Dana Blankenhorn

The Road to Chengdu

The tickets are paid for. The visa application is in the mail. It seems likely that my son John and I will be heading to Chengdu, Sichuan, China on May 22, taking his exchange teacher home.  (Not this way, of course.)

A decade ago, I would have gone with great optimism, a representative of American values. Now? Well, consider these two stories, and where in the world they occurred:

• Hundreds of people quietly protest a new refinery, expecting to be heard.
• Regime opponents are subject to political prosecutions, to having their homes torched, while elections are stolen and public opinion is ignored.

The first story is from Chengdu. The second is from Alabama. As others have noted, the Bush war against democracy continues apace, and even seems to be accelerating.

I think it's time for us to get off our ideological high horses and start talking first principles, not just the what but the why.

A World Without a Moral Center

As I may have mentioned here before I'm scheduled to visit Chengdu, China next month. Blogging will be sporadic.

Given the recent headlines over the torch run I'm certain you're wondering what I might tell my hosts.

The answer is -- not much.

For one thing I expect few there to know English. But even without the language barrier I'd mainly want to listen. Listen to my son try to puzzle out the language barrier after three years of Mandarin. Listen to people greet me, and try to explain things by speaking Szechuan ve-ry slow-ly (as though that would help).

But there's another, more important reason. I no longer have cause to condemn anyone.

Neither, frankly, do you.

Dust

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 14 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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On sunny Sunday mornings, while the rest of Atlanta is in bed, at church, or huddling over brunch, I ride my bike downtown and visit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (right).

It's quiet then. Just a few Japanese tourists wander by. If it's sunny, if I've been riding a few hours, I will sit by the reflecting pool and talk to him.

I don't expect him to talk back. He's dust. His tomb is a symbol for the life he lived, and the work he did. I was pleased when I snapped this picture, because it shows his wife Coretta is now with him. She lived nearly as long without him as he'd spent time on this Earth (38 years against 39) but they're together now in heaven, and in memory.

What Lasts

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 12 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The death of my friend Russell Shaw was one of those events which happens to everyone, the kind of event which forces you to re-assess your own life and path.

Sudden death can come to any of us, at any time, in any way. As we age, heart attacks become quite popular.

I still remember my trip to Japan, almost 20 years ago now, for the Electronic Networking Association. We were given a banquet in Sendai, copious amounts of sake, which caused me to pass out. When I awoke I learned that one of our party had stayed with the festivities, agreeing to join his hosts for a Japanese-style bath, many degrees hotter than an American hot tub. And there, his heart stopped. He was pretty old, I thought later, 53.

I'm 53 now. And Russell was 60.

Revenge, Reform and Justice

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The countdown to the end of the Bush era has begun.

We think.

But as we gaze over the immense crimes of this time, and seek justice for the damage to our world, our people, and our finances, the demand for revenge and justice is getting in the way of reform.

I share the thirst for revenge.

If no one pays for all this, if no one is held legally responsible for Iraq and Katrina and torture and the massive thefts which may add up to trillions of dollars we don't even have, then the whole country becomes like the Reagan labor secretary Raymond Donovan (right), plaintively wailing (after being found innocent of corruption) "where do I go to get my good name back?"

Fact is, with countries, it's not so easy. The guilt for this era will never wash off our hands. Not entirely. No matter our politics, the crimes of George W. Bush, his henchmen, and his followers, done in our name, are our crimes as well.

The Reckoning

We are past the time of the Good German.  We're even past asking who might be a Bad German.

The Reckoning has begun.

We forget how The Reckoning can begin before the war ends. In Germany The Reckoning began long before the Soviets entered Berlin. It was in full swing at the time of the 1944 plot against Hitler (a plot in which I recently learned a distant relative (right) participated).

So it has begun here, with George W. Bush still in office. The great hope of the Administration, the fact that will keep W's butt out of jail, is to show Democrats' complicity.

Democrats were complicit. Democrats on the Intelligence Committees, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were apparently briefed on torture and stood silent. The CIA's insistence it acted within the law, that it it was only following orders, Mein Herr, is more evidence that the search for conspirators is well under way.

