Gratitude

I know it's a bit early for Thanksgiving (at least the USA version). In fact, we still have to survive Halloween. (The announcement for the New Humanitarian Institute's Halloween party invites us all to "dress and decorate ourselves in the spirit of Halloween and frighten all the students and instructors we meet ... It will be horribly fun!!!") The day before yesterday, I was in Moscow to visit the Fulbright office, and on the way back to the train station, I stopped at the "Children's World" department store and bought my own frightening preparations. At the party itself, I plan to read Luke's prize-winning Halloween story from Richmond, Indiana's Palladium-Item story contest of twelve years ago. Has it been that long?? Being the resident American here at the Institute, I've been pressed into service as a Halloween expert, despite my efforts most of my adult life to avoid the holiday!

But, back to the thanksgiving theme: As I walked to work today, I was suddenly overwhelmed by gratitude. I'm amazed by the many factors that had to come together to make it possible for me to be here, to build relationships, to teach, to influence, to be taught, to be influenced, to learn in so many ways that I'm not in control even as I reap unanticipated blessings.

One of my circuit breakers tripped the other day, and my neighbors didn't know what to do. I had no key for the breaker box. The owner of the apartment lives four hours away. After trying everything I could think of to get into the breakers, I thought I remembered some numbers stenciled onto the wall downstairs near the elevator. The stencils were inked onto a stucco-like surface and were almost unreadable, but if I looked at one of the words just the right way, it looked like it might say "Elect ..." Dubiously, I called the number, was given another number. I called that number and was given yet another. When I called that third number, success!! -- the dispatcher promised an electrician would visit me shortly. And so he did--he fixed the ceiling fixture that had shorted, he reset the circuit breaker, and, after giving me a friendly lecture about not buying cheap fixtures, he charged me all of $4!

What if I'd succeeded in resetting the circuit breaker on my own? I probably would not have found out what caused the short in the first place.

In looking back over my many visits to Russia since 1975, giving up certainty and giving up control have been constant themes. For every loss of familiar procedures, familiar guarantees, there's been a gain: techniques and procedures are replaced by relationships and kindness. Both the exchange and the lesson have been invaluable. I'm sure that, before Thanksgiving rolls around, I'll have a fresh crop of examples.

---

I'm grateful for my students, who often deepen the class discussions in unexpected ways. In one class, we were reading Stephen Keeler's reminiscences about his late wife and their "not conventionally romantic" marriage, from the BBC English-learning Web site. When we got to the part about their wedding -- "There was not even a 'big day' when we got married" -- I asked the students whether, when and if they imagine getting married, what their "big day" would consist of. At first they confined themselves to daydreams about ceremonies, parties, and honeymoons, but then several of the students began going deeper.

In one group, two of the students said that they didn't expect to get married, because they didn't believe the spouse of their dreams actually existed on this earth. Two others said that they were believers but didn't want to get married in church because that would be too serious a step--if they ever got divorced it would be like breaking a promise to God. (One said that she was not a believer; thus getting married in a church would be hypocrisy. And a couple of students said that they would get married at the registry office, and have a big party, and then have a marriage ceremony in the church much later--five or ten years later, when they were sure the marriage would "take."

In response to a student question, I described Judy's and my traditional Quaker wedding, with some brief comments about the theology and spirituality behind it. By far the majority of my students are young women, and in one class we talked about the nearly-universal expectation among them that they would have careers until they got married, and then their family would become their career. One student asked me about the age of marriage of American women, given this "reality." To engage in linguistically useful, humane, non-judgmental, and empowering dialogue in the context of such receptiveness is an awesome privilege.

In yet another class, a student asked me whether it was true that a man could get into legal trouble simply for holding a door open for a woman. Last year I did a lecture here on Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness and Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary?; it turned out to be a far more popular lecture than the ones I've put together so diligently on "the history of the welfare state" and "the future of the American family" and other serious subjects, and I was asked to repeat it twice. I may have to try and dig up that lecture again.

