harmonicminer

My mom passed away on September 19, 2011.   This is the eulogy I gave at her funeral a few days ago.

Here is a photo of my folks with my first child, about 24 years ago.  That beautiful baby, Kira, has grown up, of course, and is about to give birth to my first grandchild in a couple of months.

My mom was born Lois Leone Mumford on July 4, 1915 in Clam Falls, Wisconsin, to Grace Harvey Mumford and Wellman Mumford. Rumor has it that in my mom’s earliest years, she thought the fireworks celebrations were in honor of her birthday on the 4^th of July.

Lois was the second oldest of four children, with an older brother, Loyd, and two younger sisters, Elsie, and Lillian. Lillian is still living, in Wisconsin.

Lois loved music as a child, a very natural thing since her father was a violinist and her mother was a pianist. One of her favorite songs as a child was “Can A Little Child Like Me, “ which we’ll be hearing in a moment, sung by Elyse Shackleton, my mom’s youngest grandchild.

At the age of 14, Lois met her future husband, Loren Shackleton, age 17, at church.

Lois’s family lived 10 miles outside of town, and there was no school bus service in those days. In order to finish high school, Lois completed her junior and senior years by living in the home of a woman with two children who needed housework to be done, and help with her children, so that Lois could live in town and attend high school. She was obviously a very determined young lady.

Lois and Loren were married on October 26, 1934, by Pastor Paul Shrock, at the home of the Mumford family. The relationship of the Shackletons and the Shrocks lasted for decades. I recall staying in their home when I was a child.

Loren and Lois worked in ministry for many years, starting with Christian radio broadcasting in 1937 with Melvin Miller (I still have a “business card” of sorts showing the broadcasters), and then pastoring in Stanley, Wisconsin, starting in 1939. With an interruption for attending college, they pastored together until 1968, in Virginia, Indiana, Missouri and New Mexico.

My sister Mary Lou was born to them in 1940. My brother Tom arrived in 1947, and I broke into the proceedings in 1951.

For many years after moving to Arizona in my last year of high school, Lois was the organist for the Tempe Church of God.

It’s impossible, of course, to state all the ways that my mom impacted me. All I can offer for now are some snapshots.

She started my musical training with a few months of piano lessons in the 1^st grade. I complained a lot about how much my upper back hurt when I had to sit at the piano bench, so she let me stop. But both parents encouraged me to start the trumpet in our school band in the fourth grade, and that decision set the, uh, tone of my life in many ways. She accompanied me in countless performances, patiently learning piano parts for all kinds of music for contests and other occasions.

I still remember a chocolate shake she bought for us in the train station in Chicago when I was a small child, just her and me, on the way to Wisconsin to see her mother. It’s amazing what memories we create for our small children, and how much they will remember little things.

When I was twelve or so, I began banging around on the piano again, just out of curiosity about how chords worked, counting the half steps between the notes that made different chords and so on. She noticed, and showed me something called a “dominant 7^th chord.” I didn’t know it at the time, but she had given me an early music theory lesson, and I was off to the races learning about harmony and melody. I’ve spent nearly all my adult life teaching music theory, in one form or another, and it traces back to her. Both she and my dad were endlessly patient while I played the same chord progressions over and over, getting their sound and function into my ear.

In the Kansas City area, where we lived when I was 13 to about 16, I was an up and coming trumpet player, playing in all kinds of school groups, jazz bands drawn from the city’s high schools, and so on. In addition to continuing to accompany me, she and my dad drove me to dozens of rehearsals and performances all over town. They usually sat in the front row. I have the impression that my dad didn’t always like the music I played, but she genuinely did. Her tastes were always a bit broader than his. On more than one occasion they drove me half-way across the state, so I could play a 5 minute solo for some contest or other. She would accompany, and he would offer opinions on how well my trumpet was tuned up before the performance.

I recall one trip in particular across the Kansas City area to a performance of a jazz band I was in. My dad wasn’t along on that trip. There was a huge storm, complete with something that looked like ball-lightning on the light and power poles as we made our way through the downpour with almost no visibility. She just kept on going, determined that I would get there in time to perform.

