The Celebration of the Death of DOMA

Taken from George Takei's Facebook Page

The caption to the left is similar to how I looked when I turned on my computer yesterday morning to see some of the best news I have seen in years. The Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA had been put down by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional. For those of you who are unfamiliar with DOMA, as I once was, it is a law that was signed by President Clinton. Simply it mandated that if a same sex couple got a civil marriage or a civil union that other states did not need to recognize that. Such as a same sex couple that got married in Massachusetts moved to New York the state of New York would not have to recognize that relationship as legal. Not only did DOMA make it difficult for same sex couples to be able to move where they pleased, it made it difficult for them to travel and retain their rights. Such as if a same sex couple would be on vacation in Florida and they were in a car accident the family of the injured party would have rights to visitation of the injured, but the spouse may not have rights of visitation and could even be asked by the family and the hospital to leave. These are the kinds of situations that make the end of DOMA worth celebrating.

However not everyone in the Union will see this as a matter worth celebration. Many people in California donated thousands of dollars to make certain that Proposition Eight passed. And when it did lawmakers were faced with a group of people who proposed that it may be unconstitutional. This is what made DOMA and Proposition Eight so controversial: the fact that people said they wanted X and the Bill of Rights said people should get Y. This is what the Supreme Court among others has been trying to sort out for years since all this began back in 2008. Now that it has been declared unconstitutional there are groups of people who are upset because the Supreme Court did not vote in favor of the people. Instead they elected to give the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community their rights. This is why I celebrate.

However I need to make a confession to you. I am a Mormon. Mormons did much of the funding for Proposition Eight in California. I do not agree with their choice despite some of my beliefs being the same as theirs. I believe that religious marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman. The purpose of that marriage is to have a relationship that lasts longer than our lifetime here on earth and into the eternities before God. None of the doctrine I have read has ever led me to believe that God offers that same opportunity for those of the LGBT community. That is the primary reason why I am against religious marriage for the LGBT community. However civil marriage which is the legal form of the union which is recognized by the state and federal government I believe is crucial to the livelihood of this nation if we want to continue to brand our nation as the land of the free.

The United States of America was established to offer religious freedom to the puritans over two hundred years ago. During that time we have had to redefine freedom multiple times. First we had to figure out what it meant to give the natives freedom. We hurt them as individual nations by taking their lands, corrupting their culture, and expecting them to peacefully respond to our demands. I do not need to describe to you that this went poorly. Next we had to deal with the issue of slavery. This issue lasted much longer because of the belief that blacks were less than human at one point. With the Emancipation Proclamation we purchased a peaceless surrender of the slaves. Over the freedom of slaves we started a civil war, we instituted the Jim Crow Laws, and we oppressed blacks for another hundred years after they were granted their “freedom.” Today we face the issue of Gay Rights and we are responding to it in much the same way we did with same grace and sensitivity that we have with these other issues. We as a people are undereducated about it, fearful of it, and unwilling to recognize in what ways we may be wrong about how we are treating our fellow human beings. Same Sex Marriage is only one of a multitude of rights that the LGBT community is fighting for.

In my celebration of the Death of DOMA I am committing to becoming more educated on how to help support the rights of the LGBT community because I do not want to repeat the mistakes of our past. As a young black man, I still see discrimination towards me and I’ve seen it towards the LGBT community as well. And personally I hurt, because I know they hurt. Civil Rights isn’t about protecting the definition of a word that doesn’t need protection. The definition of marriage changed in the Oxford Dictionary already. And marriage in the context of what the LGBT community is working towards has everything to do with legal rights and nothing to do with trying to take the domestic comfort of the families of heterosexual couples. This is about making us as a people living according to the values that we state in our Constitution to stand by. If we are seeking the Life, Liberty, and Happiness of all the people in our nation then we by definition need to give to our people the same rights that they can be with those they love, take care of their families, and build our nation into the beacon of freedom that it claims to be.

I end this blog with one of my favorite songs. It is by Mackelmore and Lewis and it is called Same Love. I believe if we raise the rising generation to hate themselves, fear the judgment of others, and polarize themselves and others on the issues we face in our world we will fail them. We owe it to ourselves, and our children to educate ourselves that we may be full of love one for another and live in real freedom.

