Okay. Hello everybody. My name is Jason Scott. Today's flight is to why tech documentaries are impossible and why we have to do them anyway. This is a discussion about the documentary medium that I gleaned in my four years of production work on a documentary I just finished and saying why we have to look at this medium, look at its flaws, work around its flaws and encourage people to create new ones.  My name is again Jason Scott. I'm mostly known I guess for a site that I run called textfiles.com which is a collection of BBS era text files that I started in 1998 because I was wondering whatever happened to my old BBS that I used to go on all the time and I just... Does everyone here know what a BBS is? Anyone here not know what a BBS is? Okay, a BBS. Did you just have fun with me? I can tell. Look at those eyes. Alright anyway, a BBS is like a single-use website anyway. I created that archive of BBS era information because I saw a gap in history and knowledge and I as a person happened to have collected a lot of that. So it was more a case of seeing that there was a missing piece of a story, a story that all of humanity is kind of telling about itself and by putting it all up there I was encouraging other people to add their pieces and actually that kind of worked out pretty well. I see that the 305 has arrived. So that theme of filling in gaps is part of what drives me and unfortunately because I have a bit of an obsessive compulsive disorder I kind of start at one end and just keep going until somebody pulls me up sweating telling me to stop. So textfiles.com grew into web.textfiles.com, art scene.textfiles.com, CD.textfiles.com, all these subsites of shareware CDs and old music things and groups and all of these weird little subcultures that I was discovering more and more about and more and more people and so after a while I suddenly thought about this missing piece which was when you watch a lot of documentaries you know the documentary format is kind of interesting because we we didn't it's always been kind of the real dismal format in terms of things you know until very very recently if a documentary grossed one million dollars it was in the top 20 documentaries of all time ever made in terms of box office because it's not a very beloved format it's very very dry and it's a very hard sell unless it's about sex or death and even then you have to kind of work on it that's why we currently have a documentary about wheelchair rugby called murder ball you know there's one that came out a couple years ago about a bunch of strippers unionizing boy what a tough sell that is and it's called live nude girls united that's just you know that's that's that's the nature of general release and I'll go into general release in a moment so throughout this time we've had a number of what are known as documentaries of a technical nature I think in my encountering the one that most people know is Triumph of the Nerds by Robert Kringley because it got on PBS it got a lot of attention and it's it's a very decent documentary it's technical but it's not really technical and when you have things like say tech TV being the standard by which computer history is defined you run into problems because that kind of a cable channel that has very monetary goals produces films that are not really about imparting a lot of information but about making a lot of video transitions that move very quickly and dazzle and delight you so you'll stay on long enough to learn why you want to buy this G4 ad you know that's very important so so that's you know that money issue gets in everywhere and gets in everywhere in this format now the documentary format thanks to a very very fat man has become extremely politicized these days because what's happened is that suddenly people started looking at films like Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9-11 and they said oh documentaries and because it got political to attack the arguments or arguments however you go along that way they went after the medium and the medium by itself the documentary medium has roots what's normally called the first documentary is a film called Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty made in the 20s which tells the story of an Eskimo man and his family who was trying to survive up in Alaska it is entirely fake top to bottom Robert Flaherty filmed a bunch of Eskimos running around took it home realized it sucked just sucked it was boring it was a shots of these guys running around in misty bad film so he had an accident this is one of these things that comes out he was smoking a cigarette and the nitrate went up on the film and the film exploded essentially burned him and so the film was destroyed he had to make a new one so he went off and he made a film called Nanook of the North starring a man named Nanook and it told the story well you see his family huddling for warmth inside an igloo that is actually only half built and has heaters and you have shots of people running around that are filmed in you know lodge parking lots and things like that because he needed to tell a story and he wasn't going to go let reality get in the way of a good story a common problem in documentaries in fact it's endemic to the documentary format one of the funniest things that came out of the the whole argument over I think it was I think it was Fahrenheit 9-11 that was boring for Columbine got the Oscar and then fire 9-11 people were saying it didn't qualify and that always made me laugh about it not qualifying for a documentary because it turned out this wasn't an exactly right fact and if you go read the Oscar rules for what what is a documentary it is a narrative film that portrays historical facts through recreation creative editing and you know basically narration everything does that right I mean that's not a very very you know so the answer is of course anyone can get an Oscar and in case you're wondering I did check and see if I could get an Oscar for this so in case you're wondering the way that you qualify to be judged for getting an Oscar besides you know actually making a actually decent film is you have to broadcast your film on a screen greater than 20 feet in New York and Los Angeles for a period of two weeks during the qualifying year without showing it on television or cable so case you're wondering you know one of the interesting things about life is we go through life learning about things kind of in a vague surface fashion and we like to impart a lot of our own internal stories to these things this is what people do with technical subjects they think of the story of the PC and all they think of is once upon a time there were a few computers and then there was IBM and then everyone won and everyone went home and then there were sound cards and that's great because you know for some people they just simply don't care about the subject as a documentary and you have to wonder what will make people want to watch this actually before that you have to say what will make the kind of people I'm aiming this for want to watch it and when you say well who you aiming this for when you say you want to make a documentary let's say you want to make a documentary you insane people let's say you just give somebody some money for a documentary and so what ends up happening is you say well who is it for and then you know someone will go everybody no don't do that that's not that doesn't work people perceive films different ways some people are looking at this and going oh my god look at that subject matter that's incredible I can't believe somebody did this other people like well it's cool in here that's nice that's great you know you can't aim it for everybody the story I like to tell people was my father's not fond of bush so naturally when Fahrenheit 9-11 came out I thought well what a perfect gift for my father I'll take him to see Fahrenheit 9-11 you know dad here dad come with me we'll go and he lived in one state and I lived in another we met in the middle we went to go see it and we see it right I watch it is with from my eyes and he watches it whatever we come out and I'm a son I want my father to be happy but he's walking around like and I'm like hey dad you know did you like the film and he's like well yeah they really let bush off light and so for me you know I watched it completely different perception and so when people watch a film you can't say oh well I'm gonna shoot this for everybody the rule I usually tend to use is if I was walking down the street and I saw this was here would I want to see it and if I walked in and saw it what about it would make me think it was good like if I said well no he got it wrong he had to do this and he had to do this and and what rules are you gonna lay down in technical documentaries the issue is technical people are very hard to please there is a lot of money in pointing out flaws in technical situations because there are so many details and every single one is important so it is very easy to hyper focus on that it's very very difficult to express how important it is how how how important it is that yeah yeah you kind of needed a semicolon there you know that's that's why the spaceship flew into the moon not by it you know I mean I think it yeah there's a beautiful document out there of every of major bugs like they tricked down like why did this satellite hit here and the answer is oh forgot a while loop you know and it'll be like that technical people want to focus on those on that minutiae but the video format for instance or even the audio format it's very hard here to describe the actual technical situation so the natural thing that I did when I went after this was well I should focus on technical people but technical people are even more difficult than technical subjects and it's a very hard thing when you do nature photography you try to tell a story even though in fact the stories tend to be rather dull once upon a time I got eaten you know once upon a time a bunch of us were eating this one bore and I hit him and he stopped eating it so I could eat his piece you know very simple stuff but you'll see a nature photographer kind of try to put things together and he ends up having to put in artifice the question is what level of artifice is acceptable when you're telling a story this is a problem that I've encountered many times in many films and once mr. Moore's films got a lot of scrutiny of course the narrative utterly fell apart because you end up with a problem of you're trying to tell you've got the parallel tracks of the point you're trying to get across and what reality ended up giving you and how different those are defines your skill as a filmmaker in other words sometimes when I started this film I started out really kind of not knowing what I was gonna go with it all I knew was in my particular case bulletin board systems were composed of people and I said well how do I how do I express that I know I'll interview a metric fuck ton of people so I ended up interviewing 205 people across four years that's a lot of people don't do it documentary formats the standard ratio is you film one hour you film 10 hours for every hour you do or 20 hours and and I film 205 hours and end up being five hours so that's a lot again don't do that