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From 2024, for the dot-connecting.
This one…
11 Sep 2026 Leave a comment
I planned not to highlight today’s remembrances, but they aren’t yet through with me.
Housekeeping…
14 Jul 2026 1 Comment
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I opened my eyes this morning and found myself, in the immortal words of Ulla Inka Hansen Benson Yansen Tallen Hallen Swadon Swanson, in the mood to “tidy-oop” a little. And if you’ve somehow missed The Producers in your lifetime, watch it posthaste, you’ll thank me for the reference.
Speaking of tidying accumulated detritus, what I’ve observed about computer files over time is that they are faithful to their calling which is to fill themselves to capacity with things no one will ever need again. Ever. But MIGHT just… so therein lies the dilemma. I can’t simply let them go, despite an experienced knowledge of how this works, so I’m tossing this batch into your court, do with it as you may. I’ll yield to the inner compunction to share it, then immediately throw it in the bin. Heartlessly, I assure you.
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And a couple from the realists…
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Sadness and anger are cousins and can exist simultaneously with all the other human emotions. There are no Get Out of (Existential) Jail Free cards.
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There’s so much sadness and anger intermingled in this one it’s hard to process. Incredibly, this is what a massive part of The People’s House looks like now, before it gets even worse. And no one bothered to get clearance for ANY of it.
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My heart hurts for everybody younger than 60 (as well as everyone older than 60), because every generation since the Boomers (mine) has believed deep down that there’s no rosy future for anyone of any age anymore. That’s a bleak outlook to base a lifetime on, and not fair… but I’ve never heard anyone say life’s designed to be fair. I do especially feel for the kids coming out of high school this year, the college grads, the people who need to be ready to take over from us, the certified elderly, and steer the country away from the cliffs. Again. Some more. The youthful ones who traditionally lace up their boots and implement plans formulated by old men in windowless rooms who are basically immune to the downsides. And those old men and women have to get a clue and retire because for the most part they’ve lost the plot and aren’t keeping up with what time inevitably delivers. Life is entirely about change. That’s an immutable fact and it’s pointless to laugh in the face of reality.
Meanwhile, those high school and college “kids,” what ABOUT them? Who and what are they supposed to believe and internalize? What kind of society is being built via all these mixed messages? What sort of adults are under construction as we speak? And who shoulders responsibility if it all turns to quicksand under our feet?
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Which brings us full circle to an important truth…
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It’s a beautiful day.
Find someone to be nice to.
Smile a little or a lot.
Keep your powder dry
and work with what ya’ got.
[I may have just written a pome.]
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Christmas countdown time?
01 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
***
Nobody seems to know what happened to October, but November showed up this morning so we must keep the line moving. The good thing is that it’s traditionally a beautiful month, full of plans and anticipation for many, a time to start the pre-hibernation ritual for most. The clock returns to its rightful setting (and oh that “they” would LEAVE it there), while darkness falls like a theatre curtain by 5:30 and earlier. Messes with my head all the way to my toes every time “they” tweak reality, so Greenwich Mean Time year ’round would be super-great, thanks.
As we streak toward the end of a year that feels three months long, everything in our nation and elsewhere is in a state of flux. Our entire way of life is under assault, with wildly disturbing things happening every day without fail, and there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it. It’s heartbreaking to think there are still people who watch what’s going on and say, “Yes, this is exactly what I wanted,” or at the least, “Nope, not a dealbreaker yet.” I wish I had answers. I wish SOMEbody did.
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Most everything gets better eventually so let’s all keep on keeping on.
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Sage advice from a sage.
Month by month…
06 Sep 2025 2 Comments
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Abundant August rains have brought us to a lush September, and fall should be a show of color. I love all of autumn but I may be prejudiced toward the month of September since it contains my birth date (today) so just know I’m doing some extra thinking. I staggered into a Facebook site last week called WDNC, populated by women WhoDoNotCare, and it’s as therapeutic as you might already imagine. In that vein and a spirit of celebration:
IDNC that I’ve never, in all these years, managed to fit the mold. Full disclosure, I still don’t even know where and what it is, so I guess that gives us the pertinent information right there, hm.
IDNC that on the little things I’m wrong more often than right, that’s just bad luck. On the BIG things I’m far more often right.
IDNC that I alone can say what qualifies as large or small in life.
