Welcome everyone. This is the first annual meeting of the Friends of the Callis Town Hall. At this meeting where we will hear about who the Friends group are, here's a hint, it's all of us about what we're doing and what we hope to do in the future. In some ways this meeting is the kickoff for phase three of restoring the Callis Town Hall. Bear with me, I'll give a little bit of history here for the record. The first phase of restoring the Town Hall began seven and a half years ago at Town Meeting of March 5th, 2013. At that meeting we voted to pay for a much needed new roof for the building. Between Town Meeting of 2013 and 2018, many dedicated people, led by David Sheets and Donna Fitch, worked on the engineering studies, the community engagement, and perhaps more important of all, finding an architect. That architect turned out to be John McCullough. At the Town Meeting of 2018, the town voted unanimously for $200,000 toward the restoration of the Town Hall. At that point the total cost for the project was projected to be around $400,000, so after that Town Meeting we began worrying about how to raise the rest from a complicated federal grants and through major big deal fundraising. But then, wonderful happened. On June 28th, 2018, Donna announced that an anonymous donor had given $200,000. Wow. That donation assured the completion of phase two. We now have a beautifully restored working space downstairs for town business. We'll hear a little bit later about the amazing work, call it magic, the completed phase two. We'll also hear about our hopes for phase three, which focuses on the upstairs. As Cliff mentioned, we've set an ambitious agenda for the next 50 minutes. We've set aside time at the end for questions, so please hold your questions until then. Enjoy the meeting. And now, I give you the one, the only, David Sheets. Pray. Pray. All right. Thank you, Scott. Quite an intro. So I've been given plenty of time here, but I don't think I'm going to need all of it because Scott did such a wonderful job of laying the groundwork for all of us understanding the work that's been going on at the town hall for a surprising amount of time. And yet the actual construction has not been all that long. And happily, but somewhat unhappily, we have a beautiful building again, but one that the public cannot quite yet enjoy. But it is the public very much, particularly the citizens of Callis, that take ownership and always have been owners of this structure to some extent. And it is, that is basically what the Friends Group hopes to be the group that takes the project from here to the future. And any good Friends Group, of which there are many, and I'm sure that many of you are members of such organizations, the local library, they're countless, including the State House itself, which has a very robust Friends organization that continues to raise money for the purpose of developing and enhancing our ability to serve as a museum to the public. Well, in the case of the town hall, it's much more practical than just being a museum. This is a structure that we have talked about for quite a few years that has been underutilized for nearly a century, ever since the Christian church gave it up at the end of the 19th century. And it became nothing but the town hall from that point on in its both floors. But in recent years, it's been used for a little more than town meeting and some meetings downstairs. Happily, now that the renovation has occurred, the building is on a very firm foundation with a great roof on top and quite a bit of loving care on the inside, particularly downstairs. But if we want the space to be utilized more fully, we have to develop the upstairs as well. And that is kind of where the renovation of the town hall has come to a conclusion so far. We need more money. The Friends Group is possibly the means to try to get more money on a project by project basis in a reasonable amount of time and over the course of being driven by such things as will make it a performing space on the upstairs. So we're going to talk a lot about that today at the annual meeting, the hopes of you, the citizens of Calus, and how we can make this place once the pandemic is passed a vibrant gathering space within our town. Sound good? Great. Thank you, David. Thank you. Okay. I've been asked to speak a little bit about the role of the Friends Group and the role of the select board in this new arrangement. So as everyone knows, the town owns the building and the select board is responsible to meet the wishes of the community in taking care of the building and maintaining it. The Friends organization is a nonprofit corporation of 501C3 that was organized to help manage the process of taking care of the building and also, as David mentioned, to engage cultural events at the space, primarily in the upstairs. The hope is, is that through some of these events, they can serve as fundraisers that will provide additional monies for the care and maintenance of the building. There will also be other requirements, as there is with any structure over time, to help keep that another member joining us, excuse me. And that will allow us to keep this a thriving, important part of our community, the heart of our community, if you will. The select board, of course, will be responsible every year for setting a budget and putting some money into the budget that is there to help take care of the building, but the Friends will augment that through their efforts. Okay, and once again, just a little housekeeping here for people who have recently joined us. Everyone comes into the meeting, they're automatically on mute. If they want to ask a question, there will be opportunities later in the program for a Q&A, but if you need to say something, you'll have to unmute yourself. You can do that either by pressing and holding the spacebar, or you can scroll down to the lower left-hand corner of your screen and hit the unmute button. All right, so next on our agenda, we want to nominate some board members going forward. And we have some current board members who have agreed to run again for the board of directors. I'm going to handle this in three phases. First, I will present two slates. The first slate are current board members who have volunteered to serve on the board again. I will ask for someone to nominate the entire slate. This first slate are people who will be running for a one-year term. The second slate will be board members running for two-year terms. Now, per the boards, I'm losing the word here, our organization's bylaws, thank you, David. Our bylaws state that the board member's position is a two-year role, but we realized if we started off by having everyone at a two-year role, then everyone would have to be reelected every two years, and we'd lose some consistency. So half of the current board volunteered to serve a one-year term, and the other half volunteered to serve a two-year term so that we could have a staggered board and going forward, it will be a two-year period for everyone who's serving. So I will present the two slates, and then in the third phase, I will open up the floor and take nominations for other people who might be interested in serving on the board. And there's a lot of work to do, so we're hoping that some people from the community will join us and volunteer. Okay, so for the first slate running for one-year term, the volunteers are Scott Bassage, Barbara Butler, David Sheetz, and Artie Tulis. So I'm wondering if someone would like to nominate this slate of candidates. Okay, thank you, Denise. Is there a second? Thank you. All right, so what's going to happen is I'm going to present a poll. It will pop up on your screen. You will have the opportunity to vote by simply clicking next to the names of the candidates. And as I said, after this slate, I'll present a second slate, and then in the third phase, I will open the floor up to nominations. So this is all kind of new to me, so bear with me. Okay, I've launched the poll. Hopefully everyone can see it. I'm on the Zoom by seeing some votes coming in. If you do not see the poll on your screen, we will provide you with an option opportunity to vote via chat. I'm going to keep this open for about another 20 seconds. Looks like most of you have been able to vote. I'm still seeing three missing. Scott, unfortunately as host and co-host, you and I are not able to vote, but we will vote via chat so that we're counted. So apparently there is one other attendee who has not been able to vote. Can you please speak up if you're not seeing the ballot on your screen? Yeah, I see the ballot, but I'm not a resident of Calis, so I don't think I would be eligible to vote. Okay. I'm sorry. I got a phone call while you were doing instructions. Should I just click on submit? Yes, once you're done voting, you hit submit. Okay. And I just also need to... Oh, so I check each one? Yes. Okay. So the bylaws do say that the FRIENDS group is open to residents and non-residents of Calis. So non-residents are welcome to vote as well. Can we get a second ballot so Tina can vote? Unfortunately, we can only have one ballot per internet connection. Can I just put a chat in the chat that I'm voting for all of them? Yes, you can. Thank you. Okay. Can you write that in? Yes. I would like to encourage Ron Padgett to vote. Even though he's a non-Calis resident, he's certainly a member of our community and I invite him and encourage him to vote. Absolutely. And the bylaws do allow for that. This is Ron Padgett. Thank you. But I've already taken the ballot off of my screen and it looks like a shoe-in sledge anyway. Okay. If you do want to submit your vote by chat, you're welcome to do so. I'm too scared to use chat. Okay. Cliff, what are the positions those people are running for? That's decided at the first meeting after the annual meeting where the newly recognized board of directors will vote to assign specific positions, president, vice president, treasurer, etc. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. I'm going to close the poll and I will present the preliminary results. These won't be the final results because they won't include the people who weren't able to vote via the ballot. And there are the results. As was mentioned, it looks like it's a shoe-in. Congratulations, everyone. Congratulations, indeed. And thank you for stepping up. Okay. I'm going to stop sharing these results and bear with me. I had an interruption in my connection. I apologize for that. Okay. So next we will go to the second slate of candidates who are running for a two-year period. And the candidates on that ballot are Chris Colt, Cliff Emmons, and Nancy Toulouse. Do I hear a nomination for this slate? So moved. Thank you, Denise. Is there a second? Second.  