January 13th, 2023

Ta da!

Look, a new book! Well, a new book cover, but I’m pretty pleased! In some ways, the book cover is the sweetest part of the book publishing process, because I didn’t have to do anything, but it’s so so lovely, and everyone, even non-readers, like lovely book covers. Designed by the very talented Laura Boyle at Dundurn. You will also note that this same cover appears in mini, along with some pre-order links, in the right-hand nav of this page. I haven’t had a new image over there in oh…six…seven years? Quite some time, anyway. I feel it really jazzes the place up. Anyway, please do pre-order if you are so inclined, but definitely definitely glory in the book cover, which is exactly what the vibe of the book is.

January 8th, 2023

The Joys of Getting It Wrong

The nice thing about a world post-death of the author–if that death is presumed, in a Barthian way to mean that once text passes from author to reader, the author “dies” and all that is known is how the reader interprets the work and not any ideas or intentions the author may have had about how the reader should read–is, wherever you go with a book, there you are. (I’m madly over-simplifying, but if you wanted very serious complicated literary criticism, well, I have terrible news for you about this post!) You can be pretty sure, VERY sure, that was not the plan of the author or publisher or school of thought it was produced by or for but–oh well! There’s all kinds of joys to be found in strange places.

Of course, we do know certain things about authorial intentionality a lot of the time, and/or at least context. It’s not that I don’t acknowledge those those things–it’s just that I do not always care. I wanted to read <i>White Noise</i> because the film was coming out at the end of last month and Mark was excited, having always loved the book since he first read it in first-year university and he thought I would like it too, so I agreed to read it first and then watch the film with him. Right away, I saw what Mark saw: the laser-eyed lists, the hilarious details, the po-mo absurdity but also warmth of the family and friendship–I love it. For a book that is so hailed as serious and respectable, WN is funny af and a lot of fun to read.

However–published in 1985 and set, one imagines, a year or two before that, as novels tend to be, WN is also seemingly (who knows what the author’s intent might be? ;)) a critique of materialist culture where the centre of worship is the supermarket or the TV and everyone huddles around the news just to feel alive. The family shops and memorizes jingles and struggles to remember trivia; they rehearse constantly what they will do in case of disaster but cannot discuss they memory or the impact of real ones. Hitler is reduced to the site of academic achievements; car crashes too. It’s a weird and desensitized world DeLillo has created.

The protagonist, Jack Gladney is a prof at a small university and lives with his wife and kids in a big house near the school. It wasn’t until I started watching the movie that I realized how strongly I identified with that family–when I saw the house in the film, I was weirded out that it was MY house. I too grew up with a professor dad in a big house with my mom and sibling in the 1980s–I’m about the age of the younger Gladney kids. DeLillo’s literary project–among others–in this project was to show how over saturated and trivialized American family life had become, but to me it seems positively dreamy and quaint. The family has one TV they all gather to watch, and they move it from room to room, clustering together in an animal heap wherever it goes. They eat meals together and drive everywhere together in the only family car, a station wagon–everyone goes everywhere together. They are always sitting on each other’s beds, chatting, watching each other do tasks or chores, bickering. There was no way to get in touch with anyone outside the house without walking to a plugged in phone handset and dialling their number and seeing if perhaps they were home–or else, you could physically go looking for them. They supermarket is the apex environment but the family goes as a unit to shop, and often meets friends and neighbours there and CHATS. It was sweet and lovely, and completely at odds with what I think was DeLillo’s project of making the 1980s seem over-commercialized and harsh–it seemed loving and quaint to me.

I would move into this book immediately if I could, or at least visit for a while. But of course, I already lived there once. Of course, this reading is wildly coloured by my life experience, as is anyone. Perhaps there will be a future school of criticism about the death of the reader, but I don’t know how that would be possible and also it would be too sad.

January 2nd, 2023

End/Begin

Enough people were on twitter denouncing folks’ end-of-year summaries as “bragging” if they were too positive that I was reminded that it might not be so terrible if that site just immolates. Of course, I’m not immune to reading some “I did many things in 2022” posts and feeling I didn’t do enough, or did the wrong things, but that’s a human feeling and not on others to correct for me. Or hey, if you have a solution, one that’s not hiding your own light under a bushel, I’d love to hear it.