let me be your warning so when I dealt with my subjects technical subjects you have to strike this balance and the balance is where the skill set comes in and what it tells is if you want people to get an idea you can go all the way to the right to the right you have industrial films industrial films are basically videotaped instruction manuals they tell you where to put the little part in the copier and you'd switch like this and then you go down like this and oh yes remember this and then they do a cutaway to show you this it is unbelievably dry you watch it because somebody is reimbursing you in some way you do not go to see this film because you're like oh yeah oh that was much better than lost in space so on the other side you end up with films like war games war games is a film that was filmed to tell a tale and the tale was the tale of a young man who encountered an innocent force that faced with the realities of war you know anyway professor falcon was supposed to be played by John Lennon I thought that would have been really cool anyway it's funny because you know as we get now to where it's been 22 years since war games was filmed a new generation has latched actually on to the movie hackers from 1995 as being a seminal event of giving hints as to a way of living in a lifestyle and things to shoot for in belief and the reason that is is because they went to people like Emmanuel Goldstein and they used pieces of subculture that existed in various ways mentors conscience of a hacker and other such writings and they remixed them much in the same way that a blender remixes a lemon so that it would become this palatable thing with Angela Jolie's tit and people who look to that as their indication of what their culture is because there's a dearth of stuff in the middle end up having to do that they end up having to say okay well that's that's kind of how it was and it wasn't like that and so there's again great lots of fun for technical people to go well it's not like that at all actually it's like this and it's like this and it's like this and I know you can't get away from me because I got the door and so on because you know you some of you to giggle because the problem is technical people are not very good at telling stories because that's not how they approach it stories are these arcs that start with a beginning and a middle and have some sort of theme that runs to an end whereas a lot of technical stories are impartations of information you know peppered with puns and that's what they do because that's how that's how they get the information to you as fast as possible and that's understood so like you're watching on this film this film was trying to tackle a very difficult initial idea the idea that there was colored text that was transferred online and that people had an entire history of collecting them and and and being you know 15 years old and working for months and it's fascinating because it's a people story these kids are talking with great emotion and that's more from the interview you know you interview somebody for an hour you choose what to use from that hour you don't make people sit through the hour of that guy interviewing you can go the other way which is where like say MTV goes which is where you'll interview somebody for an hour and you'll do one of two things you will either force something to happen to the person that they don't expect so you get you know some horrified thing or you keep peppering them with the same question over and over again until they answer it the goddamn way that you want it to which was yes I fuck children and then that be you know once again welcome to MTV I fuck children the story of a pedophile anyway when I was young I loved MTV but MTV betrayed me damn you MTV anyway the way I like to think of it is that a technical documentary is an engineering problem you have the problem of wanting to naturally turn everything into either a lecture or a fictional narrative and what you do is you say well how can I take the reality and portray it as a narrative that is to say how can I make this somewhat dry subject interesting and there's several ways you can do that one way is to focus on characters humans people expressing themselves in a way that's that's that's engaging and again bringing that out in an interview was very tough the other way is to do an awful lot of I guess you would call it dazzle and that's more like one of those things like when you eject stuff into the car to make it go a little faster it's not so great for the car but it kind of works and so he's talking right now about something that's relatively interesting to some people but for the other people I just give them a whole bunch of pretty colors and he's talking about this work he did and it's being illustrated and it's kind of interesting but why the hell is that back part there well because it's interesting and you try to strike that I also try to shoot for instance with very few exceptions nobody no one shot lasts for more than 10 seconds a person might talk over something else so that his shot is 30 seconds but in fact the point of fact it's not right now in the world there are an unbelievable amount of subjects that just haven't been really tackled I tackled bulletin board systems because I decided in 2001 that it looks like the bbs movie wasn't going to be made they missed the boat we were having trouble where people were you know people were disappearing was harder to find the stuff the artifacts are kind of gone and and how do you get that back and so in 2001 I started doing research and I did six months of research and I brought in an advisory team of about 20 people who I both respected and didn't know and who would give me advice and I'd say well you know I'm thinking I'm gonna shoot this way and I think I'm gonna go here and ask this question what do you think and sometimes they'd answer sometimes they not you know they just say well I hope he's interesting or I hope you have a reason for going out there or oh yeah ask him about this guy who I wouldn't know about because that really changed his life so being open helped a lot there's a lot of money right now you'll find I get really oaky when people discuss money whenever I say monetized like someone says smeared with shit um but it's just you know that's just because I'm some sort of freak but um the the money is in calling something open source there's a lot of money in calling things a brand that has meaning so revealing the people that you have a list of people you're going to interview suddenly makes it open source you know or telling people oh well you know this new movies coming out we shot it using this kind of camera this new kind of that's open source you revealed things so it's it's a case of marketing terms getting bastardized very quickly I tried to let everyone know I was working on this for four years and the problem there of course was that there were people who waited for years or five I have a gentleman here wait a five gave me twenty bucks five years ago there's an investment actually when I created the film I asked for donations because I was dumb I don't know why I thought I'd need a foundation to create this film so people sent me five bucks ten bucks you know just like cool sounds like fun so I made sure each one of them got a $50 copy for you know sent to them my cost it's like wow that was a great investment so hey it pays to be charitable I guess anyway when I shot this film I would go out and interview people and one of the things is that there are a lot of people out there who have very interesting stories to tell who are slowly decaying and the longer you talk to them when I started shooting there were a lot of people who were names you know there's different levels of celebrity in any kind of technical subject oh he's the guy who wrote that you know he's the guy who made that computer he's the guy who created this thing and you go and you track him down and sometimes he's really boring and sometimes he's really not most markedly in mind there was a network of bulletin boards called phytonet and this started in around 83 84 went and still exists today and it's this beautiful self-grown volunteer network of people all around the world who created this bulletin board system network and at the center of it is Thomas Jennings and Tom Jennings is fucking nuts he is a gay bad-ass gate punk vegetarian fuck you anarchist who did this because god damn it it's great to write a goddamn network because fuck everybody that's interesting and I don't think a lot of people knew that when they were doing it so when I interviewed him he was amazing to a person who's you know looking at things like is this interesting so he's just this beautiful profane man who I used in my way to tell a story around him the question becomes how do you how do you translate that and I wasn't gonna do this I'm gonna do it afterwards I'll play a sequence after I'm done I took what when here's an example the documentary format has editing what that means is you take two separate recordings of events in time and you place them together and they didn't happen one after the other but you put them together I know this sounds basic but it's so easy to forget that a good example of a documentary that really does this a lot is something called MTV Cribs I don't know how many people know MTV Cribs MTV Cribs is supposed to be a documentary about the Homes of Stars yeah okay so for instance there was the case where basically they go in and they shoot right they shoot footage with steady cams and stuff of these guys houses yes this is where the magic happens this is my bedroom this is my pool this is my kitchen and it's fascinating look what they have in their kitchen look what they have in their fridge look what they have here they've got hangings you know well recently I believe it was usher I don't care if I'm smearing him it's some other guy like usher usher or an usher like being had a little lawsuit occur turns out usher rented an island for 350 grand for two days it's a expensive island nice island though first day he shot MTV Cribs there to show his home this only came out because the second day he had a party with 2,000 fucking people and they were having trouble getting condoms out of palm trees and all that so right I mean here you'll see this you'll see this documentary format where he's supposed to be describing reality to you but MTV and he have agreed to 100% completely create a false reality now you compare that to when they interview I think it was Ted Nugent now Ted Nugent's in a house that it's fucking Ted Nugent's house because you can't rent that many animal heads you have to get a clearance you know from from the TSA to ship that many guns to a shooting location to shoot your documentary it's Ted Nugent's fucking house it's real you go through it you're like oh my god oh my god a pet a member would like explode in the flames walking in here so so you know that even even a person who's watching it who's not technically oriented towards documentaries are thinking of them that way they get it in their mind they're like this guy's house has four pieces of furniture that's fake you even if you got a really good maid that's fake but this other guy's house full of