New Year's Eve 2006

As New Year's Eve takes shape, I sit alone in this room and think about both past and future--not only this year that has passed like highway beneath my wheels but also other New Year's Eves back across my lifetime. I remember a couple of celebrations during my years in Nashville. The best was probably a big party at the Chesshir house on Michigan Avenue. A couple of years I drank some champagne early in the evening (the first time not knowing and the second time forgetting that it gives me a terrible headache) and then spending the rest of the evening, including the countdown, in bed. Several celebrations have found me on stage in some bar, playing three or four one-hour sets, interrupted somewhere in the middle by a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne." By contrast, I've had some quiet New Year's Eves, and this one is shaping up to be one of the quietest of all. I've eaten too many chocolate chip cookies this afternoon, so I'm a little sick at my stomach. But it's only 6:51, so I'm hoping to recover in time to have a beer around midnight.

(Picture for Dennis C.) I was thinking about making two nice clean lists of the "best" and "worst" of 2006, but then I decided not to for a couple of reasons. First, the best and worst of life comes at us in such a jumble--the best and worst sometimes even being the same thing--that two separate lists don't represent life that well. Second, I'm afraid that the list of worsts would overwhelm the bests, and I don't want to see that as clearly as two distinct lists would present it.

So, without any sort of chronologizing or prioritizing, without any arrangement by event or idea or situation, without any distinction made between the personal and the global levels (and everything in between), here's a rather random and incomplete list of the best and worst of 2006:

• best--I've enjoyed blogging over the past few months. This activity has done several good things for me. I've been writing when I have little time to write. The composition of a novel or book or essay or short story requires a commitment of time and energy that I haven't had recently. Blogging has allowed me to keep writing short pieces that not only keep me in practice but help me understand my experiences and idea. It also keeps me in touch with friends, to some extent at least. I know people are reading, so at least some communication is taking place.
• best--Although I haven't really paid that much attention to them, I'm impressed with the celebraties who are speaking up and reaching out toward the unfortunate. I'm glad to see them participating in something that isn't based on shallow work and glittery image.
• worst--While I'm pleased that celebraties are seeminly reaching out to the more unfortunate in the world, they're doing so in quite glamorized and romanticized ways--adopting children from Africa and such. That's all well and good, but what about the children who live on streets near their mansions? What about the people living in the woods?
• worst--Nationalism, politics and religion continue to be the forces that drive us and distract us. We continue to believe that because we're American or Republican or Democrat or Christian that we are right always and about everything. I don't call for relativism as the best thing, but I do believe we could improve this world--for the people who live in our woods and for the people of Darfur and Iraq--by doing what is just and humane rather than what is in the best interests of our nation, our party, our religion.
• best--Cherokee United Methodist Church entered a new building and a new life as a congregation!
• worst--War and terror and poverty (economic and spiritual) haunt us on a global scale. I know it's not scripted in the scripture that this world will know peace, but I always imagined we would be better than this. While we might have expected the world to move closer together as our understanding of the global and our ability to communicate with one another improved, things are falling apart at a frightening rate.
• worst--Saddam Hussein is dead, and I don't feel a bit better about the world in which I live.
• best--My circle of friends has expanded this year. In the real world, this has taken place, as might be expected, mostly at work and at church. But I've also developed friendships with folks in cyber space as well.
• worst--While my circle of friends has expanded, my circle of close friends has narrowed. One I have long depended on and one for which I had great hopes have faded.
• best--My work is going well.
• worst--My work is going so well that I'm getting more and more involved in admistration, which leaves me less time for teaching and writing.
• best--I've had a great time playing in the band at church. It's been such a long time since music played such a consistent part in my life.
• worst--Our world tends to be run by people who think only of themselves and their ilk, who think that what's best for them will work best for everybody. That's stupid.
• worst--While some pockets of our culture are improving, showing real commitment and interest is what is worthwhile, our broader culture seems to be becoming stupider by the day.
• best (and last . . . for now)--God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.

