Coming to Canada

Having recently moved to Canada, I want to share two poems written by visitors from centuries past.

The first was published in 1878 by the English satirist Samuel Butler, who is not to be confused with several other Samuel Butlers.  It is called

A Psalm of Montreal

and includes the following extensive preamble:

The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects, most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as yet too busy with commerce to care greatly about the masterpieces of old Greek Art. A cast, however, of one of those masterpieces—the finest of the several statues of Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers—was found by the present writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however, banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, etc., and in the middle of these, an old man, stuffing an owl. The dialogue— perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of one and a little of the other— between the writer and this old man gave rise to the lines that follow.

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber-room,

The Discobolus standeth, and turneth his face to the wall;

Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed, and set at naught,

Beauty crieth in an attic, and no man regardeth.

Oh God! oh Montreal!

Beautiful by night and day, beautiful in summer and winter,

Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful,—

He preacheth gospel of grace to the skins of owls,

And to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls.

Oh God! oh Montreal!

When I saw him, I was wroth, and I said, "O Discobolus!

Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among Gods and men,

What doest thou here, how camest thou here, Discobolus,

Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls?"

Oh God! oh Montreal!

And I turned to the man of skins, and said unto him, "Oh! thou, man of skins,

Wherefore hast thou done thus, to shame the beauty of the Discobolus?"

But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skins,

And he answered, "My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."

Oh God! oh Montreal!

"The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar,—

He hath neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs;

I, Sir, am a person of most respectable connections,—

My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."

Oh God! oh Montreal!

Then I said, "O brother-in-law to Mr. Spurgeon's haberdasher!

Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls,

Thou callest trousers 'pants,' whereas I call them 'trousers,'

Therefore thou art in hell-fire, and may the Lord pity thee!

Oh God! oh Montreal!

Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of Hellas,

The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon's haberdashery to the gospel of the Discobolus?"

Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty, saying, "The Discobolus hath no gospel,—

But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."

Oh God! oh Montreal!

It's worth noting that a haberdasher is a supplier of men's clothes in North American English, and a vendor of various sewing-related odds and ends (called notions in America) in British English.  I wonder whether this trans-Atlantic difference was operating here as well as the more obvious one.

The second was penned in 1923 by a young reporter at the Toronto Star named Ernest Hemingway:

I Like Canadians

By A Foreigner

1I like Canadians.

2They are so unlike Americans.

3They go home at night.

4Their cigarets don't smell bad.

5Their hats fit.

6They really believe that they won the war.

7They don't believe in Literature.

8They think Art has been exaggerated.

9But they are wonderful on ice skates.

10A few of them are very rich.

11But when they are rich they buy more horses

12Than motor cars.

13Chicago calls Toronto a puritan town.

14But both boxing and horse-racing are illegal

15In Chicago.

16Nobody works on Sunday.

17Nobody.

18That doesn't make me mad.

19There is only one Woodbine.

20But were you ever at Blue Bonnets?

21If you kill somebody with a motor car in Ontario

22You are liable to go to jail.

23So it isn't done.

24There have been over 500 people killed by motor cars

25In Chicago

26So far this year.

27It is hard to get rich in Canada.

28But it is easy to make money.

29There are too many tea rooms.

30But, then, there are no cabarets.

31If you tip a waiter a quarter

32He says "Thank you."

33Instead of calling the bouncer.

34They let women stand up in the street cars.

35Even if they are good-looking.

36They are all in a hurry to get home to supper

37And their radio sets.

38They are a fine people.

39I like them.

Perhaps one day I will write my own poem about Canada, but that day is not now.  Still, on this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I'd like to give thanks to this country for its hospitality.

Piscine nocturnal ethnomusicology

Once when she was little, my friend Tatjana dreamt about fishes.  They were beguiling and menacing and they sang a song:

Wir sind die Fische, Wir mögen auch beißen...

We are the fishes, We can bite, too!

