Welcome to the peace vlog I was actually going to say Persian bunny Should I start again? No!  Yeah you finally changed it I've gone back to natural It's vlog 4 you said you want to do this Oh okay so I haven't I've been a bit MIA I'm back now since so many People have requested for me So we've just parked up, hey vlog You probably couldn't see me before And we were trying to Book our plane tickets In the car, I don't really know Who else's family is backwards Like ours in that We're doing our clothes shopping for the holiday Before we have our tickets I can probably say in this vlog Where we're going, we're going to Tehran Super exciting Sol's not on it today I usually make Sol dance in all our vlogs Go on Sol, come on take one for the team Stop it Persian money Take one for the team and then call me Persian money Bentley tints, okay I hate this Sunlight view thing on the camera So I will check back in Selfridges where I'll show you guys What we like to shop For our holidays I stopped focusing on you I'm just trying to zoom in I'm simply being a little diva How's it going Sam? Go to sushi here in Selfridges He loves salmon avocado and rolls Also I don't know why I'm taking my I don't know why I just keep going I work so he's bare grumpy Tell the vlog what we're Basically I bought this cake Not just randomly It's like No, she's just got We've got some friends coming over to barbecue Yeah it's not randomly, we have basically We're doing like this She's got it So Sol graduated from Dentistry So She's left me now She's come to London So it is the next day It's Saturday and honestly I'm being So lazy Let me catch you up One I'm not even wearing Pants right now like I CBA I'm just in a giant t-shirt No makeup chilling Trying to do a project and Literally procrastinated for four hours I've been on YouTube I've been on Instagram I've been texting friends Making plans for like later With like eight different people At like five different places Um I'm basically just hoping they're all going to come to where I am But um yeah So I've just been so lazy Um and To my room is an absolute mess I bought some stuff from Zara that I'm going to show you guys now But um I couldn't show you my room because My suitcase is still on the floor from Can and I would pack it Back up but considering I'm going Back to Back on holiday I'm going to Tehran And then from Tehran we're going to a couple of places So I'm Don't see the point because I'm leaving in three days Three days I have this project to you And I'm just being lazy And I'm going out to see April after So I just like bring it up to speed Because I'm making myself food I haven't eaten yet And it's like four in the afternoon Because I've just been lazy Like I was meant to make myself something But I've been so bad So yeah I went to Zara, I got a few things Some of them were in sales, some of them were once I just thought I'd quickly show you First thing I got were these plain denim shorts I think they are so cute Um They are like Just your standard Denim shorts They were $17.99 And I think they will be good with like crop tops And like wedges or something Um so next A pair of black jeans Black high-waisted skinny jeans Again from Zara They were on sale down to $12.99 And they are just literally Your Black plain high-waisted skinny jeans I love Zara jeans I get mine in a size 6 Just because I like them to be tight And I always lose weight In summer because It's really hot usually where I go And I can't I get myself to eat In the Day time even though When I'm in London I don't feel like that Because I'm at home my house is cooler Like literally yesterday I had so much That like my friends were laughing at me And like how where do you put all this But when I'm away on holiday I can't eat a lot So I always lose weight in summer So I get them to be snug In a size 6 I got this cap from The men's section I love and I feel like I'm gonna add this In like an airport when I can't bother to Like have my hair down Or whatever Just like this Like a backpack for casual vibes This was on sale down to $6.99 From £13 I got this pair of boyfriend jeans They were $12.99 as well on the sale And I feel like they'll look super cute I have similar ones from H&M But my H&M ones don't fit nicely I might just give it away To like charity or something when I'm in Iran But yeah I thought it was Such a good bargain as well These are also, these are in a size 8 So it's a Mum fit as well I really hope it's not the same issue as With the H&M ones but hopefully Not Because these are like a baggier fit Hopefully it'll be completely fine Also I cannot believe I'm literally on camera Looking like my out of Revision mode This is what I look like when I study for exams guys Not pretty Alright the last thing I got Was such a bargain from the sale Like I was just shocked when I saw it And it was this like Really formal old scotch loft on it And obviously I wasn't really shopping for winter stuff But when I saw this I was like this is so nice and just In my opinion this is perfect For placement it's really chic And in winter I always want like a nice chic coat When I'm on placement and I always end up wearing Mon clairs which looks stupid And this was look at that bargain $95.99 Down to $29.99 So I was like I have to get this The last Item I got was From $12.99 And it's literally just a plain white tea With little sequins on it That was a mini haul for you guys right A little secret for me When I'm really lazy with cooking There is two things that I Always run to Because it's super fast to make The first thing I always make myself Super lazy when I want something In like 5-10 minutes is this It's the pasta and sauce, mac and cheese I like the cheese and broccoli one too Unless you just add tuna to it And I'll have like a salad with it And for me that's like a student life meal Even though I live at home But yeah I discovered this when I was living in halls So I love this Everything that I love to make If I really can't be bothered to Cook or go out to eat or anything And I want something fast is this ramen So I'll either have it as a ramen Add hot water And I'll add like chicken Or tuna and an egg and some cheese Or something like that Or I will boil the Ramen noodles with hot water And the sauce And then I'll drain the water And I'll add one spoon Of cream cheese and tuna And that tastes so divine to me It tastes so good I run out of tuna right now So I'm not going to have that Because I don't want to have that much noodle Without any like substance to it Like tuna but this is just mac and cheese So I think I can get away with it Without any tuna So I'm just going to have this now Don't judge guys I know it's Super lazy and unhealthy I guess I want my vlogs to be The real me not just what people think Like oh she must eat Out all the time or she must eat healthy All the time like yeah I do workouts I go Jim I bet I'm also human And I like stuff like this too Let me know in the Comments if you guys have ever had this Or the cheese and broccoli one The cheese and broccoli one is my fave And I always make these for like my closest friends I just thought I'd show you guys That finished product When I was cooking this I was just thinking That I'm going to insert a picture Of what I look like Literally four days ago on the beach In Cannes And the reason why I'm going to do that is because I know that there's so much Like on social media So much stuff out there that makes you think Ugh like this person's body is like this They probably don't eat Anything or they look like this all the time And all that's not Like it might be true for some people But it sure as hell is not true for me I have to have a balanced lifestyle I have to eat the things I want When I want them And I keep clean like 80% of the time 75% of the time The other 25% of the time I eat what I want Because you only live once And I will Be confident in whatever body I have Because I know I've worked out for it I take care of it And you know at the end of the day Everything that matters is your health And your health So just wanted you guys to know Eating a pasta, eating whatever That you fancy I had like so much cake last night Because we had a little cake for my sister In the shape of a tooth Like eating anything you want Obviously in moderation Is completely fine Don't ever feel like It's not going to stop you From reaching your goals Or don't ever feel like It's not true And that's just something small I want So I've come to meet these two We're at Miam It's the same vlog, you don't need to say hi again Also me and Simon are kind of matching I love the dress Hi Hi I can tell them what happened when we were at dinner So basically we were at dinner And then there was this table thing store And they were like these Iranian guys And they didn't know we were Iranian So it was a long good thing It's not about us, but just in general About their life experiences I have never, ever, ever Have experienced Oh my god It made mommy blush I wasn't that I had never, ever I literally I couldn't eat I was eating Say hello to the vlog Talk to the vlog Introduce yourself What's happening? That's a thousand views right there A thousand views his promise Let's see So as you can see I'm just starting to pack up But this is basically The holiday I came back from last week And I kind of Everything that's been washed Is like on the side to grow back in And my suitcase is going to be split down Half for Iran And like Islamic Republic And half like swimsuits And stuff like that for For where we go afterwards I did a bit of shopping from Netapote I thought I'd show you guys so we end this vlog On just this little Tiny Because there's only two items in here But I thought I'd show you guys I'm literally sitting on the stairs In my house So I basically Need to try on one of the items Because They If they don't fit I only have like Tomorrow in the daytime to send it back But Netapote had a sale on this So it was a pair of night trainers That I really wanted for ages And I need like black trainers to the gym Every time I'm with my trainer I always say to him Like he's always like Yeah but I need black trainers to go with I don't have any gym black trainers I have like designer black trainers That have another wear to the gym So these are just some good Workout trainers And they are the Nike They're called the Flynitz Nike So I buy the Nike size 7 Now just to make sure that they fit But that's what they look like And they're just super simple Gym trainers, I'm really happy with them They were like 120 pounds down to 60 And they're like Classic Nike gym trainers So when I told that they won sales I have to grab these from the gym I can take them away with me if