Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Irene Sunwoo. I'm the director of exhibitions here at GSAP. I'm the director of architecture, planning, and preservation. And I'm also the curator of the Arboros Architecture Gallery just across the lobby. And we're really pleased to have you all here tonight on the occasion of Tokwasi Dyson's exhibition, 1919 Blackwater. Tokwasi is a multi-disciplinary artist based in New York by way of Chicago. And she works across sculpture, drawing, and performance with a commitment to and passion for painting. And I've really witnessed this over the past couple of months and I can testify she's really a machine when it comes to painting. And at the core of her artistic grant as a whole is an intellectual investment in forms of environmental justice. Both interestingly from a historical perspective, but also importantly with a view to potential futures. Her work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Wooden Museum of American Art, the Grand Foundation, the Drawing Center, the Museum of Modern Art, and also the Cincinnati National Museum of African Art. This past spring, she was the Robert Quothney Chair at Cooper Union, rotating interdisciplinary professorship in art and architecture. And she continues to teach at Cooper today and is also currently a critic at the Yale School of Art. In 2016, she joined the board of the architectural league of New York as vice president of visual arts. So over the past few years, the Extension Program at Ross Gallery has prioritized developing new projects for architects and artists, offering them resources and space to test arguments and launch new investigations, which in turn augment and expand the research, conversations, and design experiments that are continuously unfolding at GSAP. We're incredibly proud to support and present this new body of work, like Quothney, which I'm confident will prompt us to re-evaluate how we as architects, historians, teachers, and students understand the agency and limitations of representation, the scope of repercussions of climate change, and the power of geometric abstraction as a visual language. And while it may at first seem curious that an architecture gallery has invited a painter to do a show, in fact, Turquoise has allowed to teach us as a discipline about the built environment and space. And really, I can't express how much I've learned from Turquoise interacting with her over the past few months. Now I can't take full credit for pulling Turquoise into this crazy vortex that is GSAP. I post her from a few of my colleagues, namely Mario Gooden, professor in the architecture program here, and who joins us as moderator tonight, and also Laila Patelier, director of events. So Mario and Laila have been trying to coordinate a drawing performance, masterminded by Turquoise, and are trying to find a space that the school has proposed for them. Having come across her work through her solo exhibition at the Graham Foundation, and also her project at the drawing center, which was the inspiration for the Graham exhibition, I kind of concerted myself, uninvited into the conversation that Mario and Laila were having, and inquired what was going to happen to the drawings after the performance, and maybe with Turquoise wanted to exhibit these in the gallery. And soon after, she was essentially in residence at the gallery, really set up shop, and the space really became her studio, her oratory, classroom, and think tank throughout this past summer. And for those of you who know Turquoise, you know that she was truly a force of nature, able to crystallize critical thinking and creative production in mysterious and breathtaking and beautiful ways. And that convergence of intelligence and poetry surfaced in her proposal for the gallery to tackle the 100th anniversary of the red summer of 1919, a period of sweeping racial violence across the United States. And in particular, she emphasized the desire to focus on a specific act of violence that took place in the segregated waters of Chicago or hometown. So I'll leave it to her to speak about the significance of this historical case study in more detail during her discussion with Laurent Rooks and Mario Gooden, and also to discuss how it was offered a lens to think through more contemporary issues concerning race, climate, migration, and the architectural imagination, and the quasi-certainlyness of architectural imagination. So we're delighted that Laurent Rooks has joined us this evening to participate in this conversation. He is currently the Associate Curator for Modern and Contemporary Collections, specializing in African American collections at the Getty Research Institute. And prior to working at the Getty, he was an assistant professor of Africana studies at Lehman College and a curator for the Racial Imaginary Institute. And serving as a moderator is Mario Gooden, Associate Professor of Practice here at G.C. and Principal at the Huff and Gooden Architects. And he also directs the Global Africa Lab with Mabel Wilson. His work writing and lectures frequently examine architecture and the translation of cultural landscapes defined by the standards of technology, race, class, gender, and sexuality. Before I turn it over to our state speakers, a few other things are in order. For her continued support of the Gallery's programming and her consistent recognition of exhibitions as an integral part of G.C.F.'s intellectual and creative culture, I wanted to thank our dean, Amal Andros. And I'd also like to thank Mabel Wilson, also a professor here at G.C.F. and Ayama Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist based in New York. Each of them generously engaged for quasi-important conversations that are included in our exhibition pamphlet. And I really encourage you to pick this up and take a read. It's really an amazing set of conversations. And last but not least, our amazing student team who contributed to the formation and the realization of 1919 Blackwater, including Tommy Nguyen, Alexander Tell, Andrew Shea, Ira Bae, and especially Fernanda Karlovich, I don't know where you are, but you were really an MVP. We got there early today and we didn't show up until two minutes ago because you were working hard to make this happen. Thank you so much. And a big thank you to Paola Veliklana, Laila Katelier, and everyone else on April 4, 15 who helped make this event possible. So with that, we'll turn it over to Tuvalé Mario. And just straight off the bat, I want to thank Tuvalase for the work that you all are going to see next door in the gallery. It's truly a pleasure and a gift really to have your work here at G.C.F. and to be having this conversation in this school at this time 400 years after 1619 and the arrival of the first Africans on this continent. Probably not the first Africans, but the first enslaved persons on this continent. So I'd just like to start perhaps with Tuvalase if you could maybe just tell us a little bit about the story that you're using for the historical framework of the paintings. For those who haven't had a chance to perhaps read about it in the pamphlet or the wall copy of the style. Sure. Thank you. First of all, thank you for inviting me and me from the starting of this year's conversation. All the students and all of you who are joining us tonight. I really appreciate you making that said. What I was interested in in 1919 particularly was in a bit that happened in Lake Michigan. And this event was personal to me because I grew up in Chicago swimming in Lake Michigan on the south side of Chicago living very close to the water. So as I got to swimming in Lake Michigan I had the story of a young man named June Williams but bit killed in the lake. And it really triggered my whole sort of rubric of water and politics in the body. So this event for young pregnant had been swimming in the lake and there were segregated waters of course, segregated beaches in Chicago and they had found the space in between the Black Beach and the White Beach. And they had built this raft, right? So they had built this, I don't know, what I consider as an architectural object to be in play in existing between these two spaces. So I was very interested in that raft, the moment that they decided to collect the materials, decide to be able to leave segregated spaces and live there or there. And also understanding the heat of Chicago in that time and look up to the rights of the land across the country. You know, black people were really vibrating to Chicago, the water was over, white people were coming back and there was a lot of conflict around the city, around labor and space and segregation. So when the four men one day, the five men were, my boys, there were playing in rafts while white Chicago had thrown rocks at them and hit Virginia and Virginia drowned. So I was really interested in their imagination and just thinking about that day of play, the water, the horizon, the making, the genius of creating a space in a nonsense, right? And thinking about ways to resist being told where to go and what to do or how to live. So it's really interesting in that impulse and I can't pretend to be interested in the sort of impulse to create a place of freedom in between the sort of second game of the castle. So I made an exhibition about it. You know, what gets me about the process of work is that, you know, every day, you know, I look on Instagram, every day you look on the internet and I see the danger of black bodies in space and to come up with a term called black oppositional thought in which black people are in some particular way navigating or making objects or making space for themselves to be safe or to navigate or to navigate between spaces in which they are not built, right? And so the connection for me in terms of your work, I mean, it's not in the past, it's actually in the present. It's when I'm on the train, I'm on the sidewalk just as a black man. It's me in public space and I constantly think about the space I hold and the space around me. Am I safe? I constantly think about it, am I safe? And so, you know, just in terms of this work, these young men just made a raft.  But they weren't. I mean, that's what makes me do it. And to make work around that idea and to use abstraction to bring that work across. But there's no figuration. I'm not saying it's easy, but we're late to it easier. But to work with the principal ideas of the spaces that black people have historically named to be safe and to use the sort of ideas that they created as thinkers. They're the thinkers. And to make all work out of that is to move on. I'll follow up with that. Because of the wrong notion of figuration, but it'll work. And I think I read somewhere recently that abstraction is perhaps the tool of the mechanism to deal with these issues. So it's not about the kind of literal representation, but abstraction and translation at the same time. So I'm wondering if you might sort of talk to us about the, what it is that you're sort of translating or the particular elements of the story that you're interested in translating or how that relates sort of architecturally to your broader interests. I've come to abstraction as very much a tool. So if you can imagine thinking about these histories of black body self-liberating over time. And today, I am trying to understand that condition of both inventing under the duress, inventing with materials around you, and inventing while the sort of systemic order of degradation is always happening, right? So there's some simultaneity in the, I think, genius of black people who can really create a similar space. So they have to know infrastructure. They have to know material. They have to know their own body weight. They have to know that even, it's acting like over time, how things work, right? Material in relationship to their body. So abstraction allows me to understand the system that they create in relationships and the system that they are trying to navigate, negotiate and critique and be free in, right? So it's a way of thinking about Eugene and the young man, thinking about the horizon, right? Thinking about the rav below, above. Thinking about the distance from taking materials from the train tracks and moving them to the water. Thinking about buoyancies. They're understanding how buoyancy works and ties. They have to figure that out, right? So the idea of transparency, opacity, movement, distance, space, I am interested in abstraction and getting closer to understanding how really they work, right? In these different ecosystems. And then that same understanding that genius, despite that research, almost in all the other systems, right? So in that decision, they are always center subject. They