In 2022, I had bed bugs twice; Covid; radical under employment; a new book contract; a trip to France to see a dear friend and also the Mediterranean Sea; far more hugs than in the previous two years; fascinating freelance; some over employment; a tonne of support and encouragement, some from quarters I never would have expected it from; some strange and surprising days when people I would have expected to support me or at least say something vaguely kind just didn’t; a really lovely summer; a very challenging time editing that new book; a pretty healthy family (now that the year is over I can say that without feeling it’s a jinx…right?); a wildly hard new job and deeply kind new colleagues; a gorgeous time standing up in a wedding for beautiful friends; a new commute I adore but that eats a lot of time; many migraines; work travel; so many great books and great shows and great movies and great songs. I felt, in 2022, I had the world again, a little bit.

I also found 2022 pretty hard, although as always I am writing in the mood of whatever just happened, and I found the holidays tricky and not as restful as usual this year, probably at least in part because I had to work the Christmas-to-New Year’s stretch for the first time in years, and had a bad migraine that week, all week (and currently, too).

I don’t think it’s poor form to admit things are hard, just like I don’t think it’s rude to say when things are great–even on twitter. In general, I find when someone asks how I am or how something has gone and I say “bad,” they appreciate the honesty or at least are hoping for an interesting story. But I also do sense a push towards framing even negative events in a positive package–“But you learned a lot for the future, right?” “But it’s funny in retrospect, right?” Sometimes… Sometimes I never learn a lesson or get the joke, or it was a lesson/joke I could have done happily without. It’s stressful not to be able to share something painful about my life until I have found the silver lining, but I think it might also be stressful to talk to me about things that have two sides to them but have me only look at the negative. Toxic positivity is a relatively new concept but the older one, toxic negativity, is very much alive and kicking. Both are problems.

My resolution this year is to look at the positive more in all aspects of life. You can probably tell in the above paragraph that I am not completely sold on this plan yet–but I am going to work on it.

December 7th, 2022

MY BLOG!!

So some spammers attempted a takeover of this blog??!! I got a notification last week that the password had changed, which I thought odd but I logged in and didn’t see anything amiss. I thought maybe somehow the site adjusted the password itself? Or original designer of this site, who is technically still the admin and can access it if I ever need help in a pinch, for some reason might have? Neither of those explanations really made sense, but I’m super-busy these days and I couldn’t figure it out quickly so I just went with the explanation that didn’t require me to do anything.

Then yesterday there was a new user notification, which is definitely something with no reasonable explanation so I had to log back in, dig around, find the user panel (which took some digging!) delete the now TWO random users, log out everywhere and change the password. I hope that solved it but I felt very violated. I’m sure it was bots and they didn’t target me personally. They creep in like zebra mussels and if they don’t get shucked off begin posting their stupid bot content but!! This is a very personal blog and I was horrified that weird little creepers were trying to show up in here. So I posted yesterday’s very personal post in response to that. Rose-coloured is mine and though I post less than I used to, I love it and it’s important to me. Rose-coloured forever!!

December 5th, 2022

The Ragman’s Horse and Other Family Frustrations

Here’s a story: about ten years ago, I was walking with my parents in a park and my dad and I started talking about our shared love of animals, and he told me a story (meta!) from his childhood. He was very little, still living in Brooklyn so less than 7–this would be the early 1940s. And he was playing in the alley by his house and the ragman drove up with his horse and cart, and leaving them in the alley, went into the house to bargain with my grandmother. My father, in the alley alone with with the horse, was entranced, and like any little kid would, started to try to feed the animal grass and pet it, just see if it would interact at all.

The ragman came back and my dad was scared of getting in trouble for bothering the horse, but instead, the man lifted him up onto the horse’s back and urged the horse to carry him down the alleyway. A tremendous gift to a little boy–my dad was astounded at his good fortune and at the feeling of being in motion atop this huge, muscular creature, carried along down the alley, to the lip of the street.

I flew into a rage upon hearing this very charming story. Like any parent, my father had many anecdotes that he repeated over and over–some I enjoyed hearing again and again, some I tolerated, some I cut off at the introduction. But THIS story, I only heard that one time, walking in the park, nearly 70 years and a nation away from when it happen. You lived in the time of door-to-door ragmen?? People travelled in Brooklyn with horse-and-carts in the 1940s?? They left you alone in the alley when you were so little? Where was everyone else? WHY DID YOU NEVER TELL ME THIS LOVELY STORY BEFORE?

