Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Hera hurling Zeus-borrowed bolts
Death dodging in Weehawken this week.
The "Miracle on the Hudson"... !!! What a beautiful thing...
The plane landed around Midtown Manhattan, in the Hudson across from Weehawken, where I live. The plane's pilot, "Sully," grew up in Denison, Texas, where I was born...
------------------------
In other death-averted news:
My cat Gracie has been sick all week. All of a sudden unable to walk straight. Not eating. She's only 10.
When she was a kid, she used to hunt birds and lizards for me, eating every bit of them except for their hearts, which she would leave on my balcony for me to admire.
When I moved to a small house from the apartment with the balcony, she was a real porch kitty. Sitting there, and then...able to leap from the porch rail up onto the roof in a single bound... That was at least 6 fucking feet! I can't think of any little beast that could ever even dream about doing that!
And then there was the time that I was taking some boxes out to the dumpster that sat catty-cornered across the street from my house... I dumped the boxes off, then started back home... Only to have a maniac-cat leap out at me from a drainage-ditch! SURPRISE! (There was a drain off the street... Gracie had, for some reason, jumped right down into it---hopefully she saw the platform below-ground before she jumped... And she waited on that subterranean platform for me to walk back... When she saw me, she SPRANG!)
Before I moved to NYC, I used to talk to her: "Are you a New York Kitty? You ARE a New York Kitty, I know you are..." In Austin, she'd always been an indoor/outdoor cat, always had her freedom. In moving to New York, there was the scary plane ride, then the first apartment with 6 other cats, several of them vicious; then the second apartment, with the basset hound; then the third apartment, with the manic roommate always trying to grab under my bed for her... She put up with all of it.
It's been peacefully just me and her in this current apartment since last February... I thought she was OK, I thought I had her with me until she was at least 16 or 17... I'd always promised her a ground-floor apartment, where I could let her outside when she wanted...I'd always promised her a little brother for company...
If she dies now... Not Gracie. Not at only 10... She's always been a wild, healthy cat... I keep nuzzling her, saying, "You have got to get to at least 17, honey; please be with me until I'm 50, when I'm old and you're old..."
The "Miracle on the Hudson"... !!! What a beautiful thing...
The plane landed around Midtown Manhattan, in the Hudson across from Weehawken, where I live. The plane's pilot, "Sully," grew up in Denison, Texas, where I was born...
------------------------
In other death-averted news:
My cat Gracie has been sick all week. All of a sudden unable to walk straight. Not eating. She's only 10.
When she was a kid, she used to hunt birds and lizards for me, eating every bit of them except for their hearts, which she would leave on my balcony for me to admire.
When I moved to a small house from the apartment with the balcony, she was a real porch kitty. Sitting there, and then...able to leap from the porch rail up onto the roof in a single bound... That was at least 6 fucking feet! I can't think of any little beast that could ever even dream about doing that!
And then there was the time that I was taking some boxes out to the dumpster that sat catty-cornered across the street from my house... I dumped the boxes off, then started back home... Only to have a maniac-cat leap out at me from a drainage-ditch! SURPRISE! (There was a drain off the street... Gracie had, for some reason, jumped right down into it---hopefully she saw the platform below-ground before she jumped... And she waited on that subterranean platform for me to walk back... When she saw me, she SPRANG!)
Before I moved to NYC, I used to talk to her: "Are you a New York Kitty? You ARE a New York Kitty, I know you are..." In Austin, she'd always been an indoor/outdoor cat, always had her freedom. In moving to New York, there was the scary plane ride, then the first apartment with 6 other cats, several of them vicious; then the second apartment, with the basset hound; then the third apartment, with the manic roommate always trying to grab under my bed for her... She put up with all of it.
It's been peacefully just me and her in this current apartment since last February... I thought she was OK, I thought I had her with me until she was at least 16 or 17... I'd always promised her a ground-floor apartment, where I could let her outside when she wanted...I'd always promised her a little brother for company...
