The Party of Lincoln

Published in edited form May 11, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     It’s been an unquiet week in my adopted home town, and anywhere else the television or radio has been on, thanks to the Donald and his band of happy followers.  Pundits, blue and red alike, have been swarming the microphones like bees whose hive has been hauled down the freeway in the middle of the afternoon, leaving them behind:  lost, and making lots of unhappy buzzing sounds.

     I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard very much that makes sense to me.  I’m sure it’s my lack of political acumen, whatever that is.  But whatever the Republicans or the Democrats are going to do as a result of the unspeakable prospect of the current presumptive Republican nominee winning the Presidency, it seems unlikely to make more sense.  The Republicans have been out-Republicaned; the Tea Party’s stash of tea has been dumped over the side of their ship.  The bullies in Washington have been out-bullied, and if the show must go on, it’s going to take some anti-bullying expertise, plain and simple, not a review of conservative values or party unification (except perhaps in performing a “bullying” intervention.)

           

     Speaking of conservative values, over the last few months I have noticed several Republican speakers referring to their party as “the party of Lincoln.”  I associate Lincoln and his presidency with far more liberal values, not to mention sensibilities of the common folk, than we see expressed regularly in either party today.  I found substance for that belief in Stephen Natoli’s book, Liberally Speaking (2015.)  After noting that the Republican Party “was founded in direct response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threatened to allow the extension of slavery into new Northern territories,” Natoli wrote:

“The Republican Party of those days was the more liberal party.  It stood for human rights over property rights, standing as it did for the restriction of slavery.  It stood for the precedence of nationally guaranteed human rights over the idea that ‘state’s rights’ permitted localities to nullify national laws or void human freedoms when and where they wished.  It stood for nationally-encouraged economic modernization and development that helped the people.”

           

     The creation of the Party of Lincoln was preceded by the creation of a third party called the Free Soil Party after the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited slavery in the southwestern territories acquired from Mexico (including California,) was defeated in Congress:

           

“Disappointed by the ambivalent position of the Whig Party toward slavery, ‘Conscience’ Whigs held a convention in August 1848 at Buffalo, N.Y.  There they were joined by delegates from 17 states drawn from the Liberty Party and the antislavery faction of the New York Democrats, known as ‘Barnburners.’  The Free-Soilers’ historic slogan calling for ‘free soil, free speech, free labor and free men’ attracted small farmers, debtors, village merchants, and household and mill workers....  In 1854 the disorganized remnants of the party were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which carrie54 the disorganized remnants of the party were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which carrigh several party memd the Free-Soil idea of opposing the expansion of slavery one step further by condemning slavery as a moral evil as well.”  (“Free Soil Party,”Encyclopedia Britannica, online.)

     We might ask “Are we at a similar moment now, where dissatisfaction with the status quo in Washington could lead to the creation of a new party?”  I don’t think so, but maybe it’s just my lack of political acumen again.

     I watched the supporters behind the Donald on tv this morning, one holding a sign that read “The silent majority stands with Donald Trump.”  I think about them often, that silent majority.  I think they’ve fallen in love with someone who can speak his mind, even if that mind is like a sailboat with no rudder.  They stand with him because they cannot stand up for themselves.  And I worry for them because, from years past I know how it feels to discover that the one you fell so hard for, hoping to be redeemed, doesn’t really see you and has been using you all along to bolster his fragile (if bombastic) ego, that his words were lightly filled balloons barely tied.  It always feels bad, but the result can be good.  I just hope that therapeutic and truly redemptive moment happens before November.

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Trudy Wischemann is an apolitical pundit who writes in Lindsay.  You can send her your opinions on this election c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

The Letter

Published May 4, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I received some interesting correspondence this week.  Some of it was solicited, comments from colleagues responding to my request for help.  I am finally crafting the foreword to our collection of writings on agriculture and the common good, and I wanted their input to make this small piece of writing represent the large effort of the book.  Although I don’t always like being corrected, their comments helped strengthen my sentences as well as my position.  Every drop was helpful.