are always the center of the beauty of it all, right? And the tragedy of it all. But that's what abstraction does for me. And it's interesting what Meek-Prom is in the audience and I was thinking about this maybe in 2014 when I was making all of these architectural objects that I didn't think about as architectural objects. I was in the solar panel at the time trying to provide pretty solar energy and think of solar technology and get off the grid. I wasn't thinking about me. So I was making all of these crazy architectural objects just to hold the solar system, right? It's got this battery bank. It's got the systems. It's got the solar panels. So architecture just became to me as something that would hold the solar systems, right? So then one day, Donga and he was like, I can draw something and then somebody built the thing that I draw. Is that the thing? So it clicked. If I could do that, then I could un-make things too. So I started un-making slave castles, right? Or architectural buildings that were built to transport materials. Then we built to transport bodies. So I was like, whoa. I've been in Elmina with my mother when she was a full-bright scholar in Ghana. I was like, whoa, I could take those stairs away where they would bring in slave women up to wait. Like, I could get rid of the stairs. I could get rid of the door with no return, right? So for me, thinking abstractly through architecture allowed me to understand, to engage those systems. Right now, I'm like, okay, it's a way to understand things. That's great. It seems also to me that one of the things that strikes me about this new body of work, and I read an introduction mentioned the force of painting. That makes you a painter. But the paintings, I would describe the paintings as constructions. Not paintings in a traditional sense. And even though you started with the story of the boys, the paintings are not representing the story. But it seems to me that you have constructed a history or constructed a telling of that story. And so the paintings exist between, yes, painting, but also architecture. In the way that they're constructed, I'll call them found objects, but perhaps there are objects which begin to index certain things, but it's very much a kind of constructed condition. And so I think that that's something that we in the architecture group are asking, take away in terms of thinking about narrative and how we translate that in terms of architecture, if that is a tool or a structure and how we translate that in terms of narrative. What gets me too is where do you fit into the narrative? Where do you start to think of narration and story telling? How do you understand the source material in terms of the story you're feeding from and then where do you come in? And so the paintings are paintings, but they're not paintings. They're also telling of an interaction between artists and a history, because you space a faker meaning fakers. One of the things that we do, the way in which you gave those young men the dignity and the respect to respect them as thinkers, those young black men to respect them as people who can make a wrap. And if I made the wrap, I would not take it out into the water. But they did and they were having fun and it was a space for them to exist in the world and on the water and they're looking at the horizon and it's dark and looking at the stars. It's a whole condition of thinking that you're interacting that you're engaging and that you're repositioning and instructing an environment for us to then enter that space. I think that's amazing. That's very true and I say that because I think it's exactly my politic right around using geometric abstraction in particular because I'm not sure you know, thinking about those five men and of course I talk about Fox Brown a lot and Harriet Jacobs how would they figure all of that out? The genius around figuring those things out over time, moment by moment and to engage their cognitive ability through my own imagination because there's no image of the raft. It's talked about maybe over twice but when I heard that they had built this object on the water and I'm a diver so I know that you should be afraid of it and to understand that that space and getting at those histories and making paintings about it it really gets me closer to them it is an homage to their engineering sales their architectural sales, their creative sales their poet sales I guess my paintings are a way to think about how they did that as a creative strategy to think about what we're going to have to do so there's a history of say black composition of God and these people were using a kind of genius around space and maturity and movement in real time and on their bodies and imagining places imagining things how are we going to figure out motion and movement and kind of movement as the waters rise so in a way both building space motion and movement and migration is to enter the history of painting to say well we need to be thinking about these kinds of tools to figure out what's going to happen to our physical environment but also how do we figure that out? I think we look at the history of black spatial genius to figure that out so it's a way to you know not necessarily translate but it is a translation but it's a way to really understand or take notes or index or be in relationship to that kind of knowledge the only thing that can get me there is my imagination and then I make the objects and then there are visits that come in that's right you're trying to get to those is that part of that human perception of thinking genius that would happen in that way? but the paintings that constructions are all in my instructions they don't really reveal it they don't reveal it all I mean they really have clues and I think in terms of the layers of history and I think it's the boys went out to have a place of refuge to be liberated but we know the history of water and African-Americans going back to the transatlantic state so there is this trauma associated with water and I think that the constructions perhaps reveal some things but also leave some things to sort of question in terms of thinking about the but also the genius of how do you deal with that trauma? and so in a way and I was mentioning to you that we were a few of us were in conversation with Tina Camp today this idea of refusal of not sort of putting it all out there a practice of refusal that resists it seems to me that these constructions are also kind of operating in that liminal condition where some things are clues or are indices but other things are beneath all the layers of painted material on surface I think that is a product of that kind of thinking right so if we were to think about what you just said and lay it on any of those people they lay out self-illegration those same ideas right refusal things that are hidden things that are revealed things over time things that are strategized some things are given and some things are not so I think that kind of measurement or idea of refusal has many different sort of ontological conditions and what I mean by that is that when you look at these kinds of histories of becoming black in these ships in this water on this water I say in this water on this water simultaneously we think about how we got to where we are and then both in the trauma of dying death and I'll say death, dying quickly over time and refusing that kind of condition of a force death by figuring out how to self-illegrate like how is one how do we track that even beginning right how do we question that kind of impulse and when I think about that in terms of the constructions of the paintings it kind of ends up like that just in the process of researching these kinds of histories if I'm building a painting with the same kind of well if I'm building a painting thinking about each and every one inevitably there's going to be something hidden or not inevitably there's going to be ideas of distance and time and life and passing so the idea of where something comes from and where something is and how to make meaning of all of that inevitably things are going to be refused things are going to be welcome things are going to be negated things are going to be quiet so all of these things help me make the paintings so I think that's second question but I don't necessarily it's interesting to have this conversation because we collaborated before and I'm always I always wonder what architects are thinking about people who made constructions for who with the attention of um no no no um to your point the rap was made in secret yeah so the rap was made in secret until it was known and I'm sure the people I'm sure the people who didn't know these little these black boys can actually make something like that and when it was seen I'm sure it was a shock right and for me you know doing for people to make something often we have to do it in secret because the newness of it or the shock of seeing something made by like that you didn't expect made often what violence often what violence you know so the idea of black middle class right the idea of you know they have a piano and they're home they got a piano it was secret but once it's known they're in danger they're in proximity to like in a poor white community who who are angered at black people actually living in the American dream economically and culturally right and so the idea of secrets is something that's ingrained um in the culture because who wants to stay alive you know and to another degree the making of the rap their climate change right and I'm thinking we all may have to make a rap and some particular point and we think about climate change so the metaphor itself you know you beginning in blackness and invention and the danger of that invention being revealed but that being a signal to we're all going to be vulnerable and something we're going to be don't pay attention to climate change and what they metaphorically will be alright right so that's what the young boys were doing they were swimming in the beach in the beach again so all of this runoff of industry they named the place black white I'm sorry hot cold because at one moment the water would be hot well other moments the water would be cold from that industrial runoff right they still enter the water they still played there right this sort of determination again instead of sea to sea this they then they had to hide the rap every day they left right so they had to tie it up they had to make sure they could come back to it and I mean at least for 14, 15 the idea that we don't hunt these stories down after all the all the tragedy that's happening because of climate change and global warming and global stuff if we don't figure out those stories of trying and those stories of spatial negotiation and materiality as we're based on water and industry and infrastructure what are we doing right so by understanding these stories completely and their spatial significance we understand the science right we understand the material conditions right that water was wet it was water or wine what is it slippery you know it was of course algae forms and then the box flies and feeds on itself so you're getting up on it they're getting down on this slippery piece of wood that was made out of whatever they could find so in my mind stories like this we're going to have to we can't think about our roots the same we can't think about our furniture the same we can't think about the patients the same we can't think about these kinds of built environments the same and I mean now I don't need an existential threat I mean for people of color around the world the same thing yesterday or that 10 years ago talking about climate change as we look at it right now so I think that these stories have got to be exhibitions about them and you know around sort of mentioned you know what is significant enough to work is the sort of dignity that you've given to the boys and I mentioned that I think that the paintings are instructions I'm going to come back to this the paintings are instructions but in sort of let's say excavating the stories which have been suppressed or or hidden or even denied and making your instructions it also seems to have a point towards the future or at least the kind of optimism as it was and that you are constructing something new out of this it's not simply about the trauma of the past but even let's say the trauma you know or the risk of climate change but that you're constructing there's a creative process that comes out of this but creation seems to be about the kind of future you might sort of talk about if you're thinking about the future relative to climate change in a kind of positive way or in terms of what you're making now that