Good morning and welcome to the first Unitarian Society. My name is Kelly Crocker and I'm one of the ministers here. Today I'm joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Asprey Jackson, the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Daniel Karnes, and our deep, deep thanks to the Meeting House Chorus for not only being with us at services this morning, but for being with us on the Sunday of daylight savings time. They were here painfully early. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another, and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community, and in our world. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us. If you would like more information about our activities and programs, please stop by the welcome table located in the commons through these doors to your right next to the elevator. We're excited to let you know that our mission and vision task force has drafts of new mission and vision statements for First Unitarian. You'll be receiving an email today with these statements and a request for your feedback. If you would like to see the statements more immediately, because you just can't wait, they are on a board directly across from this room. There's post-it notes there. That is a place you can also leave your feedback this morning. So take some time during coffee hour and take a look at the board and look at those draft statements. Many thanks to our task force for their hours of discernment and discussion, their dedication and commitment to this whole process. And for those of you connecting virtually with us today, we're glad that you are with us as well. We hope that you'll be able to take a moment after today's service and watch the announcement slides to find out more about our upcoming programs and activities. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence as we center ourselves, bring ourselves fully into this time, joining together once again in community. Come, you accidental pilgrims, you who find yourself on a journey of surprise and wonder. Come, you who emerge into this place as an act of liberation.  Come, you who bring hearts of all kinds, heavy hearts, rusty hearts, hearts broken open in revelation, hearts full of love to share. Come, you who seek courage and you who have more courage than you realize. Come, you who stand behind the curtain, gathering up the resources to claim your truth. Come, you who have been in a bubble, you who are poised for transformation. We begin our story again, gathering courage, love, mindfulness, and a sense of purpose. We gather as a people of all ages of different abilities, different backgrounds, and different perspectives. We share a covenant, a direction for our shared journey, and a commitment to encourage and challenge one another to spiritual growth. This path will ask much from us. Let us move forward with love. Let us move forward with appreciation for one another. Let us move forward knowing we are not alone. Whoever you are, whatever gifts you bring, you are welcome to join this journey. And we invite you now to rise in all the ways we do, joining in our words of affirmation as we light our chalice. A chalice lit in our midst is a symbol of our liberal faith. A faith built on the foundation of freedom, reason, and tolerance. A faith sustained by acts of kindness and justice. A faith that visions a world flourishing with equality for all her people. A faith that demands the living out of goodness. A faith that requires thoughtfulness. A faith of wholeness. This tiny flame is the symbol of the spark of all this within each of us. And now let's sing together our opening, hymn number 1008, when our heart is in a hole. Please be seated. I'd like to come up closer for our story to come on up and join us. You've heard this before? You know this one? Oh, good. Hi, everybody. Good morning. Good. How's the baby? Good, good, good. How's your morning? Are you selling Girl Scout cookies today? I like your cookie shirt. Very good. You are? I'm really excited about this today. It's a theme. It's a good day. So we have a story for you called The Rabbit Listened. Have you all ever had something hard or something go wrong or been disappointed by something? Have you ever had that happen? Ever have a hard day? Yeah. Right, how about grown-ups? Have you ever had a hard day? No, right? This is a hard morning, huh? This is such a hard morning. Is anybody else half asleep this morning? It's not just us, right? Thank you, it is a hard morning.  I am with you on that one. All right, let's see what happens in our story and see sometimes maybe what we need when we're having a hard day.  Something new, something special, something amazing. Taylor was so proud. But then out of nowhere, things came crashing down. The chicken was the first to notice.  I'm so sorry, sorry, sorry, that happened. Let's talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about it. Cluck, cluck. But Taylor did not feel like talking, so the chicken left. Next came the bear. Grrr, horrible. I bet you feel so angry. Let's shout about it. Grrr, grrr, grrr. But Taylor didn't feel like shouting. The bear is scaring some children. So no worries, the bear left. The elephant knew just what to do. I can fix this. We just need to remember exactly the way things were. But Taylor didn't feel like remembering, so the elephant also left. One by one, they came. The hyena, he he he, let's laugh about it. The ostrich, let's hide and pretend nothing happened. The kangaroo, what a mess. Let's throw it all away. And the snake, let's go knock down someone else's. But Taylor didn't feel like doing anything with anybody. So eventually they all left until Taylor was all alone. In the quiet, Taylor didn't even notice the rabbit. But it moved closer and closer until Taylor could feel its warm body. Together, they sat in silence until Taylor said, please stay with me. The rabbit listened. The rabbit listened as Taylor talked. The rabbit listened as Taylor shouted. The rabbit listened as Taylor remembered and laughed. The rabbit listened to Taylor's plan to hide, to throw everything away, to ruin things for someone else. Through it all, the rabbit never left. And when the time was right, the rabbit listened to Taylor's plan to build again. I can't wait, Taylor said. It's going to be amazing. Look at that, huh?  What did Taylor need? The elephant wanted to fix it. The chicken wanted to talk. The bear wanted to shout. What did Taylor need? Yeah, Jen, absolutely. What he needed was someone to listen to his ideas because everyone else came in with their ideas of what he needed to do and he needed to figure that out for himself. And what he needed was someone to cuddle up close and just listen, right? And on those hard days, maybe if today's a hard day for you, we hope that you will always have somebody there that will listen. We thank you for listening to our story today. Oh, we're gonna, is that what your sister is for? Sweet. What's that, hon? That's the last page. All right, we are gonna sing you out to class. Have a great time. And I invite you now into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering, which sustains the work of our community here and also the work of our outreach offering recipient. This week, our recipient is Porchlight, a service organization that provides shelter, affordable housing and support services to families and individuals experiencing homelessness in Madison. There's multiple ways to share your gifts. Basket's being passed here in the room. Thank you for making that happen. And you'll see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussMadison.org, and you'll see the text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Captivating, confident twang in her voice. Annie DeFranco, the great queer folk poet of Western New York, once sang, and sometimes still does sing these words. Buildings and bridges were made to bend in the wind. To withstand the world, that's what it takes. All that steel and stone is no match for the air, my friend. What doesn't bend breaks. I've been thinking about her words this week as we reflect this month together on the topic of trust and vulnerability. The vulnerability with which trust is forever intertwined. Thinking about how much strength it takes to trust another person. Not a rigid, stoic strength, but a flexible, open-hearted one. And of how the connections we build through trust are ultimately the basis for all of the strength we have. Congregations such as ours are built out of trust and can only be as effective as the trust they are built from allows. But trust between people is not a heavily emphasized value in the philosophical tradition of the West, which so greatly influences the world we inhabit today. Here, I'll give just one example, but hopefully we can agree that it is a crucial one. In his Republic, that quintessential text of Western philosophy. Through the voice of Socrates, Plato offers his framework for dividing reality, or at least reality so far as it can be known, into two main categories, each themselves further divided into two. Ranked from the lowest to the highest, these are reflections and impressions of things we can perceive. And then those things themselves, all objects and beings. And then moving from the sensate world, we reach the two categories that are the realm of ideas. First, the hypothetical, including the sphere of mathematics. And then finally, the arena of ethical principle itself. Each of these four quadrants has a closely related affection or capacity to be found in human beings. Descending back down now from the highest to the lowest, these are understanding, knowledge, belief and imagination. The third highest or second lowest capacity, which I just translated as belief, is the word pistis in the original Greek text. In biblical Greek, it's most often translated as faith. But remember that the Christian Testaments were written several hundred years after Plato's death. And in the context of the Republic, this word seems to encompass both faith and belief in all of the ways that we might use those words in contemporary English and also trust. Trust in the divine, trust in other mortal beings, and trust in the dependability of all that we can see or hear or touch. That the