My fellow Americans, I'd like to talk to you today about trade, a powerful force for progress and peace as you well know. The winds and waters of commerce carry opportunities that help nations grow and bring citizens of the world closer together. Put simply, increased trade spells more jobs, higher earnings, better products, less inflation and cooperation over confrontation. The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides for economic progress and peace among nations. I've seen in my lifetime what happens when leaders forget these timeless principles. They seek to protect industries and jobs, but they end up doing the opposite. One economic lesson of the 1930s is protectionism increases international tensions. We bought less from our trading partners, but then they bought less from us. Economic growth dried up. World trade contracted by over 60 percent, and we had the Great Depression. Young Americans soon followed the American flag into World War II. No one wants to relive that nightmare and we don't have to. The 1980s can be a time when our economies grow together and more jobs will be created for all. This was the spirit of the Williamsburg Summit in May. The leaders of the industrialized countries pledged to continue working for a more open trading system, but sometimes that's easier said than done. Take the case of our own economy. Things are looking up for America. Inflation has been knocked down to 2.6 percent. Economic growth in the second quarter reached 8.7 percent, and 1,700,000 Americans have been hired since last December. Yesterday, we learned that total unemployment has dropped to 9.3 percent. Nearly 500,000 of our fellow citizens found jobs in July. More Americans are working than any time in this nation's history. This good news restores confidence in our economy and our currency. Some people dislike our strong dollar and blame it on our interest rates. Well, we do not want disorderly currency markets and we've intervened to bring back order to otherwise disorderly markets. But let's remember something. Other countries have higher interest rates than we do, yet the currencies have fallen in relation to ours. One good reason is inflation. It's not the interest you earn from holding a currency that matters most. It's the confidence you have that the value of your money won't depreciate from higher inflation. America's inflation rate has declined dramatically. Now, a strong dollar makes our purchases from abroad less expensive and that's good. Winning the war against inflation is probably the best economic legacy we could leave to the next generation. Remember what life was like only a few years ago? When the value of the dollar was being talked down and inflation was going through the roof? But a strong dollar also brings problems. It makes the goods our exporters are trying to sell more expensive. Still, we're tough competitors. Some $200 billion worth of goods were sold by Americans last year. So, do we listen to those who would go back to dead-end protectionism and to sabotaging the value of our currency? Or do we go forward? Keeping our faith in the American people who made this nation the greatest success story the world has ever known. I believe our challenge is to marshal the power of this country's best minds and create the technologies that will restore America's economic leadership. I have appointed a Presidential Commission on Industrial Competitiveness asking distinguished leaders from business, labor and academia to advise us on how best to strengthen our ability to compete in world markets. We believe the U.S. trade position would be strengthened by uniting many of this government's trade responsibilities under one roof. So, we've proposed legislation to create a Department of International Trade and Industry. We're also taking action to create opportunities for trade. Ten days ago, our negotiators reached a new long-term grain agreement with the Soviet Union. Since 1981, we've ended the unfair embargo that had been slapped on American farmers. And now we have an agreement that obligates the Soviets to increase their minimum purchase of wheat, or grain, I should say, by 50%. This, along with the likelihood of substantial purchases from China, represents a major step forward for our farmers. It symbolizes our determination to help them regain the markets they lost. It also proves that while we oppose Soviet aggression, we seek to promote progress and peace between our peoples. Yesterday, I signed legislation to stimulate more trade and opportunity, the Caribbean Basin Initiative. This package of incentives will establish new commercial relationships between the people of the Caribbean and the United States. Stimulating trade will mean new jobs for their citizens as well as ours. It underscores our belief that economic development, based on free market principles, is the key to helping our neighbors build a future of freedom, democracy and peace. Finally, let me mention an important agreement on textiles. We've just reached with the People's Republic of China. No free market currently exists in textiles, and only what is called the multi-fiber arrangement signed by 46 countries. We're a party to that arrangement. But China is not, and our bilateral agreement with them expired last December. To prevent a flood of imports from harming our struggling textile industry, we imposed unilateral quotas on China's products. They responded with large reductions in their purchases of American farm products. We faced three options. Option one, end our restrictions on Chinese textiles, which would help our farmers but risk further damage to our textile workers. Option two, cut back Chinese exports even further, which would cost our farmers billions more in lost sales. Or option three, negotiate a tough but fair five-year agreement with China to permit controlled, moderate growth of Chinese exports. We chose option three. Our textile producers can be assured there will be no flood of imports, and they can get on with the task of modernizing their industry, which is the best long-term assurance of jobs for our own people. This new agreement will mean more business for our farmers, and it promises China the opportunity to sell its products here. That's important for good relations between our two countries. Bit by bit, we're restoring America's reputation as a reliable supplier and as a supporter of free and fair trade for progress and for peace. Until next week, thanks for listening and God bless you.