to me the work is moving from painting becoming more and more architectural we've also talked about that and I should mention even everyone will see the people over there but the black glass pieces as well in a way in which they sort of change the condition of that existing space and point towards a different space or a future of that gallery I don't think I this is the way I think that I consider time when I'm making my work so there is no future that I'm working towards there is no in terms of the second linear thing between past present and future I'm really thinking about conditions of black death in a way in a way not in relationship to trauma but also in relationship to a kind of brilliance that happens because of that right I don't I don't like I said I don't think about climate change as an existential threat I don't think about it in terms of you know kind of years away I don't think about it as something that's not personal I think it's a very personal condition as a Katrina I have 30 people at my house I was teaching a settlement Katrina happened 6 days later I was feeding everybody so there's no I I don't think about it that way as something that I need to do to save our future I think about it climate change particular global one again people in the global south as a as a way to deal with the people who are around me right now in proximity people that I know in coastal cities now people that I know live in cities that where superhighways are making these hot zones people that I know are living and dying all in breath and water clean water, bad water so I think it's a kind of condition where we have to recalibrate right now how we think creatively in the arts with capital A as it relates to climate conditions so the paintings are a critical response to I think they're critical because I'm trying to get to a way where people deal with climate in different kinds of climate there's a climate industrialized by supremacists so that those boys were in multiple climate conditions it was the climate, the water that was coming from the industrial ways it was the races that threw rocks at them and killed one of those boys it was the climate of the water it was the material of the raft so they were existing in these kind of climate conditions where a black death occurred so in that way I am working spatially to figure out what I need to know right now that I don't know but the water moves yes and so the water does have to pass a future for migrating from does the water have to pass a future well there's a time element right in terms of maybe a motion element maybe a state change element a state change but the state change happens at a later time or in cycles so moving from Katrina or moving from New Orleans to Houston or to LA whether they come back or not but there is something like distance or maybe in terms of duration so maybe not future in terms of kind of futurism or optimism about the future but in terms of here and there I suppose particularly in terms of migration and water as geography right so I think the word I use is distance yes so I've been making these exhibitions thinking about distance and trying to replace the idea of distance because people do that to me about time and work and instead of using the word time I try to use the word distance and what distance allows me as another tool is to consider both the story of region both the stories of those people that were at my house and both the stories of people in Vietnam, both the stories of people in Houston and so I know that geographically they are far from me so I think about that distance I know that I have a memory of Katrina that for me is not time that's a distance in my memory so when I'm making paintings scale is very important so scale allows me to construct a sense of distance and I also know that when we think about scale in architecture, engineering and infrastructure how does the black genius someone like Eugene Wings and his friend then get scaled up as a way to deal with space so that was an incident that happened how do we scale up those kinds of conditions when we understand the waters are rising because they are in a constant state of change so that's what I'm thinking about in terms of constructing things that are to me measurable from buying this standpoint as a diver, as a swimmer in relationship to distance another thing about distance so when you're diving into like 50 feet or 100 feet, I think I've gone down to like 120 feet where you have this idea of visibility so visibility is a condition of distance I'm not thinking about time I'm not thinking about what I can see in front of me and what it's going on in my mind it's like those sharks I'm not thinking about sharks so I'm thinking about distance in that way in all conditions so I know that when someone is suffering from the aftermath of a tsunami I think about that distance how far are those people away from me how close of it to me how much do I know or don't know and how can I close that distance between what I know and what I don't know as fast as I can and I'm going to use abstraction to do the thing that this world has completely been unable to facilitate a kind of knowledge information of this world has completely been unable to facilitate such a tsunami defense so my distance is like how can I construct a kind of knowledge from black history to climate change to conditions of the global cloud south that will close that distance between what I know what I need to understand and what is happening right now in terms of day to day issues of death and dying no I mean so proximity proximity proximity to proximity to the sort of psychological duration, the physical duration to all of these other boys that think about let's not get too close to those white people so it's the psychological distance and then it's physical distance and so it gets me about the exhibition in and of itself is that we have all of the objects right, I did that in one moment we have all of the so we have all of the objects inside of the exhibition and then you have to figure out what is your proximity of body to body relationship to those particular objects and so if those boys are thinking about how to stay away from that side of the beach because they're safer being at a distance from those people who would likely attack them you know I mean so in the exhibition you have to sort of feel your way through the space because when you're down to the feet below the water you know vision is very important because there's a wall but there's also the body, there's a perceptual thing that the body has that can feel the space around it so when you're walking through the exhibition it's not just the paintings but it's the sculpture it's the orientation of the sculpture it is you are box brown kind of you are in a space in which you have to sort of navigate and negotiate when you turn but with a particular perspective and the paintings themselves they're not just looking at it straight and painting straight and you look at it from the side it's a different thing, the sculpture you look at it from the side it's a different thing and so that kind of navigation of the space sort of mirrors this idea of proximity you know to contrast yeah I think it mirrors the idea of proximity it also challenges the distance and particularly I think the black glass pieces we were talking about this when we walked through I think on yesterday in the way in which they visually sort of manipulates certain things about the space which by the way sort of collapse some corners of the room or they expand some corners of the room so there is this proximity, there is this distance and again I would think of rather than not paintings perhaps even the sculptures, not even as sculptures but as devices yes, yes, so being that idea of the history of people making devices to self liberate and that's what we could probably go on and I will have many more conversations but I think it really would be great for everyone to enjoy the exhibition I would really like to thank everyone for turning out on Friday evening during a happy hour I guess but again thank you so much for what you've given to Columbia GSTOP given to our community and for letting us be engaged in the conversation with you


Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re-invent 2017 presented by AWS, Intel and our ecosystem of partners. Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. We are live on day three of our continuing coverage, AWS re-invent 2017. We've had an amazing three days, lots of great guests, lots of great conversations. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host Keith Townsend and we're very excited to be joined by two guests new to theCUBE. Please help us welcome Adam Burden, the Senior Managing Director of Advanced Technology and Architecture at Accenture. Welcome to theCUBE, Adam. Thank you so much. And Sandra Stonem, one of the Managing Directors of Technology and Operations at DBS Bank. Welcome, all of you from Singapore. Thank you, yes. Great to have you guys here. So we hear great things, that there is a remarkable story that DBS has that started last year when you guys attended AWS re-invent 2016. Talk to us about what you discovered last year and how this has facilitated your journey to cloud your transition. So if I may, maybe I'll start a little bit before that because actually we've been playing with AWS before that. We actually have a huge transformation strategy that takes us towards cloud. And so we've actually been using AWS for infrastructure as a service, just scaling. So we were putting our trading system grid onto that. So that was our initial exposure. And then what happened to AWS last year is that I came to re-invent and I saw all these rich, rich services that AWS were providing and I thought, we actually can't afford not to be building on this. So from then I went back and with my organization, I basically said, look, we need to be building natively on AWS. And so that's what we've been doing. So we invited an Accenture to come and help us because they actually have more experience of building natively on AWS, taking advantages of those services. And we invited them in, they've been working together with us and we've got now native AWS applications using serverless. So Sandra, talk to a little bit more about that process because politically it's tough to move something as very consistent, very stable as a bank to a digital transformation and then even select not just a partner to help in that transition, but AWS. How was that first set of conversations when you got back from re-invent 2016, excited about the transformation opportunities? What were some of the internal discussions? Well, as I said, we actually had a whole technology transformation strategy underway at that point. So we'd actually really looked deeply at ourselves and we'd looked also at the tech giants that are out there and we'd created this whole technology transformation strategy that basically meant we needed to go completely cloud native, cloud native infrastructure, cloud native applications, complete automation on everything and a very agile and fast moving business environment as well to work with us. So we actually had that whole strategy in place and that was all underway and we were starting to work with AWS. So this was actually just an extension of that strategy. Tell me a little bit about this digital transformation strategy. I'm sure a lot of others would love to learn from what you guys are doing. What were the top three business goals that this transformation strategy needs to drive? Okay, so what we did actually, maybe I'll tell you a bit about it. We call it Gandalf and the reason we call it Gandalf is we actually took a look at all the tech giants and we said how can we, DBS be standing tall among the tech giants? So the tech giants that we looked at were Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, LinkedIn, Facebook and we said how can we be the D in Gandalf that kind of became our sort of codename and our galvanizing strategy and to help people understand what that really meant internally we actually came up with five key themes and we put them in a wheel and we've got kind of five cheeses in the wheel if you like. Three of them are really about the organization and the culture. One of them is organized for success. One of them is to change from project to platform. One of them is high performing agile teams. So those are kind of the three organization and culture focused and then we have two that are very specific to technology. So one of them is designed for modern systems and the second one is automate everything. And on each of these five themes we then have a whole load of sub