If she dies now... Not Gracie. Not at only 10... She's always been a wild, healthy cat... I keep nuzzling her, saying, "You have got to get to at least 17, honey; please be with me until I'm 50, when I'm old and you're old..."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Courage (i.e., "the art of losing")
For years now, I've made a living copy-editing literature textbooks for grades 6 through 12. While I've sometimes gotten annoyed with and been dismissive of the pedagogy I have to look at, here are three poems that I came across over the past week at work that made my heart happy, even while making me cry.
I was an English major, and I hardly ever read any more. (Kind of like Mrs. Robinson, the former art major, who tells Benjamin she's not interested in art.) Seeing these poems reminded me of how stunning and heartbreaking poetry can be, how it can strengthen your spirit and give you hope even in (especially in) the face of the utter waste and sadness that life can sometimes be.
I'm so glad someone (some wise and tender spirit) chose these for the kids to be able to read! For all the little "fatties" and "crybabies" and queers out there, the kids who feel "crazy"...
COURAGE
by Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONE ART
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAKING A FIST
by Naomi Shihab Nye
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
I was an English major, and I hardly ever read any more. (Kind of like Mrs. Robinson, the former art major, who tells Benjamin she's not interested in art.) Seeing these poems reminded me of how stunning and heartbreaking poetry can be, how it can strengthen your spirit and give you hope even in (especially in) the face of the utter waste and sadness that life can sometimes be.
I'm so glad someone (some wise and tender spirit) chose these for the kids to be able to read! For all the little "fatties" and "crybabies" and queers out there, the kids who feel "crazy"...
COURAGE
by Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONE ART
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAKING A FIST
by Naomi Shihab Nye
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Move Over Darling
When I first heard this song back in Austin, I sat in my living room and played it over and over and over... And made a Doris tape... and then played the song constantly in my car (until I once got stuck at a stoplight with frat boys next to me while Doris warbled "Make love to me" over and over and over...)
Sunday, January 04, 2009
A Very Good Year
My Leo horoscope from astrocenter.com:
Your horoscope - Week of January 5, 2009
This is going to be an excellent year for partnership and romantic issues. Jupiter moves into Aquarius and your partnership zone on Monday, where it will stay until 2010. Despite the issues and problems you've had to deal with in past relationships, you may decide to get married, engaged, or perhaps commit to your lover on a long-term basis this year. You're also going to be doing a lot of socializing and this is going to bring many new friends into your life. You're going to have a lot of fun.
Oh, all this as of Monday, huh? OK, astrocenter! Bring on my ENTIRE YEAR o' bliss! ;0
Your horoscope - Week of January 5, 2009
This is going to be an excellent year for partnership and romantic issues. Jupiter moves into Aquarius and your partnership zone on Monday, where it will stay until 2010. Despite the issues and problems you've had to deal with in past relationships, you may decide to get married, engaged, or perhaps commit to your lover on a long-term basis this year. You're also going to be doing a lot of socializing and this is going to bring many new friends into your life. You're going to have a lot of fun.
Oh, all this as of Monday, huh? OK, astrocenter! Bring on my ENTIRE YEAR o' bliss! ;0
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
GACOYA (Part 3): Bastet
My favorite, most meaningful Christmas present this year was a small Egyptian "Bastet" cat sculpture that my mom brought home from Germany, from the house of her sister, who just passed away.
I didn't know anything about this mythological creature, but my mom had printed out some online information to go along with the sculpture:
Bast is the daughter and/or wife of Ra, the God of the Sun.
Bast was responsible for joy, music, and dancing, also health and healing. She also protected humans against contagious diseases and evil spirits.
Her cult can be traced back to about 3200 BC, and she became a national deity when Bubastis became the capital of Egypt in about 950 BC.
Bast expressed the qualities of the lion or cat family, beauty of movement, agility, strength, caution, fidelity to the pride, all of which could equally be interpreted at the spiritual level.
