Internal revenue service, IRS tax news, tax time guide. IRS provides easy access to tax refund status with where's my refund tool? No need to call the tax time guide. You've gotta have the tax time guide. I mean, it's kind of like having one of those maps of like the Disneyland theme park. You have to have it so that you can fully enjoy the experience. Yeah, look, Frank, just make the shake, okay? You have to have it. He doesn't want it. Somebody drink. I love this end part here. No need to call. I mean, clearly the IRS doesn't want us to call them. And it's like, why not IRS? Hey, call us if you need anything. Don't call us. Why not? What did you do with all that inflation reduction money? Take it easy, honey. I'm going to be all right. Don't be hysterical. Stop crying. Just be glad I'm alive. What did you do with the money? What did you do with it? I thought you were going to hire telephone people so we could call you. One of them was a midget. Bonnie couldn't see him. But whatever, any case. You too have something better before I get back. IR 2023-46, March 15, 2023, Washington. The Internal Revenue Service reminds taxpayers that the Where's My refund tool on irs.gov is the most convenient way to check the status of 2022, 2021, and 2020 tax refunds. irs.gov, there's a link to that here. It's the mobile app. So that's the cool way to do it. You have it on your phone, you know? Offers another way for users to check their refund status. Information for the most current tax year filed is generally available within 24 hours after the IRS acknowledges receipt of a taxpayer's e-file return. If they file a paper return, taxpayers should allow four weeks before checking the status. To use Where's My refund, there's a link to that here. Taxpayers must enter their social security number or individual taxpayer identification number, filing status, and the exact whole dollar amount of their expected refund from the original tax return for the years they're checking. The IRS updates the tool once a day, usually overnight, so there's no need to check more often. So if you're checking for your refund every hour or something, you have a tick, you have a problem, you need to stop. You can do it maybe twice, maybe twice a day, more than that, and you need to check yourself. So this provides individuals, prevents the individuals from having to contact the IRS for updates unless the tool requests them to call. So once again, the IRS doing their best to not have to talk to anybody on the phone, even though they got all that money from the Inflation Reduction Act that they were gonna use to hire people, which didn't have anything to do with reducing inflation. But whatever, we know how that goes. I won't get into that again. It's kind of an issue for me. But whatever, where's my refund? Displays progress through three phases. You got number one, return received. Number two, refund approved. Number three, refund sent. Taxpayers will get personalized information based on the status of their tax return. The tool will provide an actual refund date once the IRS processes the return. It approves the refund. The fastest way to get a refund is by filing electronically and using direct deposit. There's a link to that here. Taxpayers who don't have a bank account can find out how to open a bank account at FDIC insured bank. There's a link to that here of the National Credit Union Locator Tool. There's a link to that here. What to expect? Even though most refunds are issued in less than 21 days, that's kind of like an average. I wouldn't really depend on that for like, for sure Zs, meaning don't spend a bunch of money hoping the refund's gonna come within 21 days unless you like have to. So taxpayers file electronically and choose direct deposit. So that only counts to that 21 days. If you file electronically and use the direct deposit, some refunds might take longer. Oh, there's the disclaimer. You knew it was coming. Many different factors can affect the timing of a refund, such as if the return has errors is incomplete or affected by identity theft or fraud. I wouldn't be surprised if they somehow weaseled in equity into that as well so that there's equity factors in terms of who's gonna get their refund on the fastest terms. Where do you stand on the social equity ladder here? That's how the refunds are gonna be issued. That's how things are done around here. Any case, other causes for delays. The return may require additional review. The return needs a correction to the earned income tax credit or additional child tax credit. The time between the IRS issuing the refund and the bank posting it to an account may vary since many banks did not process payments on weekends or holidays. The IRS will contact taxpayers by mail or if more information is needed to process a return. IRS phone and walk-in representatives can only research the status of a refund if 21 days or more have passed since it was filed electronically, six weeks or more have passed since the return was mailed. Where's my refund tells the taxpayer to contact the IRS? If a taxpayer refund isn't what it is expected, it may be due to changes the IRS made to the return. Those jerks changed my return is what you might think. These changes could include corrections to the child tax credit or earned income tax credit amounts or an offset from all or part of the refund amount to pay past due taxes. So if you owe past due taxes, they kind of hold on to your refund and they use it to pay the tax due taxes as you might expect that they would do or debts possibly they might pay your debts for you.  I know you were expecting it in 21 days to pay the rent but you know, they paid whatever debt they felt was important at the time. More information about reduced refunds is available at irs.gov. There's a link to that here. Filing a tax return. Taxpayers should make irs.gov. They're first stop to get information on how to file. There is information on IRS free file. There's a link to that here. IRS online account, there's a link to that here. Answers to questions and tips on filing a return. You got links to all that cool stuff. As a reminder, the deadline for most taxpayers to file a return pay any tax due or request an extension to file is Tuesday, April 18th. This news release is part of a series called the tax time guide just like that Disneyland map to giving you all the different locations within the tax world of atmosphere fear. So you want to make sure you get on all those rides. They're really exciting. Any case, a resource designed to help taxpayers file an accurate tax return. Additional help is available on publication 17, your federal income tax for individuals. More resources below. We've got about where's my refund online accounts, FAQs, tax season refund FAQs, direct deposit, choosing a tax professional IRS free file, free tax return preparation for qualified taxpayers. Links to all that stuff here. And we're giving that to you. We're providing it right here. There'll be a link to this in the description. So if you should give us like, I guess a thumbs up and if you haven't done so already, subscribe and like ring the bell icon and make sure the notifications are turned on because this is stuff that you need to know.


I'm Linda Quinlan. I'm Ann Charles. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. It's Tuesday, January 19th. We're taping in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. So now let's go to Keith for some headlines. Alrighty, so I want to start by acknowledging that January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And that this was established by the UN in 2005 and it's the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Brookernau concentration camp. So we're going to start with the trivia question that someone might have guessed correctly. This is Inauguration Week. There will be the Power of Unity LGBTQ Inaugurable, it's a virtual event. Billy Porter is the headliner. It is being spied. You can register online and I think it was free registration. And it's sponsored by the National LGBTQ Chambers of Commerce. So we finally made it as an inaugural event. When was the first time we were included? Whose presidency? So I want to acknowledge that the LGBTQ Town Hall forums will have started by the time this airs, but they will be running through March 2nd. Please look for forums of interest. Please come and participate. But Linda has been busy putting it on the All Things, the Alliance, and the Pride Center's site, and Rainbow Umbrella's site. I also want to acknowledge that on Saturday, February 6th, 7.30, that the Chandler Performing Arts Center will be doing their Pride Theater presentation of Raggedy and, and it's a $12 suggested donation and it benefits GLAAD's Transgender Rights Project. And you know who's going to facilitate the talk back? Christine Holocaust. Oh, really? Yes. Very good. Also acknowledging Momentum, the coffee and chat is happening on Sunday, the 24th at 11 a.m. Also, be looking at the Pride Center of Vermont out in the open and queer connects websites because everyone is trying to sponsor ongoing virtual events. And speaking of websites and organizing and Rutland that we don't talk about a great deal, apparently the group in Rutland has reached out to, and he is looking at establishing a collaborative relationship with Queer Connect. So there will be a Queer Connect Bennington and a Queer Connect Rutland. And there may be an upcoming interview where we will get to talk about how this is happening and why. Teach Out Vermont, which is an organization for LGBTQ plus educators, and you can find their website. They're looking for LGBTQ plus educators in Vermont to come join them and looking at how they can bring about change in our schools. What about retirees too? I know a few teachers who are retired, would they be? I would suggest you go onto their website and look. I just saw the request, please come join us. And now a bit of, I wish I didn't have to report on this. And it's a follow-up to the traffic stop study. And this has been an ongoing joint venture between UVM Cornell University. And they actually went back and looked at the last five years worth of data. And what did it tell you about traffic stops and racial bias in Vermont? And it didn't come out looking good. And as much as fair and impartial policing have put an effort into doing education and implicit bias training, they haven't seen the indicators that would show that this racial bias and law enforcement in Vermont changing. And what was really striking was, you know, they made the direct statement that, yes indeed, driving while black. Now, if you are a person of color, you are at increased risk of being stopped, being ticketed, your vehicle being searched or being