Hey everybody, Matt here for late in sports cards ripping two boxes for Alex P. We have one box of 2122 Merlin chrome soccer and one box of 2021 Mosaic team all basketball again. These are for Alex P. Good luck Alex There we go. Let's see a big hit. That is Alfred Peyton Mosaic TJ Warren red wave. I'll be topping and I came a Lajewan red wave all-time greats It's like we got a Tops debut jumbo box just rolled in that sucks a lot of fun to rip guys We have like 13 boxes of that tops pro debut jumbo left in stock for rippets There's Cole Anthony rookie debut and Ben Simmons red wave but that tops pro debut has three autos per box and It is a hundred bucks a box. We pulled some really nice stuff out of that There's contavious called well Pope red wave Josh Green and Tyrese maxi. That's rookie red wave. Nice one, Alex Have a gold wave coming up. There's Jane McDaniels and gold wave Tyrese maxi national pride rookie insert Obi-Topp and debut and red wave Kevin Durant We have Chimera Rookie Sam Merrill and LeBron James national pride red wave. That's Luke Kinard red wave Cell Zion red wave and some good names on those wave parallels Kung-wu rookie and a manual quickly rookie red wave All right last pack of mosaic team off Anthony Edwards rookie T-Mac and Robert Covington gold wave Lots and lots of room for personals if anybody wants something grab it up. I'll get it ripped Here's the Merlin. Oh, you got the three and two first offline nice All right, it's Leslie Ogachukwu rookie Dembele Cole Palmer rookie and Maxon's cacorette refractor Yeah, I'm pretty much a 10 out of 10 on pronunciations when it comes to soccer Sometimes commentators will call me up just to just to get my counsel on the Pronunciations that's Gianluigi Donnarama Force doesn't sleep. He meditates in his hyperbaric chamber for about 45 minutes a day There's Hannibal rookie refractor Darbo and Pat Sondaka. This is yellow wave Phil Foden 225 this is Jamal Lucia. That is gold to 50 Yep, I'll grab you the link here. Here's a link to the basketball boxes Pogba refractor gusto rookie This is Cristiano Ronaldo Prophecy fulfilled refractor insert. Yep, totally agree on that I concur. For this Jones refractor Ray Bigger and rookie refractor. That is Abrima Darbo This look at this rookie Relic Otto Shola shore tire There you go. That is a Merlin match ball signature rookie auto not numbered but awesome looking card. These are so cool Pulled one one others or one other match ball auto That is a case hit awesome. Thanks Forrest There you go. Congrats Alex Antonio Blanco and Atomic refractor Cameron Carter vickers 250 guys lots of room for personals Of course will kick me out of this chair at 3 p.m. I can stay until then in rip boxes It's Edinson Cavani Ageless alchemy rookie John Pacheco Declan rice refractor Zanoli Vanderson Devon wrench tops pro debut 22 tops pro debut baseball There's a Ronaldo Gomes rookie Mecha rookie and Ray Marr, Jr. Renaissance refractor insert Yeah, guys, I'm gonna be ripping WWE impeccable on Wednesday. That is gonna be awesome. That one's a case hit as well Suckage and Dice delight it's to 99 Green Mojo Awesome, thanks guys appreciate that we're magging that one. This is Jeremy doku refractor There you go, Alex good stuff That'll do it for your break appreciate the purchase. We'll get these right out to you. Congrats on those hits


Welcome to dealing with materials data, we are looking at the collection analysis and interpretation of data from material science and engineering. We are in the module 6 which is on case studies and this is the fourth case study which is on design of experiments. We are going to use this microwave plasma process optimization to produce nanotitanium as the example case to understand design of experiments. Here the optimization is done through the design of experiments. And the data and the method are described in detail in the paper by K. Murugan et al. Materials and Manufacturing Processes published in 2011. This paper is about synthesis of commercially important titanium enopoder from low-cost titanium tetrachloride using microwave plasma process. And what they studied and tried to optimize is the parametric impact on process parameter of the process parameters on conversion efficiency and percentage annotates in the titanium powder. So they did the design of experiments so that they can optimize the parameters to get maximum efficiency and best percentage annotates in titanium nanopoder. So there are lots of R libraries to do design of experiments DOE.base, FRF2, DOE.rapper and there is also a plug-in which will allow you to use a GUI to do these analysis. Professor Ulrike Gromping has given lots of material including some slides and manuals et cetera. And there is also a CRAN page which is for design of experiments and analysis of experimental data which is what is shown here. So it is at the CRAN R project, experiment, design of experiments page, there are lots of libraries and material that is available and what you can do is given. And they also refer to Gromping's work and so they have this fractional factorial two level design which is very comprehensive R package. And there are other packages also which you can explore for doing the design of experiments. However, in this session this is not what we are planning to do, we want to carry out the analysis using linear model fitting and ANOVA. So we are going to do the most direct way possible so that you will understand it better and we will use this paper by Murugan et al to confirm that our analysis is okay and we are getting the same results as is reported in this paper. However, it might be a good idea to explore these and make some experimental design yourself. For example, the design matrix, how do you decide and things like that. So you can use these libraries and generate them yourself. So the paper has replication experiments, so two levels and two sets of experiments had been done and what is reported in the paper is lumped data and only the averages are reported. But we have the raw data available to thanks to Professor Gokhale who is one of the co-authors and so we are going to use the raw data and I am going to share that raw data also with you. So you can do the analysis on the data and confirm that the results that are reported in the paper is what we are getting. And I am not going to reproduce all the results, I am going to leave some of them out so that you can try and do it yourself. It might take a bit of effort and a little bit of reading and also some amount of practicing with R and thinking about what the quantities are and how they are calculated and so on. But you have been taught design of experiments in the other part of the course and so you should be able to take all that knowledge and use R to solve whatever is left out. But in principle you should be able to reproduce all the results in the paper using the lecture that you have heard on design of experiments and the code and the data that I am going to share with you. So let us do this, we will use, I am also going to keep this paper handy. So this is the paper by Murugan et al. So this is about microwave plasma process optimization to produce nano-titanium through design of experiments. And it also has some interesting conclusions which is worth going through. And our aim is to actually take the data and produce the results. By results we mean that this table of coefficients and this analysis of variance table for example and these figures, residuals figures and so on. So you should be able to produce this normal probability plot and the table of means plots. They might involve some effort but that will help you understand the methodology as well as R programming better. So I am going to do for one. So there are two exercises, they are repetitions of the same exercise but one is done for percentage efficiency, the other one is done for Anettis percentage. So let us do this. So we are going to reproduce using R. So I am going to take, so the first step is to read the data. So let us do that. So we want to read this data and what the paper reports is only the, so this is the design matrix and this is what is shown in coded form in the data that I will show you. And the data on efficiency and percentage Anettis is needed that is not here. So I am going to show you the data. So this might be familiar to you from the presentation and in the presentation what was shown for these two is the average of efficiency in the Anettis of 16 experiments. But here we are showing you the full data. So I am going to show for 32 experiments and so the first 16 and the next 16 is basically repetition of the first 16. And in each case what is the percentage Anettis obtained and efficiency percentage is what is given. So this is the data that we are going to use. So the first step is to read the data and we know that the different columns of the table give you this PFR, AFR, CFR, FR, RC, power, ET, etc. So I am going to use the same symbols because these were the ones that are used in the paper. So I am going to say second column is PFR, third column is AFR, fourth column is CFR, etc. And then there are interactions and the interactions are between PFR and AFR, CFR, FR and AFR with CFR and FR. So these were the five interactions which were decided to be important for this study and that is given here in this table. So PFR with AFR, CFR, FR and AFR with CFR, FR. So these were decided to be important and these are the other 7 parameters. So 7 plus 5 there are 12 parameters and the response is percentage efficiency and percentage