The Difference a Teacher Can Make

In another life I work at a Junior High School as a tutor.  Often it is an uplifting job, because I get to work with smart kids who are learning about their own potential and want to really go someplace with their lives.  Sometimes though, I hate being there.  Not because the kids don't care (and sometimes they don't), but because I hear the way the "teachers" are speaking to them in the hall.  As a society often we talk about the disrespect of students towards teachers, when I think we should consider the fact that the students are learning disrespect from their teachers.  Calling your students, "Lazy Lumps" or telling them that you can't believe they can't solve a problem on the board doesn't really inspire them to give their all in class.  Yelling at them like animals isn't a solution either.  But I've seen teachers do both of these things as a tutor.

Mind you I'm not saying teachers are terrible.  I believe that most of them are given tools to educate, test, and show our students the way to success.  But most of them are taught how to deal with the ideal classroom rather than a real classroom and this can frustrate and discourage even the best or most well meaning teacher.  And as I was once told by one of my mentors, "Discipline is the most important thing a teacher must teach."

For example, a few years ago I was in a classroom with a man who told his students how stupid he thought they were when they wouldn't answer his questions when he taught them at the board.  After doing so, he still expected for them to do their work, but most of them just refused.  When I was in his classroom I noticed that there were three types of students in his class.  The ones who refused to care, the ones who refused to let him keep them down, and the ones who were hurt by his callous attitude.  I didn't spend a lot of time with the ones who weren't effected by him, and instead focused on the students who he hurt the most with his comments.  In a few weeks of being in his class they were working hard on every assignment, because for every time he insulted them I reminded them of how smart they were and helped them with the work.  They trusted me and what I said more than what he said and soon enough they were able to answer his questions on the board and he was praising them too.  But had he chosen to discipline them with expectations according to their ability instead of ridiculing them for their silence he could have developed that relationship with them on his own.

The following is a video of one of my online mentors, Mr. Taylor Mali.  He's a poet and a teacher and the message in this video is superb.  Take a few minutes and watch it.  I'll wait.  He's worth it.




I think Mr. Mali would agree that right now we are in a teaching epidemic.  How many of our kids come home from school feeling this way about their teachers?  Too often they have one teacher like Mr. Mali, the others don't seem to care enough, and then there's one who is just awful.  And that awful one makes you never want to send your child to school again, because the awesome teachers can't undo the damage the awful one's do alone.

So if you have children, please be more involved in their education.  Teachers do have tenure, but nothing says that they have to attend a class or a school where they are being hurt.  One of my friends recently kept her daughter from going to a school where her son had problems.  Other friends have gotten their students involved with helping their teachers.  When a student understands the work load a teacher is under, it changes how they participate in their classrooms.

It is time to expect something more of our teachers and the systems that prepare them for the classroom. But this isn't just about teachers in the classroom.  It is also about what we invest in our children's education.  Teachers should be able to expect us to support them.  When that teacher who was calling students stupid, when he had the support of his students his attitude changed.  If we teach our children they need to support teachers and show that through our own example by communicating with them, sharing our concerns, and praising them for what they are doing well we can make a community of teaching that can change the lives of countless students.

I have a pretty solid plan for what I will do if I am not able to make it at first as a novelist.  I have every intention of teaching in a classroom.  And even if I make it as a novelist I'll be finding ways to support teachers in my community.  Because teaching is a communal activity.  You, I, and our teachers all play a part.  And it is my hope that the future will be bright because we all learn how we can.  I'm the First OG, Jayrod Garrett, and I just want to know:

In what ways do you see us being able to better support our teachers?

The Culture Blogs: Sex Education, isn't it about time?

As I finished my last blog I said that I was going to blog about Abortion.  Let's just say that was the seed of a larger idea.  This is one of many trees that have grown from that seed.  I'll get to Abortion itself eventually, but we need a foundation by which to have that conversation.  This series is dedicated to building a better foundation for people understanding sex itself.

President Obama said during his last campaign a loaded statement about his daughers: "If they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."  This is the kind of fodder that political newscasters rail folks for and here you can see it developed into a meme.  So I went to CNN for a more complete version of what was said.  He followed this statement with: "I don't want them punished with a STD at the age of 16."  Which clearly made this conversation about Sex Education.  But for the sake of our discussion I'd like bring up a single point of the wide array of subjects underneath Sexual Education:  Birth Control.