arrested. And what was striking to me is that in general, black drivers are 3.5 times more likely to be stopped than white drivers. People who are perceived to be Hispanic, 3.9 times greater. But in as far as having your vehicle searched, if you're a person of color in Brattleboro, you're 9 times more likely to be stopped, searched. I mean, I found it staggering. And really quickly, legislatively, they're spending a lot of time right now in what I refer to as they're getting to know you session. They're telling the new legislators, this is what we do in this committee. Here are some of the pieces of legislation we passed before we may want to look at again, bringing in those people from state government secretaries, commissioners, to talk about what they do, how they interact with the legislature. But in the process, they were able to pass one bill already, which is H48. And it's already been signed into law by the governor, and this allows municipalities to change the protocols for town meeting day. So mail-in ballots, some towns delaying when they hold town meeting day, looking at doing Australian ballots instead of in-person voting. And it allows the secretary of state to generate mail-in ballots in the appropriated $2 million to make this happen. Good. So what you got? Yeah. Well, North Carolina cities begin passing historic non-discrimination laws. New sheriff is first lesbian to hold a position in any Ohio county. Gay representative Sean Patrick Maloney was ready to fight the mob in the Capitol. We'll have more about that. Stonewall Vet, Ms. Mayer and her partner are new parents. Stonewall Vet and trans icon Ms. Major Griffin Gracie and her partner Beck recently welcomed a new child into the world.  He worked for years trying to desegregate the LGBTQ movement. Missing trans woman Natasha Keanna has been found dead in Detroit. She had been missing since December 26th. Andrew Day is riveting as bi-blue singer Billie Holiday. We'll have a clip about that show later, that movie. Conservatives want a new target in their culture, so they pick trans kids. COVID claims Judith Colb at 89. She was the stand-in mother for Atlanta's LGBT community. Her daughter Cindy remembers she was scared and crying when she came out to her mom. But Judith just dived into reading books and educating herself. Eventually she became the president of PFLAG and was there helping people for 20 years. Attorney and lesbian Robert Kaplan is about to make Trump's life extremely difficult. Arizona representatives Target Cindy McCain. We'll have more about that. And Kim Jackson takes office as Georgia's first LGBTQ senator. So those are my headlines. Anne? State Senator? Yes. Okay. Well, I have some news.  What happened was a lesbian was approached, it might have been a heterosexual bar.  And it was a horrible experience. And so the police came and they charged the person, but they only find him 40 euros and charged him with a misdemeanor. So the European Court of Human Rights said, you know, this is totally inadequate. So Croatia does have hate crime legislation, but it needs to have teeth. European Parliament LGBTI group is critical of the Latvian move to define family in the Constitution. So there's a national party, I think it's called the National Alliance, that has submitted a bill to the Latvian Parliament, which is called the Seima, to define family only in heterosexual terms. So a group of 150 European Parliament members has condemned this action. So we'll see how that develops. Cayman Islands, back there, the Privy Council finally, has set a date for a same-sex marriage appeal. Now we've seen pictures of those poor women who tried to get married. The judge said, good, go ahead. But then the government said, no, no, no, you're legislating from the bench. So they overturned his decision. Now the Privy Council has set February 23 as a date for the hearing because they're challenging the government's appeal ruling that passed. So I'm back, so it's time to return to Poland. They've missed you. I have before you now a picture of three protesters protesting the trial of three, you may recall, that in 2019 I reported on activists putting rainbow flags all around Warsaw. And one of the signs was the Our Lady of Czestakowa, whom I knew from my buffalo origins, is a Polish icon. They call her the Black Madonna. So this artist, Izabeta Podieska, decorated the Our Lady of Czestakowa with a rainbow flag or included rainbow iconography. And so now I have a picture before you of that iconography of the rainbow flag on Our Lady of Czestakowa. So this artist has been charged and she and two other people, they've been charged with putting up posters on walls and elsewhere around the church. They were also charged with putting stickers with the image on garbage bins and toilets, which they deny. The Polish media identified two other defendants as Anna Prus, Joanna, Gurska, Iskandar. They could face up to two years in prison if convicted. And so you see, I showed you at the outset, but let's look at it again, that picture of the protesters and they're holding a sign that says the rainbow is not an offense in Polish. So we'll see what the outcome of that action is. I have entertainment news from Asia. There are boys love hits now. And I'd like to talk in detail, if I may, during a segment, if I may, about a series from Thailand and a series from Taiwan. And these two Asian countries are significant. Thailand may be the first South Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage. They're moving in that direction. But as you know in 2019, Taiwan already did it. But there are two boy love, one is a film and one is a series that are forwarding the cultural dialogue about that. And in case I don't get to it, let me just show you a picture still shot from one of the movies that is breaking records in Taiwan. And the movie is called Because We Belong Together. It's a record-breaking LGBTQ blockbuster. So in case I don't get to greater detail about those, now you've seen the picture. Two more pictures of stories I'm not going to get to. The first ever transgender candidate to run for mayor in Yucatan is Naomi Arjona Rosas. And there she is. She's transgender. She's been a transgender activist for years. She's very popular, so I hope she wins.  He wrote an article, and there's a picture, you can see a picture of him now.  I'm happy with my boyfriend.  But then when I go to work, I'd have to assume a straight persona. And so he had a breakdown. He outlines the whole thing, and now he's very happy. And he said, a lot of people, a lot of gay people in sports just drop out rather than pursuing it and trying to be open. So he was delayed because he didn't have any role models. Good for him. So those are my headlines. All right. Oh, and I have to say, a book review is coming up later in the hour. You're back. That's right. There's lots of pictures. That's right. So I want to talk a little bit about the arts in New England. And I want to give a shout out and a thank you to Boston Spirit that we mentioned on our last show and not just because they included us. But they have made a commitment to looking at artists, writers, you know, exhibits throughout New England that we should be supporting. And looking at some of those, there are two books of note. The first one is The Rain May Pass. And this is a memoir by Boston native Alan Shane. And they compared it in the review to call me by your name. And it's his recounting his teenage years and falling in love with a man twice his age during the 1940s. And they said it was refreshing as a warm summer rain. So that's enticing. Yes. And then there's this one that made me think of maybe that Linda. Plain bad heroines. And it's billed as a contemporary gothic horror novel. Yeah, I know it's got your attention already. Written by Emily Danforth. And Emily Danforth wrote the book upon which the film The Miseducation of Cameron Post was was based. Plain bad heroes heroines is described as a time hopping plot focusing on a doomed romance of two young women that haunts a Rhode Island boarding school. Now I'm thinking we might need to get in touch with Bear Pond to get a copy of this as a birthday gift for an upcoming event and then get a review of it. Music. There is pop duo called Frontlines has just released Bitter Sweet Revival.  This is described as powerful harmonies that touch on important social and political issues such as bigotry in a long way. An anti-45 anthem called Rain and then a song called Save Us which addresses healthcare. Okay, we could identify with that one. And then love is all we own about the growing social movements. Sounds very interesting. I know. And I appreciated because I really don't go out and look for these kinds of and knowing that there's a New England connection sort of heightens it. They also were showcasing wild fancy designs in North Hampton and that's their website. They have local artist LGBTQ plus using repurposed materials to create earrings, pings, pins, necklaces, patches to announce the wearer's personal pronouns or LGBTQ identity such as butch and queer. I think that puts it right out there. And then the New Haven Connecticut Pride Center always has a display of LGBTQ artists such as their recent exhibit called Transcending Art. And what they're doing is they have two other venues that they are expanding so they can show more work. And again, you could go on to their website, the New Haven Pride Center and get a virtual tour. And I went and I didn't get to go when we were in North Hampton but we wanted to go to lesbian Emily Dickinson's house. Yes. And just set up up front. And I want to leave you with a short clip and this is from a film that when I watched the trailer I'll tell you I started choking up. And it's called Super Nova. And it's with Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. And it's a portrayal of an aging long time couple facing a health care crisis. And the film uses a road trip to both reveal the crisis, reflect on their years together which got me. And how they were saying goodbye. And in the clip it will tell you the health care crisis and the importance of this film. So you have to find the three brightest lights there that make the triangle. And that's where the Milky Way is. It's good to get back on the road again, don't you think? But how about just exploring the outer regions of fifth gear? I'm on the edge. All right. If you had one wish in the world, what would it be? I wish this holiday wouldn't it? So can you tell that it's gotten worse? I'd like to make a speech. I, uh... Well, maybe Sam will do it for me. I'd love you to do it for me.  