I want to make one additional announcement tonight's performance, there'll be an open mic, there's no headsets for tonight's performance, but for all the performances to come, we'll be using headsets, okay? So for people here who are new to our community, who have just joined this community, I'd also would like to make a suggestion to you that you don't clap for the deaf and the mormons when they're done, if you want to show appreciation for their work, please raise your hands in the air and shake them high so that people can see them. Now I'd like to introduce a very important person, Clayton Bally. He's a full-time professor at the Gallaudet University. He works in the Department of Linguistics, and he's studying for his PhD now, doing a correspondence course with the University of Ohio. So, I'd like you all to please help me give him a very warm welcome. Can't see anything. I have to see you. I really have to lighten up a little bit much better. Thank you. Now I can see all your faces. The reason I need to see your faces is that while performing, I'd like to have a little discussion in between and afterwards, so I don't like to just perform and then leave you all in the cold. I'd like to have some dialogue, so it's good to see your faces. I'm really thrilled to be here tonight. I remember in 1987 when I was here, there was a death of the National Death Poetry Conference held here in 1987, and there were five of us, Patrick Gravel, Ella Lentz, myself, Peter Crook, and Debbie Rennie. Five performers came for a death poetry conference.  We shared a lot of our ideas, but then that impact was gone. We had no further contact with each other. We hoped to have an annual or live annual conference, and yeah, this is the first time we've done together again as poets. Now this is called the Death Literature Conference, which is really great because it's more broad and includes poetry and comedy and different kinds of literature, and I hope that this continues annually from now on. In with my performance, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what Lentz had to make this evening. I'll present, and there will be an interpretive voicing. My presentation is a kind of discussion, but when I do my actual performances, there will be no interpretation. I prefer that you who are hearing and don't know sign language to watch, and although you may be a bit overwhelmed, I'm sorry about that. But what I'm doing is a kind of art. It is art. And ASL poetry is a way, a very expressive art, a very visual form of art that I want to be able to appreciate visually. Now when I perform, and the interpreter does not voice, that will be just the performance part, but afterwards, and in between my quality, I'll be talking about what I'm doing, and then perform the piece again so we're able to watch. Now the first time you perform the piece, you may be able to get some kind of idea of the big mouth field to remember all the different pieces of it. After I explain how you can go back and see it again, and understand it better, I'll be performing seven different poems for you this evening. Dan DeWine.  I like to tell you a little bit about how I created the poem, Dan DeWine. Sometimes I was mowing the grass in the bottom.  And I kept saying, this thing is even crazy. And I thought, this is the same way as I am. This Dan DeWine, and myself, there's something uncommon here. And the poem emerged. A little bit now about this poem and what it meant. The other flower, the Dan DeWines, were multitudes across the green grassy area. And the man comes and sees them.  The rain comes, the sun emerges, the grasses grow. And one Dan DeWine goes and spreads its seeds. And if he comes, it takes its seeds and then plants it. And days go by. And the Dan DeWine is 1,000 spores, meaning that you see what I presented at home. From the Dan DeWine, a pain from the flower and I carried away and spread these spread seeds. And says, he yells, he yells there. The spores have spread and he pulls it out but those seeds again and plant themselves throughout the grass. He's like rye. Did you notice anything like a rye as you saw in the performance? My body shifts back and forth. My hands shift back and forth. My hands themselves. What about them? Yes. I use my hands to move them in and out. And I often use hand shapes when I open my finger to hand. When I say, oh, flower, spread out across the grass and use this hand shape. And when they're waving, they're also the same five hand shape. And man incorporates that same shape. I use five hand shapes throughout the phone again and again. Just a kind of a rye. And also, when I use the classifier to signify Dan DeWine, you'll see that again when he's in the open hand shape. That's one kind of rye. Also, you see this hand shape, the clenched fist. What does that signify? This is the close hand. What kind of feeling is there in opposition to the open feeling of the five hand shape? A clenched fist, yes, signifies kind of anger whereas the open hand is free and liberated. So this is just the position of the close and the open. So you can see that there is the literal meaning of the poem as you watch it. So you may wonder what this meaning is. Have you been able to figure it out for yourselves as I'm speaking? Yes, it's a metaphor. You're right. Meaning that my poem has a literal meaning that you can see but also a metaphorical meaning. It's not just a pre-picture in the air. What you're saying? It's a metaphor for frustration, anger, from my experiences growing up in a deaf school for having my slain to take away from me and being forced to use the pluralism. Oh, of course, you're right. That's right. That's his discipline of interpretation. Having my designs taken away from me, being forbidden to sign, being forced to use or lack of communication, you're saying that it's a metaphor for that the world is imperfect and that it may have to show that the world is not always perfect. You're saying that when seeds spread, a seed is a symbol that seeds will always continue to live, that they'll continue to propagate no matter what. And that you cannot keep these hands clutched and they will open. Even if you don't plan it, even if you don't intend it, even if you try to rid the world of them, they still will continue to sprout. Exactly. That's right. So the sign, continue, is appropriate to use in the instance. This person's opinion, it used to be that deaf people were allowed to use their sign language and then the invention of the world made more methods of communication and education appeared and really diminished the ability for deaf people to use their hands to communicate. But now it's beginning to spread again that people are free to use sign language to communicate. You're right. What we've been talking about is a metaphor, is examples of how this poem is a metaphor for really deeper feelings. So the poem has a deeper meaning of what you nearly see when you first watch. Now, remember opening the poem with Moe, telling you about how it is Moe in the grass and how I realized that this dealing line and I have something in common. I was before punishment for signing and I use this, and I use this sign to say, to express my frustration at being oppressed in this way. And then again, I was abusing that sign to talk about how I was trying to rid the Dan boy. Now back in 1980, so 1880, the Milan conference, there was a Milan conference that occurred and it was a milestone in the history of deaf people. For that conference, sign language was forbidden all around the world. Deaf teachers were fired, sign language was shouted off from the province of the deaf. But now, again, sign language is continuing to be analyzed again. We'll see what happens in the future if we think it's going to take off now. Well, I agree. I really agree. Okay, I'm going to repeat the poem now so we'll have another chance. Okay, Melissa, in this poem, many things occur in the threes, movements of threes pulling out the seeds in the movement of three, well, in the movement of three, blossoming in the movement of three. I tend to use the movement of three over and over again as a rhyme. And I deliberately manipulate the poem in this way to create rhyme. There wasn't just an arbitrary expression of my feelings, but there was a deliberate plan of how I was to do this as a rhyme. The next poem is entitled The Lonely Sturdy Tree, and I'm signing it in this way. You know, a tree that's lived for a long time in this old weather. Remember 1978? That was about when mainstreaming started. Am I right there in the 70s? 73? I don't know. But that probably is that date. You're saying 1973? Okay, well, in the early 70s, mainstreaming began to become a wise method of education. And I was working in the mainstream school for deaf children, and I saw the kinds of frustrations that they went through. I became very frustrated. I had many clashes with the teachers. Now, I was at that point commuting from Reno to Carson City. I lived in Reno, and I went to the school to work in Carson City. It was a lot of 50 mile drive commute each day. And every day when I was driving, I saw this tree, and it really inspired me and out of it came this palm and a desert that's very flat. And then later, because of a mountain, it's all actually hilly, and the mountains are very cracky, with stones and lands. And on top of one of these hilly, dry mountains is the silhouette of an old, weathery, cracky tree bent from the wind. The sun beats down there, and there's no place to hide. There's only this one long tree survive every day. Now the wind always blows in this one direction, and has the trees blown over in that way. And yet it continues to stand and to wind brushes it off against its trunk. Through storm arms, through freezing cold, through sleet, that tree remains. Even through drought, when it's dry, the tree still lives. And as I watched that tree every day and every day, I thought about my own frustrations. I thought I was a kind of a spirit to this tree, and I'll repeat the call for that. When the black and white hills are hidden here, all the places here in NTID, at that time I was a student here back in 1971, my first year here at NTID, and the actual continued years of student in 1972. And this poem came about because at the time I was living in a dorm on the NT side, and I was in bed and the shade was going back and forth from the wind. I thought it was a very odd kind of a morning. I didn't like the sensation, but outside it was a beautiful day. I never forgot that and how I was awakened. Then at one point later it happened that I got a terrible toothache, and I thought I'd better run the dentist now and have it fixed or pulled out or something. It was so painful. So I called the dentist and told him and he told me, well, I'm sorry, but I have a very full schedule to have to wait until tomorrow. I told him, I'm sorry, I can't wait until tomorrow. I have an extreme amount of pain. But I told him I might have to do the best that I can and then went to bed to try to sleep. But the pain was not and I couldn't fall asleep. So I got up and started to pace the room and my pain diminished. So I started to sign and realized that was a good way to help me get through the night and out of that pain. This is a new poem that I started going to perform in 1981 even though I first conceived it in 72. The poem was written in a kind of style that may seem awkward compared to the way that I made both of these days. But I kept the stuff. That's why I'm going to submit my days that this is student year. I actually did videotape at that time when I watched the videotape and tried to keep the same style which it was conceived. Perform it that way today to keep the style of 72 alive. And you'll see that my poetry style has evolved since then in later poems. Windy Bright Morning is about this window where the shade has pulled down and the wind is blowing through letting you in through the cracks the light of the morning. And as I'm sleeping that light gets through my eyelids. Is it the wind and the sun know that I'm deaf and that I need a flashing light in order to wake up? Letting you know that I felt as if the sun and the wind knew I was deaf. So I get up to close the window. You know how RIT buildings are constructed, right? You