Essentially our Congressional leaders are being blackmailed, in the full light of day, by the regime's leaders. Protect us and you won't be hurt, they say. And these leaders are knuckling under.

In 2006 the cry was for more Democrats. Today the cry must go out for better Democrats. Despite the risk which our major media (which is also fully complicit in torture, in war crimes, and in the theft of this nation's Constitution) will claim exists, Democrats need to wage war on their fellow Democrats, right now. Netroots Democrats must demand that those Democrats whowere complicit in these crimes be held to account, in order that those Republicans who engaged in criminal conduct be held to account.

What is at stake is our own complicity in these crimes. Your complicity. My complicity.

This Week's Clue: The New Mortgage Fraud is Political

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 49 of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of December 10.

Enjoy.

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There's a new kind of mortgage fraud stalking the land, the quick political fix.

It's a game both parties can play, unfortunately. A moratorium on foreclosures bails out thieves who signed for loans they had no intention of repaying. The industry's "freezer-teaser" plan gives the impression of progress, but it's really just a way for lenders to pick through the rubble.

Jesse Jackson has proposed that the government take on the loans which are going bad, leaving you and I on the hook for bad loans. He misunderstands what the Depression-era RFC actually did, which was mainly micro-lending to good risks, at a profit.

Here are the plain facts:

1. Housing prices have to come down. That's the only way to make housing affordable.
2. Lending practices have to be tightened. No more teaser rates, no more interest-only except to investors, and simplified documents must become mandatory.
3. Incentives need to be adjusted, and responsibilities attached to everyone in the mortgage process.
4. The criminal law must be applied for fraud by both borrowers and lenders.

It's this last which is most essential. It's obvious a lot of fraud took place here on all sides.

1. Investment bankers created crap, mixing-and-matching bad loans with good.
2. Mortgage brokers pushed bad loans on poor people, and didn't tell them.
3. Many buyers grabbed cash with both hands.

Laws are going to have to be changed, and people with gazillions of dollars in the bank are going to have to face prosecution, not just here but in other countries as well.

Here are my own modest proposals:

Belief in Evil

The nightmare I've been dealing with concerning our son reaches another climax tomorrow with an appearance at juvenile court.

After three months of this I have a pretty clear idea what happened. We're hoping for the best.

But regardless, what seems very clear is that the teacher who claims my son assaulted her believes firmly in good and evil. Especially evil.

Evil can be a noun, a verb, or a modifier. As a verb it refers to action everyone knows is wrong. As a noun it refers to the person behind that action, and may also be used to damn their character, to consign them to the netherworld of death or prison. As a modifier it's a political football as in the term evil-doer.

How many more innocents have died in Iraq these last 5 years, at our hands, wittingly or unwittingly, compared to the number who died on 9-11? Yet our leaders refer to those who planned 9-11 as evil-doers, and to our own good men and women as liberators.

It's nonsense. War is evil, no matter who does it, no matter their cause. It is all hell. It is violence, it is destruction.  It's a central lesson told by everyone who has come back from any war. The only way to justify such evil is to see the other side as more evil, so that the war becomes self-defense.

I shouldn't criticize. That's our defense as well.

Dealing with Oppression

Oppression is not something I deal with well.

It's something we're supposed to learn in kindergarten, but the ADHD kid (like me) doesn't have a mind for it then, so it passed me by. (I doubt Robert Fulghum had ADHD, since he learned these lessons in kindergarten.)

Americans in general are bad with oppression, yet oppression is a necessary evil. It's part of life. Organization oppresses the disorganized. The kindergarten classroom must be organized. The teacher has to be in charge, even when she's wrong. You're supposed to sit down, shut up and obey instruction. That's the whole purpose of the class.

This personal reality is also political. The main reason Democrats seem so wimpy (to those in the Netroots) is they have learned the hard lesson of dealing with oppression. Whether by fair means or foul they've been losing, on the whole, for 40 years, and they're used to living in the nooks and crannies of a Republican world.

That's what triangulation is all about. You assume that your own side, no matter how well-intentioned, is too extreme, and you try to fit modest reform between what you want and what you know the other side is going to do. Hillary Clinton continues sailing into the wind that doesn't blow and it drives people crazy. That's her real problem right now. Barack Obama doesn't assume the wind exists, John Edwards insists the wind can be resisted.

