Month: October 2004

  • MONDAY BOOK

    I’ll be returning to “Grace and Grit” next week when I’ve had a chance to read a little further, but for today here’s an excerpt from Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac, published in 1965. I’d heard he took the same trip on a Yugoslavian freighter from New York to Africa that I did and that he described it in this book so I checked it out from the library and found this passage that cracked me up:
    During wartime I’d actually sailed in those Northern seas of the Arctic but it was only in summertime: now, a thousand miles south of these in the void of January Seas, gloom, the cappers came glurring in gray spray as high as a house and plowed rivers all over our bow and down the washes. Furyiating howling Blakean glooms, thunders of thumping, washing waving sick manship diddling like a long cork for nothing in the mad waste. Some old Breton knowledge of the sea still in my blood now shuddered. When I saw those walls of water advancing one by one for miles in gray carnage I cried in my soul WHY DIDN’T I STAY HOME!? But it was too late. When the third night came the ship was heaving from side to side so badly even the Yugoslavs went to bed and jammed themselves down between pillows and blankets. The kitchen was insane all night with crashing and toppling pots even tho they’d been secured. It scares a seaman to hear the Kitchen scream in fear. For eating at first the steward had placed dishes on a wet tablecloth, and of course no soup in soupbowls but in deep cups, but now it was too late for even that. The men chewed at biscuits as they staggered to their knees in their wet sou’westers. Out on deck where I went a minute the heel of the ship was enough to kick you over the gunwale straight at walls of water, sperash. Deck lashed trucks groaned and broke their cables and smashed around. It was a Biblical Tempest like an old dream. In the night I prayed with fear to God Who was now taking all of us, the souls on board, at this dread particular time, for reasons of His own, at last. In my semi delirium I thought I saw a snow white ladder being held down to us from the sky. I saw Stella Maris over the Sea like a statue of Liberty all in shining white. I thought of all the sailors that ever drowned and O the choking thought of it, from Phoenicians of 3000 years ago to poor little teenage sailors of America only last war (some of whom I’d sailed in safety with)– The carpets of sinking water all deep blue green in the middle of the ocean, with their damnable patterns of foam, the sickening choking too-much of it even tho you’re only looking at the surface– beneath all that the upwell of cold miles of fathoms–swaying, rolling, smashing, the tonnages of Peligroso Roar beating, heaving, swirling–not a face in sight! Here comes more! Duck! The whole ship (only as long as a Village) ducks into it shuddering, the crazy screws furiously turn in nothingness, shaking the ship, slap, the bow’s now up, thrown up, the screws are dreaming deep below, the ship hasn’t gained ten feet–it’s like that– It’s like frost in your face, like the cold mouths of ancient fathers, like wood cracking in the sea. Not even a fish in sight. It’s the thunderous jubilations of Neptune and his bloody wind god canceling men. “All I had to do was stay home, give it all up, get a little home for me and Ma, meditate, live quiet, read in the sun, drink wine in the moon in old clothes, pet my kitties, sleep good dreams–now look at this petrain I got me in, Oh dammit!” (“Petrain is a 16th Century French word meaning “mess.”) But God chose to let us live as at dawn the captain turned the ship the other way and gradually left the storm behind, then headed back east towards Africa and the stars.
    Well, that’s as close as I ever got to Jack. Riding through the same storm in January on the same sea to the same destination in a different year. And we both lived to write about it.

    Deep Thought: Isn’t it funny how one minute life can be such a struggle, and the next minute you’re just driving real fast, swerving back and forth across the road?
    Today I am grateful for: Strawberries
    Guess the Movie: “I’ve had three lovers in the past four years, and they all ran a distant second to a good book and a warm bath. ” Answer: Jerry McGuire, 1996
    Polls Today: Kerry 270/Bush 248 EVP: Zogby did a large (N = 1216) telephone poll Oct. 7-9 (thus, after the second presidential debate) and found the race to be a statistical tie, with Kerry at 46%, Bush at 45%, Nader at 0.9%, Cobb at 0.2%, Peroutka at 0.2%, and Badnarik at 0.1%. The rest are still undecided. I guess they are waiting for the third debate, on Wednesday. Some people like to collect all the data before coming to a conclusion. Interestingly, Zogby also found that among newly registered voters, Kerry holds a 5% lead. Given the millions of people who registered for the first time this year, new voters (along with the millions of overseas voters) could be a serious factor.
    End of Day: 8:35 pm
    + = Started writing Chapter 8.
    - = Death of Christopher Reeve – now there was a fighter.

  • PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ME OUT

    Bob Dylan

    As the first volume of Dylan’s long-awaited 3-part memoirs, Chronicles, Volume One, hits the stands, it’s time for everybody to remember the first time they heard the tiny troubador from Hibbing, Minnesota who changed the landscape of music in the early ’60′s. I was in a commune in Pacific Grove, California when Dylan played the first Monterey Folk Festival right next door in 1963 and though I didn’t go to the festival his first album was played nonstop, full-blast for days where I lived. And then it seemed like the hippest thing ever that Dylan and Joan Baez would have a romance. What can I say, the voice is unique, the lyrics powerful (he says he doesn’t like the word “poet”), and the persona mystical. I like that he’s kept his life so private – not because private is important for everyone but because it is for him. And yet, like everyone who felt Dylan belonged to our generation, I can’t wait to read whatever he’s been willing to share about it. The kids of today listen to somebody else, but then most of them don’t vote either. In those days we had Dylan to sing out about the war, along with others of that time. Who is singing out today? I grew up alongside him – and so Bobbie Zimmerman, Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You.

    Deep Thought: Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.
    Today I am grateful for: Big Voices
    Guess the Movie:     “Beginnings are scary. Endings are usually sad, but it’s what’s in the middle that counts. So, when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will. ” Answer: Hope Floats, 1998 Winner: merrow_mistral
    Polls Today: Kerry 270/Bush 248.     Not much happening. Of note in my neighborhood, Oregon is now back to being Strong Kerry, thank god. I got a call from General Wesley Clark saying to see a film on Kerry and to keep it in theaters. It was called something like Going Upriver. I noticed that Michael Moore’s F9/11 is not flying off the shelves at my local video store and that kind of surprised me. The only political signs I see in my neighborhood are Kerry/Edwards signs. What about your neck of the woods?
    End of Day: 8:59 pm
    + = Saw Friday Night Lights and it’s a very good Hollywood version of the true story of high school football in Odessa, Texas which was documentarized beautifully awhile back too.
    - = What in the hell is the attraction of such violent sports, both to the athletes themselves and to the audience, like me? Hmmm…..

  • SATURDAY POEM I ADMIRE

    Song

    The weight of the world
    is love.
    Under the burden
    of solitude,
    under the burden
    of dissatisfaction
    the weight,
    the weight we carry
    is love.
    Who can deny?
    In dreams
    it touches
    the body,
    in thought
    constructs
    a miracle,
    in imagination
    anguishes
    till born
    in human–
    looks out of the heart
    burning with purity–
    for the burden of life
    is love,
    but we carry the weight
    wearily,
    and so must rest
    in the arms of love
    at last,
    must rest in the arms
    of love.
    No rest
    without love,
    no sleep
    without dreams
    of love–
    be mad or chill
    obsessed with angels
    or machines,
    the final wish
    is love
    –cannot be bitter,
    cannot deny,
    cannot withhold
    if denied:
    the weight is too heavy
    –must give
    for no return
    as thought
    is given
    in solitude
    in all the excellence
    of its excess.
    The warm bodies
    shine together
    in the darkness,
    the hand moves
    to the center
    of the flesh,
    the skin trembles
    in happiness
    and the soul comes
    joyful to the eye–
    yes, yes,
    that’s what
    I wanted,
    I always wanted,
    I always wanted,
    to return
    to the body
    where I was born.
    Allen Ginsberg, 1954
    Ginsberg came out of New Jersey, graduated from Columbia, and headed to the West Coast. He wrote this poem at 28, the year he met Peter Orlovsky, who became his companion till his death at 71 in 1997. He was arguably the most famous poet of the Beat Generation and wrote epic poems like Howl with themes of war, drugs, and sexuality. Because I hung out daily in the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco during 1965, I had the opportunity to browse next to him in the stacks one day. That was a good day.

