Hello and welcome to No Summary, Golden Thread's live stream series of conversations with artists who don't fit in a box. A note on Golden Thread and land acknowledgement. For those who may not know, Golden Thread is the first theater company in the U.S. devoted to plays from and about the Middle East. Golden Thread was founded in 1996 by playwright and director to range Yegyezarya, and they are based in the Ramayitish Oloni land known colonially today as San Francisco. I'm going to introduce myself. I am a trauma informed therapist, psychotherapist and theater artist, and my relationship with Golden Thread is I think just I would love to always watch plays there since it represents some of the stories that I am familiar with and that mirror me as a person coming from the Middle East. I'm going to also introduce my guests. Today I'm delighted to welcome an exciting conversation with drowning in Cairo's intimacy coordinator Maya Herbsman and fight director Carla Pantoja. Hello everyone. So I'm going to just provide some context about the conversation. I watched drowning in Cairo and it's amazing by the way and would highly recommend it. When I watched it it caught my eyes. There were some moments of strong physical altercation and some moments of physical intimacy and I wondered how the crew actors and director went about it in terms of safety and in terms of consent. And I'm a theater artist myself and as an actress I also you know I also been through not also I've been through a couple incidents on in the rehearsal room and on stage that were felt like a little bit somehow violent or like some touch that wasn't consented. So I just want to highlight the importance of respecting the boundaries and how mushy the boundaries are in the rehearsal room and in the performance space. Regarding like you know when we're acting it's a little bit mushy what is real and what is not and what is my body and what is which one is you know the roles body and how all of that play together. Maya and Carla will discuss their creative process and their role in safely driving the story forward. They'll share insights about the protocols that need to be used in such instances and we'll have a broader conversation with them and if anyone from the audience also would like to ask questions directly to the panelists I highly encourage that. You can do so by utilizing the chat function or just raise the hand function and I will bring it back to you. So now coming back to Carla and Maya. Hello and would you like to put your mics on? Yeah Carla do you want to start? Go ahead. All right. So tell us more Maya and Carla but Maya you're volunteering to speak first. Maya about your experience as the intimacy coordinator and anything you would like to share too. Yeah hi I'm Maya I use she her pronouns and I live on Ramayita Shaloney land clonially known as San Francisco and so when we talk about what the process of intimacy looks like on a stage play and I could speak specifically to what we did in this process the place I always like to start is with the story. For me there's no better more important place to start than making sure that I understand the story that's being created in the room and that the rest of the creative team the actors Sahar everyone else in the room that we are all on the same page about what the story is we're trying to tell. Of course there's what's on the page but knowing that every rehearsal room ends up finding their own nuances their own layers to me I get really excited about diving into the kind of nitty gritty of that story because I get really excited about using intimacy as a place for nuanced physical storytelling. So in this particular process we started off just sitting on the floor chatting through the relationship between the characters I asked questions they asked questions and we all just sort of talked through the overall arcs that we see and saw between the characters and so from there once we're clear about the story that we're trying to tell then that's where I move into consent and so before any choreography happens it's always really important to me to make sure that actors are discussing consent and discussing their boundaries I think to your point the boundaries can be fluffy and I think actors aren't generally taught to have boundaries or even that it's okay to have boundaries and that's what makes it more mushy is that we're taught not to have boundaries to just give our bodies to theater and to what is needed. Exactly to just say yes right or if you don't there's 50 people right out back who will say yes if you don't so I see a lot of my job of course there's a creative elements but I see a lot of the work as being about being an advocate and and being someone who can empower actors to find their own boundaries and to recognize that it's okay to have them and good to have them so we start by talking about that about boundaries about consent and oftentimes actors don't always know immediately what what their their boundaries want to be right because most of the time they haven't been asked and so often I think about my work is creating a safe enough room that if a boundary is crossed because we didn't know it was there it will all be okay and we'll be able to handle that and it won't be a big crisis so it's holding space for the process too of if a boundary gets crossed or violated how you show up for it. Exactly and setting up structures also so that when I'm not in the room again a crisis will occur everyone will be able to resolve it quickly and easily and and just for the actor to know that there's someone for me to go to even if the actor did it and went home to sleep and then in bed I was like oh then this wasn't good this didn't feel good oh but well I have someone supporting me where I can go to so there's a safe space for me this availability that you you offer as the intimacy coordinator is precious too. Thank you yeah I think it's important and so once we've talked about consent the beauty of that right is then one doesn't need to ask for consent every single time right because we've set up this is what's on the table this is what's okay so instead of having to every time and that's walking can I touch your shoulder can I move it slightly down can I adjust the angle of my hand right then we can just sort of save the time and the actors don't need to be concerned that they're crossing the other person's boundaries right and so from there we start to get into choreography and that's part of the work that really excites me artistically. Yeah I want to I want to ask more about choreography but I want to go first to Carla so that we're having just about intimacy and how you navigate intimacy as well as just about how we navigate fights and then we're going to expand further to artistic means thank you Maya. Carla welcome. Hi y'all I am zooming in from the land of the Shasta and Tekelma people which is colonially known as Ashland Oregon. I am normally from the Bay Area and but right now I'm at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as a fight director. I started training in stage combat over 20 years ago and I have been my connection with Golden Thread is auditioning but also being a fight director on many many productions with Golden Thread and I'm so appreciative and grateful to be able to practice and hone my craft as a fight director at places like Golden Thread that have given me opportunities to to work with so many different directors and new playwrights really exciting and and helping to support stories that that aren't that are not shared mainstream whatever that is which is really important to me. And how did you find your way to to theater in general from the combat combat world too? It was one of the trainings I started training this is sounding so hoof but I started training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and I took a summer Shakespeare workshop which was affectionately or not affectionately termed the American program so I took that and with with that programming came stage combat which I loved oh my gosh I was like oh my gosh this is incredible and I continued to train when I came back to the States thinking that I would never use this in my life as a female actor that I'd never get a chance to wield a sword or do any of that and I've built a career out of that so this was part of your training program as an actor and then you kind of branched out from here that is correct yeah and kind of specialized and continued my training and and focus and I'm still training to this day everything is like an opportunity numb numb numb take take it all in and working with this this particular show what I tend to do is when I when I come into the room I start off with a basic stage combat workshop of tools that I think we may need after just like Maya I read the scripts I talked to the director see what is the story we're trying to tell here what are the images that you're looking for what do you what is the the string that you want to pull in the audience as they're there how do you want them to react to the story or this fight and so that is all the background work we come together we do a kind of a mini workshop because not everybody has the opportunity to train in stage combat in other words it's it's one of those things that I obviously feel every actor should have because it's a way to keep yourself and your partner safe we talk about that in stage combat the person that you're fighting with in a scene is not your opponent they're your partner you're there to tell a story it just happens to be a physical one and so we we build with some of the some tools that I think everybody could use and and it also gets me a feel for how folks move with unarmed work that we did in this one unarmed being hand-to-hand combat which it's a weird way to name it unarmed there's no weapons involved other than words I tend to give folks some general ideas and then I want to talk to the actors about how they're feeling I do ask about you know are there any concerns I things that are important for fight directors to to understand and and something that that helped solidify for me was working with with Maya before and working with some intimate and training in intimacy direction is asking folks about and holding that space for folks to have those moments of like I don't think I want to do that particular move okay we don't need to I don't need to force an actor to do something because it looks cool or whatever and that's like Maya that's a safety measure that unfortunately it's not taken into consideration in a lot of the productions that happen worldwide and and here in the US so here you're raising a very important point there's a consent that the actor needs to give and it's not about just forcing like well this is what the role says and this is what we need to do we can if someone is creative they can go around those things and make the same story pop the longer that I've worked as a fight director the more I encounter folks who have had personal connection with violence and so it's about being mindful of making sure that folks the actors come in safe and they leave out they they come in clean leave clean in other words they're safe mentally physically they're there to do a job and and beautifully and to be able to do it without fear if somebody brings fear to the stage you can't bring your whole self to the stage always worried about that slap or that thing that oh that scene I don't know about it you can't get past that yeah and I love how you say it's about also creativity and being mindful a lot of the times when we have the space and