An article I distributed by Lynn Visson on American women who marry Russian men provided another important area for discussion: whether or not we should always tell the truth. There are times when the American cultural ideal says to tell the truth, whereas Russian experience advises knowing when to keep your big mouth shut. (Of course, as one student wisely pointed out, the real difference is not Russian/American but is far more dependent on the individual.) I talked about the experiences of Friends who confronted this issue when they helped "fugitive" ex-slaves to reach safety.

If you are one of those who's helped me get into this amazing zone of vulnerability and blessing, I don't have adequate words to thank you.

---

Righteous links: An inquiry from a George Fox University student concerning Russian children's literature led me to this fascinating article on the Russia Profile site, "Horton Hears Privyet: Dr. Seuss to appear in Russian translations." The site may ask you to register; it's worth it. ~~~ I have just seen a Russian remake of the film Twelve Angry Men by the director of the Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun, Nikita Mikhalkov. This new film is simply called 12. Please see it if you can. Reviews: Washington Post; International Herald Tribune. Photos. Trailer. If anyone wants to know why Russia intrigues me so deeply, this film will be part of my reply. ~~~ This edition of Russian Religion News has an intriguing article about Russian Baptists: "Baptists seek identity." Here's the line that caught my eye: "We have always needed to be against somebody."  ~~~ Congratulations to my friend and former colleague Ginger Pyron on the publication of her book When Law and Religion Meet, which has been getting good advance notices. ~~~ David Augsberger is coming to Portland, Oregon. He'll speak on "Forgiveness as a Peacemaking Practice" on a couple of different occasions at Portland Mennonite Church. Friday evening at 7:30 pm: "How far should forgiveness go? Should we forgive Osama bin Laden?" A reception and book signing will follow. On Saturday, 9:30 am to 12:30 pm: a workshop, "Thou shalt not nail thy neighbor to his/her past." On Sunday, 10:30 am, sermon: "Not without my Neighbor: A Three-dimensional Anabaptist Spirituality." ~~~ Fashion corner: I'm probably not in the target market for this product, but I know people for whom it fits perfectly! ~~~ Reality check on Iran: "The [Iran] war rollout keeps rolling along." Also, Juan Cole writes in Salon on expedient anti-Iranian jingoism on the campaign trail. My urgent question to all of us is the same as Fareed Zakaria's question, quoted in the "rollout" article: What planet are we on? My version: On what specific planet does it work to obtain any kind of desired political result by directing a constant stream of abuse and threats at the actor you wish to influence? Given the crowd in charge of U.S. foreign policy, perhaps we should not be surprised that, as Zakaria says, they have lost all touch with reality. It's great that these illustrious commentators have started seeing the light (years after everyone reading this blog did); when will ordinary voters also begin to say, "The U.S. is behaving like a bellicose empire, but the emperor has no clothes"? I actually dare to hope that caucuses and primaries and voter surveys will show voters not rewarding candidates with the meanest snarls, but those who make actual sense--even in a season when actual sense is condemned as weakness.

---

Dessert! Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks:

Worship seeking understanding, part four

(part one) (part two) (part three)

On the face of it, Sally Morgenthaler's article "Worship as evangelism," is raw and gloomy, but I choose to see in it a possible confirmation of Friends practice--and Friends promise.

Morgenthaler, the author of Worship Evangelism, is utterly blunt about the self-deception and cultural blinders prevailing in so much of Evangelicalism 2.0 in North America. For example:

Were these worship-driven churches really attracting the unchurched? Most of their pastors truly believed they were. And in a few cases, they were right. The worship in their congregations was inclusive, and their people were working hard to meet the needs of the neighborhood. Yet those churches whose emphasis was dual-celebrated worship inside, lived worship outside--were the minority. In 2001 a worship-driven congregation in my area finally did a survey as to who they were really reaching, and they were shocked. They'd thought their congregation was at least 50 percent unchurched. The real number was 3 percent.

. . .

For all the money, time, and effort we've spent on cultural relevance--and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.

