Weekend update

(now with less Seth Myers!)

I had a pretty busy week. Last Sunday, I found out I am going to NELI, which is really exciting .... and really scary! I am very pleased, and honoured to be chosen. I think it will be a great opportunity. So one thing I did this week was make some other arrangements for my absence in early December (re-arrange my course outline for ILLs, arrange hotels, etc.)

Our big thing this week was author visits: we had two at Rideau, on the same day, even! Children's author Sylvie Massicotte visited Rideau Branch to talk to a class on Tuesday afternoon; Claire Rothman visited on Tuesday evening. My colleague mostly handled Sylvie's actual visit, because my brain was full of other stuff that day for Claire's visit; I had also done a lot of the prep, including chasing down a class to attend the visit. You'd think this wouldn't be so hard! ... and yet. Here's the deal.

The opportunity for this visit comes as part of our branch's participation in the Livromagie club from Communication Jeunesse; in other words, the author visit is for the children participating in this club. I had some issues finding groups and/or classes to join this club, and basically, finally, after lots of work, we got a grade 1-2 class willing to participate in the club, and they came to see Sylvie on Tuesday afternoon. What was especially interesting about the event was that it took the kids about 15 minutes to completely understand that Sylvie, the woman in front of them, was actually the author of the books they had been reading in class. This was definitely the first time any of them had met a published writer, and I think they were a bit in awe. What a rewarding experience ... in the end.

What was I talking about? Sorry.

Oh, right, Tuesday. Author visit #1 - check. Author visit #2 - Claire - check. We had 15 people at Rideau for her reading, which was both awesome (I would have been happy with anything over, say, 5; author visits at libraries are generally not well attended, which I frankly have a few theories about, but that rant will have to wait for another day....) and kind of depressing (considering the amount of marketing I did!) I was cheered that one person had found out about the event because of a flyer I put up at Loblaws, one heard through one of our book clubs, and two attended from another local book club (not held at Rideau) of McGill alumni, who I had invited specially.

On Wednesday, Claire spoke to a group of senior school girls from Elmwood in Rockcliffe Park, and I accompanied her there as well. Honestly, I was able to better concentrate on her talk the second time around, since I sort of felt like I had Author Reading Brain for the first two days of this week (like Mommy Brain!).

It was great to get to spend some time with Claire. I must confess that we weren't particularly close when I was a student in her class at Marianopolis; she was closer to my best friend at the time, Kaya. Both Kaya and I were writers, but it was Kaya who shared much of her work with Claire. That time in my life was when most of my energy was devoted to exploring my new-found independence, bonding with my rez girls, feeling anxiety about money (and working three jobs) and navigating my first relationship. I was probably not the most respectful or studious girl in Claire's class. Claire and I floated in and out of each other's lives since then, seeing one another at Kaya's concerts or in Westmount circles. I'm so glad that we are still in touch, and I'm so glad that now, 13 years later, I have been given the opportunity to get to know her better. Turns out we're both dancers, and runners, and we both love long walks; we have similar warm memories of a particular nun at the College who I lived with; we're both ardent feminists, and so on. Honestly, it was lovely to see her.

A couple of quick things I learned from her talk, besides the obvious about Dr. Maude Abbot:

• The history of the Holmes Heart
• What she was reading when she developed the idea for The Heart Specialist: excellent Canadian historical fiction, including Helen Humphrey's Afterimage (about amazing Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who I totally had a girl crush on anyway) and Michael Crummey's The River Thieves (which I sort of knew was about the Beothuk, but had sort of also forgotten; must pick it up)
• She loved Dorothy in Middlemarch!
  
• My favourite quote of the talk: Claire, speaking about her main character's expertise with the physical heart, and ineptitude with her own emotional heart, says "We can be the smartest people but we are just falling all over ourselves in love."
  

At the last minute, I realised that Claire's talk would be a great time to promote Winter 2011 programs at Rideau, even though they aren't totally finalised yet (the new issue of Preview is just being drafted now, and I am currently inputting programs into our online database). I made up a quick draft flyer to put on the table for the reading.

In case you are wondering, we have some of the usual suspects: our bilingual Family Storytime, our two Frontier College partner programs (the Reading circle and the Homework club), our three book clubs (Morning, Evening, and Mille-Feuilles), our writing workshop group, and March break programs, of course!

