Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Rambunctious and poignant, Blaine Lourd’s moseying coming-of-age memoir, Born on the Bayou, takes readers to the swampy, misty marshes of his youth in New Iberia, Louisiana.

While Lourd regales us with tales of his two brothers, his sister and his mother, it’s his father who stands tall at the center of the story. Harvey “Puffer” Lourd Jr. is a salesman and a gambler, a lovable and cantankerous man living by the code of the bayou and the South, who tells his son he’s never had a bad day in his life. The younger Lourd emerges into manhood by hunting and fishing with his father, pulling the feathers off of still warm ducks just shot or cleaning a whitetail deer. “[T]his was the way of the South of my youth, boys walking in the footsteps of men who themselves did not know the way,” he writes.

Lourd does know that, like his father, he’s a Coonass, a badge he wears proudly: “A Coonass can be wealthy or poor, wise or foolish. At heart, he’s generally unpretentious and comfortable with himself, listens to his gut, has horse sense, and tends to be indulgent.” 

A dazzling storyteller, Lourd so skillfully describes the hazards of growing up in the bayou with a larger-than-life father that we can’t help but read with wonder that he survived his upbringing and lived to tell these tales.

Rambunctious and poignant, Blaine Lourd’s moseying coming-of-age memoir, Born on the Bayou, takes readers to the swampy, misty marshes of his youth in New Iberia, Louisiana.

While Lourd regales us with tales of his two brothers, his sister and his mother, it’s his father who stands tall at the center of the story. Harvey “Puffer” Lourd Jr. is a salesman and a gambler, a lovable and cantankerous man living by the code of the bayou and the South, who tells his son he’s never had a bad day in his life. The younger Lourd emerges into manhood by hunting and fishing with his father, pulling the feathers off of still warm ducks just shot or cleaning a whitetail deer. “[T]his was the way of the South of my youth, boys walking in the footsteps of men who themselves did not know the way,” he writes.

Lourd does know that, like his father, he’s a Coonass, a badge he wears proudly: “A Coonass can be wealthy or poor, wise or foolish. At heart, he’s generally unpretentious and comfortable with himself, listens to his gut, has horse sense, and tends to be indulgent.” 

A dazzling storyteller, Lourd so skillfully describes the hazards of growing up in the bayou with a larger-than-life father that we can’t help but read with wonder that he survived his upbringing and lived to tell these tales.

Rambunctious and poignant, Blaine Lourd’s moseying coming-of-age memoir, Born on the Bayou, takes readers to the swampy, misty marshes of his youth in New Iberia, Louisiana.

In 1993, Mardi Jo Link was a 31-year-old wife and mother of two and a bar waitress with a college degree. Just before sunrise on an October Michigan morning, Link and three friends set off on what would become an annual get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge adventure to the isolated refuge of Drummond Island on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In 1993, Link was the newest member of the sorority, but she eventually became the chronicler of the highs and lows of the annual island weekend.

In The Drummond Girls, Link proceeds roughly year-by-year as the conclave grows from four to eight, and as each of the friends passes through the peaks and valleys of life, from marriage and divorce to birth and death, including the sudden death of one of their own, Mary Lynn.

Link regales readers with tales of nights and days spent exploring the North woods, running into some of the island’s more colorful inhabitants—both animal and human—and bonding deeply with a group of women who, as Link says, would “do ninety days at a minimum-security prison camp or plan a hostile takeover of a Caribbean beach resort” for each other.

So pick up this book: You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll find yourself pondering the meaning of life’s small disappointments and its greatest joys, especially the “fierce friendships” at the heart of this remarkable story. 

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 1993, Mardi Jo Link was a 31-year-old wife and mother of two and a bar waitress with a college degree. Just before sunrise on an October Michigan morning, Link and three friends set off on what would become an annual get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge adventure to the isolated refuge of Drummond Island on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In 1993, Link was the newest member of the sorority, but she eventually became the chronicler of the highs and lows of the annual island weekend.

The day the music died wasn’t when Buddy Holly went down in that now infamous plane crash; the music stopped flowing on December 10, 1967, when Otis Redding died in a plane crash in the icy waters of a Wisconsin lake. During his short career, Redding built the reputation of a small Southern studio, Stax, generating a funky and distinct sound whose energy fueled the music of Rufus and Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and the MGs, and Sam and Dave, among others.

Although the Stax story has been well told by Robert Gordon in Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion (2013) in Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul, Mark Ribowsky draws on interviews and extensive archives to paint in rich and colorful detail the poignant story of a singer and songwriter who never felt comfortable with himself or his success, yet whose confident stage persona and canny genius with a song mesmerized audiences from rock palaces like the Fillmore West to New York’s Apollo Theater to the stage of the Monterey Jazz Festival, where he wrung out the crowd’s emotions with “Try a Little Tenderness.”