Polls show Obama is right -- in our guts we know the Republicans are nuts. Every one of them. Even that nice Governor Huckabee. Yet Congressional leaders keep leaning forward into the wind, as though afraid reform is going to be knocked over. Media pundits keep leaning forward, into the wind that doesn't blow. There's an Emperor's New Clothes feel to the whole thing. Washington truly seems like a Potemkin Village at times like this.

But back to me.

Inside Out

One of the most depressing stories of 2007 has not been written.

This is the trend of turning blogger outsiders into political insiders.

When Markos Moulitsas takes gigs at Newsweek and The Hill, he is figuratively moving to The Village, even if he never leaves his home in Berkeley.  Part of the process of being taken seriously is that you're pushed into taking yourself seriously. While Kos has actively resisted this in many blog posts, his writing gigs now make him a major media voice, whether he wants to be or not.

This is not something isolated to Markos. I have lately noticed many Netroots bloggers, from John Arovosis to Jane Hamsher to the Great Digby herself, start to take themselves more seriously lately. It's true that MyDD has always had an "insider" feel to it, based on an early decision to concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts of campaigning.  But these days, when I check in at any of these blogs, I often get the feeling I'm getting pronouncements, the official word, rather than just someone's opinion.

What Housing Prices Should Be

The proposed bail-out of the sub-prime market is an attempt to postpone reality past the Bush term of office. (Picture from the Real Estate Bloggers.)

There will be a lot of talk from Democrats approving this about "home affordability" but it will be a lie.

An affordable home should be what it has always been:

A 30-year note in which one-fourth of your take-home income goes to pay off the mortgage.

Everything else is speculation.

We have subsidized housing so that you can't afford a home on this basis. That's the scandal. Allowing people to buy homes with no money down, or with teaser rates, or with balloon notes, or with negative amortization (the principal goes up even as you make payments) is nonsense. These kinds of loans make homes less affordable, not more. They drive up the prices of all homes, forcing more-and-more buyers into the trap of bogus loans.

Housing prices need to fall until they are below this level. They need to overshoot the target so that the inevitable bounce-back achieves parity with what people can afford.

Paul and Huckabee

The rise of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee is great news for Democrats.

No offense to their supporters, but both candidates throw a major element of the Republican coalition off the bus. Their appeal is based on this dismissal, and without absolute unity Republicans can't win.

Just ask Democrats what disunity did for them.

If you've been playing The 1967 Game along with us, you'll recognize these guys as the extremist wings of the Democratic Party from that time, the fire-breathers who drew cheers from their supporters while turning a generation off the Democratic Party brand.

In Ron Paul's case, he's tossing the neo-conservatives off the bus. Then he's running over them. Then he's backing the bus up to run over them again.

You don't just hear it in the sneer he gives their imperial aims in Iraq, you hear it clearly in the cheers with which his followers greet this. They don't care if Paul is an economic royalist, an ultra-Randian, an anti-government absolutist so extreme (sincere, and consistent) in his beliefs that he probably couldn't be re-elected from his South Houston district (he refuses to bring home the bacon, just leaves it on the side of the road to rot).

You don't support Ron Paul with your head. You support him with your heart, and your guts. In your guts you know he's nuts. You are, too. You live in a world of political theory, a jungle world you wouldn't personally survive a day in, unless you had the morals of an ax-murderer. (He's got Bud Light. And a chainsaw!)

This Week's Clue: The Nature of Evil

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 47 of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of November 26.

Enjoy.

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Evil sees itself as the only good.

This is the paradoxical nature of evil, everywhere and in every time.

Evil is good which thinks too much of itself.

Didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition? Nobody does, because we are taught to see the faith of our fathers as an unalloyed good. It can be, but only if it tolerates other faiths and fathers, no matter how grudging that tolerance may be.

It was the intolerance of Communists that turned the workers' paradise into the peoples' hell in the 20th century, everywhere it was applied. It was blind, self-centered self-belief that twisted the South in the 19th century and was at the heart of Nazi Germany from its beginning, that lay in the weeds of both apartheid and the Mugabe dictatorship.