Hibernation

Seems as if I'll sleep these days away. Not that this is a bad thing. This week between Christmas and New Year's, when I'm making a conscious effort to stay away from the office, I'm sleeping a lot. I sleep in every morning and get a nap--sometimes two naps--in the afternoon.

The day hasn't been a total waste. I took my son to driver's ed., and did a couple of things at the office (mostly answering emails, I think) while he and a group of his fellow students were risking each other's lives--along with their instructor's--on the road to Kingsport. Then he and I went to Barberitos for fish burritos. Back at home, he immediately fell to slaughtering zombies, and I fell flat on my back to finish reading Joyce's "The Dead." Now that I have it in my head, I should be able to move forward with my own story. Anyway, almost as soon as I finished that last incredible paragraph, I fell asleep.

Outside the sky is blue and the day is warm for the 29th of December. I should go to the park and walk, but I can tell by the angle of the shadows that I've waited too late. It'll be dark soon, and no matter how shiny and blue the daytime world is it gets cold when the sun goes down.

So, I'll shake off this post-nap grogginess, have some supper and make a trip to the grocery store for our usual Friday ice cream treats. Tonight we'll watch a movie, maybe, or maybe I'll read again. But no matter what, I know I'll be entering my nightly hibernation phase in just a few hours.

Stories

This is a large picture (somewhat like Dennis's Minnesota beer collection but not as tasty), and yet if you can open it up and look closely, what you'll find is interesting. Here's the life story of a tree told in its rings. Such a tree witnesses more of what passes in this world than most other "living" things.

The story I'm trying to get started is "Witness Tree," and I'm trying to figure out how to work in some of the history surrounding a tree such as this, a tree that has stood in my fictional Runion community since before it was established as a "place." I think a display like this one in the museum at Grandfather Mountain might be the ticket. The difficulty, however, is in working this in and at the same time giving the piece more narrative flow than it would have if it were just history or just science.

So I'm floundering about, trying to figure out where to begin. I have most of the structural details to begin creating "Witness Tree," but I don't know what the story is. I'm thinking about it a lot, but then I'm also distracting myself--with things like writing this blog--to escape my unproductive thinking about it.

My lack of a story for "Witness Tree" seems also connected to a fear that it'll be seen as a cheap imitation of James Joyce's "The Dead," the final story in Dubliners and one of the finest pieces of short fiction ever written (as far as I'm concerned). The ending is beautiful. The lead character in the story, Gabriel Conroy, is in a hotel room with his wife Gretta, where he has just learned (or been reminded) that a boy named Michael Furey had once loved her so much that he seems to have died for her. In this final scene, a private moment after a large Christmas party and then a few minutes talking in the room with his wife, Gabriel stands in the darkness while his wife sleeps.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

I have a Christmas party in mind as well. Trying to keep "The Dead" out of my head is difficult, so until I come up with a story I want to tell, I'll continue to think about it.

Maybe I'll do the work of a dendrochronologist and chart the history of the community via the life of a tree.

Christmas 2006

For as long as I can remember, I've spent the early part of every Christmas Eve at the home of my dad's sister. It's the usual meal-and-gift-giving event, although this year my son was the only one to receive a gift. (The food, however, is generally gift enough for me!) Dad's family has never been particularly close, at least not in the same way that Mom's family has always been. So, often, through the years when I was growing up, Christmas Eve seemed almost the only time I saw my aunt and uncle. It wasn't quite that bad, really, but it was close, especially considering the fact that my aunt/uncle/cousin's house is only a couple hundred yards down the hill from the house I grew up in. And it was bad by comparison as well. Consider the fact that Mom's sister and family lived not too much closer in the up-the-hill direction, and I was there, it seems, almost every day.

Anyway, when I got out of the CRV this Christmas Eve, I looked across the creek and saw The Coop--storied practice venue of the White Water Band--still standing. For some reason, I guess I just assumed that when the road was widened a few years back, The Coop was a casualty of the expansion. Then again, I'm in that particular spot so little in these years, I've had few opportunities to think about the place. I've adjusted the contrast of this picture, because the evening was almost dark. To provide some perspective, I'm standing in the highway--or at the edge of it. Near the center of the picture is the door that led back through the entrance way or storage area and into the Coop proper. We practiced in the area where the two windows are visible to the left of the entrance way's roof line. I liked seeing the old place there still, especially after having so recently relived some of those days through writing about them.