have to close the window and as it swings out pull it shut. And that's the way all those buildings are built. So I pulled it shut and went back to bed to try to sleep again. But my body was very warm. But all of a sudden I felt the window again open again. And again the sun was flashing and an ink in my bed. The wind had opened the window and so on and the cold air was rushing in here. And I was styled and taken to bed and I got up and out of the shade a little bit and it felt pain. And this is something I want to be awakened to feel. You know here in Rochester every day there tends to be clouds over there. Rochester is famous for its cloudy weather and you'd feel like come on sun. But all of a sudden it was just one morning when the sun shone brightly cold and clear and I'll never forget it. He's asking me here does this woman have a hidden meaning? Is it a metaphor to something? And no I think this means this poem is really more for the enjoyment the beauty of the region and the feeling the expression of my experience at that time. The next poem is entitled Snowflake When I talk about this a snowflake was a concept that at one point I took a real liking to but I didn't know how to arrange it with my poem so I held onto the idea for almost three years mulling it over in the back of my mind and then one day I met a deaf child and I realized now that the snowflake had found its home and a poetry about the child. This is about the child with his body was very proud of the way the child could speak but strange when I made this snowflake and the snowflake destroyed the child I really didn't know why I put it together that way I wrote my poem and conceived it and then realized that the hidden meaning was more than I and I had been aware of when I created it after I had reported the poem I'll talk about that with you okay you don't see any oh goodness he said he saw no hidden meaning but there really is here he sings about the boy and his grandmother and then he does can't use ASL he uses English like someone uses a signed English an English word or being forced to use those words but for me really I'm talking about the boy using the oral language communication I just added a sign so you could see what he was saying you're saying that your interpretation of it is that sign thing which is so wonderful just like a snowflake is that's an interesting interpretation very good you're very warm he's very close he caught an important part that at the end the snowflake is dissolved you notice my face I do not I have a bit of a smile on my face very slight you're very close your interpretation is very close you are saying here that it's a feeling that the snowflake melting it is about the feelings that are hidden inside of it that your person has to fake it in order to make it and it's here in the world you're saying this snowflake is going and that later it will be able to spread to the earth and rise again that's interesting you're saying here that the meaning once expression in some cases must be blamed and hide one's anger knocking into a special truth feeling you're very close to him you're saying that you couldn't really follow all of it but at the very end you caught the idea that the snowflake is obliterated into the ground meaning that oppression is continuing and the smile is just a cover up for the hard feelings of that oppression you're saying that the meaning is of a little girl a little boy whatever I didn't specify the gender you're right that the meaning is about that the communication here is simply superficial there's no depth to it right very good yes you're saying the poem here is about the feelings of bitterness and disappointment that one feels when the snowflake is dissolved into the earth there's a kind of a bitter feeling you're right this poem here is very ironic the snowflake ends in like a special is mild but that mild discussion really is ironic the snowflake you know the natural snowflakes are like each snowflake has its own unique design each snowflake is an individual every snowflake is its own entity and what could that equate to what could that concept equate to the snowflake is like each different person in the world who is also unique right it is poetic the snowflake is a metaphor for individuals right the snowflake well first you see we have the sun the sun now is representative of warmth with energy and heat and also of authority who is an authority the father right the father who is above and an authority who has the power and the heat of him radiating down now the snowflake that is a metaphor for the child and when he lands into the heat of the father it happens he lands right and this is symbolized a symbol of how he loses his identity he is dissolved into the heat of his father's power now it looks very beautiful you see my expression is that it's all very lovely but ironically it's embarrassing so I'll do this more in depth for you so you can see it again that's another dimension oh did you notice something you were saying that when you said that about that child it really struck me how did you know that the child was deaf how did all of you know that because of the way they were trying to live and put it in the way that they spoke and the way they said my name is that's right okay I see how you caught that now you're saying that the father is saying say it is say yeah huh that's good he's saying that he's saying that I am five years my M is like an S oh and an S meaning in some way an S why do you know how those pieces have a chess board small ones called haunts and my vision of them is that haunts are small and small and so a diet of eggs and the other is a sand evidence but all for that and I dedicate this part very important in this time okay one of the times one of the times what were you saying I can't watch too many people one time here you're saying that the government won't help the quilt is not for them and the other is extremely important you're saying that there are no support for people like this but they're neglected and they end up dying but what's this about the planets that are turned up at the end does that mean that there's peace at the end there's freedom prevails you're saying that the flag when there are people and they're overturned there's no identity when people are left on the ground like that you're saying that there's a remembrance and an honor of the dead people right but notice you're going to say but who is this who is this who is this the flag is like this with stars and stripes but then people tend to say stars are like this and sign it this way I've seen this over and over again and in two different places in parts of the country I see all over that people sign it this way and I've taken them the radar for the dead community the stars spreading out ahead and stripes going across and I want to take the flags and lay them up like this what does that signify how does it come down for the dead community that it's dying but there's two flags here you're close it shows that that American needs support but they're still dying that's close that's American support I'll give you support but they're still the flag you're saying at the end that there's a question of oh well I'm warning you that when the hands turn face up it might mean the flag is there face up but the people will survive beyond the stars and stripes but the world in the south is gone the world in the flag is gone you're saying that the face up flag symbolizes the people who have aid to our who are simple who are honored in the quilt the handles of the quilt you're right talking about the quilt you're saying talking about the quilt and what if the American flag was a part of that quilt what would that be about? if the American flag was down there as a part of pieces of quilt that means when the soldiers die and war there's a parade and they always put quilt when the soldiers die quilts are often placed over the over the coffin that's right it's an interesting interpretation or when the flags placed over the coffin what you're talking more about deaf people many deaf people who have aimed for that that's right this is really true that this is a difficult point to decipher but it's important when I sign the stars and stripes as I do this is a way of saying the deaf people and when the evolved these flags are overturned it's a way of saying that the deaf population will diminish the world will diminish it may grow again but at the time it's diminished because of the of AIDS that community is very small to begin with it may be able to people may say oh we can find a cure and people will survive days after all but too many people in that community get it then we might not be able to save that community she's asking here why are there two different flags well because it's symbolizing both of my friends John and Sam so there was a group of us who were walking performing arts one night we were discussing something and having a nice time when all of a sudden there was a really nasty fight between two of us the next day it seemed that it had dissolved but one person the one of them who had been involved in the argument came up to me and said later you know I told them I was sorry I really disturbed me she was the one that said she was sorry so I created this poem and dedicated it to my friend who said I'm sorry does that mean any deeper meanings held within this poem you're saying that I won't say anything you may say you're sorry now but it's my to be silent I think it's good enough to leave your interpretation to yourself this poem speaks for itself pretty clearly would you like me to repeat it again anyway shall I do it again okay okay fine now do you want me to explain anything more about it first or not shall I just go ahead and do it again no yes I shall just go ahead and do it again fine do you want me to talk about it no no it's not like I was saying no I just do it there I'll leave it up to you and you can all decide for yourselves and let me tell you though it's very complex you may watch it and be completely amused but that's fine after I perform I will discuss it in depth and that's when I perform for the second time I did it much more clearly it's called the game I created this poem because one woman named Barbara Cannon was giving a presentation about death culture and the answer and at that time it was 1985 and I sat there completely fascinated by her talk and there was one point that she made about cochlear implants and she was talking about the inner ear and you know how they always talk about the big ear you don't want to put this gigantic poster the huge ear on the wall for everyone to look at you know the poster that you've all seen over and over again and I really like this idea of the big ear you know that often has people see it as one big ear without even looking at it it's really disgusting it was very true and so I thought of a poem and I asked Barbara if I could add her idea into a poem about the big ear she told me that was fine so I gave her a lot of thought but I realized the counter was very difficult to work with and I struggled for a long time it was almost three years and eight until finally it happened that Barbara's birthday she invited there are many people invited to a party for her and I thought I'd love to present to her this poem about the ear to dedicate to her for her birthday finally came up with it and entitled it a famous sign like this they're completely puzzled by it this is like a band you're right it's like a band she said it's like music you know like a big band they're a band your culture almost right what's this on what's going on here this is about just about the inner ear people people who are deaf or people always trying to find out how to improve deaf people hearing trying to make them able to hear better they try to help when they even enter into the ear to try to fix it right this is correct very good you got the point you get the nail in the head and finally it's as a comparison between the ear and the cave right you go down into a cave and the tool goes down into the ear and you know the different lines around the ear compared to stalactites from the cave and once it's being pulled out things being pulled out do you know what they do they clean out the ear what's