Anettis which is what is given. So once we have this, so let us read and get this data. So once we have this data in place then we can start our analysis. The first thing we want to do is that we want to do the logit transformation. Which is very important and as you have learnt if you do not do in this case you might get wrong results like you might get percentages which go above 100 and things like that. So after we do the logit transformation we want to fit and we want to look at how the fitted parameters look like. So I am saying that this logit efficiency is a function of PFR, FR, CFR, FR, RCL, PWR, ET and these 5 interaction parameters and there is a constant that will show up anyway. So now you can see that the fit actually gives you the fitted parameters along with their standard error and now let us compare what we have in the paper. So here is what is there in the paper and you can see that this 4 3 7 5 is this and 3 2 7 2 is here and 8 8 5 4 is here and so on. So basically this column corresponds to the estimate of the parameter and this is the standard error. So it is 10088 which is 1009 up to 4 decimal places and if you take it up to second decimal place the T value is given 4.336 minus 3.24, 8.78 etc. and these are the P values and in the paper alpha was taken to be 0.05. So anything less than 0.05 here was considered to be important and the conclusion that was drawn was PFR, FR, FR, RCL and the 3 interactions of PFR with the other quantities were statistically significant. And here you can see we have the statistical significance marked by 3 stars, 2 stars and 1 star. So anything up to 1 star is 0.05. So point is actually 0.1 so it is a 10 percent significance level. So the other ones, so you can see that I1, I2, I3 which correspond to this PFR, FR, PFR, CFR, PFR, FR are considered to be important here also. So significance code indicates that with alpha 0.05 these 3 are significant. These 3 are significant, these 2 are significant even with alpha 0.01. So obviously for 0.05 they are significant. So that is the RCL and PFR and then with 0.001 level of significance these 2 FR and the intercept and FR are important. So these 3 are important and that is what is given now. So 0.4375 so that is this quantity plus minus 0.3272 PFR that is X1 and minus 0.8854 AFR and the next one CFR is not significant. So X3 is skipped and then it is X4 which is given 4943 so that is given with X4 and then the fifth one RCL is important so 2890 X5 is given but X6 is not important so we have left it out. And then 0.2513 X1 X2 so 2513 X1 X2 2590 2589 that is X1 X3 and 2230 X1 X4. So these are the parameters which are important. So it is the same information which is here and same table from which same conclusion is being drawn. Of course the next step is to do ANOVA on this linear fitting that we have done. So let us do that. So you get these values here and you can see that this is partly a reproduction of this table which is the next table. And for example residuals is 6.188 so that is the information here and they have also included the main effects and two way interactions separately with sum of squares you can do that too. So here is the command to do that. Let us do. So this is 40.5804 which is the same quantity which is given 40.580 and if you go from 8 to 12 which are the two way interactions so you will get 7.057 which is the quantity that you get here 2 way interactions 7.057. So basically the ANOVA table can also be reproduced and of course we also want to reproduce the figures 4 and 5 which is for scatter plot of observation versus residuals. Of course I do not have the data in observation order so this will be slightly jumbled up but you can look at the presentation where observation order is also available so you can get it in that format. And here is the fitted value versus residuals. So let us do those two plots now they can also be done rather straightforward. So this is for plotting the residuals so you get the plot. The other one is for plotting the fitted values versus residuals that is also a scatter plot. Let us do that and this is the plot and you can compare it with the plot from the paper. So this is the plot from the paper. So you can see that we get the same plot and you can of course draw a line at 0 to separate this data and look at how it looks. So this is for doing the up to residuals and I am going to leave the normal probability plot for you to explore as well as the total means for logit efficiency for you to explore. Once we have done this exercise we can repeat the same thing with the annutase percentage. So let us do that. So we take logit on annutase percentage and we again fit it for this thing and you get the fitted parameters and you get the significant ones to be I3, I4, PFR and the intercept and that is the conclusion that is also drawn from this namely that for annutase you see that constant PFR the rest of them are greater than 0.05 except for PFR, FR and DFR, CFR. So these are the only four which are important and that is the same conclusion you draw from here. So up to 0.01 significance alpha 0.01 it is I4 and PFR and 0.05 significance it is I3 and 0.001 significance it is the intercept. So that is what is given here in the paper. So they look at it and then they say that constant X1, X4, X1, X3 and PFR was already there. So then you can again do the same plots and do the ANOVA and so on. So those are the commands that are given here after you have the fit you can make those plots. So you can make the residual plot, you can also make the fitted values versus residual plot and you can compare this figure with what is given in the paper. So this is observation order so it is here. So you can see how this figure compares with this. So we are getting same results and of course the other quantity to reproduce is the table of ANOVA and you can do that by reproducing the table 7 or at least parts of table 7 by doing the ANOVA. So you draw the same conclusions and again you can just add up the sums of squares for these and add up the sums of squares for these and you will get the numbers which are the same so we did and you can add up. So you will get 2.952 and 4.963 and you see that it is 2.952 and 4.963 so that is the way you get and there is also of course residual which is 3.6314 and here residual is 3.6316. So it is the same result so we can see that we have reproduced. Now this is not the only command there is also another way of doing this analysis which is what I want to show here so let us do this. So this is the command AOV so annotates the logit transformed is a function of so this star symbol means that individual that is PFR plus AFR plus PFR colon AFR which is the cross term and any duplicate will be removed. So PFR, CFR means PFR plus CFR and PFR CFR but PFR is already there so that will be removed and so here this is another way of writing the same interaction so PFR has an interaction with all this AFR has an interaction with these two so those are the 5 interactions and the remaining terms without interaction and with interaction terms. So you can do and then you can do a fitting and you get the same result I mean the results are not at all different which is expected except that now instead of I1, I2 etc you can clearly see what the interactions are also. So this is another online command for you to do the same analysis and get the same sort of results and you can also do this not just for ANAVA you can also do it for efficiency so let us do that also. So you get the same conclusions namely that these 3 interactions are important and these 4 are important and these are not important from the point of view of the significance. So this is the paper and so we are able to reproduce most of the results and the remaining ones also you will be able to reproduce yourself and it is also a good idea to understand these significance levels and the table 9 validation trials but I am going to leave that to you to explore on your own and because all the data will be available and the presentation of design of experiments is available and this script will be available to you so it should not be very difficult for you to reproduce them on your own. So to summarize design of experiments is very important and you can optimize process parameters by carefully setting up the experiments and then analyzing them and such statistically planned experiments and the statistics that you get from them will make life easy for you in terms of optimization otherwise there are too many parameters and you need to take a call on how many experiments you will do and how you will change the parameters and so on. So this is a nice way of doing it and for doing that of course there are lots of libraries in R which you can use but I have also shown you that with whatever we have learnt we have learnt linear model fitting and ANOVA using just these 2 commands or combinations of such commands you can get all the information you want. So if you want to set up a new set of experiments for some optimization here is a way to explore and I also strongly urge you to go through the material on design of experiments and the libraries that are available and the other ways of doing things for example I have not shown how to make the design matrix but you can generate those things also using R which will help you set up your experiments. So we have looked at one two factor experiment and reproduce the design of experiments analysis that was done in the paper. I hope this will help you set up more experiments of your own along these lines. Thank you.