I recall at about age 13 or 14 coming home from school one day, and finding her crying (and trying to hide it) over a letter from my brother Tom, then a soldier in Vietnam. My mom was a praying person, and I know that she and my dad always covered their children in prayer.

Because my folks pastored at relatively low wages up until my senior year in high school (when my dad got a job teaching 5^th grade in Eloy, AZ), they didn’t have enough income to send me to college. Even after financial aid, there were still going to be costs, and my mom took a job as a proofreader in the local newspaper in Casa Grande, AZ. Her spelling and grammatical skills were excellent, and I’m sure she rescued countless verbally incompetent reporters from their just rhetorical desserts, while paying for me to go to college at Anderson University in Indiana.

During my dad’s last years, she did an amazing job of caring for him, finding ways to get healthful food into him, getting him to medical care, and generally supporting him. I have to say, I have rarely seen or heard of two people who seemed more made for each other. Yet they were very different people. I think that, with God’s help, they grew together in the mysterious way that couples do when both spouses are seeking God’s presence in their lives. A lot of marriage counselors might have been well served by throwing away their theories and interviewing my parents.

When my mom was about 80 or so, she decided she wanted to learn how to use a computer. For the young people here, how many of you think that at the age of 80 you’re going to learn how to use a complex technology that wasn’t yet invented when you were 50 or so? But she brought typical Lois-style determination to the task, reading thick manuals and help screens, asking questions until she knew how to do what she wanted. Until her recent decline in health, when it got to be too difficult for her to get to her computer, we generally exchanged email five or six times per week. Some of these emails were closer in length to essays than text messages, if you get my drift. We discussed a great many topics.

After her stroke at age 87, she typed one handed, and the emails got a little shorter…. Though not always! As her vision got worse, her family gave her a larger monitor, and she kept on going. Since her hearing had deteriorated as well, and making phone calls was nearly impossible, email became our main way of staying in touch.

My mom dealt with her stroke in typical Lois fashion, with courage and determination. I used to say she was the “special forces” of retired people, as I saw her doing her exercises, trying to stay as independent as possible, doing as much for herself as she could. No Navy Seal works harder or is more determined to succeed in the mission. She did her best to manage every detail of her own life, even giving my sister Mary Lou advice to give to the hospice nurse near the end of her life on earth.

Mom was a voracious reader, and her granddaughter Tammy kept her well supplied with large print books. She watched C-Span, and knew more about the political controversies of the day than a lot of people.

My mom was what might be called the genuine article. She was trustworthy to a fault. More people than you might imagine found her to be a safe person to talk to. She simply did not betray confidences. She looked for the good in other people, again nearly to a fault. She found joy in many simple things, from ice cream to reading to table games. I never saw her put on an air (though a few times she did put on the dog, for a family celebration). If you needed to talk for a bit to someone who loved you and accepted you, a good strategy was to go visit my mom.

Galatians 5:22 says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” As far as I was ever able to see, that described my mom pretty well.

This is a truly remarkable story.  It has found its way into print in Guideposts magazine, in a lovely little book called “When God Winks” by SQuire Rushnell, and now on this gentleman’s blog.  It’s also a very personal story to me.

The Day Weary Willie Smiled

By Phil Bolsta

Emmett Kelly as Weary Willie

I loved Emmett Kelly as a kid. He was Weary Willie, the quintessential tramp clown, an integral part of my childhood. This touching and amazing story by his daughter, Stasia Kelly, of Atlanta, Georgia, appeared in the October 2006 issue of Guideposts. What are the odds of this story ending as it did?  Probably one in a trillion. And yet . . .

I sat on the plane, my purse in my lap, waiting to take off from Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta for Florida to attend my father’s funeral. I had just spoken to Dad the day before. He’d sounded a little down, but I never guessed it would be the last time I heard his voice. “I’m tired, Stasia,” he said. I could hear that tiredness through the phone, could feel it the way so many people had felt the world-weariness in the most beloved character my father ever portrayed.

