text:
Q: Salt: connection refused to proxy I have troubles with Salt, installed on an HPC cluster. All maintenance commands (i.e. salt commands) are made from master0. The minions to be managed are named node0, node1, ..., node4. When I try to install a package on a minion (let's say python's numpy on node0), I get the following error:
[root@master0 ~]# salt 'node0' pkg.install python3-numpy
  *duplicate lines removed*
https://vault.centos.org/7.8.2003/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] curl#7 - "Failed connect to master0:3142; Connection refused"

On node0, file /etc/yum.conf looks like this:
[main]
exclude=ibutils-libs*
cachedir=/var/cache/yum/$basearch/$releasever
keepcache=0
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
exactarch=1
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1
plugins=1
installonly_limit=5
bugtracker_url=http://bugs.centos.org/set_project.php?project_id=23&ref=http://bugs.centos.org/bug_report_page.php?category=yum
distroverpkg=centos-release
proxy=http://master0:3142

As far as I understand, node0 does not manage to connect to master0 through port 3142. Indeed, I can curl master0 on default port (80 I guess), but not on 3142:
[root@node0 ~]# curl 'http://master0:3142'
curl: (7) Failed connect to master0:3142; Connection refused
[root@node0 ~]# curl 'http://master0'
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  *Some HTML stuff, not relevant here*
</body>
</html>

But I don't get where I am supposed to open this port on master0.
Note: Complete newbie here. To be honest, I don't get the point of passing through this port either, but the whole HPC structure was built by an external service provider, and I just try to handle all this stuff by my own.

A: If you don't use a proxy, just remove the proxy= line from your yum.conf.
Alternatively, start your proxy server.
3142 is the default port of apt-cacher, which is used for Debian based distributions, but can also be used to cache RPM packages.
Your config indicates that it used to run on master0 (or you skipped steps you deemed irrelevant when following a tutorial).


Proactive Advisor Magazine: David, talk about starting your firm and how your practice has evolved.
I made a major career change several years ago and am very pleased with how that has worked out. I was trained and worked in air traffic control in the Navy and then went on to earn my undergraduate degree and dual master's degrees in aviation management and safety from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. From there, I worked in the aviation industry in finance and business development for just over four years and also did some teaching and baseball coaching.
While I enjoyed both positions, I knew I wanted a career that allowed me to work closely with people in the financial industry. I always had a very strong interest in finance, investing, and the markets. I started investing in my teens, had a financial advisor at an early age, and became someone people would informally ask for guidance about their 401(k)s or investments. My advisor was actually the person who set the wheels in motion for me to be recruited into the industry. My first position was with a national firm where I received some professional training, but I ultimately decided their business model was not the best fit for me.
I wanted a role where I could build deep and long-lasting relationships with clients and provide holistic guidance for their overall financial plan and investments. I looked at several different options and decided that becoming an independent financial advisor was going to be the best model for my objectives. After conducting a considerable amount of due diligence and investigation, I found that Ameritas would offer the kind of broker-dealer resources and support I was looking for. I have the freedom to build my practice according to my vision while having access to an impressive selection of products, services, and practice management support options.
What kind of clients do you work with today, and what are your product and service offerings?
We are a full-service portfolio-management and retirement-planning firm, but we also get into many areas beyond that. Our services include portfolio reviews, fee-based asset management, tax-sensitive planning, insurance products such as life insurance and annuities, college-savings strategies, retirement-income planning, high-net-worth planning and management, and a variety of services for small-business owners.
My personal philosophy is that I will basically work with anyone, any family, or any business owner who expresses a sincere desire to improve their financial situation, is willing to be coached, and who values the advice and guidance our firm can deliver. I work with high-net-worth clients, but the bulk of our clientele is in the mass affluent segment—people who have worked hard all of their lives and need to develop strategies for their financial future. I also work with clients who have a relatively low level of assets or are younger and still very much in their accumulation years. That makes sense not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because they can grow and succeed along with our firm in what will hopefully be a very long relationship.
I am very active in our local community through several civic organizations; our church; local sports activities, including my role as a high school baseball coach; and an executive club I belong to. This affords a wonderful avenue for networking. This allows me to get to know new people, tell them what I do for a living in casual conversation, and plant the seeds for the possibility of working together in the future. I meet many people who have serious concerns about their retirement-planning needs, and that is a natural fit with our firm. It is also a two-way street, and I am always looking to help others with mutual referrals or helping them build their network. I am also interested in acquiring the businesses of advisors who are looking to retire. That is an ongoing objective for our firm.
Please describe how you approach investment management for clients.
Every client is different, and the fact that we build customized investment approaches for each client is a major benefit of working with our firm. There are, however, certain factors that remain constant for all clients.
We believe in a goals-based approach to investment management. We spend a lot of time getting to know our clients' short- and long-term objectives and then recommending a personalized investment plan that we think can help them progress toward those goals. For retirement-planning clients, I like to work backward, looking at reasonable estimates of a client's or couple's likely expenses in retirement and comparing that to their known sources of income. From there, we can develop the type of investment strategies that will help them fill the gaps.
In developing an investment plan, understanding a client's risk profile, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is critically important. I have a twofold approach with tools that approach the evaluation of client risk tolerance very differently. When I combine the analysis of those tools with my own observations of their financial situation, time frame, and objectives, I think we develop a rich picture of where they should be on the risk spectrum.
We generally will use a blended, strategic portfolio-allocation approach. This again is highly dependent on a client's situation, but I will speak in a general sense about higher-net-worth clients. These clients are interested in both growth and capital preservation. We will help structure an allocation that will accommodate both of those goals. One growth portion of the portfolio will be an allocation to carefully screened stocks that are usually blue-chip names or sector ETFs or mutual funds. This will be more of a passive, longer-term investment.
The balance of the portfolio might be allocated to a third-party money manager who has a wide variety of strategies. Some strategies might be highly tactical in nature and others could be strategic. They could be anywhere in a range from very conservative to more aggressive. The difference is that all of these strategies are risk-managed. They are designed to mitigate volatility and are based on technical indicators and algorithms. I explain to clients two concepts in this regard: upside capture and downside capture.
This is an educational process where I will take clients through market cycles, explaining that active strategies are intended to manage exposure to severe downside risk in bear markets and to capture opportunities in positive market trends. They might be able to go to 100% cash if the market environment calls for that, or use leverage, or even go inverse the market.
We can look at the bear market of 2008–2009, where some of these strategies had very minimal losses as the broad indexes were losing more than 50% at the worst point. These strategies were then able to get back in the market when conditions started to recover. There are no guarantees with any strategy of course, but in this example, the positive contrast to an indexed strategy is quite striking. Clients appreciate that their money is being managed by professional firms with a research team whose only job is developing the models for these strategies and implementing and monitoring them. The strategies can also encompass a variety of asset classes, so there is a strong element of further diversification in that regard, along with the fundamental risk-management emphasis.
What would you like clients to say about your practice if they were to refer you to a friend or associate?
I believe that our values are at the core of everything we do for clients. We have a mission statement we share with our clients, and these are the beliefs we operate under every day.
The first value is honesty, which simply means operating in the best interests of the client at all times as a fiduciary and clearly communicating the trade-offs of risk and reward in all of the recommendations we put forward.
The second is transparency—part of which is helping to ensure that all costs and fees are understood by clients.
The third is diligence, as we are committed to providing knowledgeable guidance and professional service to our clients. We conduct regular reviews with clients of their overall plan and the performance of their portfolios and will be proactive in recommending changes as their life circumstances warrant.
I personally would like clients to tell their friends, family, or business associates that our firm goes above and beyond from a personal service perspective. I believe that has helped lead to the development of strong relationships that should continue to flourish for many years.
A total business management system for client and prospect CRM database management, calendar organization, and business segmentation.
A digital storage system that allows clients to upload important personal financial documents and can show consolidated investment performance from multiple accounts.
A virtual marketing assistant program that helps efficiently manage email campaigns, newsletters, events, and client appreciation communications.
Mr. Salley was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in the Chesapeake area. His grandfather was an engineer and his father an architect, and he says he has carried on their tradition of proficiency in tackling challenging technical issues. He joined the Navy after high school, where he was an air traffic controller and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. After his service, Mr. Salley attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where he earned his undergraduate degree and dual master's degrees in aviation management and safety.
After working in finance and business development for an aviation firm and later teaching and coaching, Mr. Salley was recruited to join a national financial-services firm as a financial advisor. He says the company provided "intensive training, and the experience helped confirm that this was a good career fit—helping guide individuals and families toward better financial outcomes." Mr. Salley founded Salley Wealth Management in 2016.
Mr. Salley resides with his wife and two young children in the greater West Palm Beach area of Florida. He is a member of the Rotary Club of Wellington, where he is membership chair. He also belongs to the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches and is a high school varsity baseball coach at a local school. He enjoys spending time with his family and is an avid sports fan.
Disclosure: Securities and investment advisory services are offered solely through Ameritas Investment Corp. (AIC). Member FINRA/SIPC. AIC, Proactive Advisor Magazine (PAM), and Salley Wealth Management are not affiliated. Additional products and services may be available through David Salley or Salley Wealth Management that are not offered through AIC.