In a classroom, you always have the kids who sit in the back. You always have the kids who try and get away with, maybe the teacher won't call on me to read. But when we have these hands-on experiments, everyone's held accountable, pushed out of their comfort zone. When you're trying to prepare them for what's coming down the pipe, it definitely involves a lot of technology in their future, and that's just the one piece that we really don't have access to in public schools. My desktop computer is over 10 years old. Some of the textbooks that we have in the building are from before the turn of the last century. Lack of funding is usually the reason why we don't get to do a lot of things we want to do. We are a school district with very limited resources. I am very grateful for the NEA Foundation. Not only dollars and grant opportunities, but also expertise. To be able to do that is especially important in a school district like ours. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It's a push for us to purposefully include more opportunities for students to introduce technology and engineering practices into their education so that they're ready for the next step. Teachers don't always have time to collaborate cross-content. So my job as the STEM coordinator, I work with the department heads, figuring out what are you doing now and how can we help connect that more to STEM? How can we give you more industry resources? And how can we push kids from a regular science class into a career as a scientist? We used to think of learning things like you learn the skill, and then you can apply the skill in the world, and kids just don't think that way. You see a problem in the world, and then you have to find a way to solve it. And oftentimes that solution is not necessarily in a book. We're preparing children for careers that we don't even know what they are. They don't even exist. We know that STEM is going to be an important piece of that. STEM education is, I feel at the heart of being a human, we're meant to be creative. All of us want to make sense of the world, and we want to bring our dream into reality. Our teachers are our greatest resource. That classroom teacher is the only person who can actually do the job of meeting the needs of those children in that classroom. And investment in teachers is the most important investment we can make. I've had many, many opportunities to see the power of what education can do for children. There is no more important work we can do than be in education. I asked the kids to work to become something more than they are today, and teachers need to do the same thing. The kids are changing. I need to be changing too. When I grow up, I'm thinking about being a doctor. I want to be a pediatrician. I want to be a nurse when I grow up, like my mom. I want to be an airline pilot.


Hello, I am Jan Reardon and I am representing the Jennifer Reardon Foundation and I have a guest with me today that I will tell you a little bit about in a minute. Just wanted to let you know that the foundation has been formed for my sister-in-law Jennifer Reardon who we lost to a tragic accident a few years back and my brother has formed this fabulous foundation that has pillars to represent the areas that were such a focus of GENs and that would be women's empowerment, community vitality, early childhood education and financial literacy and along with that in the foundation GENs mantra was to be kind, loving, caring and sharing and that's what it's all about. Every act has been a true act of kindness. We have a huge announcement to make next week in Albuquerque to honor GEN by the number of acts of kindness that have been logged in and really putting Albuquerque on the map to be one of the kindest cities in the United States. But here we are in Vermont and I have the absolute pleasure and honor to introduce Kimberly Pierce who is a physician's assistant in Plainfield, Vermont, Central Vermont area and just I hope we have enough time to listen to Kimberly about the kindness project that she's involved in and what she really has to offer to us in regard to what's tangible to be able to bring change to the healthcare system and move forward in a much kinder way. So let me introduce you to Kimberly Pierce and good morning to you. Don't forget about Bruno. I know I was going to give that honor to you. He's becoming my best friend but I wanted you to introduce your special friend to us please. Yes this is Bruno the dog who's here for just for fun and for support so. And I love his purple scarf and thank you for wearing purple. I know obviously that was GEN's color and as well as your friend that you can talk about as well but please begin by you know saying how you're feeling about being here and then talking a little bit about the kindness project to get things started. Sure thank you so much for having me I am so honored I I feel like my life has been leading up to this moment. Love it just love it thank you for your time Kimberly I know how busy you are. And I just I just want to take a second to recognize that we here in Vermont are actually here on unceded Abenaki territory and I just want to honor that. Love that I love that and which is such a wonderful tie to Albuquerque too. I think of you and I'm out there so that's beautiful. I just want to dedicate the next half an hour to my to my niece. Absolutely thank you. Consider it done. Okay so if you could just begin you know we'll just chat about I know there's so many different things that I love hearing about and I would love to share obviously with the community. But let's just talk about the kindness project because when I was able to obviously host the show I went on to Google and put kindness Vermont you popped right up picture and then I reached out to you and thankfully you were back in touch that night and the rest is history here we are. So that was very exciting for me to see what had been taking place because I was not aware of that and obviously being kindness related I was all about that and being able to find out what you've done and what the next steps are. So if you could just talk about the project that would be fabulous. Thank you we're waiting for you. Thanks. Yes yes so the Vermont kindness project came out of I've been working as a medical provider for the last actually really long time since 1987. Thank you and I've actually been in the same practice and what I found is there has just since the opiate crisis hit probably I don't know whenever that was 10 years or so ago I just found that I was feeling very much into despair and hopeless about what I could do for my patients and I could love them up in the exam room but then I send them out to a system that is really broken and so the Vermont kindness project if you could think of it as everything that can happen outside the exam room it's really more for community and convening and also thinking about healing and reducing stress in ways that we've never thought of like tapping into creative pursuits and think about yoga and meditation and pet therapy and walking labyrinth and those kinds of things and trying to get a place a resource for my patients so they'll be able to find some resources learn some more about the topic we're going to talk about today and find some some some things that they can do. Perfect and my understanding and maybe you can expand upon this a little bit more is that Vermont is leading the way there's no question about that as far as taking this step forward to create a pilot program in Vermont that would be nationwide in our lifetimes which is fabulous to know that we'll be able to see this through but what would you say from your perspective has been the biggest obstacle I know there's many there's so many but you obviously in the trenches you can prioritize what is the biggest obstacle obstacle to this point that has not allowed this to move forward at a little bit faster pace I mean I know what's involved so it takes time but we've struggled with healthcare for so long and so this is just fabulous news but what's holding you back at this point? Well nothing's holding us back at this point and we're about to unleash and I'm