I was, and remain, furious at the caprice of memory. Someone mentioned to me recently being sorry they didn’t ask their parents more questions before they died and that’s the thing: I DID ask my dad all the questions I could think of. But you just can’t elicit interesting stories by demanding them–you have to know specifically that there was a ragman to ask if he had a horse, and to know that there was a horse to ask if anyone ever got to ride it.

Up until a few months before he died, my dad was telling me new stories–not often, but now and again. He was 80 years old, and wounded when I accused him of holding out on me–he didn’t always remember, both the stories themselves, and what he had or hadn’t already told me. But…then he’d think of something new.

Something I tell myself as a writer is that an accurate map of the world is the size of the world–and, the parallel, that a true retelling of a life would take a lifetime. We edit the details to give a sense of the whole, but nothing is ever the true whole except the thing, or the person, itself. This is, in my darkest moments, cold comfort.

I have been talking about family history again and every time I learn or figure out a new fact, it fills me with joy but it also all drives me crazy–so much I don’t know, so much I will never know, can never know, because so many people insist on being dead.

I have long thought I would someday write a book called The Ragman’s Horse and Other Something-Something. I don’t know what the subtitle should be. I don’t even know what the real subject should be–my family’s history or my somewhat bonkers attitude towards my family’s history (took me quite a few paragraphs to admit I know I’m not being rational, didn’t it?)

In the meantime, that story is really very sweet, isn’t it? Horses, in Brooklyn, in 1942ish! Is that what you would’ve imagined? I would never have thought of it I wasn’t told.

November 21st, 2022

Copyedit time

The sweetest plums of publication vary by writer, but for those of us for whom the call is coming from inside the house, as it were, I think one has got to be the copyeditor’s style sheet. Would you like to see the one for These Days Are Numbered, which edges daily closer to be real book and NOT a collection of online ramblings. Or possibly it’s both. LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS FUNNY THING. I think I said this with my last book, but if it were an option to publish this instead of the full text, I would consider it.

Spelling, Hyphenation, and Abbreviations
A
air conditioner
Alice (younger cat)
Allan Gardens

B
backup (n.)
ballcap
Bleecker St (not Bleeker)
BlueJeans (app)
the Bureau of People We Know, the Bureau

C
CanStage
CareMongering (Facebook group)
catio (cat patio)
Census
convoyers
Covid-19
contract-trace (v.)
co-worker (Dundurn style)

D
Double Unicorn
drugstore (Can Ox)

E
Evan (elder cat)

F
Facebook (not FB)
Fimo
freezie
FreshCo
front line (n.), front-line (adj.)
Frosty (Wendy’s)
Furama Cake and Dessert Garden
FYI (for your information) – not fyi

G
Gaelan
the Great After
grown-up (n., adj.)

H
Halloween (Can Ox)
health care (n.), health-care (adj.)
heat wave (not heatwave)
HMU (not hmu)
hot spot (Can Ox)
Houseparty (app)

I
iMessage
Instant Pot
internet (Dundurn)

J
jeez louise

K
L
lineup (n.; CanOx), line up (v.)
Liquorice Allsorts (brand name), but licorice (Can Ox) for general mention
lockdown (n.), lock down (v.)
Lycra

M
Mark Sampson
Mattermost
meal plan
mini-putt
Mominator

N
O
okay

P
PayPal
People magazine

Q
quaranfree
quaranlove

R
Regis Korchinski Paquet

S
Sampsonblum
sani (sanitizer)
seat belt (Can Ox)
self-defence (Can Ox)
set-up (Can Ox)
social distancing (n.), social-distance (v.)
spray-paint (v.)
St. James Town (SJT)
staff (sing. n.)
stage 2, stage 3
stay-at-home order

T
T-shirt (Dundurn)
takeout (n. & adj.; CanOx)
TBH (not tbh)
The Mandalorian
TL;DR
tone-match (v.), tone-matching (n.)