themes and that gives people a little bit more idea of what they can do and that strategy we've found has been very galvanizing for the whole organization so that everybody in the organization they know if they're aligning to the strategy because they're doing one or more of these themes or sub themes. So Adam, this is kind of the perfect customer. They already gone through a transformation. You don't have to have the conversation. Cloud is in the technology. It's more of a business process. What was it like engaging DBS for the first time in their transformation? Well the good news is I was actually with Sandra at the reinvent conference last year so I saw some of the light bulbs go on during that process and we engage with DBS. They've been a client of Accenture for many, many years and we're delighted to have an opportunity obviously to work with them. Going in and having these discussions though and helping them identify the right workloads to move to serverless technology is something that we've done a lot for other clients and we move workloads all the time to AWS and there's lots of different techniques to do that. You can just lift and shift. You can move things into containers and move them but for the right workloads you can get truly breakthrough results, benefits and value release by moving them to serverless and that's what we were able to identify for them and we worked through a process to do exactly that with that experience. So it was actually very pleasant because we'd had an opportunity to see that process from the very beginning and I think that the inspiration at the end of that that we've created about the value that can be generated is going to help to really drive even further adoption of cloud and other serverless technologies at DBS as a result. One of the things that I love that you're talking about is the cultural transformation. How long has DBS been in business? Since 1960s. Quite a long time. So the strategy that you laid out, I love also not just the cultural transformation those are hard and so challenging but also the fact that as a bank you want to be like one of those big tech leaders and I think that's going to be incredibly inspirational for people to hear your story that even in terms of adapting the culture but even attracting talent that you have such big aspirations. How did you establish the strategy? What were some of the cultural elements that you have successfully changed and how quickly were people able to get on board with this? Yes, okay so it's a very long journey and there are many different facets to that journey. We have a CEO who's very driven to be digital to the core and so he's very visionary and has really sort of set targets for us as an organization. So embracing digital, embedding ourselves in customer journeys, driving sort of joyful customer journeys, making banking joyful is one of our missions. So he really set some of these strategies even challenging us as well to be a data driven company because we feel that's very much the future. So we have a CEO who's really set many of these strategies out there but even so to make it happen in the organization is difficult. The agile teams is one aspect where we've really been looking at what does it mean to be agile and sometimes you can be tech agile but not business agile and so what does it really mean to be business led agile? And so that's a long learning journey, we're still on it but we're getting some successes and so now that helps to start get other people on board. We also look at innovation so we have an innovation officer and he feels that his job, his job of himself and his team is not to produce product but to actually change the culture of the organization so that we look like a 22,000 person startup. And so he tries to many, many different things whether he's bringing in speakers or whether he's working with us to align to startups and work with startups so that we can really get exposure to how startups work. Many, many different aspects of what he does to just encourage innovation among everybody right from the senior leadership down. So many different aspects of the cultural transformation. Another area is one we're grappling with at the moment is how we do funding. When we want to move from projects to platforms how do you take away that big cumbersome way of working where you fund these big initiatives and you have to wait for a long time to get any output and how do you move that more to a sort of iterative evolution of a platform that the business really owns and champions. So all of these things it actually crosses all aspects of the organization and I think you have to do all of them. You have to take every facet and work on it and move it forward. So Adam, large company like DBS comes to you with these big aspirational goals, become a platform from a technologist perspective, architect, that's exciting to hear. However, baby steps and chunks. What were some of the first steps that you guys took after identifying opportunity and workload? What was one of some of the first technologies you engage AWS with? Well, Accenture, well first of all I should probably explain that I'm a customer of DBS as well. They're my bank in Singapore. So I care very deeply about making sure that the work we're doing, even more so than Accenture probably would normally. The things that we do to help a client get started on a journey like this, first of all helping to identify the applications. A lot of times one of the very first things that we do is we look at different patterns. So almost like a sewing pattern, right, that you would follow and be able to repeat over and over again, different patterns for how workloads should actually move. And we use those as ways that developers can kind of follow a recipe book almost. So that in the future as they're moving new workloads or they're building new services that they do it in a very similar style and technique. Those initial steps, those processes kind of set the tone for how the migration process will go and you can really expand from there. If you try to do too much at once without really getting a nucleus of it right, you'll have a lot of varying standards and it'll be much harder for you to be able to make the kind of progress that you want. So we typically try to start with a really good marquee, a couple of projects, get those going really, really well, save those patterns and then expand upon them as more and more workloads actually move. That's one of the key elements of success we find early on. So Adam, as you engage with customers and you're coming to a show like this, it's great that customer gets really excited about the business opportunity, but working internal IT for a long time, exposing just a little bit of the capability of AWS is both good and bad because now you've exposed AWS and developers want the whole thing. They'll look at something like Sage Master, I think is the AI solution from yesterday. A recognition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want that today. But you have to be able to roll it out in a controlled fashion. How do you guys handle governance once you embrace a opportunity in a relationship with a company like AWS? Well, I can speak about one. Sandra, why don't you talk about that from DBS's perspective and then I'll give you Accentures as well. Yeah, so no doubt about it, it's challenging, but governance is changing regardless of whether you're looking at cloud internally or cloud externally, governance is changing. Now the whole focus is to give developers self-service access to everything they want to do. So they can deploy, they can run tests, they can do all of those things themselves. So that applies whether you're looking at private cloud or whether you're looking at public cloud. Now obviously in public cloud, all of those controls that you have internally, not only they need to change for the new world, but they also now need to translate, if you like, into public cloud. So things don't just necessarily, you can't just necessarily move them and apply the same things to public cloud as you do to private cloud. So you have to go and reinvent them in public cloud. AWS is good in that they give you all the tools to do it, but the tools are not already set up, so you do have to learn about it and you do have to build slowly over time and that's why we started with simple things like infrastructure as a service, which we can just scale up and down. And now we're moving to the more complex, which is using the native services, which obviously need more governance around them and contain more data. And so it's a learning process, but basically if you've got a great organization internally that really understands what it is you're trying to control, then you need to be able to translate that and see how that applies to AWS. One of the things that interests me, Adam, is what you talked about with the recipes and recipes, the consistency. How important was that for DBS, Sandra, in terms of, all right, they've got some prescriptions here on how we can be successful. You talked about governance, the steps to take, so that, like Keith was saying, you get exposed to all these things, you got to kind of control everybody, but talk to us about the recipes and this kind of playbook for success and what that means to DBS to be able to do things in a streamlined fashion and be successful. So there was the real reason that we brought Accenture on board is because they've actually looked at applications before, enhanced applications that the people have built, and then they've looked at what would that look like if you were to rebuild that from scratch on AWS using native services. And so they were able to work with us and work through difficulties with us to actually transpose those applications onto an AWS native format. So that was actually very helpful and that's been our learning. So the team that's been working together with Accenture has now learned. We've taken other applications from there and we're now looking at sort of just starting directly building natively on AWS based on what we've learned. So actually it's very valuable and I would say expedited our journey. Excellent. So let's talk about some of those newer services. Infrastructure is a service. We can do what we do in our data center today in AWS much faster. There's instant value there. But as we start to expand out and look at something like serverless. How does DBS and Accenture in general look at something like serverless and taking advantage of Lambda? I'll tackle that one first maybe. Serverless technology for Accenture has been something that has really allowed our clients to move from looking at cloud as a data center to looking at cloud as a platform. And it's an epiphany actually for many of our customers where they look at, well, absolutely we can move our workloads into cloud. Maybe we'll get a lower operating cost. Maybe we'll get some other benefits of being there. But now I can begin to actually in serverless and other techniques I can take advantage of the native services there to actually operate at a far lower cost and enrich it with new capabilities. Think about adding text to speech capabilities from Polly. Think about adding image recognition facilities. Think about the other capabilities that you can now have because you're on a cloud platform that you wouldn't have if all you were looking at it was as simply another data center. And that is the light bulb that goes on. And why I think serverless from a breakthrough standpoint about the cost structure, the granularity of how things are metered and actually priced but then the richness of features that are available you're inventing your future there. It's available at your fingertips. You do have to control the governance. You have to make sure that you've got some guardrails around that, but the developers will be incredibly creative with those services and you will have new features that will delight your business users and your clients much faster than you'd ever been able to in the past. I love that ignite your future. I wish we had more time because I wanted to ask you both about what you're excited about that was released and Adam got this great grin in his face. But unfortunately we are out of time. We want to thank you both, Adam and Sandra for joining us and sharing what you guys are doing. It sounds like the light bulbs are going off continuously burning and we look forward to hearing more of your great successes. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And for my co-host Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from AWS re-invent 2017. Stick around, day three of coverage. We've got more great stories coming back.


