Hi, this is Dr. Gene Preuss. Today we're going to look at Mexican American history's background, and in this lecture we'll look at the origins and developments of Mexican American history, or its historiography, the study of the history of how history is written. We're going to look at how the field has developed, how it's evolved, and new directions the field is going in, and then some themes that occur throughout the literature. Mexican American history actually can trace its origins back to some of the earliest days of the professionalization of American history. History, although it has been written for thousands and thousands of years, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, American historians began professionalizing. In 1893, in Chicago, at the World Columbian Exposition, this historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, delivered a paper for the American Historical Association that was also meeting at the World's Fair. His paper was called The Significance of the Frontier on American History. This is a unique perspective, because up until then, most of American history had been written as kind of the development of history outside of Europe. It had taken a European perspective, looking west, across the Atlantic. And so what Turner did was kind of turn this on its ear, and he began looking at American history from the west, that it was, American history was influenced by a series of borders, and by borders he meant places where cultures collided, where they came into contact with each other, and where they interacted. This was the idea of the frontier. That's what frontier meant to Turner. And so where the west was, was where Native Americans were in the early colonial period. Then as the United States began expanding, that western frontier kept moving further and further west. And it was what happened at that frontier. It was one of Turner's students, Walter Prescott Webb, who began looking at the west as a place. And one of his colleagues, this man pictured here, Herbert Bolton, who had done a lot of work in the Mexican archives, began looking at American history as an expansion of Spanish history. So the Spanish had come and landed in 1492 in the New World. And by the 1500s they had begun colonizing and exploring what's now the North American West. And Bolton believed that American history really should be looked from west to east instead of east to west as it had previously been done. And so some of Bolton's books reflect this attitude, the Spanish borderlands. The Outposts of Empire, again that frontier ideology. The Rim of Christendom, again that cultural conflict. And Coronado about one of the early explorers for New Spain in what is now the American Southwest. By about the 1930s you had the development of a group of historians that had been raised in the United States were American and were coming out of Texas and the American Southwest and writing about Mexican Americans, the society of Mexican Americans as a people. One of the earliest ones was a woman by the name of Lita Gonzalez who lived in South Texas and she was writing about society and life and culture down in the South Texas region. One of the things that these historians are trying to do is that while Bolton and some of these other historians earlier had opened the door for Mexican American history, they had also had a lot of inaccuracies and stereotypes and misperceptions that were prevalent to that day woven into the stories. And so this next generation of historians began to revise those ideas and revisit them and look at them and reevaluate them. Paul Taylor is another one of these historians. Carlos Castaneda who was at the University of Texas at Austin, one of the librarians who did extensive work with the archives wrote seven volumes of a book series called Our Catholic Heritage in Texas. You also had Los Angeles newspaper writers like Kerry McWilliams and you had George Sanchez who was also a very well respected instructor and later on government official who was writing about the history of Mexican Americans in Texas and the rest of the United States. McWilliams was focusing on Los Angeles, of course. By the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement gets underway, you have a new generation that is coming of a younger generation, better college educated, more college educated and this was sometimes called a Chicano generation after the name that many of those era took for themselves. One of those was a fellow by the name of Juan Gomez Guignones who was looking in the 1970s very early on in the 70s at Chicano history and how Chicano history was being written and new directions that it could go in. The fellow pictured here with Ojo Cunha, his book Occupied America written in 1970, he reflects some of the ideology of the Chicano movement that America was occupied, its indigenous people were taken over and the effect of European, white European society on that indigenous society. Matt Myers wrote a book in 1972, the Chicano is a general history of the people and a lot of these historians are also not only being affected by the Civil Rights Movement and this idea of telling Chicano history but by new social history. Social history, this was a history that was influenced heavily by cultures and disciplines like anthropology, sociology, economics. So they were historians looking more than just at historical documents but they were looking at other factors that led and affected people's lives. Some of these new directions included more women in Mexican American history. On the left here in the center is Cynthia Orozco who writes about, in a recent book, no Mexicans women or dogs allowed looking at the rise of the League of United Latin American Citizens which initially had not allowed women to join in the 1920s when that organization was formed. And so she's looking at Chicano discrimination and how women fared in Lulac and in the Mexican American community at large. Sarah Deusch's book, No Separate Refuge, looking at family life in the Southwest, Vicki Ruiz from Out of the Shadows looking at the development of women in the California area. And then you have professors and teachers who have passed away who did a lot of work and were very influential in Mexican American history. Irene Ledesma from South Texas and Yolanda Romero on West Texas Mexican American community. Irene had written on South Texas's Mexican American community and looking at women in those areas. As far as culture is concerned, you have authors who are now writing and historians who are now writing about sexuality, acculturation and the other issues. So Ramon Gutierrez is his very famous book in 1991, very influential book in 1991 when Jesus came, The Cornmothers on a Way, looking at colonization of the Southwest in places like Arizona and New Mexico. Native American women who had influential roles, how their roles are stripped from them when the Spanish came and entered the New World. George J. Sanchez about acculturation in becoming Mexican American and this is about Los Angeles community. And then you have more recent books like Defiant Braceros which is a new take on the manual laborers that came into the United States that Mireya Loza is writing about who kind of seen as all immigrant workers from Mexico but she says you know it was much more diverse than that and she's not trying to romanticize the workers. So those are new ways that these topics are being addressed. One of the things that we see in the historiography of Mexican American history is that a lot of studies focus either on Los Angeles or on Texas and especially on Los Angeles and you do have some new writers who are writing about communities in Chicago and now in the American South like Atlanta and North Carolina are starting to emerge. But Texas although it accounted for about half of the Mexican Americans up until the 1970s and 80s was kind of underwritten. You start seeing the development of Texas Mexican American history with writers like America Parvedes. Now Parvedes from UT Austin was an English professor and not a historian but his analysis of a border ballad the ballad of Gregorio Cortez who was a fugitive in 1910 was chased by Texas Rangers and eventually arrested and finally pardoned by a later Texas governor. It was a very famous border ballad. And his analysis looks at the development of that looks at the variations on this type of folk music and what place Gregorio Cortez had in Mexican American identity and history. Arnoldo de Leon is another writer he's from San Angelo and his history in one of his first books was looking at Anglo attitudes towards Mexicans in the early period of 1820s when Stephen F. Austin brought his Angles and how that developed throughout the 19th century. Emilio Zamora teaches at University of Texas has written a lot on labor history. One of his most famous books is the world of the Mexican worker in Texas from University of Houston. Guadalupe San Miguel has written quite a bit on educational history Mexican Americans in the educational process and his 1987 book let all of them take heed Mexican Americans the campaign for educational equality in Texas was a very good well received book. Similarly Carlos Blanton who is now at Texas A&M has written about education from a different aspect of the strange career of bilingual education in Texas. And then you have some more recent scholars some younger scholars who reflect the diversity of the field now and how it's grown looking at more women Sonia Hernandez at Texas A&M on women in the borderlands and Gabriela Gonzalez at UT San Antonio looking at how the trans border issues have changed over time and the ideas of middle class and respectability and rights in redeeming la rasa. So those are some of the new ways the field has changed but you still see even at that some very similar themes that keep recurring. One of those is the issue of the land and Mexican Americans and their identity with the land and this may take on this rural heritage that I mentioned here. But it's also about the land being dispossessed of the land there is strong focus on racism and rightly so. Economic issues is another problem and Mexican Americans often time are economically disadvantaged and so it's no surprise that that has become an important issue that historians have addressed. The rural agricultural heritage which has been criticized as a focal point because it ignores many of the urban dwelling. For example we get the idea that San Antonio when the battle of San Antonio in the 1830s was fought that San Antonio was a rural area in Mexico and in fact it was the major city in Texas at the time. But it's this idea of ruralism and most Mexican Americans working in farm areas. And there's a lot of talk on culture and by culture and I kind of pointed to this earlier. It's not just about how they live their lifestyles but about how people acculturate how they adapt to new societies and new environments, how they respond to the geography of place and how they also sexuality is very important and a new and emerging issue, LBGTQ issues have largely been ignored in Mexican American historiography. And so this is a new area that's starting to develop. And education and I mentioned a couple of books on that. So if we wrap things up, the origins of the development of Mexican American history it started off as a subfield of Western American history and then as people wanted to correct misrepresentations in correct history it began expanding and it was also expanding because more Mexican Americans were entering the field after college of becoming professional historians and teaching and writing. The field is moving in new directions it's expanding and new generations continue to bring in new ideas and some of the common themes and despite the changes as I've said earlier that many of these core themes remain but there are new opportunities. The field is slowly evolving and maturing and there's always new ways and new areas and new ways of looking at things that hopefully will capture the next generation of stories. Thank you very much and I hope that gives you a good overview of where we're going to be going in this class and the types of themes we see in Mexican American history and some of the prolific writers and the other historiographical ideas about this class.