Emmett Kelly learns he’s a dad

I shifted in my seat—first-class because it was the only available spot on this leg of my trip home. The airline-reservations operator had promised to get me there in time for Dad’s funeral, so she honored my bereavement ticket and gave me an upgrade. I pulled the faded newspaper photo from my purse and glanced at it. The famous picture of my dad, Emmett Kelly. Or should I say of Weary Willie, the sad clown that he had immortalized. Dad was disciplined about Willie’s public persona. Once Dad put his makeup on, Weary Willie never broke character and never smiled, except once, back in 1955. That one time he smiled—beamed, really—a young photographer snapped his photo, and around the globe it went. The only time Willie smiled in public, the world smiled with him.

The plane was almost full and the seat next to me was still vacant. Good, I’d have the row to myself and my tears. I didn’t feel like explaining to some high-powered business type why I was so sad. I folded the picture and slipped it back inside my purse just as a well-dressed, middle-aged man strode down the aisle and took his seat next to me.

“Almost missed this flight,” he said with a sigh, as we taxied from the gate.

Odd as it might sound, in the clowning business Dad was a revolutionary. Clowns were happy figures …zany, wacky, unpredictable and relentlessly upbeat. But that’s not the kind of clown Dad was. He’d created Willie on his drawing board—a rumpled, sad-sack figure, beaten down by the world, Everyman on a lifelong losing streak. In those days, circus bosses were skeptical. Did people want a depressed clown? But they let him try it.

By the 1940s, the sad clown had become a hit and Dad had made it to the big time—Ringling Bros. circus. People cared about Willie and his struggles. They saw that no matter how hard he took it on the chin, Willie never gave up. He became the world’s most famous clown, probably the most recognizable clown ever. Maybe the reason Willie was so easy for people to love was that Dad brought a bit of himself to the character. Not that Dad was a sad sack, but he understood struggle. His early life on the road was tough and often lonely. Then in middle age he fell head over heels in love with a beautiful trapeze artist who eventually became his wife and my mom. They bought a little place in sunny Sarasota, Florida, for when the circus wasn’t traveling. It had a big backyard, a porch and a vegetable garden. For the first time, Weary Willie was a happy man—and happiest of all, I’m told, that day I was born. He and Mom named me Stasia.

Now, staring out the plane window, I tried to be grateful for that happiness Dad had found, and for the life he had led making others happy. How much more blessed could a daughter be than to have Emmett Kelly as her father? Even the airline-reservations operator who managed to get me this last-minute seat said some thing. “I remember Willie! Your dad made so many people smile.” Yet yearning and grief crushed out all my other feelings. I rested my head against the seat. Dear Lord, comfort me. Show me a sign Dad is content with you the way he was with Mom and our home and the backyard where he watched us kids play.

They say the food in first class is better. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t feel much like eating. I kept my tray up and stared into my lap. I just wanted to get home to Florida. I felt the plane slow and then one wing dipped as we started to descend. I couldn’t resist pulling that old newspaper clipping out of my purse and looking again at Dad beaming that incredible smile as he held a phone and heard the news that I’d been born. Immediately, I had to wipe away a tear.

I barely heard the man next to me say, “Excuse me.” He tapped my arm gently.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Yes?”

“”That photo…”

“My dad, Emmett Kelly. He died today. But this is from the day I was born….”

“I know, Stasia. I know. I was there. I’ve never seen a man so happy. I just had to snap that picture.”

My father, Frank Beatty, was the photographer who took that now-famous picture – the only one ever taken of Weary Willie smiling.  And what an amazing moment for him to meet Kelly’s daughter that day on the plane.  My dad went on to become very good friends with Stasia Kelly, he was even the photographer at her wedding.  God does indeed often work in mysterious ways.

h/t: SuzyB

You can keep the orangutan, but I’ll take the hound.

h/t: SD

So, today is my birthday.  I went and played keyboard for the first service at church, then got out before someone caught on and tried to sing to me.

Since my age for the entire last year was a prime number, I guess that means that I am now, uh, past my prime.

Sigh.

To make me feel better about it, some friends, colleagues and students sent me nice birthday greetings on facebook.  Some were of the normal “Happy Birthday, Shack!” variety.  A couple of them got insulting and called me Dr. Phil.

Cretins.

One even thanked me for teaching her music theory and music technology, which she now uses in her life more than she expected.  That was nice, one of the best birthday gifts a person could give me.