being pulled out what's being pulled out cilia right and if I'm planting a cold layer implant into the ear placing it deep down inside it's hard to know if this your perception of this is positive or negative if you say it's negative wow you're right if you couldn't catch it but you're right I'm not overt about my impressions of this I love anti-duty and I want you to have to work hard to figure out what it is that I really what it is what I want the real point is I just like to talk to you and and I'll be looking at a picture an image that I gave in Snowflake and I can do with a cave and you then figure out what my perceptions are on these images we have the cave and then we have these steps you know stairs going deeper and deeper down to the cave what do these stairs symbolize it's the lines from the cochlear implant all the lines from the cochlear implant and then these lights what do they symbolize the electricity right the energy the electricity is being wired down into the ear and these drips and the lights what's that like air conditioning placed within a cave meaning that really the natural elements of the ear are taken out and these artificial elements are placed in and it's very ironic you notice the ribbons that I set up and the lights and the chairs red white and blue placed throughout the audience symbolizing the air it's like now why would I do something like that why did I bring up the American flag because it only supports this right because this is during the time when they get used when they use bright colors and tie-dye and all that kind of thing interesting very interesting and hallucinations they glow nice and what I'm also talking about money here is that the cochlear implant costs millions of dollars it's very expensive you're putting a lot of money into a kid when you do that so I'm sure that technologists the people who are using this only have seed dollar signs otherwise when they think of placing cochlear implants now what's all this about this brightness up in the sky it's about the sound about misperceptions very good about anger it's basically interpretation but my interpretations are the distance these are the sounds that I can't hear and a cochlear implant just makes those sounds increase in volume so they make your implant not in a great amplitude so what benefit is that okay now I'll perform it again alright and this is the last final evening but I'll let you know that being here was really exciting for me I'm teaching them children now and there's more news about about children getting cochlear implants so I really want to talk to you I really want to give you a message about that thank you for listening to my analogy take care I want to thank the interpreter for interpreting for Clayton Valley tonight it's just a chapel I want to choose your voice


Good evening and welcome to channel 17's continuing election coverage you thought that it was over in March But it's not because Essex Junction and the Essex Westford school district still have some Decisions to be made by you So we are speaking today with two candidates for the Essex Westford school district And that is Joanne Jewel and Todd Oditt and they are both New candidates they neither of them are incumbents and this is a position that has one seat that's open So you will be voting on what day is the election? April 9th, April 9th. That's what I thought coming up April 9th And if you have questions today tonight, this is the 5th of April You can give us a call at 8 6 2 3 9 6 6 we'd love to hear from you So without further ado welcome both of you. Thank you. Thank you very much Todd, why don't we start with you? Why are you running and what qualifies you for the school board? Sure. Thank you for the question My interest in the school board has really goes back two years when the districts merged and there was the promise of transportation services to the village and the first year of the merger that didn't happen it was announced quite late and Being an active parent in the community. I heard a lot of comments from the from the parents I was concerned about that and then so as the last summer Happened and the school year was approaching. I was concerned. Is this going to happen? I started reaching out to Brian the COO of the school district had a meeting with them We know what are we doing to make sure this is going to happen? I started attending board meetings I've probably been to 15 or 20 board meetings since June originally Just trying to advocate for the parents. I was listening to who didn't have the time to attend the meetings For that service in the village as I intend in those meetings I realized that out of that group of ten I felt I had a unique set of skills that I could bring to the board I'm not a education Policy wonk at all, but I've been involved in public administration and public policy My entire professional career So I thought I could bring my expertise and experience in working with the board being an administrator Public policy advocacy to the board. I thought it was something that could fill a role And I saw that need on the board. So I decided, you know, why not help out if I'm going to be in the crowd Participating in meetings as a parent Why not have the backing of the voters and their voice to sit on the board and have more of an impact? Wonderful. Thank you very much. Joanne Why do I want to run? I am very invested in education My professional background as a CPA and investigator Leads me to listen to my eyes and my ears and I think it's Very important that we, you know, give our students the best education possible As far as the busing situation You know, I'm at my kids actually live in the junction, too That was I think the take on that was I think, you know I wish we'd gone with a proactive versus a reactive meaning not change the schedules until we had the buses in place But then it's the supply and demand thing, you know I don't think it was within their control That they didn't have the people people to fill the buses, but the schedule changed So that's a very tough position that they were put in so but I know it's very disconcerting when our taxes You know, you know $700,000 was left over from the busing situation, but back to my personal What what would make me a good? Member of the school board is you know, I'm a CPA by trade I know numbers I do tax accounting, but I also do understand fund accounting and can ask the question and Ask the questions that need to you know be asked and do due diligence to you know Make sure that we're making those good choices for you know, the Society with the the kids in general and what are the top three issues that you would work on? I think I definitely would work on special education that I think is very very important. There is a Obviously with act 46 they're changing the way, you know, the funding stream is I think there's a missing piece in that for Essex specifically is there's a federal law. It's called child fine. So every As you know all the states get money from the federal government for some programs for Education child fine is a federal law where the schools have to identify they have to evaluate kids in need Essex displays that on their policy handbook different than a lot of other schools do Colchester Does it differently as well as Wilson it so it's a child finding the school has to do it and the way the Essex read it It says the parents are first and the and the children are second now I know we spent a lot of money on special education 50% of The general G can go to special education. I think there's a number of kids. They're not being identified So to me that's very very important because I know they're talking about My time up. No, you got another minute. Okay, so I'm one of the big reports was DMG They did a report and they the teachers were talking about that they deal with behaviors all day long Well, I think there was a perhaps a group of kids. They're not getting identified as needs And if those kids needs were met at early age It would be you know, those behaviors would be corrected as well as those can be more productive later in life Do you have any other issues besides special ed? I think a return on investment as far as I want to incentivize incentivize teachers that do that want to do More right now how it's in places there. They are They're paid on basis of their education and courses that they take in addition to that I think there's teachers that want to do more so those teachers that want to do more if they want to you know If it's whatever whatever they want to do like for example There's people that want to do robotics or people that want to do all kinds of different clubs Or there could there could be all kinds of different incentives Obviously working with the teachers and the union to make that something that's worthwhile because the teachers are our best investment Okay. Thank you very much. Todd. What are your top three issues? And you've named the school transportation as one Transportation is one so I would like to find an equitable resolution to that Within the resources that are available available. We need to find a resolution that treats everyone equitably I'm also concerned or interested in capital planning and budgeting. I think by bringing together a Huge amount of schools and the amount of capital Resources we have That going forward trying to figure out how we're going to divvy up the funds within the district to those capital improvements is going to be A challenge. I think part of that stems from the governance structure that was set up which I think manifested itself in the transportation debate by creating a Board that represents Portions of the district it's going to be interesting to see how we decide which schools are improved and when Like I said that I think showed up in the transportation Discussion where we had you know six out of the ten board members had transportation and I didn't see a lot of leadership among those individuals to sort of Advocate for what was in the best interest of the district as a whole which left just the Minority four members of the village Trying to advocate for that and when you have four against six obviously that you're not going to get very far I'd also like to work on board and administration communication From what I saw it seemed that the board weren't always Prepared well in advance for their meetings. They didn't always have the meeting materials Enough in advance of a meeting to be able to understand it read it and formulate questions I think that's highly important that board members have that ability to Digest material before a board meeting as opposed to getting it At the meeting and then trying to react at the time so All right, why don't you tell us about your view of how consolidation of this school district has worked and do you think? That it has been beneficial for the region Okay, I think part of my last question it goes to that but frankly I think it's too early to tell Again my biggest concern is the way the district was set up and is our board Governance structure Going to serve the the interests of the district as a whole Going forward So you're concerned about representation. I'm concerned about representation I would have I would have been interesting to see if we had some at-large members on the board how the transportation discussion would have went I'm also concerned about the number of students we now have and the capital facilities we've had There's been a few Comments at some board meetings. I've heard where well. We have a lot of students now I Don't think that should be an excuse we knew going in how many students we had we're going to have and we need to serve them all equitably and give them the same resources so Hopefully it works. Maybe it doesn't but it's too early for me to judge whether or not it's going to work and whether it's Successful, thank you Joanne. I Really haven't seen much of a change You know for example on a smaller scale we carpool a soccer carpool with a young gentleman that goes to Essex middle school and he's always talking about all the field trips he goes to Well, my kids go to ADL and they don't go to those field trips at all So we still hear all the stuff EMS does that's on the small scale on the larger scale I know that they