And now we're actually going to bring on nine up-and-coming entrepreneurs to do quick pitches. They are finalists for the Gratitude Awards. And we're excited to have partnered with Randy Haken and the Gratitude Network team this year to bring these awards to the stage. So I'd like to welcome Randy and Lindley Sides and the nine entrepreneurs as we get these stools set for them. And they're going to give you just a taste of what their enterprise is about and then you'll be able to get to know them better at the innovation showcase in the Impact Hub over there during the day and you'll actually be able to vote for your favorite. So this afternoon we'll announce the three category winners as well as the People's Choice winner. So Randy? All right. Thank you, Liz. In the words of a great social innovator that I look up to, Good morning San Francisco! The Gratitude Network was essentially set up to identify, nurture, and then help grow incredible social innovators around the world, both non-profit and for-profit. And so what you're going to hear on stage today is nine incredible, incredible stories. A number of people have asked me where does the name Gratitude come from? And I guess it's borrowed from a book that I know a number of you have read in which it's stated, To whom much is given, much is expected. To whom much is given, much is expected. And so the spirit that we have at the Gratitude Network, our team and all the people that we work with, is about taking what life has given us and giving something back. I think a great example of this is SoCAP in general. And I wanted to thank Kevin Jones and the SoCAP team for making it possible for us to highlight some of the entrepreneurs who are here every year. Some incredible people who are, we now have a chance to recognize and you'll hear from each of them. Lindley? Thank you. And good morning. I'm Lindley Sides and in leading my own social venture, the Glue Network, that is a platform where companies engage their customers and employees in giving to good causes. I work with large non-profits and small social ventures across categories and around the globe. And through that work, I have seen the power of entrepreneurship to create solutions that are innovative, impactful, scalable, and self-sustaining. So I was honored to work with Randy last year to create the Gratitude Awards and then to work with SoCAP this year to expand upon them. So this year's Gratitude Awards were open to organizations that are early and growth stage, both non-profit and for-profit ventures that could be located anywhere in the world. We were thrilled to receive over 500 applications to the SoCAP Scholars and Gratitude Awards programs and we've accomplished the daunting task of narrowing that pool down to 32 semifinalists and then to the nine incredible finalists that are here on stage this morning. And from this pool, four winners will be selected and announced on this stage this evening at 6 o'clock. We first want to thank our panel of expert judges who brought expertise from our three categories as well as from non-profit, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, and investing. We want to thank them for their time and effort and expertise in narrowing down this pool and choosing our finalists. We also want to thank our screeners who are not on the slide but are listed on the Gratitude Fund website and a few of whom are here, so thank you to all of these participants for your help in this process. So a little bit about our three categories. Last year, in our first year, we focused on education and our three winners are still doing well and growing in Kenya, India, and here in the U.S. Why education? We believe education is truly foundational, that improvements in education result in greater success of all non-profit work that is done in a region. And this category spans primary, secondary, higher, and adult education. And over the last two years, we've seen an incredible variety of creative solutions in this space and have worked with a number of them and are looking forward to adding another one or two to our portfolio this year. This year we've added two new categories. One is health and wellness, which is clearly an area of great need to reduce suffering and cost and deaths due to preventable causes and so forth. This category spans traditional health, health tech, and clean water. And we've seen some very creative models and solutions and we're excited by the ones that we've seen this year, in our first year in this category. We also added the category of community development in keeping with the SOCAP theme. This is a broad category that includes hunger, shelter, substance abuse, microfinance, multidisciplinary programs. The key is that community-led improvements tend to be very positive, effective, and long-lasting. And we've seen a tremendous amount of entrepreneurial spirit coming from individual communities and we're looking forward to supporting a couple of those in the coming year. So, at the end of the day today, one winner will be announced from each of those three categories and then there will be a fourth winner that will be chosen by you, the People's Choice Award. You will hear from the nine finalists here in just a moment. You'll also have the opportunity to talk with them in the innovation showcase in the main hall until 2 o'clock this afternoon. Voting will be open until 3 and the way to vote is go into Pathable, open this session, scroll to the bottom and click session poll and it only takes a couple of seconds to vote for your favorite. So please cast your vote for the venture that you believe is the most innovative, has the greatest potential for impact and where the founder has the skills to scale and grow an organization. So, it's with great respect that I handed off to our nine finalists beginning in the category of health and wellness with Nora Health. I'm Katie Ash and I'm co-founder of Nora Health. We train patient families with health skills to improve outcomes and save lives. The baby in this photo is Anup. I met him two days out of open heart surgery in Bangalore, India. When it was time for him to go home to his rural village, a nurse came over and gave his parents an eight minute shotgun lecture about everything that they needed to know to keep Anup healthy and safe. Keep in mind that they were returning home to a rural village that was two days travel from the nearest health clinic. They only had elementary level education and they returned home from that hospital completely horrified. We saw this situation play out over and over and over again and I had experienced it myself as a caregiver for loved ones feeling completely helpless and statistics say that the majority of people in this room have provided care for a loved one at some point in their lives. We think that this is the largest, one of the largest unmet needs in health care. We take this highly motivated, compassionate resource, the family members and we train them with medical skills to be highly effective at providing care for a loved one. We design and develop mobile tools so that when those families go home they have the support that they need. We started out in one facility in Bangalore, India earlier this year but we're already in nine major urban hospitals in India. We've trained over 9,000 family members and most excitingly we're seeing a 36% reduction in complication rates. The started out as a class project two and a half years ago at the Stanford Design School when we were a team of graduate students. But since then we've built a team that has decades of both health and tech experience. If you're excited about what we're doing, if you want to help us scale if you know an organization that we should be partnering with, come find us. We'd love to work with you. Thank you. Does anyone know what the largest mass poisoning in human history is? It's the arsenic and fluoride water crisis across Indian Bangladesh affecting over 200 million people and leading to one in five deaths in Bangladesh alone. You can't see or smell arsenic but if it's in your water you'll get arsenicosis an incurable cancer causing disease leading to death. My name is Minhaj Chattery and as a Bangladeshi American I always wondered why people like my grandpa passed away to do this crisis. As a Fulbright scholar at Bangladesh I found 60% of all water projects to fail because jobs aren't being created and customers aren't paying to run the systems. I've launched Drinkwell to transform this crisis into opportunity for entrepreneurs living in these affected communities. We've developed the world's first indigitously produced filtration technology capable of cost effectively removing arsenic and fluoride from the source, groundwater tube balls. Unlike reverse osmosis, the current best practice, we reduce waste by six orders of magnitude. Each system doubles an entrepreneur's income, creates three jobs and reduces household medical expenses by up to 85%. Our team has experienced deploying 200 systems across four countries. And most importantly we found that people are paying for our water and it's not because of the massive long-term health and wellness benefits but because in the short term we give people smoother hair, less briny fish, tastier rice and whiter whites. That ladies and gentlemen is vanity and that nuanced understanding is how we drive social impact to these 200 million people. We're Drinkwell. Join us as we make arsenic and fluoride poisoning history. An average Indian lives 14 years less than an average American. I'm Shelly from Sevamab and we address this gap by fundamentally transforming primary healthcare via mobile clinics and an online telehealth marketplace. Our mobile clinics serve low-income consumers in groups on an annual subscription model. For just $10 per year patients get comprehensive primary care, medicines and supplements and most of this is delivered on their premises. We use technology heavily to manage health outcomes. We also operate an online telehealth marketplace through which internet savvy consumers can get video consultations, second opinions and in-clinic appointments from participating healthcare providers. In the platform along with new revenue the providers also get access to the same technology that we use to manage our patients and our health outcomes. We currently have 6,000 annual subscribers all paying from four states in India and in our marketplace we have more than 300 healthcare providers. So if you would like to partner with us please come and find us afterwards. Thanks. 