Born the son of a preacher in Macon, Georgia, Redding discovered his love of rhythm and blues very young, and by the time he was a teenager he was singing in local clubs. A rousing storyteller, Ribowsky energetically chronicles Redding’s rise from local singer to the King of Soul, as well as his marital difficulties, his personal insecurities and fears, and his reluctance to embrace the fame coming his way, often preferring to work on his farm in Macon where he felt most comfortable. Along the way, Ribowsky skillfully weaves in the threads of the songs and albums that were making Redding’s career, especially his 1965 hit “Respect,” a song that illustrates the singer’s fear of losing his marriage in the give-and-take of his rocky relationship with his wife, Zelma.

Ribowsky’s book is a fast-paced and entertaining tale of a man, a time and a place where black and white musicians, in spite of the racial tensions swirling around them, came together simply by playing the sweet soul music that transcends any divisions.

The day the music died wasn’t when Buddy Holly went down in that now infamous plane crash; the music stopped flowing on December 10, 1967, when Otis Redding died in a plane crash in the icy waters of a Wisconsin lake. During his short career, Redding built the reputation of a small Southern studio, Stax, generating a funky and distinct sound whose energy fueled the music of Rufus and Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and the MGs, and Sam and Dave, among others.

In her charming and flavorful memoir, My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today, Nora Pouillon recounts the ingredients of a life spent shaping our attitudes toward the food we cook, how we prepare it and the way we eat.

Pouillon, whose Restaurant Nora in Washington, D.C., was the first restaurant in the United States to become certified organic, comes by her love of fresh, local food honestly. As a child on her grandparents' farm in the Austrian countryside during World War II, she learned that food was precious and that growing and producing food required constant work and care, with no waste. When she attended a French boarding school, she learned a lasting lesson that she carried with her as she established her restaurant: When people share good food with others in relaxed surroundings, they treat mealtime with respect and pay more attention to the food they're eating and to each other.

When she turned 21, Pouillon married her French lover, Pierre, and they eventually settled in Washington, where she encountered the shocks of her first American grocery store—bins filled with meat in plastic containers, out-of-season produce and packaged foods. Reading Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking stirred memories of the fresh food and ingredients of her childhood, and she was soon off on a search to find the freshest local products to prepare and cook for her dinner parties. After a few successful dinners, she began a series of cooking classes, and her reputation and expertise soon led her to start a restaurant at the Tabard Inn in DuPont Circle. Eventually, after personal ups and downs and financial struggles, she opened Restaurant Nora, had a hand in founding the DuPont Circle Farmers' Market, and became one of the first restaurateurs in America to hire local farmers as sources for meat and produce.

Reading this informative and inspiring memoir is like sitting down to a delicious, healthy meal with a good friend.

In her charming and flavorful memoir, My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today, Nora Pouillon recounts the ingredients of a life spent shaping our attitudes toward the food we cook, how we prepare it and the way we eat.

Willie Nelson was born to be a rambling man, but he was also born to be a gifted songwriter and storyteller. In his rambunctious and meandering memoir, It’s a Long Story, Nelson regales readers with stories of his life, from his childhood in Abbott, Texas, to his now-famous run-in with the IRS over back taxes in the 1990s.

Nelson attributes both his love of music and his penchant for the peripatetic life of a singer to Ernest Tubb, the Texas Troubadour, whose candor in crooning the blues made a deep mark on the young Nelson. By the time he was 7 or 8, he received his first guitar and began to realize that music and emotions could be combined; as a result, Nelson was motivated to keep writing poems, to learn to play his guitar with “crazy precision” and to use songs to overcome his shyness.

Although fans may be familiar with many of the stories here, they will nevertheless be entertained as Nelson recalls his first night in Nashville—where he lay down in the middle of Broadway—or his efforts to save a guitar case full of pot from a house fire. He also discusses his three marriages and his relationships with musicians from Ray Price and Johnny Cash to Waylon Jennings and Leon Russell. Above all, the music is the thing for Nelson: “Love every style. Love every musical thing. . . . You will become a part of everything. And everything will become part of you.”

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Willie Nelson was born to be a rambling man, but he was also born to be a gifted songwriter and storyteller. In his rambunctious and meandering memoir, It’s a Long Story, Nelson regales readers with stories of his life, from his childhood in Abbott, Texas, to his now-famous run-in with the IRS over back taxes in the 1990s.

