Good evening. Good crowd. My name is Robert Whalen. I am a public programs manager here at the Barnes Foundation, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the blissfully air conditioned space here at the Comcast Auditorium. We have a wonderful lecture in store for you tonight with a distinguished artist, and it's my honor and privilege to introduce him tonight. Photographer Ron Tarver is here to discuss his work documenting the life of the African-American cowboy. Mr. Tarver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer whose work has been featured in notable publications, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Inquirer Sunday Magazine, National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Black and White Magazine. In addition to his photojournalism, he is co-author of the book We Were There, Voices of African-American Veterans, published by Harper Collins in 2004, which was accompanied by a traveling exhibition that debuted at the National Constitution Center here in Philadelphia. Professor Tarver's photography has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 30 solo and 50 group exhibitions, and is included in many private, corporate, and museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Oklahoma Museum of History, and the National Museum of Art of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He received a BA in Journalism and Graphic Arts from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, and currently serves as a visiting instructor of photography at Swarthmore College and is in his final year overseeing the MFA program at the University of the Arts. Professor Tarver's work has spanned many genres, including sports, photojournalism, fine art, and architecture, but some of his most striking work has been that examining the lives of African-American cowboys. By showcasing African-American riders, Professor Tarver has aimed to demonstrate the rich history and vivacity of African-American cowboy culture, while also showing that being an African-American cowboy means surviving discrimination, racism, and prejudice. His photographs of these communities elicit powerful responses that echo Mohamed Borouisa's current exhibition, Urban Riders. Professor Tarver will speak more to his experiences documenting these communities and individuals. Please join me in welcoming him to the bar. OK, people showed up. I thought it would be too hot, so. One little correction, I do not oversee the program.  So I'm actually working in my FA at UArts. So in my third year, so I've had about two hours sleep for the last two or three weeks. So if I stutter a bit, you'll understand what's going on. I also want to thank the Barnes. I'm so honored and privileged to have this opportunity to speak here. The Barnes is just, as we all know, just one of the most outstanding organizations and collections in the world. It's just fascinating. I want to thank Kathleen from pronouncing her name wrong. I think it's Deidre, maybe. Alida, Alia, and Steven for making all this happen. When I got an email a few months ago asking to speak at the Barnes, I thought, this is a joke. But yeah, so it's a really honor and privilege to be here. I was thinking about this whole thing about black cowboys at the Barnes. And how does that work? And I thought, well, it took me a while to get my head around why this is here, why the show is here. And I thought, if Dr. Barnes was here, he would be high five in everybody, I'm sure. Because his vision for his collection was to be a living thing. It wasn't to be in some stuffy institution where the pictures just sort of hang on the wall and you walk by them in reverence and just pay respect to the images. His vision was to have these pictures almost like a working lab where he would rearrange things and put them next to things. And when you walk in the collection, you see it. We've all seen the Barnes. It's really a wacky kind of thing. I mean, he has hinges next to chairs next to priceless artworks. And he was constantly rearranging things. And I think, how does this connect with Muhammad's exhibition? And I think it's right up the alley of what Barnes would have done. Because this is contemporary art. When Barnes was collecting his work, it was at the forefront of art.  We can't see the brushstrokes. And so Barnes goes over to Europe and brings these paintings back where they're just this wild impressionist kind of ideas about the human form and painting people that aren't beautiful and all these conventions that just flew in the face of American art and was panned by the art community here. But what he assembled is something that is second to none in the world. And so I think anything fits in the Barnes. Any sort of contemporary art sort of fits here. Because that was Barnes' vision for art, was to make connections with the viewing public, to make connections with community, which is exactly what that Muhammad's work does. It makes connections with a community that probably most people wouldn't see. Most people wouldn't go there if there hadn't been the horse day film. So there are all these connections with the way with Barnes philosophy and how that work fits into and makes connections with the price of collection that is here. My work takes more was I did this work for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is the Sony magazine it ran in in 1993, actually, the year my daughter was born. And so my work is more journalistic in nature. It's not so much conceptual. But my goal was to tell a story about not just black cowboys, but that whole experience that blacks have and the connection they have with the West. I grew up in Oklahoma, so if you hear a little bit of a twang in my accent, that's where it's coming from. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and grew up around horses. And really didn't think much about the fact that there were horses in our backyards and my neighbor's backyards. It was just the way it was. We didn't necessarily wear cowboy hats or I wore cowboy boots and learn not to wear cowboy boots when you're around horses because you slip a lot. So having that experience growing up in horse land and my grandfather that you'll see later was working cowboy, all those experiences, I guess I didn't really appreciate until I moved out here. And when I started working on the story and after the story ran, I had just worked on a big, long project on drugs in North Philly. So I just come off this and I thought I need something that's going to sort of pull my head back into reality that the story that I'd worked on before was all in black and white. And I wanted something that would be in color and to sort of because I usually don't work in color. So and I had known about the black cowboys here. And I thought, well, I'll just do this. It'll be a three month project and I'll get it out of the way and move on to something else. Here we are in what is it, 2017 and it's still hanging on. I did the story for the Inquire Cindy magazine. We got more letters for this, that story, than practically any other story I'd ever worked on. It was amazing. And the responses were, we didn't know that there were black cowboys. I'm like, what? How could you not know that? And so it was so overwhelming that I went to my editors and I said, well, why don't we do an extended story on black cowboy life across the country? So let me give me six months to work on this thing. Well, kind of in six months because this ran in October. So no, it ran in July. So yeah, I think I asked them for six months. So they cut me out for six months. And I went out and I found stories all across the country in Illinois and Oakland and Texas and all over the country and pulled out stories, pulled out a whole series of stories for Black History Month that month. And it appeared as a five-part series in the feature section over a week. So I got a chance to really sort of dig down into black cowboy life. And then National Geographic saw it and got in touch with me and said, we'd really like you to do that for the magazine. So they gave me a grant to go out and work on it for the magazine. I worked on that for maybe about six or seven months. When you're working for National Geographic, time just all kind of blends in together because you don't know. There were days that I woke up. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know what day it was. All I knew was I had a camera and I had to go out and make pictures of something. But it was an extended story. It ended up staying on their website for 10 years. And it was an amazing experience. And so here I am giving a talk at the Barnes about work that is still living, which I think I have about 2,000 rolls of film, slide film, with that. It still hasn't even been edited yet, a lot of it. Well, it's been through the Geographic edit. But I think there's another few edits that it needs to sort of be churned through. So let me get started here. I think I have the right button. Let me see. OK, all right. So I'm going to give you just a brief history of Cowboys. So I'm supposed to have presenters' notes. Are they not up here? Because I don't know what to say if they're not here. I don't want to touch anything because I know something would blow up. Is somebody back coming to help me? I could tap dance, but you wouldn't want to see that. I know they were having a few issues with some of the technology earlier. So nothing's showing up there. I could pull my laptop with that. OK. So I guess we could talk a little bit about what's going on in this image. I mean, this was a photo, a painting, 1966 of the carols, which Spanish Cowboys. And let me see if I can rely on my memory. I think the 1500s of Morsepix, 1562 or something, was when the first Cowboys appeared on the landscape. And they were primarily Spanish. They came up from Mexico. And in that, there were Mexicans. There were African slaves that were involved in that whole trade. And they herded cattle from Mexico, mainly in Texas. So a lot of the ranching and things like that were going on in Texas. Let me see if I can move through this. Some of the first ranches were the missions that were established in Texas, which actually was Mexico, actually, at that time, really was in Texas. And it's funny, we think of the missions as these places where they're sort of monasteries. But really, they were working ranches.  