text:
KinoNovosti
Petr Buslov, Anti-Bimmer [Anti-Bumer] (2004)
reviewed by Natalia Rulyova©2005
Dmitrii Puchkov's Humorous Interpretation of Bimmer [Bumer] (Petr Buslov, 2003)
Anti-Boomer is an official acknowledgement of Dmitrii Puchkov's popularity and a step forward towards legalising piracy as a "creative method" (tvorcheskii metod), to borrow a Soviet literary term.[i] Puchkov started his career in the film industry as a pirate-translator of western gangster films and became known to Russian film lovers under the pseudonym Goblin in 1995, according to Nil's Iogansen and Stanislav Lobastov. In the same year, his group, the Polnyi P set of the Guards Klim Chugunkin Translation Studio, entered the world of illegal video production. It is symbolic that they named themselves after Klim Chugunkin, a proletarian from Mikhail Bulgakov's A Dog's Heart (Sobach'e serdtse) whose body was used by Professor Preobrazhenskii for the production of Sharikov. In his "alternative translations," Puchkov's God's Spark (Bozh'ia iskra) production company reinterprets the visuals of existing films by creating a completely new narrative and soundtrack, which mock and satirise the original films. Sarcasm, vulgarity, and steb have coloured most of the work of the former militiaman Puchkov. I use Aleksei Yurchak's definition of steb: it is a type of humor characterized by "overidentification" with the object of mockery.[ii]
Puchkov's approach to translation, which he calls "pravil'nyi" ("correct"or "right"), could be described as faithful, aiming to convey the original narrative as closely as possible. At the same time, however, Puchkov's satires of Hollywood's grand-narratives, are also deeply embedded in Soviet and post-Soviet reality, whose imagery dominates his interpretations. He first acquired widespread popularity for his "alternative" or farcical translations of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001-2003). The first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, came out in Puchkov's free interpretation as The Gang and the Ring (Bratva i Kol'tso). Soon after that, Two Towers was remade as Two Toppled Towers (Dve Sorvannye Bashni) and The Return of the King appeared with the farcical titled The Hobo's Return (Vozvrashchenie bomzha). Enjoying the success of his first parodies, Puchkov continued with Shmatritsa, an interpretation of The Matrix (dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999), and Star Wars: Storm in the Glass, an adaptation of the original Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, 1977). Among his many others projects interpretations of other cult films: Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994); Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrels (dir. Guy Ritchie, 1998); and Kill Bill 1 (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2003). Puchkov's website contains a complete list of his work.
Anti-Bimmer marks a new stage in Puchkov's career for two main reasons: it is his first mocking interpretation of a Russian-made film, Petr Buslov's Bimmer (2003), and it is his first legal production. Anti-Bimmer was broadcast on the Russian TNT television channel on 31 January 2005 at 10:00pm in the evening and was re-broadcast the following morning at 10:00am as part of a series of comedies. According to the TNT website, these two broadcasts scored a record rating of 22.5 % of all the viewers who watched television during those times on all channels. This figure is higher than the number of the viewers who watched the popular reality show House-2 (Dom-2) on the same channel.
Anti-Bimmer was also well received by some critics. On 28 January, Komsomol'skaia Pravda published an appreciative review of Anti-Bimmer, marking the legalisation of Puchkov's "alternative" production. It advertised Anti-Bimmer as an ironic comedy that satirised the original bandit thriller: "pure steb". KinoKadr also published a positive review admiring the humorous effect resulting from the incongruity between the "stylised, naughty, and idiotic dialogues" and the stony faces of the characters on the screen.
Puchkov's "alternative" interpretation turns the original film inside out. The leading character, a sleek and powerful Bimmer (BMW), is transformed into Anti-Bimmer: the German car is re-fitted at a service station with an engine from a Zaporozhets—a cheap, small, and old-fashioned Soviet car. As a result, the struggling engine makes the Anti-Bimmer puff and wheeze on the new soundtrack to the film. Departing from the original, Puchkov's four main heroes are not gangsters; they do not steal the Anti-Bimmer but own it from the beginning. The aim of their journey is not to run away and hide, but to go to the European football championship in Portugal. They are not threatening but comical: they take along a globe as a roadmap. Anti-Bimmer follows most of the events as in the original plot, but reinterprets them humorously. In Bimmer, the men deceive a militiaman, attack and kill other bandits on the road, threaten lorry drivers, and rob a chemist to steal cash. In Puchkov's version, they manage to get away from a corrupt cop, fight gangs of philharmonic artists and provincial show business celebrities, and hold up a chemist to get the necessary drugs for one of them who was injured. Unlike the original film, the men do not die at the end: they realise that they have missed the Russian football team's match in Portugal and make a new plan to go to Greece for the Olympic Games. To turn the tragic plot of Bimmer into a comedy, Puchkov cut out the cruel opening and closing scenes—the theft of the Bimmer and the deaths of the main characters. Puchkov aims to create a cheerful and upbeat comedy-version of a road movie. One character sums up the aimlessness of the journey: "It doesn't matter what road you choose. The earth is round!"
While the original soundtrack to Bimmer became a best-seller on Russia's music market in part because of dynamic rock rhythms and lyrics were fully integrated into the film, the soundtrack to Anti-Bimmer is deliberately eclectic, even occasionally comical. Puchkov's soundtrack intermixes Soviet songs ("Nasha sluzhba i opasna, i trudna" by M. Minkov, and "Smelo tovarischi v nogu" by L. Radin); contemporary Russian pop music ("Chelovek svistok" by A. Varum, "Sedaia noch'" by Iu. Shatunov, "Menedzher" by Sergei Shnur); music from some old and well-known children's cartoons ("Pesenka Cheburashki" by Shainskii, "Govoriat, my biaki-buki" by G. Gladkov); and with folk songs like "Valenki" and the parodic song "Chernyi bumer" by Serega.
Puchkov's kaleidoscopic narrative often falls into parts, lacks coherent development, and appears as a chain of random jokes in the fashion of Soviet kapustniki (an event organised by university students and consisting of disconnected or loosely connected numbers) and KVN (Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh, translated as "Club for the Cheerful and Quick-Witted"), one of the oldest and most popular Russian television shows involving a tournament of university student teams from different parts of Russia and the former USSR in which each team presents numbers loosely connected by the theme of the show. The humorous effect in Anti-Bimmer is the result of the gap between the seriousness of the visual and the absurd story narrated by the "translator's" mocking and monotonous voice. Because it was produced legally, unlike Puchkov's earlier translations, Anti-Bimmer does not contain any obscene jokes. However, as in his previous parodies, the characters' speech is filled with Soviet and post-Soviet clichés and references; some of the jokes are repetitive and self-referential (for instance an episodic character in Anti-Bimmer remarks on the elves and goblins, alluding to The Lord of the Rings.) The role of many references is simply to shock or to take the viewer by surprise with an outrageous and unexpected remark. Puchkov uses various means to provoke laughter: he takes phenomena out of context, randomly juxtaposes them, and often exploits sexist, xenophobic, nationalistic, and homophobic stereotypes. As in all of his parodies, Puchkov simultaneously belittles the western, laughs at the national, parodies the past, and makes cynical comments on the present. The effect is such that the chaotic structure and ridiculous jokes of Anti-Bimmer make the viewer laugh not only with it, but also at it.
[i] See Natalia Rulyova, "Piracy and Narrative Games: Dmitry Puchkov's Translations of The Lord of the Rings," forthcoming in Slavonic and East European Journal.
[ii] Aleksei Yurchak, "Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in Post-Soviet Nightlife," in Consuming Russia. Ed. Adele Marie Barker. (Durham, London: Duke UP, 1999): 76-109.
Natalia Rulyova, University of Surrey
Anti-Bimmer, Russia, 2004
Color, 73 minutes
Director: Petr Buslov
Master of dialogues: Goblin (Dmitrii Puchkov)
Cast: Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Andrei Merzlikin, Maksim Konovalov, Sergei Gorobchenko, Iana Shivkova, Lidmila Poliakova
Production: Bozh'ia iskra (God's Spark)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
'Nonpolitical' Groups Target Democrats In Ad Blitz The law allows the groups to accept unlimited donations, and they don't have to report their donors. That coupled with the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling means there's a wide-open path for corporate money to flow into partisan politics.
'Nonpolitical' Groups Target Democrats In Ad Blitz
October 14, 201012:01 AM ET
Peter Overby
Andrea Seabrook
This election season, more money than ever is flowing from supposedly nonpolitical groups into TV ad campaigns.
Americans for Job Security ad targeting Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA)
Most of the ads are negative, sponsored by ambiguously named organizations like "Americans for Job Security" and "The Commission on Hope Growth and Opportunity." Who are those groups?
Some of the ads can be seen in Pittsburgh, the site of three fierce races: two for the House and one for the Senate.
Pittsburgh TV stations are airing as many ads now as they used to run in the last fiery days of a campaign season.
Each local station is airing 12 or 14 ads per hour during the evening news, but they are not all the same. Some come from the candidates themselves. Others come from party committees like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Still others come from other groups.
Tracking Down Ads
Two such groups advertising in Pittsburgh are Americans for Job Security and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Both are 501(c)s, organized under the tax code as nonprofits. The law says they can't engage in politics as their primary purpose. It also says they can accept unlimited donations and don't have to report their donors. Couple that with the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, and you have a wide-open path for corporate money to flow into partisan politics.
That's what makes these ads different from those by party committees: Candidates and party committees have legal limits on the size of donations they can take from each donor, and they have to report the names and numbers of the donors and how much they gave. It gives context to the ad.