I want by gymming I know it's not winter But I was just like oh my god this looks so perfect In winter So I'll show you guys So It is this scarf from Off White Oh wow it's actually much thicker and nicer than I thought it would be So It's got like the Off White Logo on this way And then what does it say on this side On this side it says Fire Fire line do not cross So yeah This way round And this way round it says this Such a cool Scar for winter I have designer scarves that aren't really statements They're just wintery plain But I feel like this over a bomber jacket Or just you know when you want to do a casual It's super cool It's got like the Off White logo And it's like a classic kind of monogram Off White and I don't have anything off White It's my first item from them But it looks really cool for winter So I'm going to continue packing My beauty video My summer look Then you would know that I'm actually off to Istanbul tomorrow And then from Istanbul we are going straight to Tehran And we are Hopefully going on a couple of the trips from Tehran Before I come back To start uni on the 30th of July Summer is actually flashing Before my eyes I can't get over how fast It's going but I'm loving it I can't like this for even One of the best Summer of my life And you guys have been able to follow through my vlogs Which I'm really happy about I've managed to keep blogging Like I wanted If you guys like my vlogs Then please give it a thumbs up And let me know in the comments I love reading the comments I usually reply to all the comments And make sure to follow my socials My Instagram is Persian Bunny My Twitter is The Persian Bunny And my snap is You guys in Istanbul Tehran Love you guys so much And I'll see you next time Bye


I'd like to give you a kind of a contrast view as a way of introduction, a contrast view of Germany and Europe at a time when I decided to work more on Europe and today. Now, it so happened that 30 years ago in the mid-80s, I decided to move away from academia into the think tank world. And the transition was somewhat smooth because I first started to do policy work at a university and then kind of build a public policy think tank at a university. But I thought that'd be more interesting than the academic debates, which were rather specialist and rather peculiarist and rather about pushing people into niches than letting them to see the bigger picture. And I was always interested in the bigger picture. And it so happened that at the time of the mid-80s, Europe was getting back on the move again. It's not that it has been on the move all the time. Actually in 85, it was just ending about a decade or if not more of a relative stagnation. It was the community of 12 member states. Germany was the strongest economy in this. Germany was a junior partner to the politically strongest member state at the time, France. There were interesting dynamics between Germany and France. Think of the 1984 visit of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl to Verde. It was the first time that a French president visited a mass graveyard where also German soldiers were buried. And there was this handshake or this taken, it wasn't a handshake. They took each other's hand in the commemoration ceremony, which also shows that at that time the past, Germany's past in particular, was very much present. And there was still a need to go back to some of the places and situations which were connected with Germany's past. Both at World War II and at World War I past in order to demonstrate that this was a different country. It was a different Germany and there was a different type of relationship between Germany and its neighbors. Ten years later, ten years after this 1984 handshake, there was another one of those gestures. The Eurocore, the German participants of the Eurocore being invited to parade on 14th of July down the Champs Elysees. And one of the most vocal statements on French television and in French media was Jules Gardistan complaining about the situation, saying that as a young boy, the apartment of his parents was on Champs Elysees. And he could see daily parading German troops down Champs Elysees and he was disturbed by the fact that they were parading down Champs Elysees again. And Mitterrand's idea was to demonstrate to the French with this invitation that he believed that this was a different country. So on this non-economic, non-institutional level, on the level of social psychology, political emotions, you know, kind of the software of European integration, there was still a lot of work to be done in that situation of 30 years back. But there also was 30 years back, there was an architect, architect's coalition of the founding members who very much saw themselves as the principal stakeholders of this integration process and the principal advocates of carrying forward integration. And this six plus six, you know, six founders and six newer members, gave them adequate room to actually not dominate but shape the policy debate inside the European Union. There was, from a German perspective, a like-minded accession to the North with Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland having joined countries where there was a number of shared preferences, particularly with the Danes and the Brits, the Irish, people didn't know really what they were about. They kind of, in the German view, came on the back of UK membership. There was a manageable transformation challenge to the South with Greece joining in 81, and on January of 1986 Spain and Portugal joining. So that all looked as if it was designed for a country like Germany being divided and being still a front state in a otherwise moderated East-West conflict to unfold and to act and to shape its environment. The political agenda of German-European policy at the time was integration must succeed. It should not be allowed over the longer term to stagnate or to regress. Because it was the anchor, not just an anchor, it was the anchor of Germany's role in Europe, of Germany's international role in a wider sense. Political integration should advance. And also economic integration in the German thinking of the time was basically about political integration. Economics was an instrument to drive the building of a political union, rather than being pursued on its more narrow merits alone. The EU's competitiveness at the time was an issue of concern of German policymaking, because Germany saw that there was a trend that it would kind of separate itself too much in terms of competitiveness from a number of its other partners. So there was reason to help shape up the EU at large in order to keep a certain level of complementarity inside the EU. And Germany was prepared to do what it takes to quote from Mario Draghi to make that possible. And one of the means, German EU policy at the time employed, was actually to be ready to fund change in the European Union. That was when this was necessary. Think of the famous, I think to Europeanists, maybe to the outside world, it is just a footnote in the history books. But to the Europeanists it was a rather significant date in February 1988. It was a big controversy among member states about the single market. Number of countries Germany included, very much wanted it. UK very much wanted it. But other member states thought that this would be too harsh. And actually they needed compensation if they were supposed to open their markets in the way that DeLore's white paper had proposed. So the doubling of structural funds was their principal issue. There was no agreement. Britain was drawing red lines, which is a particularity of British politics. So it was then up to the Germans to say, OK, at the end of the day it's 3 billion Deutsche Mark. That's missing in the budget in order to have a deal. We will pay in that 3 billion. Four years earlier Margaret Thatcher had negotiated her rebate. And she was not prepared to say, OK, I give up 30% of the rebate in order to get it done. But at the time that was the German position. Everybody was expecting the Germans to chip in the extra contribution when that was needed in order to get something done. And Germany did, even though there was a kind of pay master debate at times at home. Because the political reasoning of the German political class was this was too important to fail over disagreement over 3 billion Deutsche Marks. So Germany's position to sum it up was a driver of integration embedded in a triple support structure that I've laid out. This Franco-German relationship, the Founders' Group, and this kind of Protestant enlargement. Not in the religious sense, but in the kind of the business ethic sense of that. An enlargement to the north that sort of enlarged the group sharing a number of the preferences on economics, but also on social policy on how to run a modern state as Germany did. Germany was perceived as a lead country in this European community because it was more integrationist than France. It was the most preferred partner of the smaller member states in this community because it was very understanding. On a bilateral perspective, Germany was able to compensate part of its junior status in relations to France because it had that relationship with the smaller states. And German governments paid great attention to talking to smaller member states a lot in order to be seen as the country that would then bring in their views and interests into this principle bargaining that was going on all the time with friends. Fast forward 30 years. Where are we today? And I say that now, as Catherine mentioned, in the luxury of an observer position after having engaged a lot also in consulting governments, the German government mostly, but also other governments on this rather fascinating period over since 89 with the many changes that we have seen. Now we're in the EU 28. Now we're in a much more fragmented environment, much less structured than even the EU 12 was at the time. We have Germany united under the Kohl paradigm, which was at the time before 1989, Kohl's innovation to this traditional conservative position on the German question was that the German question was not a question of unity, but it was a question of freedom. And when unification came about, it precisely came about as a consequence of understanding it as a question of freedom and not in principle terms as a question of unity. Germany again is the strongest economy, even though it elevated into that position in a different way than many people in Germany thought in the early 90s when they still thought that the biggest economy of the West and the biggest economy of the East would necessarily be a super economy. But then the Soviet Union collapsed and the biggest economy