Hi, and welcome to What's Up Wilson, the show where we take a closer look at things going on in the community. I'm your host, Eric Wells. We're back after a long break and I'm coming to you today from over Zoom at the town offices. And what we're going to talk about this month is the town is starting on an exciting land use study project looking at foreign based code in the gross center. Later this month, a series of public outreach events are scheduled to begin. So join me this month and return to the program as planning director Matt Mulanje to take a closer look at this project and explain for us in greater detail what's going on and how to get involved. Matt, welcome back to the program. Oh, great. Thanks for having me, Eric. I'm excited, excited to be doing this and excited to be getting started on this project for Williston's Growth Center in Taft Corners. Thanks Matt. And for those listening at home, my phone is ringing and I forgot to put it on mute. So we'll just, we'll keep going here. So Matt, I thought to start out, we could kind of go through some history of Taft Corners and Development Williston to set a background here. Sure. Well, you know, a lot of the modern history of Williston involves the town's various ways in which it has confronted growth pressure and development pressure. Taft Corners was a sort of a sleepy crossroads, an intersection of what eventually became two state highways. And really until the mid-1960s with the creation of exit 12 and the eventual opening of the interstate highway, that's pretty much what was there. It was farmland. But where, you know, eight miles from downtown Burlington, we're around the corner from the airport and with the creation of the highway exit and the access that provided to people from Greater Chittenden County and beyond, there was a lot of interest in changing that land from farmland into something far more intensive. Williston had interest as early as 1973 from private developers who wanted to build large malls on the property and eventually that interest sort of coalesced around the pyramid mall proposal, which many Willistonians could remember. And that proposal eventually evolved into what we know now as Maple Tree Place. And at the same time, on the other side of Route 2A, another owner was developing what eventually became the Walmart and Home Depot complexes and some of the other what we might call big box stores along Marshall Avenue and in that area. And of course, we've had other developments since then in the forms of the beginnings of Cottonwood Crossing, Finney Crossing, and the office park configuration at Blair Park. Along the way, Williston also gained access to municipal sewerage, which really changes what can be built, did a lot of transportation planning and over the years, especially since the early 1990s has engaged in a number of different public involvement projects to try to shape the future of this area and imagine what Taft Corners could become. So we're picking that project back up again. The development standards for Taft Corners have been in place in their current form since about 2009 and they reflect a lot of the community desires for Taft Corners to become a pedestrian friendly walkable design conscious downtown like environment, but there's some ways in which those development standards have fallen somewhat short and we certainly hear some criticism from the community about the layout and the architecture of Taft Corners and we hope to address some of that through this new effort. It's interesting the background and kind of the growth from farmland to I think Williston was a one stop light town at that point or a blinking yellow light at one point with two and two way there in the area. Why is it how considering changing these development regulations to fill folks in at home? Well, what we have today are what planners like me would refer to as performance standards. So we have requirements that regulate building height and set back you know how far a building can be from the street or its property lines. We require a certain amount of landscaping in certain places on the plan and we have some architectural standards and some other sort of you know you pick five out of the nine between public art, wide sidewalks, multiple stories, multiple uses, etc and that works and it's quite flexible but sort of represents a bare minimum in terms of trying to really achieve true walkability or a downtown like environment. And some of the feedback we've gotten over the last few years is people feel like some of the buildings built under those standards don't really have anything about them that says this is Williston or this is Vermont. So the architectural standards we have while they aspire to something like that they don't always result in that because they're not really very specific. In addition it's difficult under the current standards to get a lot of coordination when one site develops next door to another one in terms of how those buildings might be arranged on the street and you know when we're out in the community we don't experience tough corners one building or one property at a time we experience it as a place that should feel cohesive and it should feel like I can walk down the street and know what kind of place I'm in from one building to the next. So the kind of project that we're looking at now under a form base code you know backs out to 10,000 feet looks at the whole area plans for the whole area and how those sites can be in harmony with one another and then drills all the way down through all those other site things I talked about to the architectural standards. How can we bring something to town that meets the town's needs and also says yes this is Williston Vermont you know you're there just by seeing it by seeing what those buildings look like and how they feel when you're when you're on the ground. So it's pretty significant you know I know some folks might look at it as a planning study and you know how does that impact play out but this is really setting the standards for that look and feel of the community and the area and what it could all come together with a change in to a form base code what that means. So I guess you start to touch on this a little bit but if you want to dig in a little bit more about what a form base code does and why this would be an interesting tool to look to apply in the tap corners area maybe a couple examples you can think of of some other form base codes in effect in some communities in Vermont. Sure we have a number of form base codes that have been adopted in the last 10 years or so in some of our neighboring communities. So Winooski along the Main Street corridor has a form base code South Burlington uses a form base code in their new city center area and Burlington uses form base code as well. There are a couple of others in the area in far more rural examples the Sawmill area up in Jericho has a form base code and there are a few others sprinkled throughout the state. So you I think what I want to emphasize is our neighbors that are using form base code might be a little more urban but form base code doesn't have to mean that the area becomes urban or has you know really big buildings or buildings that look really modern. It's just a code that emphasizes how the form of buildings plays out. So what they look like what they feel like how they're placed in relationship to the street and to one another. I think that the last one you made is really interesting important to take away from this where they're placed from the street and you know maybe explain that a little bit more how that can be significant make an impact on a streetscape. Yeah you know you can think about places you've been where there's this sort of traditional strip mall where you're on the street and then there might be three or four rows of parking and sort of towards the back of that is the building. That's that's what we would call sort of an auto oriented not a pedestrian oriented sort of layout. It's very convenient from your car you know going 40 miles an hour down the state highway you can tell whether there's parking available or not. It's very easy to access. Generally you would you would access a site like that you would park for the store you're going to and if you wanted to go to another store you'd probably need to get in your car and drive there. A more pedestrian oriented configuration might involve a park once shop twice or three times environment where you could access multiple places once you've parked the vehicle. You're walking on a sidewalk on the street and there are buildings you know pulled up to the street it's easy to get to their front doors from walking you don't have to walk through a parking lot to get there. Those are two really different forms and and depending on what the town's development standards require in terms of where buildings are those those things play out in terms of whether that ends up feeling pedestrian friendly or ends up being very convenient to drive to but you know maybe not so pleasant to walk around and you just want to get in and get out and you know get your shopping done. I'm just kind of throwing back a little bit what what the process looks like here. We'll get into our participation piece in just a moment but you know starting out where it's a study so that's going to progress to a potential bylaw changes recommended to the select board. Maybe kind of give us a broad walkthrough of what a process would be to want