things which we sense to be there are there. And are generally what we perceive them to be. It is a great irony of the Republic, which was written as a dialogue, its arguments playing out through conversation between Socrates and a number of other characters, that human relationship is not its leading priority. Plato's hierarchy of value considers other matters to be nobler and higher. But in passing at least, Plato does observe that trust is the affection by which all people may be connected to each other or to other things. Every relationship we have, we have two other people, and even the most basic experiences of navigating the world is defined by some degree of trust. If you've ever spent any time with an infant, you likely have some experience with this. The game of peek-a-boo, for instance, is especially entertaining and magical for someone who has not yet learned object permanence. The learned trust that I am still here, even when my face is hidden from you. When we first had our babies, their mother and I laughed about how every toy was advertised as being educational, and at the top of every list of educational benefits seemed to be the line, teaches cause and effect. The world itself teaches cause and effect, teaches us that things we touch or prod or grab will change because of our actions, even if not always predictably. In times of profound crisis, and for those of us living with certain types of trauma, just that sort of intuitive material trust that people are not gone forever, the instant they leave our sight, that the motions of life's daily rituals can be relied upon to function in much the same way each time, that the earth beneath us will continue to hold us against it firmly. Just that much trust can be a hard one accomplishment. So how much harder, and how much greater the challenge and accomplishment of trusting another person? Not simply to be, to continue to exist barring illness or accident, but to be what we need them to be, to keep their promises and to hold us to our own. In the analytics of Confucius, we find the aphorism that a person without trust, that is someone who is not trustworthy, is like a chariot without an axle, a thing which cannot achieve any purpose to which it is set. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna counsels the prince Arjuna to fulfill his spiritual obligations by completing his temporal ones. Others have trusted him to lead them into battle, and he must be true to their reliance on him just as he trusts in and relies on the divine forces which create and sustain the world. But both proving worthy of the trust of others and extending trust to them is mostly not a matter of dramatic events and grandiose displays, the sorts of things that get eternalized in myth and scripture. It is a process of mostly small components of little actions and small risks, reaching out and reaching back. Rarely is it seamless without a loose stitch or tear, we are all of us mortal after all. The threads between us cannot be expected to be more perfect than we are. Thankfully, they do not have to be perfect in order to be worthwhile and neither do we. So we show up and we show up with and for the folks we hope to trust and be trusted by. We take the risk of being known a little bit more of divulging what it is we need from one another. Nothing is so frightening in life as admitting what we need and then not getting it. To trust is an act of courage, a feat of psychological and emotional strength but it is the antithesis of the rigid and impervious ways that strength and courage are usually presented. Trust must be built but it is built by bending towards each other to find the middle point between you and I. Trust is a process of mostly small components, little actions and small risks, reaching out, reaching back. When I saw Kelly's words, I thought of these. Because the most difficult part about making something also the best is existing in the middle, sustaining an act of radical imagination. This is how the poem Thursday by James Loganbock begins. It is a poem at first glance about making risotto yet I think it is about so much more. Let me give you the rest. Because the most difficult part about making something also the best is existing in the middle, sustaining an act of radical imagination. I simmered a broth, onion, lemon, a big handful of mint. The phone rang so with my left hand I answered it, sauteing the rice and adding the broth slowly, one ladle at a time with my right. The miracle of risotto, it is easy to miss. It is the moment when the husks dissolve, each grain of rice releasing its tiny explosion of starch. If you take it off the heat just then, let it sit while you shave the Parmesan into paper thin curls. It will be perfectly creamy but will still have a bite. There will be dishes to do, the moon will rise and everyone you love will be safe. What I thought when I read these words was how very true it is, that the most difficult part but also the best is existing in the middle, in the ordinariness of a Thursday or of making dinner. Isn't this true of so much of our lives, especially our relationships? Think about the ones in your own life, about those beginning days when everything is new, the novelty of meeting this person, knowing this person, opening yourself to another. It's exhilarating, it's exciting and you feel so very alive. This is true whether that person is to be a partner or when you meet your child or a new friend with whom you find an undeniable spark or even perhaps when you meet your new colleague. Think also of those tender moments at the end of a relationship, where you look at the one who has shared your days, your life, one who knows you and whether it is ending because of death or a decision that the relationship has come to a beautiful and perhaps heartbreaking completeness. You find yourself wondering where the time has gone. These moments, the exhilarating beginning and the perhaps reluctant end, these are often the moments we remember, the ones that stand out in our hearts and our memories, but really, isn't it the long stretches in between where nothing particularly exciting happens but laundry must be done and food must be cooked, where the work of sustaining happens isn't that truly the magic. For it is in those daily moments of vulnerability where we grow, change, where transformation is possible and where trust is born. One of my favorite spoken word poets is Andrea Gibson. And recently they sent out these words that they called, want to evolve quickly, try vulnerability. These are their words. Recently I came across a video about an octopus that was titled, why are we the pinnacle of evolution and not them? The film was, from my perspective, a celebration of the power of vulnerability as it begins with this sentiment. Having a protective shell makes species evolve very slowly. For example, turtles have stayed virtually unchanged for millions of years. I loved learning that octopi have evolved at lightning speeds because of their vulnerability. The fact that they were shellless, soft and defenseless was exactly why they became one of the most evolved species on earth, overhauling their entire being to survive. In the video I learned that the octopus has three hearts and nine brains. They can taste with their skin. They can feel light. Though they don't have ears, they hear impeccably. They're also capable of making decisions quicker than any other living being on the planet. And that's not even to mention their wisdom and emotional depth, which we humans may not yet be evolved enough to comprehend. One could spend a lifetime complimenting the octopus's history of turning vulnerability into a powerful force for growth. They continue there's a myriad of ways we're not evolving as a species because of our protective shells. Many of us are guarded, closed, shut down, but it's impossible to learn while in a state of defensiveness. What might we grow into if we allowed ourselves to be softer, more open, more exposed, more transparent about the truth inside of us? How might we evolve if we let our guard down? If we, like the octopus, knew that what makes us soft is what makes us strong, how would the world be different? I think this is what we do together here. We show up week after week in all our fleshy, unguarded beauty.  This requires a great deal of trust. Charles Feldman in a work called The Thin Book of Trust defines trust as choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions. I am choosing to believe that what is important to me is safe with you. Here we have a tool that helps us remain in this space, sustain the radical act of imagination called community, something that helps us build trust, maintain trust and rebuild when it is broken, our covenants. Covenants are one way we define how we are going to be together, how we set boundaries, how we keep generous and hopeful hearts, how we hold ourselves and one another accountable, how we choose courage over comfort, how we exist in the middle. Reverend Preston Moore puts it this way, a contract is a matter of law, a covenant is a matter of love. A contract speaks this way, if you do this and only if you do this then I will do that. It is hedged, cautious, risk averse. Its most basic principle is no surprises. Covenant speaks this way, you and I will do what is needed to achieve our shared purpose. We will come back to each other again and again whether we succeed or fail. Kelly and I find ourselves here in year two of this grand experiment of co-ministry. We still have a foot in the exhilarating newness of possibility and a foot in the sustaining and act of radical imagination. We know we are beginning that work of existing in the middle, the difficult part yet also the best. To help sustain us in this work is our covenant, which we would like to share with you today. We began writing this in our first month together, August of 2021 when we were definitely filled with and overcome by the newness of this possibility. I love how many of these promises echo the hope of those early days. I love how I know they will sustain us in the days to come. We, Reverend Kelly Aspruth Jackson and Reverend Kelly J. Crocker as the co-senior ministers of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, embrace