rivervision

There is very little that I hate, I mean really hate. I talk big talk about hating such and such and so and so, but if pressed to remember my pacifist core there isn’t much I can justify hating.

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howard zinn is a great image to see when i first come to my blog as my gateway to news.. but this image is even better (btw, i took this from lisa ling’s background on twitter)

if you can’t tell.. that’s a young palestinian boy walking arm in arm with a young israeli boy.

oh, and vickie.. as i was putting up that howard zinn speech i thought of erin…

“After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself — whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist — you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.”

and

“My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, Black and white, who are models. I don’t mean African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.”

(from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Howard_Zinn.jpg)

Howard Zinn
1922-2010

Against Discouragement
Spelman College Commencement Address, May 2005
By Howard Zinn
[In 1963, historian Howard Zinn was fired from Spelman College in Atlanta GA, where he was chair of the History Department, because of his civil rights activities. This year, he was invited back to give the commencement address. Here is the text of that speech, given on May 15, 2005.]

I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after forty-two years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.

But this is your day — the students graduating today. It’s a happy day for you and your families. I know you have your own hopes for the future, so it may be a little presumptuous for me to tell you what hopes I have for you, but they are exactly the same ones that I have for my grandchildren.

My first hope is that you will not be too discouraged by the way the world looks at this moment. It is easy to be discouraged, because our nation is at war — still another war, war after war — and our government seems determined to expand its empire even if it costs the lives of tens of thousands of human beings. There is poverty in this country, and homelessness, and people without health care, and crowded classrooms, but our government, which has trillions of dollars to spend, is spending its wealth on war. There are a billion people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who need clean water and medicine to deal with malaria and tuberculosis and AIDS, but our government, which has thousands of nuclear weapons, is experimenting with even more deadly nuclear weapons. Yes, it is easy to be discouraged by all that.

But let me tell you why, in spite of what I have just described, you must not be discouraged.

I want to remind you that, fifty years ago, racial segregation here in the South was entrenched as tightly as was apartheid in South Africa. The national government, even with liberal presidents like Kennedy and Johnson in office, was looking the other way while Black people were beaten and killed and denied the opportunity to vote. So Black people in the South decided they had to do something by themselves. They boycotted and sat in and picketed and demonstrated, and were beaten and jailed, and some were killed, but their cries for freedom were soon heard all over the nation and around the world, and the President and Congress finally did what they had previously failed to do — enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Many people had said: The South will never change. But it did change. It changed because ordinary people organized and took risks and challenged the system and would not give up. That’s when democracy came alive.

I want to remind you also that when the war in Vietnam was going on, and young Americans were dying and coming home paralyzed, and our government was bombing the villages of Vietnam — bombing schools and hospitals and killing ordinary people in huge numbers — it looked hopeless to try to stop the war. But just as in the Southern movement, people began to protest and soon it caught on. It was a national movement. Soldiers were coming back and denouncing the war, and young people were refusing to join the military, and the war had to end.

The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies. I know you have practical things to do — to get jobs and get married and have children. You may become prosperous and be considered a success in the way our society defines success, by wealth and standing and prestige. But that is not enough for a good life.

Remember Tolstoy’s story, “The Death of Ivan Illych.” A man on his deathbed reflects on his life, how he has done everything right, obeyed the rules, become a judge, married, had children, and is looked upon as a success. Yet, in his last hours, he wonders why he feels a failure. After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself — whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist — you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States. This was horrifying to me — the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call “civilization,” we have carved up what we claim is one world into two hundred artificially created entities we call “nations” and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary, so fierce it leads to murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking, cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on, have been useful to those in power, deadly for those out of power.

Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that’s not true. If you know some history, you know we massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, and the Philippines. We killed huge numbers of people, and we did not bring them democracy or liberty. We did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; we did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Our aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history — more profit for corporations, more power for politicians.

The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism. Perhaps the Black poets especially are less enthralled with the virtues of American “liberty” and “democracy,” their people having enjoyed so little of it. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes addressed his country as follows:

You really haven’t been a virgin for so long.
It’s ludicrous to keep up the pretext.You’ve slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you’ve taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows.