83 days. That's how long it took for my students reading levels to finally catch up to where they had been before the summer. These are my first graders the day it happened. Karina Maya Sanaya Carlos and Travis. My name is Alejandro and I'm the CEO and founder of Springboard Collaborative. I spent two years as a first grade teacher in one of Philadelphia's most impoverished neighborhoods. There I became angry that my kids and millions more in low-income communities face chronic summertime reading losses in elementary school that account for two-thirds of the achievement gap in high school. This is symptomatic of an even deeper problem. Low-income parents have been left out of the process of educating their kids. Children spend 75% of their waking hours outside of the classroom and yet our nation does shockingly little to capture educational value from that time for low-income kids. Springboard closes the reading achievement gap by coaching teachers, training parents, and incentivizing learning. Our primary offering is an intensive five-week summer program that combines daily reading instruction for pre-K through third graders with a weekly workshop training parents to teach reading at home in an incentive structure that awards learning tools to families from books to tablets in proportion to their kids' reading progress. Since launch in 2011, Springboard has grown its reach from 40 to 1200 kids through major vendor agreements in two cities. This summer, our scholars replaced what would have been a three-month reading loss with a 3.4-month reading gain. They'll go back to school this Monday having more than doubled their annual reading progress. In schools with fewer than 10% of parents showing up for report card conferences, our weekly family training workshops average 91% attendance. By training parents and teachers to collaborate, Springboard puts kids on a path that closes a reading achievement gap by fourth grade. In a nation that uses fourth grade reading scores to plan prisons, this changes everything. Parents' love for their children is the single greatest and most underutilized natural resource in education. This is the key to giving all children the opportunity to learn, regardless of whether they're at a school desk or the kitchen table, whether the calendar reads January or July. Join us in changing out of school time from a barrier into a Springboard for our kids. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name's Rebecca Harrison. I'm from the African Management Initiative. We provide practical and affordable learning tools for African managers and entrepreneurs. But I want to start this morning by telling you a story about a man named Simeon. Simeon woke up one morning at his home in the rural eastern Cape of South Africa with chest pain. He walked to the nearest hospital, where an excellent doctor immediately recognized the symptoms of heart disease, took him to the ECG machine to run a test. But the machine was out of paper, so she sent him home. This is a true story. I don't know what happened to Simeon. But without wanting to trivialize it, it's quite possible that Simeon died because no one restocked that machine. This is not a health story. It's a management story. It's quite possible that Simeon died because of a basic avoidable management failure. Now, management is not a sexy topic. It doesn't pull up the heartstrings. It's not a very so-cap topic. But it's absolutely critical. Bad management can be catastrophic. Good management can be transformational. The problem is that in Africa, over 90% of the roughly 10 million managers have no access to high-quality training and development resources. At the African Management Initiative, we're working to change that. We deliver practical, accessible, locally relevant learning tools to managers and entrepreneurs. We're developing the first-ever social learning platform in Africa. So think, Coursera meets Facebook with an African twist, designed with mobile in mind, and for an environment where bandwidth is often constrained. We've secured exclusive partnerships with Africa's three most prestigious business schools. Think the harvards of Africa, world-class African management education to potentially hundreds and thousands of small businesses. And critically, we've developed a peer accountability tool that will help those managers apply what they learn on the job. That's the most important part. So we'd love to tell you more about how we're working to unlock the potential of the continent by empowering one million managers over the next decade. Thanks for listening. My name is Brian Hill, and I'm the president of JL Education Solutions. When I was growing up, I had a full-time prison here in California, and at night he would bring home the essays of inmates and he'd read them to us, and I distinctly remember feeling of the hopes and dreams of so many of these individuals and being so disheartened that so much human potential was locked up. By that age, I had no idea that my dad's class was only reaching a small minority of a very large population. 12 million Americans cycle through our system each year, which means that one in 28 children currently have a parent that is incarcerated. This will have devastating effects on our society and financially. The $74 billion that we spend on incorrections in this country somehow leads to a 50% recidivism rate, meaning that half will return a short time after being released. What are we doing with the time that we have for this literally captive audience that is driving such abysmal returns? Right now, we're showing daytime television. Jerry Springer and The Price is Right. This is not a formula for success, especially when we know it works. Educational and vocational training, when provided to inmates, reduces recidivism by 43%, and that's even when controlling for things like background and motivation. Moreover, every dollar we invest in these types of programming reduces the cost of the government and to future expenditures by four to five dollars within the first three years. But it is expensive to do these programs. It is operationally challenging and it is politically difficult to spend money in this space. This is where jail education solutions comes in. They set up secure wireless networks in prisons and jails, provide tablet technology that allows inmates to engage in educational, vocational, and treatment programming on a daily basis. Inmates can rent or earn these tablets and achieve tangible outcomes, like a GED, college credit, and time off of their sentence, all at no cost to the taxpayer. Moreover, they can only begin their progress while they're online, but receive short-term incentives that help them earn entertainment options on the back end as a short-term carrot. Now, this program will reach 20,000 just next year, where my dad's class reached just 30. Moreover, my dad's course was cut back in the 90s and with financial budgets now, it will never come back. Jail education solutions is exactly what America needs right now. We must stop the revolving door. So join us in helping unlock the immense human potential perpetually behind bars. Thank you. Good morning. I am the CEO and co-founder of Sun Culture based in Kenya. We help farmers grow more while spending less. On the left side of the screen, there's a man named Peter. Peter's a farmer and he was our first customer ever. Before meeting us, Peter was like most of the other 450 million smallholder farmers in the world, forced to grow very low-value crops, like beans and potatoes, because he could not afford irrigation systems to grow high-value fresh fruits and vegetables. Irrigation systems are too expensive. And more so, the recurring costs associated with irrigating, like buying diesel for your water pump, was just too expensive for Peter. And because of that, on Peter's one-acre plot of land, he made $600 per year. In one year, Peter made less than half of what each and every one of you paid to be at this conference. Now, this is a problem that's affecting smaller farmers around the world. And we're changing that. Sun culture designs and sells solar-powered irrigation systems that make it cheaper and easier for farmers like Peter to grow food. Our systems combine the cost-effectiveness of solar-powered water pumping with the efficiency of drip irrigation, giving Peter access to an affordable irrigation solution that removes most recurring costs for him. Now, Peter's using our system now, and he's making $18,000 per year. That sort of impact is what we want small-holder farmers around the world to feel, and we can do it. So if you'd like to learn more about our funding needs and working with us to impact the lives of small-holder farmers around the world, we'd love to speak with you. Thank you. Does everyone here remember their first job? For me, it was Starbucks, my senior year of high school. And I didn't know it at the time, but that job actually prepared me for a lifetime of employment. Responsibility and how to show up on time and be a part of a team, and the value of hard-earned money.  