There's almost no context with the noncandidate, nonparty, supposedly nonpolitical groups. But they do have to disclose something -- not to voters, but to the TV stations. And whatever they disclose to the TV stations, the stations must disclose to the public. It's the only way to track down how many ads these groups are running and just how much they are spending.
Incomplete Paperwork
At TV station WTAE, the ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh, the political file documents all of the political advertising the station has sold for this election cycle. You can expect to find records of who has been buying ads, how much they have been paying for them and, in a very general way, why they say they are buying them.
For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most powerful voices in these midterm elections, logged 206 ads at WTAE in a period of three weeks for the Senate race and two House races. The cost: $134,000. That's for one station, in one market, in the chamber's nationwide campaign.
There are also many disclosure forms (see examples in box below) that give less than full disclosure; parts of the form are blank, and that's not atypical.
At KDKA, another TV station, there are more huge ad buys: On Sept. 7, the group Americans for Job Security booked a month worth of ads for which it paid $105,560 and left incomplete paperwork.
The group is required to fill in the name of the candidate that the ad is talking about, but it left the field blank. The ads it runs specifically mention the Democratic incumbents being attacked. The group is also supposed to declare whether the ad is talking about a national issue, and if it is, which candidates it names. Americans for Job Security left it blank.
Although the groups are filing their paperwork with stations, they are not taking it seriously. Some answer a few questions; most leave the important lines blank. It's an indication that TV stations can't act as a watchdog of these groups.
Unprecedented Spending
NPR tried to contract some of the groups behind these ads. They either said they were busy and that they are complying with the law, or they didn't return the calls. And they don't have to.
For most of these groups, there's almost nothing required in terms of donor disclosure. They can keep their funding sources comfortably hidden. But they are spending amounts of money that were unimaginable just a few years ago.
One group can easily spend $100,000 or more at one station in a few weeks. Multiply that by four or five local stations in each area, and five or six groups spending at that level, and the amount of money flowing from secret sources to fund attack ads across the nation is easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The ads in Pittsburgh attacked candidates of both parties, but the ones attacking Republicans were all from Democratic candidates or party committees, groups that have to disclose their donors. Not one ad from the supposedly nonpolitical groups attacked a Republican. All of those ads are aimed at Democrats.
This year, in the wake of Citizens United and other court decisions, corporations and rich donors can give as much cash as they like to these groups. But it's unclear who the groups are.
In Part 2, which will air on All Things Considered on Thursday, we talk to a candidate being attacked and a campaign benefiting from a third-party ad. Also, voters discuss what they think of the ads.
The Message Machine: Fact-Checking The 2010 Campaigns Nov. 5, 2012


text:
Marriage is the great step beyond friendship, and family, and nationality, but it does not supersede these. Marriage should only give repose and perfection to the great previous bonds and relationships. A wife or husband who sets about to annul the old, pre-marriage affections and connections ruins the foundations of marriage.--D.H. Lawrence
I liked this story's first sentence when I tried to write it the first time—"It was October, the season of dying." And it was their anniversary. Ours, too, I guess. I've retained the first sentence because I think it breathes an inaugural blast of autumn air into the narrative's whisper-and-groan invocation, its forward-facing surge of truly aching for the past. And it's as true as I can get to true.
From there on, however . . .
I'm trying to say that something's gone wrong, and I've been trying to fix it. I feel there's something in this story that needs to be saved. To give up on the story is to indulge in the darkest, most seductive hypocrisy. Write the story. Be the story, I say. It's very Zen.
So here's what I did.
First thing: names.
Her name was Stef, not Jennifer.
Never Jennifer. A big uh-uh on the Jennifer, nix on the Jennifer. No way was she a Jennifer. So since you weren't able to see the first draft of this paper dreamscape before I changed it, I must clue you in on this midstream interlarding of names. In the story that follows, you'll read the girl's name as "Stef," but know you would've read "Jennifer" had I not succumbed to this momentary lapse into a hankering after truth in the process of toggling together this transparent chameleon-skinned daydream I'm calling the story that follows.
This is the problem: I've been faking it. That's why this writing has rung so hollow—so infantile, so "not mine"—for so long.
But not anymore.
Jennifer?
She was one hundred percent Stef.
Well, Stefanie. But she told me I could call her Stef. She had blond hair, short-cropped. Tomboyish, absolutely alluring. I bumped into her at a campus dance hosted by some local church organizations affiliated with the College of Southern Idaho. So, yeah, the setting: Twin Falls, Idaho. On the south rim of the Snake River Canyon. Gun racks and Fords, Wranglers and bolo ties. The whole crap-kickin' corral, amigo. Circa 1988. It was a Friday, late, and I was hanging around outside with three friends. We were freshman, single and all talk. Four of us, counting me: Darren Veenstra, Terp Whitaken, and Toby Bergham. They were all from Gooding, but I hailed from the metropolis of Jerome, home to a Keebler cookie warehouse, several thousand stinking dairy cattle, and one of only two Tupperware plants in the country. Veenstra had driven us to the dance at the assembly hall of Our Lady of Mercy, across from the CSI campus. Veenstra had driven because he'd had a car, a pickup actually. Had being entirely different from owned. And for some reason, the fact that I didn't own a car (it was only this last year that I was able to drive my wife around town in a car I could say I really owned—but even that's a lie; it took us both to pay it off) seems significant now because when I met Stef at this dance, the first thing I wanted to do was drive, drive, drive. Drive away. Drive away from the dance, from the canyon's rim, away from my three loser campadres over a single airy span of love and first impressions. Drive away and find our own unpopulated corner of the universe where we could tell our secrets to each other. Tell them, loudly. To each other and to the stars.
I remember the music: some old Eagles and John Cougar.
Whitaken, Bergham, Veenstra, and I were loitering around in the half-crowded lobby of Our Lady of Mercy, shooting the breeze, not really in the dance, when she strode on rubber heels out of the darkened assembly hall, smiled at me, and grabbed my hand.
And I remember thinking—vaguely, not in any articulate kind of way—that the combined energy it takes to create a universe is charged in the moment that a stranger grabs your hand.
Stef led me awkwardly to the center of the dance floor. Colored, electric pinholes of light orbited the gym inside of Our Lady of Mercy.
"I'm Stefanie," she said, circling her arms around my neck, smiling.
"Niles," I said, returning the half embrace. "You always take your dance partners out of the lobby?"
"Not always," she said, laughing. "Just tonight."
"Good deal," I said. "Glad tonight happened while I was in it."
We circled under the circling lights—red, blue, maroon. Moon, stars, disco ball, strobe light. Slow, deliberate silhouettes swam and coupled on the dark walls inside Our Lady of Mercy, expanded to freakish circus shapes, and then shrank to stick figures that shamefully disengaged and retreated on stiff legs into lonely dejection across the faux chestnut paneling and open windows of frosted glass. Near the rec hall's stage, a long folding table supported a dusty, archaic smorgasbord of stereo equipment. I saw the usual: punchbowl, cheeseballs, crackers, dainty powdered donuts, chairs, and rows of people standing around, heads bent earthward to scrutinize their multiple predictable histories in the clairvoyant glare of the gym floor's candy wax gloss. Somehow, I wasn't a part of it. As Stef and I circled, I glanced out at Veenstra, Bergham, and Whitaken. They stared back. Later, it was the thing they talked about the most: She'd walked out of the dance to get me.
We circled. The lights spun out broken constellations and wayward meteors on the ceiling, weaving and electrifying a ragged-edged a universe inhabited by the population of the two of us, for just that pocket of time. Ephemeral, red, blue, blaze and shimmer. I didn't know anyone at Our Lady of Mercy; I barely knew Veenstra, Whitaken, and Bergham—I haven't seen them since. I barely knew the amazing statuette of the supposed virgin in my arms, barely knew myself. But because this strange girl named Stef had taken my hand, in the middle of all that was anonymity and ignorance, I'd stumbled on a vibrant, humming state of oneness. Without leaving the room, I'd stepped to the edge of an airy desert canyon spanned by a sky crammed with stars, summoned to a moment so illuminating I felt I'd either turn to stone on the spot or start to erupt in a volley of prayer to the stone goddess in the circled fire of my arms. I felt like praying and being prayed to in the same instant.
Stef had short blond hair, and she was no taller than five foot something. She had this great smile and straight white teeth, like a model from a toothpaste ad. Her skin was light tan. She had slate blue eyes that wavered in and out of silver under the trick of the lights, and she wore her hair moussed up into a tight nest of soft spikes, all wrapped up in a white headband knotted on top. Black skirt, dimpled right cheek, white socks rolled down like some anachronistic bobbysoxer. A black suede vest with fringes. She sported a casual string of black beads, like an afterthought, around her throat.
"Call me," she said, releasing my hand at the end of the song.
I reached out for her hand, pulled it back.
"What should I call you?" I said, outrun already by my own maverick wit.
"Anything—Stefanie. But you can call me Stef. Everybody does. My friends do."
"So I'm your friend?"
"Sure, only if you call me."
"You—are a trip. You know it, right? Take me away from those three jokers, just for one dance? You're our lady of mercy."
She smiled and laughed.
Back in Vestal's Ford pickup, the talk went shallow.
"See her body?" Whitaken kept saying, rolling a JB's Restaurant toothpick along his bottom lip with his tongue. The toothpick end was festooned in cheap yellow plastic, the same stained color of Whitaken's teeth. Whitaken's breath reeked of Wendy's chili. The lights along Blue Lakes Boulevard cast a harsh artificial glow of dust and moths against the deep evening sky, like dance lights without limits.