Being one of the world’s big vampires,
Why don’t you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.

I am a veteran of the Second World War. That was considered a “good war,” but I have come to the conclusion that war solves no fundamental problems and only leads to more wars. War poisons the minds of soldiers, leads them to kill and torture, and poisons the soul of the nation.

My hope is that your generation will demand that your children be brought up in a world without war. It we want a world in which the people of all countries are brothers and sisters, if the children all over the world are considered as our children, then war — in which children are always the greatest casualties — cannot be accepted as a way of solving problems.

I was on the faculty of Spelman College for seven years, from 1956 to 1963. It was a heartwarming time, because the friends we made in those years have remained our friends all these years. My wife Roslyn and I and our two children lived on campus. Sometimes when we went into town, white people would ask: How is it to be living in the Black community? It was hard to explain. But we knew this — that in downtown Atlanta, we felt as if we were in alien territory, and when we came back to the Spelman campus, we felt that we were at home.

Those years at Spelman were the most exciting of my life, the most educational certainly. I learned more from my students than they learned from me. Those were the years of the great movement in the South against racial segregation, and I became involved in that in Atlanta, in Albany, Georgia, in Selma, Alabama, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Greenwood and Itta Bena and Jackson.

I learned something about democracy: that it does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice. I learned about race. I learned something that any intelligent person realizes at a certain point — that race is a manufactured thing, an artificial thing, and while race does matter (as Cornel West has written), it only matters because certain people want it to matter, just as nationalism is something artificial. I learned that what really matters is that all of us — of whatever so-called race and so-called nationality — are human beings and should cherish one another.

I was lucky to be at Spelman at a time when I could watch a marvelous transformation in my students, who were so polite, so quiet, and then suddenly they were leaving the campus and going into town, and sitting in, and being arrested, and then coming out of jail full of fire and rebellion. You can read all about that in Harry Lefever’s book Undaunted By The Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1967.

One day Marian Wright (now Marian Wright Edelman), who was my student at Spelman, and was one of the first arrested in the Atlanta sit-ins, came to our house on campus to show us a petition she was about to put on the bulletin board of her dormitory. The heading on the petition epitomized the transformation taking place at Spelman College. Marian had written on top of the petition: “Young Ladies Who Can Picket, Please Sign Below.”

My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, Black and white, who are models. I don’t mean African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.

Another of my students at Spelman, Alice Walker, who, like Marian, has remained our friend all these years, came from a tenant farmer’s family in Eatonton, Georgia, and became a famous writer. In one of her first published poems, she wrote:

It is true —
I’ve always loved
the daring
ones
Like the Black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.

I am not suggesting you go that far, but you can help to break down barriers, of race certainly, but also of nationalism; that you do what you can — you don’t have to do something heroic, just something, to join with millions of others who will just do something, because all of those somethings, at certain points in history, come together, and make the world better.

That marvelous African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wouldn’t do what white people wanted her to do, who wouldn’t do what Black people wanted her to do, who insisted on being herself, said that her mother advised her: Leap for the sun — you may not reach it, but at least you will get off the ground.

By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap My hope for you is a good life.

Copyright © 2005, Howard Zinn

it’s been a long 2 weeks. it’s been hard. there have been moments of horrible agony. i’ve stepped out of my comfort zone though.. i emailed two folks to ask for help with some of my research.. and i made an adult call and sent another adult email.

i also have gotten my butt down to salt lake city twice in two weekends and tomorrow will be a third time in three weekends. i really don’t like the construction between exits 213 and 206. 2 weekends ago it was to listen to a new friend sing amazing songs. folk songs. the kind of music that brings comfort and joy to my heart all at once. i love that kind of music. i hope i didn’t overwhelm my new friend with how much i enjoyed his singing and guitar playing.. but when music moves the soul in that way it is hard to stop it. 1 weekend ago it was to listen to an amazing woman talk about her trip to palestine with the compassionate listening project and then participate in a 3 hour compassionate listening project workshop. the power in this woman’s story about palestine? her father is a palestinian refugee from jaffa and technically, because she is her father’s daughter, she is considered one of the 4.62 palestinian refugees. what was moving about her talk? how she said she isn’t angry at the israelis.. but rather, when she thinks of them, she feels sad and i heard compassion too. a palestinian refugee without anger at the israeli government. really, the only word is amazing and i am glad that i drove 1-15 between exits 213 and 206, twice (round trip), so i could hear her. and tomorrow, tomorrow is another drive down for lunch with that singer songwriter new friend. it’s good to get out of cache valley.