One former student from way back seemed to find great joy in astronomical allusion.  We eventually decided that as long as I live, the galaxy will keep spinning ’round, with all black holes kept tidily in their places.  Or maybe that’s an astronomical illusion.

My 94 yr old mother sent me email asking how long the university will allow me to continue to teach.   Nice, mom.  Real nice.

Then my cousin told me about all the family members she’s seen lately that I haven’t.

It’s always your family that knifes you in the back.

And then there were the nerds.  Lots of nerds.  For example, a fellow faculty member sent me this birthday greeting:

sol-sol-la-sol-do’-ti, sol-sol-la-sol-re’-do’, sol-sol-sol’-mi’-do’-ti-la, fa’-fa’-mi’-do’-re’-do!

I think that last do should be do’…  but I suppose I’m quibbling.

A music major from three decades back, who then worked as a DJ or something at a radio station in Alaska for a time, sent me this:

0–0-2–0–5-4–0-0-2–7–5—0-0-9--7-5-4–2—10-10-9–5–7–5

It took some time to decode that one, since it has a couple of errors in it (the 9–7 sequence should be 12 — 9, and the 2–7–5 sequence should read 2–0–7–5), and it assumes that “0″ is the fifth scale degree…  but what can you expect from someone who moved to Alaska?  Hey….  I wonder if he ever met Sarah Palin?

But I digress.

Then there was the current student, a jazzer, who couldn’t resist sticking in a suspended, altered dominant voiced as a Neapolitan major 9, +11, 13 chord over the dominant root, where it would conflict with the penultimate note rather seriously, so he changed the melody down a half-step, the only remaining problem being that the root of the Neapolitan isn’t the ideal melody note against all that extended color.  He seems also to want my birthday to be over very, very quickly, though at least he wished me many happy returns.

I am often accused of employing inappropriate logical tools to issues of values, theology, philosophy, etc.  That may be what was behind the next birthday greeting, which I think may be a subtle insult suggesting that I think only in black and white, with no room for shades of gray, nuance, etc.

01000111 01000111 01000001 01000111 01000011 01000010 01000111 01000111 01000001 01000111 01000100 01000011 01000111 01000111 01000111 00100111 01000101 01000011 01000010 01000001 01000110 01000110 01000101 01000011 01000100 01000011

I’m not sure what to say about that, other than that the apostrophe confused me for a moment…  I actually had to consult this table.  In retrospect, it was obvious, of course….  the apostrophe was to indicate the upper octave of “G”.

I’m reminded of a sign on my office door, graciously donated to me by a faculty friend.  It says:

There are only 10 kinds of people.  Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

As for accusing me of binary thinking, all I can say is this:  either today is my birthday, or it isn’t.

Based on the available facts and logical conclusions to be inferred from them…

I choose to believe that it is.

_________________________________________________

UPDATE:  It has been pointed out to me by a friend on facebook that, while I can do binary arithmetic, I can’t do third grade decimal arithmetic.  To wit: last year, my age was NOT a prime number.  And neither is this year.  Next year IS…  I think.  I no longer trust myself.

Perhaps the logical question is, will I be completely overwhelmed by senior moments (or senior hours) even BEFORE I have passed my prime?

I suppose time will tell.

My Uncle Fred passed away about 12 days ago, moving on to be reunited with his brothers, and best of all, with the Lord. I wanted to tell you a bit about him, not in the way of a complete recounting of his life, but more along the lines of a personal appreciation.

He was an absolutely amazing classical tenor. He could probably have had a career at the Met, or something similar, if he’d wanted that. (He might have needed cosmetic surgery to make him look Italian.) On the other hand, with all his amazing talent, and great success as a teacher of singing, he never quite managed to turn ME into a tenor…. or even a singer. Nobody bats a thousand.

My Uncle Fred was a philosopher. No, really. Not somebody who sat around woolgathering, but someone who read what all the other woolgatherers sat around thinking about, and then thought about that. For a long time. He was unusually adept at communicating to his philosophy students the fruit of the many generations of philosophers that he had studied. Yet, he encouraged his students to think for themselves, not to be intimidated by the weight of all those heavy thinkers, who certainly don’t seem to have been intimidated by each other. He left his students believing there was always a chance that they might think a genuinely new thought, but that meant they’d have to learn what other people had already thought, so they’d know it when they saw it.