So they had to have everything. They had to have food. They had cattle. And they were huge. They were immense. They were like acres, hundreds of acres big. And they had to have cowboys to work those. So that was another job for a lot of cowboys. This was the document of Texas, not emancipation, but the establishment of Texas as a state. Annexation, right. I'm sorry. I'm doing all this from a very minor little part of my brain. But so when this happened, it created the migration of blacks out of Texas. The emancipation created the migration of blacks out of Texas to the north. I think the next slide is going to show you. A lot of them came along on these different trails. So you can see where these trails go. And my family settled in right around here in the northeastern part. My great-grandfather had a ranch in Texas. Actually, when he came, he was emancipated from. You need to see your notes. Oh, good. OK. All right. Figured technology decides not to work. Actually, I'll hold that for a second. Here's the scroll. OK. OK. Yeah, you're just going to have to scroll down here, but still advance it. OK. All right. All right. So let me see. So oh, so going back, how do I go back now? Don't I go? Anyway, you saw the p- I feel like a tap dance would be much better. So if I could go back. But I'm afraid to do this. But if you remember the picture of the Redbird, OK? The significance about that picture was in Oklahoma, there were 50 established towns, all black towns in the state of Oklahoma, which to this day is the largest established. There are more black towns in Oklahoma than any other state. And it's largely due to the migration of a lot of blacks through the, there we go, through the, from Texas. All right. So this brings us to my grandfather, Tommy Wilson. He's this guy here. He was a working cowboy. He drove cattle from Catoosa, Oklahoma to, let me see if I can get this thing going here, from Catoosa, Oklahoma to, which is in the northeastern part of the state, to from Fort Gibson, where I grew up, to Catoosa, which is about 80 miles. So that was what his job was. He was a cattle. And he also was a pretty good, from what I understand, a pretty good rodeo cowboy. He roped, he did roping and things like that. And evidently he had a really amazing roping horse. And if you know anything about roping horses, it's, they're really important because if you, when you rope a calf, the horse and rider have to be in perfect sync. The horse has to know what to do in order to tighten the rope up and to pull the cow back, so the calf back so you can tie its legs together. So evidently he had a really amazing roping horse. It's gonna, I'm gonna, this is a little out of sequence to the way I photographed it. This was during the National Geographic part of the shoot. But I did, I wanted to find a ranch that still had original black cowboys there. And I found a ranch, it was the Connor Ranch in Texas. I mean, it was one of these ranchers that, you know, this bigger than the state of Delaware kind of thing. And they had these cowboys that were still there. And this is Nathaniel Youngblood. Now, I'm sure all these men are probably gone by now, but he was 72 when I found him. And they still lived on the ranch. They still had bunks set up for him. And they had these amazing stories. Nathaniel was, told me the story that he had never been off the ranch before. He had spent his entire life on the ranch. And when the war came, World War II, they drafted him or he found himself on sitting on a beach shooting at planes as they flew over with banners in the back to test their ability of a merchant ship. And they gave him a high score and put him on the back of a gunboat. And he was out in the South Pacific shooting down Japanese planes. And he had this amazing thing. And then once the war was over, he came back to the ranch and that's where he spent the rest of his time. And that was his whole experience of, and I remember he summed up his experience of his marksman ship was from shooting rats around the pond.  So then this guy, K.J. Oliver, he worked on the McFadden ranch. It was 47,000 acres. And later on he came to the, oops, I'm sorry, I'm looking at this and him, K.J. Oliver. He worked on the McFadden ranch, 47,000 acres. And later came to the Conner ranch as a trail headsman. He was the guy that sort of made sure that all the herding was done correctly and everything. He, his quote that I asked him, so how long would you work? And he said they would work from can to can, which meant that they would work from can't see in the morning to can't see at night. And I thought that was really great. He said one time the weather was so bad that his job was to go around and break the ice that the windmills had pulled up for the, to feed the, to water the cattle. And he said it was so cold that he would break the ice on the, on one container of water. And by the time he had made it back to that container, it was frozen again. So he spent the whole day just breaking ice. So it wasn't pleasant. Living out there. This was Jesse Jones. He was born in 1916 near the San Antonio River. And he was known for his performance. He was evidently a pretty amazing cowboy performer. But he just had these amazing eyes. I just, that's the one thing that I really wanted to focus on. So that leads us up to the city cowboy. So like I said, I started this project in 1993. Wanted to show what it was like to just sort of be in with these guys. So I spent probably around three months maybe shooting these folks. This guy's name is Leo Hill. I followed him from his stables in the White House. Now, the stables that I photographed, I didn't photograph at Fletcher Street. So I photographed at a place called, it was called the White House, which was at 32nd and Master, which is now a, I think now it's a condos and maybe a whole foods or something, I don't know. But it's not there anymore. And so I followed a Leo on his ride from the White House to Fairmont, where he rode. And I just thought this was, I was hoping he would ride past this mural. This is in Strawberry Mansion and just to have that juxtaposition of these legends. This is the outside of the White House.  And so these two boys had just washed this horse and they were waiting for the horse to dry in the sun. You know, they would have these little impromptu parades where they would ride down Philly streets and folks would come out on their porch and they'd wave and they would be in full in all the cowboy regalia and would always draw a crowd. This photo was taken in Harlem during one of the, some of the Philly cowboys went up to meet some of the Harlem riders and they had another parade down the street. And it's sort of reminding me of riding through the canyons of Wyoming or, this is a barbecue. They would have these barbecues and kids would play and old timers would sit around and tell stories and there was always things going on. This guy, you know, I sort of traded in the six shooter for a beeper. You know, the Tim Gallon hat, you know, a lot of Tim Gallon hats. And this was outside the stables in Philly. So at the rodeo. So one of the things I did was traveled a lot with rodeo cowboys. I can't tell you how many days I spent in the back of a pickup truck riding from rodeo to rodeo.  It was an association, it was called the Anowax Saltgrass Rodeo Association. And it was in Brownsville, Texas and in the northeastern part of Texas.  This was in Opmogi, Oklahoma. This was rodeo queen in Opmogi. Opmogi, Oklahoma has the largest rodeo in the country. It's like 10,000 people would show up for this rodeo for over four days. It was just amazing. And this is a picture of a father and son. It's a little pixelated, but father and son, they were dressed alike. This little kid, he was, his dad was a roper and he was playing with the ropes. When this was, actually this was in Texas. It was at the, I think the Texas stockyards. There was a big rodeo going on. You know, it's all family show up and everything. But he was, he was just this little man, you know? But what I really, what I loved about it was his belt buckle was about as big as his head. So, these are guys behind scenes at a smaller rodeo getting ready, you know? I mean, rodeoing is tough. It's a very physical thing. And these guys were pretty banged up.  And there was a lot of behind the scenes sort of preparation just to keep their bones together so they could get on the horse and ride. This was at, this was in Oakland. I was in, this is why you do not want to wear cowboy boots when you shoot this because you have no traction. And I used to, I learned this the hard way because I shot a rodeo when I was working for, I worked for a small newspaper in Oklahoma. And I went out to shoot a rodeo and I wore my cowboy boots because you just kind of wear your cowboy boots. It's, you know, it's a thing. So, and I went out to shoot this thing and a bulls came at me and I turned to run. And it was kind of one of those cartoon things where your feet are spinning but you're not going anywhere. And that's when I realized, okay, you know, you wear cleats. And I looked around at all some of the other cowboys, some of the other shooters and they're all wearing football cleats, you know? So I thought, okay, noted chick. Another one. I mean, these bulls are amazingly big, you know? And I wanted to sort of get at that idea of just the power behind these things.  And these bulls are well taken care of because the people that own the bulls make their money, this is their livelihood. So they don't want anything to happen to these bulls. So, you know, I know we hear stories that, you know, to make the bulls jump, they put nails and things and straps and things like that to make them. I can, I have never seen that happen. These bulls are well trained.  So the more money the owner makes.  Point in case, point in here, this guy got bucked off and the bull literally like picked them up and flipped them in the air. Another one, you know, it's a brutal sport.  I was watching the, what is it called, the IFR International Finals, rodeo not too long ago and they don't even look like cowboys anymore.  One guy even had a football helmet with a cowboy hat on it. I thought, very cool. Yeah, you know, the horn is almost there.  So if you don't tie yourself up properly, the idea is you want to be able to release yourself from the bull and when you get bucked off, but he tied himself too tight and the bull literally just drug them around the arena which brings us into the rodeo clowns.  I don't know, has anybody ever been down to the cow town rodeo? Yeah, yeah, that's, you got to go down there.  It's down in South Jersey. I mean, it's like you're entering a whole nother land when you go down there. It's really, it's really cool. Here he is where he pulled the guy off and he's protecting himself from the bull and they really put themselves between the bull and the cowboy. You know, it's sort of cowboy code that you don't, if somebody's hurt, you don't rush out immediately to help them immediately.  