For a Fisches Nachtgesang, however, this was both prolix and unusually familiar.  A more typical encounter with piscine songmaking is recounted in Marshak's Tale of the stupid little mouse:

Стала петь мышонку щука — Не услышал он ни звука: Разевает щука рот, А не слышно, что поёт... Глупый маленький мышонок Отвечает ей спросонок: - Hет, твой голос нехорош. Слишком тихо ты поешь!

Mrs. Fish's mouth is round, But it doesn't make a sound: Though she moves her lips to sing Still the mouse can't hear a thing... Says the sleepy little mousey Barely opening an eye, "No, your voice is way too quiet! I don't like your lullaby."1

It took the genius of Christian Morgenstern to accurately transcribe the songs of the fish in his Teutonic waters.

Fisches Nachtgesang — ⌣ ⌣ — — — ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ — — — ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ — — — ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ — — — ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ ⌣ — — — ⌣ ⌣ —

Fish's Night Song (translated by Max Knight) — ⌢ ⌢ — — — ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ — — — ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ — — — ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ — — — ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ ⌢ — — — ⌢ ⌢ —

A picture which is not a frame from
March of the Fishes.

The English translation was, of course, set to music by John Cage, as 4'33", the best-known of his lieder.  A Google search for Fisches Nachtgesang reveals that the original German has had a number of musical adaptations as well, but inevitably all of them play fast and loose with the text.

Cage's piece, fittingly, is used as the soundtrack for the upcoming documentary March of the Fishes, narrated by David Attenborough in absentia.

¹Of course I can't resist commenting on the translation process here.  The fish in the original poem is a pike, a common character of Russian folklore but one you can't expect American children, say, to know.  Its predatory reputation helps pave the way for the cat that ends the poem.  To preserve that, it could become a shark, but sharks and mice don't really live anywhere near each other...  In the end, better to stick with a generic fish with a round, lippy mouth, which happens to be what I could most easily fit into the meter and rhyme scheme.

The Donets Basin is not waiting for salvation from Russian tanks

I've been happy to find some more good reporting on the human angle in Ukraine.  It comes from Dmitry Galko, a journalist working for the independent Belarusian-language weekly Новы час.  (It can't be easy being an independent journalist in Belarus!)  I came across this article about Donetsk in Russian translation here.  It's a few days old, pre-referendum, but the sentiments in it are still totally relevant.

For those who haven't been following the events closely, Donetsk is the most Russian-speaking and the most industrial of the major Ukrainian cities, located in the middle of the coal-mining Donets Basin.  Yanukovych got over 80% of the vote there in 2010.

A note on names: names are freely translated between Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian.  For consistency, and because they tend to be more familiar, I'm using Russian transliterations for names unless they're already familiar to an English-speaking audience in a Ukrainian variant.

Here's the article in English.  There are photos in the original which you should absolutely go look at.

Absolutely every Ukrainian I got to speak to, independent of their political views, said: we can forget about Crimea, it's all been decided already, no one is actually interested in the Crimeans' opinion.

In Donetsk they want to be people too

But even the most pro-Russian citizens wouldn't like the question to be decided in this way, "by itself", in continental Ukraine.  The participants of the March 9th protest in Donetsk, Russian tricolors streaming overhead, told me that they don't consider themselves residents of occupied territory whose liberation Russian forces have started in Crimea.  The cry "Putin! Putin!", when it began, would ring much weaker than the others and fade very quickly.  The longest and loudest cheer was "Donbass! Donbass!"

Many of the protesters didn't like it when someone started tearing down the Ukrainian flag to replace it with the Russian one.  People would say, "don't do that, instead let's raise the Ukrainian flag, the Russian flag, and the flag of the Donetsk region all next to each other."  A disapproving murmur ran through the crowd when a thug lunged at a car with a Ukrainian flag, spit on it, then punched the windshield.

It would be a mistake to think that the main participants of these protests are "Putin tourists."  In conversation, Sergey Anastasiev, opera singer and chairman of the Civil Position party, joked: "The poor fellows, no one will let them behave like this at home.  Well, let them come, we can organize special tours, all-inclusive, come for a breath of freedom.  We'll get some extra money for the city coffers."