Christmas was a struggle this year. I simply couldn't get a feel for it until, literally, the last minute. All of the gift-giving seemed hollow. The Christmas music in every store and restaurant was annoying. Moments that should have been the season's dart-to-the-heart were short-lived; I felt something for a short time, but then it went away, as if the season's dart thudded against some vest of chain mail and fell away. Then about 9:30 on Christmas Eve, after supper at my aunt's and an exchange of gifts between my little family and my mom and brother, my son and I drove back across the mountain to Tennessee to attend the 11:00 candlelight service at Cherokee. There, with words and music and friends, I finally felt--when all was said and done a few minutes before midnight--that Christmas had come, that the child had been born. I drove back across the mountain feeling Christmas, not contending with Xmas.

This morning we awoke and ate cheese biscuits and chocolate for breakfast at my mom's and a turkey lunch at my mother-in-law's. When my enthusiastic nephew seemed about to preach an impromptu Baptist sermon (something I believe I've heard enough of in my life), I decided it was time to head back over the mountain to Tennessee. We came home and fed the cat, I took a nap and then my son and I watched the DVD of Independence Day, which he'd given me for Christmas.

My mom's Christmas lights and me.

Christmas Eve

The tree is up, as of last night. A little running up and down the attic ladder. A little music in the background. A little white wine. And behold!

Today's a busy day: church in the morning; getting ready to cross the mountains into North Carolina; a family gathering at 5:00; a return across the mountains to Cherokee for a midnight service; another return to NC. . . .

Merry Christmas!

Chocolate Milk

This morning I poured myself a bowl of Cinnamon Life and reached into the refrigerator for the milk. I saw a half-gallon jug of whole milk bought for some holiday baking. That's been in there a while, I thought. Better check the date. It was dated 12/22. Okay, that'll need go out today. Then I checked our gallon of 1% and found it also dated 12/22. Gotta get some while I'm out and about, I thought, and then a funny memory popped into my mind.

During my last two years of high school and the first couple years of college, one of my best friends was Mike Tweed, the youngish Methodist minister--maybe 32 or so--at the church in Walnut. He sang and played guitar a little bit. His wife played piano. The two of them and my aunt and mom and I often sang together at church--Dallas Holm songs mostly. In addition to the singing, we also played a lot of basketball together and just generally had a laugh a minute.

One morning roughly 30 years ago, Mike and I were booked to sing at a 7:30 meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at AC Reynolds high school near Asheville. To make this easy, I spent the night at Mike's. I was up and around early and decided to fix some breakfast. I don't remember what I had to eat--Pop Tarts, probably. But to drink, I fixed chocolate milk, which is what I drank every morning. I poured a glass from the carton in the refrigerator and then dumped in a couple of heaping spoons of the old Nestle's Quik chocolate powder that came from the squarish boxes with the pop-off metal lid.

Mike and I left the house in good shape and headed for the school. But on the way, I began to feel sick at my stomach. Before I knew it Mike was rolling the car to a quick stop on the side of the road, and I opened my door and threw up.

What's funny about this? I told Mike that I thought his Nestle's Quik had gone bad. I can't tell you how much he laughed at this. And later his wife laughed at this too. The Quik hadn't gone bad, of course, but the milk had. That fact would have been the first thing to occur to most folks. But with all the milk-drinking and cooking that went on around my house, any given container of milk had never stayed around long enough to go bad. As a result, I never knew that milk could go bad!

By the way, once the sour milk was off my stomach, Mike and I went on to the high school, where we sang our Dallas Holm songs as scheduled.

I don't think Nestle's still makes the old powder any more--or maybe I just haven't looked. But while I'm out today to pick up a couple of final Christmas items, I'll pick up some milk. And I'll check the date, as I've done lo these many years.

