 Let's sit down for a minute. Good evening. Good evening. All right, first things first, it's the beginning of the holiday season, so happy holidays to you all. And our holiday party is December 11th at 5.30, and I invite you all to join me for the festivities and the rest of the staff and the rest of the members. So looking forward to seeing you. My name is Ralph Lewin, I'm the new guy, the new Executive Director here at the Mechanics Institute, and I'm just thrilled to be here. I'm excited about the DNA of this place, the fact that the founders, these 20 and 30-year-old men, you know, who are living in San Francisco, they're faced with incredible unemployment, massive unemployment, what do they decide to do? They decide to build this temple of knowledge, this place where people can come together and learn. And what a vision. And here we are today, you know, 160 years and it continues, one of the oldest cultural institutions in San Francisco. And what an incredible thing, and I think about what Ben Franklin wrote about another membership library, and he said, the mission of this library is to pour forth benefits for the common good, pour forth benefits for the common good. I haven't heard that in a while. And I'm glad to be part of an institution that is part of that ethos. So I've had a chance to meet with you and some of the others. I have not yet had the chance, and I look forward to that. I thought I'd give you a brief insight as to who I am. I was born here in San Francisco at Kaiser, Hungary, raised in San Diego. I've lived in a few different places, Argentina and Indonesia and Germany, but I've been back in San Francisco for about 20 years. And with my wife, Caitlin Mohan and my sons, Leo, who's 10, and Sam, who's 13. Before Mechanics, I was president of Cal Humanities, which was a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We did cultural work across the state, and we worked a lot with libraries. So I have some insight into how libraries work. I've been impressed by a number of things since I've been at Mechanics, and the first thing I want to say is the legacy of this man, Jim Flack. Jim has led this institution with warmth, with good humor, with a steady hand, and I just want to say thank you, Jim, and I continue to count on your good advice. So thank you. Other things that have impressed me, the staff here at Mechanics, just an incredible staff, and I'm just going to call out their names and I'd ask them to raise their hand. Deb, Taryn, Bobby, Margo, Ced, Laura, Eric, Sam, Pam, Craig, Diane, Matt, Ron, and also Michael Fox, our Cinema Lit curator, they're all in the room and they work so hard and give so much to this institute, I think they deserve a hand. I also want to thank the board, just a very committed group of volunteers that meet monthly and really look out and safeguard this mission of the institution. Any of you who've served on board know how much work it is, how frustrating it can be, but also how exciting and deeply rewarding it can be. So thanks to the board members, some are in the room, Richard Laderman, Lindsey Crittman, if you can raise your hands quickly so people can talk to you afterwards and thank you for your good work. Jim Paulson, Dick Reinhardt, Sheila Cunningham, Mike Hilliard, Vince McCambridge, Mark Pinto, Charles Sullivan, and I think I got everyone. Sheila Cunningham, I think I mentioned. So thanks everybody on the board for your good work. It means a lot. So it's been a very busy time at the institute as it always is, but in the last three months I've been here and some of the things I've observed are surprising and amazing. When I came in here and learned that members can request a book and the library will order it and it'll be on the shelves. I mean that's an amazing thing and it takes a lot of work to do so that's something to appreciate. We have new computers in the library. They're faster. I hope you're enjoying them. We have refurbished painting of Andrew Holiday who you're going to hear more about. We have in process a new display cabinet going in on the second floor and sorry for any convenience that building's causing, but I just wanted to thank the people who helped make that happen. Mr. Garfield McNamara who gave a tremendous gift, the quest to mechanics that allowed that to happen. Karen Gray who's giving a gift in memory of her brother who's a member called Christensen in case people know him. So members are making a difference in that way too through their gifts. I wanted to give a brief overview of the finances. We're doing well but at the same time we have this issue of the open spaces down at 65 and 61 posts. The great news is over the last three months we have Indochino now in at 61 posts and they just told us today they're interested in renewing, extending their lease so that's positive news and we're working hard with our brokers to find somebody for 65 posts so if anybody has any leads let me know. Programming, the events department, the libraries, we've done amazing jobs. I was impressed by just the double header we had last month with Colm Toibin, probably the greatest living Irish author came to Mechanics