little things and they've obviously sorted up and clean things and dusted them that's his house that kind of visceral reaction comes from right here and it's can't it's very hard to fake and so when I shot people when I filmed people I would ask them questions and they knew talking to me that it was somewhat unlikely I was going to fuck them that's very important to note because one of the standard the standard method of communication in film media is fucking people over where you convince people something is going to be a certain way so that you can get the thing you want which is antithetical to their needs this is part of by the way I should mention I went to film school I went to film school emerson college boston film class of 1992 mass communications concentration in film I immediately decided not to go into film that was so happy I instead went into video games which by the way is worse than film but it's still it's film at that time so I went to work for a company called signosis and they had all sorts of beautiful things and I thought it was like film but it wasn't it was just mean and so I didn't actually make films for a long time I didn't want to because the more I learned about the film industry because you know after a while they take you away from oh look how beautiful citizen Kane is to around your junior year was like so this is how the film industry works and you're like ah you know it's like petting the bunny and then seeing the inside of the bunny bunny a cute no more even if they put the bunny back like they did before okay so so I got tired looking at the inside of the bunny and instead I went into computers and computers have been very well by me and I've actually been rather lucrative and because of that I could afford to have a stupid hobby I don't drink I don't smoke I don't do drugs I don't do PowerPoint so yeah so so what ended up happening instead was that you know I I got into like doing little projects and doing film projects and computer projects so when I when I decided I was gonna do this documentary I was like I guess I'll do it I guess I'll use that damn film degree now ironically I've had people say well is this your first film the answer is no I had a film play at Sundance and they're like oh that's really impressive it was a two minute film I did for a comedy troupe in 1993 it is a schoolhouse rock animation about the Kennedy assassination and what happened was was that Comedy Central bought it and played it on the 30th anniversary across the weekend for that I got for that five of us got the princely sum of $1,200 and they got the rights for one year and they proceeded to play 300 times you know because it's two minutes long they could shove it everywhere so that was my introduction to the industry yeah you know I lent a guy the tape 15 years ago every year like clockwork he apologizes and says he's going to get it to me I just have to get it off the 16 millimeter film I used to do stuff in film when I shot this I shot it using film techniques that's why everyone looks kind of goofy because I use indirect lighting and shots like that that is nine processors by the way give you an example of artifice that shot right there darkest crap didn't look good he wasn't there I've applied softening filters lightning filters highly filters everything to make him look like it but not it's real and there's a lot of that a lot of noise reduction you take what you can when you're a one-man crew you make an enormous amount of mistakes anyway so yeah so when I decided to actually shoot this film I hadn't even looked at that for ten years but I had a pretty good salary and I could afford to pretty much do it myself budget-wise because I engineered it the film this film okay when I made this film how many people here were at my talk last year the thank you very much the the film when I saw the film I decided that I was gonna make a film that was you know when people make a film they want to be like an hour and a half you know because that's what plays in theaters but I was like fuck theaters I don't need to put them in theaters I'll put on DVD what a delightful format boy DVD got the heavies DVD sucks as a person who uses it by the way you have never seen you want standards don't go to divot don't go to DVD people put out as far as I can determine peanut butter jelly sandwiches that claim their DVD players I've gotten more anyway so it's like it'll go like this and the answer is well maybe it will if the fang song trading company when they made it for five minutes ten years ago think it was good you get this anyway so I love DVD DVD has been good to me so DVD was the format I was gonna go into so I said well okay well I'm gonna have subtitles I'm gonna have directors commentary I'm gonna have this I'm gonna have that and so when I shot it I knew it wasn't gonna be an hour and a half I thought it was gonna be nine hours which hurts people I mean I explain to people what it is is when you take on a subject that's 25 years long because nobody else has done it you have to make up for a lot of slack and there are stories that aren't in any way paired up they're not paired up fight net is not the story of the bbs industry it's not the story of antsy art it's not the story of the hacking bbs is it's not the story of this so what do you do well you make separate episodes so I made a mini series and I shot it like I said 250 hours edited it down to five and a half hours the rough cut was seven each of these episodes is about 40 minutes some of them or less and the whole thing shooting wise cost me $21,000 now some people drop their payload on that but in fact that's actually rather cheap it actually works out to a very cheap price per and the way that I did it was to kill myself for instance I would land I would I would determine 14 interviews I had to do in the Midwest and in one trip in 10 days I went from Chicago to Indiana back up to Milwaukee over to Minneapolis down to st. Louis over to Kansas City down through Oklahoma City over to Texas and then flew out of Austin that hurt I can also tell you that I can drive precisely 302 miles at a stretch but by doing that by combining what would have been a whole bunch of little trips in the one trip it cost me almost nothing I didn't sleep in my car I should have but I didn't so by just adding these prices together I was able to shoot very cheaply I had a crew of one I had a camera that I purchased as a floor model you know I edited it on a PC because it's much cheaper to edit on a PC than a Mac right now I shot I guess for anyone who cares I used a product called Vegas video and I had a PC a 1 gigahertz PC and four terabytes of USB storage and I lost 14 drives in the two years of editing so anyway that's the price you pay live fast die young Mac store is the James Dean of hard drives just so you know it it you know it tries to seduce you would look I'm $50 in 200 gigs and then the next day I'm not feeling too good man Jesus man I can't feel anything right now so that's you know the things you'll learn when you put things through stress tests I had people going like like I had one time where I was really pissed because I put 200 and I put 205 gigabytes of footage on something and it died like it was like here's your data foot and I went on IRC bitching which is a mistake by the way IRC will bitch you right back and someone's like you dumb fuck they're not meant to be used that way that tells you a lot about customer expectation doesn't it hard drives aren't meant to store data you dumb fuck anyway so one of the side effects of me going through and doing this as a one-man crew was that I interviewed a lot of people who had never been interviewed before and people who'd always been interviewed like been interviewed for all their life and so when they met me there was like oh here's some guy and there's an old quote in the movie industry which says that honesty is the most important thing in the film industry and once you can fake that you're golden and so I was very honest and in fact I was very honest and I made a lot of I offered a lot of things that people didn't normally get when you deal with media I told people after I've interviewed you even though you signed a release if after one month up to one month preferably you think you said something you didn't like tell me and I will erase it off the tape because I'm not going to hurt you for my film I'll get four other guys to say what you said that you're not comfortable saying I don't need you to get in trouble with your buddies and I don't and I and a lot of people I would explain to them what I was doing and I would send them cuts and say okay I'm gonna use you this way is that okay I also had what I called the jerk crank index which was if I made somebody say something funny and that made them look weird they had to be somewhere else saying something smart I couldn't find that I wouldn't use it because and the thing is that's antithical to how a lot of films work these films work that way I have I have a I have a I have a recording of a guy still good okay well there's a recording with this old man he just goes you know man I used to get laid off that bbs and it's really funny in the shop trust me and I love audience feedback the anyway I made sure that that old man told another story that it wasn't just the old man who said that and at the end of the day if people do not get these stories on tape they disappear and what you end up with are very very I would almost call them you know cliff notes of history you say well they used to be this and that's it that's all they'll say you know Ward Christiansen he invented the bbs and there is a massive story behind why he did it how he did it involving a snowstorm and it being you know Chicago and because he couldn't get to the guy's house he was like let's just write something to transfer files wouldn't that be neat and this whole industry rises up from that guy and there's things before him and there's things after him that are actually very important he actually got the idea for bbs is off the arpanet the arpanet was around he was on the list because he had written X modem and he was kick-ass for doing that and so they gave him an arpanet account and everyone was saying wouldn't it be a great idea to have something where you could use these little toy computers and leave messages on them and he was like hey and he was like so when's anyone gonna do it or as he puts it nobody was plugging in their soldering irons to get started on doing it which tells you how long ago that was um anyway you know it's funny now because I like I said I have these hacking text files and when they start out it's like well here's how to write machine language to be able to play crisis mountain for free and I get over here with here's how to remove ads from your geo cities account and it's just this amazing well the progression doesn't go this way let's put it that way I love the I love the present but I love the past more let's put it that way anyway at the beginning of this film art scene there's an old man his name is John sheets John's sheets was the pimp of teletype art a lost art it was a way of sending text over ham radio and other ways so that you could write things and other people would get it