A clever joke, but as political analysis it's shallow and myopic.  Some people also thought I was a "Putin tourist."  One woman from among the defenders of the Shevchenko monument said, "I don't believe that you're a Belarusian journalist.  You're a Russian and you came to beat us up."

I can't say for certain that there are no "Putin tourists" there at all.  I saw groups of people you might think were there on special assignment.  They wouldn't answer questions and aggressively ask you to leave.  Or, in the words of the head of the strange newly formed organization Eastern Front, "What kind of questions can there be during a war?"

But everyone who didn't refuse to talk, and that was a majority, were from the Donetsk region.

One should understand that their moving out onto the streets is a continuation of the Maidan.  No joke, they also came out for freedom, dignity and democracy.

Some of them have utterly fantastical ideas about Russia as a land of milk and honey.  "A cleaning lady gets 500 dollars there, it's the minimum wage!" enthusiastically asserted a couple of pensioners.  Others say, to hell with wages, let them even be lower, but we can't "torment our single physical and spiritual body" with our "brothers", so as not to "plunge entirely into the darkness of Western civilization."  A man with an intellectual's goatee recounts, smiling, how supposedly a "Bandera supporter" nurse threw him, the son of a Soviet officer, on purpose down on the floor of the maternity ward.  "That's why I've not been quite right in the head since childhood, and Banderovtsy are my enemies to the death."

Some want to enter Russia as a federal subject, others to revive the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Republic, many would be content with autonomy inside Ukraine, but among the plurality of voices what comes through loudest is: "Let them see that here too there are people living with their own opinions which have to be taken into account."

"Stuff like this is impossible in Russia," one young guy with a Russian tricolor patch says proudly, referring to the protest.  "They've been trained there like circus animals, one whistle and they go in the paddy wagon all by themselves."  Don't laugh at the contradiction, he just hasn't found a more appropriate uniform yet to declare his unique opinion.  There's still time.

The point is that they're not waiting for salvation from Russian tanks.  They're just waking up from a long political hibernation, they're trying out their newly-hatched civic voices.  I doubt they'll want to say goodbye to this achievement.

Finishing the Maidan's job

After the militarily-minded part of the protest came and went, central Donetsk found itself filled with small groups of people with different views who calmly discussed them, listening to each other.  One which stood out was a gaggle of highly motivated young men who went from one group to another, trying to convince the pro-Russian activists that they're playing a role that has been foisted on them, a role in someone else's play:

In western Ukraine there are people who aren't used to carrying regimes on their back.  They love freedom, the struggle is in their blood.  And now, at the cost of a hundred lives, they've overthrown a government which pleased no one, neither me nor you, right?  As a result, the new government is made of people who even in Western Ukraine no one wants to see in power.  The Maidan stands, they're not disbanding.  So what this government is most afraid of is that they'll also get deposed to hell.  Look what happens next.  They have to distract the people.  They create an internal enemy.  In the west, they paint the image of an eastern enemy, where they're all moskali who hate the Ukrainian language, in the east, the image of evil Banderovtsy.

These young men were convinced that it was necessary to support and continue the Maidan's unfinished business—to radically change the government, to build new foundations for a system of social relationships, not to run around with tricolors.  That said, they complained that the process was going very slowly and with variable success.

"It'll look like we've convinced a dozen or so people," one of them explained gloomily.  "They're agreeing, nodding their heads.  But the next day we see them standing there again and shouting, 'Russia! Russia!'  What can you do?"

"We're just like you, except we root for Shakhtar"

Nevertheless, an hour-and-a-half trip away, in a suburb of Donetsk, Misha Ponomarenko, a self-styled "couch-side observer" and worker in a Donetsk metallurgical plant, talked in a similar vein.  "Well, if the Maidan happened, though I didn't support it, we have to finish the job—let entirely new people come into politics.  Because the bog we've got today swallows any single fresh current... Instead of dealing with our real problems, we're growling at the Galicians, they're growling at us... They're all Banderovtsy there, we're all moskali and gopniki.  Cap-wearing, seed-cracking, what, brother, jump up and down, got any change?  If these stereotypes are so insurmountable, let's make federal lands, like in Germany.  But why would we join Russia?