           

     Another piece of correspondence, however, was less than helpful.  It was a letter elicited by my April 20^th column, “Disappointing News” from a reader in Strathmore.  Let me say that such letters are always welcome, no matter the content, because they tell me the column is serving my main purpose in writing it: to get people expressing themselves about, and on behalf of our communities. This letter, however, triggered doubts about my ability to communicate.

           

     The writer of the letter was kind in his criticism if also seemingly confused in his facts (i.e., his facts do not match mine.)  His subject was what has happened in the City of Lindsay over the last couple of years; his purpose in writing the letter appeared to be to correct my version of those events.  He also expressed what he thinks should be done, solutions which run contrary to my prescriptions. 

           

     I don’t know where he got his facts.  Perhaps it was from reading the newspapers.  The point of my column that week was that the reporters had chosen narrowly from the facts available, and that this selectivity had skewed the truthfulness of their reports.  Perhaps I was too subtle.

           

     I suspect, however, that the letter’s writer had his facts delivered to him from another source, someplace nearer and dearer than the printed page.  That’s fine.  That’s where most of us get our facts, after all.

           

     The writer of the letter recommended that I (and my fellow discontents) educate ourselves and get a copy of the city charter, then hold our councilmembers accountable to that lovely legal document.  I wish that would help.  But I’ve had a copy on my shelf since 2010 when the citizenry began expressing their discontent and dismay, first at the exorbitant salaries Lindsay city officials were paying themselves, then at the debacle over the stacked low-income housing loans made to 13 city employees.  This effort to “hold accountable” the council culminated in the resignation of former city manager Scot Townsend, who departed with a $35,000 severance package despite the fact that he quit (i.e., he was not fired or asked to resign,) and the exit of several other higher-ups, including finance director Kenny Walker.  The scramble that followed wasn’t pretty, and the perpetrators got away scot-free, so to speak.

           

     The writer of the letter also suggested we initiate a recall if our efforts are not taken seriously. He apparently is unaware of 2011-2012 recall effort of all 5 city council members, which did not culminate in a recall election but which (I feel pretty sure) resulted in the non-re-election of 2 of those members in 2012.  The effort took us one step in the right direction, no doubt, but it also burned out a great deal of the community’s available energy.

           

    Reflecting on that time took me back to my battle to save the Central California Citrus Exchange building from demolition in 2013, which our current city manager, Bill Zigler (then holding the position of city planner) wanted so badly he could taste it.  That building was eventually saved, thank God, by the new owner who has a passion for buildings with historical value and design integrity.  But this effort to bring Lindsay into the 1980’s regarding historic preservation was followed quickly by the loss of several other historic buildings, including its first hotel and Stamper Motors.  We still do not have even an inventory of our historic resources much less an update of our badly-outdated general plan.

           

     Looking back on the last six years wasn’t particularly pleasant for me, but perhaps it was useful after all.  I’ve learned the hard way that people are inclined to hear what they want to hear, to believe what seems to best serve their purposes.  Changing those beliefs takes something more than crafty little sentences on a page of newsprint.  

           

     It takes speaking truth in love, a Quaker concept I have not yet mastered but admire when I hear it.  The next six months, as we approach the big election, will give us all lots of opportunities to hone our skills in this spiritual art.  Let us begin.

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Trudy Wischemann is a remedial student of plain speech who writes despite her lack of education.  You can send her your appropriate phrases c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

The Last Word

 Published April 27, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette  

    

     Last Wednesday a large number of people gathered at the Exeter Memorial Building to listen to 7 of the current candidates for Tulare County Supervisor in District #1.  It was generously moderated by KTIP Radio’s PK the Redhead and sponsored by the Tulare Co. League of Women Voters.  The candidates introduced themselves, answered 6 prepared questions, plus 6 more chosen from the audience’s suggestions.     

    

     The prepared questions ranged from “What do you see as the role of county government?” and methods for constituency outreach, to issues like water and economic development.  Audience questions were more specific, seeking answers on things like homelessness and mental health, parks and recreation, land use planning, job training, water rights and leveraging money from the state’s water bond.  By the end of the program, when each candidate summarized his interest in and qualifications for being our next supervisor, most people had an impression of each man’s potential performance in that job, as well as how we might feel about that.