In his engaging and provocative Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, Emory University anthropologist and neuroscientist Konner (The Tangled Wing) admits that his book contains something to offend everyone. The idea that important differences in gender identity and behavior are based in biology will not please feminists, and the idea that women are superior to men will offend a lot of men, he writes.

Nevertheless, in his characteristically elegant way, Konner marches on, using the tools of genetic biology, evolutionary psychology and anthropology to demonstrate that “women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future.” Konner opens his book with a discussion of genetics as a means of determining both identity and behavior in men and women. In some cases, as he illustrates, genes do explain the gender differences we have attributed to cultural influences; thus, he observes, nurture and culture, while powerful forces, are often not the most powerful in determining gender behavior.

Konner focuses on evolution as the engine driving the ways that gender roles and behavior might change in the future. If women steadily take charge of their genes—which he points out is already occurring in various biomedical technologies such as in-vitro fertilization—they can slowly begin to increase their numbers relative to men. By relying on this genetic technology, coupled with a return to rules of life that ruled humans as hunter-gatherers for 90 percent on human history—“women and men working at their jobs, sharing, taking care of children, their main link to the future”—Konner argues that our culture might have a chance at seeing real equality.

At the very least, Konner’s virtuoso performance will challenge us to examine the cultural stereotypes we so often use to foster the gender inequality that diminishes both women and men.

In his engaging and provocative Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, Emory University anthropologist and neuroscientist Konner (The Tangled Wing) admits that his book contains something to offend everyone. The idea that important differences in gender identity and behavior are based in biology will not please feminists, and the idea that women are superior to men will offend a lot of men, he writes.

Open Candice Bergen’s A Fine Romance and be prepared to settle in for an evening filled with a few drinks, casual grazing, laughter, tears and rollicking tales from one of America’s finest actresses.

In this follow-up to Knock Wood, Bergen reveals the glorious days of her long and passionate love for French filmmaker Louis Malle, their frenetic and full marriage, the birth of their daughter, Chloe, and the success of her Emmy-winning sitcom, “Murphy Brown.”

Bergen married Malle in 1980 after a four-year courtship that had an inauspicious beginning but grew tentatively and then blossomed into a colorful marriage. Bergen calls Malle an “incredibly courtly and charming dynamo . . . always leaning into whatever he was heading for; he was never idle.”

Ambivalent about having children, Bergen pondered the ways that becoming a mother might add a new dimension to her life. When Chloe—a “potent and tiny spirit who had clearly been fighting to get here”—was born, Bergen declared that her child would be her first priority “by miles.”

Three years later, the script for a sitcom about a cantankerous TV newswoman landed on her desk. Despite what she calls a “horrible” audition, she won the part, bringing a natural sense of comic timing to her role in “Murphy Brown,” a show that had a celebrated 10-year run.

Fifteen years after their wedding, Malle succumbed to cancer. A light in Bergen’s life was extinguished, though she and Chloe grew closer. Three years after Malle’s death, she met and eventually married real estate developer Marshall Rose. The union has brought her much joy, though Bergen candidly chronicles her struggles with the differences between her two husbands.

Bergen’s rapier wit, warm personality and unflinching honesty make these stories of life and love all the more appealing.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Open Candice Bergen’s A Fine Romance and be prepared to settle in for an evening filled with a few drinks, casual grazing, laughter, tears and rollicking tales from one of America’s finest actresses.

When Mimi Baird was 6 years old, her father, prominent Boston dermatologist Perry Baird, didn’t come home. In that moment, Baird effectively disappeared forever from his daughter’s life, for her mother told her only that he was “away.” Baird saw her father once in the 15 years between his disappearance and his death in 1959.

Although her life fills with marriage, children and a career in healthcare, her yearning to know her father haunts her. In 1991, she tells one of the surgeons at the hospital where she works about her father, and he soon produces a cache of letters between her father and his mentors, copies of which the surgeon retrieved from the Harvard Medical School library. As she reads these letters, her father’s manic-depressive state—and his own quest to understand its causes (Baird was the earliest to suggest that biochemical imbalances might lie at the root of manic depression, though he never got to pursue his research)—unfolds before her, but her journey toward understanding him is just beginning.

Three years later, she receives in the mail the manuscript her father had been writing and which forms the core of this poignant memoir. At the center of He Wanted the Moon is her father’s book, in which he describes in detail his institutionalization in Westborough State Hospital in 1944, his attempts to understand his own condition, his often brutal treatment by doctors and staff, and his reflections on the state of psychiatry in mid-century America. 