the authority and responsibility of serving the people and mission of this congregation. We enter into this covenant recognizing that the model of co-ministry holds the potential to transform our relationships and practices to ones that are mutual, whole and healing. We will work to fulfill the inherent promise in how we engage in this shared ministry. As co-senior ministers, we covenant to celebrate one another and our respective ministries, lifting one another up in this work we share. To be radically authentic with one another, showing up as our full selves with vulnerability and integrity. To ground our work in the beauty of our individual gifts and the power of the work we share, all held in gratitude for this moment, this congregation and one another. To develop and demonstrate trust in and with one another. A trust that is deep enough and strong enough to be able to hold one another accountable and lean in when difficulties arise. To resolve disagreements between us without involving congregants or staff utilizing outside support when needed. To share, co-equally, leadership in these areas of congregational life, articulating and sharing the vision and mission of the congregation. Our reporting to and relationship with the Board of Trustees, the healthy functioning of the congregation. Worship, leadership of our staff team. Decisions in the above areas will be made through conversation and consensus. Once a decision is made, we will speak with one voice. To lead with authority the areas that are identified to fall within one of the co-senior ministers portfolios. To stay sufficiently informed on the activities of the congregation so that either minister could make decisions independently when consultation is not feasible. To seek and engage in coaching and other professional support that will make it possible for this co-ministry to flourish. In faith and in gratitude. Reverend Kelly Aspruth Jackson. Reverend Kelly J. Crocker. The work of relationships of all kinds exists in those long stretches in the middle. We are under no illusion that this work will be simple or easy. Yet here we are, ready to lean in with you and each other when the days are hard. So we'll leave you today with these words from Francis Cozer, which speak to us of the possibility that lives within covenants and how we are called to return to one another again and again. When covenant breaks, hope flickers and doubt seeps in like floodwaters through the cracks in the basement. We are left staring at the door that was slammed in our faces wondering if we should walk back in and why. Covenant is a promise that we will work together on a team we did not choose. We like the idea of it far more than the thing itself. It is the radical answer to a radical goal, at least on paper. For our faith does not give us answers for what to do when covenant breaks.  Covenant is a promise between the people of this faith. But it is also a promise between our self and our faith. And sometimes nothing takes more faith than staying. Choosing to speak of your broken heart to those who are brave enough to face change, to stay in dialogue and have those hard conversations you never wanted to have. And choosing to be angry rather than walking away, all of these are holding true to your promises. When covenant breaks, we are sent back to the beginning again, like a toddler on their time out to think about what just happened or a minister on their sabbatical called to remember what we fell in love with in the first place. This ship is not sinking. It is only rocked by the violent waves of being human. May that humility keep us listening even when our own pain hasn't been heard yet. Even when our relationships are shattering like crystals falling to cold stone, even when all you need is a hug and your community won't open its arms yet. When covenant breaks, we need to come home to trust. To trust that there are others out there who would have supported you if they were only there. And to trust that our faith will always be here tomorrow bound by nothing more or less than the promises made by people willing to fight. Like a golden web glimmering with dew in the first light of morning because... When covenant breaks, it is merely a tear in a web still holding strong. And as long as we believe in ourselves and in the greatness that we could become together, then we can always come back tomorrow, roll up our sleeves and start weaving again. The worship service is trust in partnership. We're gonna ask you to partner with us as we sing our anthem. It's a Buddhist mantra. It's a very joyful one. And the score calls for time.  It's very simple. We're gonna work first right now. There are only three options. Three claps, two claps, or one clap. I'll hold up the number for both hands and we'll go together. I'll give you some time to digest which one we're doing. So when you see me hold up a number, you don't just start clapping. It's a warning and then we'll go together, right? So let's practice three claps. Ready? We're going to clap. We're going to clap. We're going to clap. We're going to clap. We're going to clap. Everybody's singing. Everybody's laughing. Everybody's going to clap. Everybody's going to clap. So if you do not already know, I'm about to tell you that we are in the midst of our annual stewardship campaign season, the time where we think deeply and reflect and make a decision each for ourselves or for our households about how we will support and sustain the work of this congregation for our next financial year. And so here now to offer a testimonial in support of the stewardship campaign are Dave Wailow and Amy Schultz. Hi, my name is Dave Wailow and I'm here with my wife, Amy, and we are giving a testimony as to why we contribute to FUS. Amy and I moved to Madison in December of 1987 and that was following a large blizzard, about 13 inches that dropped on the Madison area. And we were trying to move into our new little house as the last snowflakes of that blizzard were falling. And, but before we could get into our house we had to remove some of the snow. And so I went looking around and after searching through several big box stores, I did come across Farm and Fleet and found just what I needed, a shovel. Similarly, we were looking for a religious home and discovered FUS at the time Reverend Michael Schuler arrived. His melding of Western and Eastern wisdoms resonated with our evolving spiritual beliefs. And for me provided a familiar connection back to my Christian roots while opening my mind to other religious perspectives. And it was just what I needed, a thought provoking religious community. During our early years here I often had to work day shifts during the weekends. So when the Saturday service started it also was just what I wanted and needed. However, it was often very difficult especially during the beautiful fall and spring afternoons to stop outdoor activities and going doors to attend a church service. But after a year of being foul weather church goers Saturday families were alerted that if we wanted this service to continue that we needed to commit to attending. That is when I began to take to heart what it meant to make a personal commitment to a greater community and the church that we were calling our spiritual home. We dedicate ourselves to the Saturday service by becoming regular attendees and helping out by teaching in the RE program and ushering. It was at that time that we also decided to make a financial commitment to FUS by becoming sustaining stewards. So please join us today in making a commitment and financial contribution to sustain the good work offered by our own F our first Unitarian society. And that is what FUS needs from me and from you. Thank you. So my name is Amy Schultz and I've been a part of First Unitarian for over three decades. First Unitarian has been a place where my perspective is enriched. It's been important in these chaotic times that we're living in to find a place that validates who I am and yet it also challenges me to grow. The number of attendees to faith-based institutions has declined over the years and for many folks it may seem a lot easier to sit on the sidelines. But I think it's important to engage in the messier endeavor of belonging to a community where you can learn and be inspired by both the leaders and the congregation. The structure that First Unitarian offers with services, groups, music, films and classes promote the opportunity to both grow, get support and inspired and to also to give back to the congregation. An example of my own growth has occurred in the last few years. In our congregation we have been called to examine racism. Sometimes racism is exhibited when we simply remain silent in the face of injustices. I was motivated to explore the meaning of racism in a much more active way. I read books and I watched films about racism and I joined the Black History for a New Day class at First Unitarian sponsored. The facilitators for the discussion groups helped me to understand these issues much more deeply and to help me to become a better advocate for countering structural racism wherever I encounter it. Having a community to support me on this ongoing journey has been key to my own growth. There have been many ministers in the pulpit and yet there hasn't been just one minister that has kept me coming back to First Unitarian. Sure, there's differences in the delivery and the depth of the topics, but it's that they continue to stimulate and challenge my outlook that I value. I remember one of the ministers talking about the importance of financially supporting an institution that reflects our values and then how we count on these places to support us in return. My participation as a religious ed teacher and volunteering for certain events and contributing financially are all ways that I give back to FUS. I feel like I've received many things from First Unitarian for which I'm grateful. The religious ed that our kids went through and then also the classes on marriage enrichment for Dave and I were great foundations for us. The family activities of camping trips and cross-country ski trips connected us with people that have become some of our closest friends. During the COVID pandemic, the staff and volunteers at First Unitarian went to great efforts to keep the services, music and programming vibrant and we enjoyed participating in them from the comfort of our own home. It's these things that connected us to the society and have kept us engaged. We know that if we wanna keep First Unitarian as a beacon in the community, that we need to invest in it. It's with gratitude and pleasure that we continue to contribute to First Unitarian with our time, talent and treasure and I thank you for all that you add to our congregation. Thank you. Our thanks to Dave and Amy. Each week we gather, bringing here all that lives in our hearts, the joys and the losses of our recent days. We share them here knowing they're held gently in support and in love. We light a candle of grief and gratitude for the life of Sparrow Sentie who passed away on Thursday evening.   