But I just thought of how casually the people in the background are like, well, we're just gonna wait and see if he's gonna get out, you know, because it's sort of like stripped something of your manly hood if somebody runs out and are you okay? You know, so you don't, you don't do that. If he eventually got it walked off, so. I also followed some people who, some women, women writers who worked in various jobs. This one was a stenographer in a court room. But I wanted to find people that was more, I wanted to find sort of this expansive look at not just, you know, men, but I wanted to find men, women, young, old, all kinds of stuff. So I found her, and this is her, you know, writing. She was amazingly fierce. I cannot tell you, she would, there's a whole series where she's writing around the barrels and if you know anything about barrel racing, the whole idea is you have three barrels set out and then you make a circle around each barrel and it's timed. And so the idea is you wanna get as close as you can to the barrel without knocking it over and then make the circuit. And she was, I think she won just about everything. She was just unbelievable. This is a little blurred motion action.  This is, I think this was in Texas at the ANOX Hotgrass Rodeo Association where people would just show up, they would pass up the hat and put some money in the hat and, you know, whatever contest you were involved in, how much money was in the hat. If you won, that's, you got the money in the hat. So that's what's going on here. Scott was getting ready to go out and rope. You have team roping where one person ropes the front part of the calf, another person works the back part of the calf and then you get time for that. This is a little sequence here of this kid, you know, roping, I don't know how well you can see it might be a little too bright, but going through his emotions, really amazing. And then, so this guy, I found this guy in Oakland and he was practicing, so he vented this thing where he put legs in the back of a garden tiller and he would sort of fire the thing up and he would sort of putt around his arena with the legs would kick him and he would practice roping it, you know, so I don't know how challenging it was, but it was good practice, I guess. So I wanted to find sort of the quintessential Annie Oakley, I wanted to find the woman that sort of embodied the idea of what it is to be a female cow person and everybody told me that, you know, you have to find Betsy Bromwell, she lived in a little area close to Stillwater Oklahoma and so I found her, she lived in a trailer, I walked up, knocked on the door and she opens the door and she goes, who are you?     But then she would, her job was working in a cell barn so she would go and work and getting horses ready to sell and things like that, making sure that they were all shooed, she would shoe horses and things like here. You know, so it was a tough job. I mean, she would work from literally six o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night, mucking stables, doing all kinds of things. She would be exhausted by the end of the day. One day, somebody came up with this horse that they wanted to sell but nobody could ride, which is not a good thing. And so they brought, they took it to Betsy. Oh, by the way, that's, where's my, oops, oh no, how do I go back? Can we go back? Oh, well, so anyway, there we go. So I wanted to use that, you know. So that was, that's the way Betsy got around. She rode this motorcycle. So somebody brought this horse up that nobody could ride and Betsy said, you know, take it out of the stable. I mean, as they were pulling up, you could just hear this horse just banging on the sides of the trailer. And Betsy said, well, take it out of the trailer. Two guys take this thing out of the trailer. And she said, tie it up, you know, tie it against the post, which means, you know, just tie it up to the post. And she walked over and the horse was bucking everything and she punched it.  And the horse was like, you know, I think the horse was surprised just as much as she was or just as much as I was. And she put literally put one foot in the stirrup and she's told the guys, let it go. And the horse just went berserk.  But literally by the end of the day, I mean, she had this horse, it was like pussycat. You know, I mean, it was, it was amazing. I mean, she had this ability, it's almost like a horse whisperer where she could just talk to the horses and she was just really amazing. I also wanted to find sort of the quintessential sort of, you know, what we think of as a cowboy. Somebody that really makes their living on horses. Somebody who that doesn't really do anything but horsework. And I found this guy, David Cormier, who lived in out near Brownsville, Texas. And he was 21, really nice looking guy, just the nicest person in the world. He lived on a trailer with his, that on land that was owned by his uncle, who was actually a pretty well known cowboy in that area. But his uncle gave him, I think five or six acres where he had a couple of horses. His uncle also gave him a horse to ride to work. This is him putting on his muck boots to go to work. He would get up at six o'clock in the morning and he would have to go and catch his horse to ride to work. And this horse was just extremely crazy. I mean, which is why they gave him the horse. But it was, he would literally, I was, and I was sleeping in the trailer and my bedroom was in the back and I heard all this commotion outside and things were banging up against the trailer. And I literally jumped out in my underwear because this is like five acres of nowhere. And I'm running out with my camera, taking these pictures of him, trying to catch his horse to go to work. It was just crazy. And then once he got it, he would have to tie it up, put the saddle on it and ride it to work. And once he got there, he'd shoot horses. He worked the stockyards. He would sell pigs. Anything that would happen in a cell barn, that's what he did. He was also sort of this guy who people just looked up to. And little kids, this little boy was just, and totally enamored with David. And David was, he was just such a gentle guy. He was just amazing. This is him in the cell barn, some of the buyers, if you go to a cell barn, the buyers stand above and David's job was to bring the pig or the cow or the horse or whatever it was, bring it out and then they would do a bid on it.  Into the day again, this exhausting day. The tragic thing that happened was when I was out there, he had a wimp the whole time I was out there. And so I went to the doctor with him and they did MRI and I had spent this week with him and when I went back, I called him up and actually I called his mother up and or his mother called me and I said, so what's up with David? And she said, well, they found cancer in his knee. And so they ended up having to amputate his leg, amputate his right leg. And my plan was that I went back and this is during the geographic shoot and I went back and the plan was to edit all the film and then go back and spend another week or two with him. But by the time I got out, by the time that we had gone through the process, the cancer had metastasized and it had just spread all over his body and he passed away. And it was really, really, it's I still get kind of a shaken up when I see it. I mean, he was just, you know, just an amazing guy. They have a rodeo out there named for him that David called me a memorial rodeo every year. And I haven't talked to his mom in a while, but she used to stand touch. I should get back in touch with her just to see how things are going. But evidently, it's a pretty big annual event out there. This is a picture that I made of him and this is not Photoshopped.  But it just, you never know, you know, it just happened.  So some of the people, you know, just throughout the day, I photographed this woman's wedding. She had a traditional wedding in Texas where she jumped the broom and had her wedding party all came up in a stagecoach. It was really, really cool. This was one of her wedding guests.  So this was her, yeah, this was her pet. You know, I wanted to focus a lot on men and their sons.   So I'm sure, I would love to find this little boy again because I'm sure by now he's gotta be in his 20s. You know, the races, this was in Illinois. You know, the thing about cowboy life is there's not a lot of sort of, at least I didn't find a lot of tension there. You know, it seemed like people got along pretty well. These guys were best friends. Okay, so I spent, I spent a lot of time, again, back at the Antelwax Saltgrass Rodeo Association and what they do at these things is so these are rodeos that they have. People literally have rodeos in their backyards. Like they may have like a, you know, a half acre rodeo arena in their backyard. But afterwards, after the rodeo, they throw some of the most amazing kick-ass parties you've ever seen. And they would last until like four o'clock in the morning and it would be 104 in there and this guy is dancing and doing splits.  They just couldn't deal with it. But this guy was just amazing. He was, he was, I can't even tell. We drank a lot of beer that night.  Maybe that's the way I remember that. I don't know. Just, you know, just because. It was just a pretty picture. Little boy in his horse. Actually, this is the son of Bumsy, Bumsy, Bumsy. What was Bumsy's last name? He was at the White House. His father ran the White House. And Bumsy Burwell, I believe. But anyway, his father ran the White House and he went to school on a rodeo scholarship and just a brilliant kid, amazing kid he would do. And I did a whole series on him where he would go to different events and he would, I spent some time with the African-American Museum where he was showing kids how to rope and how to do horses and things like that. How to take care of horses and things. Just an amazing kid, cute little girl.  