Well, this is the problem facing over half a million unemployed youth and slums in Kenya. But what if we could find a way to provide that first job opportunity to hundreds of thousands of youth all over the country? What difference would that make? At livelihoods, we've seen firsthand the power of a single job opportunity to change a young person's life forever, and we believe in the power of young people to change the world. We operate a door-to-door distribution service to sell socially transformative products like solar lamps and clean-burning cook stoves, and we use a daily consignment model. So our sales agents get products on consignment and they don't have to take a loan or any financial risk. We can earn an income and learn valuable sales and professional skills. We've already trained over 600 young people and opened and forced them locations across Nairobi, and we're growing. In the first half of this year, we've trained more people than we had in the past three years, and over the next five years, by opening 32 locations and changing hundreds of thousands of lives. A job means hope, purpose, confidence, and that is opportunity and that is powerful. So please come and talk to me and find out how you can take this opportunity to invest in our youth, because they will change the world, but it's our responsibility to make sure they know that they can. Thank you. Morning, everyone. Think about the shirt that you're wearing. Think about the phone in your pocket. These things were made by people, right? They're not made by machines. So what do you know about those people and the working conditions that they face every day? Not much, right? But the brand, and maybe that's okay, but the brands that you're buying those clothes and electronics from also don't have good transparency into what those workers are facing every day, and that's the problem. In April, over 1,100 workers died when the factory they were working in in Bangladesh collapsed on top of their heads. Why? Partly because those workers are invisible, right? They saw cracks in the walls several days before the factory collapsed, but they had no channel to report that to decision makers, to anyone who had the power to stop production. There's a simple solution to this. Lack of information and lack of transparency. Mobile. There are nearly as many mobile subscriptions as there are people on the planet today. So we have this incredible channel to connect the workers that are making our favorite products to the companies that are buying them, eventually to us. LabourLink does that. We use the transformative power of mobile to give voice to workers. Workers trust us with information about child labour, about sexual harassment, about excessive overtime. So they're reporting this information to us anonymously, and through feedback loops, we give that information directly to decision makers, and we've been able to address these issues in real time. In the last four years, we've gone from reaching 100 workers to over 125,000. In the next four years, we're trying to reach over a million because we believe that every worker should have a free and anonymous channel to support directly to decision makers about their working conditions and needs. Please join us, vote for LabourLink, and help us give voice to the global workforce. Thank you. Well, wow. How would you feel if you got to get up every day and work with these nine? I'm like a kid in a candy shop right now. That's what the next year is going to be like for our team. So we are so excited and so thankful for all of you, and also for our 32 semi-finalists who were just an incredible batch. And as I said before, SoCAP attracts just a wonderful mix of people amongst whom we find young people like this who we want to give a voice to. Okay. Final reminder here on the audience vote, if you haven't had a chance to go to your bitly address or unpathable, we'd appreciate your vote. That's a tough call. I couldn't do it. Good luck to you. And thank you. We'll see you tonight for the awards.


Hi, this is Hannah Fane from Jack's Abbey and I'm here with my friends Paul and John from Steel Canvas and this is another episode of Shipping Out. Thanks for having me today. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about Steel Canvas and what you guys do here? Well, first of all, thanks for coming. My name is Paul Lordin. I'm a second generation owner at Steel Canvas along with my brother John. So Steel Canvas is just over 100 years old. Primarily we make material handling cards. Big Canvas bins, that whole thing. We transition from making baskets for the shoe industries, which have long since gone, transition to the fishing industries which are hanging on into laundry and material handling areas. Currently we're making a lot of cards for colleges and construction companies. And we also have been partnering with a lot of retailers so we're getting more and more homes. And it's great to get to share that with the rest of the country. And why don't you tell us a little bit about what makes Steel Canvas special? It's a real responsibility that we feel to make a quality product out of quality materials. And we've been doing that as long as we can without compromise. But the most part I think what makes us special is the culture and the people. We've got a ton of people, employees that have been here well over 40 years. We've been around 100 years and everybody here wants to make sure we're around for 100 more. So we have that drive to make sure that we build a quality product that lasts. Just being here for the day, you can definitely see that. This series is all about manufacturing in Massachusetts. Do you have anything to say towards that? We deal with so many different projects and personalities and industries that kind of know what you're going to get into when we walk through the door because it's going to be some chaos, some moments of brilliance. But at the end of the day, to be able to build something from scratch sometimes is just from an idea or jot it on a piece of paper and then ever go through the production process, see it being made and gain it out the door. To me, that's always a highlight. We're still a small company or small enough where we can see and do and touch everything. As owners, Paul and I can take a little of the bone. We can then order materials. We can be there when the materials come into the dock and unload them. We can see them work through the process of being cut, being stitched. And we can see an order actually going through this every one later on the day and recognize it as, oh, wow, there's that order for Jack's Abbey. Wow, that's the green I just bought and it's going out the door. It's really special to be able to have oversight over everything and to be able to have a hand in every bit of the operation. So what are you guys most excited about? What's on the horizon next? Well, I'm excited about the future, but it's also because what we've already accomplished in the past. Before our business was 90% focused on industrial products, industrial customers, industrial use. In the past 10 years, we've really transitioned to more of a 60-40 mix with smaller products going into people's homes and stores. We're going to be growing that side of the business going forward. Chelsea and the world currently are fantastic to us. Prior to that, we're in Cambridge, a really neat spot. And we're going to be moving into Wilmington. So we're looking forward to getting to know that neighborhood. It's what that provides us, you know, the ability to create more, to do more. Really, what I'm excited about is the next big project, whether it's transitioning to making masks during a pandemic or transitioning to make more products for home use. It just seems like there's always a different happening to turn down. Thanks for having me today, guys. It's been fun to book in Wilmington. Thanks. Thank you. I appreciate you coming.