Our new and exciting initiatives include two more sessions of "Coffee with a police officer," two partner programs with the Ottawa Art Gallery: "Talk about Art with the Ottawa Art Gallery," and "Meet the Firestones with the Ottawa Art Gallery," and 6 free legal aid clinics (in partnership with three local legal aid organisations), focusing on Tenants’ rights / Droits des locataires, Workers’ rights, Income maintenance for the elderly, Successions & testaments and Human rights.

(Just for fun, remember that not only do I organise all this, but I get to make the posters for each event, too! Which I really enjoy, actually, it's just a lot of work).

I did one other incredibly rewarding thing this week (in addition to welcoming Claire, that is, not in addition to program submission and poster design - both of which are more equal parts rewarding and tedious): I went on outreach to the Stepping Stones program at the Ottawa Mission. I met with a group of about eight men who are in this program (along with their teacher, who has been incredibly welcoming and enthusiastic about meeting with me about partnerships). I introduced myself, talked about Rideau Branch, explained library membership and services (computer use, databases for homework help, language learning and hobbies), and brought some free paperbacks to give away. The men were interested, respectful, and they laughed at my jokes, which is always good. At one point, I logged into my library account to show them how to check their accounts and renew books, and they loved that I had overdues! I was very impressed by the group.

Instead of grading assignments on Friday, I decided to give myself a break and hung out with friends, which was kind of unusual (at least for the me that exists since I moved to Ottawa) but a lot of fun. Meanwhile, back at Rideau, my colleague received a group visit from a local refugee centre for a tour of the library.

On the weekend I prepared next week's lecture (on copyright! Horrors!) Oh, and I worked Saturday, when it was so cold inside the library (weatherstripping issues - don't ask) that my nose was frozen and I kept my legwarmers on all day, and, in other news, I explored the fine line between "Is this patron sleeping on the heating vent in the parking lot?" and "Is this patron passed out?" Sigh. I believe only emergency response teams can answer that one for me. But hey, I helped a guy with MLA format. Wheeee.

Then I slept for 12 hours.

Author reading: Claire Holden Rothman

Historical novelist and short story writer Claire Holden Rothman will be reading next Tuesday at my library (and at two others, on Tuesday and Wednesday), and I thought some of you might want to come. It's free (of course) and promises to be a great event.

I am particularly excited to be hosting Claire, as she was one of my English professors when I was in Liberal Arts at Marianopolis College. It has been a great pleasure of my life to have stayed in touch with her over the years, and to have the opportunity to work with her again, organising her visit Ottawa for a series of readings.

Claire's novel, which was long-listed for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was named one of six novels that mattered in 2009 by Quill & Quire magazine, and is an OLA Evergreen 2010 pick, is The Heart Specialist. Inspired by the life of Dr. Maude Abbott, The Heart Specialist is the story of a woman pursuing her dream. Set in a time of great social change in the early years of the twentieth century, The Heart Specialist is the story of one woman’s triumph in the face of adversity.

Claire Holden Rothman is a writer and translator. Her work on Le chercheur de trésors won her the 1994 John Glassco Translation Award. She has a BA in philosophy from McGill, a MA in English Literature from Concordia University, and has taught English at Marianopolis College and creative writing at McGill University.

Claire will be reading in Ottawa as follows:

• On Tuesday, November 2nd at 2 pm at the Nepean Centrepointe Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (register here)
• On Tuesday, November 2nd at 7 pm at the Rideau Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (register here)
• On Wednesday, November 3rd at 11:30 am at the Rockcliffe Park Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (register here)
  

Unjustly dusty: the works of Gwethalyn Graham

I am on a (too-short!) one week vacation this week, and I've brought home 5 books for the 9 days I am off... Do you think that will be enough? With side trips to Montreal and Toronto, I think it will be!

The first book on the pile is Barbara Meadowcroft's 2008 biography, Gwethalyn Graham: A Liberated Woman in a Conventional Age. It's at the top of the list because it's an ILL from TPL, and it's due this week. I find the designation of this series as "Women who rock" deeply trivialising, but luckily I am spared looking at this text as it is covered on my copy by the TPL barcode.