This is the essence of the evil we see in George W. Bush, in Dick Cheney, in all their followers. They see their own interests as the only possible good. They see all other interests as evil. The terrorists aren't evil-doers. They're good men who do evil because they see their own cause as the only good.

The test is as simple as that.

Islam is mere submission to God's will, an unalloyed good. Once that submission is demanded by force it does evil. Judaism is the glorious word of God, but when others are oppressed in its name it does evil. I've got nothing against Mormons, but when they see only their own humanity and not that of the girls or women around them I call the cops. It was the intolerance of Hinduism which Gandhi most feared, and it is indeed that intolerance that has caused it to do evil, tearing down mosques, banning languages, all the rest.

This paradoxical nature of evil fools everyone.
 

Ritalin Wars Do Damage

One of the more interesting news items to hit our house recently was that MRIs confirm how ADHD impacts brain development.

Areas of the brain which are taught in kindergarten, those involved in social rules and cues, develop slowly. Areas of the brain dealing with higher functions develop normally.

This doesn't just explain the physiology of ADHD, but may also explain some of our social pathologies toward it. The idea of changing when things are taught is anathema to many people. ADHD kids are taught things they can't learn, then blamed later for having failed to learn them.

Unfortunately this isn't how the news was read by readers of Judith Warner (right) in The New York Times.  Let kids be kids, and they'll grow out of it, reared its ugly head, " a nation of boys drugged into conformity by knee-jerk liberal school systems."

Pl-ease!

You can't "let ADHD kids be kids," in that you can't just let them run around loose, unmanaged, and expect them to learn anything. You have to find some way to give them structure, to make them sit, before they can learn. And once they do sit, they learn faster than other kids, they hyper-focus and can become better at what interests them. The sooner you can start this process, the sooner strengths can be recognized and rewarded.

In my own case, knowing about my ADHD might have been the best medicine, only I wasn't given it. Instead, I was sent to a psychiatrist who knew nothing of the condition and an offer of Ritalin was rejected by my mother, who said  "you're not going to put my kid on drugs."

The result was a pretty hellish childhood, at least from the point of view of my own mind, one which I've only forgiven my parents for in the last decade, since I learned the cause of my trouble. Instead of being given help I was sent to a Baptist youth camp upstate, which taught Revelations until it came out of my ears, complete with movies. Step out of line and you'll fry in hell, they said, and here's what it will look like. Those images still inform my nightmares and leave me more than a little skeptical about churches and God, even though I know such communities can help whether or not you believe the doctrine.

The Prosperity Gospel

I probably shouldn't be writing this. I'm not black, although my neighbors are. I'm not wildly into religion, either. Although some of my best friends in life are.

But this is politically important, the start of what could be a turning point which will renew Republican domination of the South and threaten Democratic majorities nationwide.

It has to do with black televangelists, specifically the Prosperity Gospel. I saw the godfather of these boys do his thing in the 1970s, when I was a student at Rice. His name was Rev. Ike. Even in a secular setting, on a naked stage, it was easy to see his appeal.

Ike's spiritual descendants, specifically Creflo Dollar in Fulton County and Eddie Long in DeKalb, are now the dominant black preachers in Atlanta. They probably think of themselves as the Ralph D. Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. of their time. Certainly their political power is equivalent. Long even has one of Dr. King's daughters in his New Birth Church, and held Coretta Scott King's funeral service there.

Well, Sen. Charles Grassley wants their financial records, as part of a Senate investigation, and needless to say both men are pissed. First Amendment, they cry. Separation of church and state, they scream. Never mind that several white preachers have also been served. Never mind that obeying the summons is not mandatory.  Never mind, in fact, they are going to fulfill the committee's request.

What Grassley wants to know is why Long, Dollar and their fellow prosperity preachers drive fancy cars, own fancy homes, wear fancy cars, and pay themselves like Fortune 500 CEOs. The answer, their congregants will likely respond, is that the congregations want it that way.