very proud to say that Vermont is going to lead the way in becoming the first I'd like to say the first trauma-informed state and race-informed state and when you say Kimberly just because we've had a chance to talk so I'm starting to get a little bit of the the language but what is trauma-informed mean in your practice and that's a great question and we're still trying to actually learn what the meaning of that means and I don't want to scare anybody off by trauma-informed but the easiest way to distill it is just to imagine imagine the lens of looking at a puppy or looking at a baby on the floor and like how how we feel a certain way we feel joy we feel like this we're light yeah there's a there's a word for clumped right and we feel that yes joy natural yeah it's in it and it's actually it's a physiologic state and so what what we're trying to do through education and empowerment is to stop the intergenerational cycles of violence that when you when you when all you know is a violent family then that's all you're gonna know what to do you don't know and respond differently right how do we so trauma-informed is a lens from which we can look at a person and it's really through instead of a fear-based lens it's really a lens of love and and how can I as a practitioner sitting there in an exam room with a patient who's struggling who maybe maybe they're homeless maybe they're dealing with addictions how can I imagine not only where they came from today but what what happened in their ancestry what happened to them as children what happened to their grandparents and where are they going to be going so looking at the whole well-being of exactly physical the emotional and spiritual well-being which is I'm afraid and I'm I'm I'm honestly I'm ashamed that the medical establishment has sort of cut off spirituality as something that's actually important when that's exactly what we're missing right now exactly right that can certainly bring everything together so what would that look like for you going into work tomorrow with a trauma-informed center and how would you treat that patient well I know what you're already doing so I shouldn't use you as an example but how would another provider either in your clinic or elsewhere act when a you know a patient came in versus their normal routine what would be the tangible difference so this is the exciting thing and we didn't really talk about what this project is going to be at the health center in Plainfield where I've been working we're going to be and there's let me just take a step back to say that there are about 1600 federally qualified health centers in the United States okay there's about 12 in Vermont we believe we're going to be the first health center in Vermont and maybe of the whole U.S. that's going to be what I call trauma-informed right and so what that's going to look like is the whole organization gets trained up about the importance of understanding and reflecting on our own things and our own own trauma so that we can be our best moving forward and so that would mean that what we're hoping to capture and we actually have a research study with five colleges from the University of Vermont and I'll just say the College of Medicine this College of Public Health the School of Business the School of Nursing and the School of Education are actually coming together at the table try to create a pre and post survey so that we can actually measure what we know it was going to happen and what I hope is going to happen is that when patients come in the door they're going to be greeted by a different vibe exactly you can feel the culture shift and if you realize that we're all on a spectrum there's the autism spectrum but there's also kindness spectrums there's trauma-informed so there's so many and and so if we could all just come up come up a couple of notches then I think that would be palpable and I hope that that will also translate into better outcomes for patients and that's just the beginning right and that's fairly recent as you say with UVM with the five colleges coming on board the training we just got the dates today it's going to be in February and congratulations thank you yeah it's really exciting it sure is I mean it's a movement it is truly a movement and we're hoping that that we're actually going to film it as it's happening so that we can be a model for other places and and to be able to say this is not rocket science it is brain science but it's not rocket science and it's really it's it's doable and it's all of us are at the core you talk about that baby or that puppy and they come in with this clean slate as we all do for the most part things happen and obviously we have to deal with that but again it's how we get through those things and I can certainly look to my brother in the the trauma that has come you know for their children and family and friends and how you need to be very aware of ways to get through such as spreading the mantra of gen's kind loving caring sharing keeping that spirit alive and focusing in on the positive which would be the conversations that you're having in your office to discover what could be going on in somebody's life that they're ashamed or embarrassed to to talk about meanwhile you bring that out and there's no there's no judgment why should there be we should all be at our core supporting one another and I think there's more people out there that would like to do that but just don't even know how simple it could be yes and you asked me about obstacles I really didn't answer that question but I think the system right now is set up to be a for-profit industry absolutely so if we want to change so it's all about time right it's about time it's about you know checking the correct boxes and you know ordering the protocols old things that don't take into account this very very powerful public health study that was done the ACE study which is what is now what does a stand for so adverse childhood experiences ACEs was a study that was done in the mid 1990s a long time ago and it was the biggest public health study that's ever been done of its kind even to date to date and what it showed was just stunning nobody could believe it the the the amount of trauma that this population the seventeen thousand mostly white mostly well educated and very well insured population had was so surprising and and we had no idea that it was so common but what we also didn't know is that stress in childhood imprints in our bodies in a physiologic way it's not just that oh okay you know you had a lot of stress and then therefore you're making bad decisions right right what I'd like for people to understand about ACEs is kind of think about it as a like a lead level right if you're exposed to lead as a child right you have a high level we don't usually blame those kids because they can't control what their their environment is like right so a lead level is an environmental toxin right that imprints in our bodies in a physical measurable way right that's the difference I think it's measurable and so is ACEs so is stress and child yes stress and childhood is is basically so intense because of the the the sponge that we are as children soaking up and if our bodies are in a state of hyperarousal or fight or flight which is understandable if you're in a lot of stress it's actually an adaptive mechanism that is absolutely you know probably keeps you alive exactly it lets you like you know leap of a tall building or something right but if that stress doesn't ever come down that cortisol the adrenaline all of those physiologic changes actually imprint in our bodies and increase the risk of disease exactly but the exciting thing and this is what people aren't talking about because they just I think that they get so like oh it's just such a bummer like why would you be excited about this well I'm excited about it because now we have the research on the flip side on the light side got the dark side exactly got the light side which shows us this the that neuroplasticity and resilience is something that can be taught it's not something that's inherent that we can all become more resilient and we can all heal no matter what age