"And it's supposed to be our brother country?  Some brother!  Comes to your apartment, issues a ruling that, in accordance with a referendum among your roaches, the apartment is now his... No, there's really a lot of pro-Russian sentiment in Donetsk, in favor of economic and cultural ties, that sort of thing, but I don't know anyone who would want to join Russia.  Personally, I wouldn't want to join anyone, even Europe, it's better to be a strong and self-sufficient country.  But my brother calls me a titushka for that...

"As for the Galicians, I'd like to say: we're just as Ukrainian as you, we just speak Russian and root for Shakhtar!"

The older brother, Denis Ponomarenko, a miner for 17 years, does away with all the Donetsk stereotypes: "I love Ukraine and I want us to join the European Union.  In the mine we have people with different opinions, I express mine freely, and I'm not at all alone.  People are split about 50-50.  And now I even want us to join NATO too.  With a neighbor like this we don't have any choice.  I used to be neutral towards Russia, but after this trick they played in Crimea... They've been scaring us with Banderovtsy since 2004, that they'll come with red and black flags.  Not a single one has gotten all the way here though.  People have come with totally different flags.  They threatened us with NATO troops, instead we have "little green men."  I don't need anything like that here.  I don't think that Russia will try to swallow Ukraine whole or even half of it.  It's more likely they'll use any pretext to destabilize the situation.  That kind of "brother at the gates"—that's frightening."

The final chord was sounded by Valentina Ponomarenko, Misha and Denis's mother: 

"Lately I've completely stopped listening to the news.  I can't do it.  Putin I don't care about, never have.  What really hurts is that the Russian people are becoming our enemies."

A voice from Ukraine

This morning, I read yet another a media report casually mentioning the "allegiances of eastern Ukrainians", as if the people there were just itching to fight for one or the other side.  Dear American friends: no matter how many times you've talked about moving to Canada after a political defeat, if a Canadian army walked into Detroit, you wouldn't cheer.  Let's ignore for a moment the absurdity of this image: unless you're a particularly red-blooded American, you also wouldn't put in that much resistance.

Ukraine is not some kind of exotic Eastern despotate.  Its democratically elected government may rob its citizens, but it doesn't usually deprive them of their rights arbitrarily.  When Yanukovych crossed this line, he was deposed.  The people of Ukraine are people just like you: if offered a choice between peace and war in their country they would choose peace.

I want to share this blogpost by a certain Svetlana Panina which offers a view from Crimea.  A translation follows.

I don't believe anyone right now. Not politicians, not the Internet, not my neighbors. I believe only the things I see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. Even those can lie, but at least that's something to rely on. 

Last night I rode the train to Kiev. Because it was important to me to see what's happening in Kiev, with my own eyes. The train from Sevastopol to Kiev, mostly filled with women and children. With big suitcases. You could see they were leaving for a long time. They disembarked in various Ukrainian cities. Most spoke Ukrainian. After Sevastopol was captured by "unknown men" from the "self-defense forces" who hoisted a Russian flag, people living in Sevastopol who spoke Ukrainian sensed that they were in danger. A train leaving Sevastopol, packed with women and children. It reminded me of an evacuation. 

In Simferopol, where I was coming from, schools and banks were closed. The city center was barricaded by people with machine guns. There were men armed with submachine guns on the roofs of administrative buildings. In Russia, as you'd expect, they were "doing military exercises" near the Ukrainian border. If this was "self-defense", I personally have no idea who was defending themselves from whom. There were no invaders or aggressors here until the "unknown men" captured the Crimean parliament building and hoisted the Russian flag. 

Normal people in shops were telling each other that it was the "Maidanovtsy" who had captured the Crimean parliament, and that they hoisted the Russian flag for camouflage. I wonder, does anyone still believe this? 