He was a theologian and pastor, whether or not he happened to have a church at the time. He was a skilled communicator from the pulpit, and a caring shepherd for his flock. (I know, I’m writing too much about wool.) Speaking from personal experience, he was an absolutely safe place to store confidences. He genuinely loved people, all kinds of people, and saw them as opportunities to show his love for God, by loving them.

Uncle Fred was just enough of a politician to survive in the world of academia. (Remember Henry Kissinger’s comment: “University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.”) When I was a young professor, and in some serious political hot water at my university, he was exactly the right combination of mentor, strategist, behind-the-scenes operative, therapist and (I suspect) rhetorical hitman, to help me keep my job. But he loved teaching more than university politics, and when he had the chance, he moved out of higher education administration back into teaching, an exception to the Peter Principle if ever there was one.

He was quite the golfer, an avocation I never understood, and still don’t, though I hear he was very good. I had a suspicion, for a time, that he imagined the faces of philosophers with whom he disagreed to be stenciled on the golf balls. In retrospect, I now believe it more likely that he had in mind lazy students, or rock and roll singers. Or maybe he was just doing ballistic research. Maybe he had fantasies of being a reincarnated Scottish king. He seemed to know an awful lot of golf jokes. Thursday was golf day, and it didn’t really matter if the Big One finally shook southern California, or the Martians landed, or the president invited him for tea; golf is very important, you know. And a man has to have some principles.

He was pretty interesting to watch in faculty meetings. He’d sit and listen for a time, while the various perspectives on the trivial issues of the day were aired. Then he’d clear his throat, an utterly characteristic gesture, a sort of announcement of pronouncements to come, and as the room fell silent (they knew what was coming), in a very few incisive sentences he’d explain what was wrong with all previous statements, all the while appearing to compliment the wisdom of those who’d made them. Besides singing, this rhetorical tactic was the other thing he failed to teach me. Not for lack of trying. But for me, it was like a person with a club foot watching a ballerina on a high wire. If I was fast, sometimes I could knock him off the wire, but I could never do the dance. I saw him literally end a few faculty meetings, working without a net, with no one having anything much left to say.

(I’ve ended a few faculty meetings in my time, too, but somehow it isn’t the same when the paramedics have to come and save people who’ve slit their wrists.)

My Uncle Fred was a man of words, who seemed often to be searching for the exactly right phrasing to say what he meant. He clearly believed that how a thing was said was important. (He once referred to me as “a man of words,” but I think he had something else in mind.) He loved clarity, and concision.

For some reason, my Uncle Fred seemed to precede me to lots of places. I recall being very proud, at the age of 18, of having started a jazz band (big band) in my undergraduate college, and then seeing a 25 year old photo, in an old college annual, of Fred Shackleton directing the Anderson College Band. I used to play the trumpet, while he was a trombonist… but I suppose nobody’s perfect.

Does it sound like my Uncle Fred was three or four people? You don’t know the half of it. I haven’t even mentioned many of his various accomplishments: speaking and conference invitations, publications (songs sung by hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, scholarly work in theology/philosophy, popular and curricular work in ministry), honors he received, institutions he helped to rescue, etc. Actually, I used to wonder if he had a cape or something stowed away under his suit jacket. But it is a fact that he was extremely gifted in a variety of ways, such that most people would be thrilled to have one of those gifts, let alone all of them. And then he worked very hard in polishing those gifts, and using them in service. In all of that, somehow he managed to encourage people to excel, to bring out the best in them, and tended to leave the lesser mortals in his life (that would be most folks) believing they had something unique to contribute, too.

The last time I saw him, he asked me to rub his ankle, which still hurt from a recently cleared up skin infection, and which was hard for him to reach. So while we chatted about the old days, and I thought about how much he looked like my dad (who I knew was waiting patiently across the great divide), I rubbed his ankle.

It was an honor.

When I was about 11 years old I remember my parents telling me they had some serious reservations about my hanging out with a couple of guys from school who didn’t meet with their approval. At the time I took great offense, telling my folks their concerns were misplaced, and secretly harboring no small resentment against them for trying to tell me who I should and shouldn’t have for friends.