There are many things I genuinely no longer care about and most of them are things I should never have cared about at all, so passing birthdays are good for perspective and a few other concepts like longevity, which reminds me… I’m not old. Not yet. Both of my grandmothers saw 96 with their minds in working order and I call that incentive. My mom had me in the same September in which she turned 20, so I always knew exactly how old she was. This year she would be 98 and likely still wouldn’t be “old,” so there’s some more perspective.
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The state of human existence being what it is, I offer one piece of advice from this vantage point: Whatever it is, do it NOW.
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And everybody still gets one special birthday wish, right?
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Let the light always remind us…
21 Dec 2024 Leave a comment
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… that the sun will soon return.
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Pardon my dust…
30 Nov 2024 Leave a comment
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From the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader:
Opinion | Pardon our devastation. Millions of you put a criminal in the White House.
Pardon our devastation. More than 75 million of our fellow citizens put a malevolent, criminal madman in the White House. We’ve watched you embrace him as he destroys your faith in science, education, and our government. You stuck with him after he lied and incited a deadly insurrection. You champion him as he demonizes and endangers nonwhite immigrants. You swallow his ridiculous lies about our public schools doing “sex change” surgeries. You ignore his plans to reverse the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, even when you have loved ones that this will profoundly affect. You numbly nod as he repeatedly speaks of black jobs. Not a flicker of alarm when he stated immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” You support his promises to destroy families with immigrant camps and mass deportations. You cheer for him as he promises revenge on his political opponents. You excused him when he demeaned our dead war heroes. You ignore that he is a convicted felon, found liable for rape.
For eight years, the rest of America has made excuses for you. You’re brainwashed. Misinformed by Fox commentary. But that no longer tracks. You heard the words straight from his mouth. Even low information voters know he was convicted of 34 felony counts. That he was found liable for rape. His vile words and behavior don’t matter to you. You’re either in it for the promised tax break or the lawlessness or the hate. But you’re all in.
Decent Americans can no longer ignore or navigate our moral incompatibility with you. That is why so many people were devastated last week. We didn’t just lose an election. We lost friends and family and neighbors to a vision of America that is corrupt and dishonorable and cruel. We’re grappling with the reality that everything we ever learned about kindness, decency, honesty, respect, patriotism, fairness, and democracy has been relinquished by half of our citizens. We optimistically hoped that deep down, you were better than this. We learned you weren’t.
So what you now see aren’t liberal tears over a lost election. It’s brutal grief over our losses of friends and family who no longer share our understanding of right and wrong and what it means to be a decent citizen. And it’s fear for our daughters and our minority friends and neighbors who now have targets on their backs. We won’t expect you to feel shame. Our new clarity assures us you’ll laugh or shrug this off, turn on Fox News, and continue to gorge yourselves on immigrant crime, hate porn, and the evils of feeding school children a free lunch. You’ll consume more nonsense about how men supporting women turns them into women. Your hate and fear control you.
In my view, you are now inextricably connected to the man you support. When the next Asian woman is assaulted, you will be one of the attackers. When families are ripped apart and put in camps, you will be one of their guards. When another woman dies from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, you’re one of the people barring the door to her doctor. When the next trans woman or gay man is beaten up, your foot is on their throat. You voted to hurt people and that is unacceptable.
What your guy refers to as the Lunatic Left, Communist Left, Radical Left, will still be here. We won’t don cult gear, denigrate our flag or corrupt the term “patriot.” We won’t grab our guns and bear spray and storm the Capitol. We’ll organize locally in an effort to protect the targets of your cruelty. We’ll push back against the destruction of our public schools. We’ll stand between racist and target; misogynist and our daughters. We’ll teach our children and grandchildren the difference between tolerance of people’s differences and tolerance of hate. We’ll work our jobs, pay our bills and our taxes, and love our families. We just won’t be doing it in relationship with you anymore than is absolutely necessary.
Jan Scherrer is a speech language pathologist and mother of two who lives in Versailles, Ky., and I’m honored to reprint her here.
Into the long, dark night…
07 Nov 2024 Leave a comment
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ACCEPTANCE
by Robert Frost
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.”
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Patience & time are powerful warriors…
25 Oct 2024 1 Comment
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How many times in your life have you hit cycles that required you to wait, and wait… and wait… sometimes for decades. And at no point during the wait did you know how it would all turn out. That’s the trick, being ready no matter what happens. Prepared, if necessary, to leave everything you’ve known and loved, for almost 80 years in my case, trusting that life will go on, as it always does.