so of course they used it to send porn but they also use it to send you know images of Snoopy and everything and they used to have art contests in the in the 60s in the 70s of who could draw the best you know Bordeaux based art and who could do this and so nobody has had ever talked to John sheets about this and I was doing this thing on anti art wouldn't it be funny I thought to go interview this man about this technical subject and when I got there he was stunned that I driven from Boston to New Jersey for him and he had all his old art out that nobody had really seen and I interviewed him for one hour asked him all about he talked about his family and working on this stuff and everything else and then I did that I never saw him again you know I went away and I edited and this year I went to go give him his free copy and I discovered he had died and I got his widow and his widow was absolutely delighted that somebody had an hour of her husband talking to me to give to her and the thing is that little story plays out over and over again you know you get all these things where it's like well just sit the guy down for an hour and ask him about this technical subject because people don't just tell those stories that way they actually tell stories that are actually indicative of other things I'm a very big fan of this idea that when you record something I'm collecting all the podcasts right now this gets me some press it's cute that it does but it's not that hard it's an rss feed the guys doing it's like a self it's like a self-service anthropology experiment it's like driving by an African village and there's a pile of videotapes for you to pick up not that hard I have a little bashell script I'm currently collecting 4,800 podcasts it's something like 600 gigs now or something why why not and people go well that's you know this they're boring and I'm like well they're not really boring they're actually stories about what it was like to be alive when that person was talking it's supposed to be about wine you know the wine cast but no it's actually kind of about his friends and how they had wine together and what it was like to be alive in 2005 and order wine and be at this place and places that won't be there anymore you know we live on shifting sand sand that disappears and people you know they don't want to hear that of course and that's why it's used to sell you know cigarettes but you know it's one of those things where people don't really think that through and the answer is you know will I will not live to see a lot of the results of the work I'm doing you know like where somebody you know people like if you think it's difficult if you think it's difficult to tell the bbs story in 2005 imagine trying to tell it in 2050 you know I love how in about 200 years we're going to be these afro wearing silver-suited grunge tattooed kids from the 20th century because they'll just take all of that that 10 years which we think of as a lifetime and just compress it and so you'll just have all everyone together because that's what we do as a people we just go oh like Roman centurions they all got little brushes on their heads and run around clanking metal that's it and they have a big wooden horse somewhere I think you know that's what people do and people go ha ha ha they don't really you know and the answer is no I mean people do that they compress them in their minds and they'll compress this in their minds except now by recording this history we get it anyway all that said I should open this up to questions I don't have a really zinger closing statement other than to say that like I said don't shoot for perfection perfection is not attainable shoot for something because something is attainable and something is much better than nothing nihilism is not an answer it is a symptom so I guess I'll open it up to any questions people yes sir yes my next documentary will probably be on text adventures yeah yeah yeah that's right there's another one I might do on arcades like not arcade games like 1980s arcades I found a guy who worked as an arcade technician and he was working at a Namco time out and they had thrown out this book let of slides and it was 1000 promotional arcade slides from 1980 to 1982 it was just perfectly posed pictures of arcades and all the games that were in them in pristine shape and everyone looking good and all the shots so I'm he put up like 50 like wasn't this funny and I'm like I'm going to send you a scanner and I'm going to pay you to put them up and you know and he's like well I gotta give them away and I'm like hell's yeah that doesn't care do that I got a lot of press because having finished this five and a half hour so eight episode documentary with all the the bells and the whistles and the little little twirly bit I I licensed it creative commons attribute share alike which means basically leave my name on it and so I have people who tell me oh they're gonna pirate your documentary and I'm like you can't pirate it it's it's it's copy of all sure there's no oh yeah I should say that when you go through this is important thing in life if you always dream of doing something and you do it take the extra time to do all the things you promised yourself you were gonna do even if it at the time by the time you do it you're a bitter old man who can't walk very well do it anyway so if it's like when I own a car my car is gonna have the the shiniest gas cap ever and when you get older you're like that's a stupid thing to want get yourself a shiny gas cap what's it hurt well when I got this thing I was like I'm not gonna have any menus you can't get out of I'm not gonna have any fucking FBI warning I'm not gonna have it be region encoded because that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen so it's region zero you might not know this but it actually costs money to put CSS on a machine like you pay a royalty to macrovision to make your disk not work well like my printing company was like don't do that like don't use it we offer it we offer this service you should not do but we have to offer it this macrovision is right here behind us send help so so I made sure that all that stuff was like that and I also found out by the way don't do DVD layer the dual layer it actually works really shittily the light the laser goes like this and at one point I found this out you know it's like to find out you're like I must be doing something wrong and you find out the world is wrong the way they get dual layers that they have two separate areas on a disk and they're like kind of like this and the laser goes along like this because I'm switch we okay except that you kind of can't completely control where that is you kind of can sort of and at one point it goes except like I said before some just some DVDs go man battle stations and to get around that problem they have buffers which are sometimes too small so they go if you look on a lot of dual layer DVDs in Hollywood how do they solve this they move it to between transitions so it goes black and you hear it and then it goes over here that's great what a fantastic future jetpack world we live in piece of shit so I would never do that again don't ever do that and when you once you learn all these things you're like oh Jesus oh man that's horrible anyway other questions can I can you make fun of DVD more yes yeah you just asked how do you how do I feel about people torrenting my DVDs I wrote it I wrote an essay called why the BBS documentary is creative commons and in that I talk about why I very specifically understand what's going on with this whole thing you know there's a little bit of a horror going on in a lot of industry because okay I'm gonna in trouble I I call media I call a lot of me I'm gonna get in trouble I call a lot of media makers air sellers because they enclose some air and try to sell it to you and like the oxygen bar and that's not you know I mean that's my thing they're like it's my fucking livelihood I'm like well your livelihood is extremely duplicatable now sir you know when we used to be able to make a wheel and it took three days for Bob the cobbler to make the fucking wheel great but now we have a machine that makes 4,000 wheels a minute don't stop thinking give Bob a you know make Bob the guard or something you can watch the machine so stop trying to keep Bob around okay I understand poor Bob you have a lot of jet we have a lot of jet companies in this world that have people whose job is to wind the propeller and the thing is is when I made this I realized we're in a world now where some people simply do not pay for media they don't they have tools to do it to get it for you no matter what you put on it they're gonna get around it all you've done now is treat the rest of your audience like a bunch of you know criminals twitch bags who are gonna steal you never know get back here I have a knife and meanwhile the guys over here like we and so they feel really elite over here because look at all the look at how they're pounding mom into the ground they didn't even touch me I got 20 so what you end up with is this kind of a stupid dichotomy so my take on it the whole time around two or three weeks in I think it was like two weeks in info fallout wears the documentary and I contacted them I'm like you go girl and I found where they posted it and I put up this thing going just so everyone's clear here it's region zero it's deep there's no CSS it's creative commons so they essentially went into a McDonald's and scooped up all the sugar and ketchup packets I'm at free food I scammed some food and I said okay well okay well here's a link to a PayPal account if you want to send me some money but otherwise you go when I was 20 I couldn't afford pizza either so of course you know you can afford a $50 hard drive but you can't afford the $10,000 worth of movies you're putting on it and they don't see a problem with that because it's very hard to explain them why so this is gonna look like I'm doing a sales pitch but I'm not when I did my documentary I want to make sure that it would have you know three DVDs it has the photos of everybody there it's frigging huge it's got the photos in it it's 18 gigabytes of data it's got a DVD ROM with the stuff all the photos I took the idea being twofold number one make it worth the money that I'm selling it for and two make it so fucking big it's really hard to bit torrent I will out feature your ass in nine hours some some people want me but some people they're quite happy to watch a postage stamp size rip of your film with no subtitles and trying to convince those people that they want to spend 50 bucks on anything is impossible so I don't do that so when I saw the bit torrent thing I just hopped right on there and I was like hey I mean I have the NFO framed and I've talked to the kid and the kids like I hope to be like you and I'm like yeah ripped off like you anyway no I didn't he's like I hope to go into film someday I'm like oh what a great start you are what a great start you're getting up there so no my attitude with the torrent thing was like you know go ahead at worst I mean I get mail from kids go I got mail from a kid just recently he's like I'm 17 I never used BBS this is the best fucking documentary I've ever seen you