U
uh-huh
under way V W
Walmart
Wellesley St
Wi-Fi (Dundurn style)

X
Y
Z
Zoom (upper-case when referring to video platform) #

November 15th, 2022

One night in Minneapolis

I don’t love it when people say “These things only happen to me”–I think it implies a certain lack of empathy with the universe, which is very vast and we are always following in each other’s footsteps. And yet…sometimes I do feel little bit alone on my asteroid, having experiences without echo. Anyway, I tried to go to the Mall of America and this is what happened:

The clerk at the hotel from whom I asked directions evidenced frank and visceral disgust at the question, which he only somewhat covered. In truth, a mall was not my first choice for a Saturday night either, but I had not succeeded in making any friends at the conference, I was too tired for something more adventurous, nothing was within walking distance of the hotel, and at least by going to the largest mall in the western hemisphere I would have…accomplished something…? Or something… Also eating in a food court seemed like a good compromise between sitting in a nice restaurant sadly alone and huddling on my bed with takeout like a goblin.

Anyway, the desk clerk told me to walk five blocks to the light rail stop, then take the blue line south to the end of the line. I was worried about getting on in the right direction but he said not to, because the train would just go two stops north, then loop around and go back the other way, so either way was good. He also said the trip would take 20-25 minutes, or a bit more “with traffic.”

Well, the part about 5 blocks was true. I just missed a train–so close I was touching the door–and then stood in the shelter with a man who passed the time by spitting. It was 15 minutes until the next one and the wrong-direction train came 4 minutes sooner, and I was VERY COLD, so I took that one. At first, the man at the desk seemed to be right, in that after two stops people came on and removed some garbage from the train and then an announcement that the line was ending went out, but then we were ordered off the train. No one stood, so I thought maybe it was just a formality. Then the train started up again and I thought awe, it’s turning around, but it got about 100 metres out on an elevated track and just stopped there. For…a while. At first I wasn’t too concerned–transit has its delays–but then I thought they DID tell us to get off. The other people on the train were an unhoused-seeming gentleman in shorts who was either glaring at me or glaring at nothing, and a group of rowdy kids goofing off. When the kids started to notice we were just sitting alone trapped on a train above the train yard, and were sort of tapping on the windows worriedly, my heart started to beat fast.

Of course, we weren’t in danger–I had my phone and could have called…someone…to let us out. But how long would that take and how positively STUPID would we all seem? Also, if the train turned Lord of the Flies, obviously I would be the first to go. I stood, thinking not much of anything, and then the train started finally went back the way it came. It had probably been about 10 minutes but if felt pretty long.

The ride out felt longer–it took an HOUR, and the light rail is not affected by traffic, so the guy at the desk didn’t know what he was talking about. The group of kids ruled the train and many came and went, all seeming to know each other and what car to enter and leave from–it was very odd, a senate of light rail teenagers. The man in shorts never altered his gaze. A lot of people on the train seemed to be having a hard time–transit does not seem to be the province of the middle class in Minneapolis. At one point, a young man–dressed ok, but a little dishevelled, Black–seemed to be in distress, pacing up and down the car, yelling and whimpering, crouching down to hold his head in his hands, rummaging through his pockets and not retrieving anything, screaming obscenities. Just for a moment, he noticed me watching him, and his demeanour completely changed: he straightened, calmed, smiled pleasantly. “How you doing tonight, ma’am?” I was startled, and sad that whatever he was going through, he made it a priority for his self-care–for his safety–to assuage a person like me. I have aged since I’ve last been in the States, and was dressed at the outer edge of my prissy professional looks for the conference: I looked like the sort of person that might make life worse for a person like him. Ashamed, I said I was doing all right, and smiled, and cast my gaze elsewhere, to let him get on with whatever he needed to do.

By the time I got to the mall, I no longer wanted anything to do with it and wished I hadn’t started, but I had invested so much time in the endeavour I got off the train and went in. The first thing I saw was a sign saying guns are forbidden in the Mall of America, which indicates to me that there are many guns at the Mall of America, as I have been to many malls–even many malls in the states–and never seen such a sign, or any guns. This was not an auspicious beginning.

I was genuinely impressed with the amusement park, though it is oddly dark, and the aquarium, though I didn’t go in. There are lots of nice stores, including one I like that had a pretty party dress I wanted to try on, but the thing is the mall is so vast you spent forever finding what you want–in my case, an Ulta, a bathroom, and something to eat. So I had no time leftover to ever go back to the party dress and in any case I couldn’t remember where it was. And I never found the food court and ended up having pretzel bites for dinner, an enormous disappointment, though they were sold to me by the rudest customer service person I encountered in Minn, where the service was pretty uniformly excellent, so that’s a landmark.