From here on out, I'm going to try and link only to blogs written by black folks, who I find are in a better position to offer criticism than I am.  What I'll say in the mens' defense is what I noted earlier,  that many of my black neighbors, like the white middle class of 40 years ago, are seeking a clear separation between their experience and that of the poverty they left behind.  This leads them to embrace social conservatism, conspicuous consumption, and to seek preachers who endorse these choices, who embrace the same values.

The ADHD Kid Writes Home

Gee, Officer Krupke,
We're down on our knees,
'Cause no one wants a fellow with a social disease.

- "Officer Krupke," from "West Side Story." Lyric by Stephen Sondheim.

Actually, son, it's your dad who has the "social disease."

Many people consider ADHD to be a disease, a disability. Your dad gave it to you. It's your inheritance, and in many ways it is more precious than gold.

But like any great gift, it has side effects. Nothing comes free. This is the most important lesson you can learn in your life, and you're learning it early.

I saw your teachers today. They say you're brilliant. But you also lose patience easily. You try to tell them how to teach. You argue. You're always raising your hand.

Public schools can't have that. They have to teach everyone. Even people who aren't as smart as you are. Even the linear-minded who weren't gifted with ADHD. You have to learn patience, for now. You have to be quiet, for now. You have to forgive them their trespasses, as they learn to forgive you yours.

What Works

My current family crisis, which reaches a climax of sorts just hours from now, has taught me a lot.

About myself. About my strengths, and frailties. About my family, about love. About my wife, whom I love more than ever. About my son, whom I admire now, not just as a father, but as a man whose maturity is hard-won, one with his own stories to tell.

About community, about belonging. About blogging. About you.

Mainly it's taught me about what works. What works for me. What eases pain, what calms my nerves, what helps me keep panic at bay.

What works for me, when I get nervous, are talking, writing and walking. Talking about my problems relieves my pain. Writing about them helps put them in perspective. (Coca-Cola, when I'm real nervous and can't eat, can be a blessing. Music, fitting my mood, playing in the background.)

Walking, which is the exercise my father favored before I knew him, the exercise my son favors now, may work best of all.

Once this is over I have made some vows. I will get help for my own condition, help I have put off by hiding from the world behind a typewriter. I will become more involved in the community, with neighborhood groups, perhaps with my son's church. I will become an advocate, hoping to give others some benefit from lessons hard-won.

But first, let's take a walk.

 

Don't Take History Personally

Atrios (alias Duncan Black, left), and other liberal bloggers, continue to blame the lack of media concern over their point of view to conspiracies, intimidation, or personal distaste by the Washington "Village" elite.

It is none of these things.

It is, as I've written here many times, the natural result of an entrenched political thesis meeting a new thesis for which is is unprepared.

Players of The 1967 Game will see this clearly. As a political thesis, a set of myths and values, assumptions and beliefs, is validated by history, everyone in the media comes to accept it, often unconsciously, as the only way to interpret the world. This is true whether they are considered left, right or center, whether they are engaged in fact-finding or opinion-mongering. Expecting different is to expect a fish to have the point of view of a bird.

This was very much true in 1967. Conservatives like James J. Kilpatrick and William F. Buckley were essentially marginalized in 1967, treated exactly as the Netroots have been the last several years despite the growing electoral success of their ideas, as in Ronald Reagan's first victory in California. It is true that the Netroots have had more electoral success than the New Right had at that time -- Congress in 1967 was still controlled by Democrats, the previous general election had been a blow-out against them rather than a narrow loss.

The financial resources of the New Right were also far more substantial than those of today's Netroots,  so their institutional base was broader. But not much. The Heritage Foundation, considered the first and most important New Right think tank, was not created until 1973. The New Right in 1967 was, relatively speaking, a cottage industry, with little-read magazines like National Review, underground newsletters and direct-mail pieces like those of Richard Viguerie, and little-noticed youth groups like Young Americans for Freedom like guppies in an ocean of sharks.

What has happened, in fact, is that the 1968 election set off a generation-long chain of events in which new assumptions were built, then trumpeted, then struggled and triumphed, and were eventually validated. This process was fairly complete by 1988, just as the process of the New Deal's Thesis-creation was complete by 1948. Truman and George H.W. Bush stood at the same point on American history's wheel.

This Week's Clue: Panic is Easy

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 43  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of October 29.