And I definitely wouldn't be here if it weren't for this man next to me. I want to be remembered for who I was, but not for who I'm about to become. It's not fair to you. It's not about fair. It's about love. No, Sam. I want to see this through with you to the end. Nostra! A very wise man once said, we will not starve for lack of wonders, but from lack of wonder. Are these out now? They are scheduled to be released at the end of this month, and I did not see with the clip where we could access them, so I'm hoping that I can continue to go online, and then you can post it on our site. Right, because I'd like to see that. So I'm handing it off to you now. All right. Thank you. Well, for the first story I have is North Carolina cities begin passing historic non-discrimination laws after a year-long monitor, Hillsborough, Carborough, and Chapel Hill passed ordinance protecting LGBT people from discrimination in public accommodations and employment. These are the first measures passed since the 2019 repeal of North Carolina's bathroom bill HB2. New sheriff is first woman, well, first lesbian, to hold this position in Ohio County. Sheriff Charmaine McGuffie had a conversation. She will never forget with her uncle when she was 14. She was told, she told him that she wanted to be a cop like him, and he told her that was just impossible, that there was no way it was going to happen because she was a woman. But she never let that get her down, and she kept working towards this goal, and now she's a sheriff. And we have a photo of her, which we will be showing now. And another photo is of gay representative, Sean Patrick Maloney, was ready to fight off the mob at the Capitol. From Hudson Valley, New York, he was ready to physically fight back against the rioters that stormed the Capitol. He was up in the balcony? Gallery. Yeah, the gallery. Is that what they call it? I was going to... All right. But I declined. When it appears the rioters had gotten into the House of Representatives, Maloney turned to colleague Colin Alfred, a former pro football player, and said, are you ready to fight these mega, mega assholes? Let's go, said Alfred, who is also a Democrat and from Texas. So here's his photo. Was that a photo of Maloney? Yeah, Maloney. And you know, I thought, doesn't this sound like a movie? Yeah, it is. I could just picture the whole thing. Are you ready? All right. And I have a trailer for this, but I'll tell you it's... Andro Day is riveting in by blue singer, Billy Holiday. The U.S. versus Billy Holiday examines the government attempt to silence her for singing strange fruit in public. Oh, that's such a wonderful, moving song. They claim the song was brought on violence. And one FBI agent was Garrett Holland, made it his life's mission to take her down. Here is the trailer. You can watch on Hulu on February 26th. Don't you know who this is? She was thinking of something more special. I'm downright flashy. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Billy Holiday. The reporters keep asking me, why do you do the things you do? This is what I tell them. I love me. We love you. And the BLSCP says Billy Holiday is the voice of our people. I think we should integrate the audience for this show. Let's change it up a little bit.     Which one of my songs is your favorite song? Strange Fruit. It's a song about important things, you know. Things that are going on in the country. That's holiday women's causing a lot of people to think the wrong things. It's a starting gun for this so-called civil rights movement. Those lyrics provoke people. Y'all got a plan? She's a drug addict. Exactly. I cut Strange Fruit.  It's for your own good, okay?  Just get her off that stage. That's strange. Don't let me sing nowhere. No clubs. No money. No nothing. You gotta understand, baby. Right now, I'm in a situation. You saying we could beat this, Billy? I need some now. You don't like a hammer. Come right back and it hit harder than before. She's singing it for all of us. Ain't no other Negro stop bold enough to do it. I'm not being followed. I'm not going to count it, no fizz. In the south.  Strange fruit hanging. You think I would stop singing that song? Your grandkids will be singing Strange Fruit. Arizona Representative Tar- Representative Target Cindy McCain for supporting Biden and LGBTQ rights. Representatives are considering censuring her, the widow of John McCain. A proposed censuring of Cindy makes personal attacks and refers to her past drug addiction. I didn't know she had a drug addiction, did you? No, I didn't either. Cindy McCain has been a proponent of LGBTQ rights and was given the Trevor Hero Wood in 2018. And lesbian teen outs her mother, her mother's involvement in the D.C. violence at the Capitol. Elena Duke was told by her mother to get out of the house that she wasn't welcome there because she was a lesbian and participated in a Black Lives Matter protest. Helena identified her mother and her aunt and uncle in videos. So... Here we are. I know. And the last story I have is about attorney and lesbian Roberta Kaplan. He's about to make Trump's life extremely difficult. She's a crusader for underdogs and has won almost every legal accolade imaginable. Kaplan says that she will seek to dispose Trump in three cases. She's a lesbian? Depose. Yeah, depose, sorry. We'd like to dispose of him. Could we? Maybe. She's a lesbian, observant Jew, and a die-hard Democrat. She's been called the attorney general for the resistance. Kaplan remains most celebrated for the Edie Winsor case in 2013. Roberta married Rachel Levine in 2005. Rachel is a liberal activist who serves on the New York Democratic Committee. So there you go. Well, I have a book review and I think in the interest of time I will deliver it now. And if there's time, I'll get back to some of my other stories, especially about the films and entertainment. Do you want to hold the book up? Why, yes. All right, well, you can put it right here if that works. This review is truncated, so I hope it's not choppy. It appeared in the Lambda Literary Review on November 15th. It's of this volume, which is of some length. And of one of my favorite periods in lesbian history. Diana Suhami's deliberately provocative title, No Modernism Without Lesbians, points to the nature of her project to place lesbian life and work prominently in the cultural landscape of modernism. Literary modernism is favored in the analysis, though the lesbian Suhami discusses also participated to varying degrees in modernist painting, music, theater, and architecture. The writer expands her definition of modernism to embrace nonconformist lifestyle, particularly in the case of Natalie Clifford Barney. Besides railway heiress Barney, the writer also considers Shipping Scion Breyer, which is the chosen name of Annie Winifred Ellerman. Sylvia Beach is also considered the owner of the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and the only member of the group who's not independently wealthy. And finally, experimental writer and art collector Gertrude Stein is treated at length. This setting is Paris, where each figure lived and worked most of her life. Three women were US expatriates. Breyer was originally from the UK. After a short introduction, the book is divided into four sections, each devoted to the life and loves of these chosen figures. Perhaps of greatest interest to contemporary readers are the sections concerning Sylvia Beach and Breyer, two women occupying back seats in the popular annals of modernism and lesbian lore. Beach's bookstore became the center of the literary avant-garde from 1919 until it was forced to close by the Nazis in 1941. She spent years with other lesbians like Margaret Anderson and Harriet Weaver fighting the censors to publish James Joyce's modernist classic Ulysses.  Despite Monnier's decision to open their relationship while Beach was visiting in the US, the two remained lifelong allies and in fact Monnier was instrumental in securing Beach's release on health grounds from a Nazi jail in 1943. Breyer is another modernist who may have escaped popular recognition, except perhaps as the companion and benefactor of Hill to Do Little, a modernist poet and US expatriate who went by the initials HD. Though unable to openly declare it, Breyer may be described in contemporary parlance as transgender. She devoted much of her inherited largesse to small presses and the aesthetic undertakings of her friends and other struggling artists and she participated in some of these projects herself. An unaccountable omission occurs, unfortunately, in Suhami's treatment of the last years of the life of Natalie Clifford Barney. One reversal came with her eviction from the site of her salon on Rue Jacob where she lived for 60 years. Though wealthy and well connected, she was still a renter and at 93 was forced to leave her storied and treasured locale in late 1969 or early 1970. More devastating was Barney's late life estrangement from the artist Romaine Brooks who had been her lover and partner for decades. In the introduction Suhami misleadingly states, Natalie's relationship with Romaine lasted 54 years until Romaine's death in 1970. In the last year of her life, however, Brooks turned away from Barney entirely and despite Barney's plaintive letters and Housekeeper Bertha's attempted intervention sank deep into isolation that deliberately excluded Barney. She famously said, I am not at home to miss Barney. Truly. I wonder what happened. Rather than including this poignant heart-breaking material, Suhami creates a fiction of lasting love. At the end of the Barney section, after quoting a 1964 love letter from Barney to Brooks, Suhami declares that a photo of Brooks was buried with Barney. Key particulars are overlooked here. This mishap raises troubling questions about narratives of this nature. If we're going to reclaim the lives and work of our lesbian predecessors, we need to provide accurate information. Though the temptation to mythologize and romanticize is great, we do so at our peril. In a work of this length and scope, minor errors and failings inevitably appear as well. British heiress and activist Nancy Kunard was a heterosexual friend, not one of Barney's lovers. A clear anti-bloomsbury bias emerges, a number of sweeping assertions call for more circumspection, and the Gertrude Stein reference list omits several notable titles. Still no modernism without lesbians partially accomplishes its goal of providing an informative, diverting account aimed at returning certain Paris lesbians to their rightful places in lesbian modernist study. Many contemporary readers may dismiss these women as rich white girls, in the words of an activist contemporary of mind. And of course, that is to a large extent true. But in the context of their lives and of the times, their work has merit and deserves recognition on its own terms. Diana