of the East all of a sudden with losing its markets and losing its monetary advantage collapsed rather thoroughly. It now is a senior partner to France, at least when it comes to EU matters. The past is still present, but in a very different way, not in the way of this immediate connex to Germany's past, not in the way that it guides government policy on an almost monthly basis as it used to 30 years back, but rather in the way of political caricatures of Merkel or Schäuble been portrayed in Nazi uniform or with the Hitler moustache or this debate about the repayment from wartime occupation or the Piketty argument that Germany is the one country in the world that never repaid its debt, which is not true. But it's interesting that it comes up in these contexts. Now this EU-28 exists on a much higher level of integration, but on a much lower level of diffuse support for integration and that largely affects also policy making in Germany today. The German public used to be pro-European, very pro-European in a diffuse way. People may have had second thoughts about the merits of certain steps in the integration process, but they thought that the principle idea that integration must not fail because it is the framework for Germany to live and prosper and share with its neighbors, that isn't valid anymore. It's not that the Germans have turned away from Europe, they are still. If you look at Eurobarometer findings, they are still pretty much up there, not in that high range of numbers, but in a good middle position, but they are much less willing to give Europe the benefit of the doubt. See, when we're not convinced, but when our leaders tell us, we have to do it, we'll do it. Now leaders such as Angela Merkel are very cautious, not to do anything that could irritate her public. That could raise the more distant or more self-centered feelings of the Germans to focus on Europe. She doesn't want to debate European debate at home because she senses that this debate would not necessarily expand her policy options but rather limit them further. But also the EU has changed. It's not just that Germany is in a much different position, but the EU environment is much different compared to 30 years ago. The architect coalition of the founders is gone and is not going to come back. There is no consensus group of these six countries today anymore. The like-minded accession idea also has sort of withered away because the Eurozone has two of the like-minded countries out, Denmark and the UK. It has brought about other countries in the entering of integration, but not necessarily on that level of consensus that has been characteristic for the founders coalition. Many member states take a more instrumental cost-benefit approach to integration, and so does Germany. Many in Germany are aware of the fact that EU enlargement has meant that we're now surrounded by friends. In all directions, and no other EU country has more direct neighbors than Germany has, we have members of the EU except for Switzerland, but that's kind of half connected to it anyway, so it doesn't really feel like non-EU in this sense. We have a big transformation challenge in the east from a Berlin view mostly done. It's not done really, but it has been rather successful. It has brought about a number of not fully consolidated but fairly stable in rising new member states, mostly somehow friendly to Germany, sometimes more, sometimes less. That's, for example, the Czech Republic at times, or Hungary at times, or Poland at times, but mostly pretty close to Germany, with Germany being the biggest economic partner of most of these new members, and it's an economic partnership under the roof of the European Union, which I think is a very effective means, and it's perceived as that, to control possible anti-German tendencies there. The transformation model south over the past 30 years has not thoroughly succeeded, and one of the pet trials of Germany's political integration plan, a politically motivated economic and monetary union, has not brought that about, but rather exposed the fact that it has not worked much more intensely than German policymakers have ever planned. In this Europe, Germany is clearly in a lead position, partly by default, because other traditional leaders are much weaker on a number of key policy issues. I've already alluded to the Franco-German relationship. France now is much less of a shaping actor in European affairs than it used to be. Britain is mostly absent from the EU. Italy is largely absent from seeking to shape the European Union. And also, it is in a lead position because the most pressing policy issues on the EU external and internal agenda all favor Germany's central position, whether it is crisis management inside the Eurozone, or it is the foreign policy challenge of a changing research in Russia, both put Berlin on a spot in the way that it does not with any other country. So what's Berlin's political agenda in this kind of environment? It is sort of a visionless policy, very pragmatic. The Merkel approach is not to move Europe ahead towards deeper integration, but rather to prevent it from eroding, from disintegrating, to keep the current level of integration. Europe still is, in the reading of the German political class, an important anchor of Germany's role, but not the only anchor of Germany's role. The agenda also has to maintain public support through intergovernmental cooperation, particularly the Merkel, but also in a certain way the Schroeder government. Schroeder was a little bit moderated by the fact that there was Joschka Fischer, who was a coal man in a way, even though he was a green, but he shared with Helmut Kohl the idea that Germany always needs to have a bigger idea about Europe in order to keep on track, to keep on its post-war track, and in order to move Europe and make it more capable of acting. But presently, the Chancellor believes and Schroeder also believed in it that intergovernmental cooperation and the visibility of that cooperation is a good way to keep the German public attached to it, because it would show leaders at the helm. And the European Council, with this sort of approach, has become the principal decision-making body of the European Union, is trending to use the European Commission as kind of an extended workbench. There has been no time in the history of European integration that European Councils have given so detailed assignments to the Commission, with timelines, with benchmarks, with ideas on what it should do than we have seen over the past few years. The German strategy or gender approach to Europe also has it to counter the obvious centrifugal trends and political cleavages inside this EU-28 through a strong focus on rules and due process, which is a traditional German bias. In terms of political culture, we have a trend to focus much more on rules than on political bargaining compared to other countries, because I think many Germans have a mistrust in politics. We think that compromise is a dirty thing. It's dubious, because it is like horse trading. You have to give something and you get something, but it doesn't have to do with the good thing, with how things ought to be. So this kind of normative thinking that is very strong in Germany kind of supports a focus to seek to steer the European Union through a focus on rules, to kind of depoliticize policy-making in the Union, which of course is a difficult proposition at a time when so much in its current dealings is all about politics. And then the rules appear to be ideology rather than kind of a concept of order, which in the thinking of many in the German political class, it still is. It's about the good order of things. Now, this is the situation. In this, I believe Germany has lost to a good degree kind of its strategic sense or the wisdom or wisdoms of earlier periods in the sense that indeed Europe does need an ambition of what it wants to be in order to help to bring together the divergencies and the heterogeneity of this European Union. That has worked very well in the past, but somehow political leaders, including German political leaders, think that with such a heterogeneous union as we have now, it cannot work. I would submit it still can work, but you have to have those ideas and you have to be credible with them. There can't just be bubbles of political spin doctors. You have to have credible actors who believe in what they say. And the current chancellor doesn't have such a vision. And if she would kind of borrow from cold speeches or Adenauer's speeches or Brown's speeches, people wouldn't believe her because it's not her. Currently, there's much less emphasis on talking with the smaller countries. For some reason, German political class seems to have concluded that this traditional mechanism, bring on board the smaller ones, use this as a platform to get things done, is not in high respect. Katherine and I, we were at a conference last year when we tried to discuss with people from member state governments and member state think tanks just this, the interactions between member states. And what we could hear then, and what I hear a lot when I talk to key diplomats from other member states, is the Germans don't talk. They don't come to us anymore. They expect us to come to Berlin and then it's difficult for us to get some face time because everybody's coming to Berlin nowadays, but they don't reach out enough. I think that's the second gap in the strategy. And the third one is that with all the good reasoning about rule-based policy approaches, I think they only work if you try to cover all of your bases. If you just don't rely on rules alone, but you try to build consensus around them. You try to cushion the effect that strict rules application has on other member states. You try to understand the difficulties that there are and you try to put yourself in the shoes of others. Has been said that one of the hubris of powerful actors is that they don't need to learn. In a bit of that you can see in the German case that they think, many in the political class think it doesn't really matter that much whether you bring people in. You seek to modify the expectations and preferences other partners have, but you rely on the fact that they have no choice but to go along anyway. I think that's kind of a backgrounder to some of the divisions of the cleavages, but also of the rather sharp perceptions that shape the attitudes towards Germany these days. And maybe it can serve as an opening to a discussion. As you see, I've left out any deeper arguments about Germany and Greece and the Eurozone, but feel free to raise all of these issues because I'd be eager to respond to them. Thank you very much.