Through this moving memoir, Baird slowly brings her father back to life and reveals the sordid history of treating mental illness.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Mimi Baird was 6 years old, her father, prominent Boston dermatologist Perry Baird, didn’t come home. In that moment, Baird effectively disappeared forever from his daughter’s life, for her mother told her only that he was “away.” Baird saw her father once in the 15 years between his disappearance and his death in 1959.

From the time she was 5 years old, Deborah Voigt was singing with all her heart, joyously belting out hymns like "His Eye is on the Sparrow" in church. In this sanctuary of spiritual sweetness, she discovered her tremendous vocal gift, as well as her love of performing for an attentive crowd. By the time she was a teenager, music possessed Voigt; she was immersed in piano lessons, singing Broadway tunes and eventually discovering and tuning into the pop music of Bobby Sherman and Donny Osmond. It was the voice of Karen Carpenter, however, who helped her realize she could have a career in music, and the voice of God, who told her, "you are here to sing" one morning and propelled her on the path to becoming an acclaimed operatic soprano.

Voight’s career became international news in 2004, when she was fired from a lead role in a London opera because her plus-size body was too large to fit into the preferred costume for the role. In the frank and often poignant Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva, Voigt reveals how that incident led her to undergo gastric bypass surgery. She also details the often desperate and gut-wrenching struggles between her musical spirit and her palpable physical desires for love, perfection and peace.

At the same time that she was discovering her musical gifts and creating her own identity, Voigt writes, her family life was falling apart. Not only did she hear the querulous voices of her mother and father every night, her parents, especially her father, diminished her gifts and offered little moral support for her budding interest in music.

She wandered off into her own uncertainties and anxieties, searching for love through a series of lustful and often destructive relationships, consoling herself through binging on unhealthy food and drinking so greedily that she sometimes couldn’t remember the previous day.

Fiercely honest, Voigt reveals the depths to which she sunk in search of love, reassurance and comfort, even as she performed on stage with some of the world’s greatest opera singers, including Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. In the end, she finally embraced the earliest lesson she learned as a singer—that music is a journey and that when you’re singing, you’re exposing yourself. In this touching memoir, Voigt reveals her heart and soul to readers as she sings the tale of her ups and downs.

From the time she was 5 years old, Deborah Voigt was singing with all her heart, joyously belting out hymns like "His Eye is on the Sparrow" in church. In this sanctuary of spiritual sweetness, she discovered her tremendous vocal gift, as well as her love of performing for an attentive crowd. By the time she was a teenager, music possessed Voigt; she was immersed in piano lessons, singing Broadway tunes and eventually discovering and tuning into the pop music of Bobby Sherman and Donny Osmond. It was the voice of Karen Carpenter, however, who helped her realize she could have a career in music, and the voice of God, who told her, "you are here to sing" one morning and propelled her on the path to becoming an acclaimed operatic soprano.

“It began with a death in the family. My Uncle Ed, the most debonair of the clan, a popular guest of the Gentile social clubs despite being Jewish, had succumbed at age ninety-five with a half glass of Johnnie Walker on his bedside table.”

With that opening sentence, Alan Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams) invites us into his own remembrance of things past in his elegant memoir, Screening Room: Family Pictures. In episodic prose that shimmers with cinematic quality, Lightman recalls a time when aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, parents and friends gathered in the Memphis moonlight to drink, talk in hushed tones about neighbors, sort out perplexing and slowly evolving attitudes about race and ponder the ragged ways people fall in love and out of it.

At the center of Lightman’s journey stands his grandfather, M.A. Lightman, who built a movie theater empire across the South, and whose presence and power haunted his family for generations. Not only does Alan Lightman’s father inherit the job of running a movie theater, he makes his son the assistant manager of the theater one summer; the young Lightman develops “a high-level expertise in making popcorn.” He sees two to three movies a week—“sometimes three movies in a single day”—and it’s then that he starts “seeing life as a series of scenes.”

The memorable scenes he brings us in Screening Room range from a wedding reception at the Peabody Hotel (where the famous ducks wouldn’t cooperate) to a 1960 meeting with Elvis (who attended private showings at M.A.’s personal theater). Lightman, who went on to become a theoretical physicist as well as a celebrated novelist, captures the South’s troubled racial history and offers poignant recollections of his family’s African-American housekeeper, Blanche.

He brings down the curtain with a wistful flourish: “I have found, and I have lost. . . . I have smelled the sweet honeysuckle of memory. It is all fabulous and heart-wrenching and vanished in an instant.”

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“It began with a death in the family. My Uncle Ed, the most debonair of the clan, a popular guest of the Gentile social clubs despite being Jewish, had succumbed at age ninety-five with a half glass of Johnnie Walker on his bedside table.”