Not too long after that our family moved and I didn’t see those guys as much. I do remember one of the last times we were together I noticed they seemed to have developed quite a taste for finding ways to skip school and get high.

In retrospect my parents were absolutely right!

A few years later they were at it again, this time about a girl I was dating. Again I became indignant over their “meddling” and again, I had to admit to myself later they were right.

As a parent, and now officially on the “other”side of the hill, I see the same issue playing out in the lives of my own kids. And the perspective that comes from adulthood adds a dimension to this subject I didn’t have as a child. For now I realize the problem wasn’t necessarily who my friends were, it was the judgment, or lack thereof, I exhibited in making choices about who I would invite to be a part of my life.

Every parent breaths a sigh of relief when their kids make good choices about the friends they run with. And the two wise old sayings that serve as title to this blog have entered the American lexicon precisely because we know them to be true.

So, do we suspend this truth with candidates for the highest office in the land? Do Presidential candidates get a free pass on the company they keep? Or is the truth still the truth? William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khaladi, Louis Farrakhan, and Kwame Kilpatrick are all friends of Barack Obama. If Obama was my child I’d be worried. If Obama becomes president I’ll be afraid.

Here is more detail on the company Obama keeps.

I suppose it is a sign of getting older when one starts counting time in decades rather than years. And though we remain a largely youth-oriented culture I am getting old enough to realize how foolish young people are in their frequent disregard of the perspective available to them by those who have taken a few more laps around the sun. I was guilty of it as a youth and I hear my kids making comments that reflect the same silliness. They truly believe the internet, cell phones, video games and iPods did something to fundamentally change human nature. The landscape has indeed changed but the wild adventure through adolescence remains fundamentally the same E ticket ride (kids – look it up), dealing with the same struggles common to all who would enter adulthood.

One thing I have learned (and I wish I had realized a lot sooner) is how rare and precious are true friends. In college (a few decades ago), I could count my friends by the fist-full. But tested by time very few remain. And those few who do remain are not store-bought, just-add-water-and-stir, we-once-took-a-class-together friendships. No, I’m talking about life-long, self-sacrificing, shirt-off-your-back, storied, battle-tested, in-the-trenches friendships that have survived everything life could throw at them. No one I know has a surplus of those!

There are most certainly plenty of good reasons for this. Marriage, career, raising a family, moving, etc. all contribute to a shift in priorities and a necessary move into new seasons of life. The time a college-age student can spend hanging out with buddies is just no longer available when adult life intrudes. But there are those exceptions who manage to do whatever it takes to remain close. There are those few who will continue to go the extra mile or two to maintain a close friendship. And as the clock keeps ticking and the years fall away like so many autumn leaves, those true and close and dear friends become more rare than a Cubs World Series ring and more valuable than words can express.

Young people take friendships for granted. I wish they wouldn’t. But you really can’t explain to a young person that with age comes a certain melancholy, almost a loneliness. How sad it must be for those who have neglected to nurture those few real friends. They only get harder to find as the years fly by.

So here’s to you and a heart-felt “hail fellow well met”, Cody, Ernie, and Tim. True friends all. The rarest kind.

Yesterday, I watched my daughter marry a fine young man. So now, in addition to being a patriotic holiday and my mother’s birthday, July 4 is my daughter’s wedding anniversary.

I’m proud of the happy couple, and hope and pray the best for them, as well as the strength to weather times of trial and challenge. Part of the ceremony involved the pastor reading from the first letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, 1st Corinthians 13, sometimes known as “the love chapter.” Among the portions he read were verses 4-7.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Sitting in the front row as father of the bride, I was close enough to clearly see the groom’s face, in a way not many could. As the pastor read, I realized that the husband-to-be was reciting the words with the pastor, very subtly, not making sounds, barely moving his lips, just enough so that I could see he knew the passage by heart. Even two rows back, I think I would not have known. I’m not even certain he knew his lips were moving, ever so slightly.

I think my daughter is very fortunate to have married a man who values these words enough to commit them to memory. It will probably not hurt any of us to remind ourselves of just how love behaves…. and how it doesn’t.

Congratulations and best wishes to the newlyweds!