- [Instructor] Tonight on WPBS weekly, Inside The Stories, Juno College in Toronto is operating on a four day work week.

The pay for every worker is the same.

We'll tell you what productivity looks like.

And what's in a web?

Discover the various silk and components that serve a different purpose in the web of a spider.

Also, when Dr. Dorothea Badenhausen passed in 2018, she left a legacy for artists and musicians.

Meet John Morrow, a painter based in Ogdensburg, who we highlight as a part of that legacy.

Your stories, your region coming up right now on WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories is brought to you by the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation.

(upbeat music) The Watertown Oswego, Small Business Development Center, Carthage Savings, CSX, The Oswego County Community Foundation at the Central New York Community Foundation, The Richard S Shineman Foundation, and the Badenhausen Legacy Fund at the Northern New York Community Foundation.

- Good evening, everyone.

And welcome to this edition of WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories, I'm Stephfond Brunson.

Juno College in Toronto has moved move to a four day work week.

It's one element in the future of work trends since the onset of COVID.

The CEO of Juno said the pandemic has given her perspective.

And as a result, other companies continue to evaluate work at home models and four day work weeks.

(upbeat music) - I just came to the realization that life is really about more than work and just decided quite spontaneously to be honest, that I think Juno should move to a four day work week.

- [Niki] The dream of spending less time at work and more time doing what you love is at about to become a reality at Juno College.

The Toronto School, which helps people transition to jobs in technology was founded 10 years ago by Heather Payne.

She says that after a decade of abiding by the conventional five day work week grind, the pandemic has given her perspective and it was time to reevaluate what's important in life.

What is it that you want for yourself in the next 10 years?

- For me in my reflection, I just started thinking about how like one day when I'm on my deathbed or something like that and I look back on my time on earth, I think I'm really gonna be grateful for time spent with family, friends, time spent being a good ancestor, a good community member.

And I just sort of saw that, I think Juno can, I think we can get it done in four days.

Like I really believe in the team that we have, just have to work a little bit smarter not harder.

- [Niki] Payne says our company decided to gradually transition to a four day work week in 2022, where Fridays are now considered to be part of the weekend, eight hour workday stay the same and employees pay isn't affected.

This gives staff more free time in their week and students more time to review material or work on projects.

- For the month of January, we worked three Fridays and had one Friday off.

And then in February, we're working two Fridays having two Fridays off, and then March, three Fridays off.

And this gives us the chance to adapt as we go.

- [Niki] Professor of management at University of Toronto, John Trougakos said the last two years have shown us that the way companies operate and work can become more flexible and doesn't have to fit into rigid schedules, defined by long commutes and office or other workplace routines.

- There's preliminary data that suggests that it could be very good for productivity and employee wellbeing.

And I guess, obviously, the pandemic has increased interest in these novel ways of working and beyond just the way people work, but the days and the schedule and the structure of the workday.

- Do you know much about the history of how even a five day work week came about?

And can you tell me a little bit about how we've gotten to the point where we are now and we work five days out of seven days in a week?

- Yeah, by and large, the five day work week is to do with industrial revolution and assembly lines and kind of breaking the day up into three chunks.

The eight hour time to work, the eight hour time to do personal life and the eight hour time to sleep five days a week made sense 'cause people had two days for a weekend and for different religious purposes as well.

- [Niki] The trend is taking route with multiple sectors and countries.

Dozens of companies based in the United Kingdom, for example, recently announced they are taking part in a six month pilot project this June, testing out the four day work week.

With now 30 companies taking part, the pilot will allow employees to work 32 hours a week with no change to their pay or benefits.

Instead, based on studies elsewhere, employers in the project say they expect to see the benefits almost immediately.

A positive shift to workers' work life balance.

- We found that people are more concentrated on their jobs, that they meet deadlines better.

- [Niki] For example, the pilot will not only measure workers' productivity levels, but it will also assess the program's effect on the environment and gender equality.