I first learned of Gwethalyn Graham in August 2005, when a friend and former professor of mine wrote a review of Graham's Swiss Sonata, brought back into print 67 years after its first publication. Although Claire Rothman admitted that Swiss Sonata "makes the mistake of putting politics before storytelling," she recommended it "for historical reasons," as a book remarkable at the time: written by a woman, with all-female characters; written not about romance, but rather world politics. Set in a model U.N. (or rather, League of Nations)-style Swiss finishing school in 1935, the novel uses the backdrop of European tensions to explore relationships and betrayals among a group of international students, and was blacklisted by the Nazis (a fact of which Graham was quite proud).

Who was this woman? The review also mentioned that both her novels, Swiss Sonata (1938) and Earth and High Heaven, (1944) had won the Governor General's Award. An almost unknown double GG winner (and a Montrealer, to boot) whose works had been out of print for over 60 years? I had to find out more about her.

Personal interest soon dovetailed with professional investigations, as I began extensive work in the fall of 2005 for an event at work celebrating Westmount's authors on the occasion of Montréal, capitale mondiale du livre. Along the way, Gwethalyn Graham's name popped up again: she had lived at 4129 Dorchester W. after fleeing her first disastrous marriage; she later bought a house on Argyle Ave., and was living at the time of her death at 4652 Sherbrooke W., just across Lansdowne from the park. I unearthed many articles from the Westmount Examiner about local authors that autumn, toiling away for often 12 hours a day, with Ann and Joan as company, executing elaborate maneouvers to get the giant Examiner archives face-down onto the photocopier. I came across many articles by and about Graham; she was often on my mind. I walked by her place on Sherbrooke frequently, wondering about her cozy, grey apartment; I read her novels while waiting for my then-fiancé while shopping in the Bay.

Her early interest in being a writer appealed to me, as I wanted to be a writer, too, up until late into university. Her self-consciousness also reminded me of myself: the fact that she took "great pains over her appearance" but that this "was not vanity; it was a necessary prop to her self-esteem" sounded familiar to me. Her choice of an unsuitable lover distressed me, but her courage as a young single mother living alone in Montreal moved me. I saw her ghost often in that last year I spent in Montreal; that time in my life was as tumultuous as her time in Montreal was comforting. I had always been drawn to tragic stories of thwarted gifts; Gwethalyn's story of great success and eloquent passion coupled with deep loneliness and alienation came at a time in my life when I perhaps felt her losses - idealism not the least among them - more keenly.

At an event in the library that fall (it could have been the Montréal, capitale mondiale du livre event or something else; memory fails me) I ran into Barbara Meadowcroft, who took me aside to tell me she was writing Graham's biography. I could not have been more pleased. It was five years later when I sat down, in another city, in another life, to read the biography, and I found myself deeply engrossed again in the life of someone I believe to have been a kind of kindred spirit of mine. I read Meadowcroft's book in one sitting, pausing when upset to get a drink or check e-mail, needing to put some distance between myself and the words on the page.

I will try to be concise about the facts of Graham's life: the daughter of a lawyer and a Classicist, she had a privileged upbringing in Toronto's Rosedale. An early marriage to John McNaught (known perhaps to CBC geeks as James Bannerman) ended in divorce not long after the birth of their son and McNaught's affair, and it was at this point that Gwethalyn fled to Montreal for the first time. Reading Meadowcroft and coming across the photograph at left, my heart aches to see her so young. She received critical recognition for her first novel, Swiss Sonata, but broke through to real fame after the publication of Earth and High Heaven in 1944. She was active in the Canadian Authors's Association (drafting an amendment to the Income Tax Act for artists and writers that would lay groundwork for forward averaging), and counted High McLennan and Constance Beresford-Howe as close friends. She wrote prolifically about anti-Semitism, immigration, and social injustice at a time when few women were political activists, and few North Americans were paying attention to the Holocaust; raised in a family that sheltered Jewish refugees, she urged Canada to pay attention before it was too late to atrocities abroad. Earth and High Heaven, a novel about an interfaith romance between a Protestant Westmount girl and a small-town Ontario Jew, came precisely at the moment when North American began to awaken to the realities of European anti-Semitism, and would have been made into a Metro Goldwyn film with Gregory Peck had A Gentleman's Agreement not gotten in the way. Graham's second marriage, which brought her to Virginia during desegregation, ended in betrayal and divorce a second time, causing her to return to Montreal. Never idle, but often short of cash, Graham turned to writing for TV (she presciently observed that "TV is or ought to be" considered art in 1959) and non-fiction, publishing her correspondence with Solage Chaput-Rolland, which examined the prejudices of English and French Canadians, under the title Dear enemies. Graham was consumed with self-doubt in later years, unable to finish another novel, and drank heavily after her second divorce. Observing her erratic behaviour and uneven gait, and concerned that she was an alcoholic, her son convinced her to admit herself to a treatment centre for alcoholism; within hours, she was transferred to the Neuro, where doctors discovered a tumur "the size of a fist." She died within weeks, at 52.