to form base code. Sure so I think I want to start with what's what's already been done and sort of decided and this goes back many many years in Williston. Williston has decided for a very long time that you know intense growth and development will be primarily contained to the growth center. So since the 1990s build here don't don't build elsewhere keep the rest of of Williston Rural and has expressed in words that this should be design conscious walkable downtown like environment. So there are some decisions that have been made but what's really interesting about the current form base code project is that we're starting from a visioning exercise. You know what could this place be like what kind of buildings would we like to see here what kind of streetscapes would we like to see. That sort of exercise has been done in Williston a number of times but it's often happened out of synchronicity with the adoption of actual bylaws. So one thing that's different about this process is we're starting with the visioning this spring and into the early summer and then we will be working with our consultant team to actually create the zoning codes the form-based codes that would make that vision happen. So the process starts with a lot of research a lot of mapping a lot of checking in with landowners in the area a lot of understanding what are all of the other things that go on in Williston that we need to know about like how much wastewater is available and how much traffic is on the streets and we're under the flight path for the airport how tall could buildings be. All of those things so there's a research phase which we've been in since about December and a lot of work with our volunteer board members in town interviewing them about their perspective on Williston and what they've experienced in their various roles volunteering for the town and what we're about to jump into is our big public process our kickoff meeting next week March 25th and then our public workshops that will take place toward the end of April beginning of May. So those are the everybody's invited highly participatory parts of the process where we really want to hear from everybody you don't have to be an architect you don't have to be a planner you don't have to have lived in Williston for 50 years to be able to participate in those and talk about what your vision for Taft Corners is. This meeting coming up on the 25th what can folks expect it's still gonna be a little different than you know it's nice to meet in person and have light boards to draw on but using technology and zoom and the virtual landscape we're in with COVID what can people expect that evening. Yeah so you know like you I'd much prefer if we could do this in person it's it's a lot of fun to get juice and cookies and draw on big pieces of paper and and see each other face to face I think we're all missing that but luckily we're coming into this process at a time where most of us do have quite a bit of experience with zoom so this will be on zoom it will be interactive so we're going to present a little bit about the project and a little bit about the history of Taft Corners we're going to ask people to give us some answers to some basic questions about Taft Corners in terms of how they perceive it what they what they think of Taft Corners now what they'd like to be able to think of Taft Corners in the future we're going to we're going to talk about form-based code a little bit more and about what it does and doesn't do and how and we're going to end that kickoff meeting which we're planning going no more than two hours seven to nine pm on the 25th with a call to have people take a visual preference survey and that's a fancy term for looking at pictures of buildings and places and picking the one you like the most and by getting a lot of people to do that we can get a lot of really important feedback about what the design choices might be for the future of Taft Corners and you'll see you know that survey will be open for a couple of weeks and then you'll see the way those responses play out in the visualizations that our consultant team will create for the April to May workshop sessions. Yeah it's something really interesting process to be a part of just you know a collective crowdsourcing in the community preferences on look and feel of buildings to help inform the regulatory language drafting that we're looking at here. Yeah I'm really excited for it I'm really excited that we're going all the way from vision through to development standards that that sort of compact process hasn't happened in a long time in Williston and it means that if you come and participate in this process now six to eight months from now you you would probably be seeing what you did turned into a zoning code and presented to the planning commission and slack board to consider and it means that you know maybe by this time next year somebody might actually be applying to to build a building or develop a site under this code. So we're bringing a lot of focus to this area by doing it this way and I think at a really critical point in time for the history of Williston because we do have a lot of interest in Taft Corners we have focused a lot of energy in Taft Corners in building streets and infrastructure. We have some new things in Taft Corners that are brand new this year I drove home last night saw people sitting out in the patio at Healthy Living eating sandwiches that was that was not something that happened even even a year ago. So it's a really exciting time to be doing this and I really enjoy the the challenge that that focus brings that you know this isn't just a plan that's or a vision or a plan that's going to go in a binder and collect dust it's going to turn into living breathing regulations and buildings and sites within a very short amount of time. And I would also say that it's a big effort and it's a once in a generation opportunity. You know Williston went from farm fields and that sleepy intersection to what it looks like today in about 85 years. That's an awful lot of change imagine another 85 years worth of change in Taft Corners. This is a chance to set the tone for for what happens maybe for that whole 85 years maybe for 25 or 50 but certainly for a good long time. Yeah it's a significant opportunity for folks in town you know I just want to want to echo your message and for folks to get involved here. It's you know some people may never have been involved with a planning exercise or engage with the planning office or a border committee but this is a real great opportunity to jump right in and see a tangible product that's going to come out with the draft code language here. So I just want to echo what Matt's saying to encourage everyone to be involved here coming up and you know when you talk about the speed of government government it's not always the quickest process it's very very prescribed and very thorough which is good but you know in speaking in terms of a government process to participate in engagement this spring and then see a potential written product that's under consideration by town governance boards in a year or so is a is a real unique and significant opportunity for the town. Absolutely I agree completely and I'm really excited to get out and be interacting with more Williston citizens around this project. I firmly believe it's possible to come up with a Taft Corners that feels like Williston. That anybody who lives in Williston would be proud to say as part of their town would be the kind of place that when someone came and visited you from somewhere else you'd say well let's go down to Taft Corners and grab a bite to eat or sit on a green somewhere. Let's take our bikes there. That kind of thing is absolutely possible for Taft Corners and I would encourage all Willistonians and people who work in Williston people who shop in Williston to take this opportunity to to tell us what would help make it that kind of place for them. Well thanks Matt I you know I didn't have any other questions right now anything else we didn't cover you want to you want to share with the viewers out there? Yeah I just I do want to encourage people to get it on their calendar for March 25th. That's a Thursday at 7 p.m. It's a Zoom meeting so I'm not going to recite the Zoom link to you. I am going to encourage folks to go to mytaftcorners.com. That's the website for the project mytaftcorners.com. You're seeing this big question mark logo all over town hopefully with the website on it and that'll get you there. We'll have a link to the Zoom meeting on that page. You can also sign up for updates and to be involved. Everything's happening through that website mytaftcorners.com and we'll be putting up those drawings and renderings and hopes and dreams visualized on that website as they're developed so please keep checking back in with that site as well. Plan to spend a couple hours with us Thursday night. I promise it won't just be me talking at you for two hours. It'll be fun. It'll be interactive. It'll be a chance to think really expansively about the future of Williston in this critical part of town. Thanks Matt for coming on and all the work you and your team are doing on this exciting project for the community. Thanks Eric. This kind of work really makes it a pleasure to be working here in Williston. Let's going to wrap it up for this month on What's Up Williston. Thanks everyone for tuning in. I'm your host Eric Wells and I'll see you around town. Take care.