Did you have a question? Okay. It was just to nominate. Okay. So after this slate, then I will open the floor up for nominees from the floor. Cliff, yes. I have a question. Okay. I didn't see who seconded and I'm taking notes. Who seconded that nomination? I didn't catch who seconded. It was me, Jane English. Okay. Thank you, Jane. Thank you, Barbara, for taking the minutes here. Difficult, because you're having to do it by phone and by the visual. All right. I'm going to bring up the next slate. I afford everybody an opportunity to vote. And you should all be able to see it now. Results are coming in like rapid fire. Can we do this on the presidential? Yeah. We'll get the town to nominate who they want to have on the ballot. Vote early and vote often. That's right. Okay. And thank you, Christina, for your chat vote. Scott, I believe you wanted to support all three candidates as well. So I will record that. I will keep this open for another 15 seconds or so. It looks like everyone who can has voted. I will end the poll. And here are the results. So once again, congratulations. Okay. So I will now take the results off the screen. These are preliminary results because they do not include those who voted via chat. After the meeting, we will publish the full results for all to see along with the minutes and whatnot. Okay. At this point now, I would like to open up for nominations from the floor. Are there any nominees or anyone you would like to nominate? We are asking for a two-year commitment, but as a one-time only because it's a newly formed board, we are allowing people to, if they're interested in being on the board, to serve a one-year term. One-time only offer, though, folks. I have a question. Yes, Craig. How many board members are there total? I tuned in late to the start of the meeting. So how many will there be? There are currently, we have elected seven members to the board. The bylaws state that the board must consist of a minimum of five members, but we do not have a maximum because we want to encourage as many people as are interested to participate. Barbara? Yes, and I want to be sure to know that we love self nominations. Don't wait for someone to nominate you. You are welcome to nominate yourself. So is a board member different than just being part of the group? Yes, the board members will meet regularly to discuss any issues at hand and also to help provide a mechanism for steering the cultural events that occur at the town hall, also to inform the select board of the goings-on and as well as the members of the friends of town hall at large as to upcoming events and ongoing activities. I would add that the board members are the governing body of the friends group, but simply by attending today, you're all members of the friends group already. So how often does this board meet? The bylaws state that we meet a minimum of four times a year. Currently, we're meeting twice a month and the current dates that we meet are the second and fourth Thursday of every month at 10 o'clock. It sounds like there's fundraising to do. I missed the first couple minutes. Do you have a goal for fundraising? We do. David, maybe you could respond to that question. We have a goal, but I would say in the midst of the pandemic, we have not really started the conversation of how aggressively we go out there and continue to raise money for town hall. I think that's one of the first conversations we're going to need to have is to identify what we feel we're going to need as soon as the building starts its useful life again and what we can put off a little longer. That's part of why it may be a good idea for some of you to be involved and there may be ways for you to be involved. Every friends group works on the basis of trying to include as many people as possible. I would submit that if it puts you off to meet twice a month, that may not continue necessarily. We'll be having conversations about what makes the most sense. Probably we're going to form a few committees. That's what usually happens. People might even be able to participate in a committee that would not necessarily have to meet with the frequency of the board itself. There are options for being participants without necessarily being on the board. I'd like to nominate Carol Beatty. Okay. I hear nomination. Do I hear a second? That took me by surprise. Do you nominate Carol? I mean Linda, Carol? I'm trying to think of, you know, right now I think I could do it. The timing Thursday morning problematic. But for right now, I think I actually could and I am interested. Okay, great. Thank you. Are there any other nominations from the floor? Cliff? Yes. I'd like to follow up on David's comment about in the future we might have committees formed and if we if and when we do that, I'm sure we'll be sending out email notification to all of the friends members. So everybody here today would have the opportunity to volunteer for let's say a fundraising committee or a furnishings committee or you know, some other kind of committee that we might form in the future. Okay. Thank you, Barbara. Good point. All right. I'm not hearing any further nominations. I can create another poll. But since we only have one other nominee, I think we can simply do it by a raise of hands. So if you would like to support Carol's candidacy, please signify by raising your hand. It's unanimous. Welcome, Carol. Thank you. And just so everyone knows right now, it looks like we have approximately 23 participants not counting Scott and myself. So that brings us actually to 25. Sorry, I just want to say I have to go. I've got a medical appointment in town. But I'm wondering are there is there going to be a summary of this meeting posted somewhere just so I can see what else was discussed after I leave. The meeting is being recorded by the Zoom account and it's also being recorded by Orca Media. It will be published to YouTube. It will also be published to the town website, as well as the virtual tour, which we're going to be presenting in just a few minutes. Also, we will publish the results of the votes and the minutes of the meeting on the website as well. Thanks, Craig. Okay. I am going to go ahead and close the nomination and election process and move into the next phase of the meeting. Before we do that, briefly, are there any other questions regarding the board of directors? I'm hearing none. Okay. Those of you who are only able to participate by phone, unfortunately, will not be able to see the video, but you will be able to view the video after the fact once we've posted it to the town's website. And I believe Artie and Barbara are going to coordinate on that, but I would expect it to be posted probably by this evening. Is that doable, Barbara and Artie? It's doable. I do want to put in a higher quality version on the website. The version you're going to see now is relatively low quality just to make it easy to to pass around and share and view, but I'll put a higher quality one on probably later tonight. That'll be on Facebook and I will forward it to whoever puts it on the website. So by late tonight or early tomorrow, you'll see the higher quality version, but it's the same video, just a better quality. Great. Thanks, Artie. And like I say, if you can send it to Barbara, she'll take care of getting it onto the website. Great. So without further ado, I am going to do a screen share here and kick off the virtual tour of the town hall. I hope everyone enjoys. I would ask everyone to make sure that their microphone is muted while the video is playing. That will help avoid issues with sound quality. At town medium in 2018, we had developed a plan for how to renovate the building and we went to the voters in Calis. They gave us $200,000. With that money, we got a matching donation, a very generous donation. In August of that year, we lifted the building up off its old foundation, demoed that foundation, built a new one, pulled the building back away from the road and put it back down. That winner, the winner of 2018-2019, the carpenters are in here working. In the summer of 2019, they were doing the exterior. It was probably the spring of 2020 that we finally finished it. The labor and industry came through and gave us our certificate of occupancy. And now the town has a renovated town hall ready for mediums. Unfortunately with the COVID, that's not going to happen for a while. But here it is. I really, I appreciated the opportunity of giving something to the town. This is probably my one shot, my one big shot. And I wanted to contribute and I had an opportunity to do so. The kitchen has been renovated, new stove, new refrigerator, new kitchen all around. The main meeting place in the lower level is almost exactly as it was. We've done some things to sort of, that show a little more respect for the existing building. For example, the columns that are right up here at the serving counter, they're no longer engaged by the serving counter. They're completely independent. The serving counter goes around them and respects the column placement. We also made the convenience stair in the corner, the old corner stairway. We made that enclosure smaller so it didn't take up so much room in here. And also all doors are on magnetic hold opens so we can keep these doors open so people can admire some of the historic pieces without having a door closed on them for fire code reasons. The building is, we like I said, we got a certificate of occupancy. It's, we don't have a sprinkler system but we have plenty of fire alarms, smoke detectors, automatic closers on the doors. If you want to take a look around, it has its own mechanical room. It has two bathrooms, one ADA complaint. It has a new lift, pretty cool. The lift actually goes up, it has three stops, this level, the ground level, the second story level, and it goes up to the stage level with another door on the side. So a person with a mobility problem can get all the way to the stage in a wheelchair and address an audience. So that's kind of nice. We got a grant from the someone arts council. Vermont council for the arts for that. The windows are going to be done by Jamie Wiener, Bill Davis and Toby Talbot, and I did most of the interior painting, all the interior painting. I did the floors, friends and citizens of Calis, welcome to the Calis Town Hall, the renovated Calis Town Hall. I'm glad you could join us. Thank you, Artie and Nancy and John for putting that together. Well done. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't want to interrupt too much, but following that, I just wonder if Donna could highlight a few of the things that you saw in the video that weren't necessarily mentioned, such as the counter and the woodwork in the kitchen, all of which were made from the reclaimed parts of the doors of the old queues that were once upstairs. And Donna, are there other things that you could call out in terms of contributions that people made to make this happen? A long list of everybody who contributed, and it's now hanging in the town hall. So when people go and vote, they'll see this very long list that starts at the ceiling and goes down. And I know John mentioned a lot of these people in the video, but the video couldn't be that long. Sandy Hyde, who lives on Apple Hill, I mean, he was there all winter with John, day after day after day. Rob Chase donated that beautiful cherry countertop in the kitchen. And there's just so many people to thank. And especially people who stepped up after Ernie died. And I just want to say to Artie and Nancy, one of my sisters-in-law in California said that the video was PBS quality. So thank you so much for doing that and giving John the opportunity to share with his family in California. That's all I want to say, David. But that was wonderful. In other words, I get downright emotional when I think about all of the people who have made this possible. And happily, when the building is open to the public again, we will have their names in the building, calling them out for their contributions and the contributions to come. Thank you. Thank you. I would also like to inform everyone that the restoration is not fully completed because we are currently working on getting the exterior painted. We did contract with Grady Thayer, Grady Thayer painting, and he and his team are aggressively working towards completing the project. We had hoped that they would be able to have it done by the end of the month, but the weather has not always cooperated, but they are making great progress. And I encourage everyone to take a drive by and see how it's coming along, because the parts that are completed are just stunning. Okay. We'll move to the next item on our agenda. And the Gospel Hollow players would like to talk a little bit about their ideas for the hall. I don't know who wants to start off, Artie? Yeah, I think I'll speak for the group. So yeah, as most of you probably know, our home at the Blue Barn is no more. So we're looking to use the town hall as our new space to do our performances. I believe, a lot of you probably already know, we did, Chris's mat as the wind and sea. Was it last year? I get confused a year before. And that's the type of thing we want to do. You know, all the shows that we were used to doing at the barn, we're now going to move over to the town hall. I think Chris actually maybe has two, is it two in the can already, Chris, that are ready to get out there as soon as we can get into the space. We had hoped, I mean, you know, we had hoped that we would be in there this summer and doing things. But unfortunately, the circumstances that weren't prevent that. But as soon as it's deemed safe, and we can go there, we plan on doing at least probably two shows a summer season, if not more, we'll be putting on lots of music events, which I feel will be easy to book once the time has come, because musicians right now are just dying to play. And as soon as the gates are open for them to do that, there will be lots of opportunities. So we foresee that happening quite a lot down the road. And I think this will probably come in later when we look at the two and five year plan. The space will also be used for being able to be rented by other groups for events, parties, weddings, birthdays, whatever. So we see eventually the town hall becoming a money generator. There will be lots of fundraising needed for the for the upstairs space. You know, most of the phase one and phase two is complete. And a lot of the donations went towards that, which leaves us fundraising for the future for the upstairs. We're going to need lighting equipment, we're going to need technical equipment, sound equipment, stuff like that. We don't really want to do our shows with extension cords running around, which is sort of what got us in trouble at the blue barn. So we're going to try to prevent that by installing some some pretty good professional equipment upstairs to have some good, to get plays up there. Yeah. Again, I want to thank the town, the friends group. There's been a tremendous amount of meetings and time spent getting the documents ready, getting the agreement with the town ready, putting together the processes for how the building will get rented, things like that. We've used Plainfield as kind of a template for what we've done, but there's specifics to our particular building that are different that we had to work around. And unfortunately, with COVID right now, everything's on hold, but we see the building getting used by us, by the town hall players quite a lot. If there's any questions, I'll take them. Hearing none, I think you must have emptied any questions with your presentation. Thank you, Artie. And I do it with the video. I do apologize that we weren't able to get, you know, within a short period. I know there's many, many, many people to thank who put in a ton of time, and we weren't able to capture all that on a four minute video. But I think there are a lot of people that were involved that need to be thanked. Absolutely. Do the windows open wide so that, you know, ventilation for, you know, with COVID, maybe we'll get a head start on things? Yes, the windows can be opened. They are subject to seasonal changes. So there are adjustable slats on the side to be able to open them up when the need arises. When we just had the primary election, we actually opened a few of them so that we would have airflow through the building. Come November, we may not want to engage in that option for obvious reasons, but if it's a nice day out, we'll certainly have them open. Any other questions? Has the board done any specific work about parameters for events or cost or any kind of guidelines there? Or are you just at the very beginning of that process? Artie, maybe you could talk a little bit about the agreement. Yeah, it's pretty specific. Actually, there's a cost schedule that we feel is very fair, but also will help the town generate some money and not just have the town hall be a drain on the town. There's specific guidelines for a number of people, hours it can be open, whether or not the kitchen is being used or not. There's time guidelines on how long the events can last, how late music can go. It's pretty thorough and specific. It's not 100% complete yet. I don't know, Cliff, if those things will get posted eventually, but yeah, fair amount of time and effort went into those things, and it's pretty specific. Yes, it will definitely be posted. Artie, didn't we build in a bit of a discount for residents who might want to use the hall? We did, yes. I don't know if we came up with exact final numbers, but we were going to have a different cost, whether they were callous residents or not, but I feel like just having been around and looking at venues and other places for parties that Nancy and I have hosted or had or whatever my band played, I feel like the rates are very, very reasonable for anyone that would want to use it, but also a way to make a little money and cover some of the costs of what we're doing. Thanks, Artie. Any other questions? Hearing none. So, Artie talked a little bit about the plans of the Gospel Hall of Players, as well as some of the long-term plans for entertainment events that would take place at the hall. Scott, would you like to please speak a little bit about short-term plans? Sure. In the very short term, we'll be working on a budget with Artie and Nancy's help to decide what we want to look for in the way of equipment, sound, including sound, enhanced sound for the heart of hearing, lights. I think everybody would welcome the idea of some comfortable chairs up in that space. I know at the moment that the Vermont Arts Council are the Preservation Trust of Vermont is standing by to give us a small grant for some engineering and technical assistance to help us develop that budget. We are now eligible for a second grant from Vermont Arts Council to actually obtain the equipment. But those grants won't cover everything, so we certainly will also need to begin a serious fundraising operation and we'll do that probably simultaneously with grant writing and budget making. And that's really all I see for the short term. I'm curious as any thought been given to using the walls of the upstairs space for visual art for painting and drawings? Certainly a possibility, yeah. David, you might have some ideas and suggestions already. Yeah, I mean the upstairs has big beautiful windows that would be the only problem with much wall space. The wall space is surprisingly limited upstairs, but certainly I think we could possibly in the future put up some kind of hanging system that would enable us to show art and rotate art with relative ease, something like that. This is Donna and as part of our Arts Council grant application, we did say that we would be doing art shows in that upper space. I think the idea of rotating is a great one, David. I have a question. The Fall foliage festival is coming up. Is the building going to be open? And I'll maybe one way in, one way out so people can take a look around? I don't know that we've discussed that possibility with Jamie. I don't know if Jamie has approached anyone asking if that was going to be included. Certainly something that the board could take up at their next meeting after this one. David Scott, anyone else have any other comments with regards to that question? If the select board chair thinks it's possible, we certainly could figure it out, I'm sure, and be safe. I think it would be wonderful to allow residents to go in and go out to take an actual look at the place, but I mean, I think I could put it in the agenda for Monday night for the board to discuss.  You can't stand around inside talking. There'd have to be some kind of, you know, people kind of they're shooing people along, but I wouldn't hurt for the board to talk about it and see what we decide. Yeah. No, I think, go ahead, David. I mean, I love the idea if we think it's practical and doable. Sure. Yeah, I think if the select board decides to support this, then the board of directors can meet to discuss how to pull it off. And I'll put it on for Monday night under the Town Hall Friends of Town Hall update. Great. Jamie's not here, I don't think, but she's doing the flyer for the weekend. I think it's late. No, not yet, because I'm delayed it because we're trying to work out something for Friday night. But if there's something just brief saying that there's a tour going on in that building, it seems to me very possible to be able to do it. If we could put it in early, and that would be like today, just saying that there's an open house. And then if the select board feels as though there's a possibility or it is a good possibility that it could happen, that would be great to be able to put in the flyer. I totally agree. Thank you for delaying it, Hasso. I don't know if Jamie appreciates it, but whatever. Hasso, did I understand, this is Barbara, did I understand you to say today would need to be the day to contact Jamie and let her know? Yeah, because I think she wants to be able to print it today. She put it off a day or so for me. So yeah, we're scrambling to try and get our listing today. Denise, would you have time after this meeting to contact Jamie and give her a heads up? Sure. Thank you. Okay, well, we are fielding questions. This is actually a perfect segue into the general Q&A section of our meeting. So I'm opening the floor for any other questions people might have. I have a question, Cliff. And that is, how does one become a member? Well, the easiest way is to attend this meeting, but the other alternative is to, we have a Facebook page. You can contact any member of the board and say, I'd like to become a member. We will also periodically be sending out things via front porch form and whatnot to remind people that we're always actively seeking members. And it's free. Oh, it's free. You're not going to have a cost. No, we talked about that. And we thought that it would be better for fundraising efforts to