Hey, this is Brett and this brand new 2023 Jeep Wrangler Willis Edition is stock number 23J103. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, you're new and used Jeep and Jeep Wrangler headquarters. I am very excited to show you this Wrangler today. This is the color Sarge Green. Really a good looking color. We haven't seen this in a little while, at least we haven't seen one on the lot lately. This is a nice Willis package. I'm going to go all the way around in this video inside, show you all the options, go over the original window sticker, and just give you a really good idea of the overall looks and styling on this particular Wrangler. If you liked the video and learned something on the video today, be sure to click subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash summit auto.   So the Willis package is part of the sport package. So it has the sport interior trim. You also get the plastic fenders on here. The Willis package gives you these special 17 inch painted alloy wheels, and it also has BF Goodrich mud tray TA tires on here. These are LT25575R17s, and they have more of a mud terrain tread pattern to them. So you get those standard with the Willis package, couple little Easter eggs up here. You get these sandals on the plastic shroud and the Jeep climbing up the side of the windshield. Your door hinges have T50 on them, not because for fun, but that's because that's telling you which Torx wrench to use on those bolts to get your doors off. We actually did a video on how to take your doors off your JL Wrangler. So if you want to check that out, that's in the description below. Also note that the four door says Wrangler now. That does not say Unlimited Wrangler like it did in the past, it just says Wrangler. So that's new for 2023. The Willis package also gives you the steel rock wheels on the side there.  This one does have the black hard top, which I think accents all the other black on the vehicle nicely. Me and some of the guys here were talking about how cool would it be if they did a white top for this color. That'd be really neat. Let us know what you think in the comments. Anyways, this one comes with the receiver hitch. Four pin and seven pin wiring has a max tow rating of 3,500 pounds. There's a look at that spare tire and better look at that tread pattern. Back storage area is very spacious. That's your case for your hard top pieces in the front. Note that everything is color matched back here. So when you do have that hard top off, everything looks really good. And in sync with the rest of the vehicle, the three bolts on the side, you get one on the top, a total of four on each side for a total of eight to get that hard top off. And then two quick disconnects. We actually did a video on how to take your hard top off. That video is in the upper right hand part of the screen if you want to check that out. Very popular video. You get a little Easter egg back here. You get seven slots on the back gate as well. You also get the jail badge back here, two door, four door wheel base and overall length as well as water 40. You also get a storage area under here with your door hinge roof and windshield bolt holders.  This one also has the eco diesel in it. So that's going to get you 260 foot-pounds of torque. I'm sorry, 260 horsepower, 442 foot-pounds of torque. And it's going to give you 29 miles per gallon on the highway, 22 city for an average of 25 miles per gallon with this Wrangler. So that's pretty sweet. On the driver's side here, you do get the trail rated badge that's outlined in the black. So that's pretty cool. Inside the, basically the sport package gives you the black cloth interior. You get the bucket seats in here, driver's seat height adjuster. This one does come with the all-weather floor mats, Bluetooth and information center controls and cruise controls on the radio. You get manual locks. You also get manual windows on here too. Key fob is kind of interesting because it looks like a fob, but it doesn't have any buttons on it because it doesn't have power locks or windows. You just get that flipper key on there. And we'll take a look at the original window sticker and the back seats, of course. These back seats are really nice. There's a lot of room between the front seats and the back seats now. You also get the seats that fold down in basically one motion. You used to always have to put the seat up and then the backrest down on the JKs. These go all down in one motion. And then the other really nice thing is that when the seat belt doesn't get caught, the headrest stays down, which is pretty sweet. If nobody's riding back here, a lot better visibility out the back. And then it just goes up like that. Here's the original window sticker. Feel free to pause this. I'm not going to go through everything, but most of it. So you can see the 2023 Wrangler 4-Door Willys Sport. The debate still rages on on the internet. Sarge Green is the color, 3.0-liter V6 diesel, 8-speed automatic transmission. Everything on your left there is your standard equipment on the Sport package. And you can see that it is a 4-door Sport, first and foremost. And then the Willys Sport package is on top of that. Interior features are right there and exterior features there. The Sarge Green clear coat is $495. The 26K package is the Willys package.  Protection rock sills, the rock protection sill rails should say deep tin sunscreen windows, the anti-spin differential rear axle, all-weather floor mats, and the mold-in color bumper with the gloss black accents. This one also has the Trailer Tone Heavy Duty Electrical Group, which is $11.95. Gives you everything right there. 8-speed automatic transmission is $2,500. 3-liter V6 diesel is $4,000 and the hardtop is $18.95. Serious XM is $2.95. You get a connected services delete credit of $165. Total MSRP is $50,200. And if you want to get your summit price with all the rebates, incentives, and availability on this Jeep in the upper right-hand-part screen is a link to our website. There's also a link in the description below. Three-year 36 bumper-to-bumper and five-year 60 powertrain warranty. So you might say, boy, Brett, that $4,000 charge on that eco-diesel is quite a bit. But you get an extra 40,000 miles of powertrain warranty with that diesel engine. So something to think about because you're basically buying the warranty there. 29 highway, 22 city, 25 average. And then your safety ratings are not rated and three stars for rollover with an annual fuel cost of $1,900, fuel economy and greenhouse gas rating of five and a small grade of one. So that's everything on there. The big thing on here for me is the 25 miles per gallon and the 100,000-mile powertrain warranty is really the big things that stand out on that particular window sticker. Do get child safety locks in the back doors. I'll show you the instrument cluster and the radio real quick. Then we'll do a final walk around here. You get the Wrangler Sport animation at the beginning. And you can see you do get a digital spinometer on there. This one only has 11 miles on it. We already went over the steering wheel. This one comes with the seven-inch UConnect radio, so you get FM and Serious XM radio capabilities on here that has all your different apps. This one has Projection Manager. You can project your cell phone to the screen via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. And then this is also where your backup camera shows up. And you can see that they've made those nice in HD, so that's a really nice feature to have. And then you get all your normal climate controls down here. You get speed select control. Your four auxiliary switches, part of that tow package. USB, USB-C and an aux jack, eight-speed auto, four-by-four shifter and that key fob, which once again, very weird just to have the flipper key on there. But that's for your proximity push-button start is basically what that's for. The other cool thing about the Willis package is you get this mineral gray finish on the dash. Now, I think that's actually more of a sport thing than a Willis thing or Willis, however you want to pronounce it. You get the removable hard top, of course, with all the quick disconnects. And that's pretty much it. The Sport package, Willis package is a very plain package, not a lot of options to it. The paint code is PGG, if you were wondering what Sarge Green, maybe you want to paint something this color, really a good-looking color. Always liked all the Wranglers that have those on. And we'll do a final walk around with all the lights on here. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. And remember, if you learned anything or liked the video, give me a like, subscribe, and share on the YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash summit auto. And to see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 550 new and used car's trucks, SCVs, minivans, Wranglers, Wagoneers, Grand Cherokees, Cherokees, Compasses, Renegades, you name it, we got it. Go to that website right there, summitauto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto. Click the bell notifications and you will get updates on the videos that I do each and every day here at Summit Auto. In fact, in a second you will see a link to subscribe to my YouTube channel in the upper left.  Click those, check us out, and we're super excited to be offering the brand new 2023 Jeep Wrangler Willis in Sarge Green clear coat. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on the YouTube channel. I really appreciate it. Thanks again.