Hey guys, I'm Ryan. I'm drows and I'm an hour Guys are you talking about the hmm the new Sesame Street movie? Whoa? Whoa? Whoa? Whoa? Whoa? No, no, no, no. This is not a Sesame Street movie This movie is called happy time murders and like the title says it has a lot to do with murders Oh, I hear a little bit about it. I know how to time murders is set in LA and it's a cop comedy And I use that term Comedy in the loosest possible form very loose the plot revolves around a string of suspicious murders Involving the cast from the hit TV show the happy time gang. Yeah, that's just like your Sesame Street show However, they gradually keep being killed off one at a time and when the private eye Phil Phillips And he's reluctantly teamed up with his ex-partner Connie Edwards. Yeah played by Melissa McCarthy The two become embroiled into a dark web of Organized puppet crime as they unwittingly become suspects in their own case So I think this film tries a little bit too hard with the I can please block your ears for a second Yeah, definitely block your ears. He's about to swear Okay There's a lot of vulgar type of humor here.  It's so forced in the film I think one of the standout characters is definitely my Rudolph. She's fantastic in this But what about you Ryan? What do you think about this? It fails both as a send-up of the detective noir genre and even the most basic of comedies almost every punchline of this movie falls Flat and the novelty of watching puppets say words and doing appropriate things wears off within the first five minutes and Hopefully it hasn't worn off in this movie. I'm all right Well, look, you know, I think the puppetry in this is is exceptional Brian Henson really tried to get this off the ground for many many years and it was a lot of false starts But then it got green lit with Melissa McCarthy signing on not long ago and look we've got this movie and It tried but look at the end of the day I actually remember this movie kind of being announced back in like 2011 and then they started sending out like Concept stuff in 2014 and yet in 2018. It's still a terrible movie. How does this even happen? But this one thing that this movie does do well, and I think probably it has something to do with the murders Imagine puppets being exploded on camera guts except stuffing going everywhere and Puppets doing inappropriate things while it does While it is funny for you know about five minutes It does come off pretty well on camera It does and it's very disturbing being puppets seeing our guts get torn out and ripped out all over the place But it does work you right. I lost a lot of friends in this movie a lot of friends. Yeah, me too Actually, I will not delve into it, but my boy blue. You're my boy But anyway guys, I think this is not a bad movie It's not bad for Brian Henson get out there again and get this off the ground and try to follow in the footsteps of his father Personally, I look I can't move my arms at the moment, but I'm gonna give this two thumbs up because I think To yeah, look two thumbs up. Oh, I'm a puppet. I love seeing myself on the screen and It isn't too bad. Melissa McCarthy can't really go wrong at the moment She's on a bit of a hot streak as you as you say, okay?  It was probably one of the worst movies I've seen all year maybe at least in the last five years and I'm sorry to say that dress cuz I know you liked it so much I know how much you like but for me, but for me I just there was nothing about this movie that is gonna last a long time and an arrow for me I would say go see anything else. I don't till next time. I'm Ryan. I'm dress And we'll see you nerds


Good evening. I'm Mark Uptegrove, President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. Lady Bird Johnson established the Harry Middleton Lectureship in 1994 to honor the career, loyalty, and legacy of Mr. Middleton, who served in the Johnson Administration as a speechwriter before going on to become the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library for over 30 years. The lectureship was designed to attract and enrich the learning experience of UT students and the greater Austin community. Past speakers have included Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Jimmy Carter, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, News Anchor Tom Brokaw, and Actor Brian Cranston. The lecture series is co-sponsored by the LBJ Presidential Library and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. This evening we're delighted to welcome author and professor Chang-Rae Lee. Chang-Rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation Pen Award for first fiction. He is also the author of On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, A Loft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Lee teaches writing at Stanford University. His most recent book, My Year Abroad, released in paperback on February 1st, was called by the New York Times Book Review, A Manifesto to Happiness, the one found when you stop running from who you are. It was also considered a best book of the year by Vogue, Time, and Marie Claire. Tonight's conversation will be moderated by Lois Kim, the director of the Texas Book Festival. And now please join me in welcoming Chang-Rae Lee and Lois Kim. Chang-Rae, congratulations on the success of My Year Abroad, one of my absolutely favorite novels of last year and his paperback has just been released. Thank you very much Lois. Just since the setting is here in the brown room of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library Museum, I thought it would be appropriate for us to start with a question about your career and your life that all may be started because of this broader historical context. LBJ championed the Immigration Act of 1965, perhaps the most sweeping immigration reform in American history. It was the law that ended up having a direct impact on Asian families like yours and mine who were part of the big immigration wave that happened after the passage of the law.  Well I've been in this country 50 years. But I'm definitely a child of 1965. Actually I was born in 1965 but in terms of immigration yeah I think we're all children of 1965. I mean it allowed my father who went to medical school in Korea to come here as a medical resident and I think he was at the time thinking just you know he'd do his training and then go back to Korea and but after a year as I think it often happens he called for us and so at that time my my sister was I think she was maybe still in my mother's womb but but there about to be born and so we came over. So that's like I think I've heard that story a lot from people that that I think the plan was originally just to come get some training and of course because back then you know they didn't have a lot of information about what was going to be on the other side of this journey. There was no internet they didn't really have you know I think they had a sponsor at the hospital but they had no friends they had no relatives and and I think the the prospect of of making a whole new life was pretty daunting but I think once they got here they realized you know maybe we can do it. Yeah it was a leap of faith. Absolutely and I you know I do think that partly my father also had a had a notion that there was a little bit of a glass ceiling for him back in Seoul even though he was a medical school graduate it was going to be a doctor of some kind his family's from the north before the war and I think a lot of northern you know northerners as we might call them kind of felt that way they'd never be part of the establishment and you know Korea's even though there's what many millions of people there it's kind of a small country yes very clickish yes South North Seoul even then even before the divide before the divide even now even though things are a little bit more fluid and mobile so so I think that was also a small impetus maybe an important one for him to think and there wasn't already family over in the states no no yeah and so on neither side and and the the the Korean friends they had were just people other people like them maybe some professors or other medical people that they had heard about you know who were around and we did not live in a Korean enclave or an ethnic enclave of any kind we lived in you know suburban West Chester so there really weren't very many Asian people at all then right where we were and there was like I grew up in Buffalo and there was a you know Korean church that was that enclave and there was a community there but in West Chester that was not the case no and we went to we went across the sound to Queens and where there was a Korean church yes you know that was pretty much the mother church mm-hmm of the whole area and my parents you know they weren't religious people it was a cultural yeah it was a cultural drop right a place to feel like you had some community yeah I mean I I don't want to I don't want to say they just went through the motions but but that wasn't really their passion right well this is you know my question about being an immigrant and maybe it's hard to answer because you know you've had the experience that you've had in your life but do you think that influenced you to become a writer I mean if you had stayed in Korea would I be talking to Dr. Dr. Lee you know working on this next appendicitis yeah well I think you know it I don't know mm-hmm I don't know I think I was always somebody who enjoyed the artistic pursuits mm-hmm mostly because I didn't like to follow assignments mm-hmm and so I have a feeling that I would have always done something that was kind of outside the lines mm-hmm what outside of what probably would be prescribed I think though the writing part you know that came about I think because of all the reading I did when I was a kid and part of that reading was because my parents were so keen on my learning English mm-hmm yeah probably the same with you very much and they were so afraid mm-hmm that we'd never learn English well enough and that you know there was a different attitude back then about English as a second language definitely it's you know it's your ticket to a survival right you know and and and my parents didn't speak English that well no neither did mine right right and and so they weren't you know they they entrusted both of us my my sister to you know all the professionals you know the teachers and we we really depended upon them and and you know I remember in school my first grade teacher who was I guess the first teacher I had when I spoke English because the kindergarten year I didn't speak any English because you know we we just grew up at home mm-hmm we didn't really go