The New Beginnings Transit Home for Children is the latest organization to receive some relief in light of the challenges presented by COVID-19. As part of its activities for Financial Information Month, the Bankers Association of St. Lucia has been journeying across the island to provide various homes with essential food items. For many years, financial institutions across the island have been working together with the ECCB to observe Financial Information Month as well as to promote financial literacy and empowerment. This year, members of the association have taken the time to visit various homes for the children and elderly across the island with donations of food and grocery items. The latest visit took place at the New Beginnings Transit Home in the north of the island. Aside from just financing and being a financial partner, we want to let the public know that we have a caring side because we are all impacted. We have families as bankers that are impacted. We have staff that are also impacted by COVID-19 and so we are all in it together and so we just wanted to share some love and share some much needed items and recognize a need and to provide for it. This donation marks the third for the month of October thus far. Manager of the home, Avis Charles-Englis, says she is delighted to see that the global pandemic hasn't affected the generosity of corporate St. Lucia. On behalf of the Ministry of Equity, the Division of Human Services and the children and staff of the chances home, we would like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts to the Banking Association for your generous contribution. It will go a long way in meeting the needs of our clients, not only those we have in-house but those we also do follow-up work with when they leave us. It will go a very long way in meeting the needs in light of the challenges that COVID-19 has all placed on us. In addition to the donations, the Bankers Association has also been active in hosting other activities to promote financial information month, including a live panel discussion on NCN on the topic Living Through Rainy Days. We have the Morning Brew as well on NCN where we give out information in terms of the various activities. We have our signature project coming up where we want to provide island-wide, schools island-wide, laptops because as you know schooling now has moved to the new normal which is online and we have a lot of students, under-privileged students who are not able, you know, their families or their parents are not able to provide. We also have an essay competition coming up throughout the schools as well dealing with our theme. The New Beginnings Transit Home is a temporary residential place of safety for children between the ages of two to sixteen years who are victims of child abuse and severe neglect and who are in need of care and protection. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting.


Hello everybody and welcome back to The Average. My name is Steph. I'm the average artist as I have called myself So ever since I first started this channel about four Four years ago, I think four years ago. That seems like a long time And I'm having a bit of an existential crisis, but never mind moving on I thought what I'd do today instead of just doing a sketchbook tour because I finally finished your sketchbook after a year of Doing it. I would compare it to a sketchbook that I did in 2018 which is four years ago and I think it would be interesting to see how I've developed If I've developed a tour I'm quite scared But yeah, this is my 2018 sketchbook and I've probably done a sketchbook tour on this one before Somewhere on my channel really old don't look at them probably really cringe But this was kind of where I was at during that time I think this was when I Began to think about making a comic again So this was pretty Emily is burning And I'm just gonna flick through these pages really quickly and I want you to bear in mind that when I was making or doing this sketchbook I was trying to be a full-time artist So I didn't have a job at that time and I didn't really have freelance jobs. I just Was doing like YouTube and the occasional Project on the side and things like that. So I had a lot of time to just be drawing continuous continuously and I Think it shows that like when you draw a lot in your time it can help you develop quite quickly and I think when I look at this sketchbook I can see like I Don't know a lot of passion in it and a lot of freedom and a lot of exploration of styles I really particularly like these hourly comics that I did Pesto that I did that the year I just really like the style and stuff and I did that I think I did them just like freehand has to do mind And I really like the colors and I think I was taking a lot of inspiration from like other artists that year I mean, I still do that I still try to look at other artists and think what do I like about their style and how maybe I can incorporate that a Little bit into my own work and see here that I was trying to continue on doing those kind of comics But I think whatever magic juice I had that day Really worked out and then I don't really like these but I like Looking back at this comic or this sketch page Diary thing. It's really nice to look at it and be like, oh, yeah, I did that. That was that was cool and It's quite nice. I wish I would do more of this kind of thing where I keep like a diary of My life basically because it's really a nice thing to look back on So you can see here. I'm doing loads of different like sketchy stuff. I don't really know What I'm doing It's funny when you look back at sketchbooks because you can remember where you were when you did them and stuff or like the Situation you were in it's kind of like re-reading a book that you read and remembering How you felt at that time or how you were then it's really odd here are bits of a comic that I cut up or not a comic a Sort of comic I wanted to work on and I did loads of like concept bits and writing down And I was really really into this idea, but I just let it go for some reason but I found it it was gonna be like a fantasy funny comic and Yeah, I quite liked it, but I think the idea became too big of a thing for me to work on I just wanted to do some short stories Just working on faces. I Really like these sharks that I did I used to draw like derpy sharks a lot back in the day And I never did that again because I think I saw like other people were doing it and whenever I thought oh It looks like I might be copying or other people are doing this. So I shouldn't do this That's what my attitude used to be but now I'm like everybody Has like conflicting ideas or loads of people have the same idea and loads of people work on something That is similar to something else doesn't mean it's not original so I think what I want to do is actually make some stickers out of these sharks anyway because They were my idea. So why can't I just cuz somebody else did something similar? It's like a bit silly, isn't it to be like no, I can't do that now. It's just like well, it's completely different It's my style. It's it's just doesn't make sense. Yeah, so this is my style I'm just gonna flick through this quickly You can see here. This is probably like one of the worst pages And I just think sorry about the train I've just moved flats and there's a train that goes by every now and then so you're just gonna have to do This is just random stuff. I think maybe I had a little bit of art block You can see that I'm just trying to explore loads of different styles trying to find My style I guess which I still don't think I have found. This is a really big sketchbook So I think Maybe I just was doing anything and everything in it. I really like this sketchbook. I got it from Little And it's like a really nice sketchbook even though it's super cheap I remember I bought two of them and I wish I could find them again because they were like in that middle aisle You know in in little and I don't think I've ever seen them again See like things like this is horrible But whatever it's a sketchbook sometimes you're gonna have really detailed stuff and sometimes you're gonna have really Rubbishy stuff and I don't think it really matters Like some people have like perfect sketchbooks and I don't think you need to do that Like it's nice to have some nice pages To look back on but I don't think every single page needs to be like a perfect spread because then I think you just get Trapped in that idea that everything you do has to be perfect And then that will be a blocker for you to not be able to draw So you just need to be like okay that didn't work and move on You can see where I started doing the book painter is because this is room book painter that I did Yeah, it's so funny like it's weird looking back and as well It's weird looking back because I feel like I did a lot more charactery stuff And I don't think like I'm doing that very much anymore So that's a good point to look back and be like maybe I should try and do more character work a little bit In in the next sketchbook that I will start because I feel like I've lost that along the way a little bit And it would be nice to pick it up again because I think You know if I want to do comics, I would like to have different character Designs of different silhouettes