awareness to be mindful around people's bodies and needs this is when creativity comes out when there's no space when we're just stuck into the role or by the book and here I want to also emphasize the importance of safety in rehearsal spaces because a lot of the time even theater teachers at school they promote the culture of well yeah I'm training you this is your body I can touch it I can push you without even telling you ahead of time what I'm gonna do you know like a lot of the times there's element of surprise for students in some schools that are not promoting awareness and are not sensitive to safety measures and awareness around this topic so thank you both for bringing this and I also like I'm thinking also about violence in general in terms of you know sexual harassment or violence in different settings and this is a setting a specific setting that we're talking about but it intertwines with all the all the ways that we show up in all the other settings regardless if it's home or work or theater or movies and we saw the recent shooting unfortunately that happened and I forgot the name of the actor please help me Alec Baldwin and around the safety importance of safety safety measures and in such a setting I would love to expand further on choreography and artistic aspects and how they move together with with this topic and Timothy and and fight and directing these two areas whoever would like to start first Maya you mentioned choreography oh sorry Karla I'll go I'll go and then I'll pass it to Maya because I was just just like Maya talking to the actors about what you know we've got we've got our our bag of tricks our tools right that we've trained in a basic workshop of what I think they may be able to use it's not all the tools that but the these are things that that will get actors feeling more comfortable with oh I remember doing this in in theater class or whatever then then we build it I build it with the actors with unarmed work I I tend to work with the actress to say okay I think this is where we talk about the story and and kind of probably similar to how Maya works is we talk about the story what the arc is and then I I talk about impulses from the actors what feels right and and working with to to make the journey look right with the script the actors the staging ah this is where so and so is coming from from over here and they're coming over here what does that look like what does years of pent up rage look like against someone who has been oppressed by a bully for the bulk of their youth and and young adult life what does that look like and so talking with the actors about what that looks like and and and build it from there so here you're you're included in psychological aspects and analysis of the roles journey around rage as well as the actors experience around rage so Carla and kind of in a setting where you and like what do we see let's say like I had a peak I went to on a day where Carla was working on this topic with Sahar what do we see we see Sahar and Carla sitting in on and then the actors on stage and you're moving around yeah and you're discussing actors looking at okay well what about this and and sharing ideas and actors bring their own ideas of like oh I feel like I want to do this okay an actor brings an impulse and I am able to uh because of my training help them do it safely so I look at distance what's the safe distance for like there's a hammer fist that's thrown what is a safe distance for that to to go through and look powerful so I give the technique we walk through the technique super duper slow just to make sure demonstrating have the actors try it then we build like what makes sense from here what happens next what happens next what is the body the way the body is moved this way it means it makes sense for the body to unfurl back this way and so we we build it from there I look at it maybe in slow motion maybe it gets a little faster maybe fast is not important the speed will come it's more about intention right and uh they're looking technically so actors now are carrying the technical of like okay I need to be this far away and I've got to do this through here and it's got to cross the plane of my partner's face there meanwhile doing a nap which is KNAP and it's a sound like a clap or a hit on a body we use those in live theater to pretend that there's been a hit of of contact and so they're the actors are thinking along the technical but they're also bringing their emotional intention they're acting intention behind it so they're thinking on multiple levels as they they do the fight right so here you're talking about examining impulses distance uh slowness because of you know we want to bring mindfulness and intentionality safety all of these are elements that are crucial to this to this exchange that we knew and and the director and the actors yep thank you Carla um Maya tell us about how how intimacy um and I'm wondering actually intimacy coordinator and five director why is it not like intimacy director why is it intimacy coordinator uh intimacy director is typically used in theater and intimacy coordinator is typically used in film but um people kind of use them interchangeably sometimes and that is a okay I'm allowed to say how do you direct intimacy is that okay absolutely so how do you direct intimacy in choreography yeah I mean I think in a lot of ways my process at least begins very similarly to Carla's and then I think we um we at some point kind of diverge uh because as you would imagine going in slow motion is not exactly something that would work well for a kiss or something right it would actually probably make it like significantly more uncomfortable than it needed to be so at some point we definitely kind of split off um but I think we we start similarly um and we start um we start with sorry this dog's gonna start barking um we start uh with just as Carla said looking at the sort of psychological elements of the choreography uh or of the moment rather so in the same way that Carla talks about this sort of the years of pent-up rage I'm looking at what does this kiss mean for these two characters um and with this show in particular um with you know thinking about the the environment the world that Khaled and Moody are living in and the significance of a kiss and how different that would be from maybe say you know two gay men in San Francisco on Castro Street right that that we're looking at the psychological aspects of the character but also context yeah the context exactly the broader cultural cultural context historical context yeah exactly that the intimacy is is happening within um so you also get into psychological aspects and and different contexts like Carla who are talking yeah definitely is this their first kiss um is one of them has they've been thinking about this for a while is one of them more excited than the other right I like to kind of get into the nuances of the story we're trying to tell so that we can be specific um and so so again starting with story right and so then once we do that then we start to figure out the practicalities um and I I could not agree more with what Carla said that I think there's always another way to tell a story um really early in my intimacy work I was um working with two actors who had a number of of kisses of lip-flip contact and one of the actors got mono um and having to then change all of that choreography of course right to prevent actors from sharing the the illness totally cracked it open for me and I and I then understood that even when it just it seems like there has to be a kiss there there has to be it has to be it has to be it has to be that was the moment for me where I learned that it actually doesn't have to be anything and that there's always there's always going to be another way to tell the story well whether it's because of mono or because of an actor's boundary or anything else um and so as much as we want to be respectful and mindful to stage directions I also always sort of take the time to get a sense of do these stage directions actually align with the actor's consent and their boundaries um and do the stage directions align with the story that's being told in this particular room um so once we have a sense of that then we start to build the choreography I I like to go choreography really collaboratively um in the way that maybe a dance choreographer might sort of prepare all the steps um and come in with something totally choreographed to then teach to the actors I would never approach it that way for reasons that might be obvious right that it's it to me it feels antithetical to consent um to come in and tell actors that they should do an intimate moment of intimacy a certain way without taking their impulses and boundaries and needs into account big time so it's actor centered it's not imposed on actors absolutely it's very actor centric um and of course always working in collaboration with the director um sometimes Carla and I might work in collaboration or I might work with um a dance choreographer in collaboration um but so we build the choreography together um and then from there um I'll I'll the way I like to work is we'll build a shape we'll try it and then we'll see what's missing or what didn't work or are we getting the story okay that I didn't feel like I had enough time as an audience member to process what was happening so maybe we need to lengthen that I like to approach choreography really technically much like Carla does um right how long does a certain moment last where your hand's going things like that right and not just that there's not room for improvisation there is um but I like to start from a really technical place um for a range of reasons but I think the main one being that it keeps it consistent it can make it make sure it's repeatable um and I think that that can take to Carla's point that can take some of the weight off right that you're not then having to worry about how that slap's going to go or that kiss is going to go because you have the structure in place um yeah so that's how I approach choreography and then I get the last step that is you know we sort of we finish it out in the rehearsal room and then I come back um usually during tech week or maybe you know before or after depending on the circumstances but I like to see it in the greater context of a run because maybe what felt really good in my isolated rehearsal room actually isn't totally vibe once we're on the set in portrayal stage um or maybe the design has moved in a way that we could better be supporting um or or whatever it is um but I always like to come back before the show gets in front of an audience to make sure that the choreography is still feeling like it fits within the greater arc of the story. Yeah and um yeah and here you can read Sahara's saying another aspect that might be interesting to highlight is how we maintain safety after creating the choreography and after performances start running. Yeah um I can start on that for I'm going to see the way that we approach that there's a couple sort of protocol options depending on on the scope of the intimacy in the play. While I'm working with the actors on building the choreography and the director the stage manager is a really crucial part of that equation because what the stage manager is doing is they're taking notes and they're writing down for us exactly what the choreography is supposed to be every night um and because when I leave when the show opens I'm not there Karla's not there Sahara's not there well I guess Sahara's around sometimes but maybe not every night um but the