Reading her biography, I was struck again by the characteristics that had initially drawn me to Graham: her steadfast loyalty to her two husbands and her large circle of friends, her commitment to internationalism and insistence that Earth and High Heaven was not a love story but was "a plea for the individual, that he or she may be regarded and respected as such, and not judged arbitrarily according to a category," her "clear, straightforward prose," as Meadowcroft calls it, and her supportive family, including her father (who mailed her cheques during the early days writing Swiss Sonata alone with a baby in Montreal) and her sister, Isabel LeBourdais (whose book, The Trial of Stephen Truscott, she did not live to see published).

There are certainly things not to admire about Graham: she is not terribly charitable to a lesbian character in Swiss Sonata, although it is unclear if the views expressed in the book are her own, and her frequent abandonment of her son, Tony, to travel or write, was undoubtedly a difficult choice that had a deep impact on him. Overall, however, she showed remarkable talent and bravery for a woman with a complicated life in a troubled time in history.

I do think her novels have their dated - as well as their truly honest and vivid - moments. Meadowcroft calls them "as fresh and readable today as they day they were published;" Rothman counters that Swiss Sonata was "worth reading, if not for its literary artistry, then for its interest as a snapshot of womanhood and the Western World on the brink of transformation." I am somewhere in the middle: both novels have moments of lyric beauty, as well as cuttingly accurate dialogue, and both are also plagued with occasional moments of narrative clunkiness, for want of a better term.

I still unabashedly recommend Graham every chance I get; she was one of the first books I shelf-talked, and she has appeared in several of my readers' advisory lists. Although she came several years before Munro and Atwood began publishing, and she was not really one to make friends with other Canlit women, she paved the way for them, churning out solid, even, intelligent writing for many years, assembling frequent salons in her living room (mixing all types of Montreal characters, writers and lawyers, Jews and Gentiles) and throwing herself head-first into the révolution tranquille with the publication of Dear enemies. Canada should be more proud of her, or rather, they should be proud of her in the first place, since it seems they never really have been.

Cormorant's own Marc Cote has been a personal champion of Graham's work, mentioning her in a 2009 article in the Globe & Mail, in which he talks about the inclusion of mostly American texts in Canadian schools, and the slavish devotion of Canadian media to American writers and novels. Describing how book-buying tastes, and "knowledge" of Canadian content and literary awards, are cultivated in readers' early school years, he uses Graham's career, and her dismissal by a Canadian journalist as a second-rate novelist who has never won the Pulitzer, to illustrate our lack of awareness of our own writers, and our own awards. Samuel Goldwyn called Earth and High Heaven "the most beautiful love story he had ever read," (Meadowcroft cites this book as a reference). Why, even with allowances made for the dated nature of some of her writing, has Graham fallen so far by the wayside, out of print for so long, and so briefly fêted upon her return into print? She was a passionate, complex woman who lived in an awkward time, and she survived to re-invent herself numerous times, as a writer, a wife and a mother.

One of my two copies of Earth and High Heaven, this one the 2nd American printing from 1944, discarded from the Westmount Public Library's collection.

Library day in the life ... (St-Laurent style) - day 3

I was off this morning, so I slept in a bit (8:15), then ate, drank my first coffee, read (plodding through An exploding case of mangoes... Not sure if I like it or not), then went for a short (40 min) run across the canal locks, behind Parliament by the water, across the bridge into Quebec, along the water there, and then back across the Alexandra Bridge.

Had a snack and cooled down with a fan in the home office while reading e-mail and newsfeeds.