Winter Solstice

From today's Writer's Almanac:

In the northern hemisphere, today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. It's officially the first day of winter and one of the oldest known holidays in human history. Anthropologists believe that solstice celebrations go back at least 30,000 years, before humans even began farming on a large scale. Many of the most ancient stone structures made by human beings were designed to pinpoint the precise date of the solstice. The stone circles of Stonehenge were arranged to receive the first rays of midwinter sun.

Ancient peoples believed that because daylight was waning, it might go away forever, so they lit huge bonfires to tempt the sun to come back. The tradition of decorating our houses and our trees with lights at this time of year is passed down from those ancient bonfires.

"Well, I'm Back"

This is Samwise Gamgee in an old--1980s, I think--animated version of Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Good ol' Sam speaks the last words of the trilogy's final book, The Return of the King. He has been to Mordor and back to the Shire, then to the Grey Havens to see his friend Frodo off to another world with the last of the Elves. At last he's home to stay, and to his wife he sighs, "Well, I'm back."

I've been to neither Mordor nor the Grey Havens the last few days, but I've been grading papers and exams and rehearsing and playing in musical events at Cherokee for a couple of weeks now. I feel as if I've been far away through it all.

I think this evening's children's performance was my last special event of the season. I'll do some music on Sunday, but that's just part of the normal thing. Next week, I'll put my flute in the shop to get its keys reseated and try to figure out how to become a writer again.

My little one has been going through driver's education this week. He drove through Garland Acres, a local neighborhood where a friend lives, and out to Unicoi the first day (Tuesday), and he spent some time on I-26 today, getting up to almost 70 mph, which thrilled him. (Oh boy, here we go!)

This milestone for him has just been another event for me that seems to get in the way of my "Christmas spirit." I know that Christmas is less than a week away, but I haven't done anything toward getting ready for it. Outside the musical performances, outside the walls of the church, I'm not feeling it. At least I'm not feeling it like I used to--or like I want to. I'm not moving toward a Scrooge or Grinch period, but I do think I feel a change a-coming in the way that I'll celebrate the season in upcoming years. At this point, I don't think I know what that future way will be, but I have a feeling that it'll be much simpler, much less expensive, much less Xmassy and more Christmassy. (My son's terms. When I was talking to him about getting a fake tree, he said, "That's not Christmassy. That's Xmassy." At least he didn't say what he, as a fifteen-year-old usually says--"That's gay." I hope the phrase and phase passes soon.)

And so I approach Christmas with a little reluctance, a bit of excitement but little enthusiasm. I'll be glad to share the season with family and friends, but I could do with more kinship and friendship. I remember a scene at the end of Jackson's film version of The Return of the King, when Frodo is waking up after his ordeal on the mountain and sees Sam, who has been by him through it all. While all the other members of the Fellowship are celebrating, Frodo and Sam just look silently at one another in a way that reveals the volumes of experiences--good and bad--that they've shared. It's a moving scene, one I think we all ought to get to play out at some point. I wonder, however, if, at this stage in my life and in this age of the world, such friendship is any longer possible.

Come, Emmanuel.

Bear II: Grading & Playing

Grades Due 12/18

Work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work (minus the redhead) work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work (the crossed eyes are developing) work work work work work work work work work

http://img.timeinc.net/ew/img/review/990709/blazingsaddles.jpg

"'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime"

This morning the band played a hymn called "'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime," known here and there as the "Huron Carol." It has a beautiful minor-key melody, which we surrounded with the main riff from "Witchy Woman" by the Eagles. A strange pairing, but it worked. The melody enhances the lyric, which has a nice old-world feel but which, if thought about too much, is probably a little patronizing ("children of the forest" and all that).

The hymn felt right for the season, and I enjoyed playing it. Hopefully folks from the congregation enjoyed it as well. (I know some of them did!)

'Twas in the moon of wintertime
When all the birds had fled,
That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim
And wond'ring hunters heard the hymn:
"Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born: In excelsis gloria!"

Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found.
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapped His beauty 'round;
And as the hunter braves drew nigh
The angel song rang loud and high:
"Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born: In excelsis gloria!"