   

     Some candidates were greater politicians than others, which didn’t necessarily work in their favor in the current political climate.  Others were more well-versed and experienced in county and city government.  Yet others had cultural experiences that qualified them for being closer to certain constituent groups.  All claimed to understand the needs of the county as a whole.     

    

     As I scribbled my notes furiously, trying to keep up with both what was said and what was not, trying to record the nuances of body gestures and facial expressions, I couldn’t tell what I was missing in the dialog.  Yet when I found this quote by Aldo Leopold (reprinted in the April 2016 issue of The Sun magazine,) I knew I’d stumbled on a defining characteristic, a way of dividing the pack of candidates into those I might want as supervisor, and those I would not want.  Simply, I want to choose someone who understands how important it is to maintain the organic, ecological health of this land we call home. 

     “The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.  Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it.  The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant:  “What good is it?”  If the . . . whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.”           

     

     The issue of water supply (from both underground aquifers and surface storage facilities) has a way of revealing who understands, and who only thinks they do.  Forgive me, but those who think Tulare County will stand to benefit anything from the construction and operation of Temperance Flat Dam, or from increased Delta diversions of all that water “wasting” to the ocean (at the cost of extinction of the anadromous fish species of smelt, cutthroat, and salmon) are either lying or wallowing in the last word in ignorance.  

     Several of the current candidates are adamant about fighting the federal and state governments to preserve our existing water supplies and water rights systems, without recognizing the existing inequities to poor communities, small farms, and the remaining fish and wildlife species with whom we are legally and morally required to share that water.  Only three candidates considered other solutions; only two of those saw a future in conservation and locally-arranged agreements for recharging aquifers and re-using wastewater.  The rest are still locked in that pie-in-the-sky belief that California agriculture feeds the world and thus justifies satisfying the unending thirst of agribusiness, regardless of cost. 

     All the other issues – poor communities, development of tourism or other industry, unemployment, providing parks and recreation, even protecting property values -  all hinge on our recognition of the critical importance of protecting the ecological health of this land.  If we allow it to be destroyed, either deliberately or through the last word in ignorance, someday we will find ourselves fighting over straws like they do in the Middle East, where once the Tigris and Euphrates ran through fertile farmland and fed the world. 

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer based in Lindsay.  You can send her your candidate observations c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Disappointing News

Published in the April 20th, 2016 issue of the Foothills Sun-Gazette.

    The recent report from the Tulare County Grand Jury, “Nightmare in Lindsay,” was disappointing to almost everyone.   Unfortunately, the reporting about the report by our two major newspapers (the Porterville Recorder and the Foothills Sun-Gazette) was even more disappointing.           

     True to policy, the Grand Jury report did not reveal the complaint that triggered the investigation or the events that led up to the complaint being filed, much less the identities of those making the complaint.  A reader unfamiliar with Lindsay’s recent history would have no way to unravel the Grand Jury’s findings, whose roots stem back into the Townsend administration.  Good journalists would have provided that background.           

     During several Lindsay City Council meetings last year, some citizens who claimed to have signed the complaint spoke openly about it, including Brian Watkins, Ellen Blumer, and Kirk Ingoldsby (Councilwoman Kimball’s brother.)  The general tone of their testimony was threatening, and the goal appeared to be to get the three council members who had been named in the complaint (Mayor Padilla, Rosaena Sanchez and Steven Mecum) to either step down from their elected positions or tow the party line these citizens wanted.  These citizens are largely insiders in this community, as well as supporters of the previous administrations of Townsend and Wilkinson, support which extends to the current one under Bill Zigler’s management, i.e., the old guard of Lindsay.           

     Findings #3 and #4 related to this complaint: an allegation by these citizens that the Brown Act had been violated when 2 or 3 of the named councilmembers met privately with city employees over personnel matters.  Finding #3 was that no evidence was found of Brown Act violations; Finding #4 stated that some council members were involved in discussion of union issues “outside the parameters of established procedures,” without citing which procedures were stepped on.           