Right now I'm in Kiev. I came to look with my own eyes at the scary Maidanovtsy. There are no machine guns here. People calmly move around the city center. The Maidan is drowning in flowers -- people coming from every direction bring bouquets and torches. The streets are clean. The shop windows are intact. I recognize all the places I saw in the horrible snapshots that came from the Maidan. Now it's all an enormous monument in memory of the victims. There's no fear or apprehension here. People cry and hug each other. They also smile and ask if you want any tea. I feel totally released from all the apprehension and feeling of danger that hung over me for a long three months. 

But when I left Kiev's main square, friends called me and asked if I'd heard the news: Russian troops were going to deploy in Crimea. How is that news? They're already there. Three days ago, in the guise of "unknown men", they captured the airports and government buildings of Crimea. That the Russian president says that he's going to deploy something somewhere, that's kind of a post facto announcement. Like, we already deployed troops, and then we had a meeting, asked each other, and decided to deploy them officially. The only ones they forgot to ask were the people of Crimea. I don't know a single friend or neighbor, even if they really love Russia and vote for Russia with both hands raised, who would say "I want a Russian APC parked by my house." No one wanted machine guns on the roof of the parliament building. No one wanted a barricaded, deserted central Simferopol. No one in Crimea wants war. And when the military of a neighboring country walks into your city without asking, that means war, right? 

Please, everyone who loves Crimea, everyone who loves Russians in Crimea. Help me carry this thought through to every heart. The Russians in Crimea didn't ask Russian soldiers to come to our homes! No one attacked us! We were living in peace and comfort! We were waiting for our summer guests from Russia and Ukraine, and from other countries all over the world, after all, Crimea is a gem that belongs to the whole planet. 

Citizens of Russia, you pay taxes and send your children to the army. Right now, with your money and using your children Russia is preparing for war. An unjust war that doesn't protect anyone's interests, that will destroy the Crimea that you love.  No one will win anything from this war. I know that it's not within your power to stop it. Just know that it's happening this very moment. 

At this moment, Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of war. The Russian president consulted the Duma and they decided to deploy the Russian military in Crimea. From the point of view of international law, an unsanctioned deployment of troops in the territory of another country is called a "military invasion." That means war. War, where people kill each other. Because after all, Ukraine is a country with its own military, with borders that are clearly defined on a world map, and it's simply obligated to defend those borders. In any armed conflict, civilians are killed. As long as Russian troops have not officially entered Crimean territory, there's no war. Let's all pray, the hardest we can, that this doesn't happen. 

I'm closing comments. Sorry, everyone. Everyone who shares our worries, thank you. But at the moment I can't read discussions by people who don't care or are cynical. Everything I've written here is my personal address to those who might be touched by it. If you're not touched, please move along. Write something for yourselves. Something about kitties, for example.

Catalinita

"Katyusha" was originally a Russian World War II song, and later became a song of the Italian Resistance.  It's only taken her a few decades to reach the Southern Cone -- here she is quoted in the intro to a nueva cumbia chilena:


I'm not sure how much of a conscious quote this is.  Maybe I'm oversensitive, or it's like the case of Hamrah sho aziz and Bei mir bist du shein.  Musical traditions which share broadly similar roots and vocabulary are likely to come up with the same simple enough patterns independently.

The name of the song is slang for "the same thing" and it doesn't appear to be related to a song of the same name by Diomedes Díaz, which is the first thing that shows up if you Google it.

A tribute to Vikram Seth

The enchanted bookstore, vast, rectangular,

Fluorescent-lit, with Bach piped through

The glamorous alleys of its angular

Warren of bookshelves, the dark brew

Of French roast or Sumatra rousing

One's weak papillae as one's browsing

Lead to the famed cups, soon or late,

That cheer but don't inebriate.

Magical shoe box! Skilled extractor

Of my last dime on print or drink,

Mini-Montmartre, Printers Inc!

Haven of book freaks, benefactor

Of haggard hacks like me, who've been

Quivering for years to your caffeine.

— The Golden Gate 8.14

The books at Printers Inc. are gone now.
A wall blots out the view from where
My bitter-rich americano
Scrawls steam upon the winter air
Of recesses where they once spangled
The rows of shelves, black, stately-angled;
Where once you glimpsed that ordered world
A sandwich menu is unfurled,
Whose jagged letters've condescended
To spell endless ingredient lists.
For baffling onomasticists,
They've kept the name, "Cafe" appended,
For — now — just one more place to have
Coffee on California Ave.