and the next night Martin aimed us one of the greatest living British authors back to back here at Mechanics and that's great stuff for Mechanics and you know in addition to that every day it seems like we have good programs happening. Our chess program, you know our chess in the schools program, we have expanded 20 schools, these are some of the toughest schools in San Francisco we're treating, we're teaching kids how to play chess, what an important skill learning to think two steps ahead in this new church society. So Nick DeFermian's led the charge on that. Nick are you in the room? Well done Nick. We have chess tournaments going on all the time. Tuesday night if you come here you'll see there's hundreds of, there's a hundred people here playing chess. The largest amount of chess players we've had on a Tuesday night marathon happened two weeks ago here and there are people of all kinds of backgrounds playing chess, it's quite amazing. I encourage you to go by and check it out. It's really a vibrant place, one of the few public places in San Francisco where you'll see someone with like a social media background playing against an eight-year-old kid, playing against a 90-year-old kid. You know, they're all coming together and it's really a special thing to see. The membership, I've been really impressed by the membership. There's such a commitment to the place, unlike any other place I've seen. People email me notes about things like David Mattson who's in the room just sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal about membership libraries and their connection to social media. Thanks for that David. I got a note from Greg Taloski yesterday and this is what he wrote. He wrote, I thought about how great a place this is to have in my city and that I should support a place where real people meet in person to read real books and play chess in person. What he's talking about is that these places where people meet face to face and build a sense of community are rarer and rarer it seems and we need to support places like that. And that's why your support is a member of Mechanics Institute is so important. It connects to not just Mechanics Institute but a larger fight in society for what is community and what do we stand for in terms of community. So at membership, I just want to say thanks to the membership. You're making a difference and I know it's customary to take questions so I want to open it up to questions before I turn it over to Taryn. Are there any questions? And Taryn has a lot of good stuff so if there aren't questions that's okay. You know that's so interesting you raised that. We just so we just came out of a board meeting. We have these board meetings once a month and what we decided is we need a future plan to expand membership. And so I've been here three months and so we'll start working on that in the new year and we'll invite membership to participate in that thinking. One of the interesting facts is that the fastest growing piece of membership is under 40 at Mechanics. So what does that mean and is this a direction we want to continue? To me it's very encouraging that there's value in mechanics for people for younger people. So we're going to work on that. That's something and we invite you to help. In the back, Sheila. We found that 60% of the members are joined because of a friend who is already a member. So you are welcome to keep confusing your friends to our institute. Thank you. So you are our ambassadors in other words. We're depending on you to bring in fresh new members that will value this place. Ralph is now the time for comments or just for questions? Comments as well, sure. The last time I attended the CINULIT, I characterized the presentation as a disgrace. I walked out and I hadn't been back. Now there are a lot of reasons for that. Now is not the time perhaps to purge myself of all the reasons. But I regret to report that in many ways the Mechanics Institute, however the staff may talk about it, ACPS is all too often in the mores of the popular culture, which many of us I believe, regard as corrupt and corrupting and as degraded and degraded. Well, let's talk about that. Come to, you're invited to come to my office any time we can talk about that, if I take it very seriously. Anyone else? We're called members. Is there any plan to improve the communication about changes that are happening? Sometimes I feel more like a landlord, tenant than a member when I see changes with no explanation of the law, no explanation of why is this happening, what is happening and so on. I know sometimes the monthly newsletter has explained some things, but there have been a lot of changes that have happened and one stumbles on them sometimes with no sense of what or why or where it's headed. So I was hoping that there might be better communications both at the point of the change as well as is there any planning for that? I think that's a great point. I think emails, the listserv is the avenue as well as signage in the building. I don't know enough at this point about the history of what's worked and what hasn't to give you a clear answer, but I will.