During the New Kingdom (1539 - 1075 BC) she became equated with Sekhmet, the lioness deity of war.
Into the Greek period, she would be equated with the virgin huntress Artemis and considered the protectress of children and pregnant mothers, musicians, and a goddess of all sorts of excess, especially sexual excess.
I didn't know anything about this mythological creature, but my mom had printed out some online information to go along with the sculpture:
Bast is the daughter and/or wife of Ra, the God of the Sun.
Bast was responsible for joy, music, and dancing, also health and healing. She also protected humans against contagious diseases and evil spirits.
Her cult can be traced back to about 3200 BC, and she became a national deity when Bubastis became the capital of Egypt in about 950 BC.
Bast expressed the qualities of the lion or cat family, beauty of movement, agility, strength, caution, fidelity to the pride, all of which could equally be interpreted at the spiritual level.
During the New Kingdom (1539 - 1075 BC) she became equated with Sekhmet, the lioness deity of war.
Into the Greek period, she would be equated with the virgin huntress Artemis and considered the protectress of children and pregnant mothers, musicians, and a goddess of all sorts of excess, especially sexual excess.

GACOYA (Part 2): Country
On my way home to San Antone from Newark, there was a stopover at the Charlotte airport, where I saw these kindly rocking chairs in a waiting area! How friendly and rustic is that!
Speaking of "rustic": When we "Newarkians" deplaned in Charlotte, there was no "tunnel" for us to walk through to get into the airport; we all simply climbed down the stairs of the plane onto the tarmac and then, if we had carry-ons that had been stowed, we waited outside for those to be unloaded.
Another woman and I both grabbed our luggage as soon as it appeared, headed toward the building, and then stopped short in the same spot, puzzled. Neither of us could figure out how to actually get INSIDE the airport! The woman looked at me, shook her head, and said, "We in the country."
Going All Christmasy On Your Ass! (Part 1)
This isn't actually very Christmasy at all, but I noticed it on my mom's back porch while I was in San Antone for Christmas. (That counts!) A mutantly large rubber-tree plant! The pictures don't adequately capture how kind-of-creepy this thing is. Here's what happened...
Years ago, during one of my moves, I gave my mom my little rubber-tree plant to keep. It was about 1-1/2-feet tall at the time. She put the plant, in its planter, on her porch, where it grew normally for a while... And then, about a year ago, it decided it didn't like just being in its planter any more... It snuck a tendril outside of the pot and burrowed into the actual ground between the planter and the cement of the porch... And now look at the friggin' monster-of-a-thing! Its "tendrils" are now more than an inch thick, and the plant itself towers about 13 feet high!
(Gee, the symbolism... Like, you know, a daughter leaving her home, er, POT of Texas and sneaking a tendril out into the Great Big World... Ha! I can only dream of being as mighty as this guy!)



Years ago, during one of my moves, I gave my mom my little rubber-tree plant to keep. It was about 1-1/2-feet tall at the time. She put the plant, in its planter, on her porch, where it grew normally for a while... And then, about a year ago, it decided it didn't like just being in its planter any more... It snuck a tendril outside of the pot and burrowed into the actual ground between the planter and the cement of the porch... And now look at the friggin' monster-of-a-thing! Its "tendrils" are now more than an inch thick, and the plant itself towers about 13 feet high!
(Gee, the symbolism... Like, you know, a daughter leaving her home, er, POT of Texas and sneaking a tendril out into the Great Big World... Ha! I can only dream of being as mighty as this guy!)




Sunday, December 21, 2008
Chelsea Styles/Frank O'Hara

http://thiswomanisdangerous.blogspot.com/2007/04/chelsea-styles-part-2.html
Some of you might remember my first forays into "Chelsea Styles," the tiny "Blue Velvet"-esque beauty shop I discovered by accident when I first moved to NYC. (See above link, from 4/28/07, an account of my second visit there. My first, equally odd, visit was in March of that year; there's also a blog entry for that, if you want to look it up.)
