oh, thank you so much. I'll probably learn something. Okay, so once we get the call for arts, we can maybe understand what we're doing. Like the next step is we need to know to whom to send it. Do we know that among the four of us? No, I think normally it goes out in like our normal avenue for like the Valley Arts newsletter and our social media and whatnot. Oh, okay. So then so that would then the only remaining step would be calling their responses and voting on which ones we like. Right, but in order to make that plan, we've got a... Like we've got a... Okay, I guess the first thing is finding out like our timeline. Like what are we talking about like for when we want to get these people in here? Because they're going to need to know what they're applying for like as far as when. We're making our own timeline. The town, the timeline is infinite. If we do it ourselves, you know, like in my law practice, my motto is the best thing to get something done is right this very minute. Any other... We have to spend the money, right? Do we... I hope we don't... We have to spend the money by just the end of the year. Usually that's the case, but they've been really linear about extensions because of just how everything's been wild lately. I would ask if we can get an extension. Yeah, I would vote to push it to next spring, summer. Why are you doing that? Because you don't think we have time to do it or you think... Or you're doing that because it's a better time to do it. Because I don't think anybody's stepping up to do this and manage it. And like installing in December, you know, in the winter might not be... Who's going to try to... ...and worrying to artists, you know, when nobody's going to be walking around and spending time looking at the...  Whereas like people will stop and look when it's, you know, like spring and summer. Well, that's a good sounding reason that the timing for it is it has to be in the spring when people get out from the winter doldrums and then they'll look. Yeah. Are you going to... Shona, are you going to get that... Are you going to talk about the extension with somebody? Yeah, I'm going to all ask the cultural council if that's okay. Which cultural council? The Amherst. Okay. If it is okay, we need to get it ready. Well, I'll communicate with them through email and that will be kind of like in writing and then I'll share whatever I find with you guys. Well, is there a copy of whatever a document that tells us when we have to get this done and that we need to be extended? Is there a report? I've never been given anything because it was... I've got it all right. It came in an email in April from Bill. Oh, that's from Bill. Yeah. Oh, this is just... Yeah, I think that's just saying he's going to go for it, right? No, it's the grant we submitted. I don't think I have anything in writing that we received the money. Yeah, because I don't think we got the full 5,000. Okay, who should I talk to to find out about this grant? Because I don't want an email from us. I want an email from them. It's the Amherst Cultural Council. Yeah, I want to talk to them about everything about this grant. Oh, so you're going to do that? Yeah. Get a paper copy of the grant, please. Or electronic copy, I shouldn't say paper. We have the electronic copy of the grant. We do? It's in Bill's email from April 15, 2022. Oh, so I'd have that. Yep, you're on the email. Am I on the email? That's really not ringing any bells. It's on your... You're on it too, and Dara's on it, and Maureen is CC'd. It just says here's the grant we submitted for the ACC grant.  It would have gone to Bill. We don't have... That's what I'm saying. We don't have that. Because what we sent them doesn't count for them. What they sent us is where it's going to say, you have to do this by X, I assume. But 422 with the grant proposal. That was just our submission. It's not what you're looking for. Bill will have... Yeah, I've got the application, but not anything from them for... Bill will have the responses, correct? Yeah. I will call Bill and I'll ask him to forward to us everything he's got, except of any significance for our records. And then we should get in some place that's permanent so that future people will have this information. Yeah, it'd be nice for it to go into our Google Drive. Right. But in the meantime, at least if he has that proposal, then we can look at it. I will look at it. I will see what we need to do to get it extended next September. I will tell Shona. Okay. How's that? All right. So you're going to do that? You're going to... So Jim will call Bill, get records he has, okay, get proposal, the acceptance of our proposal, and send to you determine what we have to do to get an extension if necessary. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry, you guys. I have a one o'clock meeting for work, so I'm going to have to jump off. Okay. Thank you. All right. I'll see you all later. Okay, Spring 23. Okay. Okay. Did we just lose our quorum? I think as long as we have three. Yeah, we only need three for quorum. Okay. So we're good. Whatever happened to that fourth person who's waiting somewhere? I don't know. They never raised their hand. Oh, okay. So maybe we answered their questions in the poetic dialogue discussion. Oh, maybe so, huh? I expect that's what they were there for. Let's try to avoid doing that in the future, so they have to join our group in order to get there and questions answered. Yeah. Somebody asked questions. Well, join the art commission and we'll tell you. All right. Okay. So I'll read again about the ACC portal gallery grant, because that's also part of what we were talking about today, right? Tell me what you just said, please, for the minutes. I'm going to read again the ACC portal gallery grant that Bill sent to all of us on April 15th. Oh, great. Yes, please do. Yeah, that's his proposal. That's not the actual grant. It says here's the grant we submitted. Right. For the ACC grant. So that would be the proposal. That is not what we I think is that's relevant. I think it's also relevant what they sent back and probably more so, because that's what we get to spend. Right. So, Jim, you're going to find the actual from them grant with the deadlines and whatnot. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. I think I can probably do it fairly easily, because if I can't figure it out, Gigi can tell me. Yeah. Yay, yay for Gigi. Yay, Gigi. All right. So I guess the next step with that is you're going to contact the you're going to contact Bill. And if needed, contact ACC or should I contact ACC? ACC being Amherst Cultural Council. Yeah, the grant he sent to us is to the Mass Cultural Council. That's a grand application, right? Yeah, the application is to the Mass Cultural Council. Oh, well, that's even easier, because I think Gigi was on that. So is that wrong, or are we talking about two different grants? It was told that it was the Amherst Cultural Council. I will find out. But like the Amherst Cultural Council is kind of like part of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, because they're the ones that like disseminate the. Oh, okay. So the yeah, I know.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the Mass Cultural Council is giant, and then like every town has a lot of work. Okay. So we have the grant proposal. Jim will find the grant. Okay. And no, it is, you're right. It's all from the Mass Cultural Council paper. Their name is on the top of every page. Yep. But it's to Amherst. Well, whoever it is to or from or with, I will get it. Okay. I hope. Astros, I hope, but I'm certainly probably, this is kind of stuff more the lines of what I do. That's good. Okay. So when you find that out, I guess, like send an email to us. And then, and then we can start thinking about the, this, how we're going to do, or who's going to do the call for art. Okay. But I'm warning, I won't do it this week because I'm going to be there right there on what's on the screen behind me. I'm going to be there for the next, for the rest of week. Yay, for you. You are very relaxing. It is extremely relaxing and very good exercise.  What are you going to do? Are you going to be kayaking or fish? We're going to canoe in the middle, start in the middle of Long Lake and go up the lake and then go into that river right there. That's Racquet Falls. And we'll go down. We cannot go down Racquet Falls. We walk around Racquet Falls. It's kind of the hard part because it's like three-fourth of a mile uphill with a canoe over your head.  Nice. You know, camping out under the stars. Sounds great. Yep. That does sound great. I hope you guys have a great time. That is great because this will be my 17th year doing it. Wow. So I do like. No amateur you. Yeah, people keep saying, let's get a new route. And I keep saying, well, you know, if you get on a new route, something's going to happen. We didn't expect that if we go on this route, that's not happening because I've already gone up and happened. I've done it so many times. Here's something nice about seeing the same thing over and over again through time. Well, yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yep. All right. So the rest of our agenda, I guess, social media, I'm still posting on social media. If anyone has anything that they want to pop in on social media, email it to me and I can get it on there. And what kind of stuff would that be? Like if you see like a cool call for artists or something that would be of interest to local artists that they should know about like an opportunity, definitely that. Or if you see like some sort of inspiring article about local artists, something like that is good. If you see a cool call for art, please send it to me, you know, because then we can put it in the package for what we're doing for the portal gallery. Yeah, I can, I can, I'll look at some other places, art, public art commissions and see if they have any. Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. And if anyone wants to take on being a manager of social media. I can't do that too. Yeah, I'm already, I'm already managing four social accounts for other It's like no. Yeah, I get that. You need to recruit somebody else. I know I'm like target somebody to get on the commission who's really good at that, like a very young, young, maybe one of those high school students. I'm about a 16 year old. You know, we've got a 16 year old on the tree committing. You want me to ask for me for us is highly intelligent. He's kind of quiet. I could ask him if he wants to be on the public art commission. Yes, definitely. And that will be his job. I'll tell him that right up front. Yeah, because like it would be great to have like a young perspective on top of it all. Yeah, great on his resume man for college. Yes. Yeah, because the kid we've got on the tree committee, he's like just vivacious. He is just inexhaustible. Yeah. For us is not vivacious. He by the way just became an Eagle Scout just. Wow, at 16. That's yeah. That's pretty good. He's a go getter. Thank you. So did I. So I got an indirect compliment. Okay. All right. I think okay. So I okay action items.  