"Seriously," Whitaken kept whining. "Her body! You see it?"
"Niles," Veenstra said, turning left at Mr. Gas. "Thing you gotta remember is, there's four of us, one of her. That, uh, ain't the right odds, I don't think."
"I love the odds," I said.
"Odds," Bergham said. "Not right. Ratio's off."
"Whoa!" Whitaken rocked back, as we rumbled past the Blue Lakes Mall and headed for the bridge. Strands of hay flew from the bed of Veenstra's pickup, vanishing into the black night behind us. In a movement both cocksure and flabbergasted, Whitaken knocked his John Deere cap back on his head. He flicked the toothpick, thoughtfully, up and down between his lips. In the glare of the oncoming headlights, his shaved head glistened. One dusty boot clomped up on the dash. His eyes glowed as yellow and lonely as the moon.
"You believe that body?" he said.
Eventually, I called Stef, asked her out, and got the story. We were driving in my mother's Volkswagen Rabbit convertible down Blue Lakes Boulevard that summer. We cradled some drive-in food—Arby's, I think—in our laps, and we were heading out toward the CSI baseball fields to eat and talk.
"I have a son," she said, smiling over at me, her short blond hair buffeted back by the wind. "Nicholas. He's eighteen months, and he's beautiful."
"Great," I said.
"My boyfriend—well, husband—we're separated. Richie, he's in California. Cupertino. He's trying to get his band going. But we're separated. Separated for good."
"Great," I said, oblivious. "This okay?"
"Yeah," Stef said. "Fine."
We pulled into the CSI baseball parking area, sat on the picnic benches under the limitless July sky, ate, and watched the team practice.
"I love curly fries," Stef kept saying.
That summer I was working the drive-in window at the Dairy Queen on Lincoln Avenue in Jerome. I remember driving my mother downtown on Main Street, waiting to turn left at Rose's Photography Studio, when the story slipped out.
"A married woman?" my mother said, turning rigid, then crimson.
"Separated," I said, annoyed. "Listen, Mom. I can handle this. We're not dating."
"You're calling her—"
"Yeah, but she's got a kid. She's by herself, lives at home—"
"Well, when you call someone you're dating them. A married woman!"
But somehow, married woman just didn't fit Stef, not in my mind. Wonder, miracle, real maybe. But not married woman. As I sat there stewing in my mother's convertible, I watched the traffic light changed to green, Then, I turned left and drove slowly down Lincoln past Gano & Dehlin Insurance, the Sinclair station. We were heading south toward the Dairy Queen, but I had no idea where I was really going. And for the most part, I've lost what the rest of the conversation entailed. We passed Washington Elementary, the old Tupperware plant, out eight miles to the country club, and then floated like Evel Knievel from canyon rim to rim for all I can remember. Plummeting too, perhaps.
"We're not dating," I said. "She's separated."
"Separated is still married," my mom said, pointing to the Food King parking lot. "Take a left here. I need some film."
One last episode, the last episode: Last time I saw Stef, I was working the drive-in window. That day, someone came through, ordered a chicken sandwich, fries, and Coke, and pulled up to the window.
"Two dollars, seventy-three cents," I said, reaching out of the window.
"Hey!" she said, smiling.
"Hey!" I said, brightening. "It's you. I didn't know it was you."
"Yeah, well, you couldn't have. Intercom's don't show your face."
"Too bad in your case," I said. "Yeah, so, what are you doing here? You know, this is the north. Not your side of the canyon. People might see you, get the wrong impression. That cool reputation, you know."
"Yeah, well—"
"I'll keep it down, though. Won't let it out."
"You know, anytime I do anything cool, it's always on accident."
"You're lucky. I never do anything cool at all—just accidents."
"You have nice teeth," she said, laughing.
That's the thing I still remember. It's one of the things that's the merciful prologue to some of my worst mornings, now that life's gone on, now that my wife and I own a car and now that life's wonderful and difficult all at once because we've got children and responsibility. I have a bad day, and I think: I have nice teeth. Our daughter gets the croup, and I think: I have nice teeth. It snows for a week, and I think: I have nice teeth. My wife thinks I should stop grinning at myself in the mirror so much. But hey, what do you do when you have nice teeth? Stef—not Jennifer—said it to my face once. So it's got to be true.
"Yeah," Stef said, looking up at me through the drive-in window. "You've got great teeth."
"Thanks," I said. "So do you. Aaaand, ah, everything else as well, I believe. Yeah, sure, everything else."
"Hey," I said, as she prepared to drive off. "I didn't know where you'd, uh, disappeared to. I'll see you around, right?"
"Oh yeah," she said. "For sure."
And I can't get it down in words. I can't accurately describe how Stef looked up at me, really meaning what she said. But I have to tell you that right there—in my maroon Dairy Queen T-shirt, hanging out the drive-in window, all sunlight and hopefulness—I believed she would see me again. I believed we would drive out toward the canyon rim someday soon, our hair tossed by the summer wind, the highway open and free, and our stories, like tumbling trash across the highway, tossed freely back and forth to each other. So, I'd ask: Can you have the story without the prologue? Can you have the two canyon rims without the impossible but necessary gap between? And now that I own a car (it's my wife's too, yes, I know), now that we own our love and borrow from each other every day, shelling out little bits to our children, sharing, borrowing back, taking and giving, counting spare change and bits of things we forgot we had tucked away in our pockets, the linty corners of our hearts—now that all that's happened, can I really say that my story, our story, exists without its prologue? I'm tempted to say no. No, I am saying no. I'm hesitant only because I'm not sure that it's "right" thing to do. But is the "right" thing always the "true" thing? For instance, right now, I'm thinking I shouldn't write this story. That's what the prologue in my head says. The voice of the story insists with a kind of riotous clamor that Stef, my nice teeth, and the love revealed inside Our Lady of Mercy during that late July in 1988 should be severed from the story of my life now, now that I'm a car owner, now that I'm really in love, and now that my mother is still calling me, telling me what married women need, like, want, dream about, despise. If we were honest with ourselves, we'd say we don't really know where the prologue and the story come together. We'd admit we don't understand that windy canyon, that sometimes dangerous fault line and precipice. So, you see what I'm saying? Prologue: Stef. Story: my life, wife, children, car, and mother. I guess it all comes down to this: Could I have the story of my love and wife without the prologue of Stef, the saintly and devilish "married woman"? And when we get to the main story—after the kissing, the handholding, the blind confessionals and feigned innocence, the surrender and sacrifice of hearts—why do we think we can go back and snip the prologue out of our lives, forever, like some discarded receipt?
Okay, so no more pretense. See, I see now I was afraid that if I wrote this story the way it was intended to be written, my wife and mother would think I was a swinger of sorts. I suppose I'm writing this largely to testify that what I felt at that time wasn't evil. And I don't think what Stef felt was evil either. Story, prologue—it's all the same. You can't cut up the story, parcel it out into little sections like a game of solitaire on a coffee table. At the juncture between prologue and story, where love vanishes and flourishes, where the cliff jumpers dwell, where hands find each other in the dark and fantastic bouquets of colored light and dance music bloom in the small universe between the bodies of dance partners, strangers change their bodies for light. It's a marriage in a way, like marriage is—leaving almost everything behind for the sake of what lies ahead. Because, well, what if we do forget? What if we make the mistake of editing too much from the story's heart, of revising out what we know we felt, what we know we should let influence our present and future loves, regardless of the risks?
It was October, the season of dying. And it was their anniversary.
It was also a Friday night.
The lumbering Oldsmobile—the car Stef referred to as "the boat"—ground to a stop at the gravel parking turnout. "The boat" wore a battered armor of venomous orange side paneling and chrome piping. It was a two-ton hunk of junk. Gutted by rust, unvacuumed. The turnout overlooked the canyon, where the rutted tarmac broke off into battered sagebrush. Stef snapped off the ignition and heaved open the driver's side door. She slammed the damaged door, which threatened to drop from its hinges, and then jumped over the dented guardrail and scrambled toward the dark canyon edge. The headlights remained on. The car's weak beams cast two hazy bridges of dwindled light into the black void. Beyond the guardrail, she ran a zigzag pattern through the light beams, paralleling them and then intersecting them, like a rock star loping drunkenly toward the edge of the stage. At the edge, she skidded and stopped. Looking across from south to north rim, she listened—the crickets, the falls, the dull silvery drone of the river flowing west underneath the damaged spotlight of the October moon, the shattered glow and hushed current five hundred feet below. She breathed deeply through her nostrils. She exhaled, slowly. It was her place. His, too, she realized, shrugging her shoulders. It was their place. It would always be their place, no matter what had happened or would happen. It was their cliff—the place she referred to as "The Pulpit." Their tree—the ancient tangled willow overhanging the half-mile wide expanse of rocky canyon rim, the one she'd named "The Preacher." "The Pulpit" for her stepdad, Warren. "The Preacher" for her mother, who'd never been able to come to terms with her life. Over a year ago, when she'd first come here—with him—she'd named the tree and cliff. They'd named them together.
Instinctively, she lowered herself to a sitting position.
She crossed and uncrossed her legs.