The program manager for the campaign in the UK, Joe O'Connor told Bloomberg the program will help companies move away from simply measuring how long people are at work to a sharper focus on the output being produced.

- It's an idea that's gaining traction.

I think more and more companies will shift to this or at least try it out.

And over time, the data will play out for what is gonna prove to be the best way to work, I think.

- [Niki] The hybrid model is another work trend gaining momentum during the pandemic, allowing workers more flexibility to work when they choose and where they want.

Trougakos believes this model is here to stay.

- What do you have to say to people who are now being asked by their employers to come back into the office, to come back in full time and to get back into their old routine, even though they've been able to master the work from home schedule?

- I think the world has moved to hybrid.

And I think, if you look at any measurable data, any opinion, any survey that's out there, about 70% of people want to have that hybrid model.

They want that flexibility.

They want the autonomy that comes with it and the jobs that can do it.

It doesn't make sense to force people back into the office full time.

- [Niki] Trougakos says working from home is believed to increase people's autonomy.

And when we increase people's ability to do things as they choose, it dramatically reduces levels of stress and burnout and helping to stimulate overall productivity.

Newly release census data from Stats Can shows just how big of a trend the hybrid and work from home models have become, with fully one quarter of the Canadian workforce working exclusively from home last year, compared to 7.5% in 2016.

- If we structure something like a four day work week properly or hybrid work at a broader, properly, you're gonna save things like work commutes, right?

Energy savings for building usages.

And when you give people more free time, when you give them more time, they can engage in better health routines have more time to prepare meals.

- [Niki] In fact, when the pandemic began disrupting our lives, the way we travel and how we work, countries around the globe drastically decreased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions within just a few weeks.

According to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released at the end of 2021, fossil carbon emissions dropped by 5.4% in 2020.

But when people started making their way back into the office and restrictions some what lifted, emissions were set to have increased roughly by 4.9%, by the end of 2021.

As for Payne, she hopes her shift to a four day work week encourages other companies who have the capacity to reconsider reshifting the way they operate.

- Hopefully with this four day work week stuff like really show people new ways of doing things and get other companies thinking outside of the box to create a better world for everyone.

- [Niki] For Inside The Story, I'm Nikki Anastasakis.

- The average spider's web found clinging to your window sill is an architectural masterpiece and it all begins with a single strong strand of silk.

And over time, it becomes so much more.

How spiders have evolved their weaving qualities over hundreds of millions of years is of particular interest to at least one curator of comparative biology at the American Museum of Natural History.

(upbeat music) - When I started working on spiders, I had no idea how interesting they were, I had no idea.

I mean, these organisms have been making silk for hundreds of millions of years, and they're all using silk in a slightly different way.

We're still finding new kinds of silk all the time.

So when you see an orb web, I guarantee you don't know the whole picture, and it's only when you get up close that you realize how cool they are.

I'm Cheryl Hayashi, I'm a curator at the American Museum of Natural History and I study the evolution of spiders and spider silk.

In my research, I'm characterizing the diversity of spider silks.

And I do this to understand how silk evolved, how it works and what it means to spiders.

And that's what keeps me up.

And just these fundamental questions.

So spiders are the only animals that really rely on silk throughout their entire life, so every part, to eat, to reproduce, to wrap eggs, to transfer sperm.

They make their homes out of silk, but some species don't use silk as much as others.

I mean, they still will use silk almost every day of their life, but they may not rely on silk for foraging while other spiders like orboy weaving spiders are absolutely tied to silk production and they use those silks for all kind of purposes.

If you look inside the abdomen, it's packed with silk gland, it's not as if there's like spools of thread, it actually liquid silk stored inside the silk glands.

So the liquid silk goes to the duct, it dehydrates and the silk proteins start aggregating with each other.

So when you see a spider dropping down, you're actually watching in real time, liquid silk being turned into a solid fiber.

It's an amazing transformation.

Well, just really captivated me about spiders was the diversity of silk that one individual spider can make.