    Deep Thought: When I was about in the third grade I used to play with matches all the time. Then one day, something made me stop. I accidentally scraped one across a rough surface and it caught on fire!
    Today I am grateful for: Knowing how much children need love
    Guess the Movie: “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it’s both, maybe both happening at the same time. ” Answer: Forrest Gump, 1994. Winner: thenarrator
    Polls Today: Kerry 280/Bush 248. EVP: “The first poll on the second debate shows the results much closer than debate #1. According to a Gallup poll of 515 registered voters, Kerry won by 47% to 45%. When asked if they felt more favorable about the candidates after the debate, 38% were more favorable to Kerry and 20% were less favorable. For Bush the figures were 31% and 20%. For a challenger, these are good numbers. Historically, when an incumbent is running for reelection, the undecideds typically don’t like the incumbent but are not sure if the new guy on the block is up to the job. His task is to convince them he can do it. In the past, the undecideds have ultimately broken 2 to 1 for the challenger.”
    End of Day: 9:14 pm
    + = None of my 5 cats have been hit by a car in the 10 years I’ve lived here and they’re all indoor/outdoor cats.
    - = My house interior needs to be painted bad – I always become aware of it when the weather changes to grey at this time of year.

  • Leave

    Leave – permission to depart the clever bivouac of childhood, epoch of a thousand treasons, for a place that looked so far as to be only after setting of the final sun. How many branches frighten the most anxious of such nomads, lost among an untied forest, never so extremely dark, the sandal of the night estranged, aloof.

    And on the way to speak to angels, plaiting on the hill their famous voices near enough to think that you were meeting white-winged sirens one to one, it suddenly occurs to me that once it may have been too bright to see the future fathering herself beside the road.

    The thick regret of patience slows my hand, but then perhaps it is the weaponless who are most suited to be called to arms. It may be that the ailing sun, chimera to the weak, awaits a traveller without defence, alone.
    (written on Formentera, 1964)
    End of Chapter 7

    Deep Thought: I wish somebody would invent a fruit that had no seeds, tasted delicious, and would scream when you ate it.
    Today I am grateful for: Having found this place where I can write again so that this story gets told before it’s too late
    Guess the Movie: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless–of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.” That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? ” Answer: Dead Poets Society, 1989 Winner: merrow_mistral
    Polls Today: Kerry 280/Bush 239 EVP: “There are 48 new polls today in a total of 25 states. The bottom line is that Kerry is continuing to surge. He now has more than the 270 votes in the electoral college needed to be elected president. However, his margin is razor thin in many states. Still, this is a remarkable comeback. All of this gain is undoubtedly due to the first debate. Needless to say, tonight’s debate will be extremely important for both candidates.
    End of Day: 7:29 pm
    + = I can’t wait to hear what y’all think of Debate #2.
    - = I’m babysitting a 5-year-old tonight and boy does it remind me how hard it is for young parents to give constant attention 24/7.

  • Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
    Previous chapters sidebar autobiography

    I had planned to write a chapter for each five-year period of my life. This is the first exception. This year took more of my strength than any other year of my life. All of my childhood and adolescence, I had been programmed to believe I was fragile – or at least that the world was a place to navigate with extreme caution. Felix was not remarkable for being gentle or thoughtful or meditative. He electrified, bolted, dashed, gesticulated, leapt. He shone. He had his own very complex childhood scars about which I knew little and later he would become a full-fledged heroin addict before his death. Somehow fittingly, he ended his life not as a painter but as an internationally famous tattoo artist. When he was gone from my life later on, I did not regret the loss of his presence after the first excruciating weeks, but I left behind with him the part of me that would pull out all the stops, follow anywhere, totally adore, hold nothing back. Other loves later were probably more mature, but none were so naked and complete. For a shy farm girl, I had ventured almost farther out along the borderline than I could make it back – but our connection was not yet broken because our fate was to have a child. The next five years would find us in the Haight-Ashbury where both my children were born.
    (to be continued)