talked about You know their savings as far as administration so there's not duplication of effort So that is some savings there is also I know ADL has an assistant principal EMS doesn't have one EES has you know, that's that size of the school is the same size as Hiawatha and some combined so those both schools are getting Assistant principal or I guess an L SEL. I'm not sure you know social emotional learning So I don't know if that's they're the same title. So I think that's important, but I haven't seen That much Difference and I know I know I looked at that DMG report that was done as far as Essex is one of the test cases for special ed And they talked about you know, some of the programs that are run at summit some of the programs that are running Yes, and they're not the same. So I think one of the things is to take the best practices and Do it district-wide. So for giving those training to the teachers. It's all the same training So I think they're still maybe running Separately even though we're under one umbrella. All right So what do you think of Vermont's approach to funding education and what direction would you give the legislators on? What they should do differently? I I think actually where they do a very good job on you know, how it is funded It's interesting watching that 65% of The population there how they actually contribute to income tax is through income not their Actual household rate, but stepping back as far as I know is it 97 or 98? That it's basically an equal playing field. It's no longer, you know a Shelburne, which is a more affluent or has more Dollars taxes or that they get more of the education. I think it's very good. That is the level playing playing feel I really do agree with that. All right. Very good. Todd. What do you believe about the? education funding I think the goal is good, but I think the system is too complex most people have No idea how it works, you know if I walked up to a person on the street and said, you know What do you think about the town's common level of appraisal or their coefficient of dispersion or equal? Equalized people or you know homestead rate, they would look at me like I was crazy. They think it was April Fool's Day You know, you got to be making these things up. I think it needs to be More transparent. There's a large Shift on to municipalities to actually make this funding system work It's all based on we have 240 246 towns more or less Who are responsible for maintaining the ground list and assessing property values a lot of the times? Those people are elected laypeople who are responsible for that. We have to collect the tax We build the tax a lot of times we get people in who Don't understand why they're billed at the non-residential rate or they didn't get their property adjustment And we as local officials are left to try to explain what is really a state issue It's an interesting hybrid of trying to do a property tax as well as making it, you know An income tax with the income sensitivity. I'd be interested in seeing a real in thorough look into Making it a purely income-based tax for residents and leaving the property tax to non-residential But like I said, I think the goal is good in trying to Level the playing field, but I think the the actual structure is too complicated and most people don't understand How their spending decisions are impacted in their in their property tax, so Yeah, there's actually a really good video on Vermont school board that explains The whole thing it's kind of an animated thing It's really for people that wanted to to see that explained in layman's terms. Yeah Great that's good to know because it is pretty complex. It is and when I saw I'm like, well, oh, this is really, you know It was it's very very broken down into ways people can understand So Todd, why don't we just talk about your view of whether the district is effectively addressing and funding the opportunity gap and that is the difference between The disparity and access to quality education and the resources needed for all children to be academically successful sure First I want to say when I don't really understand something I'll be I'll be the first to admit that I don't know I had not having served on the school board before I'm not really I don't have a good understanding of where they are spending their dollars So I don't really feel qualified or have enough information to comment on that specifically But in my opinion, I think where we could make a really good investment is in preschool My understanding, you know with Act 166 the state funds 10 hours of What you would some would consider quality preschool education for students. I don't think that's I don't think that's frankly enough My wife and I were fortunate to be able to send our two kids to NACI accredited preschools As soon as they turned three we received, you know that Subsidy from the state to send them there. We didn't we didn't need it I would like to see the board look into other ways the district can do more Can we do more than what the bare minimum of the state is and is the community Interested in spending that because it would come out of local dollars. It's my understanding It wouldn't be supported by the state, but I think if we can the earlier we can start educating our kids and getting them into an environment Where they're supported and they have quality instruction. I think that will pay dividends in the long run So that's one thing I would be interesting if I get elected to the board to say, you know, is there something we can do more? And I think it would be around preschool education. Thank you. So Joanne, you talked a little bit about that Investing on the front end when you were talking about special education How do you think the district is using its funding to address this opportunity gap? I? Think once again looking at that DMG report there are some disparity on how you know the town and the junction does it and Not to pit one against each other, but one appears to have more this is done This is done more systematical approach and 100 percent 110 percent agreement with Todd It's got to be proactive not reactive. I think perhaps some of your discipline problems You know the teachers in that DMG report say I do behaviors all day long Well, I think a big part of that and studies have shown if the kid is not getting it for web for whatever region the social emotional part It's important that we address that early on it just it just reaps so many You know it cuts off the problems. Hopefully at the past, you know, there's so many kids You know they talk about that 50% only 50% of the kids are reading at level in third grade We have to do better than that. We just have to I think it just you know Those are the kids that are coming out at the end And that perhaps some of the children might be for whatever reason, you know on the government Fisk But if we do do if we're proactive and do stuff at an early age those kids are gonna go into you know They're gonna just feel better about themselves because they're keeping up with their peers. Thank you Do you I just want to remind folks if you want to give us a call at 8 6 2 3 9 6 6 We'd love to hear from you. We're speaking with the candidates for the Essex Westford school district the election is April 9th Unconscious racial bias. How do you do you think the district is working towards addressing this issue? Joanne, I think the school that is actually does a very very good job from from what I'm seeing. I'm not in every I know Todd was saying that he attends a lot of the board meetings. I actually watched them after the fact And I think you know the black lives matter. I think you know It appears that the high school they're very open. They have a lot of groups and communities You know my I have twins at the middle school and they have friends a wide diversity of friends, you know from on their basketball teams to you know All kinds of different cultures and I just think it's amazing that I Mean I'm not in a position sitting in their chair and seeing what they feel like but everything that I've seen it's integrated You know they all come together as peers friends one another And so I think the district does a very good job with that Okay, thank you Todd your view on unconscious racial bias now it's handled in the district sure yeah, I Was pleasantly surprised when my third grader came home from Summit Street School and said we have this opportunity to pick a Subject dealing with bias that wasn't his exact term, but and he chose racism and I Just I was floored by that. I was excited by that. I remember as being a third grader That's not anything we ever discussed and we had a really interesting conversation about that Could this school do more? Of course, you know, I think Or the district, you know, I think every student should be able to go to school and feel comfortable and There not be any concerns about any bias in the in the curriculum And that they have an opportunity To learn throughout their Education it's not just a third grade unit and then you move on I think it's something that should be continuous and I was really interested to read about I believe it's act number one of the 2019 Session that Governor Phil Scott just signed and I if I can get it correctly I think it was the ethnic and social equity standard study committee that is designed to the whole purpose of which is to Create a study committee of a lot of stakeholders to come up. Can we look at implementing? State education standards to deal with biases not just racial but, you know Social and there were there was a lot of good information in there. I read that bill today and I Think that you know before that study is finished That's something that the district could look at and say here are the criteria that were laid out For this study committee and why not get it? Why not get a head start and start looking at these things and seeing it what we can do? You know, I think a large part of it is Incorporating That continual learning into the teachers and saying, you know, this isn't just you know You've you've attended one training, you know This is gonna be some subject that you should continue with your entire career from from Beginning to end. Okay. Thank you very much Let's go to the question of personal learning plans This is a 2020 expectation that the students are meant to graduate with these learning plans So what is needed to get to be done to get the school district and the stakeholders on board with this state mandate? Sure, well my daughter would Has told me that if it didn't take away from her wellness block. She'd be much more interested But I think that speaks volumes in that Students need to understand what it's for what the purpose is At the board many meeting I attended on Tuesday. There was an hour-long presentation on what the school was doing on plp's and the focus of that were these Selective Student forums that they had in each school and the results of that were We're pretty amazing. It seemed like it really got the kids Engaged and I asked at that meeting. Well, can we do this for every student? Why shouldn't every student have this opportunity and and you know the response was well We have a lot of students, but then you know a little talk through it's like well It doesn't need to be you know the two individuals who led these doing doing them for everybody perhaps we can Enable students to lose lead some of these maybe we can empower teachers to lead some of these I think From what I heard Across the district it varies the time that students are allowed to work on their plp's You know, perhaps we can bring in Ask the students, you know, what are some of the? Professions or what would you aspire to do and bring in some of those people and come up with have them develop Sort of their plp if you know if someone's an airline pilot, you know If I was a sixth grader, this is sort of what my plp would look like and demonstrate to them how that works and in terms of Parents, I think it would be really good to Develop some videos when you know the last presidential election. We saw a lot of these short one two-minute videos Explaining that electoral college. Maybe we can do something like that for parents so that they can digest that information In in short