This guy was on a ride in Texas. Just had this most amazing skin. Just really, I just, I don't know. I just thought, he just hit that profile and I made a couple of frames of it and then it went away. So these aren't great pictures, I'm almost done. But I just want to, I put these in because I followed, so in Texas, the Texas Stockyards have this huge rodeo every year. People from all over the state ride in to convene at this rodeo. And so I followed these guys from some little town way out in west Texas. It's about a 100 mile trip and they ride in on stagecoaches. And so they're riding along. This is out near Austin in the Hill Country of Austin. And so this is the time I shoot for Geographic. And the only reason this picture's in here is because it gives me the chance to tell a little story about when you shoot for Geographic, back then anyway, you had sort of the whole, everything that Geographic had offered. You had all the money, you had the, everything was at your will, all the equipment, everything. So I call them up and I said, I need the helicopter to shoot this thing because I really think that, I just want to get that expanse of Texas and this wagon train ride through. And I said, well, just find somebody. So I called up this, I looked in the phone book, there were two services, one I didn't trust, the other one was Bill's, it's even sketchy, but it was the lease of the sketchy of the two. And so I called him up and I said, I need a helicopter, I need to shoot through this shoot at a certain time. He said, well, meet me in this field at this time and we'll take you up. So I go to this field where he said, I'm sitting at this little pole barn and I see this guy coming up this dirt road and it's Bill with the helicopter in the back of his pickup. And I'm like, okay. And so he pulls up and he's like, so where do you want to go? I'm like, I want to go home right now. But he said, well, hop in. So literally it was about as wide, it was about that wide. It was a little homemade thing that he had made. And he literally starts this thing up and we take off from the back of his pickup and we're out hovering around out there.   And I mean, I was used to shooting aerials because we did a lot of that for the inquire, but we did it in like real helicopters, you know? And I knew that there were all sort of regulations. You can't get in Philly anyway. You can't get near, you can only get within 500 feet of a high line wire, whatever. And so it's like, you want to go over there? And I'm like, yeah, I know you can't, but we're yelling at each other. We're only like a foot away from each other.  And so he literally takes us over there and he just sits us down in a triangle of high line wires. And I look over at the blade and the blade looks like it's coming within a foot of the high line wire.   So that's the story behind that picture. Another picture, this was a guy out near media that I spent some time with. And so to prove that I kinda did this when I was a kid, this is me actually roping a calf. So that's it. So any questions about anything? Talk some more. No, I didn't. I didn't meet him. I came to this lecture, but I didn't meet him. So yeah. Have you ever? That's a whole other thing. I had had a little bit of running with the guy that runs the Bill Pickett rodeo because he's very proprietary about his rodeo. So I chose not to follow that. Yeah, Bill Pickett was a, he was a famous, I'm not sure the dates. He was a rodeo performer and a very famous rodeo performer. His name sort of associated now with the Bill Pickett rodeo, but he was probably the most well-known rodeo performer there was. So that's sort of his, you know, in a nutshell. Do you have anything else you wanna add to that? True, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the beginning. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a whole other issue too. The rodeo hall of fame in Oklahoma City is very, in my opinion, a very controversial place. They've even renamed it now. It's called Museum of Western Heritage. So I think they had a lot of issues with that because my exhibit, when I was exhibiting this, it was suggested that my exhibit go there and they wouldn't take it. So it went to another, it was called the Fitzpatrick Center, which was down the street, which was another, it was sort of like the equivalent of our Science Center, but they wouldn't take it. So, which leads into other questions about, you know, segregation and, you know, what's included and what's not, and especially in a lot of different museums. Now this was 20 years ago, so things maybe may have changed, but if you've ever been to the Black Cowboy Museum, there was a lot of diversity there and there were a lot of things left out, especially, but anyway, I don't want to get too far into that, but yeah, but Bill Pickett was known for that unique style of using his teeth and things like that, but yeah, but the whole being excluded from the Cowboy Hall of Fame was a really bone, of contention for me and a lot of other people, so yeah. Sorry, please just wait for my guess. Yeah, yeah. What project are you working on now? Well, now I'm, my dad was a photographer back in the 40s and 50s, so I'm working on sort of reimagining his images and making them more to connect them to the present. So I'm actually, I'm doing things like collages, I'm collaging his work, I'm taking his work and cutting things out, cutting the images out and then building sets almost, like the last set I just built was, it's sort of a moon shape, but he had made some photos of a family that were, and this may have been even back in the 30s, they're very frontier-like, so I made this, it's in my studio at UR, it's, I don't know, 10 feet long and four feet wide, and I made it from work that I'd done back a few years ago called World in the Greener Sand of things that I had scanned to represent Hubble Space Telescope. So I wanted to have this conversation between my work and his work, so I had this photo of where I'd scanned the inside of a shell, but it looked like craters on the moon, so I made roughly like four by four inch pieces and collaged all those out on a big tabletop. This is like manic craziness, but so anyway, you'd have to see it, but so the whole idea is that these folks, these black folks have landed on the moon and you can see the earth in the background and it's sort of a little reference to what's actually going on now. So that's my intention is to work with his work to sort of reimagine those, and now I'm working in glass and doing all sorts of things and thinking how we remember, how people will curate their own lives, so I have one shelf of his images that I've incorporated the images into glass, and so they're arranged on the shelf, and I don't really know a lot of these people, but they're arranged on the shelf in the way, in sort of the same way that we would arrange things on our dressers, and my reference for that is my mom's dresser and the way she arranged things, so I'm thinking about how things are arranged, how things, how people remember, what's added, sort of the curatorial process of what's added in and what's taken away and the layers of those things and how the glass represents. You're looking through this glass, but it's also reflecting back at you and sort of the fragile nature of the community that he photographed in because that community doesn't exist anymore, so he used glasses almost as a metaphor for that, so it represents the resilience of the community, but it also represents the fragility of the community, so it's like I would have never thought I'd be doing this. Thank you, Cynthia, so I'm just working, and now it's turning into these big sculptural things, so who knows where it's going, but yeah, so that's what I'm doing now. Yeah. It's like what? I can't go, yeah, it's funny because it's really connected me with my father for it because my dad was a difficult guy. He wasn't, I mean, he never, you know, he wasn't a mean guy, he was just kind of aloof, but he was brilliant. I mean, he was a very brilliant guy, and so I'm learning more about him, more in terms of, I always knew that he, like my dad, we had the first television when I was growing up. We had the first television in town. He invented a radio before radials were even, you know, so he was a really brilliant guy, and I think he always assumed that he'd gotten a photography more for sort of the scientific, sort of tinkering aspect of it, but I'm now starting to realize that he had a real aesthetic. His aesthetic was really amazing, and the way he would pose people, he posed people in these, this is back in the 30s and 40s, 30s to the 50s, but he posed people in this very modernistic way. There were very modern images in the way that he would not use the lighting that was traditionally about, that was traditionally accustomed back in the day, you know, sort of that really sort of heavenly light coming down three quarter turn and all that. They were very straightforward, very confrontational, but they just have this amazing gaze, the people, and there's one, I wish I had it, there's one woman in particular that I've just fallen in love with. She just has this amazing gaze, and I've manipulated the image so that it doesn't resemble the original image. The original image is that big, so now where it is now, it's about four feet tall, probably three feet tall, three feet square, and it has been manipulated in a way where she's almost transparent. It's a little hard to describe, but anyway, so I'm thinking about all these different ideas and what that community was and how my father thought about how he photographed those things and how I can reinterpret those things and add my own voice into his work, so that's what I'm doing now, yeah. So you're thinking, your curiosity and the themes that you've given yourself were challenges that a magazine or newspaper would give you, and having heard that you're at Swarthmore, do you take these challenges to your students? Oh yeah, I love it.  I throw as much stuff at them as possible. We had a class, actually we had just started a class last year, it's called Alternative Processes, which they wanted an alternative process class and I said, I can do that, but which is 19th century processes, Vandai can sound a type and things like that, which is good, but what I did was I had, I gave one of their assignments was to build a container that is 12 inches by 10 inches and three inches high, and then they had to populate that container with three, I think it was three photographs and two found objects and something else, but they had to make a composition within that box, and then once the composition was made, they had to photograph it, so the final thing was the photograph that they made from that box, and they pitched a fit about that for about five minutes, and this is a great thing about Swarthmore students, as much stuff as I can throw at them, they just take the challenge on and they came up with some amazing creations, I have to say. So, and that class is all about what is how things look photographed, not just what that thing is that you build, so it was about building and it was about photographing and it was about thinking about lighting and composition and foreground and background and all the things that you would find in traditional drawing class, really, line and form and texture and all those things, so they had to think about all that, and some of them would come up with these things and they just didn't look right and I'd have to send them back and they would jump into it, so that was one assignment, but yeah, and then we built a zine where they had to think about storytelling and how to, but storytelling visually, I think they can only