to school and so you know I was just speaking Korean and you know apparently I was a pretty good Korean speaker probably much better than that I am now but but I remember my first grade teacher telling my mother that I should read as much as possible and that she would you know give me all these books and then they had some kind of contest and I think I won the contest that year for you know reading more books than anybody else you know I was kind of proud of that but really it was my mother's you know their scheme they were anxious they wanted to make sure that and at that time it was a lot about assimilation and be American and totally you know there wasn't any right she wasn't I think she had her own private worries and and probably sadness that I wasn't speaking Korean but that was far outweighed by you know how quickly my sister and I you know were integrating into our lives you know at least lingu language while yes and and have you been able to keep you know I think of your command of the English language and it's Chang Ray it's truly remarkable I mean I feel like you go into every nook and cranny of the entire breadth of what English language has to offer and do you feel like that came at a cost of losing some of your Korean language facility or are you pretty bilingual no I'm not bilingual but I don't think I don't think that was the reason why I lost my career I lost my Korean because I just never spoke it mm-hmm you know we didn't have a grandma or grandfather in the house who didn't speak English most of my friends who still speak Korean my age you know same generation immigrants the ones who speak Korean well are the ones who had to yes you know just to communicate with you know a family member and again I did not live in a Korean on clay so so that's really I just didn't have practice I think if we'd had K dramas back then mm-hmm we probably would be speaking more Korean instead of Brady Bunch and right you know happy days Gilligan's Island all that stuff were that same TV way I think we're very close in age yeah and so but I think also because I learned the language and I very distinctly remember those those times and those feelings and the you know it was kind of stressful right when you spend a whole year and you it's just things are just gradually dawning on you and and suddenly you have it and then and then I think you know part of me was just had an affinity for language maybe you know my parents did say that I spoke Korean very very well for a kid so I think I always enjoyed language and probably you know like a lot of immigrant and immigrant writers do they throw themselves into the language you know Conrad yes the buck off right and I think it's because of a certain kind of maybe a little anxiety mm-hmm but also you know the passion of somebody who's coming to something where it's fresh and new and different and it's not just a given thing yes you know we're all I think writers are always conscious very conscious of their language at least on the page and but I think immigrants are very conscious of their language too and and and are very attuned to the way people speak very tuned to accents because that's how you know that's how they just see the world yeah and there's a little bit of otherness that you're bringing to it like you know this the sense of you know being an immigrant and paying attention and feeling of it and a little bit outside of it absolutely you know being more observer than participant mm-hmm which I was for you know the first probably two years of my English speaking life mm-hmm what is I'm a little low test this question because it's sort of a you know to ask about what it's like to write as an Asian-American writer when of course this is the identity that you've always had so I don't know that you can answer the question of what it's like because it's just the experience that you've always had but you know of course you're often described as an Asian-American writer very important in the Asian American canon you know what to you today you know feels what are you tired about thinking about and being asked about in terms of being an Asian-American writer and what still feels really enduring and important about that identity I don't think I feel tired about thinking about anything because those are the things that are just naturally going to appear or occur to me bug me mm-hmm disturb me you know all those questions about otherness about belonging about you know feeling as if you know you lead multiple lives at the same time and but you know sometimes it's more about responding to people's expectations of what either they thought you wrote or they think you should write it and you know a lot of my students have this you know have this sort of quarrel with themselves to particularly my Asian-Americans is like should I be writing about certain things they ask me and I always say of course not you should write about your particular experience part of which of course is mm-hmm somebody who looks this way in this place in time in you know universal history right because it's all about context right you what you were going to be writing about will be absolutely different than what I'm going to be writing about even if we're the same race even if we're the same ethnic have the same national background even if we even grew up in the same neighborhood I think there's still a universe of difference between us you teach a Asian-American literature class at Stanford yeah and what is the makeup of that of the students there well because there are so many Asian American students at Stanford they most of the students are Asian-American of all all kinds yes it's a it's a really wonderful class because I think it's the class itself demonstrates to the students how diverse their experience really is and and and and more importantly how diverse their ways of thinking are mm-hmm well and we were talking when I we were driving back from the airport about how I mean I was an English major you were an English major and you were talking about how there aren't that many English majors at Stanford anymore so aside from the great variety of students of different kinds of Asian backgrounds that are in your class but they might not be English majors because there aren't that many English majors at Stanford and I wanted to ask you you know your teacher you're on the forefront of what's happening in a higher education today with some of the brightest students in the country and the world you know what what is it like teaching in the university today when you have this tension between the humanities perhaps the shrinking humanities and then here you are in you know a university that's known as a tech incubator in a very tech epicenter of the world although Austin might be giving a pillow for its money and that tension you know what are you what are you seeing and how are you feeling about that I don't think it's just a Stanford problem being in Silicon Valley I know that you know hearing from colleagues in smaller liberal arts colleges back east and where I taught at Princeton before Stanford the same issue there's so there's so fewer students who get into the humanities from the start and and you know for especially at the so-called elite colleges where you know they you know the it's it's a it's a function of also that they can draw from socioeconomic backgrounds that right because of their wealth then because of their endowments they can they can draw you know a lot of students from backgrounds that are you know they don't come from any kind of money and in particular the students that I have say that Asian American not a biograph autobiography class so many of those students have had all these interests they love theater they loved painting they loved music they loved writing they loved poetry but once they get to this point in their lives and have an idea that oh my goodness you know my my dad and mom ran the dry cleaners they did not send me here to be an English major to be an English major and I completely understand that I mean I I can see why you know that's such a hard choice for them the I think it's just the way that the art our society and our you know our world economy is going and so I don't know what to say about it you said you mentioned the word tension I don't think there is a tension I think the humanities are dying because I do know that the students that we have in creative writing in the English department because I'm in the English department and but we also have our creative writing program within that and we serve a lot of students we serve actually very a lot more students than the English department does for their traditional courses and you know that that's not a surprise because students love to write but what happens is that most of the people end up becoming majors in the English department come through creative writing and because they're they love creative writing and then of course when you when you practice it when you talk about it you then you think you know what I should I should expand my reading I should have I should have a foundation in all this and so maybe that's the way to do it you know maybe that's the way is to encourage the arts arts maybe even just arts making first mm-hmm you know it used to be the other way around right you studied you learned all the traditions you read the cannon or you you know and then for the chosen few deemed by whoever you got to practice now because of the way the culture is everyone's making art everywhere a tick-tock Instagram but that's okay but maybe we can you know channel all that good energy and I think as we're doing in our program and getting kids you know back into you know just a literary study it's a democratization you know of art making that it's not that you need the degree you just need to do it from my vantage point it seems like in publishing there are more books being published than ever you know and and maybe that's part of the you know commerce aspect of publishing and you know here we are in this kind of stage of capital late-stage capitalism and globalization and so we do see the arts you know taking off but perhaps it's just as you say not happening in the university in this in the traditional ways and you're in a position where you're both in the academy and outside of it as a novelist a successful novelist does this stuff find its way into your work you know and your preoccupations as a as a as a you know novelist who's publishing who has this paperback version of a very successful novel come out is that you kind of like on both sides of that equation I try not to mix my worlds the you know the the work I do in my school office is all