separate that from participation in the Friends group. Because people contribute in a lot of other ways besides just monetarily. And we wanted it to be as open and active a group as possible. So by not having membership fees, we thought we could accomplish that goal easier. The other options, in addition to contacting any member of this board, if you tell any select board member, if you call the Callis Town office, the Friends also has an email account. It's easy to remember friends of the Callis Town Hall at gmail.com. Tell anybody we'll add you to the list. Thank you, Barbara. Donna, did you have a follow up question? Would the members have voting rights in some situations? Certainly, there will always be an annual meeting for the board of directors. And of course, members of the Friends group will have the opportunity to vote for the board directors. I could imagine there are other initiatives that may come up from time to time where we would want to engage with the Friends group and get their inputs. And so we would take a vote. Can anybody attend the board of directors meetings? Absolutely. Absolutely. Great. They don't even have to be a friend. But if you do attend, you automatically become a friend. Good for you. So welcome, you're officially a friend. I would not be an official committee of the town. We're not a committee or a commission of the town. So as a not-for-profit organization, we don't post or warn our meetings. So if you're interested in attending a board meeting, you would just need to be in touch with us so we could give you the schedule. Don't post them or warn them. Are you going to post your meetings on the Facebook page or something? Once we get it all up and running, that's the plan. Good. Great. We have the Facebook page. We've got the start of a regular website. And as we move along, we'll formalize those a little bit more and put more content onto them and whatnot. I'd like you to remember that there are some of us who do not belong to Facebook. So important information needs to be sent through the email or some other way. But there are some people in the world, me and especially, who do not belong to Facebook. Yes. And that's why we're in addition to the Facebook page. We're also doing a website. And we will maintain the email addresses of the members of the friends group so that we can periodically send out information to them. And we have a beautiful, as you may have noticed in the invitation, a beautiful new logo that was designed by Bob Hannan for our group. Thank you, David. Well, thank Bob for us, Hassell. On Bob's behalf. He's not here. I'll let him know. Thank you. Happy to do it. Thanks. Any other questions or comments? Dorothy, still got, there you go. So the friends group and the board of making these plans to raise money and improve the building, which I think is great. But since the building is owned by the town, how does that, how does the select board be part of that? Shouldn't somebody from the select board be on this board? I want to know how the money thing, the responsible money things and things like that dovetail between the friends and the select board. Okay. I can answer most of that question and I would invite David and Scott and any other members of the board to chime in as well. My position on the select board as well is on the board for the friends group is by design so that I can act as the liaison between both bodies as we are scheduling events and activities at the hall, we have an agreement or soon to have an agreement with the select board that we will not be scheduling them on top of municipal events that take place at the hall. Those will always take priority over any other cultural events we might schedule. With regards to any monies that come in as a result of these activities, the board will have a appointed treasurer who will manage the funds and then periodically, when need be, we will transfer funds over to the town or expend monies from the treasury fund to take on a project if we needed to do some touch-up painting or something like that for example. We may opt to take it directly out of the fund that's created by the friends group. David or Scott, maybe Scott, maybe you could add to that. I think that's pretty complete. We do have a almost final draft of an agreement between the board, the friends group in the town in addition to a separate, a different draft of an agreement with people who want to use the upstairs space. So there's two separate agreements and the select board and the friends group are working on those together just about finished. The draft management agreement is actually in front of the select board. It was presented to them at the last select board meeting and we're hoping at this coming meeting, this coming Monday that we will finalize and agree to sign off on it. So hopefully did that answer your question Dorothy? Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. We're running a little over here. So if there's any more questions hearing none. Okay. I'm going to turn the floor over to David for closing comments. So I haven't really come up with any little speech that can wrap this up, but I do think that in this meeting today, all of us have gotten a better sense, including myself, of what the future looks like for our town hall, which belongs to everyone in Calis. And what I like about the definition of this group is that you may have noticed money is not an obstacle to being involved at the Calis town hall. Money is needed for the Calis town hall and its future like any old building, it's going to have to be well maintained in the future. The great thing that we now have is a town hall whose deferred maintenance over decades has at long last been addressed. And we're at least starting with a solid building that while it may have needs that aren't currently there, we have a plan for going forward to address those needs. And we have most important of all, a magnificent edifice that we can start to use in a way that it has never been used before. So the excitement unfortunately has to be kept a little at bay due to the pandemic. But I feel confident that somewhere in 2021, the doors are going to be flung open, not just for a very carefully attended open house such as we might even have at Fall foliage festival, but flung open for a big Chris Colt written musical and many other wonderful events that will take place there in the years to come. We're in that position happily to do that as soon as the dangers of the pandemic are at bay. So thank you for coming today and being a part of the birth of the friends of the Calis town hall. And please spread the word throughout the town and beyond that this is a place for everybody and that everybody who tunes in or comes to one of our meetings or wants to help with the project. They're all friends of the Calis town hall. Thank you, David. And thank you all for being here and for being friends of the Calis town hall. I see your recording. When will the recording be available? Because I couldn't be at the beginning of the meeting. We will publish the recording to the website but we also have Orca media online and they are recording it and we publish it to YouTube on the Orca media channel. Usually it takes a couple of days for us to get these things posted online. And there's a website for the friends of the Calis town hall. Is that the website you're talking about? Artie, can you respond to that one please? No. We started a website back in January, February, March, but when the pandemic hit we decided to forego that monthly fee of having to pay for a website because we knew it wasn't going to be doing us much good. So we let that expire. When we're talking about a website now, right now we're talking about the town website. There's a town hall page on the Calis town website. That's where we'll be posting all the materials from today, the video and so forth. We will also be sending an email to each of you once that's all posted and available for viewing. Perfect. Thank you, Barbara. All right, all thanks again. And we're moving forward with a new phase of our town hall. Well done, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye. Take care.


Ukrainian Defence Forces destroy Russian St. Sepyok heavy MLRS. Ukrainian Special Operations Forces have found a Russian TOS-1A St. Sepyok heavy multiple-launch rocket system on the southern front and the Defence Forces of Ukraine have destroyed it. The press service of Special Operations Forces of Ukraine said this. While conducting reconnaissance on the southern front, the drone crew of the 73rd Naval Centre of Special Operations Forces detected a St. Sepyok TOS-1A MLRS hidden behind the trees. Special Operations Forces established the location of the MLRS and adjusted the fire of the rocket forces and artillery unit of the Defence Forces that targeted it using a HMR's multiple-launch rocket system. As a result, the St. Sepyok was completely destroyed. The St. Sepyok system is used for destroying light-armoured vehicles and manpower, as well as for damaging enemy fortifications. St. Sepyok is equipped with non-guided 220mm caliber rockets weighing up to over 200kg. The armament of the TOS-1A consists of a block launcher with 24 guidepipes of 220mm caliber with 3,725m length for launching unguided missiles. The whole system is mounted on the centre of a tracked armoured chassis. The missile block launcher unit is fitted on a mobile platform that can be rotated on 360 degrees. Depending on the target, the firing could be conducted by single or double shots from two barrels. Launching control of unguided missiles is fully automatic. The TOS-1A is also equipped with four smoke grenade launchers 902G, two on each side at the front of the hull. The vehicle can also generate smoke through the exhaust of the engine.


and mastering erotic dirty talk. Let me clarify this real quick.   I like that confidence. I like that confidence.  Okay? There you go. Hugh Hefner gave much respect. He passed away, of course, recently. He said, the greatest sex organ is not between your legs, but it's between your ears. I don't know how many of you guys know, but just like a lot of men watch porn, women read erotica novels like crazy. I was in a Beverly Hills bookstore, and I was looking for this book, and all of a sudden, I see this one hour. These women were just like about eight women into this short little corner. They're having a little powwow, so I'll go back. It says erotica. Here's a tip I noticed.  See, he probably thinks, oh, she's just getting tired. She want to lean on her. No.  One that tongue becomes more active and usually come out and up to the left. And if they're sitting down, they'll start crossing and uncrossing their legs. Or if they're standing up, they'll do a lot of this. Because the ex-girlfriend was the first one to tell me that.  So they do it. And in this erotica section, all these women kept doing, I guess, they were reading these books. Nothing is more powerful than the thoughts and sexual visualizations that women create in their own mind. So my technique, you could say, when I talk dirty to women, is I just throw out suggestions to provoke their own mind to unleash certain thoughts and visualizations. Because a woman's mind always bats 100.


Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners. So we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. On today's program, you will hear stories from John Russell and Faith Perlow. Later, Brian Lin presents this week's Science Report.  But first, here is John Russell. Archaeologists have found a group of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest. The cities were home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago. Stephen Rostin first noticed the earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador more than 20 years ago. But at the time, I wasn't sure how it all fit together, said Rostin. He was one of the researchers who reported on the findings in the publication Science. Recent mapping using laser technology revealed those locations to be part of a group of settlements and connecting roads. The settlements are in the forested areas near the Andes Mountains. It was a lost valley of cities, said Rostin, who directs investigations at France's National Centre for Scientific Research. It's incredible, he added. The Upano people lived in the settlements between around 500 BC and 300 to 600 AD. It was around the same time period as the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found. Ancient people built on over 6,000 earthen mounds in an area surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 10 metres wide and went for 10 to 20 kilometres. While it is difficult to estimate populations, the area was home to at least 10,000 people and possibly about 15,000 or 30,000 at its highest point, said Antoine d'Orison, a study co-writer. That is comparable to the estimated population of Roman era London, then Britain's largest city. This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society, said Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida. He was not involved in the study. Jose Iriarte of the University of Exeter was also not involved in the study. He said it would have required a complex system of organised labour to build the roads and thousands of earthen mounds. Iriarte said, the Incas and Mayans built with stone, but people in Amazonia didn't usually have stone available to build. They built with mud. The Amazon is often thought of as a wild area, with only small groups of people. But recent discoveries have shown us how much more complex the past really is, he added. Scientists have recently also found evidence of complex rainforest societies that came before European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and Brazil. There's always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon, not only one way to live, said Rostin. We're just learning more about them. I'm John Russell. Are you interested in food, United States history, and the English language? If so, American cookbooks provide wide information in all three subjects. The first published in 1796 started a market that continues in the 21st century with online publications of such works. And the literature offers more than just recipes. Megan Elias is the director of food studies at Boston University and the writer of Food on the Page Cookbooks and American Culture. She says that cookbooks do help teach us how to prepare food, but they provide more than that too. The concept of meals, how many meals a day that people expect to eat. What do they expect to have in those meals? Elias said. They also inform readers about discoveries, equipment and technology related to food making. Elias said, what are the objects that are necessary to make the things and what exists? So are you being asked to do something over an open fire? Or are you being asked to use an electric stove? Is it something that can be done in the microwave? If you see a lot of recipes for things that are preserved for pickles, you know that you are looking at a time without refrigeration. Amy Bentley is a food historian at New York University. She said that cookbooks from the 1800s were used as lifestyle and household guides. They include food recipes, but they were not central to the books back then. So there's some recipes for food, but it could be recipes for a cleaning solvent or what to do when your child has been poisoned, how to clean, how to get stains out, Bentley said. American Cookery by Amelia Simmons is the first cookbook published in the United States. Simmons wrote that her goal with the book was to improve the new generation of women in the U.S. Megan Elias says that after the Civil War, cookbooks became more diverse. Writers started exploring local foods and customs in their work. Elias said that Southern cookbooks tried to offer a beautiful version of the Old South that will kind of heal over the wounds of the Civil War rather than dealing with the problems that caused the Civil War to begin with. Some communities would put together a group cookbook to raise money. These cookbooks provide a look into what the American middle class was eating throughout the years. Such works serve as a record of the traditions and interests of different neighborhoods and groups. Throughout the years, cookbooks have signified humanity's growth in knowledge, trends, and innovations. During the last part of the 19th century, for example, many recipes were informed by the dangers of food containing bacteria. Then, in the 1930s, refrigerators became common objects in American homes. The threat of bacterial infection from food dropped, and very soon, cooks adapted to the new conditions. New recipes and new cookbooks resulted. I am Faith Perlow. The American Space Agency, NASA, is preparing to test a new supersonic airplane that could help establish a new generation of superfast aircraft. The new aircraft is called X-59, and it was built in partnership with American defense contractor Lockheed Martin. The experimental plane is part of a NASA project or mission called Quest. The mission aims to collect data in the United States on the level of noise produced by supersonic travel. Supersonic describes a vehicle that travels faster than the speed of sound, about 1,235 kilometers an hour. The data Quest gathers could lead U.S. officials to change rules that currently ban supersonic flights over land. NASA says the X-59 was developed to reduce the loudness of the sonic boom it produces when breaking the sound barrier to very low levels heard on the ground. A few U.S. companies are exploring ways to restart supersonic passenger travel for the first time since 2003. That is the year the Concorde aircraft stopped flying. The Concorde was the world's first supersonic passenger jet. It was operated jointly by Britain and France. The Concorde flew at speeds more than twice the speed of sound, British Airways explained. This meant it could travel from London to New York in about three and a half hours. The same flight took about eight hours with normal passenger jets. The new supersonic planes being developed make less noise and use less fuel than the Concorde. But manufacturers are under pressure from environmental groups and airports to meet the same noise and carbon emission limits as traditional planes. NASA and Lockheed Martin recently showed off the X-59 plane during an event in Palmdale, California. At the ceremony, NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy called the development of the supersonic aircraft a major accomplishment. She noted that members of the NASA and Lockheed Martin teams had worked hard to take the X-59 from an idea to reality in just a few years. Melroy added her hope that the X-59 will help change the way we travel, bringing us closer together in much less time. The aircraft measures 30 meters long and 9 meters wide. NASA said in a press release that the X-59 is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound or about 1,500 kilometers per hour. The aircraft's design, shape, and technologies will permit it to reach high speeds while producing a quieter sonic thump, the agency explained. The X-59 has not yet completed a test flight, but NASA officials have said they expect that to happen sometime this year. The team will be carrying out other tests in the coming months, including instrument experiments, fast engine runs, and ground testing. Once the aircraft has been cleared to fly, it will be deployed to several cities across the US to collect data on the sounds the plane produces and how people on the ground react to the noise. The data will be provided to the US Federal Aviation Administration and International Flight Regulators. The information will help regulators decide whether to change existing laws, restricting supersonic flight. NASA said one of the biggest differences between the X-59 and other supersonic planes is that it has a thinner smaller nose. The nose, which was reduced by about one-third, aims to break up shockwaves that results in more intense sonic booms. The Quest team also designed the aircraft with its engine mounted on top and gave it a smooth underside. In an effort to reduce shockwaves near the back of the plane, NASA said. Another American company developing supersonic aircraft is Boom Supersonic in Colorado. The company first showed off its experimental supersonic plane, the X-B1, in October 2020. Boom has been carrying out tests of the aircraft since then. The company says on its website that its development and testing activities during the past few years have centered on ground tests, including a series of taxi runs. In 2024, Boom said it plans to begin its high-speed taxi testing early in the year while preparing for an actual flight test that could happen later in the year. I'm Brian Lin. Brian Lin joins me now to talk more about his science report. Thanks for being here, Brian. Of course, Ashley. Thanks for having me. This week you explored some new efforts in the U.S. to develop supersonic aircraft. You note how these efforts could lead to big changes across the aviation industry. But what barriers do you think could slow or even block the current development? Yes, this is certainly a possibility, and it may take years before supersonic flights become commonplace. But in researching the story, it became clear that there is already organized opposition to it. It's being led mainly by environmental groups that argue that supersonic aircraft use a lot more fuel than conventional planes, even though engines in general have become more energy efficient. And of course, there's also opposition over the noise issue, which is what NASA will be closely investigating. And how have the aircraft developers reacted so far to the opposition? Well, mainly they have spoken to the issue of fuel. And one of the companies mentioned in the report, Boom Supersonic, has said they're building the planes to run on different fuel blends that will actually cause less harm to the environment than traditional aircraft. Of course, those claims still have to be proven in actual tests. But the developers of this kind of fuel, which is a biofuel, have said new versions of it could cut carbon pollution emissions by up to 80% compared to conventional fuels. Okay. Well, thanks again for being here today, Brian. You're welcome. Thank you, Ashley. Welcome to the lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. My name is Andrew Smith. And my name is Jill Robbins. Thanks for joining us. Today's lesson will help you learn more about the English you hear in our video series, Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Mateo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. Here's Anna introducing herself. Hello. My name is Anna Mateo. Today's lesson talks about a special weather event, a blizzard. And our lesson will show how we use both the past perfect and the present perfect tenses when we talk about events. Andrew, have you ever been in a blizzard? I have, but it was a very long time ago. And I think we should explain what the word blizzard means. Okay. A blizzard is a very strong snowstorm with a very strong wind. The wind blows the snow so much that it's difficult to see and it can be dangerous to go outside. Jill, I know that in January 2016, a strong blizzard hit Washington, D.C. Were you there and did it affect you? Yes, I was here, but I had fun. I had a niece visiting from Boston where they usually have lots of snow. She was stuck with us for a few more days than she wanted to be. And that blizzard became the topic for lesson 11 of level two of Let's Learn English. The lesson is called the big snow. Let's listen to the beginning of the lesson. Kelly meets Anna, who is sitting and reading a book about the weather. Hi, Anna. Why do you have all this weather stuff? I love weather. Me too. Weather is so important. It is. It affects people's lives. Have you ever reported on a big weather event? I have. I've reported on a blizzard. Do you mean the one last weekend? Yes. I had been waiting for that blizzard for years. When it came, I was ready. Many people like Anna get very excited about big weather events such as blizzards. Anna also said that weather affects people's lives. And you might have noticed that I also asked Jill if the blizzard had affected her. Were you there and did it affect you? Let's talk about this verb, affect. It is spelled A-F-F-E-C-T. But even native speakers sometimes confuse this word with the noun, effect. That word is spelled E-F-F-E-C-T. The confusion happens because we often pronounce the two words the same way. When we are speaking quickly, the first vowel of the noun, effect, is reduced to the quick uh sound, effect, which is the same sound as the verb. Andrew, that's our old friend, the schwa. Yes, it is. It makes so much trouble for English learners. To affect is to create a change or make someone feel a certain way. And the noun, the effect, is the result of something. How did the blizzard affect Anna? And what were the effects of the blizzard on Washington, D.C.? We're going to find out. But first, listen to Anna and Kelly again. And this time, listen for the present perfect and past perfect continuous tenses. Have you ever reported on a big weather event? I have. I've reported on a blizzard. Do you mean the one last weekend? Yes. I had been waiting for that blizzard for years. When it came, I was ready. Kelly and Anna use the present perfect when they say, Have you ever reported on a big weather event? I have. I've reported on a blizzard. Anna uses the past perfect continuous when she says, I had been waiting for that blizzard for years. We use the present perfect tense to talk about an action in the past that is important in the present. And what about the past perfect? When one event in the past happens before another event in the past, we can use the past perfect tense to make this clear. We use the auxiliary verb had plus the past participle to show what happened first. Before Anna reported on the blizzard, she had been waiting for a long time because waiting takes place over a period of time. We use the past participle been plus the ing form of the verb. This is called the past perfect continuous. Now let's listen to more of the story about the blizzard. Anna got her friend Pete to help her do the news report on the blizzard. To do the report, they had to work on the weekend. And Anna brought supplies to help them. Why am I here on a Saturday? Why are you carrying things? Why, why? Pete, these are my supplies. Food, a blanket, warm clothing. Where are your supplies? Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete. This could be the blizzard of the century. It'll be fine. Pete brought almost no supplies with him. He didn't think the blizzard would have a big effect. He was wrong. Let's listen to some of the effects of the blizzard and how it affected Anna and Pete. Anna continues to tell the story to Kelly. And be sure to listen for the present perfect and past perfect tenses. The big snow broke all kinds of records, didn't it? Yes, it did. And every time a record was broken, we celebrated. So far in Washington, DC, 29 inches of snow has fallen. That, my dear listeners, is a record. We just broke the wind speed record. Snow has been falling for 30 hours straight. By Saturday night, stores and restaurants had closed. Did you bring enough food? I thought I had brought enough food, but I ran out. Hey Pete, where's my bag of popcorn? Maybe you ate it already? No, I didn't. I haven't seen it. We had reported together for 48 hours straight. Wow, that must have been a great team-building exercise for you and Pete. Yeah, you could say that. At the end, Pete has eaten all of Anna's popcorn. Anna gets mad, and in the video, they start to fight. So that's one way the blizzard affected them. And did you hear the other effects of the storm? The storm broke all kinds of records. To break a record means to surpass, and that's spelled S-U-R-P-A-S-S. Or go beyond what had ever been done before. For example, in 2009, Usain Bolt ran the 100 meter race in 9.58 seconds. That broke the world record and is the fastest any person has ever run that distance. And the blizzard in DC broke records for the most snow that has ever fallen in DC. 29 inches, which is almost 74 centimeters. And it broke the record for the longest amount of time snow has ever fallen in DC, about 30 hours. I remember I had a stick in my backyard to measure the snow that time. Those are still records for DC, so we say the storm broke the record for the most snow that has ever fallen. We use the present perfect tense because we are connecting that past event to a record that still stands. When we say a record still stands, we mean the record has never been broken. Blizzards do affect a lot of things, especially in a city like Washington DC, which rarely gets them. And even a little bit of snow can affect Washington DC a lot. You've been listening to the Lesson of the Day on the Learning English Podcast. Thanks for listening. Remember that you can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.