know I downloaded off a bit torrent site it's great wow thanks for making this thing you know that you know I'm like oh at worst I you know it makes me sad actually I had a school right to me they purchased a copy and they say can we show this to the kids may we show this to the kids and I was like you can make copies for that I wrote this big thing back around like you can make copies for the teachers so they can all evaluate it you can have a fundraiser where you charge money to show it to everybody you know you can edit it to take out the profanity which is you know pretty big in some places to show it to the kid do what you need to do you bought it you own it it's a piece of fabric in your house cut it up put it somewhere put on your front yard you know don't don't don't come back to the fabric maker going please you know no call-up singer going oh sir can I can I please do it so no anyway that was a very long answer for a very short question was there a internal anger is a fuel any other questions actually you know I always thought that was the reason why the hacks or CD got DVD got so ripped last year was because or it was a year before where they were just ripping it and coming up to him and trying to get him to sign the rips yeah the porn DVD because it was a cynical exploitation of a subculture presented that subculture in an attempt to make them swallow it and they knew it they're like wow this was made as long as probably took as long to make as it is long and they felt that you watch this thing and you're like okay well this guy really worked on this thing I maybe I want to buy it or maybe I can't afford it but I would if I could you know I would I'll keep an eye out for him and maybe something else some other time people know people know when you're not even trying you know when you just anyway so that so I think that's why I mean I didn't I didn't have that happen I mean don't try it now but I mean I had I didn't have anyone walk up to me and go you know hey I ripped your DVD can you sign it haha they stayed away they either bought a copy thank me for it or whatever oh he's waving okay that's oh yeah oh yes exactly just so you all know I'll stand here and answer questions and sell DVDs for a little you know while longer here gladly just but you should know that the awards ceremony will be starting over in the big room so if you want to go to Jeff Moss's box of hot you know you should go any other questions hello how do I make something as boring as somebody typing on a computer and looking at a screen interesting in a film environment and the answer is you instead focus on why that person was there in the first place you ask them why are you at this keyboard why were you doing this why did you think it was so important why did you think it was important to do that and you focus on him knowing that the story of his thing you know the pure technical aspect can be downloaded what did the software look like well you can download that what did it we waited it's over here who was on it here's the user list but asking a human being why are you even here why why you know why is the onion shack bbs so important to you versus the you know the cat box bbs which you hated what was so bad about the cat box bbs and so you go you know it's it's one of these things you know instead of asking why you know how do I make this interesting ask why they're even there in the first place go back to the human thing that's the answer when I do text adventures people like I love the I'm shooting it in high definition which I think it's anyway I'm sure yeah anyway yeah yeah actually the url is get lamp calm the movie's called get lamp don't make one and anyway so it's like well what how could you possibly make that interesting it's a bunch of text adventures but it's not it's actually the story of a bunch of storytellers who had to decide everything their readers could ever want to know ever and how do you write like that how do you say I went across a bridge and you know some people gonna go can I whiz off the bridge can I blow up the bridge what if I bring a dragon on the bridge it can I move the bridge is the bridge is there actually a bridge is the bridge in my mind and he had to think all this stuff out beforehand and you had to do it you had to come up with this stuff so to me talking to the people who came up with those ideas will be fascinating how much of that comes out in like just scrolling text is another thing because it's not it's not again it's not how do you make zork interesting it's why did you make zork why did you decide to make a groove why did you make it why why did you do full sentences in that way why did you insist on doing it and so that's the thing those answered questions are where the interest comes from and then people go wow that's pretty interesting um anyway any other question yes sir when slash dot is a really great place to get very informed useful comments especially if you go to negative one so I did that a few times I've been announced uh humanity but one of them was this film was actually the sequel to mr. scott's first film the history of drying paint a 200 hour epic and I wrote back like you know like dude you know how hard it was to get dutch boy to sponsor that but one of the other comments was oh fuck this I'm waiting for the extended director's edition um actually one of the easter eggs is a sequel is a trailer for the sequel to this you know I went and hired a drive time dj in Seattle called smiling j andrew's to talk about the tears of bordeaux this epic anyway so that's buried in there you know because no the a lot of people are like well are you you know where's the sequel I do get that by the way I do get where's the sequel the answer is I'm going to be taking pretty much all of the 250 hours cutting out the parts where they're like where do I look where do I look and that kind of stuff which is question answer and I'm just going to put them all up on archive.org so archive.org is getting like 200 hours of footage uh attribute share alike and I'm like make your own fucking documentary right there so no that's that's pretty much um that that's how I'm going to handle it I've already made a grange with them I'm going to be another sub collection of 200 plus hours of footage and and people can make their own because of course you know when I make it I'm American and it's kind of shot in North America so the Europeans hate me because I didn't tell their story and I'm like well I couldn't I couldn't tell it where were you fuck nut 2005 so now they can take my footage and they can remix it under the license any way they want to and redo it and do whatever they want so I I hope people do it I always say I hope this is the worst documentary on bbs is ever made and that all the rest of the ones that come kick my ass but currently I am the lowest priced one any other questions yes miss okay uh netflix what was the other one you said green scene I never heard of it but beyond that the traditional relationship with rental agencies is traditionally an adversarial one normally the movie directors don't yeah so actually there's very little I have found this out there's very little mechanism to go no please rent me because people think that's a money loser so they normally want to go through it so I've told people I mean I haven't is been number and go tell netflix that he's been number and a couple people have requested it but netflix hasn't figured out how to reach me I wouldn't care I mean I know that I I I know that I was I'm in at least a few rental companies like I had a friend who said who I hadn't talked to for like 10 years he was like I was walking by the computer the computer film section of my rental place and there was your film and I thought oh I guess I might as well see the film my friend made and need for speed just in case what he said to me so so I know it's out there being rented but it's one of those things of like yeah I'd love to do it I mean again this is where you get into distribution issues right now I'm the distributor I'm doing it all myself because money and when you go through a middleman middleman goes money and you go money and then a little bit later when you go through other one it's like money money money nickel and so and you know and that's fine when it's one billion nickels but it's anyway amazon I sell through amazon here's a good example I sell through amazon everyone's like because I had a lot of people who were like well why would I buy it from some anonymous fucking up with the computer I want to buy it from amazon great excellent good 60 bucks reason why is because amazon takes 55 percent of the cover price so when you set so people like why are you selling 50 on your site and you know uh uh uh and you're selling for 60 on amazon I'm like well because less than half is a bitch slap I'll deal with half I don't mind getting 25 of the 50 instead of 50 but man I'm not going to you know that's just that hurts that hurts that that hurts in the no no hole so I actually ended up just you know selling through them and it's nice I mean they'll they'll call me and say we need 30 units so I box up 30 units in mail I have 5 000 copies in my basement um because I think big um yeah oh that's yeah that's the thing I probably should make clear um you know I shot it for this and a lot of people were like wow you're really fucked but I really pulling for you you know that kind of thing like I'm gonna walk backwards across the United States it's like you go kind of a deal anyway the bbs documentary was profitable within three weeks of coming out like and I mean like including the 30 000 dollar duplication price so it was it was like 30 000 dollars to duplicate it it was like 20 something thousand we're still arguing over exactly how much it was my wife is mad at that and so on you know she's the shit you know as soon as it was a product she grabbed it I don't even see it anymore she's shipping I don't see it um so so you know it was like 50 grand I made 50 grand within the first three weeks because people I knew that I knew that there was a story to be told I saw the gap and I didn't do it for money or it would have been shot in six months I did it for four years because let's get it right and I got it right I think I got it somewhat right I got a good start I got something where someone can go it's like that except actually it was blue it's much easier to go and it was blue as opposed to trying to explain to somebody everything this tells them so that's good I like that I don't mind being put down that way um but yeah I definitely was able to um what's the word I was I was able to recoup my costs almost immediately so that reminds me I'm selling these I think we have to get out we have to get out sir yeah we gotta get out they're gonna close the tent it's been wonderful to have you all stick around