Politically, Sexual Education is a wedge issue.  In my experience these are issues politicians talk about a lot, and put into place poor standards for how to fix them.  Danielle Deaver's experience is an example of this.  And I'll be honest I don't blame them.  We as American's don't take the time to really learn about most issues in our society.  We tend to hear a few comments that we agree with or disagree with and base our decision on what we want on that.  Because let's face it, most of us don't really want the facts.  The facts can mess with our idea of morality, and too many of us are too shallow in our ideologies to really deal with them (notice I didn't remove myself from that generalization).

My wife a few years ago was in a Human Sexuality class where she was asked to ask a Pharmacist: What is the most effective form of birth control?  The purpose of the question was to see how pharmacists might react to that question.  Well when she went to the pharmacy she wasn't wearing her wedding ring (cause she was going to go exercise after the visit) and she was wearing a Carebears hoodie which made her look like a 19 year old.  And when she approached the pharmacy the pharmacy assistant asked if they could help her.  She asked her question and it caused the assistant take a step back away from her and the counter.  (I can't help, but wonder why?  Maybe it had something to do with her unadorned left hand.)  The assistant then went back to get the Pharmacist and spoke in a low voice to the pharmacist.  The Pharmacist came up, looked at my wife's left hand, and then asked my wife how he could help her.  She asked her question.  Afterwards he began asking her questions that she felt were inappropriate such as: "Why don't you want to have children?"  "How old are you?"& "Does your partner approve of this?"  Because she is awesome, she managed to put up with it long enough for the pharmacist to give her the information.  In her class she was the only person who had a bad experience, but she's not alone in this kind of treatment.  Karen, on prochoice America's Youtube channel shares about her own pharmacy refusal story here.   They are two of thousands who I'm certain have been given the same treatment.  This frightens me.  Not because of their questions, but about the kind of power a Pharmacist (who is a medical professional and therefore required by law to be impartial) has.  Because if either one of them came in as a rape victim and asked for the morning after pill, there is a high likelihood that either the Pharmacist would have refused or they would have walked out because of the emotional stress the Pharmacist would be putting them through.  Neither one of those answers are acceptable.

Birth Control takes various different forms from pills, to condoms, to even implants to prevent pregnancy.  It isn't something folks use just because they don't want a baby, it is used for far more purposes than that.  The morning after pill is crucial for victims of rape, because I cannot see anything more traumatic than giving birth to the child of your rapist.  Even if she puts the child up for adoption she will always wonder about that child and that could get in the way of her healing.  The morning after pill prevents a impregnation in several ways (all of which can be found at goaskalice.com).  Two of which are: Stopping the woman's overies from releasing eggs (ovulation), and making the uterine lining inhospitable to a fertilized egg.  Now contrary to popular belief this is not abortion because there will not be a pregnancy at all if the zygote or blastocyst doesn't attach to either the fallopian tube (which you don't want to happen under any circumstances) or the uterine wall.  This saves a rape victim from having to deal with birthing a possible child from her attacker.

Ever heard of Polycytic Ovary Syndrome?  This is one of the most common female endocrine disorders  which can cause anovulation, irregular menstration, amenorrhea, and polycystic ovaries.  And one of the things they prescribe to help with it is Birth Control Pills.

And lets face it, what if a woman does want to use birth control so that she can have sexual intercourse?  Does this make her a slut?  No.  Basing this on a moral judgment is unfair because all of us have different moral backgrounds.  We don't have a right to judge a woman who has chosen to be responsible about when she has children.  The funny thing about the responsible woman is she has been made a rarity, because receiving an education to be responsible is difficult.  In my experience the same folks who would judge the woman for her actions, are the same who will not give their children an adequate sexual education.  Instead many of them speak of sex as dirty, sinful, and ugly.  Because we don't support sexual education, we unwittingly support the entertainment media that sells kids sexual glamorization.