     The other three findings, however, which are a much bigger part of Lindsay’s nightmare, were caused by the Council prior to Sanchez and Mecum’s election and Padilla’s appointment as mayor: #1, the detrimental effects of combining the position of city manager with the director of public safety; #2, the costly employee settlements we suffered as a result of this decision; and #5, the cost of these settlements to the city’s already difficult financial situation.             

     Current councilmembers Danny Salinas and Pam Kimball, who were not named in the complaint but who sat on the previous council, bear a great deal of responsibility for these facts of our city life, as do former council members Steve Velasquez and Mayor Ed Murray.  Ramona Padilla was a newly appointed council member at that time, and also shoulders a portion of that responsibility. 

           

     Padilla was not on the Council, however, the last time it was investigated for violations of the Brown Act in 2010.  That time the Grand Jury found that violations HAD occurred when they met in San Jose and approved the merger of the police and fire departments into the department of public safety without proper public notice.  That was the beginning of Rich Wilkinson’s eventual rise to the joint position of City Manager/Director of Public Safety.  Pam Kimball negotiated that contract, which contained the extraordinary provisions requiring 4/5 majority approval for Wilkinson’s termination and 18 months’ severance pay, a factor that led to the extraordinary employee severance settlements that caused Lindsay’s budget to somersault.           

     The real news about Lindsay’s “nightmare” is that it is longstanding and ongoing, not likely to end until those insiders in power are curbed and made accountable.  Journalists have an important role to play in helping to keep public officials accountable.  Unfortunately the journalists covering Lindsay either do not understand that role or are ignorant of our history.  I hope both lackings can be corrected in the future.

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Trudy Wischemann is a Populist who writes.  You can send her your observations of insider “trading” c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.

           

 

Tell the People

     “What shall I tell the people this week?” I asked my sweetheart as he left for work Monday.  “Oh, I don’t know,” he mused as he put his lunch bucket in the front seat.  “Tell them as long as Easter has come again and we have water in the reservoirs, there’s always room for optimism,” he said, buckling his seatbelt before driving off as the sun lighted a bank of clouds above the Sierra. 

           

     “Room for optimism” is a fine topic, especially in this election year like no other.  Since this man came into my life I have observed his many techniques for keeping the way clear for that positive state of mind, despite the fact that he stays informed about what is happening in the world.  Staying uninformed has been one of my ways of coping with the despair that frequently emerges in me when I read or hear the news.  This is only one of the ways in which he’s a good influence on me. 

           

     But “telling the people” is my calling, not his.  Since he came into my life I’ve had a chance to examine this activity otherwise known as “writing,” an act of verbally leaving the comforts of home to go out into our mental streets and call out to others, who may be sitting in their comforts of home, or may be out wandering those same mental streets, distressed at the news.  It is an act of starting an inaudible conversation, or trying to.  It is the hope of sending a thought out into the bewilderness to find another thought to hook up with, to mate or parry, or, sometimes, to trump.

           

     One day last week over breakfast I found myself talking with him about “our people.”  Both of our fathers worked hard for small pay, feeding large families.  That makes us working class by culture even if the collars of our occupations are not now blue, even if our training has taken us a little further away from dangers on the job and the physical wear and tear on our bodies that our fathers experienced.  His people were union Democrats; mine were anti-union Republicans, with some predictable differences in fellowship, epithets and voting.  My family wore “I Like Ike” buttons and waved little flags, while his cursed Eisenhower and prayed for a change in administration we did not get for a decade.  But in other ways our people had, and still have, much in common.

           

     One of the most apparent to me is that we are removed from the land.  Several in my parents’ generation kept trying to stay on or get back to the land, to make farming their livelihood, but failed.  By the mid-1980’s, when I started working with family farmers as an advocate, I calculated that I was fourth generation failed family farmer, not counting some remote cousins in Minnesota still on the land.  As I listened to the farmers talk about who failed and why, and what was needed to keep more farmers from failing and falling into the unfortunate category of working stiffs, I often sensed the insensitivity of this group to the needs of my people. 