Enjoy.

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Posting has been slow here lately. This latest issue of a-clue.com is later than any I have yet published.

I remain in a panic.

Relief should come some time tomorrow. I have done everything possible to make that happen.

But you never know. And when we're talking about our own fates, or those of our family, this uncertainty is bound to cause nervousness. In the case of someone who, like me, deals with ADD plus anxiety (which is at the root of all the current problems) you may say the nervousness is squared.

I should tell you -- before you join me in panic -- that even a total failure tomorrow will not spell doom for my family. There are laws to protect people like me. We have been assured they will be deployed, and then considered, by those in authority. I have also learned, as so many do when facing great pain, that we have friends, not just inside the family but outside it, preachers and therapists and educators who have been extraordinarily patient with me.

So there is hope.

The 1967 Game: Who Are Your Parents Now?

One thing I'm very certain of is that not everyone lives in the here-and-now.

By that I mean many people reference everything around them to some past time. For Joe Lieberman, for instance, it's always 1962, High Camelot, he's a young idealistic liberal, and the alliances of that time still hold.

I suspect that for Dick Cheney it's 1974, his boss Richard Nixon is being forced to back-down over Watergate, and he's determined to overturn the precedent. For Hillary Clinton it's also 1974, but she's on the other side of that divide.

For many of my black neighbors, it's still 1967, but 1967 as it was in white America. Remember, we're now 2 generations (in the ghetto, nearly three) from the actual 1967, a date which is just one generation removed in white America's experience of time.

Most middle-class  black folks I know are first-generation middle-class. By that I mean they are enthusiastic about their position. They love the accoutrement, the kit, the big car, the suburban manse, the suits and the dresses. They believe firmly they have achieved their status through hard work, discipline, and spirituality. They dress for church. Their preachers (left) preach a gospel which says they deserve their wealth, and that the poor deserve their poverty because they lack discipline and give in to temptation. It's their fault, and it gets laid-off on you, you're doubly victimized.

They still like the R&B. That thing with the white shirt, and the tie, and the jacket, and the smooth syrupy singing, they like that. Snuggle up on a Saturday night with a Hennessy after the kids are in bed. Light some candles, turn the sound on low. They also like Steve Harvey. He does "Grown Folks Radio" now. If Perry Como were black, and young, they'd love him too, I think.

These people also have kids, many of whom are enamored of the whole hip-hop thing. (To the right, Curtis Jackson, alias 50 Cent.) They rebel by turning up the music, by posing, with pants hung low and gangster-ish body language. These middle class black kids are a lot like white poseurs of the same age, but the black parents don't see it (and neither do the white, which makes things dangerous for these kids). What they see are thugs. The parents agree with Bill Cosby, with his criticisms of the culture and the young people. He's right, but is the solution really confrontation, a black-on-black civil war between youth culture and the old people? Isn't that just letting yourself get used by The Man? I don't think they care.

I knew these people growing up. They were Jewish, or Italian, many had served in World War II.

They were my parents, too.

Depression Kills

One thing I've learned over the last few weeks is how ADD makes depression worse. (Brain scan from Dr. Robert Kohn.)

I seldom thought of this before because, with my wife's help, I have organized my life to minimize depression. I write at home. I keep most sources at a phone-length distance. I use exercise to keep the blues at bay. Readers are kind.

Yet my current depression, over my son's impending tribunal, has left me physically devastated. My wife and daughter, even my son, seem able to continue on with their daily routines.

I can't. I have an ache in my gut, I can't eat, can't sleep. I cough for no reason. The only exercise I can do is walk, and I walk incessantly.

Yesterday I walked to my family doctor. I didn't have an appointment, but he has recently expanded his office, added a colleague, so he had time to see me anyway. He found I have elevated blood pressure and listened patiently to my symptoms, then the reason for them.

"If it's like this for a few weeks you'll live," he said. "Some people lose a parent and can get back on their feet in a few days, others take months. You're within the range of normal." He gave me some samples of a sleeping pill, suggested a psychiatric visit might be good, added they might prescribe anti-depressants. I was more than thankful.

But this kind of depression can kill. I have seen it. It was a decade ago this last summer.