Hello, and welcome to the session. I am Deepika here. Let's discuss the question which says The following frequency distribution gives the monthly consumption of electricity of 68 consumers of a locality Find the medium, mean and mode of the data and compare them Monthly consumption in units and number of consumers for 65 to 85 Number of consumers are four for 85 to 105 number of consumers are five For 105 to 125 it is 13 for 125 to 145 It is 20 for 145 to 165 it is 14 165 to 185 this eight and 185 to 205 it is four Now we know that x1 is equal to sigma fi Xi upon sigma fi where fi is the frequency of the i-th class Xi is the classmark of the i-th class that classmark is equal to upper class limit plus lower class limit upon two Now we know that the median is a measure of central tendency Which gives the value of the middle most observation in the data? Now in a group data We may not be able to find the middle observation by looking at the cumulative frequencies as The middle observation will be some value in a class interval It is therefore necessary to find the value inside the class that divides the whole distribution into two halves But this class find the cumulative frequencies of all the classes in the class whose cumulative frequency is greater than called the median class median class we use the formula Udm is equal to is number of observations f is equal to cumulative frequency the class Is reading the median class is the frequency of the median class H is the class size How to find more we will first find the model class the class having maximum frequency Then we will use the formula mode is equal to class f1 minus f0 upon 2 f1 minus f0 minus f2 into h where it is a Lower limit of the model class h is the size of the class interval f1 is the frequency of the model class f0 is the frequency in the model class is the Frequency of the class Succeeding to model class. This is a key idea behind the question We will take the help of this key idea to solve the above question. So let's start the solution Now we are given monthly consumption in units Consumers weekly consumption is from 65 units to 85 units Then the number of consumers are four for 85 to 105 It is five For 105 to 125 it is 13 and for 125 to 145 It is 20 now for 145 to 165 it is 14 and 165 to 185 It is 8 for 185 It is 4 Now that is we will find the class mark of each class We find the class mark of each class average of it Upper 5 is 65 plus 85 upon 2 which is 75 5 to 105 is 85 plus 105 upon 2 that is The class 125 to 145 it is 135 and the class mark is 155 is 175 of the class 185 to 205 is 195 that is 155 to 170 into 175 is 1400 Frequencies that is sigma 5 is equal to 68 Similarly, we will find sigma f5 xi is equal to 9 3 2 0 Therefore, we next bar is equal to Sigma f5 xi upon sigma f5 is equal to 168 is equal to 137 point 05 unit is equal to 137 point 05 units Let us find the mode of the given data Now from this table we observe the maximum frequency Even the maximum frequency is 125 to 145 125 to 145 125 that is the load limit of the model class H the size of the class interval is 20 The frequency of the model class is also 20 to 13 That is the frequency of the class preceding the model class the frequency of the class succeeding the model class so that 0 is 13 Substitute these values in the formula mode is equal to 1 minus f0 upon 2f1 minus f0 and this is equal to 125 F1 is 20 minus 13 upon 2f1 2 into 20 minus 13 minus 14 into and this is equal to 125 plus 7 minus 27 this is 13 into 20 and this is again equal to 125 plus 140 upon 13 and this is equal to 125 plus Now 130 upon 13 is equal to 10 upon 7 6 therefore load is equal to 5 7 6 units The medium of the given data to find the medium the cumulative frequencies of all the classes n and y to column for cumulative frequency frequency of this class is 4 and cumulative frequency of this class is 4 plus is equal to 9 the frequency of this class is 9 plus 13 is equal to 22 the cumulative frequency of this class is 22 plus 20 which is equal to 42 the frequency of this class is 42 plus 14 is equal to 56 plus 8 is equal to 64 and cumulative frequency of this class is 64 plus 4 and this is equal to 68 now in this distribution n is 68 so n by 2 is equal to 8 upon 2 which is equal to 34 now we will locate cumulative frequency is greater than frequency 42 is greater than 125 up to 145 is the medium class in class we use our formula medium is equal to is the lower limit of the medium class is 125 division is 68 and CF the medium class is frequency of the medium class is 20 and this is 20 to take these values in the formula medium is equal to all plus under 2 minus CF upon f into h we get medium is equal to 125 268 upon 2 minus 22 upon 20 is equal to 125 plus minus 44 upon 2 into 20 into 20 and this is again equal to 125 plus upon 40 into 20 so we have is equal to 125 plus 12 which is equal to 137 units the medium and mode of the given distribution medium is equal to 137 units and medium is equal to 137.05 units and mode is equal to 135.76 units the 3 measures are approximately the same so from above results we conclude that the 3 measures correctly for the above question is is equal to 137 units is equal to 137.05 units is equal to 135.76 units the 3 measures approximately the same in this case but the solution is clear to you bye and take care


As the progressive left, Communism, Socialism, values and ideas is on the rise. Shouldn't you be behind Trump? Or do you believe they're equally bad? I believe that whether they're equally bad or not, Trump is not the antidote to it. Trump is emboldening Socialism and Communism. Trump will make Socialism and Communism become more popular in this country. Socialism is on the rise in America today to a large extent as a response to Trump. Trump doesn't help the cause. Trump lays the foundation for the left to take over and emboldens them and encourages people to support them. So no, Trump is not the solution to the left. Trump is almost as bad as many on the left. And in his nature, in his character and in his policies, he emboldens and encourages the left to do what they do.  But then what will happen when you succeed? The left is crushed. Who? You won't have a voice anymore because you will be not a capitalist.  You're not a capitalist. You're a supporter of Donald Trump. You are in the Donald Trump bandwagon. You won't have a voice for capitalism. And then you will leave the status on the right free of all opposition. We won't be able to be opposition because we were with them. We formed the coalition with them. So you make yourself impotent for the future battle we're going to have with the right by getting into bed with the right in order to defeat the left. But let me be clear. The long-term danger from the right is just as deep as the long-term danger from the left. There are no communists today in politics. Just like there are no fascists today in politics. There are people leaning towards communism, certainly towards socialism on the left, but even the socialists, and not real socialists, there are very few of them who would actually nationalize the means of production, but they're leaning in that direction, they're moving in that direction. It's true that no fascists on the right, and Trump is not a fascist, but he's leaning in that direction. He floats in that direction. He legitimizes that direction. And you're telling me that you would get into bed with somebody leaning fascist in order to defeat somebody leaning socialist or leaning communist? No, no, no. The only coalition you can form is an anti-Trump, anti-left coalition. A coalition that says never socialism and never Trump, never socialism and never fascism, and anybody leaning towards authoritarianism and fascism. That's the only coalition you can form. A coalition based on freedom, not a coalition based on, I'm just going to violate some of your rights some of the time. And long-term I want to violate more of your rights, but right now we're fighting socialist, so I'll only violate a few of your rights in the meantime. Give me a break. You do not. When the evil is the evil, you do not choose the less of two evils. When the evil is a real evil. And when it's hard to tell what the less of two evils is, because you don't know the long-term consequences. And when one evil like Trump is going to bring about the other evil, which is socialism, I mean, look at what he did this week. Two trillion dollar, what do you call it? Infrastructure plan for the US government. Two trillion dollars. You want to get in bed with that? To fight whom? Who's opposed to it? Who are you going to fight? AOC? AOC loves the idea. This is straight out of MMT. Let's pin up two billion dollars and do it. Oh, yeah, I know. Trillion, not billion. I know Trump says he's going to do it with private-public partnerships. That's the worst. It's worse to do public-private partnerships than have the government do it by themselves. Because public-private partnerships is fascism. It's the road to fascism. It means there is no private enterprise anymore. It means government is involved in even in the private property, even in where there's supposedly an island of freedom, private property. Now the government is involved there. I was fighting socialists before some of you were born. And I was fighting socialists before Trump was elected. And I will continue to fight socialists till my last days. But what Trump has done is emboldened the socialists and expanded their influence. And if you can't see that, that you're blind. That Trump makes an AOC possible. You're blind. You fight the socialists and you fight Trump. You fight statism.  Left or right. You don't team up with Stalin to fight Hitler. Massive mistake that FDR made. And you don't team up with Hitler to fight Stalin. Sometimes evil is evil and you don't choose the less of two. And I think Trump is evil enough so that you don't work with him even against a common enemy like socialism. And particularly when you see the kind of rise of white nationalism and racism and anti-Semitism all in the last few years, all under the big umbrella that is the supporters of Trump. I'm not going in that umbrella anyway, near that umbrella. And I'm going to call that umbrella what it is, which is anti-freedom, anti-individualism, anti-America. I mean, Trump is an anti-American president. The liberals are trying to put statism over by stealth without letting the country realize what road they are taking to what ultimate goal. And while such a policy is reprehensible, there is something much more reprehensible. The policy of the so-called conservatives who believe in compromise and who are trying to defend freedom by stealth. If the liberals are afraid to identify as a program by its proper name, if they advocate every specific step, measure, policy and principle of statism, but squirm and twist themselves into semantic pretzels with such euphemisms as the welfare state, the New Deal, the New Frontier, they still preserve a semblance of logic if not of morality. It is the logic of a common man who cannot afford to let his victims discover his purpose. Besides, most liberals are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery. So they evade the issue for fear of discovering that their goal is evil. Immoral as this might be, what is one to think of men who evade the issue for fear of discovering that their goal is good? What is the moral stature of those who are afraid to know or to proclaim that they are the champions of freedom? What is the courage and the impunity of those who outdo their enemies in smearing, misrepresenting, speaking at and apologizing for their own ideals? What is the rationality of those who expect to trick people into freedom, cheat them into justice, pull them into progress, calm them into preserving their rights, and while indoctrinating them with statism, put one over on them and let them wake up in a perfect capitalist society some morning. Such, unfortunately, are a great many of today's conservatives.