After nearly 2 years, despite my initial befuddlement at the lack of hair gel and blow-drying, and at the bevy of 80-year-olds who frequented the place... I've been coming back, with only one exception, ever since!
Only now, my friends... I am a regular.
And the formerly-known-as-"Robert Goulet-man" (Vincent) who runs the place now says "Hiya, Stephanie" when I arrive, and asks me if I want a drink, and how's Weehawken, and how's my new job; my regular stylist Mayra knows to put gel on my hair while it's wet; AND, best of all, I now get my blow-drys for free! (Unlike the $30 they charged a newbie way back when.) And, for Christmas, today Vincent gave me a 2009 address book, embossed in gold with "A World of Thanks" and the shop's address/phone...It's 225 West 23rd (just across from the Chelsea Hotel), for anyone who wants to visit.
I still, though, have yet to see any customer under 70 in there...
Today the ladies were really acting up, on account of the Christmas music playing on the radio. The "Noel" song came on. So one lady started shrieking "Noel, Noel" at the top of her lungs to be funny. It was indeed humorous.
But then another lady got jealous of the attention the first lady was getting. I happened to be sitting there in the pedicure chair, completely defenseless, when this second lady decided to serenade me. Personally. I have no idea what the song was, but she said it had been in her head all day...I smiled politely, trying not to crack up, a la what I'd done to the singing guy at the Christmas party.
Luckily, Vincent saw what was happening and called over to her to come RIGHT NOW to get her shampoo. She went immediately, but then started in on him about the Christmas songs on the radio: "Are they trying to compete with me? They can't compete with me! [la-la-la] Is this a contest? I'm gonna win this one! [la-la-la]"
She eventually quieted down. And I was left with my thoughts in the pedicure chair while I waited for the polish to dry, staring out the window at the passersby and at the famous Chelsea Hotel directly across the street: "Here I am at Christmastime in New York City, getting a pedicure, looking out at the snow and the people and the Chelsea Hotel..."
Wow. It wasn't exactly an epiphany, but it was a moment of contentment. I was so full of LIKE for everything: for the ladies in the shop, for Vincent, for my getting a pedicure in the winter (which I'd never even gotten before until this past summer---getting one in winter just seems, oh, decadent!), for the people who stared in the window while they walked by, for my view of the Chelsea Hotel out the shop window...
It reminded me of this Frank O'Hara poem that I first came across in David Wevill's class at UT-Austin in the '80s when I was a kid:
Autobiographia Literaria
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
I don't feel like a freak now. Thank you, New York. I am so grateful.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Stephanie Rule: One Word For Snow


And that word is... "snow." At least in America. I don't care what the TV anchor- and weather-people tell you: It is now verboten to call it "powder" and, worse, "the white stuff"! (I know, I know...the Eskimo have, what is it, 50 words? That's very creative. But until we in America can come up with some equally creative alternatives, I hereby declare that only "snow" is permissible!) :)
Anyway, Friday was the first snowstorm of the season here in Joisey/NYC. We got about 4 inches in Weehawken. Our office had word that a storm was coming, so we all got work to take home and didn't have to come in on Friday. It was really relaxing to be all warm and cozy and leisurely doing editing while watching all the slipping-and-sliding and snow-plowing and car-scraping and sidewalk-shoveling/salting outside my window. People were busy out there!
I looooooove this weather! Being from Texas, seeing maybe an inch or two of snow every 2 or 3 years, if that, it's all still very ghostly and exotic to me. (And I've always loved winter clothes more than summer clothes---the hats, the boots, the gloves, the sweaters... I love shopping for them and getting all bundled up.)
These first two shots are from my front window, the second two from the back kitchen window, and the last, just my plants enjoying the white light.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
WET
In late October of this year, someone I knew from my college years 20 years ago came back into my life, briefly. Here's a poem I wrote for her last October:
The kid in her, at 46
Still smoking "wet"
Still screaming at the stars, coating the walls
with quotes from Ted Hughes
Bemoaning lost love and the god
she'd never given up
There was a walk we never took
A swim we never had
We never got wet, despite my wanting
And now we are not kids, I am so glad.