Today we continue our ritual of lighting a candle for the people of Ukraine. We send them our prayers for peace, our hopes for an end to war, our desire for a world where all are free. We light a candle for all who are lonely this day. All who dwell in silent sanctuaries of pain or fear who feel alone. And we light a candle for all who rejoice this day. All who celebrate whose hearts run over with the blessings of kindness and compassion and gratitude. And we light a candle for all that lives within your hearts. The blessed and the brutal mingling of joy and pain, gladness and despair. This candle is for all of us engaged in this holy and complicated work of living. Feel join us in a moment of meditation with these words from Jess Reynolds. Light the candle. Cup your hands around the flame and listen as it whispers. What does it say to your warm and weathered palms? How closely can you listen? How quietly can you wait for the questions? Light the candle. Breathe against the flame and watch it ripple. Breathe your fears into it and let them burn into trails of empty gray. Let your air embrace the flame and do not snuff it out. Light the candle. Feel your bones melt like wax. All your hardest parts softening to the touch. All your sharp edges smoothing over.  Let yourself be held in the quiet. Light the candle. Fix your eyes on the center of the flame, the center of being. Look into the darkness at the heart of the light. Reach for the contemplative dark in your own heart for the place where stillness sits and do not turn away. Light the candle. Settle into the knowledge that this light is the same as all other lights burning and all other candles. Look through the flame into the places you have known and the places you have yet to see. Light the candle. Bring into being the flame that bore us all. Blessed be and amen. The people here with you are ones whose hearts are sometimes tender, whose skin is sometimes thin, whose eyes sometimes fill with tears and whose laughter is a beautiful sound. You are surrounded by ones seeking wholeness who trust you are doing the same. As you leave this place, may your hearts remain open, may your voices stay strong and may your hands always remain outstretched and reaching for each other. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude. The spring, last Sunday, feeling mighty low and kind of mean. Suddenly a voice said, go for neighbors, wear the picture on a wider screen. The voice said, be wide, bring the longer screen.


happy 4th of July. I hope you enjoyed the Boston League and it was sufficiently rousing and patriotic for this 220th birthday of the good old U.S. Good morning Houston, those of us born in America. We wish that America and we have had the extreme pleasure of seeing 49 of the 50 states of the last two weeks and it is truly a beautiful country and we are proud to be Americans especially today and our special thoughts to those that lost loved ones and those that were injured in Saudi Arabia and we are here to serve as they did and we're ready to go to work. Thanks Tom for those great words. We're all real proud of you down here and look forward to a great day of work up there for me all and we'll let you go to work getting out of post sleep. One last reminder we'd like you to remember to turn on the tips and we'll send up your morning mail. The strange spot for me to be in but it's great to be here. On the left side of the picture in the red and white striped shirt is payload commander Susan Helms and near the tunnel at the rear of the picture connecting the space lab to the rest of the orbiters crew cabin area mission specialist Rick Linehan. The white shirt adorns Jean-Jacques Favier the French payload specialist with Canadian payload specialist Bob Thursk in the foreground. In the tank top shirt in the middle of the picture pilot Kevin Kriegel the astronauts again wrapping up their days activities in the space lab science workshop they'll be moving into a pre-sleep period very shortly which will lead to the beginning of an eight hour sleep period at 3.39 p.m. central time this afternoon. Would you like a bit of view of BDPU? It's affirmative Susan. That's the offensive for Alfie. From one window to the other but I tried to show you that. This is the front window. Here I'm shaking a little bit so you can see the interface inside the cell and this interface goes from the front window to the rear window. Sorry if I was interrupting Rick. We are getting some wrong telemetry signals and the PI thinks that maybe the battery is low. So she's asking Rick please to stop here change the battery and repeat the test.


I'm going to jump in with the San Francisco Public Library announcements. I'm Anissa. I'm your librarian host here at San Francisco Public Library and we want to thank you for being here today and attending this amazing event. We are so thankful to have the McAvoy Foundation for the arts as partners. Today's event is a larger part of our One City One Book event which we have, it's our 16th One City One Book and we've selected author Chanel Miller and this is the story of her sexual assault and the subsequent dealings with the court and the judicial system and her surviving this and her growing and becoming a champion and advocate and all of the things she does that are amazing. Right now you can see her artwork from Hyde Street at the Asian Art Museum. So Chanel Miller will be in conversation with journalist Robin Takayama on March 16th. This is a one-time and one-time only event so please ensure that you come to the event, register or catch it live on YouTube but there will not be an archive of it so please check it out and we have amazing partners, we get to do amazing things with this event so please come check it out and we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Eloni-Ramutush tribal people. I acknowledge the many Ramutush Eloni tribal groups as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we reside here in our Bay Area. SFPL is committed to uplifting the names of these families and providing factual and useful information as well as many programs around Indigenous peoples. So please come check out the library.  We are here practically every day doing programs. We miss you and we encourage you to come check out our site and with that I'm going to turn it over to Susan Miller, the Executive Director of the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts. Susan. Hello everyone, good day, good afternoon and good evening to all of you. My name is Susan Miller. I'm the Executive Director of McEvoy Foundation for the Arts. I'm here to welcome you to this very special conversation with Celeste Marie Bernier, Judith Butler and Isaac Julian. This event as Anissa said is co-produced by the San Francisco Public Library and McEvoy Arts in San Francisco. Our very talented and insightful thinkers have been invited today to share an exchange on the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass, his view on the power and role of language and visual representation in racial and social justice movements and the importance of a few of the women in Douglass's life without whom he would not be the person we know today. This conversation is the final public program held in conjunction with the exhibition Lessons of the Hour, Isaac Julian's project on view at McEvoy Arts. It will remain on view through April 24th and if you would like to make a reservation please check our website at McEvoyArts.org. I'd like to thank our speakers as well as the leadership and staff of the San Francisco Public Library and McEvoy Arts. We are deeply grateful as well to nine McEvoy, Leslie Berriman, and the McEvoy family for their generous commitment to the arts in support of this program. Finally our conversation will include a question and answer session at the end. We'll do our best to address as many as possible but please share your questions in the Q&A button. Now I'd like to introduce our very special guest speakers. Please reference the chat for their complete bios. Celeste Marie Bernier is an art historian and scholar who has authored numerous publications on Frederick Douglass and Black visual arts traditions. Forthcoming publications include Battleground African American Art 1985 to 2015 from the University of Georgia Press in 2021 and Annamarie and Frederick Douglass Family Papers and Douglass Family Lives the biography. Currently she is in progress on living parchment artistry and authorship in the life and works of Frederick Douglass from Yale University Press. Bringing her knowledge and scholarship on Douglass's speeches she was a key contributor and collaborator on Isaac Julian's Lessons of the Hour. She's professor of United States and Atlantic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Judith Butler is the author of more than 20 groundbreaking books that have been translated into numerous languages including Gender Trouble from 1990, Excitable Speech from 1997, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly in 2015 and The Force of Non-Violence in 2020. She is the Maxine Elliott Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the founding director of the Critical Theory Program as well as the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at UC Berkeley funded by the Mellon Foundation. And finally Isaac Julian is a British filmmaker and installation artist whose artworks exploring