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“All of the sudden,” the wait is nearly at an end, and it almost doesn’t seem real that after everything that’s happened over the past nine or ten years we’re within two weeks of knowing our fate as a nation. Less than two weeks to settle the basic question: Will we be a dictator-run oligarchy or a democratic republic?
Every part of who we are as Americans hinges on this election. We can’t erase what has happened, so what we stand up for NOW is who we will be going forward. The world is standing by, watching anxiously to see what will happen here. Will we still represent hope, or be counted among the rubble fascism always leaves in its wake? Just another domino in a succession of fallen nations with lofty ideals. How heartbreaking! Are people really willing to let us end that way?
Where every conflict starts.
Fall fell and handed it back to summer…
05 Oct 2024 Leave a comment
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It’s officially fall and the weather has been changing for a while now, by which I mean every day into something different from the day before. Apparently we’ve just emerged from a season called False Fall and are now into Second Summer. We’ll see where it goes from here, observing as spectators while Weather does what it will do.
Fall is always a melancholy reflective season, and true to form my thoughts have been a concoction of things heavy and light, happy and sad, profound and sublimely ridiculous. In the midst of all that I started a list the other day of personal do’s and don’ts in life’s third trimester. There’s no place I yearn to return to, so life has just one direction… forward. And I needed a little self-help with that, thus the list. The points are for me, not for advice, but if something resonates with you don’t hesitate to claim it for yourself.
So, in no special order, as they popped into my head:
- I’ve stopped going to funerals, for all the reasons. My all-time personal hero oncology nurse showed me I’m not a bad person for skipping out. Do life while it’s here, no regrets, because if you’re not careful the ceremonies will overwhelm actual living.
- I don’t give money to politicians unless they’re running at grassroots level and don’t have big resources. The rest start with kajillions and then ask ME for money? And then for MORE, repeatedly??
- I try not to schedule morning appointments because they’re an unnecessary assault on my senses. There’s a window between lunch and dinner when I’m fully awake and human, so life outside my door is best if it happens during the afternoon hours. You know, if possible.
- I don’t take advice from people whose moral code I can’t respect. People say lots of words, but when they give legs to their coldheartedness I walk away.
- I don’t chase people. If you’re my friend you just are, end of story, and we always pick up where we left off.
- I don’t argue online or anywhere else except for the shit I give Kim. Arguing is a demeaning process and rarely produces anything positive. People think what they think, me included.
- To save misunderstandings and exhausting back & forths, I spare most people my presence most of the time. This Pollyanna has gotten over the delusion that we’re going to land on the same page and feel comfortable together again, if we ever were.
- After being around older people forever, and taking care of six of them for twelve years, I had a pretty clear idea what aging would involve. Ha, ya’ think? Every day brings a surprise you weren’t waiting for, every year new challenges, things aren’t static, they change constantly, your body betrays you and so does your head. You can experience these things second-hand without absolutely KNOWING them, so expect the unexpected.
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9. Very little anymore requires my complete and undivided attention. I can still pull it up when necessary and I take it out for the occasional walk to keep it in shape. It’s on reserve, just behind the lala-life I prefer. But since complete and undivided usually denotes a problem of some sort I avoid it every way possible.
10. Mail is the bane of my existence. Doesn’t matter, snail mail or online, I can’t stick to my resolve to open every piece of information every single day, so I’m left with bulk mail that means nothing to anybody… except for THAT ONE PIECE that can’t be discarded on penalty of law!!!
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11. I have no energy for trying to convert people to a life outlook that begins with kindness. Those are the people who will talk their hair down trying to convince me how Christian they’ve always been, while fearing and despising everyone and everything not like them.
12. I’ve loved people all my life who have silently hated everything I care about while also finding me an entertaining source of gossip. That’s okay, Karma knows. The true challenges come when people I care about hate people I love. Simply a bridge too far, so adjustments have to be made.
13. If everyone suddenly liked learning new things and putting new ideas to work, the world would look shinier overnight.
There. A baker’s dozen, take or leave.