use, I think it was, I think it gave them like 25 words, but they had to tell a story with images, so yeah, so everything that I, in my practice, I throw at them and I can't wait until semester starts because I have some other ideas I wanna throw at them, but yeah, yeah. At the White House in Strawberry Mansion, how did that community form, like was it an open place where people kind of were attracted into it, was it something passed from insiders to their friends and family, like how did people come and stay a long time or they come and go or what was the nature? You know, I'm not exactly sure exactly how it formed, but a little bit of the history about the White House, it was a stable used for vendors, horse vendors, you know, who sold fruit and vegetables and things off of carts, so and that's where most of these stables in town, what they were. I think at one time, I did a little research, I think there were like 80 stables all over the city and I think Bomsi, the guy who was the father of the little boy in the red, was the president of it and he, I guess it was his friends that sort of got together and pulled this thing together, you know, and then it's just like anything else and once you form it, they will come and then it just grew and grew and grew, so I think it was just sort of this organic thing that happened, I don't think it was anything that was, you know, planned, I think it just sort of happened, so. Hello, I have two questions. Clearly your giftedness is in photography. Did you, when you were interviewing the individuals that you met with, did you do any audio or videography? Yeah. So that was what you were saying when you said you have reels of video. Yeah, well actually I didn't do a lot of video because this was back in the 90, video was a little bit more difficult to do than it is now, but I do do a lot of audio. I have a lot of audio. Interviews. Interviews, yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, mostly on cassette tapes. Okay. At least there weren't eight tracks in it. And my second question is one of your comments you had mentioned, you had alluded to the lack of tension that is, you know, we have a passion about what we're doing.  Labeling themselves as black cowboys, like for those of us that aren't in that world, it's amazing and wow, I never knew.  But in the absence of that tension, do they have a world where black cowboys?  I don't think it was something that was, you know, charted or anything. I think, you know, it was just, there's a lot of African Americans that have ranches down there and they farm and they, for entertainment, they have, they built backyard rodeo arenas and they're very conscious of the fact that they are black cowboys. But I don't think that actually necessarily defines who they are, they just do their thing.  I think what I found that existed in that community, now, you know, you get to Texas and places like that, there's always gonna be some layer of tension, I guess, between the races.  You know, so I think there's a connectedness there that exists that maybe doesn't exist in some other communities and maybe it's all sort of channeled through that idea of horsemanship and, you know, the horse sort of being the connector. Yeah, so, yeah, I hope that answered your question. Great, I think we have time for one more question, so. So we live in West Philly and have had that experience of like going to the neighborhood park or walking our dog, you know, at 8 a.m. and all of a sudden there's a horse trotting down the street and we've only lived there for a couple of years, so definitely the first time you see it, it's a fascinating thing. And I'm wondering if you've ever witnessed or photographed in West Philly a similar sort of urban riding, and I know that was the name of the exhibit by Mohamed, but of kids on ATVs, you know, or like dirt bikes and the little kids are on their bikes and it seems to me like a similar, not similar, there are some similarities, just like the comradery and also I feel like they're riding things that you might expect to see on a farm or. Right. I don't know, it's very vibrant and just wondering if you've photographed that or thought about that. Yeah, well no, I haven't photographed because they're too fast.     And if you go out, you can see that. Yeah, near Belmont Plateau, but you can see the after math, the after words of, you know, they're having their little spin outs and things like that. When I was a kid, we would herd cattle with our motorcycles because it was easier, you know?  He would drive it to the grasslands in the north and this mountain and then drive it back across the river to his place. And when he got, when he got all, and he'd have, I don't know, maybe two or 300 cattle and he would hire just local kids to herd them all up and put them in the barn. And we, yeah, we could do it on a horse, but to do it on a horse, you gotta saddle the horse up, you gotta trot out there, you know? We could just jump on our motorcycles and do it in five minutes. So, you know, now I don't know if the kids in Philly are doing that. My guess is probably not, you know? No, but motorcycles played a big role in my existence as a kid. I got the scars to prove it. But, yeah, it was, yeah, so. But I have thought about that, you know, when I see them. And, you know, sometimes I think they shouldn't be doing that in the middle of the road on Broad Street, you know? Probably not cool. So. Well, thank you all so much for coming out tonight and please join me in thanking Professor Carter.


Welcome back to my channel, it's Jess Janine. Thank you guys so much for watching and tuning in for this video. So this is a vlog of a little cooking segment that I'm going to do. I've done a little cooking before and past videos but just kind of feel far between. And I'm really hungry right now and I have been eyeballing this recipe for a while and I'm finally going to get to make it. I've had mostly all the ingredients anyway but I just decided to go ahead and do it today because I just got to taste the tacos. So this is a vegan style taco meal. So I'm not a vegan, shout out to all the vegans out there. I'm not a vegan, I do like my meat but sometimes I like to switch it up and just do something a little different. And trying to make on meals just a little bit more on the healthy side if possible. This meal probably won't be too healthy because I like sour cream and I like cheese and I'm just going to load it on and just make it taste like a taco. So I'm just going to show you some of the things that I have here. I did kind of scan a little bit in the beginning of the video but I'm just going to show you just a few things that I do have to make this vegan style taco. So let me show you all of the ingredients I'm going to be using for this recipe. I got some tomatoes, I've got the fiesta style cheese, I've got the traditional salsa here. I got some sour cream, I actually got two things with sour cream because I like sour cream and I got my diced chilies here and I have my garlic, cauliflower of course which is the main ingredient, star ingredient, taco seasoning, my lettuce and of course the taco shells. So I guess the reason why people use cauliflower to make the taco is because the texture of the cauliflower is similar to the texture of meat. So by the time you mix all of the seasonings and spices in there, you really can't taste the cauliflower because cauliflower doesn't really have a taste that really stands out so the seasonings will basically mask the cauliflower. I guess it gives you the illusion that it looks like meat but it's not meat because it's of the texture of the cauliflower, it matches the meat of hamburger meat or turkey meat. So the seasoning is everything, by the time you eat it and bite into it you think it's meat but it's not meat. So I'm going to see, again I've never tried this before, I've never cooked what cauliflower like this before especially in tacos so I'm curious and excited to see how this is going to turn out. I hope I like it. I hope it tastes like a taco because I want to enjoy a good taco right now because I am starving y'all, I'm hungry. So without further ado, I'm hungry. Let's get started. Plate this up. So I'm going to grab my taco shells. Alright so I've got my taco shells here and I hope I don't break these like I did the last time and ended up turning this into a taco salad. And there's the cauliflower meat. It's all nicely sauteed and finished cooking. Alright so we're going to start to fill our tacos up. So I'm going to get some of the meat here. I keep saying meat but it ain't meat. And we'll fill another one here and we'll put a few little tomatoes in there. My hands are clean. I'm just going to add some lettuce here, some cheese. Hands are clean. I just really don't look half bad. And we're just going to top it off with a little dollop of sour cream for each one. A little salsa. We're just going to garnish it with a balloon because I don't know if I'm going to squeeze that in there or not. So here we go. These are our cauliflower tacos. So right now it is time to taste this and to get the final final of what this tastes like. So yeah, let's do that. Alright, here we go. Let me say my grace. Amen. Alright so now we're going to go ahead and test out one of these cauliflower tacos and see what it tastes like. Here we go. I'm trying to let all the flavors get in my mouth. I know it's a taco, but the seasoning. I think because I got the cheap taco seasoning, that was the Klover brand. I should have got the real taco seasoning. But it's actually okay. It's actually okay. I think I just need some more sour cream from where I'm eating it because the sour cream is on top. Let me put a little sour cream right here and let me put a little salsa right there and then try it and see. That made the difference. Yeah, the sour cream and the salsa, yeah, that's it right there. Yeah, it's not bad. I'm just going to have to change the seasoning, that's all. Once I change the seasoning, thank you guys so much for tuning in and watching the video and watching me cook these. I'm sorry. I'm just piece-making. Thank you all for watching me make these taco, these cauliflower tacos. I hope you enjoy it. If you'd like to try it out, I will put the recipe in the description box below and you can try it out. It's real simple to make. If you know how to make tacos and you can make this, just substitute the meat for cauliflower. That's pretty much it. If you have not already, you know what to do. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe and also don't forget to click on the notification bell so that way you'll be notified of upcoming videos that will be coming your way. It's Justine. Thank you guys for tuning in for this video. Bye guys. This is good.