           

     Unfortunately it echoed an equal insensitivity I’d experienced on the broad lawns, plazas and classrooms at both UC Berkeley and Davis.  “I have been defending working people since I went back to school,” I told my sweetheart over gluten-free Cheerios, amazed to be counting forty years of this relatively thankless work.

           

     In the media’s bewilderment over Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ surprising popular support, I find a huge blindness to the workings of class.  It isn’t just that these folks are tired of the Establishment:  they’re tired of being invisible.  They’re tired of being denigrated for not having “risen” to some state of enlightenment that makes a three-car garage and a lawn service seem like necessities.  They’re tired of having their lives seen as unimportant.  They’re tired of having their realities unaddressed, of being taken advantage of and made worse by the ignorance of researchers and policy-makers alike.  They’re tired of having to share an ever-smaller pool of resources with an ever-larger number of people, and seeing no hope for change in that scenario.

           

     So, to my people this week I say “look twice.  Why would you trust a skizzilionairre to understand you any better than a Harvard grad?”  And to the rest of you, I say “Let us see if we can’t re-frame our understanding of the social divide these elections represent, and find a way to unite for the real good of the country.”  Because, you see, Easter did come again and there’s water in the reservoirs.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who sees the glass both half-full and half-empty.  You can send her your thoughts on the primaries c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Town and Country

    
     I have a small book written for children in my weird home library called Town and Country.  It was published in the early 1950’s as a social studies/human geography text designed to show the equivalence and interdependence of two kinds of life:  life in town and life in the country. 

           

     I love it for the time it represents and the sentiment; I keep it for the contrast with today.  We no longer have a sense of equivalence between those who make their living in offices and in barns; the sense that physical labor, which rural life has plenty of, is shameful reigns whether you live in town or country.  The word “rural” now connotes a level of poverty most people gladly shun, while “living in the country” connotes a level of wealth in which physical labor is shunned.  The sense of interdependence between town and country has been lost completely. 

           

     That point was driven home to me last week when I had the opportunity to drive to San Francisco and back in one day.  My friend Andrea Morris, who is an artist with a particularly moving exhibit on the role of art in recovery from the trauma of brain damage, needed to retrieve that exhibit where it had been on display at UC San Francisco, known for its medical teaching. 

           

     I drove to Merced, where she had once been the director of the Merced County Courthouse Museum in that beautiful old courthouse that looks like a capitol building lighted at night, then we streamed across the Valley at its widest, most expansive point through Los Banos and up the face of the dam at San Luis Reservoir.  Curving down through ravines and valleys on the reservoir’s west side, we dropped into Gilroy, then headed down the Santa Clara Valley to San Jose.  Taking 280 North, we climbed into the wooded hills of the Peninsula, skirting the heavily developed flatlands along the Bay, and arrived at the northwestern quarter of San Francisco relatively unscathed.

           

  “Oh, look at all the beautiful houses,” Andrea said, “I would love to live here.”  Her master’s degree in Art History was dedicated to the American Art Deco period, during which much of that city’s architecture was created.  We watched the people tread the sidewalks, jog the streets, bike in the lanes between cars and trolleys, and remembered a time in our lives when we might have been capable of keeping up with them.  We enjoyed the hospitality of the steward of the Alumni Faculty House where the exhibit was hung, and amicably put the images in their protective sleeves and boxes, then loaded them in my pickup just in time to vacate the parking space whose use expired at 4 p.m. for the commuter bus.

           

     As we retraced our route back down the peninsula, we came to have an appreciation for the beauty of our own valley, however.  “I wonder if anyone knows how many cars there are in this place,” Andrea mused, as we kept our place in the long winding lines of autos going both directions, often moving no faster than 10 mph.  For thirty, forty, fifty miles we followed the same cars, all trying to get out of the city, their occupational town, to arrive at their homes as close to the country as they can afford to get, if not the rural reality the country represents.  The road was still choked with cars past Gilroy, when we left the Santa Clara Valley to climb back over the hills toward our own.