The earliest moon of wintertime
Is not so round and fair
As was the ring of glory
On the helpless Infant there.
The chiefs from far before him knelt
With gifts of fox, and beaver pelt.
"Jesus, your king is born,
Jesus is born: In excelsis gloria!"

O children of the forest free,
O seed of Manitou,
The Holy Child of earth and heaven
Is born today for you.
Come kneel before the radiant Boy
Who brings you beauty, peace and joy.
"Jesus, your King is born,
Jesus is born: In excelsis gloria!"

http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh244.sht

A Twilight Reel

For several years now--in between husbanding and fathering and schooling (from both sides of the classroom)--I've been working on a collection of short stories that I'm calling "A Twilight Reel." The collection is to include twelve stories, each of which takes place in a different month of a recent year in my fictional North Carolina mountain town of Runion (and its surrounding area). Several of the stories are already written: "The Wine of Astonishment" (January), "The Loves of a Romantic Sensualist" (February), "Overwinter" (March), "Jamboree" (June), "Grist for the Mill" (August) and "A Poster of Marilyn Monroe" (September). That's six. Four other stories are named and some bits and pieces are written: "Decoration Day" (May), "A Fiddle and a Twilight Reel" (October), "Two Floors above the Dead" (November) and "Witness Tree" (December). I'm still working on April and July ideas.

Although it rarely works out completely, I like to work on the individual stories during the months in which they're set. That way I hope I can get a little more realism into the ambience of each piece, making each feel like the month that is its setting.

I began tinkering with "Witness Tree" today, and after the decks are somewhat cleared at the end of this semester I'm going to begin serious drafting and see how far I can take it. Either daily or periodically, I'll post what I'm writing here. I have only a vague sense of the plot at the moment, but I'm fairly certain the following will appear in the story: a giant oak tree, possibly cut or blown down sometime before the story begins; an old country church (pictured here), closed down due to low attendance and purchased by a local man to use, in part, as storage for his collection of Santa Claus figures (from miniature to life-sized); a community Christmas party held in this old church.

I hope to begin this sometime in the coming week and see where it leads.

Wednesday Piper

After that whole "bear" thing, I figured I ought to mellow out, so I thought I'd write about what soothes the beast in me--music. I'm thinking about my flute in particular at the moment, probably because I'm performing tonight with the Cherokee hand bell group. This evening is their Christmas performance, and I'll be joining them on "Riu, Riu, Chiu," a 16th-century Spanish carol, and "Do You Hear What I Hear," one of my favorite Christmas songs.

The concert went well. Hand bells are so fun to listen to and to watch. The director was right: they seem especially appropriate at this time of year. I got the basic melody stuff for "Riu, Riu, Chiu" across fairly well but did little more than avoid glaring mistakes during the flashy parts. At least I ended with the rest of the group. "Do You Hear What I Hear" came off wonderfully, I thought. I can play the hell out of slow stuff! The final passage of took a bag of wind to complete, and having gone over five years now without smoking, I had the wind to get through it. Several people mentioned wondering if I was going to pass out on that long last F.

My flute was made by a Japanese company named Muramatsu. I've had it since 1978 or thereabouts. I don't play as well--technically speaking--as I did when I was a flute major at Mars Hill College years ago, but I'm much better at improvisation now than I've ever been. One of my favorite things to do is take my flute into some room with resonance and just make up melodies, listening to the hints of echoed harmonies and those ghostly difference tones bouncing off the wallswallswallswallswalls. . . .

Bear

I feel sorry for those closest to me at this time of year. I'm generally fairly bearish physically year 'round, but during the last week or so of a semester I act like a bear too. I lumber around the house like a caged thing, growling and snapping at anything that moves. It ain't a pretty sight.

Why?

Mostly it's to do with my job. I love what I do 90% of the time. The other 10% is the time when I have stacks of papers to grade. And I'll have stacks of papers to grade from now through the 18th, two weeks' worth of werebear behavior behind the closed door of my office and at home.