rather than something that is very similar because I think that might be an issue with my newer comics is that I'm falling into that trap of doing a similar character design over and over again But yeah, I think it will be cool to just Try and do more character studies. I I really like this sketchbook. I think it's a really nice piece of work This was when Casey did she used to do the prompts and she did a prompt And it was like this and then I did like I got obsessed with the characters that she drew So I made like a comic out of her characters And this was when she asked people to do like things to do with the prompt or you could draw What she did and things like that. So that's why I did it. Oh, I wouldn't because it's a bit weird to just go and do some of these Character and stuff, but I really liked it. I just had a fun day. I remember that day doing it But yeah, just being inspired by other artists is really good as well just Thinking what they're doing how you can do something similar. It's nice I don't really know what's going on here. I think I was whenever I get towards the end of a sketchbook I'm always like, ah, don't really feel it anymore. I don't know if anybody else feels like that Well, you're just like it's not fresh anymore. So I'm not really that bothered This is my old desk setup, which is really nice to look at and Makes me a little bit not homesick but nostalgic for that time because I think yeah I just I felt happy but also not but like, you know, you know what I mean when you look back and I really like drawing Work spaces because I think when you look back on them You can just get a real good memory of the space and how you felt and who you were at that time And it's not like taking a photo but similar vibe Yeah This I remember this so this was when I was thinking about doing a comic and you can see The kind of style is developing for Emily is burning I'll just get a comic to show you So this is Emily is burning and this is a comic that I made and I did a lot of vlogs on my channel About how I made it and stuff so you can probably go watch that if you haven't Sorry about the train again. If you don't know anything about that, but you can see kind of the style is Developing here into what it becomes. But yeah, you can see here that I'm starting to think about What I could do and I think what I did was I started drawing settings of places with houses And I really liked the way that alcohol markers worked with like this thin line pen at the time It then developed into this pencil this thick black pencil, which I still use Basically today. This is my favorite one that I found. It's a polychromos. Just a black pencil They're quite expensive. But I really like it's very soft and nice to draw with That's just something I like. So what I do is it can get smudged slightly by the alcohol markers So I can I do like that effect sometimes But I try to not let that happen so much. This is kind of an old style now compared to where I'm at now, but I think I'm still proud of it and I heard that rumor that was like if you're not Looking back on your stuff and thinking oh It's a bit dated now. Then you're not really developing. But yeah These are the houses drawings that went on to inspire emily's burning because I started drawing Haunted houses and stuff like that in The next sketchbook is some more sharks, which I do like I want to make stickers out of them now And that is the end of that one. So this is um july um No june um 2018 so literally like four years ago. So let's see if I've developed I finished a sketchbook. It's taken me a year to do it. Usually I back in the day I would be doing sketchbooks quite quickly But this time I've had a lot of stuff going on So I had to go back to work full time in the office after covid I mean I was working full time, but I was working from home. So there was a big uh, oh, it's just got Pastels all over my hand. There was a big moment of Realization that that wasn't how I wanted to work like that's not how I wanted to be so I went through a lot of thinking and I quit my job and became freelance and Then I moved to the UK. So there's been a lot of stuff going on within this year that has just stopped me from Drawing drawing drawing so much. So now I think what I'm going to do is Be on the drawing Like make sure that I draw every single day because That's important Yeah, it took me a long time to finish this one. Usually I'm quite quicker. This was for a book club that we read Um In my book club on patreon, we don't really do that so much anymore But we do discuss like sometimes what we're reading. It's been a long time. I changed their reward for it But I do miss it a lot, but I felt like it was I became too It became too reliant on me finishing a book in a month that maybe I'm not too into or anything like that So it became quite a difficult one Even though I do love reading sometimes I go through phases of just not wanting to read And it was difficult when I knew I had to read a book because for the book club. But yeah, this is an ink illustration that I did with my ink pen and also alcohol markers and I really wanted to do a autobiographical comic about being an army brat so being a kid with a dad in the army and We went to South Africa when I was quite young and it was like a culture shock And I wanted to just tell the stories of that bit of my life and also like maybe focus on my mum and her strength of Going to a completely different country without some of her children were left behind in boarding school and her parents and It must have been hard thing for her and as a kid I didn't really notice but now I think about it and I think that must be really difficult so I wanted to kind of focus on her but I think it's a very big project and Yeah, I think I would definitely need some time dedicated to that where I'm not Working on free freelance contract, which I'm currently I'm booked up till September. So which is good, but I don't want to I want to dedicate a lot of time to it if I did do it And I was thinking that the title could be hold your breath through the tunnel And I like this style. It's kind of cool. This is my sister me and my brother Um, but yeah, uh, I was doing a lot of painting back then It's something that I want to get back into a lot more because When we move my stuff's been in boxes for a long time. So now I can crack out those paints Here's just a picture of me in Africa. Um, I think Malawi when I was a kid um My dad did a big campaign to save the rhino and we had loads of these t-shirts and he used to wear them all the time Um, this was the courtyard of my work Place so the office that I was kind of forced back Into so my company did this thing where they forced us all back after covet supposedly went away Which it didn't because in Gibraltar the cases were much lower But I felt really uncomfortable there and I just hated being forced back into the office full time straight off And I wrote here where hopes and dreams dare to die because um, obviously I was not in a good place when they did that I remember taking a week off work and I went to the park to just do some plain air drawing Painting rather and I do really like this. I think if I had spent a bit more time in it could be a really solid, uh Painting it's quite nice now. I really like the Texture and the paint strokes Brush strokes, sorry and the energy in it, but yeah, it could be probably more solid if I worked on it a bit longer Uh, I made a little thank you card for my patrons. Don't know what this page is probably feeling a little bit down here, uh, mentally and Trying to persevere through sketching and doing stuff I'm drawing even though I was just a little bit miserable of having to go back to the office full time Which I know sounds really spoiled, but that was just you know, how I realized how I work better at home. Anyway sketchbook This is another ink brush pen because I was thinking I really want to do that comic But autobiographical comic with ink brush and alcohol markers. So this is me On a rope swing at some point. I was just drawing a lot of old photos This is an asos lady. I thought she was cool I do this thing where I just go to asos and I draw the women there because I feel like they have a lot of different shapes and sizes and Different poses, which is quite good because we Drawing people in different poses is good Another ink pen drawing of pesto and little mochi. So this is probably when we first got mochi She was a little baby And pesto always gives me these like crazy poses, which is so great. Uh, this was a sketch I wanted to do a patron print of a tiger Uh, and colors. I don't know. I don't know what the four process was behind this because now I'm looking at it I'm like it doesn't really Speak to me about anything. It just it kind of looks nice the colors Um, but I'm not like blown away by it or anything Here are some more pesto and kubo and mochi And I was thinking maybe I can make these stickers, but then I was like, why would people want stickers on my cats? It's all like maybe not This was an artist study conrad Koenskinooski Koenskinooski. I don't know how to say that. I'm very sorry Um the year 1912 it's a portrait of wife with cat and I really like the style so When they did it in my own style I was thinking about What I could do how I could create A different