you are that's amazing and I'd love to talk about that a little more so what would be an example of that say you do have you know a child or really anybody that comes into your office that you know has dealt and has been dealing with a great deal of trauma what is that kind approach do you go to I know you make home visits which is fabulous to be able to do that in this day and age but how do you get to a place with that person where there is some sustainability on a kinder environment culture for them such a great question to me I think it is using when I think about trying to talk to a patient about their stress and childhood I have to empty myself and I have to be completely fully present and ready to receive what I'm about to hear exactly and some days I'm not up for it and I can't do it but if I am then what I find is that by bearing witness we can transform trauma into healing and that's just about showing up and being aware being acknowledging and not just being oh yeah okay you have the score have a great day exactly I put it in the file and oh my god I had no idea that's more of a disservice to know and not be able to respond and react accordingly and and the medical system has always been like you know okay well if this is a psychiatric kind of thing then that's for DCF or that's for you know mental health that's for psychiatry and in fact primary care is the place we need to be entering this and and starting conversations about mental health because I I have been at the health center now and taking care of the same families since 1987 generations of we tried to actually estimate how many patients I might have seen and I think it was something like 15,000 people over my time there and I'm still there and and and what I so what that allows me is an aerial view and and to be able to see people in an individual basis but also through families and and also community and and I think going back to sort of the old days where there was a doctor that was doing house calls who knew more of the dynamic of that family right who just wanted to who who wasn't a stranger that you know to me is is like a shift toward away from being a medical provider and toward being more of a healer exactly right so how can we be more healing well that and that means that we're we're we're not judging you number one on any level right and even if I'm smiling and I'm I'm being professional but inside I'm thinking what is wrong with this person why can't they just stop you know whatever it is dot dot dot if there if you're thinking those things even on some level it comes across it comes across there and you know when someone's sure when they're not and it breaks it breaks my heart exactly because somebody who's been traumatized they need I feel like you know we all there's there's a starting line right there's a starting line in life whether we call it kindergarten or whatever and you want everybody to be here yes you know maybe you've had good food and you've been taught some things in school and I'm at away from school and then you show up but people who've had trauma literally if the starting line here they're under the ground right and so showing up it's and how do we acknowledge that some people are here some people are here they're already ahead because of our own white privilege or whatever it is right and so I want to say for all those people and this is what I try to do is if you're you were down here I'm just gonna I'm gonna put you up here for a minute right and I just want to say you're amazing you're incredible what happened to you was not your fault you are survivor I am so impressed like the fact you even got here today like I mean like I can't imagine what people go through right to recognize so having that true empathy and and I don't see that it's at us or them for me it's it's here we are we are united and that's the basis of all spiritual health right is that we are connected so care about one another right and if we don't and somebody in our communities is you know and if they are suffering so are we absolutely and and talk about community vitality what a way to transform a community no less you know at every level whether it's in you know obviously healthcare I also you know love to think about the different things that can be done in the school system the workplace you know through the community with rec centers and gathering places there's so much opportunity to be able to level that that play field in the sense of people showing up and being glad to be there even if it's for one hour out of that day today maybe tomorrow it's an hour in 10 minutes where they're feeling at peace but just to bring peace into their life and I remember when we first met you had different phrases in different ways and I think these are nice tangible things for me even as a you know as a friend or a family member or co-worker to be able to I don't think we realize sometimes when we say something one the tone or secondly the words we might have a nice message but it comes out differently so can you give us those examples of how to word something in a better way sure and I think tone and posture matters so much absolutely so much and voice matters so much and we don't talk about that but if I were just to stick with what is trauma informed language I would say it's you know again and I'm I'm I'm actually quoting the the the U.S. Surgeon General I was I was so honored to listen to him on it was a on-being podcast and he talked about moving away from a fear-based system toward of medical care right so a fear-based system to a system based on love and what would that when was that Kimberly when last week yeah I love it so reframing the medical system and what would that look like well let's just say that trauma informed language is about equalizing and I will say one of my favorites is instead of saying I'm going to call you out on your stuff I'm calling you out right how about let's call you in there's a perfect example what is wrong with you why don't you just stop smoking stop whatever what's wrong with you versus I wonder what happened to you what's right with you let's start with that perfect instead of this sort of sort of American thing of like well people just make bad choices you know they they have the ability to make better choices and I would argue you know people who who don't feel safe are not going to be they won't be able to do safe things they will do unsafe things for themselves and for other people right they're not looking at the scenario through the same lens I mean it just it's so shaded and and that's the unfortunate part they think they're doing the right thing given what they know right right and I believe that either you're coming from a place of love or you're coming from a place of fear and if you're coming from a place of anger and envy and jealousy and frustration and confusion and it's not a place of love everything else is coming from a place of love if you're coming from a place of equality and deep respect and reverence yes reverence absolutely for the fact that all life on earth is sacred so what would be and I know we had talked about this but what would be some words that come to mind for you as far as the culture and the vibe that people would feel walking into your clinic after February and and really what does 2022 look like as far as that that sensation that somebody gets the minute they walk through the door so many words that I hope will come out I hope that people will feel a sense of belonging that they belong there that they are connected that people care about them that they don't have to fight so hard to to fight for their health that we got this that we care about you I'm an advocate for you and you and let me hold some of that oh yeah what a relief that must be yeah compared to you know putting their head for years of you know pushing it down and not even expressing it number one just being blamed yeah like I don't see why you can't just stop doing this thing you know right and that's what what our culture is saying so I mean I think when I look at the the movement that that you know occurred as a result of this research from 30 years ago the the educational