Picture and orb web, there'll be an outer frame and there'll be radii from a center point that go out.

So that kind of silk is made from dragline silk, or we call it major ampullate silk.

That's a strong and fairly extensible silk.

Then there's the capture spiral.

That's a composite of two kinds of silk.

There's a filament dotted with glue on it.

But in making the orb web, a spider will have used a so called minor ampullent silk or temporary silk.

Then she actually uses that temporary spiral as a guide as she lays down the real capture spiral.

And while she's doing it, she consumes the temporary spiral.

When you think about why a spider might make so many different kinds of silk, it really comes down to function.

The frame and the radii need to be stiff to support the web.

But if a web was made entirely of strong and stiff fibers, it might be a lot easier for an insect to just bounce off of it.

So capture spiral silk stretch along absorbing the impact of that insect and the little gluey droplets stick to the insects body.

And it holds the insect in place and gives a spider time to come down and actually catch their prey.

So whether we're talking about egg case silk, dragline silk capture, spiral silk, or prey wrapping silk, they all have different functions and they all have different material properties.

Spiders that make multiple kinds of silk, they actually have multiple types of silk glands.

And so when it's time to make a web, the spider is actually touching her leg to the correct spigot to pull out the correct silk in the correct place on the web at the correct time.

So I wanna find out exactly what genes are turned on in all those different silk glands within a spider.

So for that, I need to have fresh silk glands.

And so I have a lot of live spiders in the lab, so I can collect their silk and collect their silk glands.

I have a variety of garden spiders.

I have a golden orb weavers, I also have black widows and I also have feather legged spiders.

I collect silk from spiders in two different ways.

I take these little cards that I make out of poster board, and I collect fibers onto that card.

The other way I collect silk in the lab is I expose the spider to carbon dioxide gas and that anesthetizes them for a few minutes.

And I gently take them to the microscope stage so I can actually visualize which spigot a silk fiber is coming out of.

So then I know exactly what silk I'm collecting and when I'm done, they live to silk another day.

After I've collected the silk, the way I test the fibers is I put it in what's called a tensile tester and the machine pulls up at a controlled rate.

And as it pulls up, it's measuring the resistance of the fiber to being pulled.

And it's also measuring how far the fiber can stretch.

And with that, I can really compare a large number of different kinds of silks.

The silk protein genes are activated in the silk glands.

Each gene we're finding they might be dramatically different from each other that leads to dramatically different mechanical properties.

So in the capture sprout can extend over twice it's original length.

There's not that many filaments that can do that.

Many drag line silks are tougher than Kevlar, which is just amazing thinking that within a spider, just out in your yard and these super fibers are coming out of it.

And when you look at the whole diversity of spiders, there's just immense variations on this.

So the honest truth is it's almost like my research is becoming fractal.

What I thought was one silk turns out to be two silks.

What I thought was gonna be one silk gene turns out to be sometimes five silk genes.

In a sense, I have gotten two trapped in a spider web and the silk envelopes sort of all aspects of my research, but I'm not fully trapped because I think the spider silk system, it's a great model for seeing how you can integrate evolutionary biology, genetics, organismal biology, even let's say you're interested from the biotech aspect of it.

There's just huge potential there, there are lots of research being done into how we can mass produce silk either to make better clothing, maybe lighter airplane or car parts or implants that could be used in the human body.

And so spider silk, it's coming to your world.

- This spring and summer, we're taking you on a tour of the mini historic lighthouses dotted in and around the north country.

Next up, we take you to Tibbetts Point Lighthouse in Cape Vincent.

Originally constructed in 1827, this historical beacon still has an active light that guides massive ships on the seaway.

Take a look.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Tibbetts Point marks the entrance into the St. Lawrence river from Lake Ontario.

The first lighthouse at Tibbetts Point was erected in 1827, fueled by whale oil, the light remained in service until 1854 when the present tower was constructed.

The steam operated fog whistle was added in 1896.

In 1927, it was replaced by an air diaphone powered by a diesel engine with blasts automatically timed.