historical figures have produced numerous landmark projects including a documentary Dhamra on Langston Hughes which won him a prize at Khan Film Festival and others on Franz Fanon, Frederick Douglass and Lino Babardi. His work has been exhibited around the globe including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Venice Biennale. He is distinguished professor of arts at UC Santa Cruz. So without further delay I thank you all and welcome Celeste, Judith and Isaac. Please begin when you are ready. Welcome everybody. Isaac do you want to introduce us to this project and say a few words? Of course I'd love to do that. I'm just to say that I'm so excited to have both yourself, Judith and Celeste, you know, it's a bit of a dream come true. And I should say that, you know, there would not be anything of lessons of the hour without Celeste's Marie Barnier's scholarship. She completely led the way for me and her work for me was really, you know, I mean there would be no project without her scholarship and work which I'm incredibly indebted to and her generosity in sharing her sort of knowledge of Douglass was what really enabled me to make this project. So thank you Celeste. I'm incredibly excited as well, you know, of Judith being here as well because, you know, I've followed your work for, you know, a long time Judith ever since my early days in Santa Cruz in the early 90s and so it's a great honour to have you both in conversation with this project, Lessons of the Hour. And I would just say that in a way it wasn't really until, because when you're making a project like this, you're ostensibly kind of looking at all of these research materials but, you know, somebody has to make it come to life, you know, and, you know, with Celeste's work which and my conversations with her which brought the project to life for me, especially of course the relationship between debates around photography and, as Judith had mentioned in a sense, Douglass's lecture on pictures and his lecture on relationship to progress in pictures they were made for me to a certain extent thinking about my early works like Looking for Langston and the relationship between photography but I think obviously with Douglass I was very sort of moved by his language, the use of language and so and your work in relationship to that for me was incredible, your work with the archives Celeste was really phenomenal but I guess one of the things I was really struck by was his speech to Slaves of the Fourth of July and that speech for me is pivotal because it embodies so many questions around questions of citizenship, of, you know, nationness or nationhood and if you like the abolitionist slaves position that's so really articulated so I think, I don't know, I feel we should begin with that and we can springboard. Let's definitely begin with that. Yeah, thank you. And in the still darkness of midnight I have often been aroused by the dead heavy footsteps and the piteous cries of the chain gangs that passed our door to the American slave as your fourth of July.  Isaac, you know, I was thinking of course many of us have taught this particular speech and it's considered to be a brilliant example of rhetoric. It's also arguably a text in philosophy. It's also a political protest. He's complying with the invitation to address this crowd on July 4th but he's unable to celebrate with them. He's unable to make them feel better about themselves to placate them even the white abolitionists among them and yet it's also, it seems to me, given that this is part of your installation piece, it's also a visual experience that we have of a scene that you've produced for us so it is at once I would say rhetoric, philosophy, protest and photography. We have all of those genres, those those medias with us here and it's quite powerful.  So we go from photography to video when moving from Douglas to Julian and and and it's it's quite it's quite remarkable to see it staged in this particular way. He seems to be of them but he's separate from them. I wonder if you or Celeste has something to say about that. Well I would say that a lot of the kind of theories in relationship to Douglas which have been extrapolated in Celeste's scholarship on Douglas that you know I was able to kind of borrow and I guess in this sonography and presentation or sort of aspect of the work one is jut opposing the question of kind of rhetoric and the kind of in a way philosophical sort of political sort of activism of Douglas and in a way transposing that with the contemporary contemporaneous events you know this work was made in 2019 it draws from you know both surveillance footage from the FBI and at the same time the sort of riots which occurred in Baltimore and you know doing pretty great rights and so there's a way in which ones are able to just oppose all of those things in relationship to this speech which I think resonates and pours out all of the sort of if you like the kind of difficulties of being able to have this Trump for this vision of the nation and to contest that from if you like slaves like philosophers position and I think there's way that Douglas really is able to give this as a kind of radical sort of proclamation which feels even to this very day incredibly radical you know it's not a kind of statement that one has in this sort of everyday manner necessarily so I think there's a way in which he's really through the use of language he's just able to bring this reading which is incredibly pertinent you know so yeah and I know that Celeste had many conversations with Ray Ferrand the kind of royal black Shakespearean actor who he is obsessive language himself recognized with the Shakespearean tropes in Douglas's work and all his 19th century aspects straight away but was absolutely I think beside himself in you know and Celeste maybe you can share those conversations and your ideas but I think it was this gave him the kind of interiority that he needed for this performative aspect so that's do you want to chime in I think it's so beautiful everything you're both saying Judith and Isaac and Isaac your film is just a beautiful beautiful jugular vein to the heart of Douglas's power is activism his oratory in his artistry and what I am in total awe in your beautiful film so many things but what keeps me going and inspires me on is the power and force of your beautiful film in working in so many languages so many performances to encapsulate the many Douglas's that is so at the heart of the conversations I have with Ray Ferrand too and thinking through Douglas lived by two convictions that language was life in the face of existential death that language was the way out of as he said my mental suffering in slavery was 10 000 agonies more than my physical suffering so language for Douglas as he described it was words as things as activism in the social justice arsenal but at the same time in his moments of pain and what is so beautiful and powerful in your film Isaac is you move beautifully between the pain of the public Douglas and the pain of the private Douglas and the power in that pain and Douglas himself said privately language is cold valueless and lifeless when I think of those of my people who live and die in slavery so what is so powerful and beautiful in what you create and how you communicate in this film Isaac is Douglas has many lessons his many languages and the ways in which he communicates his embodiment and his physicality and also his imaginative literary power of selfhood you know I would add to that that if if Douglas thought language was survival he thought photography promised dignity and and had this really remarkable view on pictures he wrote as you know a really important essay on pictures and progress the pictures somehow revealed the subjective nature of a person they render it objective for others to know and to recognize and he really believed that there was both a transparency and a power of externalization and photography that he could be known which is why he so willingly sat for so many portraits more photographic portraits than any any human in the 19th century the number of which exceed you know exceed um um exceeds um Abraham Lincoln uh the portraits of Abraham Lincoln so um so that's that's quite remarkable I mean he really did think something about humanity could be affirmed through the photograph even as he obviously suffered from pictures of him caricatures drawings but also photographs that exaggerated his features and were clearly racist even among the abolitionists who sought to defend him or to present his humanity he didn't want to be assimilated into that narrative of liberation and to be appropriated by those particular images and by sitting for the portrait it seemed as if he was perhaps asserting his dignity or gaining ownership over his own story I don't know if you would say he was successful in doing that but it's one reason I I'm I'm struck here by the combination of language and and visual both pictures and video and performance here and of course we also moved to song there's an extraordinary soundtrack throughout this installation we haven't we haven't talked about the acoustic yet but it's it's it's quite central yes I mean I think there's a way in which if we think about the sort of ways in which songs and pictures become this sort of way of really him having some kind of agency of being able to both kind of in terms of the narcissistic wounding which is performed by the apparatus of photography in terms of the general articulation of it in terms of producing these images which you know to the extent this to this very day that a population a black population is in a way still suffers from and then if you think about the ways in which he wanted to ingrain within this idea of you know himself being at one time a fugitive slave and then these early photographic images which had a kind of if you like fugitive image I think this is something that Celeste has written about you know that question of the ephemeral and at the same time his constant photographic himself I think this is an extraordinary really and his theories around of course constitute a kind of aesthetic theory if you bring all of the essays together on photography but I think there's a way in which if we