system is way ahead of the medical system and the and the the complementary health world is also way ahead of the medical system in understanding this as is the mental health system to some degree but what I think we've been missing is the medical piece to try to say you know what this is legitimate this is a science this is important we need to learn this stuff so this is the perfect segue into what I find to be the most intriguing part of impacting those outcomes in the future my career for 38 years was in health care wellness and so when I heard this I I could not have been just more thrilled because I tried to move in this direction for so many years but to bring an insurance company on board and I want you to be the one that gets to announce it because you know insurance companies for years rely on you being sick they make money by people with illnesses and chronic disease not getting better and preventative care so that health care costs go down and that's where things can be shifted you say profit nonprofit right it can all go to better benefits that are important so you go ahead and take it away on insurance we have a couple minutes left so yeah this is a wrap here I just found out today that um and I'm I'm honored to say that Blue Cross Blue Shield is honored to be part of the project of creating and we're still trying to figure out what that looks like right but we are going to be partnering with Blue Cross Blue Shield to try to help create a new model a new framework of trauma informed providers create a training program for medical providers but also that training program will be able to be used in all the other sectors education exactly because it's about the staff as well all the staff is trained and then that just that in itself you take that home you take that out into the community so it's you know evolving everybody at that level not even I mean the patient's obviously the main concern that's setting but again it's coming from such a pure place and I just want to say that the most heavily traumatized people in our society are being locked behind bars and we should be ashamed of ourselves it is it is shameful it is shameful right and I'm disgusted and it's time to change the systems yes and I hope that this if we can establish a new way of creating the way we're going to practice medicine and reimburse for medicine I hope and I pray that this will ripple out to the people that need it the most absolutely let me just see I as I said we have a couple minutes so if there's anything that you're thinking of that I have not asked I would love to have you just go right ahead but well here's one last question and then you take it to the end but what can we do you know starting right now telling me to go out into the community and do something that will make it more kind is there something at that level just to be aware of and I try and I I've certainly gotten better just knowing how Jen was about being kind loving caring and sharing and I try to do things a little differently but what would you say would be a good takeaway to just say you know when you see the person blah blah do this what what comes to mind for you would be a kind act today I would say start with being kind to yourself great point self-care because if we don't and and you know self-care is all great and good but we need to do self-care together yes to create a culture where we're all being we're able to you know sing together and I will tell you through this whole project I've didn't expect to find that I was healing myself and the way I healed myself was through being in a gospel choir and I'll give a little pitch here for the Montpelier community gospel choir we're a perfect microcosm of of people coming together from all different traditions and what you know what allowed you to take that step what did you do that for yourself why did that happen because I knew I wanted to be able to speak about this project and I was afraid of public speaking well look at you girl so I started singing I started singing and then what that allowed me is to actually take the next step and then be involved with something called playback theater central Vermont playback theater is another way of helping people heal through storytelling and and drama and using metaphor and so I it is through those two things and also getting outside I would say if there's one thing you can do to take care of yourself would be get outside and connect with nature in some way because we are we we have to save the earth we're living in a catastrophe racism is a national health emergency we have to change the way we're thinking about everything I agree and I have to say when we first talked and you had mentioned that I'm paraphrasing your bit but basically you're going to save the world I'm thinking okay I gotta love it you know I'm wide open but then when I listen you are going to change the world Kimberly well I all I know I'm not an expert in trauma all I know is that I've interviewed over a thousand people now at the health center and I see what an incredible impact it can make on one person and I've seen the the impact in one life and then you times that by a thousand and I I just dream of a day when everyone will have access to this kind of important conversation with somebody who's taking care of them right who understands them who understands that fully and doesn't look down on them correct yeah right and thank you so much for all that you and your colleagues are doing in the central Vermont area it's remarkable it's remarkable we hopefully will be able to follow up I would love that if you're willing to come back and certainly keep track of 2022 things are happening in February so that gives you a lot of time to have some great results and outcomes so quickly having an insurance company on board makes all the difference in the world as far as being able to you know really get to the right place where laws are changed and policies are put in place and protocols are adjusted and until those laws and policies are going to be put in place I'm going to continue to put a lot of energy into the Vermont kindness project which we do have a website thanks to my genius niece who got this together and it what it is what is the address for your website the Vermont kindness project dot org okay and is Vermont spelled out it's Vermont is spelled out okay and there's some resources there's TED talks there's people that have been really inspirational to me Nadine Burke Harris being one of them and Bezel van der Kolk Dr. Hudziak there's so many people that have stepped into this path of this project that we've been starting and now every time I need something something else like Jan Reardon calls me up thank you it gives me chills it does on so many levels and I better obviously wrap this up but I am looking forward to having you back here Kimberly and obviously staying in touch and Jennifer and I know your close friend is Carolyn yeah yeah we're we're instrumental in having this all come together we have to definitely have to have some some kudos go out there but I just wanted to say that this show is something that I'm just so passionate about and I am wide open to people letting me know if you have someone that I could interview where you feel as though a topic would be appropriate again I really want to stay connected to Jen's four pillars but her mantra of being kind loving caring and sharing applies to everybody of every age of every race of every you know nationality so it's time to put that out there as much as we possibly can in any reinforcement on the importance of that no less in your case true evidence-based programming is where it is to I think get people to you know really see where this is going and overpower the bad news exactly finally there is so much and we don't talk about it so having a place the third Thursday of every month at no exactly it's a it's a great start and you know shout out to town meeting tv to really understand the importance of being able to do this because years ago you know certain forms of media would never have even considered it so the fact that now it's something that we know has to be a part of our community it really will make a difference and and transform life as we know it I hope so yes yeah so thanks again this is fabulous okay okay thank you thank you