In 2000 I didn't have all of the numbers I have now, but I had seen enough to know what was happening. The contemporary church--including the praise-and-worship church, the worship evangelism church--was in a holy huddle, and I began to talk about it. It was excruciating. It was career suicide. But from pastors conferences to worship seminars to seminaries, I began challenging leaders to give up their mythologies about how they were reaching the unchurched on Sunday morning. Yes, worship openly and unapologetically. Yes, worship well and deeply. (Which means singing songs that may include anger, sadness, and despair. Have we forgotten that David did this? Have we discarded the psalms?) But let our deepened, honest worship be the overflow of what God does through us beyond our walls.

Conference organizers were confused. They wondered what had happened to me. Where was the worship evangelism warrior? Where was the formula? Where was the pep talk for all those people who were convinced that trading in their traditional service for a contemporary upgrade would be the answer? I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and they need an attendance infusion now.

I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the generations they had managed to ignore for the last 39 years.

For me, considering Quaker worship in Elektrostal--or anywhere--Sally Morgenthaler's honesty confirms a healthy priority AND identifies a crucial, complicated threshold issue.

The priority: being with people, loving people, building relationships, being a modest, available, public believer with no facade of piety, perfection, or permanent cheerfulness.

The threshold issue: at some specific time and place, we worship. At some point the newlyweds stop talking about intimacy and start being intimate; at some point the people of God turn their faces and hearts Godward--but in full view of each other, in full fellowship, with each other. Sure, we want that experience of worship to be attractive and liberating for those who attend--whether regularly or for the first scary time--but there must be, if I am following Sally correctly, some authentic connection between that event and our prior presence in the community we want to welcome.

Maybe this helps me explain to myself why, after all these years in the programmed Quaker world, I'm still at heart an unprogrammed Friend. Well, not exactly unprogrammed: I absolutely love the unforced rhythm of preaching, singing, waiting, praying, that characterizes the best of programmed worship. And I know as well as any how the silence can be a place to hide--I've done it myself, and I've seen what happens when people become connoisseurs of the silence. But any importation of symbolic elements that cannot be provided with a normal voice or potentially by anyone, including an honestly motivated child, is a red flag, at least when it happens among us Friends. Why would we try to give people a representation of God, a secondhand taste of piety, a human-made (however antique) channel of grace? The function of words and songs among Friends is to frame the experience for the purpose of access, so that we are more or less equal in our understanding of what we're attempting, and then to get on with it and do what we're attempting: communion with our Savior and firstborn brother, Jesus. The letter to the Hebrews invites us to go boldly through the curtain into the presence of God. (See Hebrews 10:19-21.) Why do we keep trying to embroider the curtain?

. . .

I just asked a rhetorical question, but to be fair, perhaps the question deserves a straightforward answer.

Years ago, I read one of the booklets distributed by the New Call to Peacemaking. The author addressed the classic hypothetical question used by those challenging pacifists--"What would you do about Hitler?" In reply, the author said something about choosing not to start with Hitler and the world, trying to move from there towards God, but instead starting from God, moving towards Hitler and the world. In considering our ideals about worship, we need to consider both how people might move from worship towards the world (that is, towards their communities) and how people can move from the world towards worship. But the triangle formed by world, worship, and God, must not be austere and cerebral, but must be filled by the Holy Spirit.

For example, if we start with worship and orient ourselves towards both God and the world, my minimalist approach may seem right--we don't try to pre-empt the Holy Spirit with our own traditions or cleverness, but do all we can to frame and demonstrate freedom, authenticity, and equality in worship. We depend on the Holy Spirit to guide our worship; we depend on the world for raw data on the healing and liberation that is needed, and also (lest we get too spiritual) for the embodying elements: time, place, human beings, language, gestures, and so on. (Speaking of raw data, see Peggy Parsons' latest.)

But sometimes we may want to start in the world, and move toward worship. Sometimes I've been in what seemed like a completely "secular" setting--a dance or blues concert or a lively conversation in a café--and suddenly such a sense of blessing descends that it verges on worship. What do I do with my austere theories then? But maybe those moments are just sheer gift; I can't do anything to produce them on demand.