but the sent. the verb in the subject? that, that is referring to what i did just before i started this post. i sent my dissertation proposal to my committee. my chair, bless her heart (btw, whenever i say or think that phrase i always hear it in my head in a southern accent) – she is so patient with me and my neuroses – has been going back and forth with me on this for awhile. 7 versions. i hope the committee makes the defense part easy, but i hope its easy because what my chair and i have sent is good. i hope i can find a time where they are all available the 3rd or 4th week of february. next step. sent.

today started horribly. a horrible that i don’t want to relive but that verb, sent, makes the end far better. the day got better. i’m glad.

yes, i heard about the situation in haiti on tuesday afternoon.. i think i heard about it through twitter. like many, when i heard, i was horrified about the situation. it was being posted all over twitter and i was glad to see that people cared.

but it didn’t take too long for me to get angry about the reaction. why anger? i know, crazy reaction – anger when people care. i’m angry at the the haiti stuff, not because people are caring and not because people in haiti don’t need the help, but because – here’s the thing – these horrors in haiti, are happening all over the world, every day. i think about the siege on gaza and how the 1.5 million people there are struggling to simply live while israel enforces it and the US, egypt and the rest of the world just let it happen. and then darfur and sudan and how the genocide has been going on there for longer than any genocide should (a genocide shouldn’t ever go on, fwiw, but the world has known for a long time now and it is still happening). and colombia, east timor, afghanistan, ethiopia, pakistan, and haiti before the quake.. and i know the list could go on and on and on. and the same people i see twittering for haiti, most of those same people i have never ever seen comment about another country who’s people are living the same daily horrors that the people of haiti are living. yes, there are babies, children, young people and old people living out under the stars, not knowing where their next meal is coming from all over the world.. only the difference in non-natural disasters is that those people don’t know if help is ever going to come, if the world does care.

and it makes me angry – so suddenly there is a natural disaster and people care about different parts of the world? i actually posted yesterday “if americans cared half as much about gaza as they do about haiti then gaza would be free.” and what about the rest of the world where americans could use their power to stop daily horrors around the world, not just gaza or the west bank? it would be huge, and powerful, and truly a miracle. but with some situations – afghanistan, the west bank & gaza for instance – america would have to apologize because we either a) caused it and/ or b) support it with our tax dollars. and americans are not a group of people to apologize. and in other places americans would have to move from crisis – which we are so good at – to caring long enough to force the hand of the american government to demand that these genocides stop. yes, for places like the sudan & darfur, americans would have to force the government’s hand to do something, which will take all these people caring right now for haiti to care this much for a long period of time. but we didn’t cause the situation in sudan? we didn’t cause the situation in bosnia either and we sent military there, and iraq – cripes we started 2 wars in iraq and the same with afghanistan. when this country of mine wants something to happen it will go as far as to break international law to make it so.

but we’re not good at this. and as a group we won’t do this, because the advantage of crisis is that we can care for a few minutes and then go back to our lives. the advantage of crisis is that we can appear to be the good person to those in our networks and then go back to our lives without really doing anything to make a difference.

in a week america is going to not care as much, and we are going to go back to our normal situation as always, until the next natural disaster. and then we’ll care again for a week or so. and the cycle will continue until people in this country really wake up. maybe what is happening in sudan, gaza, colombia will have to happen here, to the white middle and upper class for people here to care for more than a week. that is incredibly sad that that is the case, but it probably is going to be. and after haiti is rebuilt there will still be people living under stars, not knowing where their next meal or drink of water is coming from, terrified about what may happen to them next and most americans will be happily in their little world convinced that what they did for haiti was heroic and now they don’t get to care anymore.