On this week's Visual Studio Toolbox, Aditi Dugar is going to finish our two-part look at how you can containerize your existing.NET applications. Hi, welcome to Visual Studio Toolbox. I'm your host, Robert Green, and joining me today is Aditi Dugar. Hey, Aditi. Hey. This is part two of our chat about containers. Exactly. In part one, we looked at adding container support via Docker to an existing web forms app we used. The whole idea is that we've talked quite a bit about containers in the show lately, in the context of microservices, and the smart hotel 360 app. But this is our opportunity to step back and do, again, two things. One is do a more gentle introduction to containers, to the extent that's possible. Step back and we talked quite a bit about what they are and why, and then focus on existing apps. You've got an existing web forms app or MVC app, you've got an existing WCF service, all the code that people built earlier and are still maintaining, and how does containers fit into that story? Exactly. So that's what we're doing. In episode one of this, we created a container, we got it running locally, which is great. But now the question is, what do you do with it? How do you get that container out so that it can be used in production? One way of course to run it in Windows Servers. So you don't need the Cloud to run containers, you can run it on Windows Server, or of course you can get these things up and running in Azure, and that's what we're going to talk about today. Right? Sounds great. Excellent. Awesome. So I think the first thing we're going to talk about is orchestrators. So the first thing you want to think about when you're deploying to the Cloud is what orchestrator I'm going to choose. An orchestrator is basically a platform that's going to help you manage all aspects of deploying and setting up your containerized application. Okay. So there's a lot of different orchestrators out there. There's Kubernetes, there's Service Fabric, there's Docker Swarm, there's all sorts of options, and all of them have their different pros and cons. But today I'm going to highlight a couple, and those are managed Kubernetes in Azure Container Services and Azure Service Fabric. Okay. And the main difference right now between those that we're going to highlight is just that Azure Container Services is a little bit more mature for Linux containers versus Service Fabric as it's part of the Microsoft ecosystem is a little bit much more on Windows. But really it doesn't matter which one you choose, both of them will work just fine. Right. So I think we talked about this last time. If you're kind of new to containers, if you're doing .NET Core, so it's a brand new app, .NET Core, can run on Windows, can run on Linux. You might choose Linux containers. Exactly. If you're using Kubernetes, they're smaller, they're I don't know performance wise if they're faster, but they're certainly smaller and quicker to create. So your dev work is a little bit faster. And then if your .NET Core app is running on both, then you've got the flexibility there. Exactly. Obviously, if you've got an existing Web Forms app, you don't want to have to rewrite it as a .NET Core app. So that you can run it in a Linux container, so that you can use Kubernetes. Yeah, exactly. And we're building on the scenarios that we talked about in the last show, which were really your existing .NET applications. So Windows containers. So we do have Windows support for Kubernetes, which is there and improving, and will continue to improve quickly. Exactly. And so today for the demo purposes, I'm going to talk about Kubernetes in Azure Container Services and focus on that in the demo, but we have both walk-throughs highlighted online, so you can follow them step by step if you want to. So Kubernetes is an orchestrator, and Azure Service Fabric is an orchestrator. What's Azure Container Services? Container Services. Azure Container Services is basically the Azure environment in which Kubernetes is going to work. So you basically will set up your resource group in Azure, then you'll set up your Kubernetes cluster and connect that into Azure Container Services. But Kubernetes is the actual orchestrator that you're using. Okay. It's confusing, I know. Yeah. So I want to talk quickly about just the benefits of orchestration and why you want to use it. Yes. It's especially important when you have things like microservices in your application, but even for smaller applications, it can be really convenient. You can have automated deployments and replication of your containers. You can easily scale in or scale out just online, which makes things really easy in terms of deployment. Load balancing, so you can load balance between all of the containers and pods that you have in Kubernetes pretty easily. You can have rolling upgrades. It's a lot more resilient because you can automatically reschedule failed containers.  You can automatically make sure that there's no breaks in your service. And then lastly, you can have controlled exposure of your network ports so that people outside of your cluster, you can kind of control that exposure. So it really turns out that containers is really DevOps. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a great benefit. Everything you just said, I know, like me as the developer, I'm like, yeah, it's great, that's all happening, but I'm the dev, right? I built the app, right? I handed over to the ops guys to do that. And I know the DevOps whole concept is to shrink that barrier and merge those two worlds. Exactly. But in our demo we're doing here, and we did previously, we didn't touch the app. Nope. So we put the app up and running in a container, added the Docker support, which made the container out of that app, and then you go and manage it. Exactly. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, if you remember in the first episode actually, the first picture that we showed was really calling this sector cloud DevOps ready and it's really focused on highlighting the fact that this is just really, really helpful for DevOps. And you look at a lot of surveys and people why, you know, what they're interested in containers and you find that they're really interested in the DevOps side. Exactly. And when you use containers for DevOps as a way of more easily packaging up an application. Yep, exactly. Cool. So we're gonna get into the demo now, but just a reminder of where we were at when we ended last time. So we had a application with a WinForms front-end, a WCF service in your middle tier, and a SQL server on the back end. And we went through and we containerized the WCF service and the SQL server and got those running locally on our machine. Okay. So, let's go into, basically if you want to deploy the Kubernetes, there's two really high level steps. The first is setting up in Azure and making sure your Kubernetes cluster is set up and deployed to Azure. And then the second part is deploying your application and all of the resources needed into the Kubernetes cluster. So today I'm gonna focus on kind of that second half of deploying your application actually into Kubernetes. But that assumes that you've gone through and in your Azure portal, you've created that Kubernetes cluster and you have that all set up already. So. What you can do in Azure. I know you can also do that in Kubernetes. Kubernetes has a whole web-based UI for setting up clusters and whatnot. You can do all of this through Azure. You can do all of this through Azure and set up the ACS that you need as well. And if you want step-by-step instructions again, we have all of that. Layed out on our eShop on containers repo. So I'm not gonna go through it today cause it would take too much time but you can definitely follow this through and be able to walk through step-by-step. Okay, cool. And so there's a few terms I wanna bring up in Kubernetes before we dive deep into it just so we're all on the same page. So the first is pods. So pods are kind of the basic unit in Kubernetes and