Suhami in this volume has made a significant contribution toward that effort. I studied all this. I don't know if you can tell. Her dissertation was on this. On Judah Barrow, but that's another. So it's a... I'm glad I read it, but it's a little bit flawed. Well, there you go. Well, Keith, do you have anything else? Or should we let Ann Ramble on? Well, I saw one thing that I had overlooked, and if I can find it very quickly. It was an acknowledgement. There was an acknowledgement that the Boston Children's Hospital, they are going to delay gender affirmation services, for people born as intersex until the person reaches age of meaningful consent. Which is what age? 14. No, no, no. It is going to be dependent upon the person. When can you make this decision? They're only the second hospital in the country to institute this policy. But I'm not sure I understand. If someone is born and identified as being intersex, ambiguous gender, traditionally the hospital will persuade the parents to engage in a gender affirmation process immediately. And by work from the intersex activists, they said, wait a minute, you're making decisions about who I am before I have the ability or the awareness to understand the implications of that decision. And that has screwed up a lot of people's lives. Yes, absolutely. Did you read, what was it, book Middlesex? No, I didn't read it. You talked about that a lot. That was the really first big book, I think, about that issue. I really like the book a lot. So what is the age of consent, though? They do not establish it, because it's going to be based upon the individual. So you could be 10, or 5, or 20. It's when you have the capacity to say, I understand and this is who I am. I think it's a really good idea to get rid of that practice. I just wonder who decides and what's meaningful. I would say that would be the same as end of life decisions where you have an ethics committee who is looking at the totality of the decision being made and what is your understanding of. But it will definitely be in the details. But this is a very encouraging step. Do parents don't know this before their children are born, do they? No. So it's not something that you would know. And a lot of parents, I think, are well-meaning, but they really... It's a terrible practice. Have no understanding. It could be like a parent saying, well, I have three daughters, so let's make this person a son. I know it, but it's arbitrary. It has no recognition. Yeah. Of nothing about me without me. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Ann, you have four stories. I have an opportunity to cover another story. Look at a smile on her face. I know. I'm delighted. Because I think this is very interesting what's happening in Asia. It's a boys' love series of genres that are appearing. And they push the dial for progress across Asia. Two boys' love hits have recently rocked the LGBT-plus hubs in Asia, particularly in Thailand and Taiwan. Two together, the series, which includes, because we belong together and your name engraved herein... Is this like a TV series? One's a TV series and one's a film. And I'm going to cover them sequentially. They have added to the reputation of both countries because of these vibrant LGBTQ scenes. Because we belong together was one of Thailand's biggest hit shows in 2020. The series aired on primetime television and online channels, receiving record views and racking up several local awards. It's based on jit to rain, right or I don't know, on their novel. The story centers on freshman college love between Sarah Watt an introvert athlete and guitarist in Thailand. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, T-I-N-E. The self-proclaimed womanizer becomes attracted to men for the first time when he falls for Sarah Watt. The series popularity is seen in its reaching 9 million YouTube views in the first weeks and 15 million at press time. It's also received 50 million views online TV. One of Asia's largest streaming platforms. Its success has many sources. It's easily relatable because of the theme of love and genuine portrayal of what lesbian youth experience as they come of age while retaining cute boy romance attributes and fun college life attracting larger non-LGBT audiences apparently. It speaks to audiences in Thailand and across East and Southeast Asia from Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines to Vietnam. It even found fans in Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia where same-sex sodomy laws still exist. Its sequel, Still Together, released several months later received even greater attention with its last episode taking the top trending hashtag in Thailand with over 2 million tweets. As with Because We Belong Together its online response was phenomenal with over 40 million views on YouTube and 27 million views on online TV spanning East and Southeast Asia. Its well-received audience is not coincidental with social progress seen in the country. As I said in the intro Thailand is well positioned to become the first Southeast Asian nation to recognize same-sex unions. The Thai parliament is currently discussing a bill to legalize same-sex partnerships along with provisioning other benefits similar to marriage. And along with Taiwan which legalized marriage in 2019 as I said both Asian countries have fundamental progress with acceptance of openly LGBTQ relationships both legal reforms and social attitudes and now if I may continue. Let me ask you a question. Do you know if these are subtitled? Is it something that you can watch on YouTube or in the United States? I don't think so. Yeah, I'll double check but I'm fearful that it's not. Now let me show you again a still shot from your name engraved herein which shares a universally relatable romantic theme and is from Taiwan. It's a record-breaking 2020 LGBT blockbuster. It was the first LGBT themed movie to break the $1 million mark a prestige badge of success in the Taiwanese and greater Chinese speaking film industry. The lead actors have been strong advocates for greater LGBT social acceptance. Given the success of both hits and two of Asia's most LGBT friendly countries it can be expected that there will be more LGBTQ themed pieces with mainstream success to look forward to. Although boys and boy love this genre arguably objectifies attractive young preppy looking gay couples it nevertheless helps raise awareness around the existence and creating lacking dialogue around normalizing LGBTQ relationships With more visibility given to same sex relationships as they become more open and discussed this is a welcome departure from a patriarchal and anti-gay don't-ask-don't-tell approach still present in Asia and abroad. This is very exciting. Everybody's watching in Asia. I wish we could watch it. I know it has subtitles so we'll have to check. I'll report on that next time. And? Well, how much more do you have Keith? I've got another clip I could do. No, all I have is the answer to the trivia question. Well in that case... Let's show the clip. Let me show you the clip. This is from the Handmaiden from South Korea. That's right. It's adapted from Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith. I like that novel. Let me set it up and then we can watch the clip. We know that Sarah Waters is a British lesbian an award-winning novelist who first caught the attention of literary lesbians with tipping the velvet a work of historical fiction that found and traced the deeply embedded lesbian veins of Victorian England. Fingersmith, her third novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and while we could call it a lesbian novel being both written by and about lesbians it's also a work greatly admired by men. It was ranked by David Bowie as one of his top 100 books. And South Korean film director Park Chan-Wook was inspired by its visceral scenes. I'll tell you one in particular that one of the characters files off the teeth of another one with a thimble. So that's a visceral scene that inspired him. He felt compelled to make it into his next movie The Handmaiden. According to an interview with The Guardian Park didn't know that BBC adaptation existed and when he found out he resolved to transplant it from its British soil to 1930s Japan a period which had its own Victorian type constraints via a final flourishing of imperialist power. At that time Korea, like much of the region was challenged by or under Japanese imperialist rule and while Japan looked down upon Korea it looked enviously to the west. In The Handmaiden, Park cleverly maps those master-servant tensions onto an Asian colonial context to stunning effect. While Sarah Waters was thrilled with the 2005 adaptation of the BBC story The Heroine Sue, she hasn't seen this version. In the story The Heroine Sue is a female pickpocket raised by a Dickensian gang of thieves. She collaborates with a male con man, gentlemen in this film, to seduce a wealthy heiress in her remote country estate alope with her and abscond with her fortune after committing her to a madhouse. Okay, so the Dickensian guy wants to... Linda and I saw a play of this at the American Repertory Theater it was still called Fingersmith and we didn't think it was that effective as a play. It's a lot of twists and turns in the plot. It was better at the book. Okay, when Sue falls in love with her mistress she nevertheless goes through with the plot and that's just part one. Many twists and turns follow in the remaining two parts. In the novel, as in others by Waters dramatic suspense is provided by psychological atmosphere of the Gothic novel. The cliffhanger device favored by early serials the duplicity of language especially the argo of the criminal underclass and the ever-present threat of the gallows to raise the stakes. All right, are we going to see the clip? Oh, you don't want to hear any more about it? Well, we have to allow time for the clip. The what? It's a clip. The clip, yeah. All right, let's look at the clip. My friends have cut me off. I am irrepressible. I've heard that rumor. And that's what we love about you. All right, well, let me just finish. Korean gender roles under Confucianism created an oppression for women possibly even worse than in Victorian England. How do I follow that? I don't know. So, when was our first LGBTQ inaugural ball? And it may have been the Triangle Ball in 1993 which was the first of Bill Clinton's presidencies. All right. Well, by the time we see you next time hopefully we'll have a new president. I'm counting on it. And vice president. Things will have gone slowly. And Linda will have gotten to see Billy Porter. And I will have gotten to see Billy Porter. And on that note, we remember even when we have President Biden we still need to resist.