person who is consistently always going to be there is the stage manager and so for me that's the person who's responsible for safety um and because most of the time a stage manager is watching the show right they're calling the cues but they're watching right um and so then what I like to encourage stage managers to do is just touch base with the actors um after performances if they notice something yeah I noticed the hand went a little farther up than it usually goes right um I imagine Karla's gonna talk in a second about what fight calls are um and intimacy calls are something that can happen um for this show in particular they weren't totally necessary um an intimacy call would be say if there was maybe um an extended scene of simulated sex that might be something really great to to practice every day to make sure you're getting it for something like a kiss it tends to not be necessary to practice that um but what I do encourage actors to do and ask actors to do is to just touch base with each other every single day when they come in they come in they're in the dressing room they're getting changed just take a quick moment to say hey everything go okay last night is Constance still the same today all right and so then they have to touch base every day and make sure that they're still in the same place if they want to talk about anything from the previous performance they can do that um and so we've got these sort of layers of systems built in so that there's plenty of opportunities for people to bring up issues right and sort of festering um whether that comes from the actress themselves or from the stage manager there are these systems in place to sort of catch issues as they come up and then of course I'm always available yeah after the show ends I very rarely need to go back once the show's open but whether it's for an understudy or someone gets sick or there's some other reason to change the choreography some things not reading some things not working um I don't disappear into a cloud of smoke I'm I'm always available um for team members to reach out Maya I can't tell you how as a psychotherapist I'm so happy and satisfied to hear about this their system that are built to support uh the actors because we all know that psychologically speaking people can get triggered way after um the incident itself it can be sometimes years it can be hours um and so that's what you're bringing here is very crucial to maintain safety and hold space continuously um in the process of creating a play and I should say that I'm also trained in trauma-informed care I'm sure not to the extent that you are but that has been a really sort of crucial part of my training it was in mental health first aid and trauma-informed care um and various trauma studies because yeah absolutely they're so connected um well that's it's so important too to be um having this background I'm glad you shared um so um I want to do a reminder here for anyone who's joining us is that if you are joining us now this is no summary golden threads livestream series of conversations with artists who do not fit in a box we're in a conversation with Maya Herbsman and Carla Pintuha about the safety um and protection and creativity of intimacy and fight as they come up in storytelling and in theater so um I want to let me see there's a lot of questions coming up but I want to also encourage the audience if you have any question please um use the feature uh raise hand feature or write it in the chat um and ask it directly to panelists we're more than happy to hear from you so um yeah as I mentioned there's different like questions coming up let me see what I have here um I want to ask is there is it something that like um you know you talked to Carla about being trained in it if someone is watching got so excited like oh my god I want to do this where do they go how do they um like what how do they train are there schools and in that process also I want to ask if you know these protocols are um um is there like any ethical codes any um order syndicate whatever containing this uh these topics these professions I I can speak about that um going back to the other question about how once I'm gone what what happens um there's a fight captain for a show and in this particular show because everybody's in the fight it's our stage manager because as Maya was saying stage manager is always there always watching um the holder of so many things and the blocking and so fight uh fight call happens before every show and it is all the moments of violence in slow motion there's there's also a level that that kind of just merges with with Maya Maya's work in that actors talk with each other how how's it going how is it how are you feeling um if for example if if an actor's like wow you know I'm I'm feeling a little out of it so maybe we do this fight a little slower today okay if that's what makes it safer and more comfortable then do it please you know there's there's you honor moment to moment um absolutely yeah and it's day to day something that I have incorporated with with my work um from learning about intimacy direction which work I got to work with Maya for the first time through golden thread a few years ago and I was like oh my gosh there's somebody who supports I was like I I've always felt that fights and intimacy you know there's there's a lot of crossover and a lot of safety and holding and boundaries and and care and I was so excited and not not all fight directors do this I do this but I I've added in tapping in and tapping out with actors and it's it's mainly an intimacy direction thing but being able to have eye contact breath in just a moment and then a high 10 to say okay I am I'm clocking in now I'm working this is this is we're working on this and it's a way to physically and mentally like step into the space of here I am this is what we're doing I'm here working as an actor on this character and then tapping out and the actors can choose to to use it or not but it's an offering um so with with fight call they can do a tap in at the beginning of the fight call checking in how are things going like you know maybe somebody's shoulder is acting up so that hit will be a little slower okay they're they're going to do the fight very very slow the stage manager's going to watch it usually I give certain like notes of oh watch this slap from this this point in the audience and over here just to see make sure that it reads that it's across the face and that it's not like you know happening up here or something and then then they do it with intention and and that's that's it so they've touched on those moments before so here Karla you're describing what's a fight call is like Maya suggested yeah thank you and I see before we go to where do people train um I see a question here from Sheila I would love to hear about process and technique of cooling down after the performance how do actors let go of big emotions yeah I can start there I think that that's I think that's one of the hardest parts of this um I think you know sort of coming back to the sort of the trauma element I think that one of the biggest things I've learned about trauma is that just because our brain knows that something's not real it doesn't necessarily mean that our body does um and so I think that sometimes actors can feel as activated as if the thing is actually happening to them even yeah as well just we fully know it's not yeah and here we come back to trauma um how how the body carries the trauma and it's not necessarily sometimes people don't remember what trauma happened but their body remembers exactly and so so we're not just talking about sort of like you know releasing after a performance we're also talking about this very real process of sort of calling the body down um and so what I you know every actor is different there's no perfect methodology to this um but what I see is my job is just to give actors tools and hopefully some work and if they don't then great come back to me and I'll see what else I can come up with and I'll ask colleagues and and see what else we can figure out um but the sort of starting the place that I usually start is I encourage actors to build rituals for themselves both with a scene partner and alone um so I'll use myself as an example I early in my intimacy career was finding that I was sort of bringing it home with me um just I think a lot of what Sheila's talking about here um with letting go of big emotions I was bringing home the actors emotions that I was working with the play it was all coming back in my car with me um and I realized pretty quickly that that was becoming a really big inhibitor um being able to do the work and so what I've built for myself is little rituals that I use to kind of bring myself into the space and bring myself out um I wear rings and so for me it's really helpful to have something physical so when I put on the ring I am an intimacy director I'm there and focused and when I take it off it's just me here why are you talking about the provider's way to take care of themselves when they're providing for others um because this can lead to compassion fatigue for a lot of providers when they don't um bring awareness to how they're carrying the people's energies and absolutely and so and I think that that can apply to actors too right and so you know if I have I use the rings that's a physical thing um I use music um I always like to sort of like sing and dance in my car on the way home to kind of get some of the energy out I have colleagues that run that's not insane um we all have yeah insensate whatever right we all have our different strategies and so what I try and talk to actors about is about finding that strategy that works for them um so that when they come home at the end of a performance they're not just you know letting themselves sort of come off of the adrenaline and then just kind of go home and lie in bed right that they're actually being thoughtful around taking the time to whatever it is I I invite actors for actors who physical things are helpful maybe there's something on your costume that can work or maybe you can you know sneak a little something somewhere that we won't see on the costumes right for some people it's about scent for some people having like an essential oil fragrance to smell after can sort of help break them out yeah and here you're talking about actors but I want to invite the audience to also incorporate that in their daily life because um here we're talking specifically because the setting happens to be about theater but um you know in terms of self-care we really need to kind of set boundaries and these boundaries can be set physically through a ritual or through incense uh through anything that represents our boundary like okay my intention of setting boundary is to wash my hands for example between um one show one another or like one client and another or um I remember between clients sometimes when I used to work in the office there's a sand tray and then I would just put my hands on the sand and it just feels so grounding and brings me back to myself and then I can kind of cleanse and reset so here we're talking about like cleansing and resetting and coming back to our ourselves in a way that's respecting ourselves and just showing attention so it's just about helping with tools um and and inviting actors to sort of take even just a minute two minutes you know it doesn't have to be a whole long drawn out thing but just invite them to take the moment to be mindful of how they come down um and I found that generally what I hear anyway is that that tends to help