And now, an Ig Nobel Prize favorite moment, with Nyla Robinson. I do not like their compound eyes. My favorite Ig moment is a mini opera featuring Thelma La Roche, her friend Louise, and their tragic ending. See them scurry before my feet, each one hoping that I will select. Hey, man, help us, be she's compete. These puny specimens I must reject. Who needs bedbugs, or lice, or flies? The filthy habits underneath the reproach. I do not like their compound eyes. What I need now is a big cockroach. Cockroach. Ahhhh! The Ig Nobel Prize's honor achievements that make people laugh, then think. This historic Ig Nobel favorite moment video stars Nyla Robinson, who helped organize many Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies. She tells here of the very first Ig Nobel Opera. The 30th, first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will be webcast September 17th, 2020. Details about the Ig Nobel Prizes can be found at www.improbable.com.


Welcome everyone to this week's hater talk. This is another great week where we have the opportunity to hear and learn another distinguished and good researcher that we can work with and so this week we have Dr. Gary Seacour from IndieSU and as you can see at the slide here showing up that he's going to talk about what we know about Dickie so far. We've been working on this for a number of years and look forward to his presentation. And so don't forget, if you have questions, there's a Q&A box at the bottom you can type your answer into or your question into and you can answer it. When he gets done with his presentation and you may also raise your hand and let us know if you want to talk and we can allow you to talk. So whichever works best for you, feel free or there's also the chat box to that you can even send him, you know, send questions into. Anyway, without further ado, let's go ahead and get this week's hater talk started and take away Gary. Good morning, everyone. I like Andy's comment. Maybe we should do something a little different today. You guys stop in the type in the question or the answer, and I'll try to guess the question. There used to be a show like that on TV. But anyway, good morning. I'm happy to be distinguished. Thank you for that Andy. So I'm going to talk about kind of what we know about Dickie so far just give an update of of our project on Dickie. So I'll start with a little history and then go through some of the findings we've got and then have time for questions at the end, I hope. So thanks for attending. In 2017, the USDA and if I awarded our group two and a half million dollars to look at management of soft trot and black leg of potatoes. The title of it is that integrating next generation technologies for black leg and soft trot management in the USA. And the main driver of this, this grant that we received was because there was a widespread outbreak of Dickie causing some field losses of table and chipping potatoes, particularly in the eastern US that's where the disease first started and that's where the most of the most serious losses were and where it was the most frequent, all up and down forward all the way from Maine down to Florida really and it was causing losses in stand because of seed decay and black leg from some of those seed pieces that decayed, not completely resulting in black leg and of course the plants died later. The pathogen that was causing this, this stand and black leg loss was Dickie dienthiccola. And that was that pathogen is new to the US. It used to be called Erwinia chrysanthemum I was very uncommon. It's been here for about 20 years. They changed the name to Dickie dienthiccola. That pathogen was new to the US and increased in the incidents and the seriousness of, of soft trot and black leg in the US. This proposal and this project was widely supported by growers by industry and by other stakeholders. We received four years of funding year four ends in October of this year. We have an option to do a one year extension, which we probably will do, because there's obviously some unfinished projects, main objectives, improve detection identification, using some molecular technology, epidemiology and spread. We also have a range of systems using omics like genomics and proteomics and metal omics metabolomics and screening for host resistance and of course management is a main key factor and what's the impact of economic development, the economic impact of decay infection on potato fields. These are myself Amy Charkowski in Colorado, Jay Howe and main and Chris McIntosh in Idaho. We have 10 additional scientists that you can see here throughout the US that are involved in this project as research scientists I don't need to, you can read those I don't need to see their names are to say their names. And then we have an advisory board from farms commodity groups and industry. Again, you can see their names here. Some of them like Don Sklarzake is semi retired John Norgaard is retired. The other is semi retired. So some of the people are in transition for our advisory board, but suffice it to say we've got a pretty good advisory board for this project as well. One of the things, one of the principle foci of this project is detection of the bacteria in seed lots or detection of infected seed lots, because Dickie and Pecto are both seed borne diseases they're not soil borne diseases they're poor competitors. They do not have any endos spores for long term survival. So the main sorts of infection is infected. Or a post harvest test is necessary to detect Dickie in the seed, because Dick well late in the season, Dickie infection is usually early in the season with stand losses and early season black leg, and it does not cause much soft rot decay in harvested potatoes. So we in order to. So the inspectors can't see doesn't cause decay and storage so we have to test the seed lots to determine which seed lots at Dickie which do not. So part of this is development of a seed lot testing. So our scientific community has developed a protocol to detect Dickie and seed. This is kind of we have to use a PCR test. We recommend stem end cores in groups of 25 per sample so 16 groups of 25 stem end cores that's 400 samples. Plus, we know that Dickie is also in the lentils. So we collect 25 peel samples per sample as well. And the peels are one to two inches long north to south as nor guard says. And then we, we smash those samples or test those samples, the peels and stem end cores together. And we use PCR tests using either pill ad primers or DFDR primers for Dickie. And then we can sequence a PCR product to identify the particular species of Dickie at the present, but the primary one is dying tickle that's that's the primary target that we're after. Amy Tarkowski is the source of reference isolates for our testing. We've done some multi lab testing of DNA. And we know that we have about a 98.6% accuracy so that's good. We did a test in November of 2019 with inoculated mini tubers with Pecto and Dickie and both or neither. And we sent those to nine different labs as a ring test to look at the accuracy of our detection procedure. We had 100% accuracy in that day. So we're pretty confident that this seed lot testing procedure or protocol that we've developed developed actually does work pretty well. But the problem we have is we only have limited results to predict the amount of field disease, based on what we find in the seed lot testing results. That's become a very hard nut to crack and we're still working on that. We can't, we can't predict how much will be in the field, based on what we find in the seed, because the environmental factors that will impact the development of disease. So this is some data that we just put together of looking at the incidence of infection by PCR testing of 316 potato seed lots collected in the US from 2017 to 2021. And you can see across the bottom of the table or the chart is that years with testing, and on the X axis on the left hand side is the percent positive. So we're looking at the number of lots we tested in the blue is the lots, and in the gold is the samples that were tested. In 2017, for instance, we tested 67 lots 16.8% were positive. We tested 1057 samples. 5.5 were positive. And so on for each of the years and you can see that the, the number of lots that were positive range pretty much between 10 and 15% and the number of samples in those years range between about one and 5%. So that's been pretty consistent. Except I know somebody's going to ask the question, what happened in 2019, when we had 46% of the lots positive for Dickia. I think what happened is we did we first found Dickia like 2016. By the time those lots went from generation one to generation two to generation three to generation four for commercial, there was a high number of seed lots. And with continued testing, we were able to get rid of those seed lots. And now we're back to our normal low levels of seed lots. And we're still testing this year. So the results from 2021 are as of March 1 of this year. But it looks like we have a pretty, pretty good test pretty even distribution of seed lots over the over that time period from 17 to 21. So in addition to some screening, we tested one large seed lot in 2020 with 42 diverse seed lots 472 samples, zero positives. So it looks like we're making headway of getting rid of infected seed lots are diagnostic lab at NDSU has tested 94 lots. So far this year, none of them have been positive. There's kind of good news that we're making headway on using seed lot testing to eliminate infected seed lots. It does seem that Dickia as a cause of seed decay and blackleg is declining and importance, but pectobacterium continues to be important, and especially the emergence of pectobacterium parmenterii. So this appears to be a more serious cause of storage software. It seems to be pretty aggressive. It seems to be really important storage software, especially in the eastern US. Okay. So there are some practical aspects of this seed testing results. We work with a large farming operation and tested a number of samples from them using our standard procedure. 1.2% of the samples tested positive for Dickia in 2019. The range was from zero to 16 of 16 samples, 12, about half of the seed lots for free of Dickia. And in the field, the 100% sample to 16 of 16 had less than a 50% stand. So we know that the higher the infection level in a seed lot, the greater the stand up to 50%.  