Good afternoon, I'm grateful to be here on the land covered by the dish with one spoon Wampum Belt Covenant and grateful to be gathered here with you if in this virtual way. This last week, one of my elders died. He was a leader in the ecumenical justice movement, a persistent force behind the former inter-church coalition on Africa, the United Church staff person and long after his retirement an ever-present witness in demonstrations on every issue from climate justice to indigenous rights to peace in Palestine. His name was Jim Presente. The notion of elder is something I've tried to learn from indigenous peoples and communities. It wasn't always obvious to me, particularly in my time of youthful hubris, but as the pandemic has so poignantly demonstrated, western culture is ambivalent, dismissive or worse regarding the wisdom and value of elders among us. But I've learned that it's absolutely critical to listen and to learn from the elders who through their experience, faithfulness and persistence help define who we are as families, churches, communities and movements. If not only because who we are and our path to the future is shaped and formed by where we've been, elders teach us and show us the way. There is a description of history compelling in symbolic if not precise mathematical terms and it goes like this. If the earth was formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight 24 hours later, humans have been around since 11 59 59 p.m. Or to say it another way in a 24 hour period, humans have been around for the last one second. That humanity is newcomer, infants in the scope of our history is an understatement. And I wonder, do we honor our elder, the earth and all her species? Do we pre apprentice and disciple ourselves to her wisdom? Our precious earth, our elder, teach us and show us the way.  And the root of this is often attributed to biblical texts which put humanity at the pinnacle of creation and that lean into the instrumentalization of the earth. Dominion over a natural world created for our use or abuse. In the binaries of enlightenment, we now understand that natural world body emotions woman has been perceived as subordinate to the products of humanity, mind, reason, man. Wild needed to be tamed, indigeneity, women, pagans and Christianity was a means in that taming.  But the good news is that it's not the only part. One of the wonders of our sacred texts is their diversity. The bible is not one book, not even a series of books, but a diverse set of stories and thoughts and visions and struggles about people's grappling with what it meant to know God, creator and Jesus, God's beloved child. And so when we look more carefully, we find we have beautiful texts about the wisdom of creation, how it in fact is the first text of God's revelation, text that can test the domination narratives of Christendom. Let's listen again to those wonderful words from the book of Job. There is no dominion over here, but ask the animals and they will teach you you, the birds of the air and they will tell you as the plants of the earth and they will teach you and the fish of the sea will declare to you. This is also our text and so many others that point to the goodness of creation, that point to creation as our teacher, teach us and show us the way and what profound things we have to learn. The waterways as creators bloodlines as critical to our survival as the blood pumping through our veins, watery itself, water is life and on its health all of creation is dependent and connected. What a critical teaching on interdependence and relationship. The seasons that change before our eyes are a powerful assertion that change is always possible. In fact, it may be the only constant. And what an essential teaching in an indeterminable protracted pandemic. What a comfort spring is in times of sustained grief and loss. The seeds that hold a prism of promise. What a brilliant confirmation of hidden potential that nourished and tended can flourish in beauty and sustenance. The monarch butterflies who in their fragility migrate from Canada south to Mexico for the winter a wonderful manifestation of persistence calling into question of human made borders. Oh, yes, also that caterpillar to butterfly metanoia resurrection teach us and show us the way. The diversity of creation rehydration as regeneration rhythms of rest and restoration so much wisdom in evidence elder creation grandmother moon grandfather son mother nature teach us and show us the way. Now I want you to remember for a moment back to that one second of human life that last second in 24 hours. And let's think about that second for a moment. I'm holding in my hands a rope.  This Turtle Island, this place we now call North America. A rope of that one second in time of human presence here. And this rope depicts 10,000 years or more of settlement along the shores of Lake Ontario. This rope represents the time of three successive indigenous peoples when dad Haudenosaunee Anishinaabe times of inter travel gathering time in this the place that mattered safe harbor hunting and fishing a route to the Atlantic a passage up river in this time in these thousands of years indigenous people learned about this place with and from their elders relatives in creation bear raven deer strawberry sage and from the human elders who pointed the way back to those first teachers teach us and show us the way this blue part this in proportion is European settlement in this land to say that European settlers are newcomers children in the scope of history in this place is an understatement do we honor our elder the earth and all her species do we honor the indigenous nations who learned these lands and their wisdom do we ask indigenous elders with respect please teach us and show us the way in anguish and in repentance we know what has been the dominant answer to this question if there was an early moment of learning a time when my ancestors European settlers depended on indigenous wisdom to survive in these lands things dramatically changed and not only did we fail to learn we actively collaborated in the suppression of what could have been taught the banning of indigenous ceremonies centered on the wisdom of the earth were the subject of missionary and residential school repression this oppressive action was ultimately self-destructive contributing to the exploitation of the earth that we now experience at our peril indigenous resurgence a reassertion of indigenous wisdom a gracious willingness to continue to share teachings teachings that had to go underground to be protected well that resurgence may be the salvation of us all we know that indigenous peoples belong at the front of any movement for ecological justice that we do well to center their wisdom wisdom that should not be commodified but rather profoundly respected as a path to reconciliation with the natural world reconciliation with all our relations for the survival of this planet teach us and show us the way my european christian ancestors have but to account for in the suppression of indigenous wisdom and the exploitation of the natural world our domination texts and our domination doctrines of discovery have much to account for and i'm going to leave witch burning for another day but i believe strongly that there's always been a holy remnant a fragment of our scriptures the trees that clap their hands the stones that cry out wisdom who plays with god in creation the story of jesus who begins his ministry by immersing himself in the watershed and then going into the wild fragments of our scriptures that know that speak up that illuminate the creator's original blessing in creation and i believe there's always been a holy remnant subversive among our peoples caltech christianity francis of ascisi bridged particular examples of religious life and into our time window berry feminist eco spirituality and the new cosmology that assert or recover a deep reverence for creation and heart of christian practice and perhaps you recall in your own families of blood or faith ones who are known for holding the relatives of the natural world close perhaps in defiance of more dominion ways to those eco spiritual ones teach us and show us the way it's important for christians to trace those lifelines back into our tradition for those of european descent to trace lifelines back into ancestry so we might not appropriate but come alongside indigenous resurgence with commitments to the preservation of the natural world for our sake and for the generations of all kinds of relatives still to come today there are so many struggles for ecological justice that need our attention and kairos is part of a growing national initiative entitled for the love of creation that brings together canadian faith communities and faith based organizations to educate reflect act and advocate for climate justice as we face up to climate catastrophe in this next decade and that title for the love of creation comes from a deep belief that we protect with action persistence and commitment that which we love and for so many of us that love may need to be nourished because we just don't know well enough or even have become alienated from the lands and the waters trees and the birds of our place learning knowing invites a falling in love with creation that is both healing and sustaining for the long-term action of ecological justice to which we are called I'd invite you this season of creation to consider a simple practice we call sacred and this practices follows the words essence a appreciate c connect our respect e express delight it helps guide us in remembering or discovering how to be in relationship with creation of relationship of love and respect and it's a spiritual practice that can be incorporated into a hike or a swim a sunrise or a rainstorm I'll find ways for folks to have access to the link for this resource which includes a teaching from one of the kairos elders from the wabanaki confederacy gets a tanamuk or if you're enthusiastic just google take a sacred pause and kairos and you'll get there it has been my experience recently that some of the youngest among us are the most wise that some of the youngest among us can be our teachers today my elders are the creative world yes salmon and whale moose and mouse blue jay and eagle lavender and moss my elders are indigenous knowledge keepers and women land defenders and my elders are venessa nakati ugandan climate defender and gerta thunberg swedish climate activist and autumn pelche anishinaabe quay water protector and so many more young powerful voices from which we are learning what it means to defend the planet as if your life depended on it because of course it does these youths who are elders among us teach us and show us the way and they do so from the streets all over the world with persistence and heart and solutions in whatever way possible we belong by their side the last photo i have of ecumenical elder jim kerkwood was at the march for the global day of action on climate that was one year ago then i think he was at the young age of 86 my staff colleague beth was also there with her baby miles he wasn't yet one and i took a picture of them both younger and older together two of the faces from the climate movement walking with the kairos crew with a stroller and a walker and i was honored by their presence ecumenical social justice ecumenical ecological justice is about showing up and coming alongside and jim knew how to do that he knew how to do that as a true ally by paying attention particularly and most importantly to events with indigenous peoples or with those young folks in the lead and i hope for myself to continue to do the same kind of showing up my whole life long my friends creator loved this world into being with all its exquisite diverse and wondrous beauty creator loved this world into being with all its inherent wisdom and complexity and we return goodness to the creator when we repent and reconcile with the land and the peoples of the land we return gratitude to the creator when we love protect and repair this wounded earth and we return love to the creator when we disciple ourselves as lifelong learners to the wisdom of the creator's precious work all our relations please teach us and show us the way may it be so