turn to song I mean this is where kind of you know in Celeste's work I really felt this real embodiment of how the soul is able to transport itself and keep itself alive when exile to such extent to these other spaces and of course I mean you know there's way in which even in Scotland in Edinburgh where we shot there's a way in which these ballads which are now part of the fabric of well the history has Douglas at the centre of them in the send back money campaign and of course people look at the work and they think well what is send back money what was this campaign and what I mean really is this entwining I would say of the kind of trans national trans racial alliance in that he was trying to assemble in this plight for his freedom and in a sense was successful um I and of course I mean you know Celeste you've written about this you know so elegantly shall we shall we get the clip and Celeste can talk to us about it please send it to blast and weather Scotland's church yesterday Eliza and I rose at four and armed with string and staves and with Douglas quite laden down with all the tools we could muster without alarming the household we set out to climb a fair way up Arthur's seat Eliza chose the place and wasting not one minute we began to mark out our slogan me moment in your film is so spellbinding Isaac and the power and the force of it brings to life Douglas's many wars and as he said he was a veteran of every social justice struggle and at the heart of his work in Scotland he stands before an audience of 2000 people in Edinburgh and he is disheartened and desolate at how white people even those pretending to support the abolitionist cause commit racism commit supremacist violations and so he stands in front of them and he says send back the money know that in my bones in my sinew in my spirit and in my heart you are buying and selling my people so send back the money became the refrain by which he condemned the free church of Scotland who are profiting taking money from white enslavers in the US south and using it to build up their churches and his way as he understood it of working out who was a whole soul and who was a half soul in the freedom struggle and a way of combating the different ways in which enslaved people self liberated campaigners were subjected to violence and violation in a freedom that was in name only and so as he said it we may have failed to send back the money but we set Scotland on fire that's the last one I was completely I mean of course I mean these are all stories that we don't know about in the UK and you know I think there's a way in making this work of trying to bridge the kind of transnational Douglas and to try to connect that of course in its trajectory and routes in relationship to the slave trade which of course all lead back to imperial cities and in a way Douglas was there in that imperial city doing that work of undoing the nation in terms of its empire and its relationship to his being and so but I felt it was incredibly strong that you had these ballads you know and he often spoke about the preference to ballads as a description of the nation as opposed to its laws to such an extent as a description you know and the way of describing and rearticulating his sense of freedom sorry I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about the women who gathered behind Douglas or who supported him but also the women activists with whom he was closely bound up we know that he really cared about women gaining the right to vote becoming full citizens and he linked the struggles against slavery and racism to the enfranchisement of women um are these separate struggles are are there black women in this picture are all the women white how do we what do we think about this this part of his of his work and both the women who are intimately linked to him and his broader commitments to um the suffragists struggle so this is you know and so beautiful we have your breathtaking um still here of Anna Murray Douglas and so Anna Murray Douglas was mother Douglas as Douglas called her and as the children their five children called her and she was a political freedom fighter an intellectual genius and an anti-slavery orator and activist um who undergirded the Douglas family who we talk a lot of the Douglas voice but the Douglas voice is made up of Anna Murray and the um and Charles Raymond who we just saw in the last slide and in Rosetta Douglas and Frederick Douglas Jr and in Lewis Henry Douglas who together were the Douglas voice of intergenerational liberation and Anna Murray Douglas left us very little in terms of her words in the archive but the word she does leave us are words to live by one of the phrases that she says is why not I enjoy a hardship that my race may be free my husband is battling with the minions of oppression but I will keep my family alive and so Anna Murray Douglas sacrificed everything and as Lewis Henry as Rosetta as Frederick Jr they all knew that her part and their part in the white supremacist archive of 2021 in the white supremacist archive in 1895 when Douglas passes would obliterate deny their trace and Lewis um just a month before he dies um he fought as a distinguished combat soldier in the civil war and he finally died of his injuries many years later and in his final letter in his shaky handwriting he says no one knew what the distresses anxieties hardships and struggles were that we had to undergo in the struggle for liberty my mother gave everything she had to the freedom struggle no Isaac do you want to join in there no I mean it's just I mean I think you know the role of women in Douglas's life for me as encapsulated you know by less description in terms of the familiar sort of structure infrastructure that provided Douglas's agency and autonomy I just in a way in the exhibition at least this is something that I really wanted to foreground you know Anna Murray Douglas you know of course was not the most photographed subject and nor was Helen Smith um Helen Pitt sorry um who in a way I think was at the kind of um you know really created a kind of legacy as well for Douglas today and of course it was incredibly controversial that um he had a white wife you know but this is someone um who of course that I sort of learned um through semester scholarship had you know really you know um been at the forefront of abolitionist work um she knew exactly what she was doing and she created that kind of legacy of that transaction um of you know would be seen as transgressive interracial alliances um which would foreground um Douglas's legacy you know in the fight for equality and so and I guess you know there is a kind of repression I think um in um Helen Pitt's narrative um and the role you know that um you know this the the the progressive aspects of um the white race um had to play um in the liberation and the fight for abolitionism and I think there's you know so I mean of course you try to translate all these codes through photography through her intensity in relationship to reading and literature and the role of language um and how those are all used as a kind of force um but okay I guess it's a kind of privacy and intimacy and those moments um which I'm also trying to instill um obviously she outlived Douglas yeah so maybe um I mean I'm I'm struck by the fact that you know when he gave that lecture in um what was it 19 18 1852 what to the slave is the 4th of July it was to the um the ladies anti-slavery society in Rochester if I'm not mistaken and he I mean on the one hand these are the mainly white women who are struggling to abolish slavery on the other hand he doesn't want to be captured by them and made into a kind of icon for their cause so he's he's he's not making full solidarity with his audience even though his audience is trying to represent him or maybe precisely because his audience is trying to represent him um so there seems to be there's like some tension there and maybe Douglas also has an idea of dignity um and freedom I don't know if we could call it masculinist or I mean he did more than so many to think about women's suffrage but at the same time is there not a kind of masculinism that runs through I mean yeah I mean I think of course I mean I think there is a masculinity um or masculinist um aspect in relationship to um you know both his relationship um you know to women um you know in that sense you know he's a 19th century man and I think also at the same time there's a way in which he is um you know at the foreground forefront of trying to create these alliances you know which have their tensions because of course in the case of um Susan B. Anthony there is that historical contestation where he chooses his identity you know as a man in relationship to the race to vote you know um against the kind of suffrage suffragist core you know for the repudiation of those laws that would not allow women you know to have the position to vote you know and so and I think about this sort of gender racial hierarchy in relationship to the law and the letter and I think um ostensibly about the rerun of those things into the 20th century the 21st century when we think about Obama and Hillary Clinton when we think about the ways in which those get rolled out even currently between Biden and Harris you know they're all kind of their relationship to this question of masculinity and the gender role aspect and the political in the body political body politics sense um and so and you know I think in the work one tries to bring out the these different questions of um the role of modernity um the kind of way in which you know um you know alimony Douglas is you know in is able to construct the Douglas image through the her labor of creating his costumes um through the technology of the sewing machine and he's able to travel and have that agency on the train I mean there are these sorts of comparisons there's a kind of in a way gender critique that I'm trying to bring into the work um realizing that question of ability was afforded to him the relationship to photography was afforded to him um you know in a way that you know that comes at a particular price and so I think yeah I mean these are the aspects which you know are still reverberating I would argue you know which I'm trying to