Hello and welcome, everyone. Thanks for coming to this month's iteration of Poem Jam. I'm John Smalley, a librarian with the General Collections and Humanities Center on the third floor, where most of our poetry books reside. While I'm waiting for a couple more folks to join us, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a program that's going on currently. So on behalf of the Public Library, we want to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatushaloni, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this place and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. As guests, we who reside and work in their traditional homeland recognize that we benefit from living and working here. We wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatush community by acknowledging their ancestors and relatives and by affirming their first rights as sovereign peoples. Or I should say sovereign rights as first peoples. Tonight's program happens every month, the second Thursday of each month. The program will be filmed for our archives. And if you do not wish to be filmed, please let me or one of the other staff members know that this series is curated by the poet Kim Shuck. Some of you may know that Kim is also an artist and there is currently an exhibit of her artwork, textural glass bead artwork on the main library sixth floor. This exhibit translations from here will be up through September 10th. So please do stop by when the library is open. You can learn more about our upcoming programs by grabbing a flyer such as this one, advertising Kim's exhibit or the library newsletter. These are all on the table to your right side. There's also coffee and cookies on the table. Please help yourself to that. And that ends my announcement. So with out further ado, I wish to turn the microphone over to Kim Shuck. Please give her a warm welcome. It is an enormous pleasure to welcome to this microphone that one, if that's the one you want. The Owls writing group who meet at the Bernal branch of the San Francisco Public Library. We have a very full house, so I am not going to do big introductions apart from saying that I really, really have enjoyed the times that I've worked with this group. Just an absolutely delightful bunch of people and really accomplished poets generally hosted by a medi-moderated maybe by Paul Corman Roberts, who is no stranger to this microphone. And without further ado, our first reader is Helen Dandenberg and the next one is going to be Lee Jenkins, so be prepared. Come on up Helen. Thank you. Memory and now. You made me a hole in the floor, they said. Calls between us every night. I look and look bewildered. Then three days, no call. Pinkish linoleum with brownish pink flowers. No hole. Dorothy Sidney, children Aaron, Carol Ann, Mark lived there. I am a very seasoned, experienced warrior. Across East 96th Street, we lived in the big apartment with my mother's parents, where at first all the sisters and their husbands lived together. Then a call with tippy-toe, trepidatious explanation rested from him by me. Okay. I love silly. A zap-a-dap-dap, I know nothing of that. Zap-a-dap-tap, ah-ha. Dutch, Dutch, such, such. Gustafs, Dutch, licorice, licorice. Drops, deliciously sweet and soft. Bears, deliciously sweet and cuddly. Cats, deliciously sweet and firm. Oh-oh-choo-choo-ee-choo. Don't eat the whole bag at once.  Don't eat the third bag at once. Oh no, not all three at once. I sit here, bop, bop, bop. I read the ingredients, bop, bop, bop. A shocking, ah-ha, moment. I can't believe my eyes. Gelatin' pork? I read all three bags. Oh-oh, say it isn't so. Pork, gelatin, gelatin, pork. What's a culturally nice Jewish woman from Brooklyn to do? Boo-hoo-hoo, say it isn't true.  Don't say that again, not again. I'm out and about, climbing trees. If you think that isn't hard at my age, riding the merry-go-round in the wrong direction even if it makes me puke. Hello, I say to passersby like a friendly puppy, but I don't jump up to chew on their fingers. Try this particular doughnut flavor of art class. Jump into this other pond of theater improv class. The water is friendly, shallow. You can swim well enough. Look at the ceiling while you float on your back in the colors of a new watercolor class. Savor the flavors of new friendships like a box of seized candy. A flamenco dance on the heads of moles that pop up saying you didn't do it right or enough or hired enough or in the right order. Play the castanets, charm the thoughts so they go away, go away dancing. Seek out the sunflowers starting to bloom in the side space allowed you by your next door neighbor. They say hello, thanks. What else do you have to say? The hole is bottomless, the leash ebbs and flows. Let's talk. The morning, a sunny day. Yes, hello, so glad to see you. Let's talk. I love the way you raised look today, reaching from the back windows way back to the front hallway behind the steps, the wonderful shadows behind the big upside down curve of the kitchen sink faucet. The snake hose lives there. I sit on the couch, feel your lovely warm presence. Stay longer than noon when you leave to go further out to the garden. I get jealous, stay with me. Don't go, I want to keep you. I know you must go on with your day. I am selfish, don't care. You go, my restlessness drives me out to find you. Ah, there you are, let's talk. Melding, two people met a long time ago, made a life, made two children, lived in a culture absorbed by the children. She is here, now, then we'll be gone. The culture, many facets, interesting. She flourished, but wondered about the others. Went, explored, there existed another world out there, how to meld them together. She is here now, then we'll be gone.  She is here now, and then we'll be gone. This is the last one, default to the heart. Default to the heart, you must in the time remaining. Bubbling annoyance, sloppy irritation, fixing someone's speech, what is that? But bubble gum on your shoe, irrelevant, annoying. Slick it off and dispose of it. Don't waste precious time in the forever of your life. Get to the heart of the matter, the heart, the heart. Boom, ba-da-boom, boom, ba-da-boom. These phone calls are what is. Listen, remember, say what you want him to hear, don't let him interrupt, remember the voice. Laugh together about whatever, little anything, the dust ball on the floor, the bumble bee on the blue cornflower, laughter, compassion, empathy, are good deposits in the forever of your life. Check your balance. What needs beefing up? Needs more attention, work on it. Time is limited in the forever of our lives. Thank you. Okay, our next reader is Lee, and after that, it's gonna be Debra Gerson. Okay, let's try this one. Okay, Haunting San Francisco for Kathy. So many scenes can't be photographed. An overheard remark. Like I said, it all depends on how you look at it. A smile exchanged between strangers. The crazy man swearing in iambic pentameter.  The child screaming in her father's arms, no, no, no, no. He replies so softly, I can't hear him. The man who travels with his piano playing requests. Come to me, my melancholy baby. Everybody does.  That woman I used to know and love, crossing the street, impossible. She's long gone from this earth, still. Her shape-shifting shadow startles me all the time. She should be here, would be, if not for circumstances. Her hair, whispering around her face, her left-leaning gait, looking around, taking in everything. But she's missing her dog, Seaver or Carney, who must be with her somewhere just down the block. This is an aphora for Betty and me. And it's a collaboration with Betty Johnson who was a much-loved owl who passed away recently. And I took six lines from a 67-line poem of hers to start each of six stanzas of mine. And I think as you all know, an aphora is a repetition of words and phrases in poetic lines. And almost everybody loved her. And she felt the same way, too. And she never left a room lonely. And she left easily and often. And she promised to be back soon. And that wasn't always true. And she stood up to competition and gave up things she wanted and complained about it sometimes and wasn't able to change. And she had to laugh at herself. And she loved without discrimination. And not everyone believed that. And so she worried no one loved her. And she missed herself sometimes and had nothing to give. And she held up everyone's end of the conversation and reminded herself not to talk so much. And yet everybody laughed at her jokes and she always liked that. And that was one thing she could be sure of. And she never failed to say thank you. And that was one thing her mother taught her. And it never hurt to be kind except to those who were unkind to her. And she became brand new. And that was not easy. And she worked at it every day and night when the moon came up and the cat slept in her lap. Holy Redeemers. As I told you before, I sometimes see ghosts walking down the street wearing the faces of people I love who are no longer with us. Memory is not so easily tamed as flesh. You can't put it in a box, bury it or burn it. Moments from the past catch up with me waiting at the crosswalk.  Nobody gives away forgiveness at funerals, but they should. Along with those religious cards with the beautific pictures of saints and prayers on the back, I would like to add a personal note. Saint Sebastian shot through with arrows still undaunted. You won our hearts if not the race. Our Lady of Mercy holding her red heart in her chest. You always loved the ones others put back on the shelf. Dear Saint Alice, patron saint of paralysis, praying for us all. May your limbs and hearts be ever-embraceable. Angels trying to sing on the subway, but nobody is listening.  And for the agnostics, a get out of jail free card. Someone loved you and you never knew it. Now you can love yourself, can't you? Ah. Thank you, Deborah. The next one's gonna be Grace Duncan. Oh, I thought I was your next. Oh, I am. Are you? It's gonna be good. I could be nervous about something. My orders. Go closer and tilt up, because I'm the tall person. Moralless. Mesopotamia. No one knows how hard, dark the darkness. I know, I read, I listen. When did I last think of Mesopotamia? Yesterday or the day before. Mesopotamia, headline story in the New York Times, where civilization so-called began. The Fertile Crescent, where rivers, tigress and Euphrates with their tributaries for more tributaries dug out from sources unnamed or dammed up or held back. We heard of them in the Bible, tigress and Euphrates. Dammed up or held back, stopped the salt from the sea, invidious invader of the fresh water of tigress and Euphrates. We mammals, human and smaller, demand fresh water.  Oh, salt. The cradle of civilization with so many towns, villages, settlements, along so many tributaries, and the human struggle, conflict, who gets the fresh water, who tastes the salt? The cradle of civilization, where humans unable to harvest goodwill or mind while water flows. Hummingbirds visit pockets of green, find red flowers with bits of sweetness within and suck. Hold till the end. Sadness runs swiftly through my dreams. I turn right side, left side, check the pill container. What day is this? Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Flip open the day, empty. I offer my back or he offers his. Reach my arm around, searching for a resting place on top of a shoulder or between two knees. Coordination problems. Sadness runs swiftly through my dreams. Drink some water, get up to pee, return again, grab a tissue, blow my nose. Sadness runs swiftly through my dreams. Recall mother, father, brother all long gone, and I became the comforting one for a daughter who'd crawl into my bed night after night and then grew up and left home. Her body insists on company. Songs repeated, good night Irene, good night Irene.  