The cliff's brown stone warmed her skin. All around her, the stone was marked with the scrawled green and mustard signatures of lichens and flimsy weeds. She wore favorite black denim skirt, white socks, black leather shoes, and her black tank top. She also wore her denim jacket, cut short up above her waist—the one he'd given her. She'd worn it last October. That night, they'd driven in his Ford Pinto out to "The Pulpit" and "The Preacher" after a gig. She sat on the warm stone, thinking, remembering, looking around. It'd been a long time since she'd seen him. But it was their anniversary nonetheless, and so she felt glad she'd decided to come back, even though everything inside her—her own internal voice of self-mockery—had tried to force her to stay home, had tried to make her forget everything, forget him, forget what he'd said, what they'd done together. No, she'd eventually prodded herself. No, it's our anniversary. So even though it was October, the season of dying yellow leaves and crusty lichens and living rock, and even though it was getting colder, she'd come to celebrate. Even if she'd come as a celebration of one.
She thought about the gig that night across the canyon in Jerome.
Weeks prior, she remembered, his band had played another gig in Twin Falls at The Ritz on Blue Lakes Boulevard. That night, three bands had played: The Oatmeal Snakes, Shades of Gray, and the headliner band, Brixton 19 (who'd changed their name that same night from "The Bleü" to "Brixton 19" in their VW van on the drive up from Boise). But even with all the lights, banners, and exotic spectacle, it'd been nothing compared to what had felt so simple and concentrated for her, that single-lightbulb love that had burned away the dust and darkness at her gig, their gig.
She sat back, remembering the gig, remembering how it had all started. She shifted on the cliff's edge and re-crossed her legs, imitating Buddha, trying to summon a peaceful groove of wind and water from somewhere. She eased back, listened to the river below, the soothing night music of the falls, the crickets that boomed in stereophonics all around her in the sagebrush and desert floor. The sky, toward the west, smoldered—a cool, limber purple. The eastern sky had deepened to a soaring indigo, peppered with star drops. She rolled her head back, taking it all in—the sky, the sounds, the breezy desert silence. She thought about him, what he was doing now, where he was living, and, most of all, what songs he was playing. Somewhere out there, in this place he'd called Cupertino, she realized, he was probably gazing at the night sky, as she was. At this moment, she realized, they were most likely mapping the same swatches of sky with their eyes. Her eyes concentrated on a star above the north rim. That star, she told herself. He's looking at that star right now. For a second, she their anniversary star burn like a drop of ice water in her mind. Then she let her thoughts swerve back to the gig on the night they'd met on Main Street in the Jerome Moose Lodge.
That night, the Jerome Moose Lodge had been packed with a raving crowd of kids. Outside the door, in the broken glare of an overhead light, someone had tacked up a sign with a slab of duct tape: a torn scrap of white posterboard scribbled over in red magic marker. Tonite from Twin Falls, Swinging Baseball Bats, 8 PM. 2$. No weapons or illegal substances. Two cops—one fat and red-haired and the other in a straw cowboy hat, both with mustaches—had been stationed outside on the street. Both cops had raked the kids with critical looks once the crowd had started filing in and the music had wound up and rocketed loose like a living coil of electric light and power.
Her friend, Tiffany, had agreed to go with her. Together, they'd dressed in Stef's bathroom in front of the mirror. They'd acted giddy, she remembered. Too giddy—competing, sparring, showing off. Stupidly giddy—laughing, shellacking on too much blue eye-shadow, comparing bust sizes in the mirror, shifting skirts and black and pink tank tops. But eventually, when they'd realized it was almost eight o'clock, they'd screamed and jumped inside "the boat" and rumbled downtown like two hijackers in a smoking tank, past the North and South Parks, past Circle K and Mauldin's Furniture & Dance. At the stoplight, they turned right, gunned the engine, and then screeched to a clanking stop on Main Street, right across from Central Elementary and kittycorner to the armory where all the army reserve tanks and transport units waited for action that would never arrive behind high fences and concertina wire. Main Street had been littered with cars of all kinds, she remembered. A parked junkyard, plus two police cars.
Inside, the Moose Lodge had been a zoo. Just perfect, she remembered, smiling to herself. And the band! Swinging Baseball Bats! She smiled wide, laughing out loud, thinking about how she and Tiffany had reacted when they'd read the name on the posterboard outside the Moose Lodge.
"Swinging Baseball Bats," Tiffany had said. "Sounds stupid."
"I think it sounds cool," Stef had countered, defending a band she'd never even heard of before. "Come on."
Arm in arm, they'd catapulted themselves into the crowd that, like a series of hard waves, had heaved back and forth and threatened to splinter the Moose Lodge's failing walls. A single naked light bulb had burned in the room. At the front of the lodge, on a small elevated stage, the band, Swinging Baseball Bats, had raged. A trio, she remembered. Simply a trio: guitar, bass, and drums. The drummer had hammered away at his set, bucking his head back and forth like an incensed stallion. He'd worn a white T-shirt with red rings around the neck and short sleeves, and his pants had been baggy jeans. He'd rigged up a microphone for backing vocals, but it had kept getting knocked over as the gig surged and wailed on. Stef had whirled and floundered, bouncing off the sweaty gyrating bodies. The music had ground into her eardrums, pounding her inside out. Hm, she'd thought to herself. A band with a drummer who sings. Very cool. At first, she hadn't paid much attention to the band, just the music. The lead guitarist—a squatty kid in baggy cutoff jeans, chain, bright red tube socks, and an old orange Jerome Recreation District soccer jersey—had terrorized the right wing of the stag, trying to play and sing at the same time. "The Wright Guys," his jersey had read, with a black decal "8" peeling off the front like the pierced black tongue of a jungle warrior. Stef remembered how she'd criticized him in her mind, as the crowd of kids had swarmed and receded in a mob of seething energy that rose and ebbed with the music. Just have fun, she'd told him in her mind. Just have fun and don't try to be so cool, so musical. Still, the guitarist had tried to rock off the performance of his life, the thing that would get him discovered. For the first hour and a half, they'd pounded the floor and walls, never slowing to rest, never seeing any reason for slowing down because slowing down would have meant stopping the crunching rasp of the guitar, the thumping of the drums, and the soul-satisfying hammer of the bass that socked everything into a euphoric vortex of night, lights, noise, bodies, and floorboards about to break. She sat on the cliff's stone parapet, remembering and tapping out the rhythm of the music on the rock surface with her fingers, recalling how she had tripped in sync with a groove of beautiful chaos, how it had only been a year ago during October, the season of dying, and how she'd had no idea that night in the Moose Lodge would one day serve as the day of her anniversary.
A cool gust of desert wind stirred her.
She sat up. Her palms went flat against the stone.
She looked again for their anniversary star, but she couldn't find it.
From behind her, a thin mosquito whine divided the darkness and was lost on the breeze. She glanced back at "the boat," as if someone had wrenched open one of the unoiled doors. Its rusted bulk behind the guardrail made her sick, made her remember how embarrassed she'd felt for years of having to drive such a beast around town. She thought of Warren and her mother and their shiny red Bronco.
They make me sick, she thought. Absolutely.
The sound reached her ears again. She tried to block it out, seal it off behind glass in its own muted sphere. It was a cry, high and thin and grating. She looked back at the Oldsmobile, bleary-eyed in the dim headlights still shining out over the canyon. The car's bald tires had crushed and pinned a fan of sagebrush to the asphalt. She strained to hear the buzzing cry through the concert of breeze, crickets, and river.
"Baby James," she said out loud. She felt the string of her body grow taut.
Just once, she thought, gritting her teeth. I wish it wouldn't happen this way. And all on our anniversary.
She clamped her eyes shut, shaking her head from side to side, waiting for the whining to subside, waiting for the whining yellow flame in her head to cool down.
"Baby James," she said out loud again, scavenging her soul for serenity.
She waited. For a moment longer, she sat there, not looking back, tensed up in her shoulders, hugging her knees to her chest, still trying to draw what warmth stored in the cliff's brown stone, trying to ward of the descending desert chill for a little longer. She waited, listened. She listened until she didn't hear anything except the wind and the scissor music of the crickets. Good, she thought. To exorcise the annoyance threatening to shatter their anniversary ceremony, Stef returned to panoramic thoughts of the gig. It had been absolutely the best, she told herself as objectively as possible. Especially at the climax. She smiled to herself. Again, she remembered that Friday night. The Friday. At the climax of the gig, Stef remembered, Swinging Baseball Bats had suddenly stopped playing, and the bass player, who'd also been the lead singer, had stepped forward and announced that they were going to play the only song they played that had a title: "Heads or Tails." At that moment, Stef had really looked the bass player over. She'd been so struck by his looks that she had stopped dancing. The waves of bodies had parted. In the middle of the flailing crowd, she'd stopped and looked at him up on the stage, the lone objector in a rampaging riot. He'd worn no shirt, and his bass had been a black fretless, nicked and worn. He'd carried it like a golf bag, slung over his shoulder with a brown leather strap, and he'd worn old green corduroys, which had only been accented by the red and white elastic band of his boxer underwear that had kept peeking up over the top whenever he'd executed a jump or stage dive to accent his playing.
With little effort, the song was back in her head. A night encore. The chorus played over in her mind, and she drummed her hands on the cliff's surface, imitating the driving roll of the snare drum, ranting along with the lyrics in her mind:
Can't , can't, can't make heads or tails!
Can't, can't, can't make heads or tails!