to Kenya after, you know, about six years? Oh, I feel. Give me time to think. Are you excited? More than excited. I can't wait to be on the stage and to face people I love from Kenya. I miss them so long time. I don't know if there is someone who suffers like me during so many years. I'm very happy, very, very happy to be here. And of course it's the Coffee Olomide Peace concert to make peace as well. How do you feel, you know, also the government allowing you to come back as well again? I must say thank you to the government, the new government, the new presidents and all the people of Kenya This country is my country. The country of my heart. I have a big part of my life here. To be back after so many years try to understand me. It's something in my heart, yes. Yes, alright. And of course what is your message of course to the fans that have been waiting for you? Peace, love and chacho. Love, peace and chacho. Peace, love and chacho. Papa Freddie, what do you have to say? You waited for, you know, Le Gran Mopao to come. Le Gran Mopao. I'm a big fan since I was young of Le Gran Mopao, Mokolo Bilanga. Welcome to Kenya. Good to see you and we can't wait to meet you on the 9th and of course for those who are coming on the 11th we'll still see you there. Good to see you back home, this is your other home. Welcome and we enjoy the show. It's all about peace, it's all about enjoyment and joy. And of course the tickets are ticketierto.com we are really, you know, happy to see you. We are excited and we can't wait to come and of course... Let me introduce to you the most beautiful voice of Africa. The female singer Cindy Lecaire. Hello. Cindy, right? Sorry? French. I'll just ask you in English and then you can... There's a question for her? Sorry, I just... We are excited to have you as well. What do we expect on the 9th of December? On Saturday? It's really wonderful. What are we going to hear from you? Your beautiful voice. Everything will be very good. Everything will be very good. We should give the best of ourselves. Yes. It's been 37 years of international Kachelatae. How do you feel celebrating 37 years of Kachelatae again? I'm proud of my kids Kachelatae. Kachelatae produced what everybody says. I'm very, very proud. I'm a field daddy. The pride daddy of Kachelatae. Yes. The last word is... I want to say thank you to Wesley, thank you to Andrew and thank you to Kenya. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.


Chips are really at the heart of the growth that we are seeing in the world. We're in a computer chip shortage, and the world needs new solutions fast. Everything we do revolves around chips. We use hundreds of chips in a car, and you know how many thousands of chips are used in a data center? How we communicate with each other, it's all made possible because of chips. Not only do we need to address the chip shortage now, but we also need new chips and new ways to design them. There's also a growing need for new types of computing resources to run complex AI models, advanced quantum computers, and to support massive hybrid cloud systems. That demand could be aided by the recent passage of the Chips and Science Act, which allocates billions in funding for R&D of new chips here in the States. I believe the reason why companies like IBM are choosing to build in America is because we're better positioned globally than we have been in any time in a long time. The supply chain is going to start here and end here in the United States. Part of that solution could be found in upstate New York. So I'm outside the state capitol here in Albany, New York to find out what makes this region so special and why IBM and so many other tech companies have a long history of research here that ends up in chips. In and around Albany, there's a long history of semiconductor research and production. For years, IBM has been the largest tenant of the Albany Nanotech Complex, which is owned by New York Creates, a partnership run by New York State and the State University of New York. Albany Nanotech Complex is one of arguably only two or three sites in the world that have the capabilities that we have that are open access to most of the industry for developing new technologies. The products, the technologies, the device structures, the things that have been developed here are really going into next generation systems. The facility in Albany has been at the center of some of the biggest breakthroughs in computing. Chip designs that have come from within these walls make it all the way to the devices that are used by businesses and people the world over. In 2021, we announced world's first two nanometer chip technology. A couple of years back, we had announced a new device structure called Nanosheet. That device structure came out of this facility and now it has become the standard for the whole world. I met with folks who work at the Albany Nanotech Complex to see what the team is up to. So we're in the Albany Nanotech Center. What you're looking at is an NFX lab. In here, we have a state-of-the-art clean room holding many tools that allow the patterning and fabrication of semiconductor chips. So this guy walking by right here is in this crazy suit. What is that for? This is to protect our chips from our contamination. This is a clean room facility. Any small defect that goes into this chip can create a failure. So people need to be dressed in bunny suits to keep the environment clean. And then it was my turn to be the guy in the suit to see the science and innovation behind these glass walls. That's not right. Ow! The closest I'll ever be to Darth Vader. I'm struggling here. Like a large white penguin. Okay, we're going in. This is cool. So here we have our cab. We're now inside the cab. Over here, we have the big lithography pool that actually padded away first. And it's so big. You can add the size of the bus as you can tell. You can bring it in. I think it needs about three cargo planes. So it's insanely big. Underneath this machine, there's an equally or even larger infrastructure that holds a laser. This laser impinges upon a very small tin droplet. That tin droplet, when the laser impinges on the tin droplet, it generates EUV light, which is collected, focused, and used to create the pattern on the wafer. So it's a really fancy etch-a-scatch is what you're telling me. That's what I'm telling you. The work that we do here now will allow us to have better performing devices in a decade or so. Researchers like Nicole Sonnier of the IBM AI Hardware Center are looking at the new types of chips that emerging workloads require. Yeah, so this is our offline lab state. Okay. And what we're doing in here is taking those waivers, we bring them in, and we can do additional testing. We have capability to do what we call parametric testing, which is a little bit more simplified, testing a device or a structure. And then we also have capability to do what we call functional testing, where we're testing actually the whole chip. We are able to test our chips before we send out the waivers or dicing and packaging so we can pick which chips are going to be good or the best and send those on to our colleagues in the worldwide lab. Today, most AI inferencing is done on GPUs. Chips are originally designed for processing graphics on a computer. Models are getting larger. Datasets that we're using to train models are getting larger and larger. And so there'll be a time when we can't just throw more compute at the problem. So instead, we need to look at new ways of tackling the problem, either through digital cores or through analog in-memory computing and even other solutions like heterogeneous integration, where try and put together different pieces in novel ways that will help to make the overall system more efficient. So these waivers are here waiting for us to go take them over to the test lab and do a little bit more work on them. The team is on a mission to accelerate the development of AI hardware and meet the growing demands of AI processing, both for IBM and its partners. But none of these breakthroughs happen in a vacuum. If it weren't for the strong community that New York has fostered around Albany, little of this would have happened. In this building alone, there are researchers from Tokyo Electron, SUNY Poly, Applied Materials, New York State, and Samsung, all working on projects that are changing the future of chips. And they've been brought together by New York Creates. We're very proud of the capabilities and the facilities that we have on site. Our mission is really to accelerate next generation semiconductor and adjacent technology development with a strong focus on education, workforce development, and helping to grow the innovation economy, particularly across the state of New York. Tokyo Electron is one partner that IBM collaborates with closely to optimize chip research and production. For Cal, our competitors, our customers, and our partners all work together in this one-of-a-kind ecosystem. And we've all learned how to coexist here and take good advantage of the opportunities. With IBM, we've perfected how we work on R&D over the past 20 years. What happens in Albany is only possible because of the collaborative community that's been fostered here. I'm very proud of how public, private, and academia work together. I'm very proud of how many companies are collaborating. It's a unique model in the world. And at the end, our goal is to create the best product for our companies and bring best talent that can join the workforce of future. In the past, Albany has helped usher in the computer age we currently live in. And the research happening today has the potential to change how we discover new materials, cure illnesses, communicate, travel, work, and frankly, just live.