I'd never dreamed before. Now a husband says, tell me a story. Sadness runs swiftly through my dreams. Older now, beset with bony knees, I use drugs. Place a pillow to cushion their contact. Woundless, I forget cancer. Touch the pale scar line, pubis to navel. Belly button jokes from brother Bill. On my desk rests his slide rule with it in its leather case. Could I learn to use it? His laundry appeared in my dream, needed folding. Now I finish a wash. I'm reminded of the broken clothes line. What to do, sadness runs swiftly through my dreams. So the next one I requires, it's a found poem which means I literally saw the words and extracted them. The words of Greta Rideout, San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1978. I was pretty lonely. I didn't know anybody. I had to get a job. I was on welfare. I didn't have a car. It seemed exciting to get married. Let's just say there was a lot of violence in our marriage. When I tried to express my opinion, he couldn't stand it. He couldn't understand I wanted to be my own person. We just didn't get along. The more I expressed myself, the worse it got. I was trapped. I had to leave. No money. No way to leave. There was a lot of violence. I was trapped. If I hadn't called, I would have sunk into the gutter. I didn't want to live like that. Live my life like that. My mother taught me to think a lot of myself. If I hadn't called, if I had say, I may have been brainwashed into thinking I had deserved it. I'll say. This woman called her husband's actions towards her rape. It was her words. And this, a little short story of someone who is not so present with me these days. Adri and I got to know each other, to meet each other and to love each other in that big apartment on the Upper West Side. Our residents in that apartment ended without little notice and we had to find another place to live. Now people call it couch surfing. But we did find beds and sublets to live in for the next year or less before we moved to California. I counted seven places in all before we moved. Somehow we maintained loving connection and equanimity despite the challenge of remembering how to get wherever we were living. Which subway train, which house are we in? So the apartment on Hancock Street gave us more light, air, space, and lower rent than anything than possible in New York City. Now I think that giving up that apartment was a confusing mistake. We thought we wanted to live collectively. That was a bust. And in the next apartment, Adri felt the need for a little private space. She moved a mat into the side of a big large, a walking closet and she would go in there out of the closet and into the closet. And since then I've learned that she has always assured herself a room of one's own. Adri was able to express her own needs and feelings with clarity and kindness, an example I sought to emulate, not always successfully. Adri knew my parents and my brother and I knew her parents too. Her mother's name was Leonore and I contained to recognize her voice on the phone, which I sometimes imitated to Adri's chagrin. Now I feel regretful. Even embarrassed. I and we could talk of class, but sometimes miss its imprint in daily life. Cooking, she learned to make egg rolls, I think, and did so. French toast, I did, I did that. Almost 10 years together, years of honesty, courage, tenderness, also confusion, fears, and unsaid thoughts and feelings. Now I treasure and honor the loving and brave spirit that you gave me to the world and the world. I'll stop there. Thank you. It's going to be Grace and then Karen. Okay, holler at me if you can't hear me. Cross hairs of tooth and ego after cue our hand. No drifters leave here alive, not even floaters or weak-willed wannabes, not in one-way window buses shirking on skateboards, standing bird-legged on corners hookers used to own, hypnotized by screens, screaming on Instagram about new beers and smelly cheeses, trampling the feast that brought them, leaving leftover lattes and quiche crumbs no beggar would touch. I saw these floaters with my eyes wide open in the middle of the day. I got scared, so I went to the Kaiser neurologist without an appointment. She said, don't worry, the pendulum swings, but it leaves scars. So I split and couldn't find my car for days, but I was relieved. I knew no drifters could leave there alive when they met the cross hairs of truth and ego. I went back home to deal with the funky girls, fricking and fracking in a moldy mirror. They were heavy into cube and slice, only dealt the cards to each other, aimed the poison dart straight for the heart, then they had no mercy with the pinking shears. Later, I heard that cube and sliced each other had to live on separate floors. The one who laughed into her armpit had no back windows. They moved to Oakland when the president's changed chairs, had a house of peace and didn't speak anymore. I had the last snort and it was sweet. This is serious nonsense. If they can inhabit the same cube, two men's can think alike. It's not schizophrenic. It's just hard to keep the wheels straight after the army of none left only folding chairs and locked up the mantra. Kiss the wind. Kiss the wind without guilt. It chills and pants at the back door with wild tiger cats waiting for scraps. Pop open the red umbrella and dance in no brain to percussion in your head, while another withers more and more. Capture the essence of beauty in a cup with a broken handle, spider webs on the windowsill, though another sees only snakes and petrified trash. How's your dreams in a hooser in a back room that looks on the cyclone tree the troubled child climbs no matter whose voice calls to him? Does he know his father will be murdered by fire? Imagine, survive the embittered anima, jitter and jump in on Saturday mornings when the house is vacant. Slide the hallways on slippery feet, dare to be ebullient. Fling open doors, dare to be ebullient while the albatross flies. Kiss the wind through battered shutters, your mama rescued from a train. She always saw possibility and muted her ears to the wailing. Laugh out your belly button so hard to snort through your nose unembarrassed, sometimes that's all there is. Praise the ocean, reject mistaken memories, regrets that stop time, tiptoe and stomp in honor of living in spite of more abundity, be kind and wish for wonder. She remembers being pretty. Elephant's glide flap aprons shaped ears in the wet blue sky toward buffalo clouds parting for steeples and astonished ancient stone houses straddled like crack cookie jars among weeds of concrete skyscrapers wearing sunglasses remembering the naked sun. Gossan stilts don't wait for stoplights. They own memories forgivable and forgettable, exploding in the bottom of a broken glass exploding in the bottom of a broken basket. The queen of tears ranks the rulers on the kitchen table and makes sure all the pencils work before she dusts around the edges hoping for a surprise. Crows she's afraid of send her messages from across town. She puts on her father's faded fedora, spits on her shoe and turns in circles. This she learned from the grandmother she never met. Her house is so old the doors don't shut and all the keys in the collage don't work anyway. Her no color hair is too long for an old face. Her cheeks withered apples now and she wonders what to do with the drier lint and the blood from the dead chicken. Her mind is a Frida Kahlo painting. In the humility of the laundry room she never knows to buy anything red unseen because it's likely to be too yellow. Even now with clown feet and polka dot hands she smells of satin sachet and remembers being pretty. And last one, baptized in fog. Baptized in fog like a new cross on top of a hill suspended in the wind kissing the rain waiting to open like a canyon, sing an aria to no one, dance on point barefoot except for purple nails. Throw away the cracker box past, pick up your broken heart and swallow it whole. You will never be this again. Look back on your wisdom, drive blind around the curve, plaster your wall with what you know. Be brave, be alone, be among.  You are baptized in fog. Remember. Thank you. Hey, this is Karen and the next reader will be Sachiko Hamada. Is this good? Thank you, Kim Shuck, for all you do for the community and for poetry. And thank you to my sister Mary for ironing my shirt. Choice. The test comes back positive. What to do this time when everything is different from last time? Anyone in her right mind would schedule the procedure. Everyone says that's what she did last time when it made perfect sense, though she'd had to fly to New York where it was legal. Chicago, that bitter winter. Guillaume, the waiter, leaning close. More bread for you? Setting another warm roll beside the cup of soup. The next day she'd gone there again to get out of the cold. I am pretty, you are pretty. Let's sleep together. Did she forget something? Her last period, was it Christmas, New Year's? 21 then, squeaking by. The last thing she needed was a kid. Poland, the doctor told her when she asked where he was from. You were better than I thought you'd be, he'd said when it was over. 10 years later, she's not cold. She's not hungry. Though this is the man that she had to have. When she gives him the news, he says, you know what to do? Hastily pulls on his jeans, laces up his running shoes, lays a crisp $100 bill on the dresser. She uses that to get a massage. How do you want your eggs? Pretty soon you can get eggs from skin cells, apparently. If you have good insurance, sex will no longer be the method by which most people make babies, according to this writer, making women not so necessary to the process. Whoa, hold on. Why is this process even desirable? Let's say skin cells to make eggs are derived from a man with a middle-class income and good insurance who wants to make a baby with his own DNA and that of a partner. This method is just the ticket. Quite a departure from the rhythm method, the diaphragm, the pill, old crapshoot processes that worked or failed but made babies on a regular basis.  Health insurance isn't equitable for all men and women, though, unless privileged men and women will not be using the skin cell method of harvesting eggs due to inferior insurance, plans that they have. They'll proceed to have sex. Maybe all the skin cells will hum along appreciatively as they make the baby. Who is this baby? One from the egg of a woman fertilized by sperm, one from skin cells from someone who chooses this method to contribute personal genes to a process supported by top-notch health insurance. I didn't have any insurance 40 years ago when I had my baby. While mulling over abortion, I chose to proceed with the pregnancy because I was 32, a woman with a job and apartment. I'd used a barrier method, but that baby broke out of its hypothetical cell. With or without insurance, women and men will keep having sex. Futuristic babies will be born using new methods. Cells will do what they do through usual and unusual processes. Stepping out of the shadow, and this is after Gwendolyn Brooks and Terrence Hayes. How happy I am today. I've just come from the doctor. She stayed at the computer, but looked right in my eyes long enough to say the mammogram shows that the area in front where I found the cancer is clear. Later in the yard, I shared the good news with my sis as we play ball with the dog. You're so lucky, she says. That's my new through line, I replied. That's my new life. But I do remember the darkness. I remember when all I knew was to wanna drink. All I craved was to disappear into it. I couldn't imagine I'd go to a better place where I'd find a strange light in dull rooms, rented for a song in the basements of churches. I'd sit in back and somebody'd give me an inch of warmth or a yard of personal and peaceful space. And look at me now. Thank you. So our next poet is Sajiko. And after that will be Maggie Roberts. Often, she's just one ear and untouched clay sleeping on the tatami floor based by a lay of bright sunshine through shoji screens. All of a sudden, sundering screams. Grandfather, grandmother, father and his sister snorling at each other. With palpulating heart, she's searching for her mom who's seen nowhere. She start crawling with hands and knees trying to get out of the room. Her father is in post-war depression. He insisted he instilled in her perfect condition at dark.  