Here in Elektrostal, we need to worship--and we need to worship in Russian, which seems a reasonable minimum in framing and providing access! But there is absolutely no way we will hit on a "silver bullet" worship style that will reassemble the scattered Elektrostal Friends meeting and add to its number; we must go into the community clothed in an attitude of worship.

(It reminds me of Samuel Charters' wonderful liner notes to Chicago/The Blues/Today vol. 1, a record that changed my life. His experience as a visitor in the blues bars forty years ago: "The blues is still the South Side’s music, and the stares get hostile if you stay too long, but the music stays with you as you ride the El back to the loop, rubbing against your skin with its hard strength." The stares here, when they happen, are sometimes friendly, sometimes just curious and occasionally hostile, but the spirit of worship rubs against your skin with its gracious strength.)

In any case, I'm very grateful to Sally Morgenthaler for her candid thoughts. If you like, please add yours.

---

Control isn't want it used to be. Something is shifting in this world, and unilateral military dominance is becoming almost irrelevant. There's a hint of it in Fyodor Lukyanov's op-ed in today's Moscow Times. An excerpt: (full article for paying customers.)

From the West's point of view, Russia is obstructing the attempt by the "civilized world" to coerce Tehran into giving up its nuclear program. The U.S. Congress and mass media often accuse the Kremlin of protecting Iran's belligerent mullahs and their half-witted president. And Moscow's categorical "nyet" to the deployment of U.S. missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, which Washington claims would help mitigate an Iranian missile threat, further muddies the waters.

Tehran believes that Moscow is exploiting Iran as nothing more than a disposable pawn in its cynical game with the West. Iranian political analysts assert that it has always been unwise to rely on Russia's word. They point out that Russia has not followed through on its agreement to build a nuclear power plant in Bushehr and supply it with fuel. And Moscow's offer that the U.S. make joint use of its radar installations in Gabala in Azerbaijan and Armavir in southern Russia to monitor Iranian rockets is a clear affront to Tehran.

To be sure, Moscow is also unsettled about the prospect of a nuclear Iran. In addition, the issue of how the Caspian Sea is shared continues to be a divisive issue between the two nations.

Nevertheless, Russia views Tehran much differently than the West does. Israel, the United States and some European nations believe that Iran is an unpredictable clerical state capable of doing anything for the sake of religious dogma. And Tehran needs nuclear weapons, they believe, so it can spread the "true faith." Moscow, on the other hand, believes that the modern-day successors of Persia's imperial past are interested primarily in becoming a regional power, especially in the context of an increasingly multipolar world. This, the Kremlin says, is the most important reason why Tehran wants nuclear weapons [by the way: does it?] and not to launch a nuclear strike against the West.

Russia's position should not be reduced to a primitive "for" or "against." The prospect of U.S. military intervention in Iran scares Europeans no less than Russians. The problem is that the political leverage of Russia and other world powers is much less than they think.

At a time of global instability, it is regimes like Iran -- and not the major global powers -- that come out the winners when the superpowers get bogged down in political power struggles. But the big players refuse to accept this fact. It is more pleasant for them to believe that they are still the ones calling the shots.

---

Remembering Samuel Charters and his liner notes brought back memories of the very first blues song I ever heard: Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign."

Albert King - 1981 - Born Under A Bad Si
Uploaded by Zone19

Impunity

You can't whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day's coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town. (from Luke 12:3, The Message.)

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on ''combined effects'' over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be ''ashamed'' when the world eventually learned of it. (from "Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations.")

So it appears that, in the struggle to keep our President's itchy fingers off the waterboard and other contemporary instruments of torture, vigilance was not enough. We also needed telepathy and X-ray vision, and, sadly, a huge dose of cynicism. A Pentagon memorandum insisting on adherence to Geneva standards was made readily available, and at the time I optimistically linked to it (pdf). But memoranda uncovered by New York Times reporters, showing that cruelty was very much still part of interrogators' menus, are withheld even from congressional scrutiny. No wonder Senator Jay Rockefeller got a little hot under the collar: "I'm tired of these games. They can't say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program." ("Bush says interrogation methods aren't torture.")