And in general, they observed that any seed lot that has three of the 16 samples positive is considered a problem. Okay. So they will have to work with that seed lot or planted in a special location or an area where Dickia is not common. Anyway, it's considered a problem they need to deal with it. In two states have the highest incidence.  And that that that state was North Dakota. So you grows North Dakota the produce seed, keep going to church, you got a good deal going on we didn't find any seed lots with with Dickia from North Dakota. The two samples seem to be more related to a farm source and variety, and there is no variety specificity in other words, we don't find any resistant varieties or any differences in varieties. So not all strains of dienticola are can be detected by this general test using the primers that we have. So we've had to identify some additional tests you can see in these publications. So it identifies some dienticola lots that are not detected. So for instance, this strain that went from Wisconsin to deck, Texas, different in the strange from Maine, and it lacks the, the, the site for the DIA, DIA primer so it escapes detection. So we use this PCR assay. So we're aware of that we need to be careful that we don't get new strains it's kind of like, kind of like our friend COVID, we get new strains, they may not be be detected, like the vaccine may not work. So we do have some genetic variability, starting to show up in some of these strains of Dickia. We also want to know how Dickia spreads. We know we can inoculate Dickia by infiltration or needle puncture. We did a trial in Florida, North Dakota inoculating seed. We had significant differences in reduction of stand in Florida, but not in North Dakota and I think the environment in Florida and the moisture was much more favorable for disease than it was in North Dakota. One of the things we asked, what does the concentration of Dickia and the seed tuber impact seed decay? In other words, if there's a lot of bacteria in the seed versus a little amount of bacteria, does that impact seed decay? And this is the thesis work of Cal Larson. He inoculated seed with different, or with increasing concentrations of Dickia from 10 to the four to 10 to the nine. So 10 to the four is 10,000. And we planted those in Florida and North Dakota. We did not find a significant difference in emergent plantarite yield, tuber infection by Dickia. So we conclude that the concentration of Dickia has minimal impact on disease or growth of the potatoes. So really, concentration of Dickia does not seem to be important. But another trial, just Dickies spread in the field. And we had two trials in Florida and Oaks North Dakota. This was the thesis work of Blake Griner. We've got his master's degree here. And we inoculated seed with Dickia by vacuum infiltration. And we surrounded those by not inoculated seed that was tested and shown to be free of Dickia. So the red illustrates the planting, the red illustrates the infected seed piece, and it was surrounded on all four sides illustrated in blue of seed free of Dickia. Okay. And we let the net growth grew full season long. We did not have stand or black leg during the season, but we collected tubers from progeny tubers of each site surrounding the positive plant and tested those for PCR by tested those for Dickia by PCR. So we collected four tubers from each of the each of the plants surrounding each of these seed pieces. Okay. The infection rate by PCR was 33% in Florida and 13% in North Dakota. This is pretty comparable to a similar trial done in Netherlands by Vanderwolf that he found infection of 27%. So we know that Dickia can move from the infected seed piece to the progeny tubers in in the soil moisture. Okay. So we collected those Dickie infected tubers the next year had a 94% stand in Florida 99% stand in North Dakota. So we also know that Dickia can infect those progeny tubers without symptoms, they can be infected and not show symptoms the next year, and we assume that that bacteria is moving in the soil moisture. And that's how Dickia can spread between seed lots can infect without causing any symptoms. So the third trial we did for spread is Dickia spread by seed cutting. Okay, and my colleague Steve Johnson whose photo is here, observed that Dickia wasn't transmitted during seed potato handling and cutting. We did some trials in 1718 and 19 a plot trial and 17 by mixing Dickia inoculated seed with healthy seed, and then handled cut and planted those potatoes together but we handled and cut them together but planted them separately. That's what we observed for the amount of disease in the field. In 2017 2017 it was a plot trial in Florida. We did not see any stand loss no spread to healthy seed. The growers said, Well, that was a plot trial what happens if you do it on a commercial level. So we did a commercial trial in Florida 200 pounds of seed inoculated with diet and tickle a mixed with commercial mix with 2500 pounds of healthy seed and commercially cut. We did not see a stand loss in that healthy planted seed. But when we planted the inoculated seed we had a 90% stand loss. Okay. So we didn't have any spread there. Again, we did a replicated trial in 2019 in Florida and Maryland, mixing healthy seed and inoculated seed. No blacklegger seed decade either site. It was found by PCR testing of cores and peels from 240 progeny tubers in Maryland. Okay, so we tested the seed. We didn't see disease we didn't see spread of the bacteria into that into the project progeny into the, the cut seed during that cutting and handling. And we saw no difference in yield and grade. Now this study had just been published in the American Potato Journal, or the American Journal of Potato Research that shows old I am American Potato Journal. And it's, this has been published and it's, it's January of 2021 in the American Potato Journal, volume 9864 to 71. If you want to look at this study in greater detail. So looking at pathogen diagnostics and population structure. Okay, Brian Swingle in New York. In 2016 and 17, found that that black leg in New York was equally caused by the Anticola or Dickia and Pectobacterium. And the Dickia had very little genetic diversity, which is consistent with a recent introduction. So that shows that it might have been introduced recently. Pectobacterium are much more diverse, consistent with a long term endemic population that's been around for a long time. And they've done genome sequencing of Pectobacterium and Dickia di Anticola. So those have been we know that we know the, the genome sequence of those. And you can see he looked at one called Pectobacterium maceratum. So this is the new Pectobacterium. Okay. So he looked across in Oregon, looked at the distribution of keratovirum and Dickia in Oregon. Okay, so he found keratovirum atrocepticum parmenterii, which was not previously reported in Oregon and only a little bit of Dickia only 3% of the black leg there. So he looked at this population in Maine and showed that the population is a little bit different than the European populations. And southern states don't have the exact population as Maine. He also showed that there was an interaction between our friend di Anticola and our friend Pectobacterium parmenterii. And this severity is greater with co infection and either one alone. So there's some synergism going on between Dickia and Pectobacterium that makes disease worse. And he found that there are three clades of di Anticola in the northeastern US. And the cause of that outbreak, which we've always said has been started in Maine. Maybe is an associated with one of these new strains that was derived five form by mutation. So we still don't know whether this new Dickia came as an introduction from say Europe or it was derived or it was caused by a mutation. So we've got two lines of evidence for that, if you will. We're also screening germ clouds for resistance. We're doing traditional testing of processing varieties using tuberonoculation. And you can see that in this population from you potatoes USA that we have a lot of variability in susceptibility but we don't have resistance. But this is not a really good test to use, because Dickia is not a good Dickia is not a good tuber pathogen but Pectobacterium certainly is. And we test for both Dickia and Pectobacterium in our tests. And Susie Thompson as a graduate student and I'm helping to co-advise Eduardo Palete is looking at screening our NDSU germplasm for Dickia using pedioles, because remember, Dickia infects the plants in the field so we're using pedioles to screen for resistance for Dickia. So we're using replicated trials in the green in the new greenhouse to screen and he screen 287 genotypes to promising selections have been identified. So we are using these foam flower foam cubes and putting the pedioles in those fresh cut and measuring the amount of rot and wilt and discoloration in the leaves to screen for resistance. So it seems to be a pretty good method. On the basis of his work, we are finding some good resistance. We're also going to try screening tubers for resistance with Susie's population. Brian Swingle again in Cornell is screening us get a data gene bank bank, wild species for high levels of soft drought resistance. He's finding some resistance in Solana Microdotum. He's in, in progressing those into crossing to try to get some resistance. Adam Hoyberger at Colorado State is using some, remember I talked about omics, he's using some metabolomics to look for small molecules associated with resistant to Dickia. He's literally screen hundreds of molecules. And he's found some little molecules that for resistant wild potatoes that appeared to inhibit virulence. So these could be useful as markers for resistant for breeding for resistant potato variety. So we're making some progress there. And Melanie Philly of troll who's USDA Cornell is looking at defense response of potato plants to Dickia. And she's found in the green and you can read all of this but the green kind of summarizes that it's a class of genes called antimicrobial peptides that are hypothetically involved in resistance to soft rock pathogens. And so she's got a very basic research project. I'm looking for some of these antimicrobial pep peptide. So we get a lot of work going on a developing resistance or looking for resistance to Dickia. We're also trying to look for potential sources of Dickia. This is one of my favorite stories. There are 120 dahlia bulbs from a well known European mail order source in the