snips at their leisure to kind of get them on board and educate them as to what they are Thank you so much. Joanne, what's your view on plp's and integrating this needs to be done? I think it's very important my twins will graduate in 2023. I spoke a great deal to them. Like I said, I have a Son that's a sophomore right now at UVM an engineering major and as we said you need to be Take a wide variety of courses so that you don't limit yourself when you get in college So that's a big discussion in our house You know that fact that he's already been on the other end of that but I think it's important for people I don't have that don't have that you know For example a big age gap so that we know what you need to do. So my daughter who's on this member of the eighth grade board they had some kids come from the high school and And speak to them about that You know we just said it's you need to take it seriously I really don't know you know what they have done in the classroom But I know they didn't seem like they took it as seriously I said my our point of view is you need to take it seriously so that your teachers are taking it seriously So somebody's gonna have an educated discussion with you. So I Know my eighth graders haven't really gone on board even though we've been disgusted But I I think we need to do more around it to make to to have them engaged In it, okay. We have time from one minute closing comments. So Joanne jewel Would you like to give us a one-minute closing comment? Absolutely? If elected, you know, I would like to serve all the constituents as I said You know specialized is one of the things that I think that we need to help those students as well as a CPA You know, I'll dig into the due diligence. I work well as a team I work well as an individual and to listen to you know the taxpayer taxpayers and whatnot to support the district Very good. Thank you so much. Todd odick closing comment. Sure It's given the opportunity. I really look forward to representing the village although I Don't like divvying up the village the unified district into political areas, you know, that's where we are I feel I'm very skilled at Advocating I'm willing to listen. I don't come in with any with any agendas anything that I Feel like I need to achieve I need to spend a lot of time learning and understanding what the board is is working on and I look forward to the opportunity I'm happy. I'm happy to do it and I feel like I have the the skills and experience to be an effective representative of the village of Essex Junction on The school district on the Essex West All right, well, I want to thank you both so much for your willingness to serve It's never easy to sit on a forum and say what you think and put your Ideas out there to the public. So I really appreciate that you both the time taking the time to do it And I just want to remind folks April 9th is election day for the junction and also that will have an impact on the Essex Westford school district because there will be a vote on those Representatives and the two here today are Joanne Joule and Todd Odette. So don't forget to vote and thanks so much for watching


If India has inherited over 5,000 years of a native culture, she has also gathered on the way many influences from outside and integrated them as her own over the centuries. The mystique of India's perennial river of wisdom was joined by streams of myriad hues. From the 11th century onwards, North India became a battleground of sorts for a few centuries, with several kings engaging themselves constantly in war as a gigantic sport. Babar, a Turku-Mongol descendant of Taimulain and Jengiz Khan, conquered Delhi and established the Mughal Empire in 1526, an empire which held sway over large regions of India for over 300 years. Architecture under Akbar's guidance represented an aesthetic synthesis between Hindu and Islamic features. Classical Hindustani music is a product of the Hindu-Muslim composite culture that has become the hallmark of a vibrant tradition, even as the Taj Mahal was under construction in the year 1600. A group of traders in England formed the East India Company to further the cause of British trading in Indian goods. To protect the rising manufacture of England from the popularity of Indian textiles, an impossibly high import tax was imposed on most Indian goods, while other goods from India were outright prohibited. On the other hand, British goods were allowed free of duty for import and sale in India. Many Indian artisans lost their jobs. Many industries closed down. It is in this context that in 1857, a rebellion of soldiers of the East India Company spread all over India with the active cooperation of some Indian rulers. Citing the maladministration by East India Company as the cause for widespread discontent in India, power was taken over by the British crown. Queen Victoria proclaimed herself the Empress of India. Although the British Raj perpetrated many atrocities in its attempt to perpetuate the economic slavery of India, there was another face also to the coin. The influence of Western thinkers resulted in organizations which had a profound impact on India. The Mahatma's philosophy and convictions had a deep and profound influence on the policies and events of the freedom struggle. The Mahatma despised the economic enslavement of India and adopted the spinning wheel as the symbol of a self-reliant India. Kadi, handspun, hand-woven cloth became a cult with nationalist passion. If Jalyanwala Bagh was one watershed in India's freedom movement, there was another, a decade later, when the apostle of non-violence led his followers in a march to make salt. In the early 1940s, while the freedom movement was operating only underground and its leaders were in prison, a party known as the Muslim League rose in importance by constantly being closed to the colonial government. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, nurtured the idea of a separate Muslim state. The worldwide respect for the moral authority of the Mahatma, the growing restlessness of the Indian forces, demonstrated by a mutiny in the Navy, a change of government in England. All of this cumulatively resulted in the British decision to transfer power. Partition became the inevitable price of freedom. And two nations were born, India and Pakistan. On the 15th of August 1947, India's destiny was placed in her own hands.


The Brainerd Warriors baseball team has been in a bit of a slump lately. They fell 3-0 this week against Moorhead and only registered 3 hits. But the good thing with all these cancellations, a tight schedule, and a quick chance to bounce back today. They take on Saint Cloud Tech today in a double header, however they would fall in an early 8-0 hole. Trying to get out of it, you've got Mikhail Petersen a bat with two runners on. Gets good contact, that would bring two home. Later on in the game, Max Borne a bat with the bases loaded, sends it to center. Two runs come around home, however they're unable to get out of that early hole as they would lose game one. 14-9, so a tough loss for the Warriors there. However they bounce back in game two with a convincing 12-2 victory over Saint Cloud Tech.


Service members from across the country have the opportunity to work with medical professionals at a northern New Jersey Hospital. The name of the game is teaching service members about the latest in medical technology so they can apply the lessons learned while in the field. Here's more. Today is a proud day for one dozen service members. The 12 men and women are part of the latest graduating class of Operation Hack and Sack Smart, which stands for Strategic Medical Asset Readiness Training. Over the course of the past two weeks, the service members worked with doctors and other medical experts at Hack and Sack UMC, learning about some of the latest cutting-edge medical technology. The service members received training in several departments including the operating room, emergency medical services, behavioral health and radiology. Those involved with the program say the skills these soldiers have learned will allow them to be prepared for the most highly intense situations on the battlefield. We are passionate to make sure our soldiers are ready so they can take care of the soldiers that they need to take care of should they need to go forward. It helps those soldiers get that real-world hands-on experience prior to going into a theater. It lets them get that experience now instead of maybe in the future. Operation Hack and Sack Smart began in June of 2017. Since then, dozens of service members from different branches of the military have spent the two weeks soaking up knowledge from hospital staffs. And now that their two weeks is up, participants say they are feeling mixed emotions. It's actually a better sweet thing. It's very better than the fact that the program is ending so soon. It was very sweet for the fact that we were here for two weeks doing incredible things with such amazing people and such a broad wealth of knowledge. Hack and Sack University Medical Center was the first hospital in the country to offer a program like this. Reporting in Hack and Sack, New Jersey, I'm Daniel Connors for WNBC News.


Meantime, the World Bank has made a donation of supplies to the dental department in the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs. The Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs received support from the Project Implementation Unit of the World Bank Health Strengthening Project to improve health and safety conditions at dental clinics on island. The World Bank Health Strengthening Project funded the procurement of nine extra-oral dental suction machines to aid in reducing aerosols and water droplets released into the air during dental procedures. This will reduce the risk of contamination and the spread of viruses such as COVID-19. Alison Jean is the procurement analyst from the Project Implementation Unit of the World Bank Health Strengthening Project. This unit is an effective method of reducing droplet splatter during operative dental procedures and can be used in helping reduce the risk of experiencing COVID-19 spread during dental procedures. Therefore, the Project Implementation Unit is pleased to hand over these suction machines to the Ministry of Health for the use at the dental clinics. The machines were presented to the Ministry of Health at a small handing-over ceremony. Minister for Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs Honourable Moses Jabatis in receiving the machines on behalf of the Ministry expressed immense gratitude to the Project Implementation Unit of the World Bank Health Strengthening Project and to dental practitioners for their dedicated service. Honourable Jabatis emphasized the importance of continued support in the fight against COVID-19. I want to say to you that the COVID-19 pandemic, as you may know, requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. It requires an attitude where all departments, whether it be within the Ministry of Health and Wellness, within the Ministry of the Department of Elderly Affairs, when we establish it, whether it be within the dental units, whether it be in our government departments as a whole country, all of us need to have an all-hands-on-deck approach to fighting COVID-19. It is really something for all of us and therefore I wish, generally, to encourage everybody to continue to do what we must to ensure that we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. The extra-oral dental suction system, droplets and aerosols terminators, will be placed at dental clinics around the island. From the Government Information Service, Hermione Mark reporting.


This paper examines the potential benefits of autonomous vehicles, AVs, for smart and sustainable development. It also discusses the privacy and cybersecurity risks associated with AVs and the measures taken by governments to address them. The authors found that governments have been taking various steps to address the privacy and cybersecurity risks related to AVs, including regulation and voluntary guidelines. However, more action is needed to ensure that AVs can be used safely and securely. This article was authored by Hazel C. Min Lim and R.S. Tehak.