Time to know your foe, the Houston Texans. It is a 305 kickoff this Sunday at NRG Stadium, Texans one, four and one. They lost to the Raiders after leading, going into the fourth quarter. Let's talk about their young quarterback, Davis Mill. Yeah, I think he's really starting to settle down and figure out how to take care of the football. You know, they're going to try to run it and use play action. And you know, you can see him the more that he stays in the pocket. He can be successful. We're going to have to continue to find ways to affect him, but we're going to have to stop this running game. Number one high school quarterback in America coming out of Atlanta, Georgia, when he went to Stanford. And good player last year, even better player this year. He's got a back now, too. A young man from Florida named Damian Pierce. Yeah, compact, strong runner, one-cut runner, gets downhill. He has fumbled twice, but I mean, you can see, like, you're going to have to have, you're going to put shoulder pads on him and gang tackle him.  And, you know, just that one cut that we talk about that you continue to see, he doesn't waste a whole lot of time, you know, dancing. So, you know, it'll be important that we swarm and we rally to the football with Pierce. He's one of those strange running backs that seems to enjoy contact.  They've outscored opponents 99 to 79 and through three-quarters. So, you know, they've been up in some games and they've been able to run it. And, you know, they went down to Jacksonville and pounded the football and was able to win down there. So we're going to have to go down there and be ready for them. The head coach, Levy Smith, is known for defense. What does the Texans' defense look like? Speed, they move, they move guys up front. Their front is active. The linebackers run, overlap, and, you know, they've been able to attack the football and get some turnovers and cause, you know, interceptions and cause fumble. So, another new challenge every week.


From Hollywood, it's time now for Yeah, I'm Johnny Duller But my plane's about to take off. He said he's very urgent, sir. Well, it better be I don't get back Hey look, my name's dollar I understand you have a oh, thanks Johnny Duller Todd Swamp Johnny at the Chamber of Commerce. Oh Todd. Look, I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to you and I appreciate all your help like your city to nice people good fishing But I barely had time to make my plane reservation pack my stuff you've got to cancel your reservation cancel my plane's already to leave Earl poorman is on his way to the airport now to pick you up and bring you back here Look, we proved that the accident in that rocket fuel laboratory was an accident I know all worse technician that Leon Spy so the company will pay for the damage and that's that well the company also pay a claim on Leon Salkoff Don't see why now now look I got to catch my what Salkoff is dead Johnny. It looks like murder In the exciting adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator. It's truly Johnny Duller and now act one of yours truly Johnny Duller Expense account submitted by special investigator Johnny Duller To the tri-state life and casualty insurance company Sarasota, Florida Following us an account of expenses incurred during my investigation of the Salkoff sequel matter Expense account item one three dollars no show penalty for cancelling the flight back to Hartford By the time I hung up the phone on Todd swam Earl poorman had pulled a shiny new can into the airport parking lot and we took off I'm glad Todd caught you before you climbed aboard that plane Johnny Earl He said that Leon Salkoff have been murdered. That's what it looks like. Well, what happened? Actually, he's just disappeared but under circumstances that make it look like he's been murdered any idea who Johnny you know as well as I do that he was pretty deep in subversive activities during the last war Yeah, but he's been given a clean slate at least so far as our country is concerned right but then Wait a minute If some of his old pals and we know there are plenty of them in this country working for the other side, right? If they know he's working for us the first thing they do for the sake of their great and glorious cause would be to eliminate one Leon Salkoff Yeah, or at the very least persuade him and I mean torture him into telling the formula the stuff He's helped dr. Allwood develop exactly Where and how did happen? Well, you'll have to get the details from Todd swam us common people aren't even allowed to know we're all worth slab Is hidden away, you know, that's why I'm taking you to see Todd and drive on Todd was waiting for us at the Chamber of Commerce building He thanked her all for dragging me in from the airport Earl left then Todd and I walked out to his car Here Johnny use my car. You know where to go out to the lab.  No, but I telephoned the FBI in Washington. They've promised to send a man Well, do they know I'm here they might not want any interference I told them about your investigation down there at the lab and they said to give you a free hand. All right good Well, I better get going Johnny. Let me know what you find out Once again, I headed south and route 41 down through Fort Myers where I swung left on 82 and on into the heart of the Everglades I found the old wagon trail leading into the swampy jungle finally came to the shack of the Indian Ben Osceola There I hopped aboard one of his airboats one of those strange little contraptions driven by an airplane type of color Fifty minutes later I pulled up at the first covered island in the middle of that vast wet soggy swamp Dr. Allworth was standing in front of the well-hidden laboratory Mr. Dollar, I'm so glad you haven't left yet. What's happened out here doctor?  I know oh Our living quarters are down this corridor. Yeah, I remember After you and mr. Swarm left us yesterday Leon and I went to work immediately to replace the rocket fuel additive We had lost in the accident you investigated. Yes Oh, if only I'd paid attention when he told me about the man He'd seen in Fort Myers the day before but we were so busy. Wait a minute. What man? Someone he'd known in Europe during the war a man. He suspected of now working for Well for those who'd like to sabotage our Yeah, go on doctor look mr. Dollar. This is my room and this right next to it is Leon show Great Scott. Yes. There must have been a terrible struggle And doctor this looks like blood on the floor Now what happened? Well, it was early this morning before dawn. I heard voices in here at first I thought Leon was shouting in his sleep Yes, but then he began to call for help and I heard the furniture being knocked about well Didn't you come in here something had been shoved against my door this table? I couldn't open it then I heard the shot I heard Leon scream with pain then another shot no terrible terrible come on Then I heard them drag poor Leon's body away outside But how did you get out of your room by by placing my bed as you see it now I was able to brace my feet against it force the table away from my door Now come mr. Dollar. All right, I pursued them down this hall, but by the time I reached the outside door They were gone But unless they had an airboat they must have hidden somewhere on the edge of this little island Oh, there are a thousand places in the brush and trees where it could have been hidden. Do you see look a thousand places? I don't see Leon's airboat out here only yours. They took it That's why I think there was more than one of them and now I must leave you what I must go into a telephone I'll be back as soon as possible. Now look wait a minute You're here in charge I'll be darned if I'm gonna chase him What's more I doubt if I could have caught him in the old airboat that I had so all right It would give me a chance to look around alone sometimes. That's the best way I Poked around outside for a while looking for where Leon's attackers might have concealed the boat They'd used and that swamp and brush it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and I walked back to the laboratory The front door was closed funny. I thought we'd left it open a minute ago. Oh, well Huh, oh no you Two of yours truly Johnny dollar in a moment and now act two of yours truly Johnny dollar and the Salkoff sequel matter I don't know how long I was out after the attack on me at the hidden laboratory the other place But when I came to I was lying in all this bed Across the room and a desk at a well-dressed man going through files of papers and folders I played possibly because I want a time to think If Leon Salkoff had been murdered by subversives, then this man must be one of them But how would he got here without all with knowing or did always know? After all now that I had time to think about it His explanation of what had happened to Salkoff had been pretty glib and the doctors sudden departure a while ago to phone The FBI he'd said didn't he know that Todd Swarm had called him in any event. He'd run off to leave me alone like a sitting duck Who was the man sitting here?    We I'm terribly sorry about what we did to you But until we frisked you and discovered your identity. Why are you a Walter Bramon FBI? Oh When we found you prowling around we thought you might be one of the people we hope to trap here the killer of Leon Salkoff Salkoff is not dead mr. Dollar What? Have you forgotten a case here in Florida that you handle last year probably Baron yes another scientist who apparently disappeared Actually, we had arranged the whole thing so that his whereabouts would not be known while he continued with his nuclear research Yeah, I remember the report of his death and disappearance was to throw off our pals behind the iron curtain precisely So now you've done the same thing Ouch again. I'm sorry dollar, but we didn't know who you were. We didn't want to take any chances You say we mr. Bramon my colleague Mike Crucian who's in searching the laboratory. Oh for what? There are two groups agents from behind the iron curtain who would like to get to Leon Salkoff Either to gain the secrets he's learned in this laboratory or to get rid of him because of his help to this country's defense and missile programs So if he's reported dead each will think the other did it and they'll stop chasing him exactly We had to act fast because Leon has already spotted some of his ex pals as you call them in this general area That's not you're all worth know this whole thing was rigged. No, and you mustn't tell him He's a great scientist, but Well, he might let the cat out of the bag Stall him dollar stall for time Drag out your pretended investigation It'll delay always bringing in the police that sort of thing until we can take care of Salkoff That is install him in his new place Well, maybe I'm a little muddle because of this wallop on the head But I should think you'd tell everybody you can you know to make sure his so-called death is publicized Make sure these people who are after them will get the word. Don't worry. They know I'd stake my life on it And needless to say if any of them come out here, we'll be ready for them. Oh Michael What did you find nothing single? See