The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”
Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” -1 Samuel 3:10 (NIV)

Update 13 jan. he died this afternoon, peacefully. i won’t be going to the funeral, i’ll just stay here. me not going to his funeral is not a reflection on how much i love him.
UPDATE: 7 jan. according to my family back east my grandfather ‘pulled a lazarus‘.. we were all sure he was going, but a day off all medication to try to fix things let his body fix it and he was up and walking around 36 hours after i went to say good-bye. i sensed there was still a bit of his bullheaded self when i went to visit still there, i just didn’t guess there was much as there was. according to my brother he is drinking milk shakes and cokes, recognizing my mother and sleeping a lot. no one knows how long he is for this world and if i get a call that he’s died tomorrow i won’t be surprised. although i’ll be sad for us, i won’t be sad for him. he’s lived a long life, he was well loved, and yet he had his struggles. it sounds, though, that he’s at peace now and i couldn’t wish for anything more for this time of his life. i couldn’t wish for anything more during this time in anyone’s life.

90 and some odd-months ago these two people:

had a son. before that they had 2 daughters, and after that they had 2 daughters, but smack dab in the middle they had a son, and they named him austin.

eventually, under the constant attention and protection of his four sisters, austin grew up, and married louise.

and soon dianne came along.

and after eons (in human years, mind you), dianne had 2 kids, one of whom was me.

on tuesday i made the most difficult visit to a nursing home i’ve ever made in my life. okay, lets face it, on tuesday i made one of the most difficult visits with someone i’ve ever made in my life, nursing home or not. on tuesday, 29 december 2009, as many were preparing to ring in a new year, my grandfather was (and as i write this still is) living his final days on this earth, and i went to visit him to say good-bye.

i didn’t stay long. and, to be honest, i didn’t have the courage i saw my father have – my dad walked right up to gepa’s face, held his hand, touched his forehead, looked into his eyes and hummed “amazing grace” to the man who became his second father. and for about 30 seconds gepa came back to this side of the veil. i could only get as far as his legs, to sit on his bed and put my hands on his legs and say the lords prayer to him and when i said it, for just a few seconds he came back again to this side but then quickly left again.

the body that lay in the bed was hard for me to look at and the excuse i have for not staying long is that i didn’t want to remember him that way and because i needed to get back to my life i was able to cut my stay with him short. the body that lay in the bed only held a smidge of the soul that was my grandfather and it simply hurt too much to know that most of his bullheaded self had already left us. the images i wanted burned in my mind were not of that, but instead of this:

or like this:

or even like this – on my visit to him just 7 weeks prior:

i wanted, instead, to be able to keep strong memories of a grandfather who loved me more than i could ever imagine. he was the one who took us to putt-putt golf, to the water slides, to the naval beaches at virginia beach more times than i can remember. he was the one who made me waffles every morning and because i loved him so much i didn’t care that my waffles were always burned a little bit. he was the one who called my mother ‘dick’, my brother ‘bunk sweeney’ and me ’sally goodpuddin’.. he had a nickname for everyone, and i think i got that from him because i affectionately started calling him ‘geezer man’ in these last years of his life. i’m sure he knew it was a name of affection as i knew that when i heard ’sally!’ being called after me that it was simply a verbal hug.

when i talk about where i come from i always mention being from the south [note, when i refer to the south - i mean the south east US - virginia, tennessee, georgia, n & s carolina, alabama, mississippi, etc..]. no, i don’t consider myself a true southerner though. i don’t consider myself a true southerner because my father and his kin are from the northeast — rhode island, new jersey, new york – having immigrated from quebec and england in recent US and distant US history. and i was raised in a small college town, among academics — which insulated me from developing a southern accent and fully being immersed in the southern culture. my mother, even without a southern accent (she was an army brat and grew up all over the country), is a southerner. and when i talk about coming from the south it is because of my grandfather and his kin (along with my grandmother and her kin) that i get to use that honorable label. yes, at meals there was always okra (my mom loves the stuff), and invariably black-eyed peas, cornbread, and other southern delicacies. it was because of my grandfather and his kin (along with my grandmother and her kin) that i can speak a bit of southern. another reason i will always love him, and be grateful that *he* is my grandfather.