When “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, Robert E. Lee’s father, eulogized George Washington, he memorialized the late president’s effort to forge a unified nation that would bring happiness forever to the people of America. On the eve of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, married to the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, appeared poised to preserve the Union that Washington had fought so hard to establish.

Yet, as journalist and presidential speechwriter Jonathan Horn points out in his stirring and elegant The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, Lee chose to lead rebel forces against the Union, leaving division and discord in his wake. Although Lee’s proponents argue that he is the “second coming” of Washington and point to similarities between the two men, others note that Lee’s legacy lies in his painful decision to preserve the values of his beloved state of Virginia above all else.

While Horn does not draw on any new archival materials, he chronicles Lee’s life with a vitality that captivates our imagination and keeps us glued to Lee’s story. With graceful vigor, he traces Lee from his childhood to his days at West Point, his command in Mexico, his leadership at Harper’s Ferry and ultimately to his decision to resign his commission in the U.S. Army. Lee’s decision to turn his back on the Union—and his canny leadership in battle—meant that he would be forever estranged from the nation he cherished.

Horn’s illuminating study offers a fascinating comparison between two figures who shaped American history.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, Robert E. Lee’s father, eulogized George Washington, he memorialized the late president’s effort to forge a unified nation that would bring happiness forever to the people of America. On the eve of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, married to the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, appeared poised to preserve the Union that Washington had fought so hard to establish.

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., stepped into the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City and delivered a thunderous sermon opposing the war in Vietnam. In that now-famous moment, King denounced the strident militarism of the American government—describing it as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"— and outlined what he saw as the connections between the war effort, racism and poverty.

In Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year, television host Tavis Smiley provides a "you-are-there" account of King's political, moral and personal struggles from the time of the Riverside sermon to his assassination exactly one year later. By the summer of 1967, the fabric of the civil rights movement had started to fray; rival factions within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) challenged what they viewed as King's betrayal of purpose as he moved to focus more on the war than the struggles against racism. Younger black leaders, including H. Rap Brown and Jesse Jackson, moved away from King's nonviolent strategies, dividing the black community, especially in northern cities like Chicago and Detroit where poverty fueled race riots. By the time of King's assassination, Smiley shows that chaos more than community reigned among civil rights activists.

Drawing on new interviews with King's family and closest associates, Smiley recreates not only the cultural and political strife of King's final months but also his deep weariness from having to stay constantly on the move to meet with other leaders or participate in acts of civil protest. Unlike other, more definitive, biographies of King, such as Taylor Branch's Parting of the Waters, Smiley's account takes King off his pedestal and offers glimpses of the high personal costs King paid for his commitment to the moral callings of his conscience.

 

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., stepped into the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City and delivered a thunderous sermon opposing the war in Vietnam. In that now-famous moment, King denounced the strident militarism of the American government—describing it as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"— and outlined what he saw as the connections between the war effort, racism and poverty.

In 1985, Alice Hobson, 77, lived independently, still mowing her own yard, fixing her own plumbing and driving her big Chevrolet Impala, often delivering meals-on-wheels to others. Seven years later, at age 84, Hobson still lived on her own, doing her shopping, going to the gym and taking care of her house. Later that year, though, she fell several times and began to experience mental lapses. Her children then faced an increasingly common dilemma: to move Hobson to a facility that could take care of her physical needs but rob her of her autonomy, or allow her to live on her own, or with them, where she would retain autonomy but face physical challenges.

Hobson’s story is one of many that New Yorker writer and surgeon Atul Gawande relates in Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, a compelling account of modern medicine’s failures to deal humanely and wisely with aging and dying. As he points out, “the waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing home and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life.”

Gawande interviews geriatricians, hospice workers and innovators in the assisted living movement and discovers that while a growing number of individuals and institutions provide places where the aging can live out a life filled with meaning, change comes slowly. In the end, he says, we must “recognize that the aging have priorities beyond merely living longer and that giving them the chance to shape their story is essential to sustaining meaning in life.”

Nothing short of a manifesto, Gawande’s book should be on the shelf of every health care professional as well as required reading for anyone—which is to say, most of us—facing the prospect of providing for an aging family member.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 1985, Alice Hobson, 77, lived independently, still mowing her own yard, fixing her own plumbing and driving her big Chevrolet Impala, often delivering meals-on-wheels to others. Seven years later, at age 84, Hobson still lived on her own, doing her shopping, going to the gym and taking care of her house. Later that year, though, she fell several times and began to experience mental lapses. Her children then faced an increasingly common dilemma: to move Hobson to a facility that could take care of her physical needs but rob her of her autonomy, or allow her to live on her own, or with them, where she would retain autonomy but face physical challenges.

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