actors that that thinking about just giving themselves some sort of closure for the night um can make a really big difference and I also invite actors to do that with each other speaking to Carla sort of tapping in and tapping out um you know they build they have these really intense relationships on stage um and so when we talk about cooling down for me I think we're not only talking about the actor within themselves but we're also talking about the relationships um right and in this particular instance the three actors spending an enormous amount of time together um and and so I wanted to make sure that I was able to give them some tools so they could just take a moment at the end of the day to sort of just connect okay we did this we were just moody and halled and now we are just ourselves de-rolling that's like in yeah de-rolling exactly yeah like getting the roll out and here are you also uh talking about what Sahar has uh said in the chat um setting up a ritual with and for the actors they both taught actors kind of ritualistic check-ins love that and it's been working for us Cairo team so uh these are the check-ins that are afterwards or there's also check-ins before um usually on both sides so the sort of like basic tap in that that I think probably Carla and I both use um yeah book marking I won't speak for Carla is um that okay cool um that I'll give um if Carla and I are tapping in when we come in at the start of the day maybe we'll check in we'll maybe face each other take a nice deep breath together make eye contact and give us a little high five high ten and that means okay we're starting our work session um and then at the end of the day after a show after a rehearsal um we're sort of clocking out so speak for the night then we'll all have just have them do the same thing again deep breath and another high five and so actors often will modify and make their own versions that fit better to them that's just the sort of template I give them um but exactly bookmarking it so that you sort of the body has a way to recognize okay we're stepping into one thing and now we're moving together yeah great Maya thank you so much Carla I want to ask you about um how to maintain I'm not sure you know during your experience working on improvisation how do you maintain safety and protection while actors are improvising and not rehearsing a script I'm asking this because what comes up for me now is um or I thought about it before uh presenting this I was like oh I want to ask this question because what happened to me as an actress one time is we were improvising and the improvisation was about like okay now you have to kind of as roles in the roles pick on each other and it kind of turned out into a kind of like a physical violence and I couldn't stop it because I was interpreted that I was saying stop in the role and they didn't know that it's me saying stop so that was like really hard I was triggered I was like feeling very unsafe and I wanted this to stop and just it couldn't until you know damage has happened and then afterwards I talked about it and it was really really um damaging so how do you maintain a container during improvisation first of all I am so sorry that that happened to you yeah thank you thank you I I have to say as a fight director as I was talking about the longer I've gone as a fight director the more I encounter folks who have had physical uh personal physical connection with violence or personal connection with violence and and that is the story and I hear folks come to me and they they tell me yeah some of their horror their their theatrical horror stories and I'm I know that folks tell Maya their theatrical their horror stories out there yes I know I know yeah and um I I it makes me sad it makes me angry that there's um a lot of um misunderstanding around what it is that we do or what that anyone uh can do at any time um for stage combat I don't I don't do improv stage combat that is a recipe for injury and trauma and harm now if I were for example invited to a troop that does improv together a lot I would take the group through some basics of stage combat and talk about how we do cues because you don't just even with the actors here in drowning in Cairo there are techniques to let their partners know even though the choreography is set there are techniques to let their partners know hey this is coming because sometimes when we're doing shows when you're doing two shows a day seven days a week you know six sorry excuse me six days a week you know double show days sometimes choreography just like everything else here like wait did we just do this oh yeah that was the matinee this is the evening performance that's right I'm getting slapped here again that we build in cues and eye contact to make sure that we're on we meaning the actors doing this story doing the scene or on the same page so I personally would never advocate for folks to just improv violence without any kind of context or training or trust built with each other um as I say the only way that I would maybe think about it is training specifically with a group that works with each other and knows how to cue each other yeah has a sense of trust is able to build those containers um very similar to what Maya was talking about is like hey let's talk about this before maybe we practice certain how are we queuing this okay great but um yeah that's that's not how I would go about it I even even when I work with someone else who is trained in in stage combat say we're building a fight and I'm working with somebody who is incredibly trained with it we work super slow and we talk it out and we indicate oh well if you do this and I want to do this okay it's not improv here Carla the difference what I'm hearing is that in the play that I was rehearsing or improvising the priority of the director was and the actors and the culture of the crew was um okay that's a priority is to do this and to arrive to a point in the script where we kind of creation and all of that and here you're talking about no the priority is us and showing up fully as us with our boundaries and safety measures and then comes the rest which I totally salute and advocate for too um in the theater where boundaries again can be so mushy and then no can be heard as oh that's the role or that's the um just whatever is coming up in the improv so thank you Carla for for bringing this to our attention Maya I have a question for you when I watching um I was watching uh drowning in Cairo there was an intimate scene behind the stage behind I mean backstage um so where we can hear the voices of the actors as if they're um they're supposed to be having sex the roles are supposed to be having sex and I want to hear more about that how do you work uh when the intimacy is happening backstage yeah I'm laughing because this is one of the weirder parts of my job but I get really excited actually about building soundscapes um actors who have worked with me as an intimacy professional will know that I have a lot of strong feelings about soundscapes and intimacy because I think it can make such a big difference in believability like I you know I've been to plays where I go and and performers are kissing on stage and it's silent and I think it's so confusing um because then I start to think about the story of why they're so quiet why I've not even hearing any breath so to me sound or absence of sound um is actually a really key part of intimacy um in helping it I should say clarify an intimacy that is trying to be someone in the world of being realistic right there I there's abstract intimacy sound is a different thing there but an intimacy that is intending to feel like real life I think that sound is a really big part of it um so in terms of the process of how that works sound is one of the places that I find that actors tend to be the most um I don't know if uncomfortable is the right word but um maybe it is uh perhaps unsure I think that and I think the reason for that is because I think the natural tendency is to feel like they have to make sounds that they themselves have made or would make um and so for me a lot of my work is encouraging them to think in the exact opposite direction we're not you're not trying to recreate how you sound in your private life we're trying to figure out how these characters would sound and I think that can the weight off a lot when they're not feeling like they're having to perform this really intimate thing um that they're just performing somebody else um right and and Maya I'm just noticing the time I can't believe it's already been an hour I can go really fast I'll just say I help them create soundscapes so I give vocabulary and tools different sounds different techniques for this show and for many others that I've done all record voice memos um and send them to the actors to give them a sense of arc um and different tools that they can use and I find that having that to work from helps actors feel infinitely less uh uncomfortable or embarrassed than they might have otherwise um thank you Maya thank you so much Maya and Carla for all these insights and for raising awareness about the importance of safety and protection and creativity in theater and um we have come to the end of our time many thanks to you both many thanks to the audience members and whoever is going to join later I'd like to thank sorry HowlRound for hosting this live stream event a recording of this session will be available on both whole HowlRound round sorry this is my second language and HowlRound uh and Golden Threads website um many thanks to our live stream technician Wendy Reyes and many thanks to all of you for joining us today and before we go I just want to say that drowning in Cairo is amazing and I invite everyone to go see it I saw it twice and um it's going to be in portrayal stage um until May 1st and there's going to be video on demand until May 1st as well and it's playing in DC in Gonda theater on May 5th for those who are watching us from DC and have a great evening or a day take care wherever you are thank you goodbye


We are watching their movements. They have been rather quiet. They are listening to our speeches. John McCormick made a good statement. Carl Albert made a good statement. Hale Bogg made a good statement. Mansfield said he'd support us, but he's gone. His heart's not in this thing, as you know. Humphrey feels as we do. Every member of the Joint Chiefs, every member out there, Taylor, Westmoreland, the diplomat Johnson, Rusk, Ball and Harriman, the three top men's state, McNamara and Bance, plus the four generals, and we are all agreed on a course of action. We do not want to go further than to say that we will continue. But these actions will be measured, and fitting, and adequate, and you can add that any day they want to keep their 54 agreement. There's no use of making them new until they'll keep one to God. They made one in Laos 62. They're not keeping it. They made one out there 54. They're not keeping it. Why do you think they'd keep one 65 when they wouldn't keep one 62? But if they want to, they don't have to have a agreement. They just got to stay across that line. If they stay across it, we'll stay across it.  That's about it. Did you get those letters sent me? Yeah, they're in the middle. I thought you meant them. No, I got a fine one from Heinem on the railroad. Yeah. He wrote a hello to get them. They want to hire him himself. Are they two? Well, they'll be there. All right. Hurry up and get them, because I've got an FBI going on him now. Yeah, you can be assured they'll be there. All right. Thank you. Okay.