The air diaphone was later replaced by a radio beacon, which guide ships into the river.

The fog whistle still works, but it is no longer used because residents of Cape Vincent and nearby Wolf Island complained that the noise shook their homes.

(fog whistling) - The original lighthouse keeper, he usually had to go up into the tower a couple times a day AM and PM, refurbished the amount of fuel oil for the lamp.

So it wouldn't cut out in the middle of the evening and that, he also had to polish the lens, the inside of the lamp room or whatever.

His other duties was to keep the properties clean, mowed, painted the buildings, whatever.

It was a job where it was like, what you would call a jab that was like 24/7.

And it kept them busy.

They grew their vegetables.

They did everything to be independent.

- [Narrator] In 1939, the coast guard officially took over the operation of the light.

In 1981, it was automated.

The lighthouse complex consists of the lighthouse tower, a two story keeper's residence built in 1800, a steam fog signaling building with several displays and an iron oil house.

The keeper's house was a coast guard station up until 1981.

It is now an American youth host along with the assistant keeper's house built around the turn of the century.

The tower is still an act of light maintained by the coast guard.

It has a fourth order Fresnel lens that can be seen from 16 miles out.

At present, the lighthouse has the only classical Fresnel lens, still on operation on Lake Ontario.

It is the original lens and is over 150 years old.

The Tibbetts Point lighthouse society formed in 1988 has restored the light and constructed a visitors center and lighthouse museum complete with gift shop between 10 and 12,000 people visit the center and lighthouse every year.

- [Narrator] It's definitely a landmark 'cause a lot of these ships happens.

They've been on these freighters and great lakes carriers for years and years.

And even though they do have all the mechanical information in that available, they still use it as a benchmark for the lakes.

- [Narrator] Two additional lighthouses once graced the shores of Cape Vincent.

The Cape Vincent Breakwater lighthouse was one of two lighthouses built on a Breakwater.

At first, two temporary lights replaced on the Breakwater in 1901.

They were replaced with two permanent structures in 1904, both exhibited a fixed red light.

The keeper lived on the shore and rode to and from the light station in a small boat.

Despite requests for dwelling to be built on the Breakwater, no keeper's residence was ever constructed.

Instead, a lifeline consisting of seven eights inch steel line was placed between the two towers to provide the keeper something to hold onto in the event of heavy seas.

The lights were in a operation until 1951.

The light now sits at the town highway department on route 12V.

- Artists and musicians of the north country need to be showcased, which is why WPBS Weekly save this time slot to do just that.

This week as part of a special series funded by Brasher Falls, Dr. Susan Badenhausen Legacy, we introduce you to John Morrow, an Ogdensburg artist whose creative style weaves nature, man, and time as an underlying theme.

Internationally, his work has been on the cover of Readers Digest.

Regionally, he and his wife own the Clark Art gallery in Ogdensburg.

Here's more on John Morrow and his incredible works of art.

- My name is John Morrow.

I'm a north country artist.

I've been painting here for the last 50 years.

I started at a very young age being interested in art as far back as I can remember.

My grandmother and father liked to paint my mother.

So they always had leftover paint afterwards and I would take that paint and compose my own compositions using those colors.

And I was probably seven or eight years old at that time.

I just love to draw and it just grew over the years and I took art in high school and then in college and then I became an art teacher.

I had a philosophy that our goal in life is to learn and our duty is to teach.

And so I've always wanted to give back to society and to students, the knowledge that I've learned.

So that sort of led me into teaching.

(upbeat music) I actually work in three mediums.

I work in watercolor, acrylic and oil, and each one of them has a particular quality that I prefer depending on the subject, depends on which one I would pick.

I find that the north country is very rich in a lot of subject matter.

And I painted the valley, I've painted the river.

I painted the Amish, the old farmhouses, and I've also gone into Maine and painted some of the scenes from there.

And I like to travel.

I've done scenes from out west, but I guess, it's just a matter of finding something that emotionally moves you and trying to share it.