who is joining us today. Welcome to the CNCF webinar, API Gateway and Ingress Management with Kong for Kubernetes. I'm Chris Short, Principal Technical Marketing Manager at Red Hat and Cloud Native Computing Foundation Ambassador. I'll be moderating today's webinar. It's going to be presented by Harry Bagde, Senior Cloud Engineer at Kong. Before we get started, though, I have a few housekeeping items to go over. During the webinar, you're not able to talk as an attendee. Sorry. But there is a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. Please feel free to drop your questions in there and we'll get to as many as we can at the end. This is an official webinar of the CNCF. As such, it is subject to CNCF code of conduct. Please do not add anything to the chat or questions that would be in violation of that code of conduct. Basically, be respectful of all your fellow participants, presenters and their time. With that, I will hand it over to Harry, Senior Cloud Engineer at Kong. Take it away. Thank you, Chris. Welcome to the webinar. I'm Harry. I lead all the software development on the Kubernetes side at Kong. Kong is an enterprise product company. But today, whatever I'll be talking to you about is all open source. So all of this is available to you right away right now. So let's get started with the agenda for today. Today's agenda is pretty simple. We have a new open source gateway, Kong 2.0 that we released earlier this month, and then we'll get into how Kong works with Kubernetes and helps you do ingress management. We also have a new release of our ingress controller, which we call Kong for Kubernetes 0.7. So we'll take a deep dive in some features. And we also go through a demo there. It's a pretty short and simple talk, so let's just dive in. So Kong initially was released in 2015, and we released the 1.0 version in about, oops, I'm sorry. So we released 1.0 in 2018, and in last one year we have been working towards Kong 2.0. Kong 2.0 brings in a major feature asked from the community, which is called the Go plugins. Kong is built on top of nginx, on top of OpenResty, and it's written completely in Lua. We use LuaJet for performance reasons, and Kong is super blazingly fast, but the Lua community is pretty small. So we've opened that up to enable you to write plugins in Go. Go is, as we all know, the cloud native language, essentially, Kubernetes, Docker, everything that is essentially written for cloud is nowadays written in Go. So we have extended that to Go. You can do request transformations, authorizations, authentication, whatnot. Everything is possible, whatever is possible in our Lua plugins. The second most important feature is hybrid data plane control plane separation, which we call the hybrid mode. Kong traditionally required a database to run. With Kong 1.1, we removed that requirement altogether, and Kong can function without a database. In the control plane data plane mode, the control plane nodes are associated with the database, and they configure all the data plane nodes. So the data plane nodes do not need to have any connection other than the control plane, which could be running in one and configuring all your ingress clusters across the world, across multiple Kubernetes clusters as well if you want that to be the case. We released a new plugin called ACME plugin, which is named after the ACME protocol. The most popular certificate authority there is Lits Encrypt. So this plugin essentially allows you to automatically encrypt your API traffic using TLS certificates. So you have issue DPS by default. So that's another feature. And then we have a lot of feature under the hood, something like buffered proxy, which allows for more advanced request and response transformations. So that's all in the details. So do check it out. If you're using Kong 1.0 already, Kong 2.0 does not have a lot of breaking changes. There are only two that I'm aware of, and they're pretty easy to work around. So the upgrade path is also very simple and easy. So with that, we want to talk about Kubernetes since this is a Kubernetes community we are talking about. Kong is essentially agnostic to the platform it runs on, but we cater very heavily to the Kubernetes ecosystem because it allows you to do so much automation. So Kong integrates tightly with Kubernetes, but it works across hybrid infrastructures where you have multiple kinds of orchestration platforms deployed. So let's get into what is an Ingress spec and what is an Ingress controller and how Kong fits into it. So Ingress is a specification that was initially launched in about 2015 or 2016, and it has been stuck in the V1 beta 1 phase for about three or four years now. We are moving into V1 with Kubernetes 1.18, which is scheduled to be released later this quarter. So that transfers into V1 spec, which will always be supported by Kubernetes. There is also a V2 spec that is being developed by the community, which is called service APIs for the lack of better naming. So what is Ingress spec? So Ingress is a vendor neutral way of defining access to your services that run inside Kubernetes. So you might be having a few hundred services running, but you want a single point of entry through which you can control how is the traffic routed, how is the traffic authenticated, or maybe how do you want to log this traffic monitor and collect matrix on it. So Ingress is essentially right now HTTP based only so you can route traffic based on HTTP host headers or virtual hosts and paths. Kong can extend that and some other windows also extend that quite a bit, and that's what we'll be talking, looking into it more. Ingress has a lot of wider adoption. A majority of cloud providers also bring in their controllers and the community has seen a huge number of controllers which conform to the spec and it makes it super easy to switch between the different vendors. So if you're running something else, some other controller, you can switch that out and put that other controller in your Kubernetes cluster with relatively easy migration. So let's look at the spec itself. So this is a sample Ingress resource based on the spec. As you can see, our API group is networking V1 beta one. The kind is Ingress. We have the usual metadata type meta here, so it is finance APIs. And then we have the spec section. So as you can see in the green, what we have is called referred to as the routing policy. So what we're saying here is whenever the any request any HTTP request that comes into it comes into our Ingress point, if it has the host header or the virtual host as example.com, follow these two rules. So the rules are if slash bills, if the request path starts with slash bills, we'll send it to the bills service on port 80, which is running inside our Kubernetes cluster. And then we have the slash orders endpoint, which will be sent to the order service. So this using the same respect you can essentially tie up your microservices that are running inside Kubernetes and present them as one single API. Or maybe you have different groups of microservices that you want to present differently. So this spec allows you to define those policies. As you can see here, that is nothing specific to a vendor here. We're not specific on how to do this. We are just declaring what we want the desired state, which is what we refer to as declarative configuration in Kubernetes. Excuse me. So Kong for Kubernetes is an ingress controller. So right now we are here talking about Kong but imagine any other reverse proxy or cloud load balance of that you can replace with Kong. And then you have a controller component. Controllers are the way in Kubernetes to to manage configuration and reconcile state. So you specify a desired state and the controller takes that desired state to the target to the current state. So it matches the current state of the Kubernetes cluster to match the desired state. So as we can see here, we have the Kubernetes API server on the left and we have a proxy running in this case Kong and the controller sits between those two components. Now Kong or beat any other vendor does not understand what Kubernetes API server is talking about by the bot. You can put in a controller in place. And the controller essentially translates what is API server configuration into Kong. So the controller is what configures the proxy. The controller is not itself trials sending over the traffic. It's just configuring a proxy which then sends over this traffic into different services. So in our case we have bills, orders and inventory. So let's focus on the controller piece. So this is the piece that is Kubernetes specific. The proxy could be agnostic to Kubernetes, you know, you can have load balancers and non Kubernetes environments can also have proxies running anywhere in the cloud. But the controller is what configures it and makes it specific to Kubernetes. This also opens up the realm of possibilities where the controller interacts with different CIDs. So imagine you're using cert manager to do certificate management or interacting with how to configure Prometheus matrix and things like that. So all the intelligence is essentially baked into the controller and the proxy software has the proxy capabilities. So each of those two components are doing their own thing. So let's focus on Kong for Kubernetes and what Kong's controller can do. We released a new version, Kubernetes English controller 0.7, which is compatible with the proxy version of Kong 1.x or Kong 2.x. So with 0.7 we have released something called encrypted client credentials. The credentials are now stored in Kubernetes data store, which is at CD and we use Kubernetes secrets to store these credentials. So you get encrypted credentials at rest that are loaded into Kong dynamically by the controller. Kong does not need a database or anything. So it's simply a deployment with a pod having two containers. The controller gets all these configurations and loads it up into Kong and Kong can verify your client credentials. And these can include anything from key authentication, basic authentication, or using some form of OAuth or OIDC, any kind of authentication. You can store the credentials in its CD and Kong loads them up or you cannot even use your own identity provider as well. Another feature is GRPC routing. So Kong has introduced something called a native GRPC routing with plugin support. So essentially if you are using GRPC or GRPC web to expose your services as GRPC, instead of JSON over HTTP or other protocols, you can use again Kong to expose this traffic. And Kong is aware of each and every GRPC request and traffic. So you can route your GRPC request to different services based on different GRPC methods. So if one server is handling your ingestion of events and the other server is a service is pointing to reading requests, you can split those up at Kong. And then Kong can also run plugins. So you get all Prometheus matrix, you get all authentication schemes with Kong right out of the box. So you can keep your GRPC service fairly small, just having the business logic in there. And Kong talks to GRPC with the client and with your service. So it's upstream and downstream both ways. Another highly requested feature was mutual TLS. So a lot of customers run in very sensitive environments and compliance is a very important part of their infrastructure. In such a case, people want to encrypt even internal cluster traffic and Kong allows you to do that using mutual TLS. So you can bring in your own certificate authority or you can use any default one or use piffy for that and on Kong loads that certificate up and it can authenticate itself to your services. And then on the service side, you could probably have some authorization taking place that only Kong can talk to it and you can prevent, you know, service to service communication if you require to do so. Or you can use something like, you know, VST or Kuma or any other service mesh to manage that as well for you. So Kong fits pretty nicely with that ecosystem of service mesh as well. Kong focuses on, you know, the north-south ingress traffic and use the best service solution for