Six years later, and we are smoking watermelon. You ready? Smoke watermelon? Yum. You're cute. Fire it up. First place of American barbecue. It is great TV time, and I'm seeing if I can do all this from memory. Bill West, bill at greattv.com. You still got your email. Jack Waybore, jackwaybore, gmail.com. Three times South Carolina state barbecue champion. I'm with barbecuetricks.com, and it's been, so I looked up, it's been six years, almost exactly. May 25th was the last great TV episode.  Six years since we shared a beer together. It's the show that takes about a beer to drink. And yes, that's right. The show that takes about a beer to drink. A stone IPA today. Cheers. We'll get the bottle of glass. So what has happened in the last six years? Muddy, I've been busy as I can be, running around the world, cooking animals everywhere that I can cook animals, and having a good time. We've had a lot of things going on, Bill. Family's been good, everybody's been healthy, and moving on through the process. How about you? How many grandchildren? Three now, and another one on the way. I've got one, just still one son, 19 now. So new home, are the other side of town in Charleston? New set. New set, that's right. Yeah, yeah, I brought a new place. You like my sign back there? Free ribs, tomorrow. Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow. But yeah, I've been doing, having some videos and doing some cookbooks, so hopefully people check those out. Yeah, the cookbooks are great. I looked through them, and they were fantastic though. So you're cooking, you're doing cooks, but it's not really, have you been doing any competition? Yeah, you know, I did my first competition about three months ago, I cooked just before the whole pandemic thing pulled up. We got a, I came out of retirement, so to speak. So we were in Cottageville, South Carolina. My son-in-law Michael and I cooked together as a team, and we came in third place overall. Had a great cook, we had a good time. It was fun to be back out again, cooking in the contest. We've been cooking all over the country lately. Pushing the thing called Boucherie, which is a Cajun tradition. We've been having a great time going to a lot of farm-to-table events and teaching young kids and young chefs about the food chain and farm-to-table. Get more on that. Boucherie is just, I guess the best way to keep up with it is to keep up with me. We do one in Georgia at Comfort Farms, John Jackson, it's a place out there. And we do one in Augusta, that's a great time. We do one on Wadmila, that's also a good time. So those are the three main ones that I've been involved with, been doing a lot of different styles of cooking. But all that's live-fired, it's all a lot of fun. Cooking Cajun food and traditional stuff. Do you have any scheduled events coming up at this point? At this point in time I got nothing on the schedule. Everything's kind of on the out. We were going to run a full, not a full competition schedule, we were going to run a competition schedule. Do three, four, five, try to get back into the swing and kind of roll through it again. But with COVID around, it's just not possible to put all the people together.  And being in South Carolina, we're opening up a lot quicker than a lot of places, but still not that much yet. Yeah, I just don't think we're ready to put a lot of people in one place. I think you're going to see, the fundraiser takes five or six hundred people to be a success. So, you know, we want to make sure that we're being smart about what we're doing. And you can't just, it's not at the point where you can hype. No, not yet.  Nope. At the time, we're shooting this. Who knows what we're doing. Yeah, we're kind of thinking about a new format for Carolina pit masters, maybe making something go with that. And I'm thinking about some big new stuff. Yeah, let Jack at greattv.com know if you'd be up for a competition cooking barbecue class. Yeah. Online, because I think it needs to be done. Yeah, yeah. And Bill and I have been, Bill has been bothering me for about the last, what, six years? Yeah. I do put together an online video when certainly we'd love to do it. It's just a matter of putting the right format together and making sure that the great content gets out for everybody. But certainly it's, certainly not out of the realm, not out of the ballpark. We're looking for a great venue right now to put another Carolina pit masters outdoor cooking school together. And we want to kind of change it up a little bit. So we're looking for the right people to put together and the right venue to put it out. So keep an eye out for that. We've got that coming on down the road, I think. We've got right over there in that smoker, a smoked, actually two smoked watermelon. And we will unveil, we're going to give it a little bit more smoke as we talk. And that'll be, by the time we're done with this, we will take a look at it. You know, last, when we first- First they see if it's gonna get. Yeah, the last time we got together, Bill, we were talking the smoked watermelon was the craze that came onto the scene. And somebody had smoked some watermelon and we're comparing it to the color of Wagyu beef and saying what a great thing it was. And we talked about it for a little while and I said, well, we won't really know whether it's good or not until we do it. So six years later, here we are smoking a watermelon. So yeah, well, we'll taste in a second. Every other video that I saw, it's people trying it. And I think of the, was it the Spruce restaurant? Some famous restaurant did it. And I think mainly to satisfy some vegetarians in their customer base. But the people that have tried it and brined it have not really raved about it. So. Yeah, didn't see any reviews on it, didn't see a whole lot of anything. All of them involved the brine that I saw. So I didn't go by really any of the ones. I just, I did two different seasonings. I did a sweet and a savory with Worcestershire and some lemon and that's it. Then the other one is a sweet and gruff owl. So we'll look at those in just a second. We'll cut them up and we'll cut them up and stick them in our face. So I've got a trivia question. And what was, where were you longest in the restaurant business? Probably Olive Garden. Okay, so actually that's my trivia question. For people watching, the question is, what fruit is pictured in the Olive Garden logo? No, it's not olives. You know this? I get that though. The answer coming up in just a second. Oh. So while you maul that over, what fruit is featured in the Olive Garden logo? Let's slice up this other fruit. At least I'll show you what I did previously. Sliced it and scored up this watermelon and we will taste it in just a second. So what fruit is on the Olive Garden logo? And it is not watermelon. It is, you know this? Grapes. It is grapes. I need to edit that though. The answer coming up in just a second. All right, let's look at this. You ready? So two smoked watermelon. A, what is that? Is it called a duo? Would you smoke? Smoking duo? Egg experiment. Let's see if we can get this. Get this in 3D. What's that? Smoked watermelon. First cut. Looks like ham. Looks like ham. So this one is sugar glazed with honey bourbon. It's a Jack Daniels honey bourbon and some lemon juice, lemon zest and brown sugar. Still crunchy inside. Still firm. Still firm. All right. I'll take it to here. Give it to you on a paper plate too. How is it? We've never had it. So we're, you're gonna enjoy that.  That's so good. Nice to see you man. Well, have a good weekend. We'll see you. Easy, easy barfing in the middle of the bushes. No. We had the Amazon man come. Here we go. Try it. Actually the smoke is kind of cool. Yeah. It's warm and still actually way more crisp than I thought because I was expecting it to be mushy. Mushy? I wish too. That's what I said. It's gotta be mushy thing. So. It's still sweet. Yeah. It's not, it's still, it's still watermelons. And I cooked this one about, I mean it's about eight hours but it was low, about 200 degrees. So I didn't want to crack it up too high. Not a bad thing. It's still fruit. Yeah, not a bad thing. It's sweet. It's a little sticky. It's clean. It's got a clean flavor to it. It's not heavy by any stretch of the imagination. This is a lot firmer or more, same difference. A little bit more firmer. So this had less, about four hours less. Or three hours less. And this is savory, right? Savory. It's worcestershire, a little bit of mustard for the glaze. And now I wanted to try at least have it, have a bark of some sort. And it does. It does, for sure. It seems to have penetrated a little bit around the outside. It's a little saltier, at least the bite I had. You get the citrus bite in too. It's good. It's not bad. Yeah, it's not bad. I was expecting it to be bad. So we're pleasantly surprised here. It's got a little bit of smoky flavor in it. It's, like I said, it's still sweet. This one with the lemon juice and the Worcestershire sauce has a little bit more of a calming acid on it than the outside. It's definitely still a fruit. It's not masquerading it to be meat, although the look of it, when you're out, I think that's the catch of all of it, is people think it looks cool.  Can't really seem a big fan of hot fruit. I will go with that confirmation. Smoke, I think the sweet version, chill it and serve it. Put a little bit more lemon zest on it, and I think definitely a conversation starter, and it would be tasty. It would be good on the serving line, if you wanna call it that. Smoke watermelon, I give it, what do you think? Thumbs up? Two thumbs up, give it a go. Until next time, hopefully it won't be another six years. Yeah, hopefully not, by local think level. Stay sustainable on every chance you get, hug your mama. I was wondering if you'd remember that. Good.