First Unitarian, Bruce Jackson, and I am one of the ministers here. Today I am joined by the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Stephen Gregorius, and Daniel Karns with special guest musicians James Waldo and Trevor Stevenson. Thank you very much for being with us. The vision of FUS is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our UU values in our lives, our community, and our world. If you are visiting us today, welcome. We are so very glad that you are with us. If you would like more information about First Unitarian society, please stop by the welcome table, which is located in the commons just through those doors and around the corner. We hope that you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee hour immediately following the service also held in the commons. Now your vision and mission task force is charged this year with helping us together as a congregation create a new vision statement and mission statement for us to live into. They have produced a draft of both of these things for us to consider and reflect on in preparation for eventually creating a document that we can approve as a congregation. The wording of that is among many other places is available on the table right across the way from these doors, but they are holding a series of in-person listening sessions for you to come and give your feedback on the wording, the things that speak to you, maybe things that don't, things you might want to see changed. One of those listening sessions is immediately after this service, so it'll be held here in the auditorium. Please feel invited and encouraged to go and get the beverage of your choice and then cycle back into the room you would like to provide your feedback on the draft mission and vision statement. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. From our very first breath we reach out. Co-regulation, not self-regulation, is our nature. We find our cues from the sun and the moon, from each parent and caregiver. We find our place in this great turning planet by turning to one another, generation to generation. We awaken to the dawn and fall asleep at the evening's end. Our life's journey is part of something greater, something simple, something divine. A flame cannot be lit without a spark, a life cannot begin without the air, and we cannot begin to find ourselves without love. May we reach out to one another. May we offer love and nurturing care. May we join together in celebration of the interdependence of our lives. In this spirit, let us worship together. And now I invite you to rise in all the ways that we do and join me in the words of aspiration for the kindling of our chalice. A chalice lit in our midst is a symbol of our liberal faith, a faith built on the foundation of freedom, reason, and tolerance, a faith sustained by acts of kindness and justice, a faith that visions a world flourishing with equality for all her people, a faith that requires thoughtfulness, a faith of wholeness. This tiny flame is the symbol of the spark of all this within each of us. Oh, really? Both versions are excellent. Let's sing together our opening hymn number 344 in the gray hymnal, a promise through the ages rings. A note of hope sustains us. Life is made of years and message Easter. So I would like to tell you a story today. You're welcome to come up here if you want, but there are no classes today, so we're not going to be leaving. Yeah, you're going to be leaving. Yeah, and that's cool. I mean, you can do what you need to do. But I want to tell you this story today about this pot. Well, I mean, not this pot literally, but a pot like this. So here's the way that the story goes. This is from a long time ago in China. And in this story, there is an emperor who is in charge of the whole country, but the emperor has no children. So there's no person who's going to become the next emperor by default. So he creates a plan for how he's going to choose the child who will get to be the next emperor. And this is his plan. He's going to call all the children in China to come visit him. Now, first of all, this is this is a story, right? So I don't really know how you would make it work to have all the children in China come to the same place at the same time. But the point is a lot of children, right? So a lot of children are going to come to the palace and he gives each of them one seed, one little tiny seed and says, I want you to take this seed home, to plant it, to take care of it. And then in a year, come back and show me what you have grown from this seed. So all these children come to the palace and they each get a seed, and they each take it home and they plant it. So one child in particular is one child in particular named Chen. He went home, he found a nice pot that his grandfather had made, probably even nicer than this, if I'm honest. And he got some nice dirt and he planted the seed and the dirt inside the pot and he took good care of it. He watered it, he looked after it, he kept it in the sunlight. And what do you think happened? Well, that was what he was hoping for and certainly what he was expecting. Oh, you think you know this story? Well, well, let's not spoil it. But nothing grew. He took good care of it. He did everything he was supposed to, but no plant grew. Months later, it's still just a pot with dirt in it and nothing else going on. Maybe some fertilizer? But, but he was pretty disappointed, right? I mean, I'd be disappointed too. This is, I have had an experience like this in that I am very bad at growing things, just straight up. So he was, he was sad, he was disappointed. He felt like it must have been his failure.  But his grandfather said, well, look, you, you took good care of it, right? You looked after it, you watered it, you made sure it got sunlight. You can tell the emperor that you can say, I did everything I was supposed to do. I took good care of it and this is what I have to show for it. So, so he did go back the next year and all those children from all over China came back to and everyone had a different pot with a different plant inside of it. There were so, and they were so beautiful. There were flowers and there were medicinal plants and plants that smell sweet and plants that grew tall and plants that grew wide. All kinds of different plants from all those seeds. And so the emperor had each child come up and show what they had grown and he looked at it and he appreciated it and he told them how nice it looked. And then they came to Chen and here comes Chen with his empty pot. And Chen said, emperor, I planted the seed you gave me, I watered it, I took care of it, but nothing grew. And the emperor said, thank you very much, Chen. You know, he appreciated it, he validated it and he went on to the next person. And so it went until all the children had shown off all these different plants and at the end of all of that the emperor said, you have shown me so many beautiful plants that you have done such a good job raising and each of you has worked hard. I can see that. But I have to say that there was a secret behind those seeds that I gave you. You see, all of those seeds had been boiled, which means that they could not grow into another living thing no matter how hard you worked at it. So you grew some beautiful plants but I can promise you that they didn't grow from the seeds that I gave you. The only one of you who took the seed that I gave you and did what was asked and told the truth about what happened because of that was Chen and his empty pot. So he will be the next emperor. Why do you think that was? What do you think the emperor was looking for? Yeah, so he was looking, it was a test and he was trying to find someone who could take good care of the people in the empire and the reason why he chose Chen was because Chen had told the truth about what happened. Everybody else, I think perhaps we could be generous and say it came from a place of misunderstanding but everybody else was pretending that they had grown something from a seed when they hadn't. They went, they cheated. They got a seed from somewhere else or maybe, you know, let's not necessarily blame the children here. I bet there were some parents involved, right? I mean, let's be real. Yes, but only Chen was willing to tell the truth about the kind of disappointing outcome from that boiled seed. Thank you so much for listening to my story and now we can return to our previously scheduled program into a time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community here and also our outreach offering recipient, whom this week is the Odyssey project an award-winning UW Madison project that takes a whole family approach to breaking the cycle of generational poverty through access to education. It has empowered more than 500 low-income adults to find their voices and get a jumpstart at earning college degrees they never thought possible. Using a six credit English literature course, UW Madison faculty members introduce adults to great works of literature, philosophy, history, and art and help them improve skills in writing and critical thinking. There are multiple ways to share your gifts this morning. Baskets now being passed in the auditorium may be used to deposit cash or checks and you will see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website fussmattison.org and find the text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Maintaining integrity and finding trust in ourselves is a constant effort. Being true to ourselves and to our own ideals can often be very challenging. One of the ways in which it can be most challenging comes in the conflict between our expectations or biases about a person or a group and some crucial moral choice about what is right and what is true. The Rallifant Club of Cleveland, Ohio began over a hundred years ago as a society for those who studied, appreciated, and in particular collected books, rare and limited editions specifically. Besides promoting friendship and camaraderie among their members from their earliest beginnings, the Rallifant Club existed in part to publish its own fine collectible editions. In 1899, they published a special prestige edition of a previously issued short story collection written by Charles W. Chestnut, a Cleveland native. He had hopes that because they'd found his work worthy of publication, they might admit him to their special club. But his application was rejected on the grounds that one or two members thought the time hadn't come. Charles W. Chestnut was black, you see, and the here to date all white club didn't feel ready for change. The usual spotty defenses of this sort of polite bigotry rang especially hollow in this instance since the Rallifant Club didn't have much of a tradition to lean on. It had only then been in existence for seven years. Charles Chestnut's response to this indignity became one of his most famous and well regarded short stories. Its name, Baxter's Procrustes, hints at its ultra-fancy overwrought language. The entire thing is a satire of how tastes and appearances interfere with the actual appreciation and honest criticism of art. The story is about a club of book lovers identical to the Rallifant Club who greatly prized their limited editions and jealously protect their value. This was in an era of bookmaking when it was common to print multiple pages of a book on one over large page which was then folded and folded again and woven into the binding so that after the whole thing was printed and bound you would have to cut the various creases in order to read the actual pages of the book. Baxter, the main character in the story, is a member of the club but realizes that his