And one more: Everyone who doesn’t want fascism to replace democracy on American soil should have a current passport at the ready because we can’t see the immediate nor long-term future. The German population, right about now, thought everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t. Things are changing rapidly across our nation, which has been instantly reflected on social media, but all optimism has to be tempered with the memory of past horrifying October surprises and other killing disappointments.
The United States may continue as an intact entity or it may not. Either way, the election will be over someday, we must assume, and I’ll revert to Ms. Nice Person Who Doesn’t Talk About Things We Simply Don’t Talk About. And if the good guys win I’ll be a more accessible, less irritated old girl, more inclined to entertain the lighter side of living. What I will never be able to do is forget what so many people showed me and the rest of the world about themselves, people we once thought we knew and identified with.
It’s been an unnerving era, with ugliness abounding and hate winning out a lot of the time. I’ll open the door to my 80s in three years… how many of the wounds, how much of the heartbreak, do you think we could heal in that time frame, just for starters? I so hope the world won’t feel as cold and lonesome as it has over the past ten years and more. I’ve learned this much: being a nice person doesn’t cut it anymore, the world has changed. I’ve changed too… but I was raised to be nice and it feels okay as long as I don’t forget what truth looks like. Does America remember?
Aging with exuberance…
12 Sep 2024 Leave a comment
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A lot of things have taken place over the past couple of weeks, one of which is that smiling and laughing are suddenly de rigueur again, praise be! For someone who was unceremoniously told, decades ago, that she laughs like a chicken, it’s like being let out of the henhouse to roam free! Be YOU, you crazy lil’ bandy-legged chick, nobody CARES!
So while our Sister in Joy and Laughter was busy making history, this girl here turned double 7s, which I believe is highly lucky. If you know otherwise, please don’t spoil my illusions, thx. I love the fact that I’ve made it this far, but already being within binocular range of 80 is messing with my head a little, so adjustments must be made and you know what THAT means… she’s thinking again.
I started blogging some 15 years ago on another platform in response to my son’s suggestion that it might be therapeutic. He was right, I loved it immediately, and when the original site folded I found Word Press and kept cranking out whatever was on my mind on any given day. Obviously, over that many years changes have taken place… and age has joined the chat. Profound shock. There is absolutely nothing other than being old on the inside (a tragedy) that could truly prepare a girl for her third trimester of living, nothing. But I’ve been here sharing insights for a bunch of years now, and been painfully honest with you in what I’ve said, and that won’t change… so buckle up.
“These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call.” P. Simon
These are the days of the medical Rolodex, the recurring appointments with doctors and their teams, keeping the vehicle running. These, if you’re lucky and spoiled, are the days of pedis and haircuts and massages that truly do extend life by making it better.
These are the days of steroid shots in the joints, extra attention to the chompers, and various other things which, much like the Spanish Inquisition, NO ONE EVER EXPECTS.
These are the days when your optometrist skips most of the preliminaries and says “Let’s talk about your cataracts.”
These are the days of skin cancer paybacks for those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. The ones we thought would never end.
What gets your attention is the acceleration. One day you’re like “Well, not too bad so far. Doin’ what I can,” and the next you wake up to major mayhem that apparently occurred while you were sleeping. This spiral of crepe here when I turn my arm… when did that start? And these bingo arms! There are jowls in progress? How rude! The supreme sense of languid laziness every single morning when I’d planned to be a ball o’ fire for a change… it’s ubiquitous, as is the faint whiff of guilt that attends my daily existence. Welp, girl, that’s the way it is, walk it off.
After an incredible nine years of turmoil and division as a people, combined with the introspection it has sparked, this is a true statement:
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Kids, here are the facts this morning as I know them. Our world is getting better not worse. Joy and laughter are not buried forever under the rubble of political correctness and planet-wide catastrophe. We’re still HERE! That means hope is alive and well. I’m catching this bus.
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Life rolls on…
08 Apr 2024 Leave a comment
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Good news! A second egg showed up in the nest over the weekend and Dave and Dar are faithfully incubating their first brood of 2024. According to the interwebs, David Dove is the one who dozes in the nest during the day while Darlene hangs out with her girlfriends at their favorite watering hole having chips and salsa. Then she returns home while David goes out with the boys, eating and drinking all night. Not sayin’ a thing, it works for THEM. And they’ve made quite a decent nest this time – we’re proud of them. It looks like they found a piece of dental floss somewhere… but whatever floats your nest.