If we want a nation where birth control is used responsibly we have to give our citizens the right to learn about it.  If parents won't open their mouths, then we need it in our schools and we need professionals who are qualified to teach it without an inflection of their own moral system.  I was in college before I had adequate education concerning sex to help my understanding.  Is it just me, or does that strike you as too late?

I'm deliberately avoiding current controversies to institute deeper thought, because I know as well as you do sometimes we think on an emotional basis as opposed to a logical one.  I hope that this has expanded your understanding concerning birth control.  And I welcome your opinions.  Feel free to add to these thoughts in a way that doesn't tear down what anyone else thinks or believes.  I'm Jayrod Garrett, the First OG and here's a departing question for you:

Do you want your children to be punished by children or

Recognize them for the gift that they really are?

The Culture Blogs: Faces of Manipulation (1 of Many)

Manipulation has so many faces that it isn't even funny.  Like the Many Faced God in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice often we don't recognize what all of the faces are about.  Today I'd like to reveal to you one of the many faces of manipulation.  Peer pressure.

This is a form of manipulation everyone has dealt with their entire lives.  But how you've dealt with it has a lot to do with the kind of person that you chose to really be peers with.  Like the comic to underneath illustrates you can bludgeon someone into your choice by making them feel like they have no other choices available to themselves.  Especially when their knowledge isn't as broad as your own.

Curtesy of dndorks.com Check them out they're pretty funny, if you play D&D.  FYI: Druids are better healers.

This is an example of peer pressure.  Both of these guys are playing D&D together.  The one gets told what he's going to do because of what everyone else has chosen. It isn't fair at all.  But face it folks all of us have dealt with this kind of manipulation multiple times in our lives.

The Joker was one of the most memorable villians we've ever seen use this to the greatest end.  He set up a social "experiment" where a cruise ship and a ship of criminals are both dead in the water and he claims to have set up bombs on each.  The people on each boat are told that there is a time limit on the bombs, but they can save themselves if they are willing to push a button to destroy the other ship.  I'll not ruin the experiment for you if you haven't seen the movie, but it is great food for thought.  Because sometimes I wonder if I would have had the strength to push the button or get rid of the detonator.

Have you ever seen one person who is made stronger because of the peer pressure though?  They choose deliberately not to give in.  This is why I think peer pressure can be good, because you wouldn't have people who have such inner strength without it.  A perfect example of the kind of person who can be born of peer pressure is Anne Frank.

How many of us would have kept a disposition of love and joy while the government killed our people?  How many of us would still think people are still fundamentally good while being hunted in a game of genocide?  I wonder about such a question sometimes.  I would like to think I would keep such a disposition, but I've also been to Iraq and come home with various different ways my head has been messed up.  But I love the Iraqi people, they are certainly odd and many of the things they choose to do to one another make me want to cry, but I see them as people just like the rest of us who are trying to figure out their place in this world.  I can't blame a people who have been oppressed for living as if they have no civilization.  Oppression is a peer pressure all its own.

I for one believe that those who don't give in to negative peer pressure over years of torturous abuse have chosen a different peer group.  A peer group of good people that they don't want to let down.  Whether that be your family, your friends, or your God.  Peer pressure exists in every family.  We use it when we tell our children that we are disappointed in them or we beat them for their poor decisions.  Another part of this idea to consider.

I leave you with these ideas to consider as I close today.  I don't know how much peer pressure affects me.  But I'm trying to learn how to be an influencer of positive peer pressure.  It has been difficult, but I believe that if I keep working at it I'll be successful at it eventually.  Maybe I already am.  But I don't really matter here.  Rather you do.

I've chosen where I stand in my peer groups.  Stand or fall, I'll get back up and try and retain the stand I've taken.  I want people to believe that there are human beings out there that actually love everyone.   And ultimately the only human powers in the world that change hearts are love and hate.

Our books of the month remain Tankborn by Karen Sandler and Dhalgren by Samuel Delany.  In any book that deals with the concepts of race and racism like these do, the question of how one will be shaped by the pressures around them is ever present.  Joker chose to be shaped into a sociopathic sadist by what things were done to him.  Anne Frank chose to be a light to the human race.