fellows have so fetishized their first editions that no one actually reads them. They would have to destroy their value in order to do that by cutting the pages. So when the time comes for the club to publish its next edition, he volunteers to provide some of his well regarded poetry and so every member of the club unwittingly manages to buy and to praise as erudite and poignant a rare edition of a book whose pages are all blank on the inside. Chestnut satire of the Rallifant Club wasn't about race ostensibly but it was about how assumptions and biases often lead us to judge a book literally without reading it. Certainly that does apply to racism and all other forms of oppression born bias but it also extends even beyond that. The impulse to think someone I trust or like or who is similar to me in some way said it so it must be true or did it so it must be right is a powerful and persistent one as is its opposite. In a passage in the gospels the apostles the leading students of the teacher Jesus had been arguing with each other over who was the greatest in the eyes of their teacher hoping to win favor one of them came to him and declared master we saw someone we did not know casting out demons in your name and we told them to stop because they were not with us. Casting out demons was one of Jesus's signature moves you understand. The apple polishing apostle seems to expect praise for engaging in what we might call today proactive brand management on his teacher's behalf but instead of praise Jesus gave the opposite. He told the student that he was wrong and not to do the same again because as he put it whoever is not against us is with us casting out no further no further mention is made in the story of who this unknown exorcist might have been someone whose faith was powerful enough apparently for them to at least attempt miracles in Jesus's name without his presence or even necessarily his knowledge perhaps they received the rebuke from the apostle and persisted perhaps they thought this one knows the teacher personally where I do not he must be right and I must be wrong if it was the latter then their spiritual activism was just one of the countless things that the world has lost because those with gifts to share were driven from them when they trusted the authority of others over their own inner calling the artist who stopped painting the poet who stopped writing the preacher who stopped teaching should deserve some understanding the pressure to conform to such authority can sometimes be overwhelming particularly when it is backed up with force in an episode of Star Trek the next generation Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by a hostile government though his mission is a noble one it is determined that he is not a prisoner of war but a terrorist an enemy of the state and so the protections normally required by diplomacy and the rules of war do not apply he is tortured for information hurt harmed harassed and humiliated in all the ways that nations both ancient and modern have employed against those whose fundamental humanity they reject yet he does not break in his jailers final bid to defeat him Picard is shown four lights blindingly bright he is instructed that there are five the pain will stop when he agrees to that statement he struggles and resists and manages to hold on until conditions change and he is released on his way out he declares to his torture defiantly there are four lights now this all reads like a triumph of the human will against inhumane conditions but at the close of the story the captain confesses to a friend that he was only moments away from breaking down it was not simply a matter of the pain and the terrible conditions by that point he had been so ground down by his experience that he was on the verge of saying that there were five lights because although he knew that there were only four he had begun to see five injustice cannot change the truth it cannot make the wrong thing right but it can do the next best thing by robbing us of the integrity needing needed to resist it Vaslav Havel the Czech playwright revolutionary and unlikely politician described such resistance as living within the truth any great injustice depends upon a very large number of people living out a lie pretending to believe what they do not believe pretending that they are indifferent to people and things that they care about and generally denying what is true in their heart out of fear or complacency but any moment of living in truth even a small one threatens the unjust status quo because it points to the lie and points out to everyone who lives in it the absurdity of that lie Vaslav Havel compared this absurdity the absurdity underlying all injustice to the night that he was walking down a road in the dark and fell into an open sewer suddenly submerged in a pool of well a word that I'm not going to say from the pulpit Havel was in trouble some friends began to scramble around the edge of the hole with flashlights making different attempts at a rescue while he focused his energies on just trying to swim it was a good bit of time before anyone had the wise idea to run and fetch a long ladder the situation was momentarily a hopeless one few things will suck the hope out of you like being trapped in a lightless sewer pit but hope still managed to reach into the forsaken place it is Havel said state of mind not a state of the world in the face of absurdity life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly emptily without meaning without love and finally without hope to live with integrity we must be willing to believe ourselves when it would be easier to believe someone else we must be willing to side with those whom we do not know or do not like simply because it is right and even though it may be unpleasant or carry some personal cost the price of integrity is high and its reward is low that's not a very conventional argument for a preacher to make but if I was going to argue for integrity on the basis of its rewards I wouldn't really be arguing for integrity at all the poet hafees one of the most passionate mystical voices of the rich cultural tradition of Islamic poetry in what is today modern Iran wrote about our human condition centuries ago you entered form to give a holy message an envoy from the inconceivable is each of us when you have completed that courageous task you will be able to return to a world that does not know sadness but so difficult your divine errand it will take a lifetime to accomplish love along the way being true to the holy message entrusted to each of us requires us to look past our biases and expectations our ignorance our anger and our comforts and consider over and over again what is the right thing to do what is the true thing to say this message emerged from a meditation on a quote from el hajmalik el shabazz that is Malcolm X which I return to again and again to remind me of my commitment to that ongoing struggle Malcolm came to prominence as a leader within the nation of Islam a afrocentric religious identity movement which was inspired by Islam but also led by a founder who according to the religion's teachings was God incarnate that man Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm eventually had a falling out and Malcolm moved towards a more conventional practice of Islam as part of that evolution he went to Mecca on the hajj the pilgrimage that Islam requires all Muslims to make if they are healthy enough and have the means to do so at least once in their lifetimes on that journey he became more convinced than ever that the man the man he had been following was not divinely infallible and he came to meet Muslims from every continent who treated him with kindness and fellowship including those with white skin whom he had been taught to hate afterwards in letters to his friends he wrote that he'd have had enough of someone else's propaganda as he put it I'm for truth no matter who tells it I'm for justice no matter who it is for or against I'm a human being first and foremost and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole even as he said this back in the United States his home country the same consideration was never returned to him for the rest of his life he remained narrowly understood in popular society as the voice of violent angry blackness his message about listening for the truth no matter the source was ironically never really listened to no matter what you expect if you live long enough if you listen carefully enough you can be assured that the truth will come to you from some corner that you had previously ignored or disregarded and that wrong counsel or wrong action will be undertaken by someone that you trusted or looked to as a perfect source of truth the poet Naomi she have nigh writes about the variety of different ways in which we express our humaneness and in particular the different ways that we pray in just one small microcosm from her own experience she writes there was the method of kneeling a fine method if you lived in a country where the stones were smooth the women dreamed wistfully of bleached court yards hidden corners where knee fit rock their prayers were weathered rib bones small calcium words uttered in sequence as if this shedding of syllables could somehow fuse them to the sky there were the men who had been shepherd so long they walked like sheep under the olive trees they raised their arms hear us we have pain on earth we have so much pain there is no place to store it but the olives bobbed peacefully in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme at night the men ate heartily flat bread and white cheese and were happy in spite of the pain because there was also happiness some prize the pilgrimage wrapping themselves in new white linen to ride buses across miles of vacant sand when they arrived at mecca they would circle the holy places on foot many times they would bend to kiss the earth and return their lean faces housing mystery while for certain cousins and grandmothers the pilgrimage occurred daily lugging water from the spring or balancing the baskets of grapes these were the ones present at births humming quietly to perspiring mothers the ones stitching intricate needlework into children's dresses forgetting how easily children's soil clothes there were those who didn't care about praying the young ones the ones who had been to america they told the old ones you are wasting your time time the old ones prayed for the young ones they prayed for a lot to mend their brains for the twig the round moon to speak suddenly in a commanding tone and occasionally there would be one who did none of this the old man fousy for example fousy the fool who beat everyone at dominoes insisted he spoke with god as he spoke with goats and was famous for his laugh charles chestnut did eventually become a member of the ralphan club in fact his children reported after his passing that some of his happiest days of the last several decades of his life were spent in that club enjoying the company of its members it still exists today and despite having been racially integrated more than a hundred years it persists defiantly in being a men's only organization progress is possible but it is not guaranteed and it is more possible