She imbued her with curious haze. When she turned four, she took her soul out of her heart and buried in deep in the earth. She became a shadow butterfly with a salite soul. She's wandering ceaselessly, following a voice almost unnoticeable to a balmy forest breeze. The perfume of the desert. She laced on the crest of a wave in the Macalero sky. Painting, early summer with blue sky. The garden was covered with strawberries. A local tree bowed down yellow orange fruits. Ginger plants sent out pungent scent. Someone spilled milk over a tatami with wild aroma. A quarrel broke out between my father and my aunts. They chased around furiously in the room before they flung the door open to jump into the garden. They longed and longed in the strawberry bed, crushing red berries under their bare feet. I was seven, parched on the tree, peering from behind the leaves. The world suddenly split in two. Before me, everything was red against bright, clear blue. Warm rain. She was returning from downtown. As she got off the express bus, the rain started in Torrents. It was a warm rain. She got wet to her skin, but kept walking escalated. Soon she got lost, finding herself in a field with a tiny house. She went in. The house was invaded by red and yellow tulips. The lightning through the roof slanted into their heads, swallowing its force. The flowers glared like wild hissing snakes. Scared enthralled, she stood immobile, but before long stepped forward, stretching her heart. Red flower. An old woman lived in a shack in the forest. She picked mushrooms, talked with bird and animals, but not with people. She had a small lacquer box, and there was a wind in it.  One day, the wind escaped from the box. She waited for a while, but it didn't return. Soon she went looking for the wind in seven bright continents. Once she came close to catching the wind's tail, but didn't. Tired and resigned, she returned home. She put the red flower in the box. The wind returned. New Island. An old woman lived in a shack, parched on the rocks in front of the ocean. The wind and the waves lowered piercingly. No one came near.  The old woman sat in a bamboo lacquer, meditating her past lives in seven lands of brightness. One day, a young man passed along the beach. He seemed a beautiful glass deer.  Alhambrila. He called and walked away. He came to the beach time and again. Each time he called to her Alhambrila. But the last time he came, his voice was penetrating. He called to her Alhambrila from the expanse of clear sky. The mountain trembled. The night she woke up in a dream, she was a hot red river of lava. Shooting high up to the blinding sun before landing in the ocean to form a new island. But if someone, someone don't know Alhambrila, it's, it's a, you know, it's Arabic. So Maggie's next. And after Maggie, we have Phoebe, Greek. Part one, you've got no business in the city coyote. You have no urbanity. I was feral once, wild like you. You could have snatched me up in your savage mouth. I shudder a little thinking of it, but you can't touch me now. I'm a domesticated cat.  Yes, I know poetry, Ginsburg, Burroughs, Plath. I know music too. Mozart, Lizzo, hip hop, jazz. Sounds you'll never hear, mister, though you live in the cool that is San Francisco. Part two, cowardly. That's you coming here because you think you are nobody's prey here, but you are wrong, Buster. Dead wrong. You've dodged many cars many times, like it's a game like me when I was a wild thing. But what you don't know is that some of those cars are out to get you.   There's folks here that love cats more than coyotes, so you better leave. Scrammaroo, as they say. Part three, oh, you're back.   He was a friend of mine named Franco Hara. So, yeah, I'm pissed.   This is another poem, unfinished poem. I once had a future child that never was. If I'd let her live, I'd call her Lorca. I'd swaddle her in casitas and gazales. I'd shelter her from the yellow wind and the tolling bells. I'd throw my body between her and the firing squad, and if they killed us both, I'd want them to bury us together beneath an olive tree in a far-off place where shepherds come and go and where nightingales sing songs of forgiveness. This is the last one. Unsalvageable. The September sky is scary. Its colors leeched out by encroaching wildfires. This happens every fall now.  My coffee grinder is angrier than usual. Its roar startles the cats. They knock a vase of red dahlias to the floor as they flee. I cut my feet on the shattered vase and tracked blood across the house. Someone has left the bathroom window open. It smells like my father's sweaters when he smoked three packs of Marlboro Reds a day. I miss him more than ever. Uh-oh, the Band-Aid box is empty. Thanks. Okay, Phoebe. And then after you is Daniel. I'm going to do this one. I was going to do this last, but now I'm doing it first. Lessons from Megalaya. It's not that the sky isn't falling. Stars, hunks, chunks, bits of light. I am a golden retriever. Catch this piece. Know that one. Run, fetch, leap, fix, catch, solve, help. There's a hole in the world where the hope runs out. I run around plugging things.  Girls in plaid dresses work smarter, pump legs for the swing to go higher. In the wettest place on earth, bridges of wood, metal, concrete all wash away. They train trees to span chasms, air roots woven as living bridges. Generational tree toes dig deep down, hang on better than man made. Swing the swing. You are what you amplify. This is encounter. It's not so late, maybe 9 p.m. We're waiting for the 44 to take us home across the park. A quiet night, the lit bus comes mostly empty. I beeline towards a favorite seat, boyfriend left behind at the entrance. Suddenly an eruption, woman screaming, comes from nowhere onto bus, past driver, past boyfriend, past other passengers, directly onto my lap. Youngish, she stares up at me. Wild eyes, milk brown skin, stop screaming. It's okay, it's okay, I say. I think she is not quite right. Maybe drugs, maybe mental. She seems soothed, stares into my eyes. I keep talking, stroke her hair. Time passes. Time does not pass. A frightened animal, a past life. A policeman enters, takes her away. Her eyes still on me. This is Ralph doing my story poems today. He sits in my circle of hard metal chairs. I sit as far as possible, try to look away, wish he would go away. He is here every week. We all avoid him every week. I want to talk about my problem, a focusing too much on other people's problems. Not about his problems, he is a problem. He twitches, hits himself in the head, rubs his hair as if scrubbing it. The rest share their struggles, tips for dealing with life. One says that to blame someone else is to point one finger at them, which leaves the other three pointing back at you. Three fingers pointing back at me. My insides may be like his outsides.  Try to climb the wall, smash into the wall, stuck back inside the wall.  How frightened should I be? I squint my eyes, try to see him without the twitches with a different personality. He's not bad looking, rather like a non-scary musician I know, or Dennis Weaver. I begin to dream of him at night, eating in a dream pizza parlor, riding on a dream bus, walking a dream sidewalk. I try talking to him at the meeting, escape route planned. I like your shoes, how is the coffee? He seems less cartoonish, more human. He lives in a halfway house, has no money, an older brother, an alcoholic mother. He is humble, doesn't press, learns it's my birthday, thinks he can afford to treat me to coffee. I accept. This is the last one. Experiments. Not everything announces itself, knocks and declares, I am here. Sometimes the arrival has passed before you know it. Spring-green on red-stemmed Japanese maple, turned to wind-burned in summer, golden autumn, throbbing oranges, slanted sunshine. Do I ever await the colorless winter? Yet there is a time when it has arrived, a sudden longing for hot soup and slippers. As a child, I would conduct experiments. How long will I remember this inchworm? Will the vanilla air return when I remove the covers from my head? Or most urgent, what does it feel like to fall asleep? I try and try to stay awake long enough to notice the point of crossing and miss it every time. Thank you. Daniel Raskin. Take a mic. I find microphones very intimidating. So if it's not working, give me a signal. This one is called Couples. I love you, the clock said to its hands. I hope you never rest at 12 noon or 6.30. Then it seems there's only one of you. I like two hands going round and round my face. Just give me electricity and my gears will turn you on for years. I love you, the trees said to the wind. You give me the best BJs. I love the way you flutter my limbs, caress my leaves, and cool me down after our steamy summer nights. I love you to the stream to its bed. I'll gurgle and bubble for you until the day I'm dry. I love the way you channel my energy through your polished grooves, how you arch me over waterfalls when I'm high on melting mountain snow. I love you, baby. How you make me whole.  Ghosts. Mother ghost wants doctors' offices, hospital beds, and operating rooms where she mingles with ether. Gone is the life of gallbladder lower back. She spends days in art museums loving the peace that quiets her. She slips behind paintings to watch viewers viewing. Mother ghost haunts the kitchen, fridge, stove, sink, dishwasher. She knocks for your help making a salad, setting the table. She has cooked since 3 p.m.  She will stomp away from the table and vanish into the exhaust fan. Father ghost haunts the bookshelves. Some days when he loses his identity, he sighs in fiction. When he does crossword puzzles, he moans in the reference section, dictionaries, atlases, and the like. When he reads newspapers, Father ghost turns to political science, philosophy, and history. He listens to yowls of the ghosts that rise off the page. He seeks understanding from philosopher ghosts. He keeps track of the spaces where books have been borrowed and records the amount of time children have spent reading. He will assign the next book before the previous one is finished. He slips away into the depths of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Aunt Ada ghost tries to help mother ghost in the kitchen. She accepts sous chef and stops growling. She is not a mother. She steals mother ghost's children for weekends and takes them to plays, movies, concerts, Chinese and French restaurants. Aunt Ada ghost moves to San Francisco from Brooklyn after all her siblings and friends have vanished. She is thrilled for the first time to have her nephews alter herself in California who visit her in assisted living quarters where the food is terrible. Aunt Ada ghost evaporates behind the vitamins in a nutritional supplement store. Uncle Phil ghost haunts a jail where he was sent because he refused to fight in World War II and hovers about in the fumes of his dry cleaning shop which is a cover for his fencing operation. Whenever his nephews need something he brings it on his visits. He is very large. He records in a secret notebook every bear claw he eats every morning. Upon discovery his wife scolds him. He slouches away in shame. Mother, father, aunt, uncle ghost enjoy summer picnics on the beach. Good night, Cookie. Cookie knows to cream the butter whites in free fall, yolks shell nested. Chocolate marbled in by hand. Oven 350, timer ticking, spoon drop dough flattens round. Pajamas say I come first. Toothbrush wastes at attention. Good night, Cookie. Tiny planet. Tiny planet one day around in the middle of nowhere. What time it is nobody knows. Eight billion spin around. Only heaven can know us all. Yet we dance like wild horses like dolphins on crushing tectonics beneath forest canopies above the bone yards of the past. Tender arms embrace. Thank you. I don't actually end every one of these smiling like this. Thank you guys so much. Give yourselves a hand. Thank you, Owls. Thank you, audience, because, you know, we do need them. Thank you, AV department. And I just, this was so perfect. Thank you, John Smully in the San Francisco Public Library. I love what I do. I'm so glad. All right, so my partner is already holding up a camera. We usually do a photo of everybody who read in front of that mural, so we're going to put the lights on and then gather and take a snapshot. And thank you. Thank you for being here.