that's really the pod host to your container. And so you could have multiple containers in a pod or you could have one container in a pod but that's really the environment for your container. And then there's a service and the service is really helping you network between the different pods. And then last- If you have two services and two different containers they need to be able to talk to each other. Exactly. Just like we have our SQL container and our WCF container and we wanna make sure all of those services are set up correctly. And then lastly, there's a deployment. So the deployment is really gonna help you automate that setting up, the replication, the deletion, the creation of your pods. So those are the three key terms that you kind of have to know going forward. So the first step in that second part of the process would be to create our Kubernetes deployment files. And this is kind of similar to what we did with our Docker files. So there's a couple of files that we have to create. Again, text-based, so super easy to create. But those are really just describing the step-by-step instructions for Kubernetes to make sure the deployment goes smoothly. So I've created this folder here in the root of my project. So this is where my project is and I've created this new folder and the folder hosts a couple of different files. One for the SQL container and one for the WCF container. And they are YAML files. They are YAML files. YAML, YAML, yet another markup language that's literally what it's doing so far. Yes, yeah, exactly. Which is hilarious. I think that's great. So let's go into both of these and I can walk through what's going on here. So first here we're specifying that it's a deployment. We're giving it a name. And then everything under spec here is just describing this deployment. So we have it labeled as a SQL data. So we're working on the SQL one first. And then here you're gonna see this looks really similar to what we did in our Docker file. So you're just specifying what image you wanna use again. So that same SQL server windows image. And then you're defining some environmental variables. And then lastly, this part is important. So this is saying that you want your pod to be attached to a Kubernetes node and you want the Kubernetes node to have windows running as the operating system. So that's where I'm specifying that. And this is kind of one of the many tips and tricks is that when you create containers, you need to be clear if it's a windows container, you need to tell the environment hosting it that it is. Exactly. If you get this running up in like an Azure container instance, it's very easy to tell the ACI that it's a Linux container when it's really a windows container. And then, oh, what do you know? It doesn't work. It takes a long time to copy the file up. So you learn a long time after that that it didn't work because you told the thing hosting the container that it was a different OS. Right, yes, exactly. So key to put windows here. And that will help you a lot. That's what's so happy to me, but I've heard of people who after they did that a couple of times learned to never to do it again. Yes, exactly. That's what I'm told. And so then we've specified that this is the end of the service here and we can define another one right in the same file. And then the second service is actually a load balancer. And the load balancer is gonna do a couple of things. One, it's allowing us to specify this external IP here so that we can understand where people need to go to access this. And then secondly, it's exposing this port here, 1433. And this is the default port that SQL listens on. So I'm just making sure that when traffic goes there it's listening in on that same port that your SQL container is listening in on. So theoretically, you could leave the SQL server on-prem and have the container in Azure talk through it through the hybrid connector, right? You could, yeah, theoretically if you wanted to do that, for sure. So that's actually the extent of this SQL file. So not too much in here. I'm gonna take a brief look at the WCF file and just highlight the one difference in here. So it's basically the same as the SQL one but we've specified a strategy here. And this strategy is a rolling update strategy and all that's saying is really that we want to make sure new pods are created before the old ones go offline so that there's no break in your service. So that's really the main difference here. And you can go to the Kubernetes docs and find documentation on how to build these files and what this all means. Exactly, yeah. We specified a lot of that again in our wiki too as we take you through it but Kubernetes has more extensive documentation on it as well. We'll see someday in Visual Studio, right click and publish using Kubernetes where these things are just dialogue. Maybe, it's just like we have for Docker, hopefully. That would be great. Okay. Cool, so that's actually, those are the only two things. Maybe we have the add Docker support that writes the Docker file for me and the Docker compose file. Yep. This could be a logical next step. This would be nice. Okay. These are the only two files actually that I need that are now deploying into Azure. So I'm gonna do this through VSTS. You can do this through the command line if that's your preferred method. Whichever way you want to choose is fine but let's go into VSTS. So here in VSTS I've created a new release definition and this is really, first I'm adding an artifact which is just specifying where I'm getting my files and my code from. So all of my code is up in GitHub so I'm just accessing this repo where the code lies here and specifying there. And then here in this environment I've added three different tasks. And that's to deploy the SQL container, deploy the WCF container and refresh the WCF pod. Okay. So here's actually where I'm referencing those YAML files that we just created. So that looks a lot easier than having to learn the command line prompts to do this. Yeah, it depends. If you're familiar with Visual Studio Team Services I think it's easier in that sense but there can be a learning curve to just understanding there's a lot of different things in VSTS so whatever is easier for you. It's not that many commands as well in the command line so I think a lot of people start with that so that's easier. So here in the configuration vial I've specified that we're pointing at that SQL container deployment file that we just created and that was in the root directory. That's why I created it in that same folder that we were working in for our project.  So we had them up in a Docker registry. You could also use ACR. Yeah, exactly. So they have options for Azure Container Registry or Container Registry, whichever one you want to choose. WCF Container, same thing except you're referring to this WCF YAML file that we created. And then refreshing the WCF pod is pretty easy as well. And what does that do? That's really just making sure that the pod is refreshed so it's a step-by-step process, right?  So you want to make sure at the end that you refresh because your WCF pod is really relying on the data from your SQL container, you just want to refresh it at the end to make sure it's all kind of in sync together. So now I could go to the releases and when this pulls up we'll see that I was looking at this one here just now. And I could create a new release.  