The kid in her, at 46
Still smoking "wet"
Still screaming at the stars, coating the walls
with quotes from Ted Hughes
Bemoaning lost love and the god
she'd never given up
There was a walk we never took
A swim we never had
We never got wet, despite my wanting
And now we are not kids, I am so glad.
A Christmas Memory: Rinder-Rouladen
The most succulent, tender, best-tasting beef meal ever, a Christmas staple in the Jones family, thanks to my mom's German recipe. The name translates to "Beef Roll-ups." And I cannot wait to eat it when I go home this Christmas!!
The below is the best alternative recipe I could find online, though the inclusion of dill pickles (!) is ridiculous! (It's just extremely tender, red-wine-marinated steak rolled up with chopped onions and bacon, dammit---no freaky pickles! Though, one time, just for a test, our family ordered this dish at a San Antonio restaurant... It came with pickles, the meat was tough...It was nasty! The test proved that it wasn't the dish that was so good, it was my mom's cooking!)
When my mom first came to America as a new bride in the early '60s, her own recipe for this dish was featured in a local Texas paper. We still have the clipping in a scrapbook. I don't have that with me now, but here's the pickly online recipe I just found to give you a general idea of what it is:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977424871
I will always remember my mother's rinder-rouladen, pot-roast, and home-made pizza. (And I will always hope to forget those godforsaken stuffed bell peppers that kept showing up on the dinner table! To this day, when I taste bell peppers, it reminds me of what "cramps" and "evil" must taste like!) :)
The below is the best alternative recipe I could find online, though the inclusion of dill pickles (!) is ridiculous! (It's just extremely tender, red-wine-marinated steak rolled up with chopped onions and bacon, dammit---no freaky pickles! Though, one time, just for a test, our family ordered this dish at a San Antonio restaurant... It came with pickles, the meat was tough...It was nasty! The test proved that it wasn't the dish that was so good, it was my mom's cooking!)
When my mom first came to America as a new bride in the early '60s, her own recipe for this dish was featured in a local Texas paper. We still have the clipping in a scrapbook. I don't have that with me now, but here's the pickly online recipe I just found to give you a general idea of what it is:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977424871
I will always remember my mother's rinder-rouladen, pot-roast, and home-made pizza. (And I will always hope to forget those godforsaken stuffed bell peppers that kept showing up on the dinner table! To this day, when I taste bell peppers, it reminds me of what "cramps" and "evil" must taste like!) :)
Guess Who
Monday, December 15, 2008
My most favorite goosebump-raising Christmas songs
1984/1969
"Tonight thank god it's them instead of you..."
"Tonight thank god it's them instead of you..."
Fruitiest Christmas Songs Ever
While driving to the company Christmas party this afternoon, my boss thought she'd get us in the mood by tuning in to her Sirius radio's Christmas station. Unfortunately, this was the first song we heard:
We were all listening, aghast: WHAT is this "ba-noing-a-noing"?! How fruity is this?!
Psychic that I am, I said, while the Jewel song was still on, "I've only heard ONE Christmas song that's fruitier than this..." Famous last words, because as soon as the Jewel song ended, what should come on but...
We were all listening, aghast: WHAT is this "ba-noing-a-noing"?! How fruity is this?!
Psychic that I am, I said, while the Jewel song was still on, "I've only heard ONE Christmas song that's fruitier than this..." Famous last words, because as soon as the Jewel song ended, what should come on but...
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Baby, it's bad out there!
I love Dean. How smooth is he! (At a Christmas party a couple of years ago, this song came on. I was sitting on a couch next to an Irish guy, who commented wryly, "It's not like Mr. Martin would ever try to bust a move or anything.") :)
"Get over that hold-out,
Baby, it's cold outside..."
"Get over that hold-out,
Baby, it's cold outside..."
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