it was a selfish reason. i think he needed me to stay, as the one christian in the immediate family i should have stayed and read scriptures to him to remind him that this isn’t the end, but i didn’t. i’m not going to beat myself up for not staying. i did what i needed to do for me, i guess i’m writing this to put an apology into the winds to my grandfather for him to maybe get as he continues his transition. i’m certain he’ll understand.

no, really.  here’s a picture of me at the moment.

if you can’t tell, i’m on a plane. i’m on a plane flying from atlanta to salt lake city. i went back east. to blacksburg, va to see my papa:

that’s him at dinner at the palisades resturant in eggleston, va.

i also got to see my aunt, uncle, and their two sons. amazing people that my aunt has raised, good men. i was thrilled to be able to get to know them as adults, and connect with cousin a. about a similar situation in our lives. and also my uncle c -> he’s a good listener and one day spent an hour just listening to some of the stuff i’ve been going through with my chronic illness. and auntie s. my dissertation editor! or she’s teaching me how to be a dissertation editor. it was just nice to be in her presence and see how much she is her mother, my dear grandmother. really, it’s always a pleasant experience to discover that you actually like the people you call relatives, family, etc.

yesterday – that would be tuesday – dad and i drove to chapel hill for a few hours to see my brother and his people. my adorable nephew b – who got an ipod touch! for christmas. that’s what we, in my field, call a digital native. along with miss bubble butt my adorable little niece m.l. who i wish i lived closer to because she’s so freakin cuddle-able. and happy too.

and then back to blacksburg for a visit with someone who didn’t really know my dad and i were there. more on that later, more on that tomorrow. i don’t want to talk about that hard thing right now.

sorry i’m not posting much these days. it’s not that there isn’t a lot going on in my head, it’s that there is so much intense lot going on in my head and it’s really not good fodder for blogging. my blessed doc hears about the intense stuff going on in my head and it should stay with her. yep yep yep.

okay. tired. i should think about napping.

Oh, Come, Oh, Come Emmanuel
Translated: John Neal, 1818-66

Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, our Wisdom from on high,
Who ordered all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, oh, come, our Lord of might,
Who to your tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times gave holy law,
In cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come O Rod of Jesse’s stem,
From ev’ry foe deliver them
That trust your mighty pow’r to save;
Bring them in vict’ry through the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heav’nly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

added: it came back up by midnight, mst.

Added: twitter hacked, defaced by ‘iranian cyber army‘ at tech crunch.

and the world is coming to an end. really. of all the social media thingys, twitter is the one that has caught my attention. i did f@ceb00k for awhile, but.. i just didn’t like the cliqueness of the place. it felt.. well, too much like high school. it became this way even more for me when a bunch of people from high school friended me and didn’t talk to me.. it felt like high school all over.. same people knowing me but not really interacting with me. but twitter, well – i can follow who i want too and have conversations, or not. it just fits my personality better.

*and* yes, i have found community. thanks to @breyeschow. he’s a social media nerd, pcusa pastor, and moderator of the current general assembly of the pcusa (i’m not sure how much power that title comes with, but it is an impressive one). he put together lists of pcusa presbys who twitter and we started to follow each other, and then from there i found @jaybakker (son of jim and tammy faye), shane claiborne, etc.. basically a bunch of emergent and outlaw type christians, along with some mainstream pcusa presbys (i delineate pcusa from other denominations of presbyterian in the u.s. because the others seem significantly more conservative). and then there is a whole palestine crowd as well that i follow, and while i feel less of a sense of community with them, i still enjoy their presence in my life and am glad i can stay up to date on the news there along with hearing commentaries from people actually over in and around that important piece of land.

isn’t that interesting? the 2 main groups i follow – christians and palestinians. there’s a draw to that land, yes there is, and the importance of that land in the lives of these faithful christians that i follow on twitter just can’t be captured. and as christians who believe to the core in justice and overcoming systems of oppression what is occurring in that land must stop.

so yeah, twitter is down, the world is coming to an end, and i guess it’s probably good so i go to sleep at a decent hour.