Exactly. Or you could just use the release here because it's easier. Yep. Okay. Specifying that environment that I just defined with those three tasks. And then I can choose if I want the latest build from GitHub or which kind of version I want to choose here. And say create. So release 10 has been created. So if I go to release 10, it's not automatically deployed. So I'll just go here, press deploy. And it's just telling me that release 10 is the same as release nine because that's what I created this morning. Okay. And if I go to the logs, here's where you can see the step by step process. So this will actually take you through the entire process of those running through all those tasks that I just showed you. But we're not going to go through this right now. It takes time. It takes time. You gotta spin up Kubernetes. Exactly. You gotta copy the container, which as we talked about last time, they're pretty large. Yeah. So it'll take a little bit of time. So I've actually already done a deployment earlier today. And so we can go and take a look at that in my Kubernetes dashboard. So now you're now over in Kubernetes. Exactly. You're out of Azure, you're into Kubernetes. Yeah, and that's where I can really discover all my pods and deployments and services. And to pull that up, all you do is type kubectl proxy into your command line. And what do you have to do to get kubectl or however you wanna call it on your computer in the first place? You do have to install it before that. Okay. So if you type kubectl, you can find instructions on how to install that. It's like any other CLI that you have to install on your computer. Yep.  Type kubectl proxy and that connects. That gives you the ability then to go into the browser and see the dashboard, right? So at some point, you have to log in, presumably? No, so you've actually, when you set up that whole first step, when you actually set up ACS and Kubernetes, you connect kubectl there to make sure that those two are connected. So you've already done the login there and that connection. So here because I've already logged in, it knows what dashboard I wanna access. Okay. So if I look here at my deployments, you can see that I had a SQL data for WCF and I have a eShop modernized WCF and those are this WCF service and the SQL server container like we talked about.  So that was in deployments. So remember I talked about pods, which are the containers. So we have one pod for each of them right now because we've only just done one for each of them. And then we have services. And so here's actually where you can see the external endpoints. So this page is really useful. So actually for my WCF service, I can go visit this endpoint and I can say, hey, this is that catalog service that I was trying to reference before. You can see it's up and running. So that is now the WCF service running in Azure orchestrated by Kubernetes. Correct. All right, cool. Exactly. So I can take this IP, just like we did before, and head back to Visual Studio. And remember our app config file is where that endpoint address was for specifying where the service is. So you can plug in this new service and restart this WinForms application. And when this starts, this is actually gonna be the WinForms application talking to the WCF service and the SQL server that are running in the cloud. So we've gone from making it from local containers on your machine to actually running it in the cloud. Cool. Now I think we might have talked about this last time, but it's always worth revisiting. I've done similar demos of modernizing. You know, take a WinFormer WPF app, talking to WCF, talking to SQL server, and I've taken the SQL server database and migrated it to SQL Azure. Yes. Because that's SQL server running in Azure, which is awesome. And then I took the WCF service and I've published it to a web app, or slash website running in Azure. And then the client still sitting on the desktop is talking to the service, talking to the server, to the data, up in the cloud. Which is exactly the same thing we're doing here, although we've done it through containers or the orchestrators. So when do I do which? Because the first, the easier route is easier. The easier route is easier. I think, I mean, the key is dependencies. So a lot of the times you have dependencies that you need to kind of bake into running your application and the container is gonna host all of that for you, which makes it really easy.  Do I have all the right things installed here? Things worked in development, but is it gonna work in production? All those worries about whether it's gonna work or not or whether you have all the right things installed is taking care of it with containers because that's like a full environment in itself. The other cool thing is scaling, right? So it's super easy to scale now and I can scale out these containers with just a couple clicks. So if I actually go back to the Kubernetes dashboard here and go back to my deployments and say I wanna scale out this WCF service, right now I only have that one pod running, but all I have to do is click, say scale and say, okay, now I want five pods. And you say, okay, and now you can see one out of five pods have been created. So if I go to my pods here, it's working on creating those other four pods. And that was super simple, right? So all I had to do was go to my Kubernetes dashboard and say, scale it out, easy. So I think that's a big benefit of using an orchestrator as well. Right, okay. So I think that's kind of a good answer to the question is, if you're just gonna stick it in a container and just run it, you know, you can do it either way. But if you're just gonna stick it in a container and just run it, you're really not necessarily taking advantage of all the stuff that containers does, right? When you get the orchestrators and have the flexibility to manage them and have failover and if you've got five pods running, if one goes down, there's four others running, you can not miss a beat or you could easily increase. So if you're doing like ticket sales or something, right? Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. So you know that between 9.55 and 10.30, there's a gigantic spike in traffic. And that's when you sell the bulk of your tickets these days. And you don't want it to go down. It has to go up. You want to make sure, yeah. Exactly. That's a great situation. And then it's 10.30 when the concert's sold out, right? You can just scale it back to, you know, maybe to three because there's stragglers and by 11 o'clock scale it back to one. Yeah, really easily. Okay. Yeah. And it was just a couple of clicks and it does automatically for you, which is really nice. Cool. And then it's also really important if you have microservices like we were talking about before because then you have so many different things to manage and you can load balance. Kubernetes will take care of all the load balancing for you so that you don't have to. So it's running in Azure so obviously we're charging for Azure. Is Kubernetes charging for any of this? No, it's free. Open source. Okay. Kubernetes is actually pretty awesome like that. So it's from Google. Okay. And it's an open source project. Okay. Yes. Cool. All right. So Azure is the only thing that's charging you here. Right. Running there. Excellent. And that's actually about it. All right. We've taken you from your existing dotnet application running on-prem locally to adding containers running that locally and now we actually have it running in the cloud. Cool. And then the repo you showed the eShop containers, there's a ton of walk-throughs on how to do a lot of the stuff we will put people to those. Please do. Yeah, exactly. So the dotnet architecture repo on GitHub has this eShop on containers and this really has so many samples and walk-throughs on how to do this step by step. And if you want more detail, if you prefer eBooks, you can actually visit our architecture page on the dotnet site and this will tell you, give you eBooks that you can download, it'll refer you to those same samples and you can explore kind of microservices or modernizing dotnet apps is really what we talked about in this demo. Cool. Or other things. All right. Excellent. Awesome. So like I said earlier, we've done a fair amount of container stuff on the show. We'll probably put it aside for a while and go do some other stuff. But hopefully these last couple episodes, if you weren't that familiar with it before I've given you some good ideas on how to get started doing this, we've really again focused on the existing applications. The smart hotel 360 is cool, but it's kind of a new modern thing. You've got dotnet core services and Java services. And again, you've got existing web forms and WinForms and WPF apps and WCF services. Containers is also for you. Exactly. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right, we will see you next time on Visual Studio Toolbox.