We met a little bit earlier, but in case you weren't here. My name is Mitch Connors. I'm Principal Engineer at AVatrix, where I predominantly work on the Istio service mesh. I've been working on Istio for four years now. I'm a member of the Technical Oversight Committee and a CNCF ambassador. And today I want to talk to you about getting really really quickly started contributing to Istio. So how many of you with us today have ever submitted a poll request to Istio? We have a few other TOC members in the audience, so I know you guys' hands have to be up. Okay, good. Yeah, we've got a few here and there, but a good number of you. For those of you who raised your hand, you can leave. You know, you've already probably taken the time to figure out your development environment, gotten an IDE, set up for Istio. It can be a little bit of a painful process. And so today I'm going to give the world's most boring demo. Anytime somebody says it's a one-click demo, you know that you're in for not much of a treat. And that's what we're going to do today. We've been revamping the way that we build Istio in the last year. In particular, we're trying to make development environments that match our build environment available to users very, very quickly. And we're going to try to accomplish that with GitHub Codespaces. So before I talk about a one-click demo, I have to talk about what's up my sleeve, right? There's always something hidden, something you did before the demo. And that's true. I did a few things here. I did log in to GitHub. I'm not going to do that live for you. You know, the risk-reward ratio is just not right for including that on the demo. And then I did a few other optional things that we'll cover that you don't actually need to do. If you're logged in to GitHub, you can follow this demo with one-click with me. It'll be a little bit slower for you the first time you run it, but that's all right. I've also gone to the additional step of installing VS Code here on my MacBook. You don't need VS Code. You can run it in a web development environment, and I'll show you how to do that here in just a moment. And I've also installed an extension to VS Code called the dev container extension. And that allows me to take this code space that I'm going to show you running on GitHub. I'll also be able to run it locally and have all of the tools right there at my fingertips that we use to build Istio on a regular basis. All right. That was my one slide. Hope you enjoyed the slide show. Let's get to the demo. Whoops. This is not the right site. Let's go back to Istio, Istio. So this is the Istio code base. Just GitHub slash Istio slash Istio. This is on the master branch. And you should have this nice big green button right here. It says code and list code spaces. If you've not run a code space before, you might need to click the plus button here. That'll be your one-click. My one-click is going to be this code space that I've already created. It does take typically about two minutes to spin up a code space on GitHub. But I've gone ahead and started this one in advance so that you guys don't have to sit there painfully watching me stall for two minutes. And there it is. There's my GitHub code space. So within the code space, now this is running on GitHub's infrastructure, not on my local system. If I were to lose internet connectivity, that would be terrible. But I have all of the tools that we use on a regular basis for Istio development right here. I can run my format command and it knows exactly how to run that. It's not going to spin up another container to run it. It's going to run it natively right there. That command does take a little while to run. We also have the kind tool, which we use for a lot of our Integ testing. It's all right there. If I were to switch over to a shell on my MacBook, I don't have those tools installed on my MacBook. They're not available, but they're right here in code space. It makes it super easy to get started, get up and running to be able to run the tests before submitting your pull request to us. I know it's always embarrassing when you push your pull request up for the first time and all the test red lights come up. So you can run them here using make test. That's the demo. So then the next part that I'll show you real quickly is that you can also do this locally. So here I have the exact same code base, cloned to my local workstation. And because code spaces uses dev containers, I can run the reopen command and say reopen in a container. This one will take slightly longer than code spaces. I think that we were at 10 seconds before. This one might be 15 seconds as Docker on my local development box spins up the development environment again with all of the tools already pre-installed. That's exactly what we need to build and interact with Istio. While we're waiting for that to start, we'll go for one last tiny part of this demo and that is if you don't have VS Code, you want to use some other IDE. You can use the open in button to either open in the browser, Visual Studio Code, all sorts of options here. We'll have a look at what a browser-based IDE looks like. Maybe. Okay. Running web-based demos at these conferences is always scary because the Wi-Fi is... So here you see basically the same VS Code user interface that I'm used to. I've got the terminal just like I'm used to. All the Istio tooling that I need to be able to develop, to debug, to run unit tests and integration tests right there in the convenience of my own browser. We'll switch back and for whatever reason, Docker is having a hard time spinning up this container here. So we'll go ahead and quit that. So what I hope you took away from this is that making your first pull request to Istio and running all of the tests in whatever environment you prefer to use is extremely easy to do. You can do it in just a few moments. Oh, and GitHub gives you free credits for code spaces by default. So this demo can be done for free by you. I hope that this results in a lot more pull requests to Istio. If you see something, whether it's in our docs or readme's or actually in IstioD or in Envoy, send a pull request our way. We're always looking forward to meeting new contributors. Thank you.


In this area of Gatodu North, poultry farming has been doing very well and that's why we have engaged in it. It has actually helped us in so many areas. With the onset of this corona, we could not have a proper market. We could not have enough money to buy the feed and we had no alternative other than to sell the chicken. And that's why I have got only 200. Before then, I had 800 and I was planning to have about a thousand, two thousand, something like that. So corona has actually affected us. With the kind of training that we have gotten from far, poultry production has even become cheaper. It is very profitable because you don't have to keep on wasting money buying drugs unnecessarily. We have realized that proper stocking unit is very important. As you can see, my units are quite old and because of the knowledge that I have learned, I will improve the poultry unit and construct the standard ones.


So here we are in Washington, D.C., where there is a group of protesters that have shut down this major intersection, which is North Capitol. You can see the Capitol in the background right there in Massachusetts Avenue, right down from the major hub behind me here of Union Station. So this is shut down, but this is only one of six major intersections that are being shut down today. Entrances to the Capitol. Bridges are being shut down. This is a great day in which people are saying in Washington, D.C., while genocide is happening in our name and our tax dollars are being used for it, there is no business as usual. Shut down D.C., six major entrances to the city being closed down today to say, stop the slaughter, stop the genocide.


Abstract multiple SARS-CoV-2 omega subvariants have been identified, including BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5. BA.5 has become the dominant strain globally. Additionally, BA.2.75 is increasing in certain countries. To explore their receptor binding and interspecies transmission risks, we examined the binding capacities of human and other 28 animal ACE2 orthologs towards S proteins of these subvariants. The binding affinity between HACE2 and these subvariants remained within the range of previous VOI and VOC coronavirus strains. Notably, our 493-Q reverse mutation enhanced the binding of ACE2S from humans and many animals closely related to humans, suggesting an increased risk of cross-species transmission. Structure determination of S-HACE2 or RBD-HACE2 complexes for these subvariants and BA.2S binding to ACE2 of mouse, rat, or golden hams to reveal the molecular basis for receptor binding and broader interspecies recognition. This article was authored by Shenan Zhao, Yufeng Xie, Bin Bai, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Well, we have gathered here today to announce our top 10 scams reported to our Consumer Assistance Program in 2023. Thank you for joining us to learn about these scams, and thank you especially for spreading the word to your audiences and raise awareness about these scams. I also want to thank our community partners who work alongside us every day to fight scams. These include AARP, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, the Financial Abuse Specialist Team of Vermont, the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, local law enforcement, and of course, the media. I want to begin by pointing out a few sort of touchstone scam observations. The first is scams are generally international criminals that are very hard to shut down. That means our best tool for fighting scams is education. To work together, to collaborate and spread the word to our friends, neighbors, and families about scams that are happening in Vermont, to keep each other safe. So thank you for this opportunity to say a little bit more about some of the specific scams we have experienced this past year in Vermont. I will say there is an official sort of financial impact tally that the FTC has about how much money was lost to scams in Vermont. It's a very small sum because it's official and it's a much larger number in reality. It's $1.7 million. But we know from all of the calls that we answer and emails we respond to and social media that we respond to, there are a much bigger impact in Vermont than that number. So without further ado, we have received 3,212 scam reports to our consumer assistance program last year. Over 3,000 scams were reported to us last year. And we have our top ten list. Coming in first, as usual sadly, is the computer tech support scam. We had a total of 531 reports on that scam. It's twice as popular as number two. It's very, very prevalent. That's in part because it's so effective. So what that looks like is you will be on your computer and, for example, you'll get a pop-up saying you have a computer virus and just click here. And what happens next is the person either is trying to fish for information that they can then use to steal your identity or, more likely, they're asking you to have remote access into your computer. And once they are able to access your computer remotely, it is devastating because they're able to access all of your bookmarked web pages, your bank accounts. We have received reports at the Consumer Assistance Program of consumers who literally watched their bank accounts be drained in real time by scammers. Don't ever let anybody remote access into your computer. Your attorney general takes her computer to the location here in Vermont to have my computer fixed. I never let anyone access my computer remotely and neither should you. The number two scam is phishing when the scammer has financial information. So they might be posing to be a bank with financial information. They're trying to get you to fill out forms and, in other ways, give them your personal information that they can then use to steal money from you or steal your identity. Number three is an imposter scam. The law enforcement imposter scam is where you will get a call from a sheriff, supposedly, telling you that you are going to be placed under arrest unless you pay this supposed outdate, overdue fine when there's no fine. And, of course, it's very emotionally taxing to receive a call like that. And so it is very effective. We're going to say more about that in a minute after I take through these. The Medicare card phishing scam, and I'm going to say more about that one, but that's number four on our list this year. Another phishing scam, identity theft is number five. I kind of catch all for those reports that we get of identity theft. Sweepstakes and lotteries is number six. We see that one on our top 10 every year. It's another sadly effective one. Fake websites and online listings is number seven. That's things like Craigslist having an apartment that's supposedly for rent and the price is just too good to be true and a very effective one we commonly see. Eight is the family emergency imposter scam, sometimes known as the grandparent scam. That's another imposter scam. Imposter scams are incredibly effective. The deceitful solicitations scam is number nine. These involve attempts to obtain payment on illegitimate promotions from known businesses. So they're stealing a legitimate business's name or logo to try to trick you to giving them your money. And the last on the list is a new scam for us. It's the rewards credit scam. The rewards credit scam usually comes in the form of an email and that is where a large retailer supposedly has sent you an email where you click on this link and you can access rewards that you have supposedly gathered. And once you click on that link, it's a phishing scam that they're going to try to steal information to get your identity so that they can steal money from you. Another possibility is that there's a malware virus on there and they're going to steal money that way. So those are the top 10 scams. I want to highlight that 168 of our reported scams came from businesses. We have a small business initiative in my office. The small business advocate is here, Emily McDonald. And we want to just highlight that businesses, what that looks like generally is another imposter scam where someone is posing as an employee or some personnel related to the business and they're trying to trick you to wire money or pay money in some fashion. So we want to highlight that for small businesses. You are also targets for scammers. So be on the lookout for those. And if you have any problems or concerns, please contact our office. The consumer assistance program can be reached at 1-800-649-2424. You can get help from anyone there or if you have a small business question, Emily would be happy to help you. I want to tuck in a little bit to these top 10 scams. I mentioned the computer tech support scam has led the list and it has for a long time. So that is one to be on the lookout for in particular and always be careful. The tools and tricks that these scammers use with that scam are insidious. I, Crystal told me once we got a report from someone who they hid the malware virus link behind the X to close it down.  