At the climax of the number, the bass player had launched himself into the crowd, bass and all. Tiffany and Stef had toppled over into a shrieking heap. The crowd had divided into two halves, revealing a psychedelic confetti of Coke cans and vending machine bags, and he'd landed on the dirty floor. Then he'd gone absolutely berserk. He'd spun out on the fulcrum of his shoulder blades. He'd played his fretless like it was an M-16, rolling over on one shoulder and running around and around in a circle, his shock-white blond hair on fire. Then he'd rolled over on his back and pumped his pelvis—bang, bang, bang—up toward the ceiling, wagging his fretless around like a war sword, kicking his piston legs and banging his feet against the floor. At this moment, bedlam had ensued. Immediately, the circle around him had closed up, and for a second, it appeared as if he would be trampled by his own fans, consumed by a swarming amoeba of kids. Spurred on by the maniacal bravura of the band, Stef had abandoned Tiffany and, lowering her shoulder, bulldozed her way through the pumping carnival of bodies. Having tunneled her way to the bassist, she'd seen something else: a girl. From somewhere in the crowd, a girl in jeans and a leather jacket, a girl with long black hair, had jumped from the crowd and straddled him—the bass player—and had started riding him like a cowgirl on a bucking bronco. Immediately, Stef had felt incensed with rage and jealousy. At once, she'd pushed through the crowd, grabbed the black-haired girl by the shoulder, and pulled her back, looking into her face as if to say what she felt: Easy—he's not yours yet. But then, she'd seen how Swinging Baseball Bats' bass player had reacted: like it was all a joke. His cool reaction alone had calmed her. As Stef had reached through the crowd to yank the girl off him, he'd immediately smiled and surrendered his tormented, anguished howl. Then he'd jumped back up on stage to finish the set. Stef and the black-haired girl had never crossed paths again during the remainder of the concert. Later, Stef had learned his name. She'd heard it being tossed around in the dance. She'd caught it and held it on her tongue like a hard candy jawbreaker—Richie. She'd said it to herself, while dancing: Richie. Outside, watching the traffic pass in front of Central Elementary and the courthouse, she'd warbled it to Tiffany, who'd ignored her: Richie. She'd chanted it to the rural night as, out on Main Street, the sweat cooled and evaporated off her upper lip and neck: Richie.
Stef said it to herself again, remembering. She said it to the night, to "The Pulpit" and its brown rock-solid warmth, to "The Preacher" and its swaying willow body.
"Richie," she said.
The canyon nocturne heard her, accepted her pronouncement without judgment, carried the wind of her voice around the curve of the earth, west, down to the faraway city of Cupertino where all names, including his, wrote the lyrics of the wind.
At midnight, the concert had ended with the drummer kicking a combat boot through his bass drum and the lead guitarist jamming his guitar down the front of his cutoff jeans. The cops had come in at that point, hands on guns and nightsticks, waiting for a fight. But nothing had happened. The lights had glimmered on, and the guitarist and the drummer had hopped down from the stage and walked down to Sheppeard's Drive-in for Rancho Burgers, fries, and lime rickeys. Some of the kids had gone with them, shuffling off, hands in pockets, chains jingling in back. Something else, too, Stef remembered, patting the surface of the cliff with her palms: Tiffany had disappeared. She'd driven off in the "the boat," leaving Stef stranded. Stef remembered how at first she'd felt angry with Tiffany. But after a while, she'd decided it was no big deal, and so she'd resolved to walk home. In less than two minutes, the Moose Lodge had emptied out between the two cops that had flanked the door like stone sentries. As the October midnight had blossomed and settled in, there had remained no evidence that a concert had just taken place. Stef had walked home alone, past the armory, past the park.
Only she hadn't gotten far.
"Hey," he'd said, perched on top of one of the armory tanks.
She'd stopped, like a bird caught in a flashlight beam. She'd stared. He'd looked like he'd looked on stage. Only more approachable, more real. His hair had shone in the moonlight, bright platinum spiky blond. His thin torso had looked muscular—like a carved statue's—from where he'd perched himself on one of the tank's turrets, eating nachos and cheese dip and a drinking a Cherry Coke Thirst Buster from the Circle K.
"Hi," she'd said back. "How'd you get up there?"
"Easy," he'd said, through a mouthful of nachos and cheese dip. "I'll show you. Drink?" He'd tipped his soft drink straw toward her, a kind of toast.
"Yeah," Stef had said, passing a hand over her short-cropped blond hair, thinking of her makeup, her clothes, her legs, her eyes, thinking over everything at once. "Yeah. How'd you get up there?"
"Easy," he'd repeated, nonchalant. "Come on."
So he'd showed her. The trick was, Stef had learned, to carry a blanket with you at all times. From somewhere on the other side of the chain-link fence, he'd produced a woolly blue blanket, and he'd draped it over the top of the fence and helped her over. A prince and his princess. Hero to stranded maiden. On the other side, they'd fallen down, bellylaughing. A gob of nacho cheese had streaked a moon-colored smear across his forehead; she'd laughed through her nose, snorting. Together, under that unforgettable October sky, they'd scrambled up on the turret of the tank to catch the view, to see out along Main Street over the roof of the Moose Lodge. They'd talked: about his music, about the name of the band—Swinging Baseball Bats ("An amazing choice!" Stef had said)—and anything else that came to mind. Stef had asked about the black-haired girl who'd straddled him, and he'd said he had no idea who she was, nor had he wanted to know. Stef had smiled openly at this, relieved, feeling small coils of exhilaration spring open inside her ribcage. They'd shared nachos, shared his Cherry Coke. They'd looked up at the stars—as she doing now—and had instantly traded hearts and promises, right there up on top of that tank turret, while down below them—down below in the mundane world of cops and parents, school and assignments, and laws and rules—the world had gone on without them. For the most part, they'd been happy to let it go. Up close, he'd looked even better to her: blond hair, smooth skin, rippling thin torso, red and white boxer band peeking up above his green corduroys. And the glittering chrome chain she'd asked him about: a gift from a friend in Cupertino, the place where his band was headed if things worked out.
Then things had gotten silly. Both of them—completely deprived of sleep—had suddenly succumbed to a twin boost of nervous energy, and had started capering on the top of the turret, dancing, spinning, doing Irish jigs, launching mock stage leaps and dives. She'd said the pledge of allegiance, her hand above her heart. He'd saluted, manning the tank and shouting out directives to his gunnery crew. Then, with Stef howling and hoarse with laughter, he'd shimmied out onto the tank's gun barrel, dangling upside down from his knees and raking his armpits like a circus chimp, his mouth filled with nachos and cheese, his red and white boxers showing a full four inches above the beltline of his corduroys. In a heap, they'd collapsed under the tank, him guffawing and choking on nacho fragments, Stef weeping with laughter. Somehow, they'd landed on the blue woolly blanket, and somehow her fingertips had flickered once up and down his torso, up and down the lacquered frets and fingerboard, the tricky strings. In the blanket of night she'd tasted nachos, cheese, and Cherry Coke introduced into her mouth, warm and comfortable and welcome and new. His hands, her knees. The beat of the band, in her belly and in his thighs. He'd led, and she'd followed. Again, again, and one more time. The rhythm had soared through her soul at a frenzied pitch and then let out a world of wind like an immense cool sigh, after which through the reverberations of crickets and distant traffic and the silent thrum of worms and leaf mold she had strained to hear a whining sound coming from somewhere, which she'd mistaken for the amplified diapason of love, for the thrilling action of tank wheels, for divebombing aircraft, or for an electric guitar reverberating through the cliffside breezes in her mind and settling deep in her loins.
She listened. It was the whining again. Louder, more persistent.
Stef stood.
Ruined, she thought. It was all too much. It always happened this way. Things always got ruined.
Her forehead knitted with anger. Now that it was ruined, she realized, she'd never be alone. All she'd wanted with him was to never be alone again. That was the whole reason they'd gotten together. And now, now that he'd gone, she'd never be alone, ever. That was the problem. That's what had ruined it all for all of them.
Another gust, blue and sagebrush-light, startled her senses. She saw the past year condensed into a few seconds: hiding the baby in her one-bedroom basement apartment on Blue Lakes Boulevard, around the corner from McDonald's; a dirty, mullioned window letting in greasy yellow light; diapers, piles of them, in Hefty sacks; Warren not coming to the birth; her mom saying something matter-of-factly—"Has his own kids, you know"; her mom, nodding in the back hallway, drying a dinner plate trimmed with purple and blue cyclamen; her mom saying, "It's for the best," initially buying the whole story about Richie's mom taking care of the baby; thinking how they were perfect strangers, never talked, wouldn't ever talk; a television screen tuned to a static channel, 3 a.m.; a screaming kid with red candy smeared on his face in the grocery line at the Food King; food stamps; W.I.C. checks; the public eye and humiliation as bright as a tin can of daylight; hoping Richie wouldn't ever talk to his mom; Cupertino, Cupertino, and more Cupertino.
But now it was ruined.
From where she stood, she looked across the ragged black expanse of the canyon, gauging the distance to the north rim, to the river below.
Hands on hips, she turned once completely around. The peace of the moment had been absolutely wrecked. The cool October night had sapped all the warmth out of her meditative cliffside perch. She shivered, with cold anger. Why did it always have to happen this way? The rush of static and anger rose inside her and plugged her ears. She gritted her teeth. It was hours past midnight now, for all she knew. Somewhere in Cupertino, it was night, too. Furious, she snapped off one last look at the canyon's beautiful nighttime panorama and turned back to "the boat."
The Oldsmobile still sat like a slab of junk behind the dented guardrail. The guardrail was marked with yellow and black warning stripes, which reminded Stef of a yellowjacket. Fists to the earth, she tromped back through the sagebrush to the passenger's side of the car. The old hunk of a car wasn't running, but the headlights still glared out into the airy nothingness over the canyon. She yanked open the passenger's side door.