           

     The night sky over State Route 152 was a bowl of stars, the land below dotted with a few lights of farmsteads and dairy barns, their light glimmering off the full canals and growing alfalfa fields, the barley nearing harvest.  The ancient, authentic Courthouse gleamed pure white as we pulled into her town; the waxing moon kept me company as I skimmed Hwy 99 heading  home to my own through orchards and fields, dotted by our small, workingclass towns born along the Southern Pacific tracks. 

           

     We both irrevocably knew we were home, despite the discrepancies.  But who now senses the interdependence of these two modes of living, much less the equivalency?

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes from her home in Lindsay.  You can send her your town and country thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Land Art

     What to write about this week?  What more newsworthy topic than our breathtaking citron hillslopes, or the way the clouds roll across the valley floor, then break against the Sierran spine?  The sight of snow coating those gray granite crags, bare so long that the newly white outlines against blue sky seem hopelessly romantic?

    

     You hear the wonder of it all spoken in some circles.  I myself don’t remember a year like this one, but this is only my 23^rd  spring in this region.  Early on in my tenure here I might have missed a wonder-full spring from lack of familiarity.

 

     A trip up Yokohl Valley would reveal glaciers of wildflowers cascading down ravines, gleeful cows and calves up to their shoulders in feed.  Mustard, filaree, fiddleneck, poppies, lupine, brodaiea, snow-in-the-mountains, monkeyflower in the creeks and rocky crevices – all those names just scratching the surface of what’s in bloom up there right now.  Down here on the valley floor so many plants are bursting forth in flower that allergy sufferers are turning indoors in droves.

     Juni Fisher gave a concert in Lindsay a couple of weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day Eve.  You might not see an immediate connection:  she does not sing about wildflowers or spring in particular.   She sings about love in general, wide-ranging love, from that between a man and a woman most people consider marginal (i.e., “Sideshow Romance”) to that between a girl and her horse (“Good Night, Good Pony.”)  But what makes my heart sing, listening to her, is where her art comes from.

 

     It comes from the land, from a culture that knows where its livelihood comes from and what’s required to keep it.  Whether singing about the historic vaquero way of horse training (“Silver Music”) or the modern life of raising, working and showing cutting horses (from “Listen,” through “Fillinick” and “Patrick” to “Ride with Your Heart Open,”) life on the land is the invisible partner.  None of this music would make sense in New York City.

 

     The day before Juni’s concert, I got a motorcycle ride up Yokohl Valley.  The wildflower opera was just beginning, the opening scene promising a standing ovation later.  All I could think was “I hope Paul Buxman is able to get out and paint right now.”  So I called him at lunchtime the next day, and the answer was “no.”  He’s farming two places while his brother-in-law tends his dying wife, doubling Paul’s spring tractor work, edging into dark at both ends of the day.  Yet his enthusiasm was as boundless as ever.

 

     “The agrarian life, Trudy,” he blurted, “is just so wonderful, isn’t it?  All the things in blossom right now in the rows, the smells of the grasses as I disk, the slight mastication reminding me of cow’s cud, the fragrance of the flowers – everything.  I popped all my blisters last night, my hands look just horrible, but it’s all just so wonderful….”  He stopped, uncharacteristically out of words for the joy he feels from his life on the land, this painter of our small farm landscapes whose renderings say more than 10,000 words ever could.

 

     We’ll have a chance to celebrate Paul’s land art next month in Visalia, and to join him in another work of land art: saving fellow agrarian Will Scott Jr,. whose wells have gone dry, from going out of business.  Helping a neighbor, “painting him out of a corner,” as Paul describes it, is an intrinsic part of land culture, embedded in our minds when we look at that scenery.  It still thrives where people are connected to land.

     Come join us in celebrating our land art at Paul’s gallery opening Friday, March 4^th at Arts Visalia, 214 E. Oak St. from 6-8 p.m.  The show will be up through Friday March 25^th.  The gallery is open Wed.-Sat. noon  to 5:30 p.m., where contributions for the Drill for Will project can be received and the Buxman  lithographs picked up in return.  Meanwhile, bask in the scenery!

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Trudy Wischemann is an agrarian activist who writes.  You can send her your wildflower sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA  93247 or leave a comment below.