 of Andrew Halliday is certainly here after that. Thank you so much. I haven't heard a live bagpipe in a very long time. I'm Deb Hunt. I'm the Library Director here at the Mechanics Institute. And I'm curious how many of you have never been here before? Could you just show by a raise of hands? Okay. Well, you're in for a great treat. This is just the third floor of our beautiful library. We have a whole second floor downstairs with much higher ceilings than this. We've been here in this building since 1910, which was built after the earthquake. We've been around since 1854. And if you are a member or a nonmember, we have a free tour every Wednesday at noon. And on February 22nd, we have a night tour coming up. So encourage you to come. It's at six o'clock in the noon tours, obviously, or at noon every Wednesday. I hope that you had an opportunity to, all of you should have had a little brochure on your chair. And this is from Peter, who couldn't be here tonight, but his company is Ada Cuell. And Mr. Halliday's portrait is up here. That's why we're meeting on the third floor tonight. And it's a live sitting of him in his old age. Taryn will tell you more about that. But the frame, if you look in your brochure, there's before and after. This frame was cracked. It had kind of oxidized. And Peter was able to restore it beautifully. And he couldn't be here tonight, but he wanted to produce a piece that you could take with you just to show what the before and after was. And we don't have the table that's in there with the dragon. That's not us, but he's done some great work. So I really, and he's helping sponsor this tonight. The other person who's sponsoring this is Jim Shine. Where's Jim? There you are. Come on over. Do you want to say a few words? Jim is from Shine and Shine, one of our favorite members because he shares such great information with us. Hi, everybody. One of the reasons I'm actually here is because I was asked to underwrite this event with Peter, which was a privilege. It was one of the events that I aspire to be involved with, an event where we, through our underwriting, we can invite new guests and bring friends and have no cost to members and kind of extol the merits of that which we already have. The collections at the library are fantastic. And the only way that we really understand them is to engage with them. The last and most current organization at the library has made great effort to restore and revitalize some of our great ownership. And this is one of those pieces. Halliday is an important member of which Taren will discuss. The frame was a beautiful period frame, and it was in rough shape. And my wife, Marty, and I have an antique map business up on Grant Avenue, and we do history and maps, and I also frame. So all of the frames in the Mechanics Institute that are in Oak were framed by us for the Susque Centennial, which was about 10 years ago or so. So we had a framing relationship with the MI and they came to us a year or two ago and said, we have this marvelous piece. How can we get this back up to snuff? And so we recommended Ada Kuhl and Peter. Peter's a graduate of the oldest guild in the world, the framing guild of Amsterdam. It dates back to the 1400s. He's got a fine classical education in carving wood and plaster guilt work. So we were fortunate. And one of the reasons I live here is because people of that caliber live here and we get to have really cool stuff like that. So fortunately we had both budget and impetus and motivation and follow through. And so that's what we have here. And that's why I'm involved. So I'm glad that you're here. I'm excited to hear what Taren has to say because Halliday is a much bigger figure than just the cable car. And I'm very interested to hear about that. So we'll see you guys later. And I'd like to just say too, if you get a chance, if you've not been back into our classrooms, Mr. McNamara, who gave us quite an endowment to preserve things like this painting and have the frame restored build our classrooms out and do other things, left us a great bequest. Those were the McNamara classrooms. And then current sponsors like Jim and Marty at Shine and Shine and Peter at Ada Kuhl have really helped us currently. But without further ado, I'm going to introduce our marketing membership public services librarian, Taren Edwards, who knows everything there is to know about Mr. Halliday. And she can tell you, she's going to tell you some great stories. So Taren, it's all yours. Thanks. Let's welcome her. Hey, thank you. I don't know everything about Andrew Halliday, but I aim to at some point. So hey, thank you for coming tonight. First, I'd like to thank Mr. Andrew Halliday himself for making this event possible. Seriously, he spent 40 years of his life actively working to realize the Mechanics Institute's aims and without his fidelity to its cause, we would not be here tonight. I'd also like to thank my coworkers. I'm so happy that they don't roll their eyes at me every time I talk about my passion. And I'd also like to thank the members of the Mechanics Institute. You are fantastic. Alright, so tonight's sponsors include Shine and Shine of North Beach and Ada Kuhl. They have been, Shine and Shine has been instrumental in helping Mechanics Institute preserve its art. And Ada Kuhl handled the restoration of the portrait itself. And I must congratulate them both for their fantastic work and their outstanding generosity and our continued relationship. Last, I'd like to honor the Institute for Historical Study, which is an Oakland-based community group of researchers and writers and artists. And they recently granted me a research stipend that helped with the content of this talk. And if you are a researcher or writer or artist, I encourage you to check out their website because they are a great group. And they have research stipends. So let me introduce myself. I've worked at Mechanics Institute for eight years and I've always been interested in its history. But about four years ago I just walked by that portrait one day and I thought, wow, who is that guy? So I've become fascinated with his contributions to libraries