you. So that's that's the general overview of zero dot seven. With that, let's get started with a demo. We're going to look at a few like GRPC and some some rate limiting plugin and a little bit of admission controller as well. So with that, let's get started. So as you can see on my screen, I have a Kubernetes cluster. I'm using GKE for this demo just because I've set that up in my Dev environment, but you're free to use any cluster. So you can use any Kubernetes cluster. All you need is support for a service of type load balancer. You can get away without that service as well. If the need be, you can use node board or any other, you know, any other proxy software that you would like to use. So with that, I'll go ahead and get started and deploy Kong for Kubernetes first. So this handy bitly link here. I'm just going to apply that. It's a single installation. So with this, we have created a few resources. So let's take a look at it. So first we have created something called a namespace for Kong, in which we run all these Kong specific services. And then we have four custom resources. Custom resources allow you to define your own API's on top of Kubernetes API's and we use these custom resources to extend com extend the ingress specification. So these are things that are specific to Kong, but are not present in the specification. The ingress resource is also fairly narrow. There's a general consensus on it. And as I said earlier, we're working on a V2 spec as a Kubernetes community in the SIG network channel. So if you're interested, please come on board in the SIG network channels and you can find like a whole new set of API's that are being designed for that. Next we create some RBAC resources. These essentially allow Kong to talk to the Kubernetes API server. So as we saw, there is Kong, there is the controller, and there is the API server. So the controller gets these permissions of, you know, it wants to list all the ingress specification and it wants to know where the pods are and things like that. And then we have a config map for some default server blocks, which can, which is not strictly required. And then we have the services. So we have two services, the Kong proxy, which is of service of type load balancer. So as you can see here, we have the service of type load balancer. And because we are running in GKE, GKE automatically assigns such a cluster and external IP address. And we also have a Kong validation web book, which is a service, but we are going to install the web book next. So if you take a note of this IP address, you can actually hit the IP address from your box as well. This is a public IP address. I'm just going to set an environment variable so that we can use that later on. So if I proxy send a request here, we can see that Kong responds back with a request and it responds back with a 404, nothing found. This is because we do not have anything configured in our cluster. So if we see we do not have any ingress resources, Kong does not know how to send this request for. Next, what I'm going to do is I'm going to also set up something called an admission controller. So let me show you the script that I'm running. So I'm just using open SSL client to generate a self-signed certificate for the Kong validation web book service. Then I'm creating a Kubernetes secret, a TLS secret. Once I have that, I am enabling the admission web book. So we have the kind of validating admission web book and we are going to validate each Kong consumer, each Kong plugin that are being created or updated. So let's go ahead and try to set that up. So we generated the self-signed certificate and then we created a secret. We updated the deployment to use the self-signed certificate and private key. And then we finally update the validation web book. So this makes it super hard for users to shoot themselves in the foot. So if you're making any mistakes while configuring, it's super easy to not indent things correctly or something just goes here. This will catch most of those things. All right. So we have got our Kubernetes ingress setup using Kong. Next, I'm going to install a GRPC service called GRPC bin. This is a pretty straightforward deployment where we are deploying a service of type cluster IP. So it's an internal service called GRPC. And then we have a single part of the GRPC service running. So this service understands GRPC protocol on port 9001. So let's get ahead and see how we can expose this GRPC service to the outside world. So here I'm creating an ingress resource now of name demo. And we have the slash path. So basically, we are not specifically a host header. So every request that comes in, we wanted to go to the GRPC bin service. Now let's go ahead and create this ingress resource. But now one thing to note is ingress is HTTP by default. We do not know that it's a GRPC service or not. So we make the use of annotations here. So we are specifying a set of protocols, essentially telling Kong that treat the traffic as GRPC. Any traffic that comes from the client, you should treat that as GRPC. So we update the client and we also put an annotation on the service resource to say that any service that talks to the service, please use the protocol GRPC. Yes, in this case, since that's what I've configured the services. So we have configured that. And now let's go ahead and hit the service. So here I'm using something called GRPC call, which is very similar to call but for G, but it makes it super easy to talk to GRPC services. So I'm calling the service hello service and the method say hello. And as you can see, I'm using the insecure flag because we have not set up any TLS certificate. So we'll use a self sign certificate. And then I'm sending it to the 443. So as you can see, the method resolved correctly. You have to say using the RPC method. And then we have the response header received. As we can see the services stuff type GRPC and the response is basically echoing the same content back. So instead, let's do hello CNCF community. And we can see hello con CNCF community here. So we have got GRPC request going back and forth, which is nice. You can just expose GRPC traffic. But then what does this bias because we could do this just by using a service of type load balancer by using this. So for that, what we have got here is how you can extend your ingress. So how we can extend and do more things once you have exposed traffic via con. So here we are going to create a custom resource called con plugin. Let's go ahead and create that. And that returns an error. Now, as we can see here, we see that it's admission web hook failed. And it says that food is an unknown field. So what happened is this was intentional that I have put in a food config field, which is not a valid configuration for this plugin. Plugins in Kong are essentially a way to extend com. You can create any amount of custom plugins. And there are a lot of plugins already that come bundled in com. Logly being one of those. So you can log to no elastic source or you can use flu and D or whatever is your logging infrastructure. But let's say you are using logging. So we are going to delete this there on a slide and create the plugin. We have created this plugin inside Kubernetes, but we have not configured it to come to tell it when to run this plugin. So now we're going to go ahead. Cdl edit ingress or demo ingress. We're going to add in yet another annotation and instruct Kong to execute the log lead plugin whenever any request matches this. Any of these rules. So if we find a just a single rule, but any of the rules that are mapped to which in this ingress specification, you want Kong to run the log lead. All right. So configured that. Now let me try to see if I can open the log lead window. All right. So we have, I have this log lead window up here and I'm going to search for last 10 minutes. So as you can see, there are no, no events, anything at all. This is just a simple trial account from log lead. I'm going to go ahead and send a request now. So we are going to do the GRPC code. Hello, CNCF community. So as you can see, we did not have any latency. Increasing latency Congress pro Kong's did not inject any latency. The upstream took 12 milliseconds to execute the request. We got the response back. Now, if everything is good and demo gods are kind to me, I should see a request here. So Kong batches these. So sometimes it can take a while. But as we can see, we have got a request here. And we can see all the details in here and this is configurable where what are the headers that were sent, whatever the request latency is response latencies, which absent it. And if you this is the raw message, and we can see that upstream URL was hello service slash say hello. So you can get all kinds of logging here. So you do not have, you do not have to even implement logging in your microservices to get that out of the box with Kong. All right. So that's proxying GRPC traffic and prox and how to use plugins on GRPC traffic. Now let's take a look at what else we can do. So let's look at how we can take an API that we have developed and how we can expose it and do like have different tiering capabilities. So we're deploying something called HTTP bin, which is a pretty popular, you know, just an echo service around HTTP. And I'm going to create two ingress resources. So here I'm creating an HTTP being free tire. The path starts with slash free and it all the traffic is sent to the HTTP bin service. And then I have paid tier where the slash paid all the request starting with slash paid send also get sent to the same service. So we have the same service, but we have two endpoints. So if I do slash data slash free slash status 200, they get back a response, the request is proxied via Kong, the server is HTTP bin. And if I send the same request to the paid endpoint, I get the exact same response. So we have two endpoints, but they are being processed by the exact same service. Now let's start introducing differences between the free and the paid tier. Excuse me. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to try to use key authentication on the paid tier. So free tier is will be open to the world. We don't want any kind of authentication limits on that for now and we'll introduce key authentication. So I created a plugin called key out. So the plugin is key out. So we are doing key authentication and the name is HTTP bin. Next, I'll go ahead and edit our paid tiering ingress resource and ask Kong to execute a plugin. So as we did before with log in plugin, this time we are going to enable an authentication plan. We'll enable the plugin. And now if I send a request to the paid endpoint, Kong returns back with an unauthorized 401 unauthorized because we did not send an API key. So how do we get the API key now? So for that, we create something called a secret in Kubernetes. So we are specifying here the credential type is key authentication. And the key here is my super secret key. Of course, this is not the most secure way of doing it because it will be in my bash history, but let's go ahead and create the secret. So we created a Kubernetes secret. Kubernetes will encrypt and store this into its database. And then we have a consumer of Kong. So creating a consumer Harry and the credentials it has is Harry API key. This Harry API key essentially is a reference to this Kubernetes secret. All right. So let's go ahead and create that secret. And now let's go ahead and use that API key to authenticate against that API. So as you can see, now we are getting a response 200 201. So if I do, let's say 202 accepted, we'll go back that if I use the wrong API key, Kong will return back with an unauthorized. So this is a key authentication example, but you could do an IDP as well. All right. So we have differentiated ourselves where we have a free endpoint and a paid endpoint. What else could we do more? So let's do rate limiting rate limiting is something that almost anybody uses. It's like the basic defense mechanism so that not somebody cannot like just simply need us you, although it's not full proof, but it's a basic one. So we have issue to be been free