Everybody forced here, but 22 23 spectra full case tiered number 14 find those results on your screen anytime a late sports cards calm I would love to pull some nebulas right here So let's do that. Let's also get that next break that has spots filled up everybody. It is I'm at collegiate and select draft mixer For box number six. It has was a 16 ago. I think it was So about halfway on that one. No, I rich isn't a bucks fan It's like the bucks because Brady was there it does not give one care in the world about the Tampa Buccaneers right now Rich just rich just like the rest of us watch watches the Patriots very sadly nowadays Thai Thai and bead we're like bulls fans in the 2000s. So 149 Van Vleet for the Raptors and Redemption Christian Brown there we go nugs Ricky Jersey autograph interstellar For the Nuggets Nuggets on the board early like a parsons boxing in the offseason Got to 49 Jamal Murray for the Nuggets Kelly Ubre to 99 sky-high signatures for Charlotte Ken and Martin junior for Houston to number to 99 Lonnie Walker to 49 sky-high signatures Lakers Lonnie Walker the fourth See a monster hit here come on Marcus smart for this Celtics 14 of 25 and Thunder rookie auto aspiring is Jalen Williams out of 35 J.  So it's something that I will avoid Hardy rookie Kevin Porter junior to 49 for the Rockets Got our Vita subbonus icons autograph for Portland Portland with an Arvita subbonus autograph That's out of 49 This game is ugly man. I thought we're gonna get I thought we're gonna get a decent game like I thought it'd be kind of close Rookie tie-tie Washington to 149 for Houston And deep space autograph rip Hamilton rip Hamilton on the auto that one's out of 99 for Detroit Out here supposed to be rain J. Doe we got Mark Williams rookie to 99 for Charlotte Redemption Nicola Yoke edge. There we go color graphs for the Nuggets About that Giovanni with the nugs. Yo color graphs Nicola Yokech. Yeah, I feel bad for Jones right now He's just he's a pinata back there rookie Blake Wesley to 25 for the Spurs and Wizards Monte Morris the 49 catalyst autograph as soon as he drops back. He has to move. Well, he stole the ball or run There's no time to think But nobody can also get open because their DB's are really good That's what I'm saying Lane catch up on some sleep or something Got McDaniels for the Sixers out of 149 Lakers legend auto here to 49 James worthy on the icons auto kills. You've got Nicola Yokech to 99 for the The nugs And look at Richard Jefferson sky-high signatures gold for the Nets They go gold Richard Jefferson one of ten Short print spectra is gonna be psychedelic Also, that's a psychedelic parallel. There's also the what is it the eclipse is Really rare and color blast is really rare basketball color blast come from spectra The Marge arose in for the bulls number to 149. Oh, you got cards tomorrow, huh Lane? Yes, I'm gonna miss out Marjahn Bochamp three of eight aspiring rookie auto for the Bucks Yeah, three of eight in the Bochamp. It's a Nick Van Exel autos last week. Yeah, I guess so barry Smith you got Jalen Williams thunder rookie numbered with 99 and a Jazz rookie auto radiant. Oh check Baji 42 of 49. What's up Dave? How do the times get the ball? Landau Robinson Gary Trent Jr. to 149 for the Raptors Jonas Valenchunas to 49 deep space auto for the Pelicans Yes sports bar chain Not there's a menagerie Kam reddish Short of printed for the Blazers and nice hit for the Mavericks here green ink clean sig to Jaden Hardy aspiring rookie auto Appreciate that Jessica. Yeah, I just looked up and I'm like, oh they saw the ball green Hardy Got Cameron Thomas Nets to 99 And spurs Blake Wesley rookie patch auto It's out of 99 as well Some better RPAs here. Hopefully 249 to sumu for the bulls Steve's just gonna be rude again Ricky Pierce auto Celtics and calves out of 25 I'm not guessing see you may as well just say what you're gonna say Celtics calves random at the end Yeah, all right. Yep. He was gonna be like, whoa, he's a score. I missed it. He was chatting during the game Disrespectful man. I try to convince Sean every single week to get Steve off that list No Can't do it. I'm an Audrey Randall for the Knicks 35 so Han rookie purple auto nice one for the spurs. That's pretty sick. It's a pretty solid case overall We need some monsters though. How'd that yoke it's redemption. Which is sweet Bridges to 149 for the Nets got men not to 25 rookie auto for the Wolves. Oh, man, you guys won You also covered It's a 99 is Vuchovic's for the bulls Redemption Kenneth Lawton jr. Rookie Jersey autograph interstellar that goes the Grizzlies Wasn't a perfect game for the uh for the Eagles, but what in the Foxboro and I mean the Pats have a really really good defense. So still beat that Eagles are not their best, but that definitely didn't suck shengen to 25 for the Rockets redemption rj Barrett color graphs astral for the Knicks Can't write tonight like I don't know what's up with my hand every time I try to write something It's very like my hair is not like the best, but it's like very I don't know it doesn't feel right Looks bad, too.  Oh, it's Franz's team. He won in FIBA Drabble thing for the next one still So next break that we're trying to fill up has 16 to go still everybody. Oh Sunday funny mixtures already sold out Steve Owens pool out of 49 for the Warriors. Oh Thunder nine of 15 Aspiring orange color match rookie Otto Chad Holmgren Bernard that is fire the orange color match 9 of 15 love that Love that would be so cool if it wasn't Florida Gators colors It would be so cool. It is sick though. Congrats. Okay. See that's a beauty That is a beauty says pretty good case so far 249 Zion Pelicans Danny green the 25 catalysts out of for Cleveland Thunder Oh, look at this gold shed Holmgren. Oh my god Hard that was back-to-back cards basically. Oh Man, oh Man eight of ten gold shed Holmgren. Yep. That's fire. That'll be a mag. I'm Jeremy so on E J LaDelle to 99 rookie Otto for the pelicans Blake Double lake you gonna start throwing again soon. I'm just kidding man 249 is Wolves Anthony Edwards and David Roddy on the rookie patch Otto for the Grizzlies David Roddy Roddy to 35 Number 249 is Bogdanovitch for the Pistons You've got a Jalen Green sky high signatures Rockets a nice one there second-year Jalen Green Otto 23 of 49 no throw till November Dang man don't sound very fun, dude Yeah, it's a 149 rookie is mark Williams for the Hornets You're allowed to play video games to 49 Ken and Martin jr. Autograph for the Rockets. It's all Sean does Plays golf on the Xbox Kawhi to 25 for the clips 35 RPA Wendell Moore jr. For the Wolves Mba, it's okay. Yeah, it's a J. Dub AI Number to 149 Philly And nice one here Malachi Branham green aspiring rookie Otto for San Antonio. Nice Branham. All right last one You have one random to do here in a moment, and then we'll do a recap as well Just football and football tonight football and soccer Getting moved back us we move back a sapphire break and then we've just got three football breaks before then for the mixer Dave yonder 149 for the Cavaliers 16 to go guys to get that filled up here We go Portland radiant Otto rookie shade on sharp Nice rookie Otto there for the Blazers 49 is the Anthony Melton 76ers got Bucks Otto Vin Baker Vin Baker You know, I know a Baker that got a dub today Baker Mayfield. Yeah, it's pretty solid, too He was he was solid Minnesota miss oh deep enough very good, but 8 and 149 for the Suns Deandre Aiden Raptors on the rookie Jersey Otto Christian Coloco to 199 give the Cowboys trophy already Yeah, maybe the NFC is a little better than people thought That's Trash I do Guy coming in here saying thousand dollars or nothing How's that guy be saying it's a 99 Brandon Ingram for the pelicans Blake you play Starfield and Caruso sky-high signatures for the Bulls I think if sky-high center, so I don't really think of Caruso not necessarily the highest flyer there is We go bulls. Let's do one random here Surprise only one usually there's like eight of these autos. All right, Ricky Davis Celtics calves on the auto here Good luck on that one's out of 25 three and one is four Top team gets it one two three and four Celtics, all right recap time Going to the Celtics was the Ricky Davis auto. He had Caruso Coloco Vin Baker shade on a sharp Malachi Brannum Wendell Moore Kenney Martin jr. Jalen Green David Roddy E. J. Liddell Danny Green Josh, but not Jeremy Sohan Blake Wesley Jaden Hardy Jonas Valenciunis Oshia Baji Marjane Bochamp James Worthy Monte Morris Rip Hamilton Our Vita Sabonis Jalen Williams that's Lonnie Walker the fourth Kelly ubré nuggets redemption was Christian Brown Ricky Jersey auto interstellar as well as color graphs Nikola Jokic Grats to the nugs We had gold Richard Jefferson to 10 for the Nets Kenneth Hawthorne jr. Grizzlies Ricky Jersey auto interstellar redemption as well as Nick's Colorgraph slush. Yeah, I told you guys I can't write right now like my handwriting usually isn't like the best But I couldn't do it RJ Barrett Nick's color graphs astral We had a gold rookie of Chet Holmgren for OKC number to 10 That's gorgeous and that's gorgeous to orange aspiring rookie auto Color match to 15 Chet Holmgren that will do it on to football