One lucky follower of the blog will receive each of these books.  Cause I know that not everyone can follow my blog there are two ways to get entries.  One is to actually follow the blog this will get your name put into my hat three times, and the other is to leave a comment on the blog.  For each comment I receive on my blog during the month of March (I think it has said February a few times, my apologies) I'll put your name into the hat once.  I enjoy doing this because it gets me reading different books, supporting authors I love, and it allows me an opportunity to give back to you, my audience.



Tomorrow is the weekly Mashup and the End of the First Round of Words in Eighty Days.  I'll talk about my success and failures and what I hope for the next round then.  Jayrod Garrett, the First OG signing out.  Oh, I got a question: How has peer pressure shaped you in your life or how does it shape the world around you?

The Culture Blogs: Left Brain vs Right Brain

“I am the left brain.  I am dependent on denotative language and abstraction.  I yield clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless.  I love the familiar.  Principles.  Segregation.  I am black and white.  I am organized reality.  I am your world and your views.    Morals.  Hatred.  Values.  Love.  I am the rational mind.”

                                    Versus

“I am the right brain.  I yield a world of changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world.  I am Diversity.  An open mind.  Connection.  Intertextuality.  I am so many sounds you can't comprehend them all.  So many colors you can't tell where one ends and the next begins.  And more tastes than you can bear to examine.  I am boundless imagination.  I am everything and everyone.  Art.  Mathematics.  Music.  Noise.  Infinity.  I am the intuitive mind.”

You've probably seen this picture before.  If so you are likely saying that's not what the captions beside the picture say.  And you would be right.  But when I saw this picture I immediately decided to do a little bit of research on the matter.  What I found completely blew me away.  I discovered this RSA Animate on the Divided Brain and it sparked all sorts of new ideas for me.  From why we tend to polarize in politics, religions, and in education.  It has all to do with how our brains work and the society we have developed around ourselves.

It's kinda long, but I promise its worth it!

For those of you who didn’t watch it, I’ll give ya a short recap.  Basically it shares about how we have lost sight of what the mind actually does for us.  It is entirely designed to inhibit information from one side to the other so that we can correctly interpret it.  And as we have grown as a society we have begun to focus more on the power of the left side of the brain, the rational side as opposed to the intuitive side, and we effects of that in our society are interesting.

Here’s three examples of this culture that can be used in your writing:

1. Left Brain thinking in Politics

In politics there is a great deal of hero worship and demonizing that goes on.  I see it among my friends, neighbors, and those people that I try to ignore sometimes.  President Obama is a great example of these types of thoughts.  Those who support Obama think that he is amazing and that he has been good for America.  On the other hand those who don’t support him tend to say everything he has done has been bad, and there are even those who go as far as to call him the Anti-Christ.

Now is one end the truth or the other?  Personal opinion is that he’s probably somewhere in the middle.  But if you want to be able to write fiction that is balanced and referential to our current day, you wouldn’t go wrong by using this in your political climate. 

2. Left Brain thinking in War

As a soldier allow me to tell you that this is a crucial matter for a soldier.  I was trained to seek out and destroy the enemy back in basic training.  There were times I said kill as I performed an attack so much that I hated what I was doing.  But as a soldier I cannot have right brain thinking on the battlefield about the enemy’s family: their spouse, children, and pets.  I cannot afford to humanize them, or else when it comes down life or death I might hesitate.  And then the person dead is me.

However encompassing right brain thinking into the mourning process afterwards I think is important.  Because for me it forces me to recognize the importance of human life, and how people can be on opposite sides of a conflict and still fighting for the same basic values: Government, Freedom, Family, and Religion.

3. Left Brain thinking in Education

Math is the most hated class in high school and university classes hands down.  Often folks say that Math Teachers can’t teach.  Others say Math is useless.  And the iron gates of the Left Brain shut off to Math because it is hard.

Now I’m okay at Math, not great.  But I think it is because I approach it from the perspective of a Right Brained person.  Math is a language like Spanish, Russian, or German.  And so it requires me to study like it is a language.  Meaning I have to do study groups, find applications in everyday life, and spend copious amounts of time learning it.  I suffered from the Left Brain thinking for years before I realized that.  I passed Math once I discovered that.

If you spend some time thinking about it, I’m sure there are some plots or subplots to a novel you can use this concept in.  Or perhaps you can apply it to your own life, like I did to be able to get through my Math courses.  Either way using both sides of our brain to process what we are given each day is crucial to a correct understanding of the world around us.