to your plugin resource. And here we are saying anybody who accesses the service from the same IP address can access it only five times. Like I'll go ahead and add this plugin and I did this before. I'm going to annotate our ingress resource. So any request that matches slash free. It's sent to issue to be been, but before sending that request to the service, they're going to execute a plugin. All right. So we have the plugin configured now. And we can see that Kong is now started to inject rate limiting headers. I'm going to echo the proxy IP again. So if anybody in the audience wants to test it out on your own, you know, you can send the request to this public IP address, which will be valid for the duration of this webinar. And you can test it out yourself how we are imposing a rate limit. So if I send enough requests, as I can see, I get a four to nine. Basically Kong is saying you have it your API limit. You need to try back again later in a minute. So we gave five requests per minute to the free tire. Now let's give 10 requests to our paid customers. So they're saying that this time we'll limit based on consumer. A consumer is essentially somebody who has a valid authentication scheme. So in this case, we have the API key and we're giving them 10 requests per minute. So we have created the resource. Now let's ask to execute this plugin when the request matches slash paid. So CTO does it here. All right. And as you can see, we already have one plugin defined here. So we're already authentication, authenticating this end point. So any request that comes first needs to be authenticated. We will also ask Kong to execute another plugin. So can execute a number of plugins that you would want to and enable the authentication there. All right. So we have authentication enabled and we have rate limiting enabled. Now when I make this request, as you can see, I get nine requests that are remaining. Excuse me. So we have got a different rate limit for the free endpoint and a different rate limit for our paid endpoint. This is awesome. So we have got a service. We deployed it into Kubernetes and without writing any code, just configuration, you're exploiting the power of Kong by using authentication rate limiting. You're also logging the GRPC traffic. So GRPC traffic here is still going through. So you're proxying GRPC, HTTP, all the traffic just using a single service. Now as a bonus, let's go ahead and see that we want a gold tier. So we have some special customers who are paying more money. And we want to have them, we want them to have a higher rate limit. So here I'm creating a gold tier plugin and I'm giving them 100 requests per minute. So all most of our customers get 10, but our special user will get 100 requests. So I'm going to create another authentication credential. So here we have an API called user one dash key. So let's go ahead and create that Cuban at a secret. And correspondingly, we will create a consumer as well. So we're creating a con consumer. And on the consumer resource, this time we are adding the plugin HTTP bin gold tier. Now we will edit the ingress specification of the paid tier. And we'll ask Kong to run yet another plugin. So this was gold tier. So Kong is now going to authenticate the request. And then it is going to impose rate limit based on which type of consumer you are. So if you're a gold tier consumer or a regular consumer, all right, so I've got that in place. And then if I execute the request, I see that the rate limit is 100. But if I use my old credential, I can see that I get 10 requests per minute. And if I use the end free endpoint, I get five requests per minute. So you can have different kinds of rate limiting. And you can also impose other policies where, you know, you need to have an authorization as well when somebody can access a service based on a given authorization or our buck resource only. So that all is as possible as well. So you've got the GRPC traffic. We have got logging and monitoring in place. We have got authentication rate limiting in place, all just using a plugin ecosystem in Kong. And all of this is open source. So you can try it out yourself. So that's all that I have for the demo. And these are some of the features that we produced in zero dot seven. There are a whole lot of, excuse me, other features that are out there. So we do a lot of load balancing scheme. So Kong can act as a load balancer. So essentially you need a single load balancer for Kong and you do not need any other load balancer for your services. You expose a single load balancer. All traffic goes via that load balancer and you can impose all kinds of policies at one single point of ingress. And then you can do health checking. You can route based on different protocols as well. So you can, you know, route based on GRPC methods. You can do routing based on GRPC or HTTP headers or methods. So that's based on routing and load balancing. That's the basic essence of ingress. And we extend ingress using plugins. So we saw authentication and rate limiting. You can do caching. You can do request transformation. So if you're migrating from a V1 to a V2 API, you can do that. You can also use Prometheus. Or any other data dog, if you want to use for matrix and analysis of your APIs themselves, you can do that. You can also do sort management and external DNS. So essentially in this demo, we did not have any domain defined because we did not set up DNS. But if you define that, we can use that as well. So you're pretty much covered and it's super extensible.  Okay, maybe I want this different weird authentication scheme that my company manages. Or maybe I want to do this different type of transformation of my API request before they are sent to upstream. Or I want to do some additional validation of the request before it's sent in. All that's pretty much easy and possible. All right, that's all that I have today for you. A few important resources. If you want to take a picture, please take a note of this slide. The first resource is how you can install Kong just with one click on your Kubernetes cluster. It could be mini cube kind or any cloud provider or a bare metal cluster. The second is a very important link. Konglabs.io slash Kubernetes. This is essentially sort of a CataCoder thing, but you can practice how to use Kong in Kubernetes in your browser itself. So this is a custom built environment where we have steps and we also have a Kubernetes cluster running in the cloud for you. And you can just use that to get a feel of how to use Kong. You can even get this demo there as well. If pieced together, this demo based on all the exercises that are available at Konglabs.io slash Kubernetes. And if you have any questions, drop into the Kong channel in Kubernetes Slack server. All of our maintainers are pretty active there. So if you're running to pick up, so do you have any questions? You can ask us questions right there. That's all good. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you very much, Harry. So I've got some questions here. Does the host example.com in your example refer to the API server or the ingress controller? And can you repeat that question once again? Does the host example.com in your, this came in very early on in the presentation. So probably one of your first slides. Does the host example.com in your example refer to the API server or the ingress controller? It refers to the ingress controller. So imagine you have API.example.com. You have food.example.com. And yet you're hosting all these services inside your Kubernetes cluster and you want to route to different services based on the host or based on the DNS name of the service. That's what this host refers to. So it's got nothing to do with APIs or what it's just the request host. It's used for routing your request. Yeah, it's basically like a label that says send traffic here and then the pass then, you know, specify where else to send it. Cool. All right. So let's see one more question. Can Kong be configured with OpenShift for, is it officially supported? OpenShift for support is, yeah, it is supported. Kong supports the ingress specification in OpenShift. OpenShift also has something called OpenShift Route. And that's not something we support yet. So if you are using ingress, it will work in OpenShift. We also already have community users using that. Yeah. So it's important to distinguish ingress from route and the OpenShift LAN routes came along before ingresses existed in Kubernetes. So there is a distinction there that needs to be specified very clearly. You must use ingresses with Kubernetes or with in Kong. Correct. And OpenShift routes are making their way into Kubernetes ecosystem in something called ingress v2. So they're very similar to how OpenShift route are designed, but that's still in the works right now. In the works. Yes. Under development. All right. Unless there's any other questions, that's a last of them. Is there anything else you'd like to add? We have some questions in the chat. Oh, let's see. Sorry. Oh, how does typical architecture look like with Kong if we have to deploy API gateways? That's a broad question. But you usually just have me to deploy the, Kong itself is an API gateway and it also does ingress. So you're essentially hitting two birds with one stone in this case. So you deploy the ingress and you also get API gateway features right out of the box. So you don't need two separate installations. You just need one. Makes sense. Another question. Will the documentation of plugins include examples currently is still going to the docs and GitHub. And is there a blog on converting from Kong credential to secrets? Good questions. Yeah. So con credentials are something that existed before the encrypted secrets. We do not have like a ready script for you to do that. But if you open a GitHub issue or drop into the channel, we can do that. We do not have that. Regarding how to write Kong plugins and the configuration, the docs are on docs. Kong HQ. So you can figure out which properties of plugins are supported. And then you can just embed that into Yamen. So there is nothing no difference between how you configure plugins, you know, using a JSON or a Yamen. They're exactly the same. There is no difference at all. So that should be pretty straightforward as well. Cool. I'm hoping there's a typo in this. If, if there isn't, I apologize. How would Kong work with the controller and API server with regards to high availability of pods? Oh, okay. I think I understand what. Like, I guess. Does, does this say, Hey, all of a sudden I need more stuff. Like I, like I'm saturated. Is there any kind of HA horizontal scaling in Kong? I don't think so. No. No. So it's pretty simple. So on the API server side, you can deploy more API server. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so. No. No. So, so it's pretty simple. So on the API server side, you can deploy more API server parts in Kubernetes for that high availability, which is recommended. And on the Kong side, as you can see in this diagram, which I didn't highlight before, you have multiple parts of Kong running and each has its own controller and you can have a different deployment strategy as well. But this is super simple. You're doing it where you deploy a number of Kong parts to scale out horizontally and each part is configured using the controller that is running as a side card. So you have like, even if a machine dies or if what gets stuck, that's fine. The other parts will continue to process your requests. Cool. Yeah. So usually HA and you put a load balance in front of all these Kong parts to load balance across these different parts. Cool. All right. I'm looking through chat. I am not seeing any additional questions. I haven't already been answered. Nothing left in Q and A. So I think that's a wrap. Sure. So thank you very much for great presentation. If, if you're looking for the webinar in the future, go to a CNCF.io slash webinars, the slides and the video will be up there once it's available. And other than that, have a great day. Enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you. Bye. Bye everyone.