"What!" she yelled. "What do you want? Why always now? What!"
The infant baby boy sat in his car seat and screamed. His sparky blond hair shone like lightning. He'd been dressed by his mother in some old pajamas she'd found at a second-hand charity shop called Lamplight Ministries on Blue Lakes Boulevard. The worn-out pajamas clung to the baby boy's plump, writhing body like a worn-out membrane filled with holes. His pajamas were splattered with grinning cartoon animals: bears, lions, birds, ducks. He howled. His face burned a deep crimson. His mouth gleamed, wide open and wet. His protracted, agonized wailing stopped only briefly when he paused to suck in more air to feed his lungs. The tiny balls of his fists quavered and flailed about at unseen demons. A silver waterfall trickled out of each eye. Stef fumed above him.
"What!" she demanded again. "What do you want?"
Then, dazzled by the constellations of her own fury, she uttered a cry of exasperation and slammed the door. Off in the brush, a killdeer was spooked from its nesting place and sailed on the fluted, frightened arc of its own cry out over the canyon. She listened to it go, imagining herself instantly soaring away from things like worry and Warren and her mother, sprouting magnificent wings and sacrificing herself in flight for her young.
Baby James howled. Stef jammed her hands under her armpits and folded her arms across her chest. She stomped around to the front of "the boat." She sat down on the front hood with such force that the whole car rocked for a second, making Baby James's howling bounce up and down as well. Good, she thought. She looked off into the canyon, off into the embrace of the darkness where its promises of soothing oblivion were intercepted by two rays of light. >From inside the Oldsmobile, Baby James's crying had reached the level of a piercing, terrified shriek. Stef put her hands to her ears, blocking it out, blocking everything out. Why wouldn't it just go away! Frantically, she searched the cliff's edge for an answer: the headlights, the precipice of brown slate and shale, the clinging lichens, the sagebrush, and the old scraggly willow hanging over the edge. Then she thought of it: the swinging. Why hadn't she thought of it before? She recalled how they had dared each other to do the swinging before—the first time they'd come here. From the willow's branches, out over the canyon. A full five hundred feet to the bottom! Now, that had felt like freedom! Full-on, mind-blowing freedom! They'd done it together, she recalled, just like they'd wanted to do everything—together. Richie'd had gone first, running out and grappling for the willow branches, grasping them desperately to his face, swinging out and kicking his heels to the stars. Then she had gone—but only because he'd made her. At first, she'd been scared, but then she'd let her mind go as blank as the night sky and had run and jumped out for the willow branches, swinging out over the canyon, and then back into his arms. It had felt like true life-or-death happiness. She was sure it had been nothing like Warren and her mother had done. Or ever would do.
She laughed out loud as the thought and decision struck her at once. It was nothing like smashing a bottle of champagne across the bow of a ship, but it would have to do. After all, it was their anniversary. Suddenly, she was smiling. She scanned the ground, picked up an old half-empty Miller Light bottle, and, saying a quick dedicatory prayer, hurled the bottle in a long, looping arc at "the boat," cracking its windshield. The bottle, unbroken somehow, plinked off into the sagebrush.
Her christening complete, she turned to face "The Preacher."
A wild wind had suffused her heart. She churned inwardly with rage, daring, peace, and disorder. She let out a yell and stepped forward. In the light of the headlights, she struck a pose. She arched her back, rocking her pelvis back and propping one hand on her hip. In the darkness, she grabbed an imaginary microphone—an old model from the radio days like Swinging Baseball Bats had used—and she jerked toward her open mouth, singing into it. She could've been the lead singer, she reasoned to herself, rolling her head back, rocking her body to rhythm of the earth, its quiet raging. All around her, the bass and guitar and drums and pounding ecstasy of a thousand kids hammering the floor of the Moose Lodge rushed on stage with the crickets and whispering sagebrush. She cradled the microphone to her mouth, cupped it in her hands. She wailed her mournful confessional to the night, cupping his head to her face, singing into his listening mouth, her lips inches from his, their breaths mingled in one warm canyon breeze scented with starlight. She kicked up gravel and tossed her head, ramming her head and shoulders forward with every word: Can't, can't, can't make heads or tails! Can't, can't, can't make heads or tails!
With a dramatic flick of her wrist, the imaginary microphone sailed from her grip. She yanked open her denim jacket and dropped it to her hips, thrust her head back. Her jacket landed behind her in the sagebrush. Spinning, stumbling, she faced the canyon edge. Her audience was waiting—she had only to perform the climax, the stage dive. With the fully resurrected music of Swinging Baseball Bats whizzing around like mad birds of starlight in her head, she pushed off. With electrified agility, she leaped over the guardrail and ran unsteadily, but with long strides, toward the canyon rim. Above the dark echo of her own panting, she heard the green-silver thread of the river below, her home. The crippled willow tree swayed at the cliff's edge, blurred, and swayed again. At the edge, the sole of her shoe clapped off the surface of the stone parapet and rang like a tank shot from the Snake River all the way down to the all-night party lights of Cupertino, her arms and legs cycling out to catch the willow branches and swinging stars beyond.
The next night, a Ford Pinto drove to the south rim. It wore a distinctly shoddy and anachronistic look—orange with faux wood side paneling, tattooed with sun and apathy. At the turnout, it grumbled to a stop, and the headlights clicked off. Before the headlights dimmed, the driver—a young man who had recently cut his own platinum blond hair with a steak knife—jumped out and ran to the cliffside. In his mind, he was thinking "preacher, pulpit" but wasn't sure why, wasn't sure he cared why. He'd written a song, a good song that had caused him all kinds of trouble back in Cupertino, and so he'd had to come back here—their spot—to sing it, to sing it to the canyon, to the world, just to try it out. It was, he realized, as he slung the acoustic guitar strap over his naked shoulder, their anniversary anyway. So it seemed appropriate. He fished for the pick in his pocket, a rainbow-toned one he'd bought in Cupertino. He found it; he gripped it between his thumb and forefinger, ready to call down shafts of light from heaven with the first chord. He wore baggy jeans, a chain and stainless steel Swiss Army pocketwatch hanging of his back pocket. His tan, sinewy torso shone like the surface of a river in the moonlight. He looked like a sculpted statue on the stone overhang, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, calling on the canyon scene to inspire him, to listen to his song. There'd been something wrong in Cupertino, they'd told him—his band, Swinging Baseball Bats. There'd been something wrong, something that hadn't been there before. After searching for it and struggling to find the answer, the drummer and guitarist had simultaneously identified the problem: love. It had been love. Love had come creeping into his songs, and so together they'd stomached enough and kicked him out, even though he'd had no idea what they were talking about, even though he'd used the same songwriting techniques he'd used back during the Moose Lodge days.
So he'd formed a solo act—Swinging Hatchets—and he'd come back to where he'd begun, to claim a fresh start and a better outlook.
At the edge of the cliff, in the face of the canyon night, he drew in a breath and sang out the first chorus of the song—simply called "Stef," a song about getting back together—that he'd written on the drive back from Cupertino. But the words and music clashed; the song was formless; it was a waste. Halfway through, he stopped and, swinging his guitar around his head like a baseball bat, heaved it into the five-hundred foot gorge. He listened for the satisfying sound of its destruction, but heard nothing.
Then he turned back to his Ford Pinto, slashing his Vans sneakers through the sagebrush. Maybe I'll look her up, he thought, walking back to his Pinto.
Then he saw something that made him stop.
It was a car.
An old rusty orange Oldsmobile was parked at the turnout not far from his Pinto.
Before he knew it, he was running—not sure why exactly, in a plodding jog at first like small child, but then faster in a dead sprint across the gravel—toward this strange car that, as he ran, became more familiar with every stride. His shoes skidded and slapped on the gravel and asphalt. His chain jingled with the titanium stars in the sky. The cricket chirps roared like river rapids in his ears, and he could barely hear the faraway noise of the falls and the wind through the brush over his own rushed breathing. He banged into the passenger's side, yanked open the door, and saw, for a moment, his own reflection in the glass—a sweaty grin, a tan face, a blond shock of hair, a trim suntanned torso—replaced instantly by a smaller version of himself. He saw the small smiling face looking up at him—the authentic blond hair, the face weak but still smiling after a full day of sitting there and watching the canyon, there in what seemed the very center of the frayed fabric of the cosmos, all happy cartoon bears and birds and ducks and unwritten songs.
Then something pushed him back. The earth beneath wavered, rose up, and slammed into his backside. He rocked back on the ground, reeling. The cliffside chorus transformed into wheeling bats and hatchets all around him, a suffocating blanket of blue night, a missed boat.
Eventually, he was found, still sitting there, by a curious deputy from the sheriff's department, who took the two blond boys—one in cuffs and the other cradled in his arm—back to the station on Addison Avenue.
The deputy was over forty, paunchy, red-faced, balding. He wore a stiff brown mustache cut straight across his upper lip. He wore a straw cowboy hat with a crumpled front brim. At the station, he stood at the booking area desk, sweating in his tight gray deputy's uniform, even though he wasn't doing anything more strenuous than leaning against the counter. For the moment, he'd put the teenage boy in a holding cell. A red-headed, middle-aged woman from social services had come and taken the baby. The deputy removed his hat, wiped his forehead with a forearm. He stared down at the unwaxed oxblood tile, as if searching for the answer in some magic crossword puzzle or television listing located there.