mr. Dollars come to almost say I'm sorry about the way I slugged your dollar. Yeah me too. I'm sure Walter told you why You find anything in here? Well, no, I'm afraid we'll have to go back. Oh Dollar yeah, I take your doctor all worth is in on one of his usual all-day trips for supplies Yeah, yeah something like that. We've got to leave you for a while. You have your gun You know what to do if anyone suspicious comes around well now look when the doctor comes back I'll have to tell him you've been here fine, and that we'll be back. Well, yeah, so I'll see you back. Oh sure Well, dolly will we'll see you later. I'm how you rest you need it. You're not kidding. Come along I felt so rocky. I didn't quite know what to make of it. I heard them leave by the other door And a couple of minutes later from all the one side. I heard their airboat Wait a minute It wasn't going out by the channel I've been given to understand was the only way out of this place strange Painfully I rose and walked out. I Headache so much I could hardly think straight There was something wrong here. Oh, sure. They'd left me your gun, but Yeah, they left it with me. All right, but the chambers had been emptied My airboat was still where I parked it in front of the building to Yeah, I wouldn't start tamper with maybe Then I heard it another boat coming into the regular channel in the distance I could see there were two people in it quickly I crouched behind a clump of brush until I saw who the two men were Max McLaughlin. Oh All right, all right I always said you're out here. Mr. McLaughlin was already on his way when I telephoned. Why didn't you tell me the FBI had already been sent for mr. Dollar, I tried to but you took all your honey. What happened to you a couple of your own boys did this Mike what? Men from the bureau. That's what they said and I was so adult from this knock on the head. Johnny. That's impossible What do they look like what what are their names? What a brand man for one? friend 511 sparse gray hair blue eyes about 150 pounds mark of spectacles on his nose perfect description and the other Michael Crucian heavy set Maybe five six about 200 pounds right small scar about the right eye heavy almost gravelly boys. Yeah Brennan and Crucian, huh, so they said we're in trouble Johnny what unless I'm completely Cock-eyed those are the boys who kidnapped and probably killed the unself of Max been waiting a long time to catch up with them Their real names are Brennan off and krushensky spies and killers from now.  I told Mac what had happened to me at the laboratory there in the middle of the evidence Only a pair like Brennan off and krushensky would have the guts to impersonate FBI agents after that beating I was too muddled even asked for their credentials What I don't understand Mac is why they didn't kill me. They haven't yet learned the formula that missile fuels So they've got to leave every possible door open Johnny would you convince that they're from the bureau so they think yeah Well, it meant they could go back to the lab after the doctor returned Maybe even get your help in obtaining the formula from him. What's your The abduction of Leon Salkoff would indicate the doctor himself is in danger But if he wanted his work carried on if anything should happen to him Well, who better to give the formula to the agents of the FBI On the way out to the lab. He was ready to give it to me. Hey Mac He entays little visit. They're prowling through the lab and always papers It means they didn't get the formula from Leon Salkoff Which probably explains their sudden departure They couldn't find the formula the lab so they'll go back and put the pressure on Leon again makes sense Mac I sure hope he's still alive, but where? Well, let's hope in all points bulletin will help us catch up with them when they leave this swamp Got to come out of it somewhere. They've had a big hit stern on us Yeah, but this channel we're taking is the most direct route to the highway any highway they carried up their pose pretty well They even knew about that finally Baron matter. I handled with you boys. Why not? Broadcast the whole thing on your radio show. You gave me clearance. Oh, just keep mum about this affair Until after the boys on the East Coast launch a space satellite successfully. Don't worry A few minutes later. We pull up at Ben Osceola's shack at the head of the bayou where we'd left our car We use mine Johnny better equipped than yours for whatever we may run into I saw what he meant because in back of the seat was a regular arsenal As we tore out of the jungle and headed south on highway 29 Mac short waved in all points to every time in the area And to the state police posted over We're heading south Johnny because you said that's the way they left the island by airboat, right Mac Well the way those rivers and bayous twist around in the swamp they could come out anywhere Well, I know this country pretty well. They'd almost have to go south to hit this or any other highway You keep your eye peeled for any side roads that might lead into where they could land the boat, will you? Hey, look, what about this car that's coming at us man. He's really stepping on it That's okay Johnny. It's police car Police, huh? Sure But did you see who was driving it and I was sitting beside him? What? Yeah, Kruschenkoe and our old pal Brenman I love your hat. They must have heard the old point. Well, if they didn't they're herring it now in that car And if that thing is souped up like most police don't worry boy. They won't get away from this old boy Wasn't kidding how we held the road at over a hundred miles an hour. I'll never know Thanks to the sarin on the stolen police car. The road ahead was kept clear They must have recognized me though when we passed when we finally started to pull up on them They fired the first shot. I Can't weave at this speed Johnny stay down low. I've loaded this gun from the stuff in the back watch Put that lemon squeeze her away grab the Tommy gun and back in a seat right You got it. I got it. All right, Mike. Keep your hands on the wheel Those boys can really shoot. I told you the killers. Let him have it, right? For the tires John got him the goal of the road Mac if they hit that row of cybertrees, they're gone. They're beyond Salkoff Well, I'm afraid he gave more than this skill and efforts to the country He loved that had taken him under its wing His body was found trust up and floating face down in the bio from which Brenman off and Khrushchevsky had launched the airboat Dr. Allworth Well, now that the US space satellite is carrying out its mission. He's safely and officially working in a government laboratory Expense account total including incidentals and the trip back to Hartford. I'll forget it If in any way it helped to get the Explorer out in space in orbit, it's on me yours truly Johnny doll star will return in just a moment Now here is our star to tell you about next week's story next week a trip to a mining town out near Denver, Colorado And for me, it's a little too close to the Wild Wild West Join us. Won't you yours truly Johnny dollar starring Bob Bailey originates in Hollywood And is produced and directed by Jack Johnstone who also wrote today's story heard in our cast were her Bellas big parent Harry Bartell Jack Prussian Lou Merrill and Stacy hers Be sure to join us next week same time and station for another exciting story of yours truly Johnny dollar This is Dan cover Lee speaking. This is the United States Armed Forces radio and television service


Live here in Silicon Valley, the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose Convention Center. This is Hadoop 2013, this is siliconangle.com and wikibond.org's exclusive coverage of Hadoop World 2013. This is theCUBE, this is our flagship program. When we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise, I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angle. I'm George, my co-host. Hi everybody, I'm Dave Vellante, wikibond.org. Sanjay Mathur is here.  Sanjay, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you David, thanks John. We love theCUBE because it allows us to sit down and talk, kind of tech, like it's a sports talk show or a video show, like Sports Center on ESPN or CNN, whatever media metaphor, and go deep and have those conversations about what's going on in the landscape. So first of all, love the company you guys put together. Thank you. One, love this fact it's got Silicon Valley in it because it's a Silicon Angle. But Data Science right now is exploding. There's a lot of navigation discovery challenges around companies looking for use cases, best practices, how to hire, tooling. It's all early innings in here and it's all early in the game, so great market. So first introduce your company to the audience out there about the firm and about the team you're putting together and your mission. Sure. Again, thanks for having me here. Our name of our company is Silicon Valley Data Science and what we're doing is bringing a team of engineers, data scientists and platform experts together to solve difficult problems for data-driven companies and whether that is identifying critical insights, whether it's creating new capabilities, whether it's frankly assisting with new product development when you're really looking to innovate, that's what we're trying to attack. My team and I have a deep background in both data science and engineering. We've pulled some of the best experts out of Accenture, out of Walmart, a number of different locations to really bring a team of experts that can work well together to solve difficult problems. So you mentioned data-driven companies. My question is, are there enough data-driven companies or do you guys have to somewhat evangelize to get people data-driven?   How does that all work? How does that dynamic work? Yeah, I mean, we got friends on the back today. The interesting question is everyone focuses on whether it's the three V's or as it's been extended four or five V's. Whether you look at it as a big data explosion or frankly what most companies have been doing, a throwing away data explosion, everyone's data-driven. Everyone could be using their data for better analytics and better decision making. I've been doing data for 20 years and it's not surprising to me the transformation we're going through because it's been building for a long time. So some companies may not realize they're data-driven but it's really a question of how do you want to drive your business forward and if you don't use data today, you're going to be at a disadvantage. Yeah, Dave and I always talk about this. We've mentioned on theCUBE now going on three years, we believe and we've said this is the first time in the history of business, in the history of enterprising that you can actually instrument the business end to end completely. Not just supply chain, not just everything with mobile computers, you have full instrumentation and ultimately surveillance as we learned from the NSA. You know, it's slippery slope, there's positive and negatives. So how do you talk to a business owner because business value is a big conversation here and of course that's always the high ground. Business value tries prices, tries economics, tries wealth creation, solutions, et cetera. But you got to walk in and say hello, Mr. Customer, whether it's business line manager, CIO or CEO, look at the way you've been doing business has been great but now there's a better way because of the data and your value chains that you have and the value activities are going to be reconstructed and either be omnidirectional, different or just changed. How do you have that coverage?  