I want to give just a quick outline of what I plan to do. Today we're going to do a very brief introduction and then I'm going to just briefly tell you the methodological approach that we've taken in this study with young people and spaces in public libraries. Then I want to just give you just a brief overview of the quantitative findings that we have derived as well as a few of the qualitative findings. And then we'll talk more specifically about a particular topic exceeding and then we'll conclude with some general comments before Jeremy talks. Urban centers are reviving again as we hear in the paper on a daily basis. Moribund cities and commercial districts prior to 2000 are now crackling and bubbling as residential centers with fashionable foodie nests and pulsing with exciting destination attractions and entertainments. Yet despite this urban renaissance so many of us have longed for it's also a radically lopsided regeneration. Manifest manifesting a decidedly anti youth urban regime. The numbers tell a clear story about this an age based segregation increasingly swept clean of young people. Only 13 percent of this city's population is now under 18. In Seattle it's 15 percent 17 percent in Boston whereas compared to the national average it's about 24 percent of the city's population is populated by young people in our rush to promote higher density urbanism asks urbanist Cade Benfield. Are we inadvertently creating child free zones that are inhospitable to families with kids. We are as committed to diversity as we like to say shouldn't that include young people. And yet one institution of civic civil society remains steadfast even doubling down in its efforts to avoid this re urbanized Jim Crow Jr. I call it our own public libraries. Although libraries have traditionally been devoted heart and soul to children over the past 15 years or so and in terms of trying to try harder to offer young adults a space of their own libraries have actually found another gear. But it's not a simple library as hero story either. In fact it's a little unnerving especially for someone like me who's a researcher that little of this recent white space effort is advanced with demonstrable evidence data fact or analysis practitioners across the country are increasingly finding this previously marginalized population deserving of more attention than they have in the past where library spaces for young people have received less space and less design attention than bathrooms on the good side. However this lack of evidence based experimentation with library space design opens up a pretty large field for people like Jeremy and myself so a few years ago and not unlike the way most research projects get started it bubbled up from something I'd been doing before I resumed the advocacy for YA space that I had pioneered at the LA Public Library in the 1990s and persuaded a panel of IMLS grant reviewers to give me a multi grant year multi grant multi year grant to capture what was actually going on in the nation's YA library spaces together with three other researchers and Dr. Kemp here today is among them and 11 San Jose State LIS graduate research assistants. We asked five years worth of the most recent most recent and renovated libraries nearly 800 nationally to tell us what they were doing. Three hundred and thirty two told us in survey responses in video footage and in data that we derived from virtual experience in second life. We even asked young people themselves to tell us what they thought about libraries what what libraries were doing and we got back what we got back represents the first empirical LIS data to support evidence based library YA spaces. We've even we've been successful too in disseminating our findings I'll briefly excerpt from three recent studies today but we've been published now in top tier scholarly journals several practitioner journals just last week for example we learned that another article was accepted for public libraries and another yet still under review with public libraries and we presented or have forthcoming presentations at school state national and even international conferences both as scholars as well as graduate students our students are out presenting some of this material too. So this is a good example of how a team of scholars and students together have begun to systematically build our LIS knowledge base to fill a gaping hole in a historical gaping hole to in our daily practice. And for those of you not explicitly connected to serving young adults I would urge you to consider how the questions and data will share with you today pertain to your own library and user populations. If you do I believe you'll agree that I'm less is getting its money is worth out of our project. In terms of the quantitative study while I do not intend to overwhelm you with the statistics that we captured from our first study I do want to have you appreciate that we approach nearly eight hundred new and renovated libraries across the country and heard back from roughly three hundred and fifty of them. That's a substantial number from which to draw insights if not conclusions about what libraries are currently offering the nation's young people. Our first study examined the role that youth participation played in the design of these new white spaces. Libraries have for many years been touting the need to better involve youth in service development. And so it made sense to ask about the outcomes that libraries observed in response. We developed our own youth participation index YPI to quantify and assess the patterns we found. Nineteen of our surveys 30 questions cohered around the idea of youth participation among many factors. We asked about the degree to which why ideas and direct advocacy contributed to the development and the design of the spaces including the extent of why volunteering in them the degree of employment that they experienced in them the role that they may have played during an advisory board capacity and the degree to which they were actively involved in the space administration. Not surprisingly libraries reported higher youth participation said that they achieved more successful places so the more participation the young people had the more that the the staffs were pleased with the spaces outcomes. Indeed libraries with high YPI ratings reported service improvements across a wide range of outcomes as well as higher staff satisfaction with the new spaces to not only the highlights libraries with higher YPA scores represented and reported more influence and attracting independent outside funding greater input on white space design which oftentimes contributed to larger spaces larger proportional spaces in the libraries the square footage that we found that libraries were reporting for white spaces was across the country three percent three percent. Libraries with higher YPI's also reported higher YA library use of course decidedly less reliance on behavioral rules and concern for line of site spatial arrangements and higher degrees of concern for libraries featuring more green construction young people cared about green construction. While I have difficulty believing that libraries will cotton to claims about the reduced reliance on behavioral rules or the faith based efficacy involved with line of site arrangements no matter how many hundreds of libraries we examine the benefits of higher degrees of youth participation do clearly point to broad and improved service outcomes. After years of literature promoting youth participation however there were overall relatively few libraries to earn high YPI scores. At one end nine percent of our libraries reported no youth involvement at all while two hundred and eight reported low scores reporting from one to seven youth participation factors only twenty seven libraries among the two hundred and fifty seven usable surveys that's eleven percent reported or indicated that why he's played a substantial participatory role because researchers know that deriving analysis merely from self-reported surveys will often raise methodological questions. Our second study just accepted for publication in public libraries as I mentioned involved distributing twenty five video cameras to libraries all over the country that had completed our online survey. We asked why a library staff along with young adults to record two to three minute video tours of their white spaces. We asked them to narrate and document what they felt was most important to them. We received forty two videos back twenty two from librarians and twenty from young adults. We transcribed the narrations. We then coded them and analyzed them and together these videos furnished a fairly crunchy insight into the thoughts feelings and meanings of librarians and their white users. Although we asked for their own responses we were after a few things in particular. First and different from the surveys we asked that librarians and why is themselves wanted to show us what they value but more interesting yet we wanted to see if these two groups agreed on what they felt was important if so what was it and if not what did they differ about what we found was something that builds upon what we learned from our first study that due to disconnects between staff and why is while there are similarities in what they found there were also some very important differences. First and not surprisingly librarians often concentrated on discussing library materials and resources. Why is on the other hand emphasize their experiences during their library visits indicating that they appreciate the library for resources but they also want a social dimension of their experience in those spaces as well. Another interesting finding which was slightly over one third of the librarians about thirty six percent emphasize the notion for separation in terms of why spaces from other places. We all know that young adults want to be as far away from as possible from children right. Well not so fast. We found that while thirty six percent of the staff assumed that this is true only 10 percent 10 percent of the young adults expressed a desire for visual or physical separation from libraries especially from children's spaces. Well you can say that they just forgot to mention it or that if we'd ask them directly they would tell us that they want separation but also I want you to remember that we asked them to tell us what was important to them and the separation thing didn't move the needle in terms of the Y.A. register while it did appear important to librarians. This apparent negligence of the Y.A.'s to emphasize spatial separation however makes sense if we take time to evaluate it. In many of our buildings particularly in urban areas where populations of where population densities are high or in areas where they're populated by poor or immigrant families parents often send their kids to the library together where the older kids take care of their younger siblings. If we interpret design through our own separation assumptions then we are inadvertently placing undue role strain on these kids either preventing the Y.A.'s from enjoying the Y.A. spaces because they need to stay with the children or saddling them with their younger siblings when they do visit their Y.A. spaces. The point here is that when we drive our own unexamined assumptions through design something which is as true for collection development or programming or outreach we are possibly then inflicting barriers on our users and our service profiles. This might cause you to consider how your own assumptions operate in your own spaces. After looking at these broad strokes about youth participation and then the disagreement and agreements between librarians and young adults we use our next study to drill down into one highly applicable and practical design concept emerging from both parts of the surveys. The 257 usable online surveys that Y.A.'s returned from libraries across the country let us detect a strong opinion pulse about the seemingly mundane and simple topic seating. So our third study simply asked how can libraries improve seating for library users? The answer we found should not really surprise anybody but at the outset let's just set aside the fact that libraries have implemented their seating concepts and policies forever without any research or any evidence whatsoever and these legacies beg questions about the unnecessary obstacles and postural limitations at play here and this assumes that libraries even offer Y.A.'s seating and most of them do not. So I mean have you ever even have you looked at Y.A.'s seating recently? I called out the information trough. There are three other insights that we got actually from these surveys that Y.A.'s told us about. One, they simply want a large vocabulary of postural options. These things that we're sitting in here do not offer postural options.  