Think about what issues you are decided on, and then spend time listening to the arguments of the other side.  Allow both sides of your brain a chance to use everything they have.  You may stay right where you are in your opinion, but you may experience a revolution of the mind where you discover not that you are wrong, but that there are other opinions that are just as valid and right as your own.

As we are drawing close to the end of February I would love for everyone who visits my blog to leave a comment.  For every person that comments on my blog this month I am putting an entry into a hat for an opportunity to win a copy of N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  I plan on giving three of these away.  It was nominated last year for both a Hugo and a Nebula award.  And it has been a fascinating read thus far.

That’s all for now folks, my name is Jayrod Garrett and I am the First OG.  How do you use both your rational and intuitive minds together?

Freedom: Do we actually know what it is anymore?

I often find myself asking people, what is freedom.  The responses to this question are interesting and range from: being able to do whatever I want, to being able to live however I want.  And it really is true.  In our republic today we have people who have taken freedom to concepts that thirty years ago we would never have been able to imagine.  The fight for LGBT rights, gun control, and healthcare have been incredible to watch.  But why are we fighting for anything if we are truly free?

So in any question I ask I turn to the dictionary to get definitions.  According to Merriam Webster freedom is defined as:

A: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.

B: liberation from slavery or restraint or from power of another: independence.

C: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous (freedom from care)

H: unrestricted use (gave him the freedom of their home)

I’ve always found this definition to be lacking because in the dictionary you find the technical meaning, but you miss the spiritual meaning of the word.  Freedom cannot be separated from responsibility and anytime they are parted you have no freedom, instead you have suffering.

For instance if there were the dictionary’s definition of freedom in gun control then the only person who would have “freedom” is the person who had the best gun and gun skills around.  They would make the law according as they saw fit for they would have the power necessary to do so.

So freedom for one equals slavery for others.  This is otherwise known as lawlessness.  We have laws in place to protect our individual rights so that we are not taken over by the man with the big gun.

Well what happens when the society themselves adopts the guns for themselves for protection to the point that nobody can really do anything with the gun?  They barely can protect themselves or their rights?  Or they simply elect that nobody can have the guns anymore?  This is known as slavery.  

Slavery and lawlessness are two heads of the same coin of unrestricted freedom.  And as a result these forces tend to destroy not just people, but societies, and worst of all worlds.  We can see it in the very struggles for freedom within America.  Gay rights are not about a woman marrying a woman or a man marrying a man, but being treated as every other citizen is to be respectfully treated.  Gun control shouldn’t be about disarming the people who want to protect themselves, but about teaching people about how to thoughtfully handle a weapon.  And we need a healthcare system in place so that we may have peace of mind about our families.

Liberty without Security is lawlessness,

Security without liberty is slavery,

Only when both are balanced and in harmony can there be freedom.

So please ask yourselves as you read this, what do you really want for freedom?  Are you trying to create the world you want to live in, or a world for all of us to live in?  I for one want a world with as much diversity and beauty as there can be.  A world where freedom is unrestricted because the people care too much about each other to live without law or enslave another.  Is that too much to ask?  Probably, but if we don’t ask for it, how can we ever achieve it?

You might wonder why I’m writing this when I’m reporting about my writing goals.  It has to do with an addiction I have to video games.  If I start playing the right one I have a very hard time stopping even to do things that I want to do, such as write.  I’ve spent most of this week playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and it has been awesome.  But my writing has suffered to the point of having written nothing for goals since Wednesday.  So in order to free myself from the self imposed bondage I’ve put myself into, I’m staying away from playing it for the duration of today and making a new ROW80 goal.  I will only play video games up to twelve hours a week from now on.  Perhaps this doesn’t seem like it is working for that goal of the world I want, but that world begins inside of me.  If I am not unfettered of what powers I allow to enslave me, how can my writing ever help anyone to free themselves?

My other goal is to catch up on what I have missed out on writing by the time of the next check in.  Which is not only possible, but exactly what will happen.  That I promise.

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave your comments below.  I love reading them and enjoy the opportunity to communicate with our community.  Peace.