Netherlands. Okay. For those tests of positive for Dickia. Okay, so I planted those at my house in Fargo, because the dahlia flowers are beautiful. And so we cultured and sequenced those. And it showed that it was Dickia chrysanthemum, which is now Dickia dionthicola. They were pathogenic to potato. Okay. There's also been reported as a sorts of Dickia in Australia, South Africa and New York. So dahlia is looked like those flower bulbs are a source of Dickia, because they can they are pathogenic to potato. And remember that Dickia is found in many ornamentals, especially in Florida, where they reuse their irrigation water, they recycle it that recycles the Dickia and Pectobacterium as well. It's also found in flower bulbs, broccoli, nettles, pineapple, and likely many more hosts. So Dickia, not only infects potatoes, but a lot of other crops as well. And those could be sources of Dickia and an oculom for potatoes. And I see how I was looked at surface water because they say is surface water a source of Dickia, because it is for Pectobacterium. So he's found Dickia aquarica. Okay, which is a new species, and Dickia Zia, and Dickia dionthicola have all been found in water and are all pathogenic to potato. You can see the testing he's done here with an oculation of tubers, and you can see the, the, the lesion size based on which species it is you can see aquarica and is is pathogenic to potatoes but we don't really know how important that is. And whether this is a source of infection for potatoes or not. So that that research is still ongoing. We've got our ag economists of course looking at the economic impact of data. We did replicated trials in four states in 2019 by planting infected seed mixed with infected and not infected seed at 05 1020% The data is done. We looked at stand black leg yielding grade and economic analysis with Chris McIntosh and Kate Fuller. Chris is at University of Idaho, Kate is at Montana State. We're repeating this trial in 2021 at four locations. Again, the most important thing is communication of soft rod black like Dickia to the industry. We've got an advisory board. We try to meet annually across this year we've had zooms, because we can't meet personally. And one of the things we hear from our advisory board is management. All that other good all the omics is good all the spread is good. How do we manage it they really want to know about management. We're trying to concentrate on management as much as we can. We used to have grower seminars live but now we've done a lot of zoom seminars and some of you have probably participated and then including this one. And Michigan State has even put out a YouTube. So here's some end thoughts that I have this kind of summarize where I think we are. Dickia is most frequently found in the eastern half of the US far less likely to be found in the Western US probably because it's drier. We do have a good standard assay for detecting Dickia and seed lots. We have a lot of seed cores and peel using a PCR test. Dickie is not spread by seed handling and cutting, at least in the trials we've done. It can spread to field by two adjacent tubers up to 33% in Florida. Dickia infection can be re remain latent and seed potato tubers, not result in disease expression after planting. This is a key issue because most of the seed is planted in cool areas where it doesn't express. So you can have infection a latent infection and seed potato tubers planted in a warm area say like Florida or Maryland, then you can get disease expression. So that's one of the take home lessons it's really important. Several labs are screening germplates of resistant to Dickia using different methods. There are all kinds of sources for Dickia as I talked about before, many that still need to be identified. And in my heart of hearts I'm still wondering where that initial infection comes because we can make many tubers free of Dickia and Pecto, where's that initial infection come from. That's really, it's a big question I really want to know. The micro-bacterium populations are changing. Our friend Parmentera is becoming more important and Dickia is declining as a disease of importance. A couple of families to talk about the Dickias and the Pecto. So I'm going to just talk about those quickly. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven species of Dickia so far. Dianticula is the one that's most important in the US. Aquaticus is the one found in water. This one, Fungzongdai is the first one of woody plants. So they can infect woody species as well. And of course our friend Solana, which is serious in Europe, it's pretty much disappeared. We don't have that in the US. Then there's a family called the Pectos, okay. Atroceptica, which causes black leg. KeraTauvera, which is a general soft rotter of fleshy fruits and vegetables. Bacillians, which is not too common, but also occurs in sugar beaded North Dakota, Minnesota. And here's our new friend Parmentera, which is the new series one in storage. We're finding new Pectos, driving us crazy. Here's Polaris, which is a new species found in Norway, and Maseratum, which is new that goes to cabbage and potato and Russia. And I'm sure that as the, the bacterial just get involved, we're going to find new members of both of these two families. So I will stop there. And that is the end of my presentation. And I'll be happy to answer questions.


Hello, my name is Emily. Thank you for joining me today for some yoga and today's yoga will focus primarily on the shoulders just to bring us a little bit more Mobility flexibility and ease while moving through here. So focusing throughout here I do want to stress so that this this is your practice and you know your body best So please do whatever feels best for your body. So if at any time something sounds like it could be uncomfortable or painful Please don't do it. Listen to yourself and your intuition. All right, so to get started Let's give ourselves a little bit of love just lifting one hand Rubbing here And the opposite hand Sometimes just bringing attention to your body like this Is it single to your body to send more blood to help ease with any tension throughout there? Let's inhale through the nose Exhale through the mouth Dropping your hands in your lap Starting with some shoulder circles We'll do everything for about the count of three inhales And three exhales Let's inhale squeezing our shoulders up to our ears. So first I invite you to come into tabletop physician Now for this one since we are focusing on the shoulder instead of kind of smutting into it We do want to focus on pushing into the ground pushing your body up through your grounding through your hands through your knees in your legs And then inhaling let's drop the belly to the ground lifting the head towards the sky Exhaling opposite bringing your back to the sky Your head towards the ground checking in making sure you're pushing into the ground Continue your pushing with your hands From our tabletop physician. Let's move into needle pose now for a nipple pose Let's inhale one hand floating up And then exhale bringing your hand through Now careful what I see often is people collapse onto their shoulder And then the hip falls, which is fine But try to experiment and see how it feels to bring your hips square Of course, that means your shoulder won't be as far down But keep that in try Let's inhale releasing your opposite hand Threading through Again instead of collapsing down Bring your shoulder out slightly Lifting your shoulder and your hips Pushing through your hand on the ground maybe So experiment that movement and see what feels good for you Now from here, let's swing around into our tabletop position And you can either push back into child's pose keeping your hands out and active in front of you Really stretching through that shoulder area Or if you'd like to do More of a puppy pose, you can be right underneath and coming down into puppy Listening to your body, doing what's best for you Pushing back into child's pose. I'll just release my hands giving my shoulder a break for a moment Being yourself up, perhaps you're on your knees Perhaps you're in a comfortable seated position I'd like to show you three variations for needle pose So one way we'll inhale an arm up Bring it across And catch it with the elbow The second way is coming up So the back of your hands are together The third way is bringing the palms of your hands together Releasing down Now let's go for the other side Catching it with your elbow So this is variation one Perhaps you bring your hands back with the palms together Variation two Or if you'd like to bring your palms together twisting your hands around each other Variation three Let's release out of here clasping hands behind your back And bringing your hands to the ground opening through the shoulders and just relaxing out of ego pose Now let's inhale bringing one hand up Making a 90 degree angle with our elbow and then clasping it with our other hand And now here We're leaning slightly to the side But instead of focusing on My lower back section I'm focusing more on my shoulders. So giving yourself a gentle Pull and listen to your body if it feels like it's too much Please feel free to release or skip this position completely opposite side 90 degree angle Clasping it And again, we're just leaning slightly to this side Focusing on the shoulder. So perhaps you're giving your wrist a gentle pull with your opposite hand And if it doesn't feel good Feel free to skip now for the last pose For this one You can check in before you ever start the sequence to see where your comfort level is And perhaps the sequence will help you feel a little looser have a little less tension So one thing you can try is just bringing your hands behind your back See how comfortable this is. So this is one position just coming here Another position It's coming here The third option is trying to clap the elbows And lastly if you'd like to try You could try Squeezing the palms of your hands together Working on those shoulders Releasing the pose that felt best for you Coming into a comfortable seated position We got started with our big shoulder circles. So let's end with our big shoulder circles Up And down And let's inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth We'll inhale Bringing the shoulders up squeezing your ears Let's inhale bringing the hands together over the head and exhale palms in front of the heart May you move throughout the week With ease grace and joy