What do you do? Well, I think fundamentally it's two things. One, you got to have familiarity with today's tools and technologies and techniques and know how to apply them. And if you don't know how to apply them then you can't actually have a legitimate conversation with your customer. The second side of it is understanding the domain the customer's operating in. Even if you don't know their products and services specifically, you understand what's going on. Your previous guest was talking about healthcare. It's a very difficult market to sell into but we all know that they have massive big data problems. So if you're going to go talk to a health insurer who reprises their insurance once a year, what's the big data conversation you're having with them? You're having a giant optimization discussion with them on all the data that they have and what you said, you've instrumented everything. How do I react to that? So our approach is to go in and have that discussion about- Domain expertise is critical. Domain expertise is critical but it's also technology domain expertise, right? If you're entering in with the CIO or the CTO, I understand your technology problems and I understand them moving forward. So it's one domino, it's the other. Now it's an education problem because wherever you had the intersection between healthcare and an example, domain expertise in healthcare, the industry, and now the technologies, you have the siloed IT department with HIPAA regulations. I mean, that's just one example of many. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons we brought Ed Dumble onto our team is he's fantastic at education. We realize that for us to be successful with our customers, we're going to have to educate them about that path to being a data-driven organization but our focus is delivering the capability to them. You engage with us, our focus is we go solve the problem and show you how to be data-driven and then teach you how to do it. Which is an important part. So huge skills gap, you guys are helping solve that problem and then you're teaching the customers how to fish, so to speak. And then sort of moving on, Sam Palmasano said no matter what business you're in you're going to get commoditized. Oh, so I know there's tons, Sanjay, this is sort of a crazy, silly question in a way because there's so much opportunity now but where do you see that all going? I mean, essentially you're going to be teaching these companies to be data-driven, transferring your knowledge. You've been in the services business for a long time so you know that trend that I'm talking about. Where do you see this going? Where you are today? What's your vision in terms of the types of services that you're going to be providing in the future? Sure, that's a great question. So we are going to teach our customers how to do what they're doing better, especially if we knew it and they didn't, which is part of why you would engage with someone like us. But over the long term, what we need to do is continue to stay ahead of them on technology. Our investment in our people will be around understanding technologies, how they're evolving and how we continue to apply them back to our customers. Our customers will come back to us and say, all right, you helped us out, this was great. What's the next thing that you can do to move us forward? The other side of that is really thinking about how you use data. And as much as we think that companies are data-driven, in fact, the question you asked me at the beginning, most aren't. And back to my original point, we got to help them become data-driven and then there's a journey that they're going to go through to make that happen. It will take time. It's not going to happen in one year or two years. I think for a company that hasn't fundamentally used this data, they're on a 10-year journey to become data-driven. Consulting firms like your former employer, the big guys, they tend to have very deep industry expertise. They've always had their hands in technology, a lot of great technology expertise, but generally speaking, they haven't productized that they've used bodies to deliver. How is that changing? And how is Silicon Valley Data Science going to capitalize on that? You obviously don't have the global presence and you've got some, certainly, some industry expertise, but not nearly as deep as some of those large guys. So how is that business changing and how are you guys going to capitalize on that? You know, the point I tease out of that is how do you deliver the skills to the marketplace? And I think the bigger you get, the more you have to take people and make them a little bit more interchangeable so that you can attack your customers all over the world and maintain that relationship that you have. We're actually taking the opposite view, which is, hey, we're small, we know that. Let's get teams of experts that work very well together and keep them together. Because when you get engineers and data scientists to work well, that's kind of an aha moment. That takes some doing and if you talk to the experts out in the field, if you look at what LinkedIn has done, you frankly look at what Google has done, they've gotten these teams that worked terrifically well together and they go solve multiple problems. If you're inside a product company or one of the clients that we're pursuing, at some point you get bored of solving that problem over and over again. Our attraction and what people are coming to us for is, let me work really well in a great team and go from problem to problem and solve them from domain to domain. I think the large SIs, they could probably do the same thing, but once you've gone public, then you've got a different overlord that's driving you. And they're still going to tend to more brute force it than what sounds like what you guys are doing. Talk a little bit about the typical engagement with you.  Who are you talking to? What are they asking you? Where are they at in the whole maturity model? Yeah, we've been approached by all kinds of people. So I'll break them into two broad categories. There is people from an architecture or infrastructure level that are over one with data and they've probably made a choice and said, okay, Hadoop's a little bit cheaper, I should look at it. Maybe they've done some experimentation. Maybe they've done a little bit of a pilot, but they're not sure how to make that work. So that's the CIO or CTO led conversation. We've got a data problem as technology infrastructure. The flip side is the, let's call it the chief marketing officer or COO or CFO led discussion on we know we need to use our data better. We've been throwing out data. We got to do better marketing. Our competitors doing X, Y, Z, how do we make it happen? So we enter from one of those two domains. It's a fundamental technology problem or you've got a business imperative that you're trying to solve and we try to match the two then because one doesn't get solved without the other. Yeah, and so are you seeing an excitement amongst those two constituencies to work together? Is there a culture clash, a combination of the two? All of the above, right? And I think some of the customers we've talked to are looking for someone to come in that can bridge the gap between both sides. So if you can communicate with both sides, provide skills on both sides and actually go solve the problem, they're much more excited to engage with you. Talk about your team. Talk about the Silicon Valley Data Science team. Obviously, no one can really just jump in and be a leader here. It's very difficult. You mentioned Accenture. You're talking about the old kind of, I call them the big six accounting firms that ended up running and deploying a lot of the old school client server days which actually transformed a lot of the workflows that we know and we see an automation now. But now that's, we're completely rebooting that model. So there's delivery, there's expertise. How are you structuring your team and talk about the team? The team itself, we're just getting going. We launched in April. We're getting close to 10 people at this point. We're balancing between data scientists and engineers. And as I said, we're purling people out that have really deep expertise in the field building these solutions. Whether solving large scale data problems, whether driving real time analytics to make operational decisions. We're getting people from those backgrounds and having expertise in delivering those things. Are you looking just Silicon Valley obviously hiring is tough, obviously in this area to find a data scientist is challenging. But like obviously other geographies global, you guys looking at remote workforces. We had, you know, most of us come from a heritage of dealing with collaborative teams. So absolutely, I, you know. Skype. Skype. They go to me. You guys, Silicon, Silicon Angle, you're bringing news about what's relevant to Silicon Valley. For us, having Silicon Valley in the name was about bringing the style of work, agile product delivery, iterative progression towards a goal and bringing in the tools and techniques and data management expertise from the Valley out to companies everywhere else. And it's in the innovation edge too. Silicon Valley has that cutting edge. So that's obviously well known. Bringing that to kind of Main Street America. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I'll call out the guys at Hortonworks just cause I think they're a great example on this front. By putting a distribution on Windows, they're going and attacking a very large part of the market that has not moved off Windows. So be it. They made a great choice with Microsoft. Likewise, when it comes to Hadoop, I think many organizations have not yet even scratched at it. Well, Sanjay, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate, I want to thank Ed Dunbill for teeing us up together to come on. We really love, we'd love to have you on again now that you're in the Bay Area. I'm in Palo Alto, Dason, Boston area. So love to continue the conversation. We are looking for signal in this area. This is an area that has a high demand certainly from a use case and demand in the marketplace. So we're looking forward to future conversations. Silicon Valley Data Science. This is the new consultancy, the new tooling that will be coming on. Data-driven businesses is the future. It's here and will continue to grow very, very early. Congratulations on your business model. Really like where it's going. This is theCUBE. We are data-driven and we'll be right back with a couple more interviews. We have two more segments and then wrap up for Dave and I. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back. Silicon Angle and Wikibon after the short break.