The first thing we should definitely do before moving any further is define a hormone. Hormones. Hormones define the endocrine system. So an endocrine organ is something that produces a hormone. So we should definitely have a sense of, dude, what is this hormone you speak of? So we're going to play a little Pictionary because you know that's how I roll. What did I just draw? Oh, it's a little bit... Pictionary skills are phenomenal, but perhaps not perfect. A hormone. I didn't draw a hormone yet. The hormone is a chemical dumped into the... Now you know what I just drew. Blood. That's a blood vessel. This end looks super wonky. Like, I don't even want to pretend that I'm trying to figure out what it looks like, but the hormone is any chemical dumped into the blood that acts on a distant target. Compare this, my friends, to a paracrine or an autocrine chemical, and those are chemicals produced by cells that are dumped out into the universe, but they're not dumped into the blood and they don't act on a distant target. They're dumped into the interstitial fluid and they act autocrines on themselves or paracrines on their neighbors. So a hormone has to be dumped into the blood. And hormones? Okay, I just spent the entire last section telling you that hormones were really general and that their action was really general, but now I'm going to tell you something a little bit different because I want you to appreciate the fact that, yeah, they're general. It's not like the neuron, which... Okay, I can't help it. I just have to draw you a picture here. Here's my neuron. Here's the axon. And here's the axon terminal. This is where the neurotransmitter in a neuron is dumped into a synapse and it affects or causes action at a single cell. And that single cell is part of an effector organ. Do you see how specific this is? If I were to draw another cell over here, I'm sorry, that little axon terminal is not touching this cell. It doesn't matter that this cell totally has a receptor. It's not going to be affected. This is very specific. Don't get confused. This isn't like anybody will be affected by the hormone. A distant target that might be affected must have the receptor. So if this is my target, this is only a target if it has the proper receptor embedded in its cell membrane. Its neighbor, who is lacking the receptor, is not going to be a target. So in that sense, the hormone, the endocrine system can be very, very specific. And only folks who are expressing the genes that produce these specialized receptors will be able to make something happen. So the hormone is going to bind to the receptor and then signal transmission is going to happen. We're going to have some kind of message received by the cell. The cell is going to ultimately initiate some sort of action. And keeping in mind that these actions might take us a while to make it happen, but eventually we will definitely get some sort of action happening. The thing that happens, how are we going to get action from here? We get binding and then what happens? Well, that depends on the kind of hormone that we're dealing with. And there are actually three, that would be three. So there are three kinds of hormones that we're going to look at, three types of hormones that we're going to look at. And all the hormones that we're going to talk about in this class will fit into one of those categories. And so we can basically learn the general categories, okay, this kind of hormone acts like this, this kind of hormone acts like this. And then once we know, oh, well, progesterone is this kind of hormone, then we kind of know the action that that hormone is going to take. Now, with steroid hormones, coming at you.


Awakening, Awakening from the lies of the newsman, the lies of the politician, the lies of the teacher, the preacher, the pundit, the parent. Awakening from the authorized worldviews, the authorized narratives, the authorized information, the authorized ideas. Awakening from dead thoughts written by dead men on sheets made from dead trees. Awakening from culture, Awakening from civilization, from how it is stories, from how to be stories, from should and shouldn't stories, from us and them stories. Awakening from conditioning, Awakening from trauma, Awakening from subconscious dysfunction, Awakening from the heritage of pain and confusion handed down through history from generation to generation. Awakening from manipulation, Awakening from control, Awakening from grasping, from pushing, from pulling, from hiding, from holding life at bay, from the inability to let life be as it is, from the inability to let beingness play unmolested. Awakening from identification with the body, from identification with the mind, from identification with any localized perspective, from identification with the disembodied witness, from identification with the field of consciousness, from identification altogether. Awakening from the illusion of separation, from the illusion of the self, from the illusion of the other, from the illusion of time, from the illusion of space, from the illusions of the mind. Awakening to truth, whatever it may be, Awakening to reality, whatever its implications might entail, Awakening to what is, without caveat or precondition, Awakening to peace, Awakening to love, Awakening to unconditionality, Awakening to boundlessness, Awakening to freedom, Awakening for everyone, Awakening for the whole world, Awakening for humanity now and into the distant future, Awakening together, Awakening as one, Opening each pair of eyelids one by one as we walk arm in arm into the great unknown.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Karamat Ali who is a human rights activist in Pakistan and has been taken up a number of issues for a very long time. Karamat, good to have you back with us. Thank you. Karamat, recently of course the Malala shooting is in the news all over the world. Do you think it has made a difference to Pakistan the way people have reacted to this particular shooting of a 15-year-old girl? Yeah, definitely. See, even before this incident she has been travelling in different parts of Pakistan and she is quite a remarkable child, very, very aware of what is happening and very progressive thinking person. So, she was making an impact already. A number of schools had been named after her. She was invited to all the major cities like in Karachi whenever she came she stayed with us. Her father is a very good friend. So, very sort of extraordinary kind of child and obviously she was not afraid of threats which she was getting and in the beginning of last month we used to kind of communicate quite regularly. So, she called to say uncle come this is all fine now there is no problem no security issues I go to school on my own so no problem. So, she had inspired quite a lot of people already and she had become a very well-known figure iconic figure for the right of the girl child exactly and to stand up to these people who are extremely brutal and you know what they did when they took over Swat was very well known. So, under such conditions a young girl standing up to them speaking out writing a diary that has already it had made a big sort of impact. So, the attack on her really triggered something across the whole country regardless of where you come from which class you belong to. So, this was something I mean I have only known this in my own experience I mean I do not believe in war. So, I will not refer to people uniting during the time of a silly war, but in during the 1968-69 movement against Ayub Khan's dictatorship that was one time when we saw people kind of coming out speaking out getting together and you know breaking all the kind of you know the fear that was imposed upon people. So, this is what I have seen this time because Taliban had also been able to in a way instill a lot of fear amongst people because one their brutality, but their outreach had become quite extraordinary. They were attacking I mean you can imagine they attacked the GHQ, they went and attacked this air base and they went and attacked this naval base and then they were attacking people who they do not like at will. So, that was some kind of an atmosphere of complete fear where people were not challenging them and they were gradually expanding their sphere of influence like even in the city like Karachi. We know areas now where we are told Taliban they set up their own courts and they were administering sentences that they gave to people and they extorted money and whatever. So, I think this incident really triggered something extraordinary and hopefully that can be sustained and there is a counter offensive at the political ideological level against such forces.  Do you think that this kind of things would change with the Malala attack? I am sure I think it has already started that process because I am sure you know you know about this killer of Salman Taseer suddenly there were demonstrations in Pakistan by some forces who were demanding his release and we also know that Salman Taseer's son had been abducted and is in the custody of such people who want to bargain. He is still alive. He is still alive. He had been in touch with the family. So, all such forces have been put in a defensive position. Now the thing is you know like as far as ordinary people are concerned they have shown their disapproval discussed with such elements. The state has to take a decisive action against these people and unfortunately because in Pakistani politics there are a number of mainstream political parties who have a soft corner or even more than that links with the Taliban and they want to see consensus being built before any action can be taken. So, I feel the state has to really act now and take action against them. You do not create consensus around people who are murderers who are killers who they must be punished and the law does not ask for any consensus. I mean there is already a consensus. Karabat the real issue has always been that a section of the Pakistani state and the military establishment has seen in these forces a kind of strategic depth in Afghanistan and possibly also in India vis-a-vis what is being thought of in Kashmir. So, do you think that this section of the Pakistani state which has been implicated at least by a lot of people in these kind of forces that you are talking about that this section of the Pakistani state would rethink, would be isolated, could be controlled, could be changed? I am sure. I think one you know if you look at the incidents that I mentioned where some of the bastions of the military power of the state had been attacked in broad daylight in the most blatant manner. So, I think that should also teach something to those sections who had soft kind of corners for these people. But you know along with the brutality of the Taliban and the need to counter them, this whole notion of strategic depth or this whole notion of kind of you know a particular perspective on what is defense and how we deal with our neighbors, all that has come under very, very detailed discussion now and even today's paper I was reading you know at least two people writing about the foolishness of this notion of Afghanistan being the area of strategic depth. So, somebody has written no, it is not Afghanistan, our strategic depth lies in Balochistan. So, if we are alienating Balochistan, we should forget about the strategic and why do we need that depth? Why can we go for a peaceful coexistence with our neighbors and sort out our issues, develop more cooperation, more trade? So, that will ensure. Well, the question of strategic depth is really almost the 19th century concept where you think of other