During those two weeks, I'll find plenty of decent sentences and paragraphs, and plenty of ideas worth the time it takes me to read them. But plenty isn't always enough. In between the good pieces of writing and the most interesting topics will be lots of poorly written papers on poorly thought-out topics. Most of the students could do better than they do, but they don't--for whatever reason.

Actually, I should be more honest. I teach one class filled with some twenty-three of the brightest of ETSU's freshman class and another class combining graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. I'll do so much better than many of my colleagues who are teaching two sophomore lit sections populated with that strange range of students who care and those who don't. Then there are the many folks teaching freshman composition and grading ten times the number of papers I have to grade. (Some adjuncts--between ETSU and Northeast State Technical Community College--teach four, five or six sections of freshman composition!)

Still, selfishly not caring that some people have it worse than I, I'll continue to snap and growl--and occasionally scratch my back against a door post--until this period of grading is over. Then I'll return to being the happy-go-lucky wrestling bear in a traveling show or the trick bear decked out in Christmas ribbons and sitting on the ice with a bottle of Coke or a cold holiday beer between my paws.

Household Updates

A few days ago, maybe a day or two before Thanksgiving, I got involved in a long talk with a telemarketer from Embarq, the local telephone-and-more company. The conversation was about putting together a package of home media stuff--telephone, wireless Internet, and Dish Network television--to save us a few dollars a month. Comcast cable stinks, so I was ready to try something new. I also liked the idea of being able to hook up my laptop and work out on the Internet with it from any place in the house. Heck, when the weather's warmer I can probably even go outside on the patio! Anyway, the deal was struck, and today was set for the installation.

Two guys came--one from Dish Network and one from the data branch of Embarq. Both arrived at about the same time, a little after 10:00 this morning. The data guy did a bit of running between the house and the pole across the street before he discovered that the live telephone wire was at the other end of the house, a little makeshift box there instead of the bigger one (where it was supposed to be). He finally got the DSL going--actually without too much trouble once he got the lines right. He couldn't really tell me anything about my wireless except that the green light was steady, which meant that it was working. "I'm a data man," he said, "not a PC man. I been at this for thirty-two years now. There's five of us. The other four went through the PC training, but I'm too old to bother with it." Despite his lack of PC schooling (personal computer and, perhaps, political correctness), the stuff's working. I'm actually writing this on my laptop while kicked back in my favorite chair in the living room. The switchover is going to require the hassle of changing email addresses, but that's just one of those things you have to deal with these days.

The Dish Network guy has had a much rougher time of it. He was here till about 1:00, when his drill burned out its clutch trying to go through a brick wall. So he left, and after several hours--picking up his paycheck, cashing it, getting a new drill--he was back at around 5:00. Now it's 6:15, and he's still here. The dish is on the roof (sort of), and the line is run into the house (finally). He had a lot of difficulty getting the line through the wall. He first drilled one rather gaping little hole that bogged down in the middle of the outside brick. He called it a slip, but it was a definite screw-up. He says he'll come back tomorrow with a patch kit. He doesn't have one of those with him, just like he doesn't have a tape measure or a pair of pruning shears. Anyway, he's now working on getting holes drilled in the floor so that he can connect the boy's television to the system. (Shades of Dan Akroyd!--and blue-collar comedy!--he's kneeling down on the floor across the room from me and showing a little rear cleavage.) We're getting something like 200 channels and a free DVR to replace our squeaky old VCR.

I never considered a job like the the ones the two fellows in my house today have. They have skills that I'm sure I'd like to have in order to be more useful around the house, but whether somewhere with my guitar in my arms or with my nose in a book, I never seriously thought that I might be something other than what I was at that moment. To be honest, I don't even know how a person comes into such work.

I'm glad that these guys have their jobs. I'm glad that I can sit in my favorite chair and peck at my keyboard. I'm glad that I'm going to have about 189 channels that I'll never watch. I'm glad that when I'm out of the house on Wednesday nights, I can record Criminal Minds and watch it without having the characters' voices competing with the squeaking VCR. Most of all, tonight, I'm glad that I have the job that I have, which hasn't--so far at least--required that I stand at the top of a 20-foot ladder in gusting wind or reveal the crack of my ass to strangers.