where we are open to the idea that truth or justice or both will come to us from a place we do not expect from something we have disregarded from some person that we have already written off because those things are not closed off to any person upon this earth we are only able to close ourselves off to them ship campaign in which each of us has a little bit of work to do to decide within ourselves what this place this community means to us and how we will reflect that meaning in our pledge of financial support for the year ahead during this time it is our practice to invite members of the congregation to share their perspective with you on why f us is meaningful to them and why they choose to support this congregation financially here to offer that message today are some members of the ryan joy family hi my name is elissa ryan joy and i'm michael ryan joy elissa and i have been members at f us for almost 15 years now and we have two kids winnie and thea who are involved in a number of activities at first unitarian we wanted to share a few thoughts as we wrap up our stewardship campaign we tried to do the thing where our whole family sits on the couch and respectfully listens to each other speak for this uh that worked out about as well as you might expect yep so we're trying something different what do you like about f us thea um after prayer before prayer prayer um i really like uh participating in prayer so like seeing service and practice that's also fun getting to know people like at coffee hour in between the two services and hot cocoa that's nice and um i also really like re because it's more open-ended than school so it gives you an opportunity to share your thoughts without just being like no that's the wrong answer you get to actually share your thoughts about big ideas where there really isn't one right answer so serving on the board the last three years has made me really reflect on what this community means to me so let me share a few things that i've realized i value about f us um first of all we have so many really incredible inspiring and and loving people in our midst here i've felt really blessed to to deepen my relationships with so many of you and there's also clearly a passion here for living out our uu values i think that that shows up in the larger communities and the world that all of us are a part of and also right here in our own congregation so i wanted to just share a couple of examples with you uh the first one is is one that i don't think has escaped anybody which is our choice to move to a co-ministry model of leadership which prioritizes collaboration and trust and brought us our amazing team kelly kelly cracker and kelly oj another example of living those values that maybe has been a little bit less visible to some but i'd like to spotlight it here um i know not everyone's able to read every single communication that comes from f us or participate in all the parish meetings um but over the last few years we've committed to bringing staff at f us up to the recommended salary levels for their positions it's been a really important step both to promote equity and to enable our staff to support themselves and their families so as we take time this month to consider what we can contribute to f us we know that a large part of our budget goes toward program and carried out by our staff who who really pours so much of themselves um into our congregation so we can show our appreciation and care and love by giving what we can in the same spirit of transparency that kelly aj kicked off our month of stewardship we'd also like to share how we decided on our pledge amount this year we are a single income household with compensation that's made up of two parts a stable salary and then an annual bonus payment that varies from year to year so our pledge reflects three percent of that salary and then 10 percent of this year's bonus it's an amount that feels good for our family situation and we think also reflects the deep appreciation that we have for this community many of you have already thoughtfully considered your financial contributions for this year and so far about half of our members are increasing their pledges from last year or becoming sustaining stewards and a lot of new members are making their first pledge f us members also made a new or renewed commitment of time and talent our family has found that being engaged in shared ministry by volunteering our time is fun most of the time and fulfilling all of the time as i roll off the board this year i've committed to chairing our nominations committee to going back to teaching ari and also participating in our music ministry through singing in the meeting house chorus i promise to singing choir my favorite volunteer um job is to be a reader and make unicorn out of the name tag um scraps i like to contribute to f us by singing choir and bringing baked goods for events and making things for cabaret i also really like um before choir teaching people board games and i think a lot of people enjoy that so we encourage you to thoughtfully consider your contributions of time and money to first unitary in society to all of those who continue to make those commitments we appreciate all that you do to support a community that's so important to our family thank you wow each week we gather caring in our hearts and joys the losses of our days we hold our own pain and celebration and those are the ones we love we share these here knowing they are held gently in care in this community maria duncan asks us to light a candle of grief and memory for her mother joanne murphy who passed from life on march 20th may joanne be at peace and may comfort come to all those who knew her as they moved through this time of mourning we light a candle of honor for linda warren's longtime friend and fellow Celtic harpist musician harp harper tosh who died this month at his home near seattle after a long battle with cancer we light a candle to acknowledge and hold in our care those living with and those struggling with depression mindful of the often invisible burden they carry we wish for them the care and support they need and deserve and the deep knowledge that they are not alone we light a candle of celebration in anticipation of the transgender day of visibility which is this coming friday together we affirm the precious gift of all trans lives both here in this community and all over the earth we light a candle in solidarity with the people of ukraine and in compassion and care for the people of syria and turkey we hold in our hearts all the areas of our precious world mired in struggle and heartbreak the places we know and the places unknown to us we earn for peace for safety for freedom and joy for all people everywhere on this shared globe please join me now in turning both inward and outward as we pray for three things among the countless that we might turn our thoughts towards at this hour let us pray for peace peace between nations which is the presence of just relations the sharing of the common wheel and trusting in others to make their own decisions in the same way that we might wish to be trusted by them and peace in every human heart which is the presence of love and the needful gifts of knowing and being known by other souls as beautifully and tragically human as we are let us pray also for hope hope which flickers and flashes among the dullness of fatigue and the sharp points of grief hope which sustains us when nothing else can or should hope which is our greatest need from the world and our greatest offering to it and finally let us pray for joy the joy of laughter that comes easily between old friends the joy of unexpected surprises of a world still so full of wonder as on the day when we were born and joy that lives in memories of a past which is no less real for the distance now in years from it for the for these three things and for so much else we yearn together with a common heart amen now before we rise to sing our closing hymn i want to teach you the low part that's a two part song and it has a very fun bass line if you have your hymnals it's on page 368 and we're going to teach it to you and then we'll stand and i'll sing the melody together it goes like this now let us sing sing sing sing now let us sing sing sing sing lift up your voice be not afraid now let us sing to the power of the faith within so if you want to sing that we welcome it the rest of us are going to sing the melody let's rise and body and or his spirit sing sing to the power of the faith sing to the power of the lift up your voice sing to the power simplicity the path that leads to compassion and wisdom that leads to happiness peace and ease welcome the stranger and open your heart to a world in need of healing be courageous before the forces of hate hold and embody a vision of the common good that serves the need of all people blessed be go in peace and please be at rest for the poster


Governor Matt Bevan's announcement last week about his plans to change Kentucky's state employee pension plan to a 401k plan has many concerned. Chief among those are school districts fearful of a mass exodus of teachers who may retire early in order to get their full pension. In my opinion if this passes it will be the worst thing that happens to education in anyone's lifetime in the state of Kentucky. Jenkins Independent Schools Superintendent Mike Jenton said the plan would be catastrophic to his district and others like it. It's going to make it much harder to recruit quality candidates and as everybody knows in eastern Kentucky it's already difficult to recruit quality candidates anyway and this is going to make it even more difficult. It's going to put a little more financial burden on us whenever we go to the defined contribution plan because some of that money 2% is coming out of the district's funding to match those employees defined contributions. Here at Jenkins if all of our staff was on a defined contribution plan it would be an extra $60,000 to $100,000 out of our coffers every year that right now we're using to pay for employees, we're using to pay for personnel. Bevan has said the new plan would not affect current state employees who have paid into the current pension plan and would only affect new incoming hires. Critics disagree and with the bill and the plan still being drafted many are waiting to see how they will ultimately be affected Jenkins Independent Schools included. This contract is a promise to the workers of the state of Kentucky and now we're going back against that promise and we're starting to try and renegotiate the contract with everyone and to me that's not fair. Everyone who's got the time in to retire will retire because if they stay till after June 30th of 2023 they will be losing money in their pension so you will see a mass exit to some people who can retire. It's easy to dedicate your life to your own children but it's much more of a sacrifice to dedicate your life to other people's children and most people did that with the knowledge that whenever they retired they would be guaranteed a good solid pension and they would be taken care of basically for the rest of their life. Kentucky's pension debt currently sits at more than $37 billion. In Jenkins, Chris Anderson, EKB News.