countries as your strategic depth. Today's world really think about softer borders, more you know cooperation between countries, less militarization as really the way to. And also this strategic depth thing you know it implies that first of all you will make a retreat and then you find a place to go to. But why get yourself in such a position? Why go to war in the first place? Why not find peaceful solution? And I think that is really in a way if you look at the recent development of dialogue between India and Pakistan, you already see some very basic changes taking place on the issue of trade for example. You know Pakistan has now agreed to grant MFN status to India and by December this process will be complete. And if you remember initially there was this whole this group of people, political parties and these so called you know jihadis and the religious parties, they came together under this umbrella organization called Defense of Pakistan Council. And their main plank was we will not allow Pakistan to accord the MFN status to India because India is our eternal enemy etc. They were all choking all over Pakistan. But once this agreement was formalized, they have not been able to organize a single rally. So, it shows a lot to me as to what is going on in front of us and behind the scenes, especially among those forces who had a particular view of themselves, of India, of security. I think international situation, our economic circumstances they are forcing everybody to rethink and that sense we are moving in the right direction. So, I think all these things put together create a great opportunity for all those who want peace, who want progress for ordinary people to come together and really give it a big push. So, Karabat you think that the Balala shooting, however unfortunate obviously it is for Malala and the fact that she has been shot in the head and is still in a critical condition though improving, also brings about the situation where there is a possibility of bringing peace, the agenda of peace to the fore. Oh sure, definitely, definitely because you know this one incident has really, really in a way sort of woken up people because for many people living in Karachi, you know, like in defense housing society or wherever, they thought all this is like far away from us and suddenly people are saying no, I mean, you know, you saw that headband with I am Malala, now these are women coming out of the upper class household, they were not part of the labor movement or anything. So, I think that really touched the deep core of the people of Pakistan. And the fact that this was a child who was a girl because you know in Pakistani society, it is very important that women who are seen to be inferior and there is a person who has really demonstrated something completely different. This is obviously touched as you are saying a deep chord, but you know in India for instance, there is not that understanding of Pakistan and a lot of people say, yeah, okay, this will happen for 15 days, 20 days, but it will be business as usual. This you don't think is so and there is a really qualitative shift because of one incident and sometimes history moves through incidents of this kind. So, you think this is really historical movement. I think it is, you know, like we keep talking about defining moments, defining moments. I think we don't have many defining moments in our history. We have them rarely.  Exactly. But this is to me a defining moment really in the sense that it has raised, I mean, you see, you can see people resisting dictatorship, you can see people opposing one view or the other, but not necessarily questioning the political ideological basis of what policies in Pakistan whether in the name of defence or economic development or integrity of the state. So, all that, you know, begins to be challenged and that to me is very, very important. I am not saying this will be an automatic process and will lead to changes. It will need obviously very, very well thought out, organised political, ideological, mobilisational activities because as you know, you said very rightly, you know, within the state structures such elements have you know, they have made deep penetration and it is not so easy to dislodge them. But the process has started and that is very important and the process has started at a mass level. You know, Karabat that also brings me to another important question. It is always easier to fight the state because people have known historically how to fight the state. They have come on the streets, they demonstrate and you have seen even in Egypt such a powerful state actually breaking up in front of the opposition by the people. When it comes to armed groups which are already a part of society, it is the fear psychosis that is really much more difficult to break. Do you think in that sense, this is a unique issue of how to confront the fear psychosis of in which armed militants are already a part of your society? You see, when this happened and you know, people started calling for demonstration, then we all went to demonstrate. There was this sort of on the back of one's mind to be careful because there was the likelihood of these people attacking such demonstrations. But two things, one was that you had to be careful and mindful of all that. But the fact that they did not dare attack anywhere up till now and they were the demonstrator were mostly women in all the big cities. They were mostly women, young women who came out. So, one that fear was not there. Second, they also they were put in a defensive position by doing this. They did not expect this kind of a reaction. So, I think both these developments give a lot of optimism that you can actually translate this opportunity into a movement against extremism and fundamentalism and the militarism that has prevailed all these years in every sphere of life in Pakistan. Karabat, if this is a defining moment in Pakistan, how do you think the civil society, the political forces in India must react in order to make this happen in Pakistan? Because the dynamics of Pakistan in India has a resonance with each other or a dissonance with each other if you will. Sure. No, I really I will go even further. I think it is whatever happens in Pakistan, unless people of India and Pakistan do not get together and deal with these issues as common issues, we will not be able to really succeed in Pakistan on our own because as you know the forces that are inimical to any democratic peaceful development are much stronger there and they always use India as an excuse to further expand their influence and power. So, if there is for example, you said you know people are thinking maybe it will run for another two weeks. No, it should not be allowed to run out like that. There should be demonstrations there and I am glad that I have seen very good coverage in the Indian press. People have come out, people have you know expressed their disgust at what has happened but lot more needs to be done. I think there should be a sort of a more sort of open demonstration of solidarity, communication with people who are taking up those issues there and also on the part of Indian states to express their resolve that we should fight this together. I mean after all within the SARC process, we have a convention on combating terrorism and it is there since 1987. This incident should actually you know motivate us to put together that joint mechanism to combat terrorism and to you know to kind of unite our resolve and forces to do that and send a very strong message to these elements that they are not confronting the Pakistani people and the state alone but this is a regional issue and people in the region and the states in the region will come together to to get rid of the problem of the two states is the minute you get their agencies into one room there is a Pavlovian reflex by which they start planning each other. So, I think the real issue is how the society at large can take the initiative outside as well so that this pressure of the state agencies are more and they do not think that this is business as usual. Exactly no that is what I am saying it the initiative has to come from the people but I am saying there is a an obligation of the state institutions as well once you you know if you are part of an arrangement which is SARC you have signed a chartered meaning you have committed yourself to certain things and you you have worked out this convention together so there is an obligation so that in that context I am saying the state has had the basis to to intervene in such situation intervening not the way they have been intervening up till now but in a more positive sense to curb this phenomenon. So, what you really saying is that in both sides you should build pressure on the states the state machineries to really do what they have signed up to do which they have not done. Exactly I think that is very important and unfortunately up till now people in India and Pakistan and in other South Asian countries we have not really seriously looked at all these developments we have really ignored them and there have been some substantial developments you know in terms of commitments in terms I mean you have set up a development fund together you talking about a food bank you are talking now activate them this sense of being South Asians need to be really enhanced at this particular moment and so that these elements whether they are extremist of the Muslim brand or a Hindu brand or whatever or a Buddhist brand in Sri Lanka they can be isolated by South Asians together as a united force and I think this these kind of incidents they do provide us with such possibilities historical windows of opportunity exactly must be seized must be mixing my metaphors. Thank you. Thank you Karabat. Thank you.


After coming oh so close last year the Bemidji wrestling team won the section championship and it's going down to the state tournament tomorrow. It's a chance for Bemidji to prove themselves on the big stage and of course get to spend some more time wrestling. Very excited I can't wait for it you know it's just another another day of wrestling makes me happy. And Bemidji is happy to be wrestling tomorrow at the state tournament for the first time since 2011. They got there by avenging last year's loss to Wilmer in the section final. It's kind of swinging back and forth especially when we lose a few matches I thought oh man it's gonna be like last year but we pulled through. I know our coach said he he felt we had the best team going into the going into the tournament and I'm glad he was right. Due to some injuries and a tough schedule the Lumberjacks lost five of their first six dual meets but the team had the character and motivation to bounce back to where they are today. We all worked hard and we pushed through the low spots of the season and very happy we were able to come through in the end. They have a lot of heart a lot of discipline effort commitment dedication all those things that you'd want to to describe your own children. They're just wonderful young men to be around and they give everything they have every time they go out. The Jax head to St. Paul with big expectations and they're most looking forward to getting to spend some more quality time with the team. Just because of the guys and you know become closer as a team and really make we have special. I'm very excited you know they're like family to me so gonna be any more happier. The Jax are seated fourth they get Forest Lake in the first round to they actually beat just earlier this month. All right so good luck to them and they're not the only ones from our area right in the tournament. Yeah in double A Long Prairie Gray Eagle they're the top ranked team also Aiken and Berndale Bertha Hewitt Parker's prairie so a stacked field for the Lakeland viewing area. Okay that's tomorrow that's tomorrow. Okay and we'll have highlights for you. Beautiful. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.