The whole thing was basically horrible and also rushed–I probably would have liked the mall if I had a few hours and could just browse around and had been there with friends who like that sort of thing. But then it was closing and they literally started turning out the lights and I had bought 1 thing if you didn’t count the pretzel bites. Upon discovering I had lost my return train ticket, I decided to treat myself to a cab, walked all the way to the “cab pickup” point on the mall map, called it, waited a bit, called again to confirm it was in fact coming, and the dispatcher only THEN informed me that it would take an hour. She seemed surprised that I was surprised, and we agreed not to do business.

I walked all the way back to the train terminal, by now exhausted and full of dread for the return trip. I just missed another train (of course I did) and bought a replacement for my lost ticket. There was a train waiting in the station so I went and sat in that to get away from someone standing in the station and screaming. After a couple minutes someone came and sat close behind me in the otherwise empty car, which I knew was not a good sign but I tried to ignore it–I was so tired, maybe it was nothing.

It was not nothing. He was rustling around and pulling things out of bags and I don’t know what and after a lot of this, he said, “Excuse me, ma’am? I got some rabbits here, if you might be interested?”

Of course this was a confusing and intriguing sentence and of course I turned and OF COURSE they were vibrators, still in the boxes (small mercies).

“Nope!” I swung to my feet and was in the aisle and down the step in an instant–I like to think this bit was somehow very graceful??

“Oh, that’s how it is, is it? You don’t gotta run away!”

He was so…whiny??? And the evening had been so dreadful, and the day no bowl of bananas either, let me tell you, that I turned again, even though I know I should have just kept going and not engaged.

“Do you usually get a better reaction? What were you expecting, trying to sell vibrators to strange women alone on the train?”

“What, you think this is sexual? This isn’t–“

“I do think that! I do think that!” And I stamped my little foot, for emphasis or sheer rage or I don’t know what. And finally realizing the conversation was unproductive I stomped the rest of the way down the car and to another one, where I sat alone and the rest of the passengers by and large let me be. (the more I think about it the more I think that dude had no game plan–even if he had someone how found the exact woman who was planning to go home and buy one of those exact vibrators online tonight, who would have bought it from an apparent thief [surely they were stolen] and weirdo on the train? AND even if somehow he encountered someone who WOULD buy them, who carries cash nowadays? Did the train-vibrator-man have a Square for credit card transactions? That would really be adding insult to injury, as my colleagues and I spent an hour on Wednesday trying to get our Square working, only to find it doesn’t do USD transactions.)

When I got off the train another hour later, I still had to walk the five blocks back to the hotel, plus a bonus block I accidentally walked in the wrong direction. And it was FREEZING. I wasn’t exactly hungry, because the pretzel bites were very dense, but I was a bit malnourished, since I hadn’t consumed any actual nutrients. I kept hoping I’d encounter a store or restaurant where I could buy a vegetable but of course, downtown Minneapolis doesn’t seem to have any of those.

I finally got back to my room past 10:30pm, having spent over 4 hours buying a small makeup palette and eating pretzel bites. I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed but I was kept up by my brain firing dementedly: possible scenarios where I spent the night in the trainyard, the pretty red dress, questions about race in America, the second amendment never envisioned malls, some of the pretzels at the pretzel store had pepperoni on them, it seems unfair to rabbits to name a sex toy after them, how did all those kids on the train know what car to get on, and on and on. Of course I put on all the makeup, for the benefit of no one.

I think I might hate Minneapolis.

November 10th, 2022

Short Story “The Action” in Hermine Annual 3

So I haven’t published short fiction in five years. That’s weird. I did write a novel, or several drafts of one–soon I’ll write another draft and maybe eventually publish the thing. Or not. Who is to say! But that took a lot of my fiction-writing energy. I also wrote a diary-type memoir, coming to a bookstore near you next spring. So I don’t think I’ve been lazy or anything–it’s just that I miss short stories, my first and somewhat purest writing love.