style because I feel like it's something I'm always exploring is What style do I want? And I know like in the comics emily is burning. I really did like the style and but I really want to develop a bit further I really wanted to work. I was getting that itch to work on another comic So I was thinking this time I'm going to do it with ink ink brush pen and alcohol markers So you can see me just trying to explore different shapes colors Just really going for it and not really caring of the outcome. I made a little book of inspiration I called it for my patrons Um, I did just have one line here, which I could show you but I don't know where it's gone so I made um A little zine I guess and I sent it to my patrons and it's just of some of the sketchbook stuff in here And I thought it was kind of cute and something that I would probably like to receive if I was someone's patron It did take me a while though to make it. I was like, why have I done this? But I do like that. It's kind of a nice thing to have and I wonder if anyone still has them to be honest So I made them like this and my printer just decided that everything needs to be more blue than it is What you're gonna do Here is a drawing of a sticker I made I don't have one to show you the final sticker, but it came out quite big I was playing around with textures and paints here. I really like this portrait I do like this style of just like water cut. I think that's probably using gouache, but I really like this Loose style everything. It really tells a story. I don't know. It just Ups depth and visual interest Here I am trying to Do that again, but with a horizon and failing horribly Going back to my ink pen and alcohol markers Doing some ballerinas You can see here that I'm a bit like lost on focus of what to do here I was watching squid games and I really did some more watercoloury maybe using gouache, but with a lot of water studies of screenshots of the show and I do like these. I like these a lot. I think I really like this one It has a lot of energy and feeling behind it A cat which you will see a lot of an empty page because This paper is very thin. Oh, no, I just missed a whole page.  I wanted at the time to Just do something involving witches and making it cozy and like a full illustration because I felt like I hadn't done one of those in a while I did coloured it in and then I did it with the pencil on this side And I did not like the way that was turning out.  I think it adds a much more contrast. It's much better for these really bright colours I drew my nightstand and all the little things. I really like Stuff like this so you can just look at it and be like, oh, that's kind of nice and see people's Way they live and things like that. I love seeing things like that from other people Here's some sketches. I think this is when I did my animal crossing print I did a video of drawing all the animal crossing characters Like this or I think all the new animal crossing characters, but I think I got it wrong and they're not new But the print came out a little bit duller than I wanted But I still quite like it Because it's just a nice thing to have like all the little characters I might do something like that again because it was just it took hours Absolutely hours, but it was a really nice thing to make and I really liked it It's like quite therapeutic to just sit and sketch out those little guys And I think I was thinking about making my own animal crossing characters of my cats Because I thought that would just be a cute thing to do Here is a setup of my desk with the ink pen again And very loose line. I really like it. I think it just Again tells a story about where I was what I was doing with situation This was went for a walk and I wanted to draw like the buildings and The garden and the sky, but just whatever reason stopped drawing it Mega art block page and I hate these because you can tell When your art block because it's just like a load of just conscious thought But not anything that's like interesting visually. You can see here my old kind of I don't know version of these pages I guess And you can see that not much has changed to be honest I'm still the same gal from four years ago Yeah, I think I was pretty in print down so made a painting this to shall pass Quite like this wish this was more centered, but there you go. Sometimes we do stuff and it's not centered Definitely here. I was trying to do more character work and just make my characters more distinctive So I was drawing. I really like these ladies And drawing hands because I really like the way that some people draw hands like really thick and big If that makes sense and I want to kind of make that into my style as well like stylize my hands a little bit more That's something that by the end of this Skechwork, you'll see I think yeah here. I was just sketching out characters or trying to sketch out people this was for a challenge I did on youtube about looking at a page of a book of a book that I'd never read before and just interpreting it Didn't like it so much, but I took like inspiration from that and then I came up with this Which I do like I really like her. Um, I don't know why it's not the best drawing slash painting It's just interesting. I think So I like that so I made this one, but I don't like this one so much I think the lines are too thick And uh, it's not as expressive I wanted to enter a graphic design competition about designing a book for girl, woman, other But for whatever reason I just stopped. This is a drawing of franard, I think Empty page and this was when we were moving So we were packing all our stuff up and I remember making this youtube video about the shiny About these shiny paints kind of like them um, kind of like the painting overall Nice, but I was very stressed at the time. It's a common theme throughout this sketchbook This is when we just moved to the uk and I just drew the house across the street and mochi Then I was just like, I don't know stressed out trying to find a place to live Drawing my cats manifesting manifest that shit Drawing my cats With loose pen These are the books that I read that year that at the time so I was trying to Keep up with the book club on patreon and just drawing out the books I read Just trying to sketch but not really enjoying it. Um Here I'm just more thinking about Maybe a cutesy style and trying to I wanted to do like You know those stamp washi tapes where you have like each Bit of the washi tape this kind of looks like a stamp and you can like tear them off I wanted to do that, but with like little landscapes still kind of want to do that, but we'll see um Also, I decided that I really wanted to do a badge or a pin or something like being like I read books Because I remember when I was a kid In school you used to get like badges for reading so many books So like if you read a hundred you got like the the gold badge or whatever And I remember being so jealous because I couldn't read very well because I'm dyslexic So I couldn't do it and I just was like wow those people must be so smart and I was like so jealous of them And now I look back on it And I think that's kind of messed up to like reward kids for reading so much when other kids might have issues with that I don't know Um messed up for me. I guess so I just wanted to do a badge being like I read books whatever Uh, but yeah, still something I'm thinking about doing.  Um, I draw them first in the sketchbook sometimes or digitally And I really like this one it came out glittery It just says you deserve to rest because I feel like another time when we're working from home or Or anyone really we just feel like we don't deserve to rest We just need to keep doing stuff we need to keep working and I don't think that's true. I think people need rest It's good for our mental health You know, it's it's a lot Somebody's gonna drew my foot I remember doing this thinking ah, this is gonna make a really nice picture and print and then I just hated it so You know what I was saying before sometimes you just do stuff and you you hate it I really wanted to draw a chair from clueless and I do kind of like this style but It wasn't really giving me clueless vibes Um, but I do like that style that kind of like kind of grungy. I guess is the expression Um here I didn't have many art supplies because I was just in the uk looking for a flat and all my stuff was in boxes So I was just using limited art supply and yeah I think that's what was kind of holding me back at this point of the sketchbook I made this into a print this little guy. Um, just drew it for spring and it was the patreon reward. This is how it came out It's a little bit darker. Um But that always tends to be the case when you're printing out stuff because you don't have when you're looking at something on the screen It has light behind it and but when it's printed out it doesn't so it looks It can sometimes trick you as to how light is going to come out But also I think I do really like this one. So Yeah So that was the patreon reward that's also on my shop if you guys want to check out my shop I have all this stuff went to heave a castle and it was the childhood home of amberlyn And so I just got a bit obsessed with her. Um, or like the tutors again And generally went to another castle and just drawing like the tulips there and little statue during another painting from the castle I tested out all my alcohol markers because some of them were running out So I just wanted to see which ones I needed to replace This is another ink. Um, you can see that I'm not I'm trying not to let the ink brush pen thing go Even though I clearly enjoy drawing with the black pencil a little bit more Here's some pictures of my cats again. So we have mochi pesto gg and then pesto Oh, so funny.  