about the students you know how to present to them the literature that I think will be most you know provocative and and in some ways lasting and and then in Turk talking about their work you know I'm kind of you know their therapist right I'm there to try to bring out the ideal forms of what they're trying to do and to steer them here and you know to massage their their direction you know in a certain way I I hope I don't ever become a gatekeeper of any kind but in my work at my desk at home that's necessarily exertions that are really intense very private and where I really want to block out the world I mean the world is of course in me because of everything I am read you know just as we all are but but at that point I don't want to ever hear anything about writing quote unquote say the craft I don't want to hear about you know any kind of suggestion of what I might do because of some other hat I have so because for me the the pursuit of of novel writing is is about complete liberty it's a about complete freedom and that's probably the best thing about it truly well it's also a great a great boon to your readers who who get to read it and let's dig a little bit more into my year abroad again a book that I truly loved it's it's an adventure tale that the New York Times described as a wild ride pick risk wise cracking funny ambitious full of sex in danger you have some epigraphs at the beginning of the novel one being from Thomas Mons novel confessions of Felix Krull confidence man he who truly loves the world shapes himself to please it will you explain that choice and how it kind of you know as epigraphs do create a little springboard for the reader to dive in right I mean that's a great I love that line from from Krull obviously it's a confidence man's line also right I mean because the confidence man is is the zealot he'll he'll be and and and conduct himself or she will or her conduct yourself in in the perfect way where where they're the key for any lock any any lock that comes comes about right in the form of a person in the form of some scheme and so there is a mercenary and and you know a kind of you know a sense that of course they want to master the moment but I like the other side of it too which is you know it's not just about getting over something on the world it's about actually connecting with it right it's about actually being the you know a more beautiful side of that of that universal key the idea that you know we can go anywhere and if we're really truly open if we're really truly curious if we're really truly vulnerable in the best ways then experience can be magical and it we might put on a persona to fit into this other experience that we would otherwise not be able to have well yeah we don't always have to be so locked in to this idea of oneself right because that's really all I mean people say oh yeah I'm this way but if you really think about they're probably mostly I think I'm this way yeah who's your who's who's the confidence man is Pong or is it I'm not sure it is you know I think I think you know the the young hero of this novel tiller is trying to is becoming you know or gaining an understanding that that maybe we're all confidence men if we actually have open hearts you know he's I guess the confidence man of course in in the traditional sense is again someone who's going to gain advantage but in this novel I think that the gaining of advantages about is not about taking but about experiencing and experiencing something about the world experiencing something about the other way the ways that other people think and and believe things are and and whether or not that leads to always pleasure or enlightenment or or something else is okay so I think I think tiller somebody who has completely ceded you know himself to the idea that the the possibilities are worth it wherever they lead them in even to dark places and let's back up for him and for viewers who haven't read my your broad yet like set it up a little bit so that they know who these characters are right well there's that the narrator of the novel is a young fellow named tiller Bartman he's 20 years old he's one eighth Korean seven eighths you know European American and and he's on a on his junior year and and about to go on a typical semester abroad probably to Europe but before that happens he meets a local businessman a Chinese fellow named Pong Lu who is kind of a famed local entrepreneur with lots of businesses and they become friendly and and Pong says why don't you come along with me and help me on some business ventures that I have and instead of going off on your doing your thing and and tiller is just at that point in his life when I think he feels like sure I definitely want to do this I I don't want to do what everyone else is doing because it's he's already bored by it bored by the thought of it of course he's also looking for something right he there's some void in his life and emotional void having to do mostly probably with his family life and lots of things that didn't happen and so they go off together and on a lot of crazy crazy adventures stuff that I didn't even know would happen but I think I think that was right that I didn't know because I think if I didn't know before that's the funny thing about writing novels sometimes if you knew before what you were going to write you probably wouldn't write it you're not a writer who has the end in mind and knows it there are writers who are that way right that that they've got it all different ways of sure course and but my my what I'm comfortable with is in terms especially with with character and psyche and as it has to do with where what's going to happen to them in plot I'm pretty associative I don't plan out I just feel my way into it and and try to have faith in in where my gut is telling me to go with them and I've heard you say in in interviews that you often do start with character right and that they're in this case you know there was pong there's tiller can you dig a little bit more into that process of you're feeling your way into it but then what is that how does that roll out like what does that look like over time as you're feeling that out like building that character and then how does it turn into a narrative and then how does it turn into this complete novel well you you certainly need to start out with a fairly good foundation for what you believe that person is like the way the style of their thinking maybe even the sound of their voice and the way that they would describe themselves both externally and then internally so but that doesn't mean that you know if if 100 percent were absolutely knowing everything about that person which of course you can never get to anyway I would say that I probably start out a novel knowing probably 35% of what really makes this person this person what makes them tick what but it's only in pushing them and putting them in situations that are going to challenge rub up against corroborate sometimes reveal you know as as paradoxical some part of their psyche some part of their makeup and you know we are all you know creatures of what's happened to us we've been raised who's been there who's not been there creatures of context so I think as a novelist I'm always trying to constantly put that character in a dynamic set of series of contexts and so that so that I'm always looking for well what should happen next to this person so that some other part of them will be revealed or clarified or refuted even so for me yes there's plot but the plot makes no difference if we don't continually have you know a deeper and more profound kind of appreciation for who this person is and why they're telling us this story and so that's what I tell my students is it's not that you have this character and then you just put them into situations mm-hmm that's that's a murder mystery mm-hmm where it's just like who done it right mm-hmm as I tell my students I want to know why they done it mm-hmm I want to know how they think they're gonna done it right I want to know you know what they thought they had done when they done it and all those things are the things that make up I think you know a really rich character in a rich novel and the context that you're putting them in it's all about that tension is in this novel so I feel like we're on the precipice of this this capitalist excessive culture on the verge of collapse but in its fullness of you know insanity right of commerce and globalism and and everything that it involves it is incredibly entertaining to read but it's also quite dark well I do try to and I think I do this in many of my novels I try to pervert things a little bit and not necessarily sexually right but but a certain kind of perversion where it's it becomes dark strange mm-hmm very idiosyncratic yes there were things I read that I didn't even know existed yes and that I thought would be appropriate to this young fellow's journey mm-hmm that yeah it could it you know it's not simply just wealth and luxury and finding out wow look how rich these people are and look how powerful they are it's for me I had to investigate well look how human these people are look how messed up they are look how obsessive they are about things that they believe are important and I believe that will shape them and that's you know that the novel in the end is is a novel of maturation about about coming into the world but as I always say about this novel the world also enters tiller in many ways it you know it he shaped himself to please it but he's allowed the world to absolutely inundate him and and it's a you know it's a clarifying and I think in many ways traumatic experience mm-hmm yes these characters that you're building it you know in these very you know world-building novels and I kind of want to turn back to some of your other work this novel is is it a depart do you feel like it's a big departure from your most recent novel before on such a full see that's a speculative fiction novel that's got a kind of dystopian you know society that is really telling the story of what has happened to society and it's also feels kind of realistic like it could happen you know it also involves China you know how are these novels talking to each other I think that the previous novel on such a full see is also kind of a adventure novel in a way that the young heroine fan is set out into the world a dangerous world a strange bizarre world at times a very sad world at times and so I think this the stories have that in common I mean I think my novels I think on this it could be said that on this on the surface of things they're completely different I've written about immigrants I've written