Which is why it means a lot to me that my short story “The Action” is published in Hermine Annual 3 out this month at this link and in more discerning book and magazine shops. It’s so nice to be in the short fiction game again, at least a little. And while the diary memoir is about the pandemic and the general tumult of the past 2.5 years, “The Action” is gently inspired by a slightly earlier tumult. The pandemic is so big it has a way of blocking out the previous wild stuff that happened–I like to be reminded of it, now and again.

If you’re curious, below is a paragraph from the story–one of my favourites from early in the piece. I guess writers are not really supposed to have favourite paragraphs, in a kill your darlings way or in a parents don’t have favourite children way but–whatever, I often do.

***

They are approaching a large high fence with no obvious breaks in it, which Joe worries about. He can usually climb a fence if he has to—he’s clumsy and not in great shape, but not terrible. Today, though, his shoes are muddy and wet, and he wore tighter, stiffer jeans than he really should have for a long march, much less climbing anything. He shouldn’t have tried to look hot. And he actually doesn’t, anyway, is the worst part—the wind is messing with his hair and he had to zip his coat against the cold, but it looks better open. And who will care how well the jeans fit when he’s falling off the fence?

November 5th, 2022

Done the basics of the clean up

Ok, I finished my big clean up of this blog–if you find a broken link, at this point that would be surprising and please report it to me. I have gone through the books, bio, and publications pages and updated any links that have moved and deleted any that were gone for ever. I hadn’t done this task in a loooong time and it was very sad–lots of long gone publications and websites, and lots of great spots don’t keep archives. I wrote a bunch for the fab old blog The Afterword at the National Post books section–all gone now. Canadian Notes and Queries doesn’t seem to have archived the stuff that was once on their website, although of course if you have a paper copy you are good. The New Quarterly DID keep up everything on their website from way way back in the day, but a lot of the oldies moved behind a paywall, which is completely legit. The Danforth Review 1.0 went to the Archives of Canada, where you can still read whatever you want, actually–it’s just a little surprising to go through the Archives interface. There’s also a TDR 2.0 that rose and fell later and you can still access directly.

A lot of smaller, briefer venues are gone entirely, but a lot remain. There’s a bunch of classic RR stories and articles in the publications tab, if you would like to read something I wrote–or listen to it, as there are a few audio and video links in there as well. And if I’m sad that the older stuff is not as permanent as I had hoped, I guess I’ll just have to write and publish some new stuff…coming soon! Although if there is a particular old story that anyone out there in blog land really needs for some reason and can’t find, I will of course try to help you (I see such people as a fair part of this blog’s readership–perhaps 3-4 loyal friends and 3-4 mildly interested passersby, plus the occasional student who saw the title of one of my book/stories on a list of essay topics and wants to work on it because it looked interesting/easy/short).

Also on the topic of blog updates, a very kind blog reader asked me about how one subscribes to this blog, and I have NO IDEA. How does anyone subscribe to any blog? I have an ancient Blogger reader that I suppose is some sort of RSS feed for dummies, but there are more modern ways, I think? I have been bashing around in the back end of WordPress for a WHILE and believe me, I have exhausted the limits of my own intelligence on this matter, so if there is a way a dumb person can do this for themselves, please let me know in very small words and I will be forever grateful. If your way is hard, though, just…nevermind. I have been very humbled by my failure on this project–me and WordPress are barely speaking at the moment.

October 31st, 2022

What is this, 2012?

When I told Mark I had a reading this week and a short story coming out soon, he said “What is this, 2012?” which is what I had already decided to call this post, so further evidence that we were in lockdown together to long!

The reading is Tuesday evening, 7pm, (EDIT: an earlier, dumber version of this post said Monday–OOPS!) just an open mic night with the The Writer’s Union of Canada–Ontario chapter, so a modest gathering (not open to the public but if you are a chapter member and feel like attending, I would love to see you there!) I am stoked to be getting my sea legs back reading after a loooong (2 years??) hiatus. After I finish writing this, I guess I should go…practice!

I realized after the reading was only a few days away that what I should read from should probably be my short story “The Action” since it’s forthcoming in the lovely journal Hermine Annual in the next few weeks. This hiatus has been even longer–nearly 5 years since I published any fiction. My last short story was published in the Short Story Advent Calendar 2017. I feel so sad saying that–I wrote a whole novel and a memoir since then, but still! Short stories!! My heart!

Anyway, I’ll post an update here if I totally muff the reading–or not–and one when Hermine is on sale.