Second, we learned from these otherwise we can learn from their otherwise what I refer to as fugitive postures. We can look at how they sit when they're comfortable and derive some of those things. And third, a full third of them given current choices like this would rather just sit on the floor. In general, expanding the variety of seating opportunities and increasing their control over their own postural enactments remain potent features that libraries, even those with limited resources, can explore to radically improve spatial equity. In this study, we took the opportunity to help librarians better envision some of these other options and so the study became more of a visual anecdote. I've already mentioned the lack of evidence surrounding library seating policies. One in particular is the ubiquitous one but to a chair policy. We can further explore this issue in Q&A if you want for reasons against or all of that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that there's no evidence supporting any claims whatsoever about this ubiquitous policy. Further, young people demonstrate in many other venues the capacity to thrive when working thrive while working together and yet libraries turned a blind eye. The best insight we gain from these young voices, however, is a desire for a wider array of postural choices. The information trough just doesn't cut it. Of course, these are not new ideas about the ways young people and their bodies work. We encounter youth every day in every place enacting postures that make them comfortable. Libraries, among other institutions, however, simply ignore or worse punish them. Here are a few historical images of young people making themselves comfortable. You may well recognize or even remember preferring these kind of floor interpretations and using stairs as viable seating options. And if not, then I'm confident you will recognize this from the 1985 John Hughes classic film The Breakfast Club. Young people from explicitly different backgrounds are depicted as making common convivial space not only on the floor that they reappropriate enacting a kind of consecrated community council, but it's the floor of their library, their school library. Note the postural individuality and variety depicted even as the group convenes on an open floor without furniture. We actually coined a name for this democracy of the floor. We call it Davidotasis, derived from the Greek Davido, which is floor and tasus, which means oriented or seeking. Floor seeking. Here are a few images of young people even in institutional settings demonstrating how they can comfortably thrive in a variety of floor configurations. The question that may come quickly to your mind is how can libraries realistically adopt this Davidotasis thing? Well, it's not difficult to facilitate floor or floor for proximate seating options, particularly if these notions are integrated into design. This is a modest two-tier carpet covered platform in a small branch library. We can discuss its assets and liabilities later in Q&A if you like. Here's a more sophisticated interpretation of platform seating, one promoting the postural liberation from task chairs and wooden tables. Note the two Ottomans on casters also. Finally, here's the best flowering of a YA space in recently constructed county library. Here are the architects, one of our grant partners I hasten to add, incorporates a wide variety of seating options, including a three-tiered carpet covered riser integrated into a rather small space, but yet affording all of the features and qualities that libraries have told us in so many ways and for so long that they want. Here, young people get options. They get variety, flexibility and freedom, all without being turned into postural fugitives. These contrasting images best represent what we're learning about seating. So here is where I believe we are on this issue of YA space equity in libraries. On the one hand, it's true that libraries have become increasingly aware of the importance to offer young adult spaces of their own. Today, unlike as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, new libraries will at least gesture toward representing YA's in their designs and floor plants. On the other hand, new and recently renovated buildings also unfortunately exhibit a continuing inability to develop evidence-based practice or respond to the aesthetic postural preferences expressed by this user group. We love to talk about computer and learning labs. Learning commons is a common phrase we use today and the more recent one, you know, we may recognize as maker spaces. But we have no evidence to support claims of best practices. We have no knowledge base or even criteria from which to draw in terms of establishing or delivering demonstrable successful spaces. In most instances, the profession unreflectively are unreflective processes and legacy privileging of collections continue at the expense of creating accommodating, hospitable, equitable and purpose-built environments for young people. It should be obvious though that without practice relevant research, library solutions will remain ad hoc. By the way, we promise the IMLS, our granting agency, that we would keep all of our studies raw data open and accessible to the public. So if you're interested in digging into several thousand survey responses, video transcripts and other fun stuff like that, we've mounted it all on our youthvax. It's a project that I've been developing with another one of our project researchers, Dr. Mike Mills from San Francisco's Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. On a broader register, like all public places, libraries demonstrate who counts and what activities matter in a community. Libraries as public spaces represent a unique civic experience for young people. American libraries, however, often trumpet these democratic ideals but do not always execute them in practice. Still, although commercial interests continually attempt to intensify their profiles, public libraries remain rather free, fee-free and essentially commercial-free environments. They facilitate rare spaces for intellectual exploration and offer a range of activities and opportunities to access rich and well-organized informational and cultural resources. They provide connections to professionals trained to help them access information, allow for observation and interaction within an age-integrated community and thus facilitate the development of social capital. And in the face of the culture's increasing privatized public experience, libraries offer youth from poor material circumstances access to well-maintained public environments. The library's physical plant thus represents valuable and unique spatial capital for youth. Library designs that include the actual physical realities and preferences of young people will better express these values in their public spaces. It's been a cliche for quite some time that YA experience is the bellwether of coming technological change. Indeed, it serves as the canary in the library coalmine for experimenting with social software, gaming, virtual experience, among others. But what we've discovered in our examination of library spaces for young adults is just how poor our general knowledge is, our general knowledge basis about designing and evaluating library spaces for all users. In many ways, the learning that we're conducting with this particular project about gathering and analyzing and spatial data is highly pertinent and applicable to all types of libraries and almost all library users. So here our work could really serve as a model. We were asked today, and Mark wanted to make sure that we were sensitive to the fact that not all of you are YA librarians. So I wanted to make sure that I ended with just a few concluding comments that are more general. When asked informed questions, library users demonstrate awareness of the importance of libraries as public spaces and are capable of offering insightful and practical solutions to address design challenges. Time after time, I hear librarians say that they asked young people what they wanted in the spaces and of course the things that young people say they wanted are completely impossible for libraries. So they were not asked informed questions. Librarians need to prepare better to engage spatial design. When we asked librarians how they entered into these new building processes, they demonstrated a stunning lack of curiosity and preparation for engaging design professionals. At a time when libraries face keen competition from technological and institutional transformations in the storage of and access to information, we must consistently seek ways to prove their value in contributing to the well-being of our communities. In being more responsive to what users want, in deriving such insights as we can from observing and engaging them, we can achieve higher degrees of comfort for them in our library buildings. And then finally, in order to achieve these goals, libraries need and should demand practice relevant research, the kind of stuff that we've been doing, practice relevant research on spaces and facility designs and evaluation procedures. And this includes what architects call post-occupancy studies. After a building is done and it's up and running for about a year, you should go back in and examine it and get your users to give you feedback on how you need to change it. So that's about as much detail as we have time for today. Thank you for inviting us to share our work with you. And I'm hoping that we'll have some good time for some question and answers after Jeremy's presentation. Thank you.