about war I've written about sexual slavery I've written about environmental disaster but I think you know the thing that that ties them all is that it's really not about all that it's about how someone usually trapped in a certain context is trying to figure out who they are in this new context or in this pressurized context and whether it's war whether it's being an immigrant whether it's being you know a young girl in a very dangerous world and and seeing and trying to take steps and psychically to understand that relationship they have with their context and to see their way to another stage of who they might be I think all the books are about that and they have vastly different stories but but ultimately I think they all go back to that do you feel that you know I was thinking of some of your earlier works and that there is a lot of war right and you've taken you know taken some of the big wars of the 20th century and they explore the effects of those war on the psyches of the very human characters that that that that you're providing for your reader is it feel like that is a little bit not your interest in war in the same way now like the 21st century wars that we're dealing with you know they're kind of ambiguous a war on terror you know places that are wars that are really different than the wars of the 20th century are those in your psyche at all are you thinking about like you know Afghanistan and Syria and are those things that you're dwelling on or have you kind of moved beyond that topic in the way that you treated it in your earlier novels even though they're all the same story like you're saying right there's a universality to what your characters are dealing with yeah I think they were more character my interest in in those wars specifically the Pacific War World War two and the you know in the Asian continent and and the Korean War they derive from the character my interest in those characters I don't know that so so unless I find another character say you know who finds it who he or she finds it herself in the Middle East that's when I think I'd be interested in in a certain kind of conflict you know a particular one that one of the ones you're talking about but but no I I try not to I don't I don't think about topics of interest really I think about quandaries of humanness and then and then look for a particular soul in a particular time and place and say huh even if it's speculative huh okay let's see let's start the ball rolling and let's see where that goes and those quandaries of humanness are the universal ones like our relationship with our parents or they include it should include everything yes right even if it's a war novel mm-hmm it's going to be a novel about companionship or about family or about love it's all the same thing it's all about our our connection and disconnection mm-hmm to others and but those things the you know the important thing about connection is that it can be so warped by circumstance right mm-hmm and and I think I guess that's where as a novelist I'm most excited and most interested I'm we I'm looking and riding that warp mm-hmm looking at and and riding that warp and and tracking it and describing it mm-hmm as it expresses itself in other scenes other incidents in that in that character's life and that for me is that for me you know it gives me confidence that I'll never run out of things to write about because that's always present right that's always present yeah and I tell my students you can write about a life one particular life once mm-hmm you can write about someone's that the life of a consciousness an infinite number of times mm-hmm that's why sometimes you know you have a right to write a great autobiographical novel but they're writing about that life right that particular life but that's I hope that's not what I've been doing mm-hmm so there's an endless an endless well and an endless reservoir for that larger question it's endless yeah the problem is choosing one that you have passion for and that you feel that you can you can discover something interesting about and if has has two years of pandemic and and sort of isolation had changed that calculus for you in terms of things that inspire you or you know the human human dilemmas that could become that character that you're going to you know explore has that been affected by just not around people and not seeing people yeah I it's hard because I I tend to be a quite a social person so I depend on that both just as a you know just in my everyday life for fulfillment and happiness but but absolutely as a writer you know and so that was a little tough mm-hmm that was a little tough I don't like to write about you know some writers are very writing about other books and writing about other stories that they love and in essentially writing about other kinds of characters and literary modalities and I'm not that kind of writer I I really do love people in you know and not I love them you know what I'm talking about I mean you go all in on how people are mm-hmm even as ugly as they can be I find it fascinating yeah no hand and so but reading about that in the paper as we did in the pandemic mm-hmm you know just constantly just being at one and a remove from that is frustrating mm-hmm and I just love going places and talking to people and mostly listening and just watching so that's more your inspiration than reading you know all all writers are huge readers right and I know you're of course of course but but but we write for different reasons mm-hmm right and and some writers as you know are are into writing about the act of storytelling about the tradition of literature you know of of certain novels about what you know I I'm not really that way right or I don't think so mm-hmm who are you in conversation with any writers now that you're really enjoying like that are sort of you know I always like to ask what what what you're reading that is kind of you know whether it whether it has anything to do with what you're writing or not just what you're enjoying well I enjoy some I mean I really enjoy so many different things I I have two recent folks who went through our Stegner Fellows program at Stanford the Wallace Stegner program is wonderful creative writing program that we have for kind of a postdoc program people already have advanced degrees and they're often well published already if not a full book then lots of you know journal publications and such and two of the folks who have recently been in the program and published books to short story collections I love both of them so much one is by Yoon Choi it's called Skinship I don't know if you know that book I think I think it might have been just shortlisted for a pen Hemingway nice and the other story collection is by a writer named Kate Folk called out there and there you couldn't have two more different collections you know Skinship is you and writes like you know Alice Monroe and William Trevor yeah as she you know her her her her stories are so elegant and and quiet but penetrating just full of just beautiful human moments and so humane and and center around Korean immigrant experience but in a way that you know is new and different Kate Folk stories are just you know they they kind of a border on science fiction but they're to me they're exciting because they're so about as all great science fiction is they're absolutely about human possibility and and the way that she creates her characters some of them are literally robots of a kind androids or something yeah I I I learned so much about how we are by reading her very very strange stories so so those are two two story collections that that couldn't be more different from one other but but I find them both very exciting and and and that feels that feels optimistic about your excitement about new writers coming up and coming and doing interesting work despite our earlier dark dark sense of the fate of the humanities in in the university that there is still such an important role for books in our lives like what they do and that there's a place for them to thrive I just hope that we can get them in front of as many people as possible because once people you don't have to be a literati to enjoy these stories and that's the great thing about literature you don't need to be you don't need to be some kind of right book monk it's one of the biggest hurdles to recover as I think people feel intimidated and that they about the idea about reading but really it it is just a pleasure it is just pleasure that makes you a better person and makes makes all of us better you know so I do think that's that's that's still something that of course we we all believe in and and advocate for absolutely well thank you so much chain ray it's been a delight to talk with you and I feel that you know sibling hood of just having a very similar immigration story and and a kind of optimism about you know we we we came to this country our families did and there was a lot of opportunity here in in being here and it's it's always a kind of duality to still be pondering these questions of being being immigrants and exploring our our identities in this larger sort of American landscape are you can you share at all what you've been working on there anything well I just I'm working on new novel and I don't love to talk about yeah yeah too soon yeah it's always too soon right it's always too soon till it's out yeah well we'll look forward to when that happy moment arrives because we're we're I'm such a big fan of your writing and have really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with you today no thanks a lot Lois it's been great my thanks to Chang Ray Lee and Lois Kim for that inspiring conversation the store at the lbj presidential library is selling signed paperback copies of my year abroad you can purchase copies at lbjstore.com amplify Austin the biggest 24-hour giving event in central Texas begins on March 2nd and runs through March 3rd during those 24 hours you'll have an opportunity to support and amplify the work of more than 700 local nonprofits including the lbj foundation and its education programs visit amplify atx.org to see what the lbj foundation is doing to support civics education for our nation's youth and we're very excited to resume our in-person programming in the coming months I'm delighted to announce three of our upcoming speakers New York Times op-ed columnist and author David Brooks will be on hand on April 4th former U.S. congressman Will Hurd will join us on April 11th and author and podcast host Julia Swag will be our guest on May 11th we hope to see you for those events and others and I'm Mark up to Grove hoping to see you soon