foreground in these kind of images and presentations um Celeste would you like to talk a little bit more on that issue I think the power of the film and the beautiful stills we see here that show Anna Murray Douglas at the sewing machine um and um speaks to the intergenerational struggle especially of the women in the Douglas family that as you spoke about so beautifully Douglas carries and um a person we haven't spoken so much about but he's in some of the historical photographs here is also Rosetta Douglas um his eldest daughter and she was a um here she is here and she from the age of 11 was proofreading and editing the North Star as newspaper and just before she died she's entirely lost her sight working on her magnum opus which was the first history of black radical feminism in 1902 um and one of the powerful life forces intellectually and philosophically on Douglas and his thinking around women's rights and you talk beautifully Judith about those tensions and difficulties and utilize that with Susan B. Antony as well the foundational thinkers were Anna Murray and Rosetta Douglas in thinking through in 1870 an intersectional way of understanding the freedom struggle and feminist rights that um understood and took parts of Susan B. Antony and but held them to account and were unequivocal around racist issues that carried through so the bleed through of the injustice through racism really is a foundation of a new feminism that the Douglas women especially Anna Murray and Rosetta were committed to. I'm reminded and I hope that this is this is true you'll tell me historically that Douglas um on the day of his death attended a demonstration for suffrage went home exhausted and and died and that was his last act which you know is is really quite remarkable um I'm wondering if we could move in the time that's left to think about the resonance of Douglas with the presence um throughout this video installation uh you you all all of you who worked on this um show uh the resonances you just oppose um lynching with um the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 and the demonstrations that followed um the threat of the police the ongoing threat of the police and even in um in the in the lecture what is um what to the slave is the 4th of July there is this moment where um Douglas although he looks like he's like this full human he's not yet emancipated as I understand it says in this hour in this hour this remains true he's not just telling a history it's in this hour and somehow when those words come through in the uh the gallery space where the installation is um um is is taking place um it's it's in this hour too in our hour in our very hour and maybe Isaac you can talk a little bit about um how you wanted to to have Douglas illuminate the present or how you wanted the present to illuminate dimensions of Douglas that may not be uh uh widely known well thank you Judith I mean I think there's a way in which you know making this work you know there was the kind of possibility to have a retort to the ways in which one was experiencing I think the kind of resurgence of a kind of hyperbolic kind of racism that became the kind of focus center for the kind of you know trump campaign the brexit campaign there's a way in which in the UK US sort of um acts you know access that you have this sort of real kind of return to questions which are kind of pivotal questions and all of the work you know that we're being involved in um I would say to work with you know um you know Stuart Horp or Gilroy and you know um Hades of a Carby I mean you know across the kind of you know what I want to call Black Atlantic world you have this kind of resurgent rearticulation um of a kind of vicious kind of um kind of racism you know in Europe and so I think in the making of the work what was really important was to how to coalesce um to um work with this kind of question of temporality and time um to um resupture all of these um moments both historical and the contemporaneous um to show actually that um this long march you know towards um equality um and but in a way I think also um in the installation and how it's very much influenced or interpolated by 19th century Salon hang it's really in the 21st century it still is to a certain extent images which lead a form of a certain activism and we saw that last year in that terrible horrendous atrocity um that happened reignited you know that how Black Lives Movement and so I think you know it's a way of trying to create this kind of synergy um in in works like this and to you know and the question of language and a kind of sophistication around the theory of the medium that Douglas had you know presented um in the eve of the advent of these technologies um which they resonate in such a peculiar way now in the new technologies as well you know and so um and yeah I mean it's as problematic then as it was now as it was then to a certain extent um one could say in terms of the way in which these technologies are going to be appropriated in use that both for and against to a certain extent so and these were some of the ideas you know which were in a sense inspired by Douglas's sort of speech um for me in the making of the work Celeste do you want to talk about the resonance with with the present um I think the the just breathtaking power of the film Isaac in how you do those staggering juxtapositions that cut to the heart of the life force of the Douglas we need today as his daughter described it in 1900 um thinks very much in and the fact of your calling your beautiful lessons of the hour which is a speech Douglas agonized over and exists in 10 forms and is a speech that he revisited just before he died and he crosses out the rise of the spirit of slavery which is what he understood as white supremacy white prosecution white torture white murder and he replaces it with the word the spirit of mastery and so his understanding of that stranglehold of vicious racism disenfranchisement and dehumanizing persecution to the day he died he understood and one of the most powerful phrases he says is as we go forward in the freedom struggle nothing of liberty humanity or justice will come to us except through tears and blood so that notion Doug was had of the ongoing fight in liberation as at its artery activism and art together as transformative is beautifully encapsulated in everything you do in this film um what one of the uh one of the videos that I thought was most powerful on that question of the the other sadism of white supremacy the relentless sadism the relentless cruelty um was the one where the hands were picking cotton and there's a sound of a whip in the background and I don't know if we can if we could show that I don't know if we're set up to show that but I would suggest that people have a look if they can I I also think there is some way you know some people say while Douglas uh didn't believe in reason or he was trying to get to feeling and I think that he was making arguments that led to an understanding of that cruelty so we could feel it but that it wasn't exactly um attention between reason and language on on the one hand and and feeling and and art in on the other I think that they actually were intertwined in a very powerful way so we are we're led through the argument to the experience um where we at least approach the experience of um astonishing cruelty uh and subjection and I do think um that this is part of the emotional power of his language um his lectures but also of Isaac's work which I I believe um gives us a history gives us a set of juxtapositions between the past and the present but also brings us face to face with the continuing relentless rhythm of brutality of racist brutality and we get that both through sound we get it through image and we get it through language um Isaac you we have it just a few minutes left you want to show us something or say something well I mean I just I mean I think this question of sadism Judith is so kind of correct I think you know in a psychedelic sense you know um you know questions of like sadism you know um desire and if you like the kind of pleasure which is kind of um extracted you know from it you know for um a white populace um who wants to retain power you know I mean I think this is one this is unquestionably one of the sort of aspects which is so kind of difficult to grasp and understand and at the same time we had such a kind of powerful um masquerade masquerading of that recently kind of in relationship to the axe which we wanted that the axe that that would desire to be committed in the senate you know and people have been arguing could be committed again and I think you know this question of um sadism um which is that that diagnosis repudiating you know um but is in a way painfully um and at the same time eloquently um articulating is you know I mean it is a kind of well it's both a moment of disavow generally in the culture but then at the same time in art when you're approaching it you're trying to recover that um in what I want to call the aesthetics of reparation um and so I think that's one of the things you know that I'm trying to um develop um in the making of those these works and images um so someone else is going to enter now to to take questions from the audience is that you Susan yes can you all see me we just have a few minutes here I'm you guys thank you so much you've touched on so many beautiful topics um and thank you Judith for jockeying here and providing so much interesting input to everyone um I wanted to take a quick moment there is one question the audience it's that's about the relationship of this the viewer Isaac um and uh and the um and the collective as it's presented on the screen so there's this this jockeying that happens between Douglas and others and between us the viewer and the work itself and how those relationships are embellished in the work I wonder if you you were something you'd like to say a little bit more about the construction of the piece and what you were thinking about as you played with those uh topics well I think it's really more about the kind of um being able in this um sort of um schematic visual sense have the sort of job as the job positions um which enables you to have this kind of multi um sort