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Since spring is all about change and renewal we’re now surrounded by it, beyond the daily enjoyment the Dove family provides. Not all change is wonderful and positive, but stagnation runs counter to human desire, so since change for its own sake is an exercise in futility, maybe pick the things that bring light and life in greater quantities. A forward trajectory, if you will. That was a note to self.
Several of the lofts in our building have changed hands recently, so the sounds of construction have been a daily presence for a while as everyone revamps according to personal taste. I don’t mind… I just slip my hearing aids out ’til the racket stops… and a full building is a happy building. Or some such. A lot of people are under the impression that this is a retirement community, probably because of all the danged OLD people around. It’s true that likely everyone currently living here is over 50 but I don’t think there’s a requirement in the covenants & restrictions.
There are enough people from the Hill here, either retired or still employed, to give us a reputation as “The KU Faculty Dorm,” and that makes for an interesting environment with fascinating people who’ve lived full and challenging lives. We have neighbors who are moving to assisted living this month, a reality of life… change and lots of it.
So that’s the view from four stories up on a blue-sky sunshiny April morning. The News of the World this morning is as cockamamie crazy as our most cryptic bad dreams, so I’ll just stick around here where somebody knows me.
Oh, and there’s an eclipse happening pretty soon here, something that occurs around the world every little whipstitch. For some reason this one’s causing a stir and I understand there may be select individuals “raptured out” at some point. One governor has even declared a 3-day state of emergency, advising people to lock their doors and gather in prayer circles to stop the evil effects of the eclipse. It may be helpful to consider the following:
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I’ll be back later to take roll call…
The Art of the Dull
26 Mar 2024 4 Comments
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A heartwarming thing happened last week. While speed-romping through social media I caught sight of a page called Dull Women’s Club, halted in my tracks, read far enough to confirm what I was seeing, applied for membership, passed muster, and just like that… women and stories I identify with like a lost tribeswoman. Both misery and joy love company. These poor dull fascinating creatures are joy-filled rather than miserable and they showed up just in time for a needed reset on my part.
First off, it gives me a great sense of relief to put an accurate name to my persona. I’m a bona fide citizen of Dullsville and it’s time to own it. Signs of dullness include but are not limited to: A deep satisfaction in one’s home environment; quiet hours for uninterrupted reading and/or writing; enjoyment found in gazing at the same intersection every morning, the cars, the people, watching the neighborhood wake up; the joys of a walk to nowhere, at one’s own pace, absorbing the sights and sounds of spring, inhaling the fresh air. So dull. So life-giving.
Non-Dulls are the ones who leave the house at 9pm primed to party all night. For a lot of Dulls, on the other hand, 9pm turns out to be the perfect bed time. Non-Dulls thrive on activity and excitement. Dulls thrive on peace, simplicity, and not feeling rushed or pushed.
The so-called Dull Women I’m meeting in “the club” are anything BUT that. They do all the things, they simply do most of them on their own or with a select few people, and they take unmitigated joy in the little things. Same here. It takes a lot of energy to be FUN if you’re faking it. It feels more copacetic to stay quiet and enjoy the things I love, and let the Funs manage the social calendar.
Schematic for a Dull day:
- Get up at 6am and drink coffee in silence until awake enough to communicate nicely. Can take four or more hours
- Look at the internet. Yes, ALL of it
- Do that well-known list of mundane tasks inherent in every 24hr time slot
- Read things
- Write things
- Eat things, wonderful things, from the best kitchen in town
- On a good day there will be napping involved (gasp!!)
- Watch TV with the cook while we sip nightcaps
- Give in to coma-mode no later than 10pm
See? Dull. Kimmers isn’t a Dull. He leaves the house several times a day, he knows people all over town, he has an idea a minute for keeping life NOT dull. In short, he’s a fun guy, so keep a good thought for him… he didn’t realize he was hooking up with a Dull since I was still in shock when he found me.
The past couple of years have been rife with learning opportunities, always a good thing whatever the process. The Dull Women’s Club is a microcosm of daily living, including the inevitable petty squabbles, and it’s affirming, freeing, and comforting to know “I’m not the only one.” That may be one of the greatest needs tied up with being human. “It isn’t just me, so maybe I’m doing okay.”
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Whether you’re a Fun, a Dull, or a Hybrid, be your best you, you’re the nearest one to the subject, therefore the obvious choice.
Playing for Time 
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