So it's, I, when I, if I get a pop-up like that, I literally just show my computer down because it makes me so uneasy because I hear of all these reports that we have. The other thing I want to mention is the imposter scam. I have this red flag formula of scams, I call it, and it's a formula where there's a combination of items and it's usually very effective at protecting you. It's when these items exist, you have to be thinking to yourself, this is probably a scam. It's when a person you don't know is asking you for money urgently and the problem with my formula which is very effective, but with these imposter scams you think you know them and so there's a sense of trust. So even though there's urgency, even though they're asking you for money, there doesn't seem to have the same sense of concern because they've tricked you that they're someone they're not. So we see it's a common trick, there's a theme. The family imposter scam is, you know, frequently on our list and also heartbreaking. We also see romance scams as another kind of version where you think this person is someone they're not. So be on the lookout for imposter scams. I also just want to give a shout out to the Burlington Police Department who alerted us to a scam that was going around and we were able to, you know, be a part of trying to get the word out about that scam. The Medicare phishing scam I wanted to point out, there's a spike in that scam during Medicare enrollment and the challenge is there's, of course, legitimate activity going on during that time period and it can be hard to distinguish between what is legitimate, what might be this scam. The thing that I would just say is we are waiting at the Attorney General's office's consumer assistance program to help you. If you have any concerns or any just doubts or like sense that there might be something amiss, please just call and we probably have heard a scam just like this one and we can walk you through it and just be that person who is a scam expert can help you make the right choice for yourself and determine whether something is a scam. I also want to just highlight this rewards credit scam. You know, we feel like we've seen it all so when we get a new scam, we take notice. The fact that this is a new scam and it's number 10 on our top 10 list is worth just highlighting and emphasizing. This looks like the email that you get, it looks like it's from someone legitimate, they'll steal a logo and when you click on the link there you go, you think you're getting your rewards, instead it's malware or it's a phishing attempt so be on the lookout for these reward scams that are coming to your email and we weren't gonna emphasize that one because it is a new one. So what do we do with all of this? Well let's talk about stopping scams. We wanna educate about what we can do and we have tips for you of course. First of all, everyone should be helping each other so we would say if you experience a scam the truth is when you report it to our office you're helping someone else not get scammed or even if you haven't been scammed and you find a scam please report it, that way we can spread the word to others who might be more vulnerable at falling for that scam. The thing that you can do if you are encountering someone who has this urgent request, they want your money, you don't know who they are, you're not sure who they are, is slow down. What they're doing is they're spiking your emotional response to get you to give them money. If you are in your feels and you're feeling excited, scared, worried, you're gonna be less likely to identify there's something amiss, this might be a scam. And it's not, I think it's intuitive that if you are worried, if you're scared that you would be in your emotions and not be thinking logically. But it's also excitement, you know we've had the fake package scam top the list some years and the fake package scam, that's really excitement. It's like, oh I got a package, oh what was this, someone mailed me something or I ordered something and I forgot and then it turns out it's a scam. So it's any kind of time that you're in your emotions you gotta slow down and take steps to verify the entity you're dealing with is legitimate. The other thing to do is write down the contact information and disengage. That's when you can call the consumer assistance program for help or just talk through, I got this call, not sure if it's a scam and I just wanna do like a scam check with you and we'd be happy to do that, to connect with you. So you can always call the consumer assistance program 1-800-649-2424. And I also wanted to highlight something that scam experts like us are very familiar with and that is gift cards are frequently used as a tool for scammers to get money from you. And I don't mean a gift card like to LL Bean. I mean the gift card that's Visa or Mastercard you can get it at the grocery store. And they'll say, oh, I'd like to be paid in gift cards. We have a jokie motto which is true and we should put it on a mug, gift cards are for gifts. If your friend is getting married, great opportunity to get a gift card. If someone is saying I would like you to pay me in gift cards, it's a scam. I need to know no additional information to tell you that. Someone is asking you to pay for something with a gift card, it's a scam. I said so and I'm right. If you again have any questions you can always reach out to the consumer assistance program but they're gonna tell you our motto gift cards are for gifts. So in closing, I wanna thank you for being here today and just note that millions have been lost to scams and that's money we can't get back. So we gotta work together to educate our friends, our family, our neighbors about scams that are happening and how to stay safe from scams and that is all I have for today. So I'm happy to answer questions if you have any questions. Yes. I have a new scam that's happening with small businesses. You know, we're in a time where scams is very common now. How do you go about dealing with new types of scams?  Well, we are experts in scams and we're experts in consumer behavior. So we're always using those, that kind of expertise and foundation to find the best way of educating the public and supporting them. So I'll give an example. We have recently tried to amplify scam awareness using social media. And we also go to, you know, seniors are often a target unfortunately for scams and so we partner with AARP to spread the word. They have scam jams. You know, Chris, who's the director at the Consumer Assistance Program or I will go. So we're always trying to meet people where they are, use our expertise in consumer behavior and communication to try to reach folks where they are. When it comes to small businesses, this small business advocate position is incredibly useful because she's able to, you know, talk with businesses about what's happening and figure out a way of like, what's the best way of reaching them and making sure that they understand what the risks are. So we're always adapting and learning as the technology changes. That's why we exist. That's why we're here to protect people and kind of be on the cutting edge of scam awareness. What about what you guys do to small businesses? This is probably the scary for them and Vermont is known for our local businesses. Yes, we are. The thing with those small business scams, I mean, we are mostly small business, I'll say small business, but the business scams often involve a lot of money because their businesses are not, you know, a family or a person. And a lot is at stake. So our advice to businesses is to put systems in place to protect yourself from a scam. So if money is being wired, why not have a second look, have more than one person looking at it or a system in place where, you know, you wait a certain amount of time before a big transaction is executed. So you have time to kind of slow down. The other thing that is encountered frequently is if you just look at someone's email address, it's a little different. So being aware of this isn't quite the email address I was expecting or the name is misspelled. Like something is a little bit often. If you find that, take a pause, contact that person through another means to ensure that this is what they wanted. I mean, when we get some of these small business scams, like break your heart because so much money is at stake. And once the money is gone, it's very hard to, depending on how it was sent to bring it back. So this is a good time. I talked about gift cards. Cash obviously is a nightmare. Wiring money is problematic. Credit cards have a lot of consumer protection baked into them. You can do a charge back on a credit card. So a credit card is actually a much safer way to go than some of these other means. You know, this is another example of the technology changing. There's now, there's Venmo and Zell and all of these other tools. So Venmo has put some tools in place to protect people from scams. But just choosing a means of paying for things that have built in consumer protection like credit cards is a wise choice. Funny you mentioned Venmo. One of the ones I get all the time and might have a PayPal account. And I'm constantly getting this, an attempt was made to get into your account. And how severe is that? And like, what would you suggest to the common person to do, to circumvent that, to like beat hands and leave like, what are they getting after? Is that such a, it's not, it's, you have no idea that you're not getting an email. You're not getting it like just at some, ask that question about those sorts of accounts. And then also, because of where I work, are you also, because I know some of these things are difficult to figure out, as English speaking, are you reaching out to and translating to other languages because we have so many other different language speaking folks here in Vermont that are even more, are really also at risk of being scammed. That's a great question. We have interpretation services at CAP. So we've come a long way in that regard. There was one time when someone called and they spoke Spanish, remember, who was there? I had to talk to them. My Spanish is really, really bad. So it was ugly. Luckily, we won't have to go back to those days. We have interpretation services. But getting to how to protect yourself, the sad thing is this is really a part of life now. So what, you're gonna keep getting emails saying someone tried to get into your account because it's just gonna keep happening. But that's a sign for you, for all of us, to factor authentication, to make sure that we're using all the tools available to us to protect ourselves. So we're changing our passwords. We're using different passwords in different situations. Anytime that you find out that you have a password that's compromised, you need to change all the passwords, the sites that you use that password for. So it's really on the consumer to find these ways to protect themselves because unfortunately, that kind of thing is just gonna keep happening. It's a good point. When someone is contacting you by phone instead of by mail, especially if it's the government, the government doesn't have a lot of money.  We used to have the IRS scam was huge a few years ago and now we hardly see it because people learned what it was. But I always think the IRS, if you ever tried to call them, you're on hold for 45 minutes. I don't have time to talk to you. So anytime it's a great point. Anytime someone is calling you and you have to wonder, really, would this more likely be a letter and the answer is usually yes. Thanks so much for being here and thanks to all of these folks for their incredible work, fighting scams every day. We're so lucky to have them at the Consumer Assistance Program.