There's another drawing with amberlyn, but just using a blue paint Don't know why Here is a nice spread. I like the spread a lot. I think I was really coming back into myself with this spread um self portrait here of me pesto plants just nice colors that I enjoy and Yeah, I think I really like this this page Um, I think I was really realizing. Oh, yeah, that's the style I like Um, why have I stopped doing that? That's what I enjoy So I think it's kind of like a full circle here. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is what I enjoy doing This was a page where I planned out my starbucks, uh, cup paint over Which is a video on my channel I drew some youtubers so books and lala and lee, uh, who's an artist on youtube and then also a statue She's not she's not an artist on youtube. She's a statue Uh another painting from another like Old mansion house that we lived mana house that we lived that we visited.  I really like the way that this turned out It was just fun and I really like the non unconventional colors I used for the hills and stuff pretty cool And this was testing out my homemade paints that I made which is also a video on my channel I got a new pen, which is basically It's called I literally got okay. I can't remember the name of this pen fountain pen. Oh my gosh. I was like, this is not I could not remember the name. Uh, but yeah, it's this beautiful like pearlescent fountain pen and I remember just thinking it's really nice to just draw with it because You can get some really nice consistent line quality and just Yeah, I was just doodling out cats and I really think it's kind of funny like the Some of the imagery that I've captured of the cats and I do really like this pen. I was drawing a lot. We did my some friends visiting and we did some Draw these pokemon from memory games And uh, yeah, I think these are quite funny and quite like tend to tend to cool there um Yeah, it's very nice and I was drawing Brighton because that's what we've moved to it's like during the building top and just during different things Here I'm back on my Because I went back to my pencil.  This is actually a photo from a photo of me I uh went on tiktok and They have like different filters and I use the filter that like stretches your face out and stuff because I thought it would make really interesting ideas for like character design So this is actually my face, but like stretched out in different ways And I really thought that was an interesting idea to try and draw. Oh um Here's a paint page. I think I was a little art block. This is when we were moving so Or just after we've moved in um, just drawing the plants and I mean, I do like this kind of page of just I think it's interesting This is a video on my channel where I tested out these pens the Liquitex Uh paint pens which I'm not a huge fan of they weren't They're like very shiny. Um, but they're all right. They're nice. They're okay Um much preferred Posca pens or Molotow pens Uh here is a character design for A comic that I've been thinking about another short little like horror comic But I'm not sure if it's gonna be anything. Um just starting out ideas and I was like, okay If I'm gonna do a woman In a swimming costume, then I should just like Look at different women And yeah, I was doing like different sketches or people. I was watching um the white queen. I think it's called. It's a show about Um, I can't remember name one of the old marks and I really liked it. I did the style with this like thin pen and then the So yeah, it's just a A drawing of Her they star of the show becoming the queen and I like that. It's kind of nice I like watching shows then pausing it and drawing the screen grab because I think it tells a lot about um Setting and composition and lighting because it's obviously all been fought out carefully by the producers and the cinematographer and everything so it's interesting to see how you could maybe reflect that in your own art Uh, here is a page. I hate. I think I was just trying to Draw loads of texture. I think I was covering up like This is a page that would have just been left blank because of drawings on the other sides And uh, yeah, so it just I did you have some plants like the texture not much else during some plants in pots Uh, did like a kiki's delivery service No draw, but I went freehand with the ink brush pen Just to practice with it and then I use just colored pencils. I don't I don't like it very much But it's not terrible I think when you copy like a character well-known character, you have to get them Spots on or a completely different style. Otherwise, it just looks silly So you can see here that it's trying to be that style and it just doesn't work Uh, I drew this lady in the fields with stars flowing down and I do like that I like the texture and the pencils and I used again Realizing that I like to use the black pencil for outlines and I keep forgetting that and every time I don't use that I'm like, oh something's wrong with that picture Drawing some cats and stuff just thinking of like a style for a cat would be quite cute So I was like drawing out different stuff and uh, yeah, that's the end of the sketchbook So I'm just gonna say that I finished this in 07 2022 Yeah, so that's my sketchbook. Do you guys think I've developed a bit over the years? I hope I have um Yeah, I think I have anyway And uh, yeah, I said this was before my other two comics, but actually was after So I think what was happening here was like once I do a big project I'm kind of like tired of art a little bit So I think that's why I Maybe this one isn't as cool as my other sketchbook that I did just before this one But yeah, I'm trying to hope to um, keep drawing every day Keep trying to be inspired by other people and hoping that it inspires you guys somehow to keep going and keep drawing and Find out what it is that you like about your artwork Um, so that's it for the video if you guys were mind checking out my patreon or my xe or anything It really helps the channel out and I'd really appreciate it But thanks for watching guys if you go up to the end, it's really awesome of you and I hope to see you next time


Many successful herbal treatments start like this. Some doctor learns that some plants have been used by some ancient medical tradition, like ginger for headaches, and figures, hey, they've got patients with headaches, and since it's just some safe common spice, advises one of their migraine patients to give it a try. At the first sound of a migraine coming on, the patient mixed a quarter teaspoon of powdered ginger and some water, drank it down, and poof. Within a half hour, the migraine went away. And it worked every time, no side effects. This is what's called a case report, which is really just a glorified anecdote, but case reports have played an important role in the history of medicine. AIDS was first discovered as a series of case reports. Some young guy walks into a clinic in Los Angeles with a bad case of thrush, and the rest is history. Or reports of an unusual side effect of a failed chest pain drug leading to the billion-dollar blockbuster Viagra. Case reports may be the lowest or weakest form of evidence, but they're often the first line of evidence. That's where everything begins. So a report like this isn't helpful in and of itself, but it can inspire researchers to put it to the test. The problem is, who's going to fund it? The market for migraine drugs is worth billions of dollars. A quarter teaspoon of powdered ginger costs about a penny. So who'd fund a study pitting ginger versus the leading migraine drug? No one, until now. A double-blinded, randomized, controlled clinical trial comparing the efficacy of ginger to Sumitriptan, also known as imitrex, one of the top-selling billion-dollar drugs in the world in the treatment of migraine headaches. They tried using just one-eighth of a teaspoon of powdered ginger versus a good dose of the drug, and they both worked just as well, just as fast. Most started out in moderate or severe pain before, but after the drug or ginger ended up mild or pain-free. The same proportion of migraine sufferers reported satisfaction with the results either way. And so as far as I'm concerned, ginger won. Not only because it's a few billion dollars cheaper, but because there were significantly fewer side effects in the ginger group. On the drug, people reported dizziness, sedative effect, vertigo, and heartburn. The only thing reported for ginger was an upset tummy in about one in 25 people, though taking a whole tablespoon of ginger powder at one time on an empty stomach could irritate anyone's tummy, just as a note of caution. Sticking to an eighth of a teaspoon is not only up to 3,000 times cheaper than the drug, but you're probably less likely to end up as a case report yourself of people that have had a heart attack or died after taking the drug.