Where do we go from here? It is not newsworthy that Bush describes torture as X plus 1, where X is whatever method he wants to defend. The rest of the world may be clear that X is already torture, but the rest of the world is of no interest to our leaders. We have now been living with this reality for six years. I'm not really interested in indulging myself in yet another round of observations that are already obvious to our president's critics and irrelevant to his supporters.

Instead, I'm struggling to find a Biblical and spiritual context for this ongoing shame and embarrassment--namely that the American nation, the "beacon of liberty" about which I'm assembling a curriculum here in Elektrostal, turns out to be hiding from the light whenever the subject of torture comes up. My tax dollars have been paying people who believe that the application of pain and extreme terror is a legitimate way of defending me from terrorism and preserving my access to carbon-based fuels.

The spiritual challenge has something to do with this: the defense of torture is only part of a larger disease, one that infects our culture and politics in various ways. It's the disease of impunity. Impunity is the freedom to torture without even a worry that we could be prosecuted by the European Community or sued by a misidentified victim. (The Supreme Court won't review the Masri case.) Impunity is our hired security guards' ability to make unfortunate mistakes and shoot innocent people in Iraq without facing serious consequences (latest case). Impunity is what we appear to seek when we excuse ourselves from ABM defense treaties, refuse to support an international criminal court, and demand that our allies agree with all of our interpretations. Some form of impunity is what some wealthy corporations and their lobbyists are hoping for in campaigning for tort "reform" and weakening ordinary people's access to the courts. And with no apparent capacity for shame, impunity is the finger with which we are seen flipping off the world, weakening goodwill and increasing cynicism on all hands.

What do we do next? Our criticism of the White House's tortured logic and flexible approach to the Constitution must continue, day in and day out. We cannot permit ethical and linguistic drift--we cannot get used to a Constitution defined by those least loyal to it. But criticism is not enough, and when it simply demonizes the human beings playing those roles, it just plays into the old polarizations. Somehow we need to shine a light on the danger that the attitude of impunity poses for all of us. How do we restore the urgency of preserving ethical boundaries, and how do we build ties of mutual accountability so that this preservation is not just left to those who find shortcuts convenient?

Here's a highly inadequate set of suggestions:

• stay in touch with friends, relatives, penpals overseas, and circulate their questions and viewpoints at home (the best American ideals are in fact the property of the whole world community, and when we betray them, we betray more than just our own country)
• ask our political candidates whether they intend to respect the balance of power in our tripartite system, and to hold the other branches of power accountable
• as believers, assert the right to define for ourselves what safety means, and what we're willing (and NOT willing) to give up for the sake of safety; when our politicians tell us that they're pursuing this or that policy for the sake of our safety, challenge them!
• continue demanding access to information the government doesn't think we should have
• rather than protesting when the FBI sends undercover people to our gatherings, welcome those people and invite them to put their faith in Jesus instead of the nation-state
• support (and hold accountable) those members of our community whom God leads into prophetic civil disobedience
• challenge our churches to wake up; the more conservative and biblically-based your church is, the more material you have right at hand to sound the alarm
• pray for President Bush; impunity is a situation with spiritual danger for him and his colleagues, as well as for the rest of us and our global neighbors; AND it is extremely important that we not succumb to spiritual pride in thinking that we are better than they are.

What else?

---

Can evangelicals reproduce?--part two: Warm thanks to the Quaker Mole for digging up this Barna Research item entitled "A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity." One of its observations:

One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals. Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing and intensifying among young non-Christians. The new study shows that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. This means that today’s young non-Christians are eight times less likely to experience positive associations toward evangelicals than were non-Christians of the Boomer generation (25%).

Here's a fantasy I'm nurturing in my imagination: Given the latest governmental equivocations about torture, I long for the day when people say, "Oh, those evangelicals! Aren't they the ones who rose up, spoke with one voice, and finally forced the White House to end all abusive interrogation practices?"