of multi access to time you know the question of time and temporalities which are co-existing and in a way kind of creating the reactions but then at the same time I mean one has all one's theories about a mobile spectator and looking and contesting the kind of linearity of um sort of films and what they ideologically kind of represent in terms of storylines and these sorts of aspects which you know keep a certain normative or conservative way of viewing history or sort of and so I think all of these things are in play in um the making of the work and the choice to have these multiple aspects when you're looking I also think like within my own practice I've been interpolated by the new technologies even in our screens we're talking now we have lots of windows open we have lots of screens all of this seems into an artist's subjectivity and work um and I think one of these things are also part of the way in which you can have a really original experience um that's very different from that of this more traditional cinema experience which is very unique to um if you go to the McEvoy you can have that unique experience thank you Isaac um and Judith a question for you so um might you and then Celeste there's a follow-up for you okay um you uh can you address how Douglas as the philosopher uh um first in in um with other thinkers before him and perhaps in his time how he fits in uh with a tradition of speech and thinking um that comes out of the 19th century and before that and maybe even touches into the into the present and then Celeste for you do you know what he was reading in his day um what inspired his speech and thinking maybe we can talk a little bit more about that I think it would be interesting if Celeste went first and then I could okay good good excellent thank you for the beautiful question thank you Susan um yeah thank you um Douglas was reading everything so a bit it takes me back to conversations with Ray Ferron to um Isaac where you spoke about and those conversations about formativity and performing Douglas um Douglas um read read and read and um he read the classics he read European philosophy he read ancient philosophy he read African diasporic philosophy um and for Douglas um as he said my thinking was my liberation and so his understanding was that the way to fight back and to win against the political objectivity that happened on the abolitionist podium was to reclaim the imagination and and his main philosophical influence was his mother so the person who read and read and read and who died at 27 was Harriet Bailey and she communicated to Douglas the urgency of philosophy practically intellectually and as a social justice weapon awesome I I think given that he did read widely in the classics and in enlightenment philosophy more generally and also understood something about American philosophy and emergent transcendentalism I I would say um that he was in a bit of a bind as a philosophical thinker because on the one hand he inherited these enlightenment ideals and and believed in justice and freedom and equality at the same time he saw that those ideals had systematically excluded so many people I mean not just the enslaved but the indigenous and women and so how how then does one re-approach those ideals does one throw them out as tainted or does one use them and re-appropriate them in order to expose their limits their dangers and their promise right and and I think that he was navigating that particular dilemma so you will find people say he's an enlightenment thinker I would say an enlightenment thinker who is a profound critic of enlightenment philosophy and um I don't know enough about his times in Scotland but I would sure be interested in knowing more about what he read and what he thought about what he what he saw there just just very quickly to add to what you beautifully said Judith um Douglas said to a Scottish audience your enlightenment is enslavement by any other name yes and then of course some of those key concepts re-emerge in another form for him as he tries to make formal even false equality substantive and realizable beautiful I think we're going to wrap it now it's one o'clock thank you all we could do this for many hours we really appreciate your time Anisa should I turn it back to you sure I will just say thank you and do know that this event is available on our san francisco youtube channel along with our past macavoy events and I want


Miguel, are you enjoying this as much as it looked like you've been enjoying this celebration? Yeah, I enjoy it, you know, we got a good team in here and that's the celebration, that's the first one, you know, but we're not done yet, we can compete in every game now because we've got more celebration. What's the feeling like in that dugout when you see Aaron Hicks send one to the left field wall? Oh, everybody's super happy because we know maybe we got a chance to go home play and we got the win in the game and everybody's happy, you know. With the speed that Didi has, any doubt that he's scoring on that play? Yeah, yeah, you know, something happens, something good happens and that's the speed Didi has and we got a chance to win. You've never experienced the postseason at this level, what do you expect? I mean, I'm super excited to be part of this team, we got a good team in here, we got a lot of guys compete in every game, you know, and I'm super excited to be part of this team right here now. You mentioned that to start the season, you weren't on the initial roster, you came up very soon thereafter and your impact has been felt ever since. Are you proud of the fact that you've been able to contribute and get this team here? Yeah, I mean, I'm super excited, you know, for contributing this team, we got a lot of guys here contribute too and we got everybody here, we got a good team and, you know, that's what we need for winning a lot of games. You always seem so calm at the plate, what keeps you so relaxed out there? I don't know, every time I go to home play, I got my plan and, you know, I try to hit the ball hard and I got a lot of good content. How long do you enjoy this? How quickly do you turn the page and focus on making sure you guys get that top spot in the wild card? Say it again, please. How long do you celebrate and how long until you just turn the page and focus on getting the top spot in the wild card? I mean, we're not done, yeah, we compete and, I mean, we're not done, we compete every game. Miguel, that seems to be the general consensus, you guys aren't done, fans are hoping that that's the case. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, thank you.


Hi, I'm Hank Chen. I'm watching CalTV, and you should too. So Hank, tell me a little bit about your movie, Lemon. It starts Judy Greer, Brett Gelman, and it's pretty much, Brett looks to sum it up. It's him being embarrassed and humiliated for 90 minutes. So he just, Judy Greer plays his blind girlfriend that breaks up with him, and it's kind of all downhill from there. And I'm one of the people that he encounters that further drives the humiliation. So it's a fun part, and it was amazing working with them. So you're talking about this great cast, what was your experience like that? Oh my god, just everyone's amazing and professional. Like you think some of the biggest stars in the world would have an air of God knows what, because sometimes they're portrayed in the media as just idols, but you realize that you only get that far because you're amazing to work with. And I think when it comes to Sundance, an independent film, it's all about teamwork and getting together, and it's like we're all here with a common purpose. It's about the art, it's about the creativity, and it's about the love and the passion, and that's why we started to do what we do. That's why I entered the business. Certainly wasn't to make money. Definitely. So lastly, I just wanted to ask you, in your time in the industry, how have you seen diversity increase? Diversity has increased incrementally. I feel like I've seen so much in the last, I'm going to say like two years, there's been a huge increase of LGBT characters, of transgendered characters. Which is great. Which is so phenomenal with Asian. I mean, especially for Asians, how do we get from zero TV shows in 20 years to two at the same time? I personally don't think that two is enough. Of course not. But it's a start. One was a start, two was a start, and I really hope that with you and I in front of the camera that maybe we can help push that visibility just a little bit more. So I'm trying to do my part. Definitely. Thank you for doing yours. Thank you so much for joining us. Everyone should go check out Lemon. Thank you so much.


Digital Supply Chain Institute is doing great work to bring industry together and explore new solutions for industries that might be having a problem taking risks, dealing with failure or finding new opportunities in which to bring digitization into their operation. And I found that exploring these opportunities at the ELF is a good way to learn, to network and to try new things without taking on as much risk. I think data trading is sort of the next marketplace in supply chain. I think information is intrinsically valuable and data is the currency in which information is traded. So that marketplace I think is a natural next transaction for industry to take place and it's already taking place. I think the concept of data trading is one that is bringing a focus to something that already occurs inside organizations and between organizations. I think that there's publicly available data that creates a great opportunity both for sellers and buyers. I think there's internal data that creates a great competitive opportunity for companies and between suppliers and customers there's a great opportunity for collaboration to build an end-to-end supply chain that creates value for everyone that's involved. So I think the biggest opportunity around data trading has to do with formalizing the marketplace, creating value whether it's a bartering system or it's an actual purchase transaction and then bringing that out to market so that we can formalize it, create an efficient marketplace and then create value from that whether there is no value today.