In the holiday spirit

[Thanks to DM and AMB on G+ for corrections on this post.] My family wanted to bring their own song to a potluck carol singalong, so they asked me to translate "В лесу родилась ёлочка".  There are some English versions already on the Internet, including two on Wikipedia, one of which is fairly loose and the other truly atrocious, though even the first assigns considerably more agency to the forest than I'm comfortable doing.

Raisa Kudasheva.  [Wikipedia, fair use.]

It turns out that this most Soviet and religion-free of holiday songs was actually written in 1903 for a children's magazine.  The author was Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva, a schoolteacher and librarian who also wrote a number of other children's poems and stories, largely published under pseudonyms and now for better or worse mostly forgotten -- even the parts of "Elochka" which didn't make it into the song, though they're on the Russian Wikipedia page.  Two years later the agronomist and amateur musician Leonid Karlovich Bekman came up with the melody.

The song embedded itself thoroughly in Soviet tradition, and no one remembers that it has an author any more than we remember the author of, say, "Jingle Bells" or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".  Since Kudasheva wrote under a pseudonym, her authorship was not even publicized until an anthologist tracked her down around 1940.


A version of the song from SovMusic.ru. 

В лесу родилась ёлочка, В лесу она росла. Зимой и летом стройная, Зелёная была. Метель ей пела песенку: «Спи, ёлочка, бай-бай!» Мороз снежком укутывал: «Смотри, не замерзай!» Трусишка зайка серенький Под ёлочкой скакал. Порою волк, сердитый волк, Рысцою пробегал. Чу! Снег по лесу частому Под полозом скрипит. Лошадка мохноногая Торопится, бежит. Везёт лошадка дровенки, На дровнях мужичок. Срубил он нашу ёлочку Под самый корешок. И вот она, нарядная, На праздник к нам пришла И много, много радости Детишкам принесла.

One day a Christmas tree was born. It grew deep in the wood. In summer and in wintertime How slim and green it stood! The blizzard sang it lullabies: "My little tree, sleep tight!" Frost tucked its snowy blanket in: "Now, don't you freeze tonight!" Sometimes the timid little hare Came hopping underneath. Sometimes the wolf, the hungry wolf, Ran by and bared his teeth. Hark! in the woods the crunch of snow Hangs in the quiet air. A sturdy shaggy-legged horse Is hurrying somewhere. The horse is pulling on a sleigh. A man is in the sleigh. He's chopping down our Christmas tree And driving it away. And now it's come to stay with us, Decked out in pretty toys, To bring great joy and happiness To all the girls and boys.

This is certainly not the best of possible translations: I didn't spend that much time on it. But I did come away with a couple of translation-related notes. Compared to translating a "real" poem I was less willing to shift stresses in ways that are usually accepted in English poetry ("Slénder and gréen it stóod", which is a better line content-wise) but more willing to accept the sort of wrong stresses that are customary but which I usually find irksome ("somewhére", "sometímes").   This is not a mystery: partly it's because the latter is easier to sing, at least to an English ear (the French and Spanish are surprisingly adept at singing syllabic poetry) and partly because a genre grounded in tradition like the Christmas carol is likely to preserve older pronunciations if that's actually what these are.  But I don't think previously I would have come up with this as a difference between literary and Christmas carol poetry.

And another thing: how much transculturation is in order when translating a song like this?  The Wikipedia translation by Durando and Popov changes the hare into a bunny, which makes it more familiar.  But rabbits aren't really associated with timidity in English-language folklore [edit: or not] -- does it help or instead obscure the image by bringing in irrelevant associations?  What about the sleigh bells that we're supposed to hark to instead of the crunching snow?

On the other hand some details inevitably get lost, both in translation and in kids' understanding of the song.  Not only is there no word in English for дровни, a kind of rough wooden sleigh, but surely most of the kids singing the song in Russia this month don't know what it is either.