    Deep Thought: Blow ye winds, like the trumpet blows; but without that noise.
    Today I am grateful for: Free recycling pick-up
    Guess the Movie: “Nobody’s looking for a puppeteer in today’s wintry economic climate.” Answer: Being John Malkovich, 1999
    Polls Today: Kerry 253/Bush 264 EVP: “Kerry’s post-debate surge is continuing, with him taking the lead in Pennsylvania according to polls from West Chester University, Survey USA, and Franklin and Marshall college. Neither candidate now has the 270 electoral votes needed to win, and many of the states are statistical ties. Michigan and New Hampshire are exact ties. If Kerry wins Michigan and Bush wins New Hampshire, then Kerry wins the election 270-268. “
    End of Day: 9:03 pm
    + = Tomorrow will be the last page for my current chapter and I’ve so much appreciated everybody’s encouragement – it adds to the joyfulness of writing.
    - = Can you believe another little piece of filling fell out of my tooth today – I think I’ll just bring my sleeping bag and camp at the dentist.

  • Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
    Previous chapters sidebar autobiography

    Though I was writing and Felix was painting, life began to feel far too surreal, this adventure on an island so very far from home. My martyred mother back in Oregon was feverishly trying to scheme me home again and also dealing with the paperwork involved in completing my divorce so that my husband could remarry a French woman he had met while staying on in Moscow a second year. We began to think about leaving the island (partly because I was now ill and had lost weight) and returning to the States, although there was complication about Felix obtaining another visa. In June, having survived six months in paradise, we headed for Paris to stay with Felix’s mother until we could go on.


    In Paris, things became even more dramatic. Miserable and homesick, I simply walked off one day and wandered around the Left Bank until I found the same little hotel where I had stayed with my husband on our way through to Russia. I sat in a little room there for two days and talked to myself in the mirror on the inside of the open door of the closet, literally holding myself to sanity by sheer will. Somehow I hung on, returned to the apartment where Felix was, received money for return tickets by wire from home, took a train to Brussels, caught an Icelandic flight for the second time in my life, and on July 13, almost a full year since we had met, I was back in New York, exhausted, thin like a concentration camp victim, and within three days had found an apartment to sublet where I began to recuperate. It was here that I turned 25. Felix planned to come when he could get his own plans in order. It was the last time I would set foot outside this country.
    (to be continued)
    Deep Thought: It seemed to me that, somehow, the blue jay was trying to communicate with me. I would see him fly into the house across the way, pick up the telephone, and dial. My phone would ring, and it would be him, but it was just this squawking and cheeping. “What?! What?!” I would yell back, but he never did speak English.
    Today I am grateful for: Edwards holding up as well as he did with the Pit Bull
    Guess the Movie: “You can take our car, and you can take our keys, but you cannot take away our dreams! ” “Yeah, because we’re sleeping when we have them! ” Answer: A Night at the Roxbury, 1998
    Polls Today: Kerry 232/Bush 285 EVP: “John Edwards won the vice-presidential debate 41% to 28% among uncommitted voters according to a CBS poll. An online poll conducted by MSNBC makes the margin of Edwards victory even larger: 67% to 33%. While the MSNBC poll was not a scientific poll, it did have 885,000 responses, so it was a very large poll of Internet users.

    The effect of the first presidential debate is starting to kick in. Kerry is surging and Bush is dropping. Kerry has retaken the lead in all-important Ohio by 49% to 48%, New Mexico by 46% to 43%, and Iowa by 48% to 47%. While all of these are within the margin of error, previous polls had Bush ahead in these states by more than the margin of error. Clearly the forward motion Kerry has been experiencing in the national polls this week is starting to show up in the state polls as well. On the other hand, Bush has taken the lead in Pennsylvania by a margin of 48% to 47%.”
    End of Day – 9:02 pm
    + = Finished watching Angels in America just out on double DVD – stunning, extraordinary, must have!!! (review later on)
    - = My hospital’s 16,000 doses of flu shots they usually dole out free to employees went down in flames because of the company in England that lost its license and which provides 50% of the shots for the U.S. (I luckily however scored a flu shot at my local supermarket pharmacy before they ran out today.)

  • Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
    Previous chapters sidebar autobiography

    When we needed supplies we walked the path to the nearest village or took the boat to Ibiza for certain items and to visit friends. We did make friends among local artists and even entertained occasionally in a primitive way. Needless to say, we drank local wine and after a few months on the island I was persuaded to try amphetamines, which were called Centramina and could be bought without prescription at any pharmacy. This occasion prompted the one suicide gesture of my life. After being awake for far too many hours, I began to crash from the drug and not receiving the promised sympathy from Felix (who was also coming down) reached for a scissors laying on a table near me, cut my long hair to the scalp, marched out the door, to the sea, threw off all my clothes (ever the drama queen), marched into the water up to my neck, realized I wasn’t deliberate death material, and retraced all these steps, now shorn and humbled. Things began to go seriously downhill after this.
    (to be continued)


    Deep Thought: When I went for my first job interview, I guess I was pretty confident, because I told the guy who was interviewing me he was fired. I didn’t get the job, but that isn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was I found out a few months later that that guy was still working there. Hey, man, I fired you!
    Today I am grateful for: Emergency dental appointments
    Guess the Movie: “I’ll have what she’s having.” Answer: When Harry Met Sally, 1989. Winner: merrow-mistral
    Polls Today: Kerry 200/Bush 321. EVP: “
    American Research Group has more data on the debate. Kerry gained in all three panels they used. In the random telephone interviews, Kerry now leads Bush 49% to 46%.

    The Gallup Poll puts them even at 49% to 49%, a big change from previous Gallup polls.

    Zogby gives Bush a 1% lead. He also says that according to his poll taken Oct. 1-3, people think Kerry won the first debate by a margin of 2 to 1.

    Pew puts Bush ahead 48% to 41% among registered voters.

    CBS says they are tied. In short, we are in a very volatile period.”
    End of Day: 8:57 pm
    + = Dentist slapped in a new filling about as fast and painlessly as you could hope for.
    - = Afraid to watch Debate #2, once again. Better go find out now what they’re saying about it.

  • Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
    Previous chapters sidebar autobiography

    Somehow we found and rented a little whitewashed, blue-shuttered, tile-roofed, stone-floored cottage (that seemed huge to me) for $15/month out of sight of any other habitation and equipped with Spanish pottery and furniture. It had two tiny bedrooms, one main room with two little storage rooms to either side, and out the front door into another tiny room was a fireplace over which we cooked the chorizo and eggs, pasta and cheese, salads and dark purple aubergines that were our mainstay. The eggs were from chickens that ran wild on the property and laid their eggs anywhere. There were fig trees and tomato plants and parsley like grass. Water for cooking came from a cistern well and probably caused the E. coli infection I later contracted. No electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. Bathroom was a little straw chair with a hole in the middle sitting over a hole in the ground that was covered between visits. In no time, we became brown like boy scouts from the sun.
    (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: The next time you go to the doctor, go ahead and bring in a stool sample. They might need it. Better go ahead and bring some for the dentist too.
    Today I am grateful for: Not being forced to feed candy to kids on Halloween
    Guess the Movie: “Is it safe?” Answer: Marathon Man, 1976.
    Polls Today: Kerry 243/Bush 295. EVP: “
    Newsweek has a new poll out showing Kerry ahead nationally 49% to 46% among REGISTERED VOTERS. Maybe they have caught on to the fact that the LIKELY VOTER screens aren’t very good. But just as I didn’t believe them when they had Bush more than 10% ahead, I don’t believe them now either. It takes a while for the debate to sink in.”
    End of Day: 8:52 pm
    + = Went to back-to-back yoga and exercise class this morning and got 2 straight hours of great workout.
    - = Giant filling fell out of tooth tonight so have to stop at dentist tomorrow after work.

  • Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
    Previous chapters sidebar autobiography

    In 1964, Ibiza, the island in the middle of the Balearic chain of three (Mallorca being the largest and Formentera the smallest) both in size and location, was just jumpstarting its notoriety as a tourist mecca. Its cobbled winding hilly streets were still relatively untrammeled and quiet seaside cafes within view of fishermen tending nets were still peaceful. It was, however, above our budget and we decided to try Formentera, ten miles long by four miles wide approximately, L-shaped, reachable only by boat, its roads mostly just paths between low stone-slabbed walls filled with tiny lizards. There we would live for the next six months on the shore of a large lake called Estanque Pudent and a short hike to the Mediterranean.
    (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: Some folks say it was a miracle. Saint Francis suddenly appeared and knocked the next pitch clean over the fence. But I think it was just a lucky swing.
    Today I am grateful for: Dylan finally releasing the first volume of his memoirs, “Chronicles, Volume One.”
    Guess the Movie:     “You can’t handle the truth!” Answer: A Few Good Men, 1992. Winner: merrow_mistral.
    Polls haven’t changed today.     EVP says: “If the Senate election were held today, the Democrats would take control of the Senate, 52-48 (counting independent Sen. Jeffords as a Democrat, since he caucuses with the Democrats). And this realignment does not take into account the possibility that Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) might pull a Jeffords and jump ship. He is from a hugely Democratic state and, like Zell Miller, would be much more appreciated in the other party. The only reason Chafee hasn’t switched is out of a sense of duty to his late father, John Chafee, who was a respected Republican senator from RI.”
    End of Day: 8:53 pm
    + = Most excellent productive serene day.
    - = Even with all the extra time of semi-retirement I still can’t fit in everything I’d love to be doing.

  • Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
    Previous chapters sidebar autobiography

    In January 1964 we set out as part of a tiny group of passengers on a Yugoslavian freighter out of New York crossing the Atlantic to the port of Casablanca in Africa. In trying to find the actual distance in miles of this voyage, I discovered to my delight that none other than Jack Kerouac had taken the same trip just seven years earlier in February 1957, though his ship took him straight to Tangiers where he was going to meet with William Burroughs. Apparently, this was a common way to travel this route inexpensively at the time. Like him, we had a stormy midwinter crossing that took about nine days.

    The ship entered the port at Casablanca at sunrise and a small boat glided straight down the path of the sun to the ship to sell fish. There were men in long white robes squatting on the docks in the habitual manner of sitting here. From Casablanca we caught a bus to Tangiers that passed through desolate countryside where I could see campfires burning in the distant night and once had to stop for a large herd of animals to cross the road. After a brief overnight in Tangiers we crossed by ferry to Gibraltar and headed along the southern coast of Spain by train. Felix had a haircut that resembled the new fashion set by the Beatles (though we didn’t hear their music for the first time until we reached Ibiza) and along the way we heard calls of “existentialisti” as the small dark Spanish people tried to figure out what two tall blond nomads were up to among them. Eventually we reached Barcelona where we got to see the incredible expressionist architecture of Gaudi before we crossed by ferry to Ibiza on the Balearic Islands.
    (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: If you ever discover that what you’re seeing is a play within a play, just slow down, take a deep breath, and hold on for the ride of your life.
    Today I am grateful for: Seatbelts
    Guess the Movie: “When I first saw you, I thought you were handsome. Then, of course, you spoke.” Answer: As Good As It Gets, 1997. Winner: swawg
    Polls Today Kerry 238/Bush 296. EVP: “Survey USA has polled over 20,000 people in 14 states and 21 cities to ask who won the first debate. In 11 states and 15 cities Kerry was the clear winner. In 2 states and 6 cities, Bush was the clear winner. Colorado was a tossup.Ominously for Bush, the 2 states that said he won the debate are Texas and Oklahoma, which he has in the bag already, but the states that gave Kerry the win include Oregon (by 19%), Maine (by 18%), Pennsylvania (by 22%), Arkansas (by 12%), and most significantly Florida (by 24%).”
    End of Day: 9:07 pm
    + = thenarrator is semi-back
    - = Was at a potluck tonight where there were totally out of control kids beating on each other. It always makes me really sad because I know they’re sad.