Hey there, njroute22.com here with another low-carb carnivore keto chat. This is take number two, FYI, and here's a little tech tip. If you're using a wires like the microphone, like this one, always put fresh batteries in when you start a new session, even if you thought you put new batteries in the day before or what have you, I shot a whole long session and it had zero audio and that makes me mad because the second take never is, it was really good too. But I'm gonna have to hear to talk about my nine most memorable moments in my standard American diet and high-carb world. And I went on and on about the three things that make the foods addictive, like the texture, like the crunch of a carbohydrate food, a chip or a bread or the chew cannot be replicated when you're low-carb. So don't even do it. And the same same goes for the taste. Everybody mistakes something that they think tastes good, but when it's just a chemical reaction basically in your body that creates this feeling of pleasure and you associate it with the taste. It's really, that's not the case in our opinion. But anyway, we have some high-carbohydrate memories that we'll never forget. And luckily because we've weathered the storm of failure and going long bouts, eating the wrong foods and not understanding the high-carb and low-carb differentials. But we're now, I think, in the clear when it comes to making those mistakes again. But one of our worst offenders was pizza. Back in the day when I was eating the standard American diet, I would eat pizza pies from any kind of pizza parlor, whether it was Domino's or the great Italian, standard Italian New York style pizza or the brick oven pizzas from those, you know, I loved pizza more than anything. It was definitely the carbs in the pizza and I would eat them.  I would stuff myself to the gills. It was the worst. I can't imagine eating that much food today. I would feel sick. I would throw up and I hardly ever have thrown up in my entire life. Same goes for the potato chips and any kind of bags of chips.    And that's something I just, I've made the mistake, you know, we had a period here, maybe a two-year period where one member of my family was gluten-free and we would get all these gluten-free chips in the house and I would dive into them every now and then I had a period, a two-year period, where I put on a significant amount of weight after reaching a really nice low level and it went, phew, after eating these gluten-free garbage. But, and the same goes for bread. Any bread, it doesn't matter if it's 90 grain bread that tastes like a frickin' brick or like usual Wonder Bread or a white Italian hero roll. Bread, bread, we've made the mistake of tasting it and never again. I don't want to feel that way so, but I still remember the the sensation of a sandwich or a nice sesame seed bun on a nice delicious hamburger. Bread, for us, was a fun thing but we don't want to feel bad so we don't do it anymore. And then sweets. I've talked about this quite a bit. I think the sweet sensation in general, even if it's a good sweet like erythritol or xylitol or monk fruit, is not something that the human mind or body is ready to deal with in mass quantity. Commercially processed sweets. So, and then includes like the grain-based desserts like cakes and cookies and donuts and I never really liked pie. I never, I hated pie. But, but donuts, you know, like a Boston cream donuts, cream puffs, those things. You know, we still have memories of eating a nice seven-layer cake and also dairy-based sweets like ice cream. And that's why we're running into these problems with these low carb ice creams now. And they're not affecting our weight and they don't make us hungry but there's something about that sweet sensation that I am striving to avoid. And then that's, I'm kind of stuck on these crook and marker drinks too. They have erythritol and they're exceedingly sweet. And when I make a drink now, I'll use a quarter can, 85 grams of this just for sweetness. But it's something that it's hard to replicate. If you get like hooked on sweets and you drink something or eat something that's not so sweet, it tastes, the flavor is numbed to some degree. It's muted. And when you, I kept sweets out for a long time and everything started getting enhanced flavor because I wasn't hooked on the sweets. So, and my next thing I kind of have memories of is beverages, especially diet beverages. Diet beverages are the worst. Diet Coke, diet iced tea, diet Snapple, all these drinks were just awful. And I did a post on it earlier about how these gas stations and convenience stores have 9 billion horribly artificially sweetened drinks or sugary drinks. And I'm telling you, man, diet soda is one of the most addictive things you cannot. I might drink 10 or 20 cans of Diet Coke a day back in my worst periods. And now it's just water, coffee with heavy cream and some low carb booze. And another thing that I remember and I still can't, it's ketchup. Ketchup is, it's basically just sugar paste. But, you know, everything was dipped in ketchup. Ketchup was slathered on your burgers and all this stuff. And it wasn't that you liked the burger or the french fries, it's just that the ketchup sort of kept you addicted. It was like your little friend coming with you, your vice. So, we do mustard now. Mustard is relatively low carb and I'll use mustard on my food but not many other condiments. I've been striving to eat the meat alone and enjoy it, eat it slowly, mindfully. And it works. You can do it. Another thing that we used to like was fast food.   But I remember the taste and it was usually like an addiction and when you took that first bite the addiction was met and then you were mindless for the rest of the time. And this sort of covers a lot of what we already talked about but fried foods were one of my favorite. Deep-fried chicken tenders, you know with that breading on there and whatever you dipped it in honey mustard which is sweet. French fries, I love getting French fries and you know in some places were better than others and you get those mealy ones at some lame-ass diner steak fries. They were called nor-thin fries, curly fries, seasoned fries and onion rings. We love them, the skinny kind, the thick kind, beer battered. I think I talked about this but this long horn steak house has this massive vomit mountain of onion rings.  Nah, not anymore. I remember what it tastes like, I enjoyed it but I can burn my hamburger a little bit and let the cheese melt down and it gets a similarly fried crispy taste and that that's enough for us. And lastly and this also covers pretty much everything is going out to eat at restaurants. Restaurants were fun. You'd look at the menu maybe you could be daring and try something new. It was usually junky food, carby food and you'd get bread for the appetizer, breadsticks or whatever they gave you. That's what Olive Garden. Everybody goes there and shovels those damn breadsticks down.  It was like hundreds of grams of carbs and they'd be gaining weight like literally as they sat there at dinner time. And the thing about restaurants they was always somehow tasted different than cooking at home because they most likely used just the worst cooking oils, vegetable oils and they cook in a shared environment.  And they might use MSG or other kind of flavor enhancers that make people want to go back to that restaurant. Oh yeah, that was an awesome restaurant.  But I have these memories and luckily because we've made mistakes and felt the pain of making those mistakes, they're just memories now. But you can't shake them. They stay with you for a long time. But just be sure, try not to be angry and eat for whatever reason.  So hope you enjoyed my trip down high carb memory lane. Enjoy the rest of your day.