Last year, someone brought me a print to have framed.

And the artist was from the 1800s and it was a winter landscape and I really liked the feel of the painting and the composition.

So I decided to develop something similar to that piece.

So what I did was I first did a sketch, color sketch, and worked out some of the elements of the composition.

I then proceeded to a larger sketch, which is this one here working out the color.

And this is the beginning of the painting with some of the elements in it.

But I decided that I would probably put a Birch tree on this side here and change the banks a little bit.

And the original painting did not have a waterfall here, but I'm not satisfied with this waterfall yet, but I will keep working on this until I get it the way I want it.

So basically, it's gonna have the same feeling as the painting that I originally saw, but with my own sort of interpretation.

When I picked my subjects, they sort of pick me because if I see something and I have a reaction to it, emotion reaction to it, I'll try to capture it usually with a photograph and then bring it back to the studio where I further develop it.

But probably, I only paint maybe one in 500 images that I end up capturing.

So then it becomes another selective process where I go through and often, I will rearrange the photographs, I will change things, add things, take things out, change colors and values.

- [Narrator] John was born in Ogdensburg, New York, but as a child, moved to Schenectady and later Buffalo.

After graduating from Buffalo State with an art education degree, he moved back to Ogdensburg in 1971 to take a position as an art teacher at Ogdensburg fREE Academy, where he taught art until 2003.

He and his wife, Brenda have six children between them and 16 grandchildren.

Together, John and Brenda own the Clark Art gallery in downtown Ogdensburg, which exhibits John's work.

The gallery also includes a frame shop.

- The gallery is located in the historical Clark House, which you spend here in Ogdensburg and was built in 1802 to 1804.

And when this became available, it seemed like the perfect ideal spot to have a gallery and a frame shop in the house.

So that's more or less how it started.

You'll find original works of art.

You'll find Chi clay prints both on paper and on canvas.

We have everything from small eight by 10 souvenir editions, all the way up to original works.

- [Narrator] John's artistic talent has allowed him to enjoy a career that has spanned over 50 years, filled with honors competitions opportunities, and of course, hundreds of beautiful works of art.

- Growing up, I had a lot of encouragement from people around me and I caught feeding the person, just giving them encouragement, giving them art materials, helping them in any way you can, taking them to art shows when it's possible, art museums and that sort of thing.

But let them grow at their own natural speed.

- That does it for us this Tuesday evening, join us next week for a fresh look inside the stories.

The sports betting landscape in Canada will be overhauled.

This in an effort to keep Canadian dollars local.

We'll tell you what could change.

And the family of a young woman from Northern New York celebrates her love of nature and the Adirondacks by building a lasting tribute in her memory.

Also, the East Charity Shoal light (indistinct) near the St. Lawrence river's entrance.

We'll take you on a tour and we'll tell you about its history.

Meantime, if you have a story idea you like to see us explore or you're poet or a musician, and would like to be featured, email us at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org.

Until then, goodnight, my friends.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] WPBS Weekly Inside The Stories is brought to you by The Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation dedicated to improving the wellbeing of communities by helping disadvantage children and families.

Online at dmjf.org.

The Watertown Oswego, Small Business Development Center, a free resource offering confidential business advice for those interested in starting or expanding their small business.

Serving Jefferson Lewis and Oswego counties since 1986.

Online at watertown.nysbdc.org.

Carthage Savings has been here for generations, donated time and resources to this community.

They're proud to support WPBS TV, online at carthagesavings.com.

Carthage Savings, mortgage solutions since 1888.

Additional funding provided by CSX, The Oswego County Community Foundation at the Central New York Community Foundation.

The Richard S Shineman Foundation.

And the Badenhausen Legacy Fund at the Northern New York Community Foundation.

- [John] I had a philosophy that our goal in life is to learn and our duty is to teach.

And so I've always wanted to give back to society and to students the knowledge that I've learned.

So that sort of led me into teaching.

(upbeat music)