The deputy's supervisor sat at a desk covered with manila folders, cardboard file boxes, paper, and pens. On the supervisor's desk sat a creme-colored phone on which five red lights flashed in silence.
"Gonna set that kid right, Warren?" the supervisor called, snapping his fingers at the deputy and pointing over his desk. "Or just set around here all night, wasting time?"
"Wish I could," the deputy replied, scratching his head, staring into the holding cell at the blond teenager. Then he corrected himself. "Set him right, I mean. Not set around here all night."
After an hour of bewildering silence at the station, the bleach-blond shirtless boy still couldn't talk, wouldn't talk. Eventually the deputy told his supervisor that he'd love to spend more time trying to figure out the case, but it was October, his favorite time of the year, the time of year when everything seemed to take on new life, and that he didn't want to sound like a preacher pounding no pulpit or nothing, but it was his anniversary, and he'd be damned if he was going to disappoint his wife on the most important night of their life because he'd had to hang around at work, monkeying around with some case out of which he couldn't make heads or tails.
Matthew James Babcock: Raised in Jerome, Idaho. Habitually reminds everyone he was born in San Francisco in 1969 in an effort to arrogate literary cachet to himself. Teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg. Currently enrolled in PhD program (Literature and Criticism) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His novella, Real Rehab, won first place in Rockway Press's annual contest and will appear in 2006. Stories, poems, and essays have appeared or will appear in Aethlon; Dialogue; High Horse; Ibbetson Street; Illuminations; The Pacific Review; Poem; Poetry Motel; Rattle; The Rejection Quarterly; The South Dakota Review; The Sow's Ear Poetry Review; Spillway; Trestle Creek Review; Weber Studies; and Wild Violet.
Copyright 2006, Matthew James Babcock. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws.
It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.


It's only half true. I detest the amount of time we spend away from home, but I know it's necessary. I abhor losing contact with friends and family (though tech makes it better), because it means if something happens, I'm not there for them. I've missed the births of my cousin and a dear friends baby. Heck, I've missed the first few weeks of school four years in a row, and every time I come back, I feel like the new kid. This time around we'll be gone for 2 months, and over those months, I'll slowly lose touch with friends.
But the traveling itself? It's amazing! We see sights that people spend their entire lives trying to see! Stuff like the Coliseum in Rome, the Parthenon in Athens, and the Tower of London (take a guess as to where that is)! I hear and learn parts of languages that I might have never heard, like Indonesian or Icelandic. I experience things that help me grow and learn.
If you have been following us for a while, you all know that we try to serve others on these trips as well. These past few years we have been spending that time helping at a YWAM base in Bad Blankenburg, a little town in Germany filled with refugees. This has led to some memories that I will cherish forever, and will be eternally grateful.
I may have my grievances with parts of it, and while I'm not completely thankful of being told 'Pack a bag, we're going to _____!', I'm glad that my parents take me with them.
Anyways, at this point I'm just rambling, so I'll be going now.
Trey, this is my favorite post of yours yet! So honest and so you ( I could hear you saying all that!). Keep it up!


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Belarus protests: the role of women and young people
By Ana Pirtskhalava	/ 4 December, 2020
The Belarusian writer, 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, and one of my favourite authors has written a book named "The Unwomanly Face of War" but unlike the war, the protest against the regime and President Alexander Lukashenko, known as 'Europe's last dictator' in the streets of all major cities...
Belarus – why it is different this time?
By Ania Skrzypek	/ 4 December, 2020
The former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski (1995-2005) has long been an advocate of regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe. During his presidency, he not only oversaw his country's accession to the European Union (2004), but only a few months later, when the 'Orange Revolution' in neighbouring Ukraine began, he...
Urban development in Allende's Chile: going up!
By Genaro Cuadros Ibáñez	/ 3 September, 2020
At the time of Salvador Allende's election victory on 4 September 1970, Chile was experiencing accelerated urbanisation that was deeply unequal. Confronting the housing deficit, and providing access to urban services and facilities would be one of the challenges of Allende's Popular government. With creativity and involvement of the people,...
Salvador Allende: respect for the world
By Juan Somavía	/ 3 September, 2020
When Salvador Allende entered the General Assembly of the United Nations, a very exceptional thing happened: there was huge, spontaneous applause from the delegates, who rose to their feet. At the end of his speech, the president of Chile was again cheered at length with a persistent standing ovation. This...
Salvador Allende: his ethical, social and democratic legacy
By Marcela Ahumada	/ 31 August, 2020
On 4 September 1970, fifty years ago, the socialist doctor Salvador Allende won the elections and became President of the Republic of Chile. In the middle of the cold war, for the first time in Latin America, a socialist came to power through elections, democratically and in freedom. Salvador Allende...
The imperfect democracy of Cape Verde: time to democratize democracy
By Roselma Évora	/ 12 July, 2018
In 1990, Cape Verde became one of the first African countries to introduce democratic reforms after fifteen years under a single-party authoritarian rule. It is nowadays perceived by literature and the international community as an exceptional case and a paradigm of consolidation of democracy in Africa. This outstanding path was...
Empirical effects of direct democracy
By Stefan Voigt	/ 28 October, 2019
Direct democracy is often discussed from a normative angle: supporters praise its deliberative and participatory qualities whereas critics doubt that the citizens are sufficiently well informed to make far-reaching decisions directly. This contribution analyses direct democracy from an empirical angle: it delves into the effects that direct democracy tools have...
Initiative and referendum in a hostile context
By Raul Magni-Berton	/ 28 October, 2019
In France, participatory democracy is constantly developing. Today, over 50 cities have adopted a participatory budget, and a large number have also launched citizens' assemblies. Direct Democracy, however, remains a taboo. Through the attempt made by the Grenoble City Council in 2016 to experiment with Direct Democracy, it is possible...
Lisbon: a decade of Participatory Budget
By Miguel Silva Graça	/ 28 October, 2019
Amongst the many European cities that have made their experiences with Participatory Budgeting (PB), Lisbon was the first capital city, already in 2008. The experience has shown that PB clearly lead to a better performance of the municipality itself, by providing a better public service and pursuing fairer public policies,...
Intensifying democracy
By Giovanni Allegretti	/ 21 October, 2019
Involving citizens in choosing policy priorities has proven able to increase their quality of life. When the discussion between institutions and citizens focuses on resources, spaces to discuss different scenarios for increasing wealth and rationalising the expenditures of the places where we live emerge. Participatory Budgeting is a democratic innovation...


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Q: Play Framework Packaging Source Files is there a way to package JUST my source code (into jars or class files) and then run that using play framework?  I don't want to use play dist since it packages play itself, which has dependencies on a couple jars that have GPL licenses.
Something like
play package -> I get jar file of just my source code
install play on another computer
play package run -> runs the source code jar files

A: There is a task in sbt called packageSrc that will prepare a jar with the sources, like the ones published along the main jar in maven and ivy, maybe that will do the trick?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


MCAS clerk Segui hard at work.
The first application entered live in MCAS today!
After six months of digitizing the back log of active licenses and ongoing applications, the first new application was processed in MCAS on Monday.
This is a great step for the Direction Nationale de la Géologie et des Mines who now has an up-to-date registry of all its licenses and applications. The system can now be used to manage the licensing process in real-time, allowing for efficient processing of payments, renewals and transfers.
Looking forward to the next step: publishing the data to the Online Repository. Stay tuned!


Our publication on "Utilizing new technologies for the improvement of problem based learning in the field of medical education" is now published in the book Active and Collaborative Learning: Practices, Problems and Prospects.
In times in which medical education seems to be more complex than ever, facing horrendous student numbers and an increasing accessibility of information, the question of how to ensure the most efficient learning experience remains a vivid point of discussion. Active Learning and its subconcept of Problem Based Learning represent a promising candidate for future improvements in the area of medical education. The utilization of the concept of Problem Based Learning, paired with the latest inventions in web and mobile technologies, finally provides the necessary media to build a possible solution, satisfying the needs of new age education. In this work we report the successful development of a novel reporting system, which focusses on the reliable and fast processing of patient case files during a student's supervised period of compulsory hospital field work. This novel system enables an improved and fast way of supervisor/student interaction and communication.


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Listen: LANY's new song 'if this is the last time'.
July 2, 2020 | by Rose Riddell
LANY have shared their new song 'if this is the last time', in which frontman Paul Klein sings a love letter to his family, with each of the two verses addressed to his mum and dad.
About the new song, Paul Klein shares: "I started writing 'if this is the last time' toward the end of 2019. It was initially inspired by the inevitable truth that one day my parents aren't gonna be here anymore, that picking up the phone and calling my mom is actually a luxury that I won't always have. Moving into 2020 and being thrown into a global pandemic and being faced with a new reality, it became clear to me that finishing and perfecting this song was imperative, that maybe this was a song the world could lean on."
Listen to 'if this is the last time' below...
Follow LANY
Zine #42 - LANY
Our new LANY x Coup De Main double-sided zine features a selection of exclusive photos and polaroids, a handwritten back-page from Paul Klein, and also folds out into an A2-sized poster.
MusicTrue fact: LANY have finished recording their album.
MusicLANY - 'Good Girls' music video.
MusicLANY - 'ILYSB' music video.
MusicReview: LANY - The Powerstation, July 2017.
MusicLANY release new song 'Super Far'.
MusicCoup De Main presents: LANY's first ever New Zealand show.