Welcome back to another episode of every single shot where I will be taking on the Nicholas course at Cardin Park.  Throughout this video there's one question that springs to mind and that is, well, am I cheating? And we'll get the answer to that a little bit further on in the video. But for now I've just got to, it's right to left, doesn't really suit my shot shape on the first hole. I don't mind trying a little bit of a draw once I'm in a bit of a groove, but for now it's as tight as I can to that treeline down the left. And believe me that is literally dicing with that little bit, but it's a perfect start because with that line I've literally gone shortest route I can possibly take and that won't leave a great deal in. That's just 125 into a flag that's tucked to the left. Not a lot of room past the flag or to the left of it, so this one is going to be hopefully that bit of a cut and you want it to finish right to the flag and that's a safe shot. It's pin-eye, decent second shot, more than happy with the way that started. I've got to look at a birdie on the first hole which is, it's always nice. Just where they can find a pace from the get-go and I could do a bit better than that and oh Jesus there's a bit of a look of disgust there because well with a foot to go I must admit I thought that was that was holed, but anyway a nice easy four to start the day which is always nice. So second hole, playing this one a bit further back off the whites today, it's 375 yards, I've got a five wood in hand. I'm looking for, you know if I can get 220 out of this, there's two tall trees left and right of the fairway that you can see so it's fairly narrow. It's just a case of can you get one through the middle of those two and allow a little bit tight to that right hand side it just comes back a little, I think actually catch the end branches of that oak tree on the right, but because of that it's just left nothing more than just over a hundred in again wedge straight at it plenty of green at the back of it so you can afford to go for this one and I eye this one down for a while because it ever etches close to the hole and a real good look it was a great wedging to be fair really pleased with it. So these kind of the chances that you know at my level you've got to try and make because I don't make a lot of birdie putts and or get a lot of close chances and there's a big swing straight away you could see I fancied that one with a couple of foot to go that's a nice birdie to go one under really pleased right tough bar three 168 pin is on the back tier this a two tier green got to try and find that tier if you can I'm playing six iron and I just try and that forced it a little bit tried it one in a little bit controlled and well smothered it and ended up in a really steep bunker this is not an easy shot at all I don't mind playing from bunkers but this is well that's a proper decent shot to be fair and more than pleased with that and to leave sort of whatever that is six foot maybe to try and rescue par after a real poor tee shot been putting well in recent weeks this is just straight at it and yet a great up and down so one under onto the par five everything is going really well driver in and 502 yards as they always do a very short practice swing and well not much longer drive but just leak down a little it wasn't the best to drive but like with these clubs nowadays you tend to get away with a little it's done better than it probably should have a lot of bunkers up top it's about guiding now a hybrid just getting another couple of hundred yards up the fairway and avoiding those bunkers which I did and now leave a bit of an awkward one really so 100 yards in into the breeze you'll see that sort of shortened follow through I tried to hit one in low and chased it up the green which I did but it just chased on a little bit through and left a real awkward one the lie wasn't bad but we just had this as you can see it's all downhill from here I popped reasonably nice but like I said with the way the green is running away really difficult to to get the pace and left an awkward one for par which was really really close to going in and that would have been a good save but unfortunately that's a bogey on a par five which I shouldn't be doing really annoyed with that especially from sort of a hundred yards in I should be in the green there and give myself a birdie chance and walk off with bogey anyway put that one behind me 375 yards drivers back out a good solid strike again just a little bit down that left hand side I think I just find the first cut if I can remember yeah and now I start 170 in but it's a real good iron this is solid love it when you get an iron going at the flag I played seven iron I thought it was going to kick down the green again I'd give it a bit of a thumbs up really pleased with that but not as close as what it looked from where I was stood and clearly perhaps at a club short so again it's a birdie chance still and a nice pace running at the hole just sneak the way down the right hand side but an easy four and that level par are more than happy at this point things are going good great hole I mean I just love this hole it's got to be from where I'm playing today I'm playing hybrid staying well clear of the water and again a little bit of that draw shape now getting to loosen up a bit really pleased with the way that's come to rest and this is an interesting one I've got a wedge right at the flag means taking on the bunker I was actually aiming a little bit left more left than that to be honest with you that goes right at the flag and looks really good but you see where I repaired the pitch mark is right on the up slope and it spun back down one hop forward or a yard further forward and I've got a real decent birdie chance but as it is it's come back down the tier and a bit of an awkward one because half the putt is up the hill and that other half is sort of flattens out at the top so these are difficult puts just to get the pace right and again right I'm really pleased with that it's not a realistic birdie chance for me that it's a case of just getting the pace and getting your two putt which you've got to gain and yet again remain at level par so it's a real tough hole this one hole seven it's 419 yards but the line you've got to stay tight down that path if you want to go to the shortest route and I just got a little bit greedy here now it's really dicing with it because apart from a path of some water runs just left of the path and as you can see unfortunately there's my ball come to rest and I couldn't even get down to get that one I had to leave it there as well yeah that's the one that's all response striped anyway take a drop because I went on the shortest route you've only got a 9-9 into the hole it could have been wedge actually it was only around 120 in and I got this going right at the flag and striking the iron so well at the moment again just not the yardage just a club short realistically so again it's about getting the pace right this one's uphill and as you can see yeah I didn't manage to get that pace right but it was a decent line and I know the line so I tend to just walk up to these and just commit if I think that I've just hit it on the right line and continue with it if I dwell on it I just feel like you're just second guessing and yeah anyway we're on to hole eight just a par three 129 real awkward pin it's right in front of that oak tree there's no green to the left hand side so you need to be landing aiming just right to the flag and as you can see I did the complete opposite and I pulled it down the left hand side and that was a pretty awful shot from just 129 yards away so again we've all had these shots a bit awkward sitting a little bit down I just wanted to get it up and running as soon as I could and just carry that little bit too far hit the firmer stuff and well it carried through and now again I've got to try and make well to put to save par which straight away as you can see when it left the club that was never going to make par and unfortunately that's back to back bogies so with one to play on this front nine we take on the par five ninth hole and hopefully a chance to get back maybe get a birdie to finish the front nine want to try this left to right as the shape of the hole but that's way too tight down that right hand side and that's going to leave me in the rough it's nestled down a little bit and to get back in this one it needs a real good hybrid because about 180 yards down there's some water that crosses through the fairway but I got that absolutely solid and got into a real good position to where should leave a short wedge into the green which it did it left about I think it was 68 yards I've got a 58 wedge and it's a case of just going straight at it I flicked it up really nice clean contact and had this ball coming right down on the flag and yes I had that birdie opportunity to get back down to to just one over par this was a nice finish to the to the front line but unfortunately again just a weak port it was never on the right line but it was always weak as well but I finished two over and the question is am I cheating that's what I titled the video because right now what's been happening of late I've posted quite a number of videos with me playing nine holes 18 holes and don't forget nine handicap golfer that was two over par and I'm just question whether or not I'm putting enough cards such as these into the WHO system and getting an accurate handicap so my comments down to you below are I'm not official member of a club right now but should I be posting these kind of scores are you able to just post nine hole scores because I'm pretty sure they'd be affecting my handicap in a positive way and I just feel like I'm cheating the system at the moment and perhaps I don't fully understand it either so if you can help me out in the comments below I'd appreciate it and let me know how I should be posting these scores to keep maybe a more accurate record of my handicap hey thanks for watching the front nine I'll post the back nine next week and I look forward to seeing you then thanks for watching bye now