And funding with the portal gallery grant. And I'm going to talk to Maureen to get a more clear understanding of when she can meet us for making it public. And you're going to ask for an extension for the grant money. Yeah. Yeah. Well, first I want to have Jim go through and get more fine print on that. And then we'll ask. Okay. And I'll talk to Maureen again about screening for artists. And I think that's it, right? Okay. All right. Is there any other business not foreseen before 48 hours of the event? No. All right. Then have a great trip, Jim. And oh wait, wait, there actually is one more thing. I need a second signature on the invoice that I need to submit to the town for the DPWs part in poetic dialogue.  What is the signature for? For the pebbles and stuff for poetic dialogue. The DPW did some work there. And what are we signing up to what's above our signature note? That they're getting money, the money that we promised them. For doing that. We're promising somebody that they're going to get money. Yeah. Well, we already did promise them and then this is to actually pay them because like. Is this a request for payment to the town? Yeah. Oh, so what it is is a piece of paper that we're signing saying please pay these people. We owe them the money. Yes. Okay. And you signed it. Yeah, I signed it, but I needed a second signature on it. Where do you live? I live in Rowling Green. Rowling Green. Isn't that right near Amherst Woods? Oh, they're sweetie. Yes. Yeah, me. I'll sign it. Okay, great. Then email me your address and I can pop over later today if that works. Sure. Okay. Yeah, that works. I'll be here. Okay. Thank you. That's good to know. Okay. Bye. Thank you. Bye. All right, we didn't move to adjourn. Okay, I moved to adjourn. I signed it. Bye. Bye. All right. Okay. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.


The Civil Service Association, CSA, joined the Caribbean counterparts in observing Caribbean public service and Solidarity Week this October. The CSA used this year's observance to provide financial aid to one charity on Ireland. President Scipian Montrop and his executive took a trip to the south where they distributed the funds. We decided to recognize October 4th as Solidarity Week and of course as part of the celebrations we agreed to select one charity to do a donation and of course Comfort Bay was selected and so we here to present to them 1500 dollars towards assisting them in whatever activities that they are undertaking on behalf of the elderly in the south. Staff of the home were elated at the gesture which they assured would be put to good use. We'd just like to say a wonderful express our gratitude to the Civil Service Association for their generous check towards our residents in celebration of Solidarity Day. We know for sure that it will go a long way in helping our residents and the home in general. The manager of the establishment was also on hand to express gratitude for the act of generosity. We are thankful and we are happy that we are considered for this year and on behalf of the staff and residents we are happy to see thank you for remembering us. The Caribbean Public Services Association of which CSA is an affiliate has decided to recognize October 4th as Caribbean Public Service and Solidarity Day as a crucial reminder of the indispensable role of public officers across the Caribbean region in our development and resilience. For the communication unit of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Early Affairs, I'm Sant Justin.


Our biggest program is we fund screenings, diagnostic, biopsy, tests for uninsured women across the country. Now, obviously, there are states where the insurance coverage is excellent. Our funding, that's what I love about NBCF, we're very flexible with our funding. So if we get a call from a doctor and they say, you know, we need to do something else, we need to look at this differently, with contrast, for example, they've eaten all this and said, you know, I know your funding says it's, you fund this, this and this, but would you fund this? We would say yes. Right now, you know, we need to grow. We're in all 50 states, but we're in various targeted areas that we know we can reach the most amount of people, but we're not everywhere. Individual patients, if they reach out to us, we're going to do everything that we can. We have a whole mechanism as navigation system to do that for sure. But our funding goes to specific hospitals. So if you're in that hospital, say, MD Anderson, where we have a partnership there, and the doctor emails us and says, this patient doesn't have funding for this, this, or this, will you, can we use your grant funds? Yes. The answer is yes. Anything that we can do to remove the barrier of getting to that diagnosis from suspicious finding to a diagnosis, we're going to do.