Arrived at work for 12:30 pm, and took over the Children's Info Desk. Read (paper) mail, tidied the department (took 1/2 hour - big mess in picture book area. I loooove day camps. Yes, I do!), read various notes left for me, and tried to avoid scratching my Holter monitor scar. Then I signed some timesheets for the circulation supervisor (who was happy about her new desk that arrived yesterday for the workroom, but sore from all the moving around in there she had done...).

I started working on a new poster to go in an easel near the entry to our department, for library program information. I totally should have delegated it (we have a staff member with great artistic talents!) but I wanted to start it myself to ensure it had the OPL logo on it and some way to change material on it without damaging the poster board. SL uses a lot of hand-made signs... some of which are quite lovely, artistically. They just make me a bit nervous because library promotional materials should be standardised - in fact, there are rumblings of future standardisation on the horizon. I think this is great, but, unfortunately, right now, everything that gets out there to our users from branches looks totally different, and a recent attempt to offer (not force upon) branches a shared template was, um, anticlimactic to say the least. They were pretty uninspiring, design-wise. ANYWAY, I designed my little poster, with at least the logo and OPL's standard font on it (so I can sleep at night), shamelessly cut out some book-ish images from the 7000 posters we have lying around, and stuck a plastic folder on the front so we can slip in weekly information. Whew!

Only a few patrons this afternoon - 2 boys horsing around all afternoon (I talked to them once about running around), and a young girl who is disabled (she comes in every day. She has recently taken to calling me Claudia Schiffer. It's pretty cute).

Oooh, checked news feeds and noticed that Cormorant writes that Claire's book was reviewed in Ottawa's Xpress mag. Yay!

In the interests of brevity, here are snippets from the rest of the day:

• Assigned some shifts in Aug, Sept, Nov and Dec so my colleague and I can *hopefully* approve vacation for some of our staff...


• Worked on next week's SRC program - making spy kits! Includes identity badges, spy telescopes, fingerprinting, and more!


• Printed out the August schedule x2 (one for Info desk, one for home - fridge!)


• More weeding in Eng pic books


• Helped a patron use the scanner to scan and e-mail wedding photos from 1980s


• Do you have any Arabic books? Where are the books-on-cd? Did my Dragon Ball Z stuff come in yet? Do you have any Pokemon books? Those are the questions I remember, anyway.... I probably blocked a few out.


• Correspondence with colleague re. rush laminating job (of that weekly program poster I finished!)


• Gah. Inbox is outta control. Please do not pass GO, and instead, sit down and file....


• Made up a proper to-do list for tomorrow and beyond

Library day in the life ... (St-Laurent style) - day 2

I'm confusing myself!

9:25 am - Arrived late, because I had to return my Holter monitor to the hospital. Ripping those little tentacles off (+ surgical tape) hurt like hell! Announced my presence to staff and chatted with the circulation supervisor (she introduced me to a new volunteer, admired my icky Holter bruises, we discussed getting rid of those spinners, and she complimented my new signage in the children's dept... YAY!).

9:30-10 am - Pulled more English pic books for weeding, filled displays in children's, left tasks for staff.

10-11 am - Prepared board game SRC program for this afternoon, read e-mail and news feeds, sent a few illicit texts re. weekend plans, gave a teacher buying withdrawn pic books a 30% discount, debated with staff about poor air circulation (finally, we called the building maintenance people to check it out...)

11 am - noon - Collection development work. I select children's English non-fiction for the DDC areas 001-398 and 921-999. Wednesdays is my collection development day; this summer, it's a bit messed up because our SRC activities are on Wednesdays, so I am also making up the lost time on Wednesdays on other days. I also do CD work every 2nd Tuesday evening (are you confused yet?) Anyway, last night was CD night, and I finished going through the July School Library Journal, so today I am focusing on a new area that I have recently accepted as part of my CD portfolio: the children's professional literature collection. This circulating collection consists of material that is useful to ECEs, children's programmers, and librarians - loooong story, but basically there used to be a prof lit room at Main. That got axed awhile ago, but prof lit collections are still around in branches and have been sort of orphaned. I'm working on an analysis of what we have, why we have it, what we should keep, what we should add, and where it should go. So, basically, a total re-vamp of the collection. My first move, today, is to run a list in Horizon of what we currently own, where it is, and when it last circulated. Turns out we have nonfic, periodicals, and picture books hiding in there!!! A total of 578 items, and 101 haven't been checked out since 2004. Hmmmm.