---

Is this Portland? It's been raining for days. But the fall rains let up yesterday, so I took some long walks. I noticed that a sign had been put up at one end of the new and attractive grassy mall between the shopping center and the building supply store here at the southern end of Elektrostal. The sign says, "The civic improvements of the mall were carried out with the participation of the Elektrostal Local Social Support Fund of the All-Russian Political Party 'United Russia'."

While heading toward the grass mall, I ran into the Neiferts, who invited me to their home tomorrow. It's a great neighborhood. We've got everything within walking distance--ATMs, a library, bookstores, grocery stores, McDonald's, and politics!

---

Righteous links: On November 1, George Fox University will present the premiere of a play by Trisha Gates Brown, Whatever Kindles, about the Christian Peacemaker Teams. ~~~ Halo 3 in church?? Thanks to Tina Russell for these commentaries: The New York Times and Mining Grace. ~~~ I am thoroughly enjoying this Master and Margarita Web site. ~~~ What our neighborhood doesn't have: great films. We have a wonderful movie theater--state-of-the-art. I've not seen better in Portland. But the fare on offer is mostly pretty weak. Judge for yourself. I guess we won't be getting David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises.

---

Dessert!! Solomon Burke provides a wonderful soul/blues medley. Good golly!

American Cola

Source.  

We Americans who care about the opinions of others are sometimes known for our touching eagerness to be liked. We are liked, aren't we? The reality of the situation is, of course, a complex version of "it depends." Sometimes we seem to me to be some kind of outsized teenager; the world has to figure out how to put up with our undeniable creativity, enormous energy, and clumsy attempts at adulthood. As with many teenagers, we think we know far more than we do, and we have adolescent immortality, too; somehow we think our imperial status is permanent. In our disdain for the conventional wisdom of the rest of the world, we exalt our own high ideals, comparing them with the hypocrisy and cynicism of "old Europe," and rarely noticing when we betray those same ideals ourselves.

Yet there's still something attractive about that creativity and energy. What else would explain why so many people, perfectly capable of seeing our flaws, still consume a big diet of American culture, and millions each year seek to relocate to the USA? Many of them seem to be able to differentiate between the America that represents a rich seedbed (though hardly risk-free) for personal and family opportunity, and the America that refuses elementary provisions for access to health care, makes educational financing as complicated as possible, and whose national leadership seemingly believes that obstinate stupidity is a virtue.

So the SPAR supermarket chain seems to believe that branding their house cola as American Cola gives it valuable credibility. ("Genuine taste, genuine cola," it says on the bottle I bought at the SPAR grocery store across Yalagin Street from me, just past Elektrostal's McDonald's. The product's motto: "If you can't taste the difference, why pay for the difference?") I guess they're not conducting their marketing with fearful backward glances at Mecca-Cola. I was glad to have a bottle of that genuine taste as I sat in this kitchen, preparing my materials for the American country studies class I'm teaching at the New Humanitarian Institute. So reassuring that the adjective "American" still stands for something!

---

Here are some of the "first principles" I'm using to shape the American studies class:

1. emphasize American values and their sources, without concealing our failures and compromises in implementing them
2. provide links to the experiences of the Russian nation without invidious comparisons
3. describe and demonstrate complex interplays of geography, culture, and politics with actual stories
4. don't bite off more than we can chew: trace themes and provide cases, don't insist on unrealistic comprehensiveness or chronological rigidity.
5. contrast different methods and approaches (example: typical high school text book compared with Howard Zinn)

Today, some of the stories I used to illustrate the theme of idealism vs realism were the decisions faced by Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War, and the overthrow of the Arbenz administration in Guatemala in 1954.

---

Arriving in Elektrostal; second day of classes.

---

Righteous links: Putin-watching has certainly become even more interesting. ~~~ Here's a helpful primer on conscientious objection, presented by the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. ~~~ Barclay Press's online book discussion for this month is on Mary Darling's and Tony Campolo's The God of Intimacy and Action. Co-author Darling is serving as moderator.

---

Two very different Texas videos! (1) The State Bar of Texas unveils a video contest to "Capture the promise of justice for all." (2) The Thunderbirds present Lou Ann Barton.