12:25-12:40 - personal phone call (shout out to Yvonne!) re. weekend plans. Mwa ha ha! Rez event!

12:40-12:45 - Lunch. Salad. Pathetic, eh?

12:45-1:45 - Replacing colleague who is on lunch + setting up for SRC activity + orientation for volunteers helping out with SRC activity. Mad, crazy busy. I also answered the following queries:

• Picture books about Native Canadians for a teacher (handed her Leo Yerxa titles and Jenneli's Dance, among others: "Thanks so much! These are great!"


• Harry Potter x2 (one Q in English, one Q en français)


• Beacon Street Girls


• Pirates of the Caribbean DVD


• Can I sign up for SRC?


• Why do you keep track of every book I read over the summer? (answer: because we keep stats and tally up how many books every kid in Ottawa reads over the summer!!! *Child's eyes go wide like two saucers...* AND the government wants to know (OK, LAC, but still The Man!)


• Where do the teen games get shelved? (staff Q!)


• Can I have a new poster for SRC? - mine ripped (TD, I love you, but those posters are craptastic!)


• What are those I spy questions over there for? (we have an "I spy" window display and handouts with "can you find...." questions)


• Series: Sisters Grimm


• Can I sign up for SRC? + can my brother? + oh, and my sister, too?


• Can I reserve The Vile Village and The Ersatz Elevator?


• I read 5 books! Can you mark down for SRC?


• Can I use the phone? x 5 million


• Dude who wants to volunteer for the library


• Can I renew my books, please? It's not working when I do it online....

All while surreptitiously eating carrots (eating 3/4 of that salad isn't doing it!)

2 - 4 pm - Spy and detective-themed board games! Verdict: I spy 3D is my favourite for today! Not my favourite is the father who routinely leaves his two daughters alone in the library for the program, despite repeated warnings from me. Next time, I'm documenting.

As I was re-deploying my long-suffering teen volunteers (they helped with the games, then cleaned up, then did some artsy crafty stuff for next week's SRC activity, then stamped some of those withdrawals, then cleaned some old dusty reference books I rescued from the workroom!) I ran into an old friend, who actually came in for more books about Frank Lloyd Wright, because her book club is reading Loving Frank (read it. It's fabulous). Then my former boss called to discuss magazine orders for my former branch, and we ended up talking about The Heart Specialist, which he's reading.

And now it's 4:50 and I still have tooons to do. I may just have to make a really good to-do list and call it a day. Oh, and scramble to find tasks for tonight's staff. Goody - the volunteers didn't finish all the withdrawals. Staff can do that. I have to go across town now to buy a bus ticket for Saturday. Sigh.

Nosy Parkers, unite!

I generally don't care for this type of article (why, oh why, are aspiring writers always interested in other writer's writing spaces? Or their editing habits? It boggles the mind...) but it's Claire! Therefore, I link!

Also, sorry about the % post. As I was opening a new post, my barcode scanner hiccupped. Apparently, it wanted to say hello itself. I'll try to keep a lid on it in the future.

New fiction

My good friend and former professor, the lovely and talented Claire Holden Rothman, has a new novel out, a fictional biography of Maude Abbott. One of McGill's first women graduates, a cardiologist, and early curator of McGill's Medical Musuem, Abbott is more or less unheard of by most McGill students, and likely some faculty as well. She was Osler's protégé, and was on McGill's academic staff as a Lecturer in Pathology, and eventually as an Assistant Professor.

Oh, and Diego Rivera painted her into his 1943 mural of the 50 most important heart specialists in the world, which hangs in the National Institute of Cardiology of Mexico City.

I think it's going to be a fascinating book (I have to pick one up...! I know, for instance, that Books on Beechwood has 3 on order...). If you're in Montreal, go to the launch at Nicholas Hoare on Greene Ave. this week (see the end of the Gazette article for info).

I also think Claire makes an excellent point about women's stories not being told. One great source is We walked very warily: A history of women at McGill, which a very good friend gave me as a graduation gift. But then, see, even as I was looking that book up online just now, it's not even listed in Amazon.ca..... I can't even find a cover image. So, that's it. I'm linking to LibraryThing... and I'm not happy about it.