A Stormy Night in Delaware

A storm front moved across Delaware last night, bring high winds, thunder and lightning, and possibly hail up and down the state.

The scene at right was at 7:05 p.m., just outside of Rehoboth Beach. Heavy rain showers had just moved through, though there was not much thunder or lightning. There was a momentary opening of the clouds that showed the sunny skies that had been around earlier in the day, and the tops of the storm clouds above the murk that hovered just over our heads.

As the evening progressed, we watched storms roll across the sky north of Lewes. They tend to pass us to the north, but we did get a few brushes of rain and wind and were able to watch the show from our north-facing living room windows.

And it was possible to track the various storms via twitter.

In Ocean City, Maryland:

• drvcrashI sweat a tornado is coming thru right now
• drvcrash It's hailing sideways
• scottking http://twitpic.com/67xft Hail just shattered the windshield on our neighbors truck. They look like cocktail onions.
• drvcrash @scottking yeah i was watching the cameras at work when it hit and all the customers run in
• scottking @drvcrash I can only picture being putt-putting or on the boardwalk and have it start hailing. Bet it's hilarious to see tourist run.

In New Castle County, Delaware:

• del_editor http://twitpic.com/680ld - rainbow outside the news journal
• del_editor power's out in bear, we hear
• del_editor about 5,600 Delmarva Power customers w/o power in Glasgow area. power back on by 11 p.m. they're saying.
• del_editor http://twitpic.com/6863r - rainbow on 141 SB

At around 10:00 p.m., del_editor, who works at the News Journal, tried a little twitter-based reporting:

• del_editor so how's the weather, any power outage situations out there in the south, north and in between delaware?
• andytuba @del_editor Well, Newark had that weird yellow sky earlier, but it stopped raining a while ago and the power's doing fine.
• lifeontheedges @del_editor not much crazy weather here, lots of thunder and lightning for a while but calm now. sky looked like orange sherbet at sunset.

I assume there were several other responses, from folks I don't follow, because del_editor soon seemed satisfied:

• del_editorI love the power of twitter. In a few seconds, I can gauge weather throughout state. thank you, all.

And others were watching the storm and storm-watchers:

• lifeontheedges wow, looking at flooding in Salisbury on @wboc preview

Meanwhile, in Southern California:

• martenhogeweg even the fox weather man is twittering: it's sunny in socal.. it's sunny in socal.. it's sunny in socal..

And this morning? Here on Delmarva:

• oceanviewde Storm last night was worth the incredible weather it brought for today!

A Small Drive in New Castle County

I had a chance to take a short drive around upper New Castle County yesterday afternoon. It wasn't as much of an automotive wandering as I might have wished, but I had a little time and a reason to be up there and so I took advantage of what I had.

Colleen's Sussex Tech lacrosse team had a game yesterday afternoon against Ursuline Academy. The game was scheduled late, 3:30 p.m., to allow for the several students, Colleen included, who took the SAT that morning.

She and a few others had to drive up separately from the team bus because of the test. Few parents wanted to have their 17 year old, relatively new drivers wheeling around New Castle County -- a place they have not driven before -- on their own. So I agreed to ride along and coach Colleen in her first foray onto I-95 and some of the crowded roads of New Castle County. We took two others with us.

The game was moved away from Ursuline's home field, adjacent to Barley Mill Plaza, because recent heavy rain had left that ground too soggy. We headed instead to Hockessin Montessori School, on old Lancaster Pike, where there was an artificial turf field. The field looked great to play on but it was surrounded by a fence, with no provision for spectators, and made a lousy place to watch a game.

It didn't help that one of the Ursuline moms was loudly disagreeing with the rulings of the referees all game long. I know she cared about her kid, and she may have thought she had a point, but there's no reason to be such a huge jerk. The refs felt it too; eventually one turned and said, simply, "That's enough out of you. Hush."

After the game, Colleen and her friends wanted to ride the team bus back home. It's part of team spirit and camaraderie and I think the coaches like to go over the games on rides home and talk about what went right and what went wrong.

That left me on my own in a part of Delaware I rarely get to visit, with an hour or so of daylight and a newly cleared sky. I headed north, into Hockessin, and west on Valley Road. I cut north again and crossed briefly into Pennsylvania on Little Baltimore Road (I wanted to see if I might spot a Boundary Monument -- no luck), then continued west and south on Doe Run Road and then Corner Ketch Road. I took that to Route 72 and jogged east a bit to hop onto Upper Pike Creek Road, which I followed south to Kirkwood Highway. I love the fact that Delaware, so flat and open where I live, also includes roads that wind along small stream valleys.

Eventually, of course, I had to return to modern highways and cruise back to Lewes. I comforted myself by listening to the first part of the evening's concert by The Dead, on Sirius Radio's The Dead Channel. I'm listening to the rest of that show on the Internet Archive as I write.

I like to get out a see new things. Sometimes I can make it a walk, and sometimes it needs to be a drive. But I am thankful that there is a world to see, roads to explore, and landscapes to learn.

Remembering a Grandparent's Adventures

There was an undersea volcanic eruption in the western Pacific, near Tonga, this week. The Boston Globe's The Big Picture offered a set of fascinating photographs of an island being born from the eruption. The image at right is from that collection.

Scrolling through these pictures brought my mind back to a series of letters written by my Grandmother in which she described a similar eruption that sprang up in the Galapagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific, off the coast of South America, in the spring of 1925.

My grandmother, Isabel Cooper, was an artist. Starting in 1917, she made seven voyages with the naturalist William Beebe to Central and South America, and surrounding equatorial seas, to study animals and plants.

This was in the days before color photography. My grandmother, as the expeditions' “scientific artist,” produced detailed color paintings of the flora and fauna of the Amazonian jungle, the Galapagos Islands, and the open ocean. The image at left is from The Arcturus adventure: an account of the New York Zoological Society's first oceanographic expedition (1926, Putnum). It shows my grandmother at work on the Arcturus, painting a live fish.

During the 1925 voyage, she wrote a series of letters to my grandfather, Charles Mahaffie, who she had met the previous winter and with whom she would carry on a nearly three and a half year courtship – mostly by letter. We are lucky to have these letters in a collection edited by my father.

On Easter Sunday (April 12) of 1925, she wrote from the Arcturus:

I have put in some peculiar Easters: fire at sea five years ago; shooting rapids of the Mazaruni River last year; etc. But this time is the prize. What do you suppose has gone and happened out here in this “ash heap of the world?” Blooming volcano has broken loose, erupting all over the place. Rather decent of it to pick just this time to do it, as we are probably the only people anywhere around for a few hundred miles to observe it.

They had been anchored in Darwin Bay, at Tower Island (now Isla Genovesa), when “the night watch noticed a faint glow in the direction of Albemarle Island [Isla Isabela], about sixty miles away.” When morning came they began a voyage of a day and night, across the span of the Galapagos Islands, to reach the volcano.

We got to the scene of the eruption early this morning, after the wildest possible night. You couldn't sleep. It was too exciting, steaming slowly toward the first active volcano that any of us had seen.

They watched the eruption from off-shore. I think it differed from this week's eruption in that it was on an existing island and featured less explosive activity, but perhaps more lava flow. A small group went ashore and trekked close to the crater. That was probably a foolish thing to do, as she describes their return “in very bad shape.”

Legs full of cramps, from walking on hot lava, I suppose. And all symptoms of bad thirst, tongues swollen, etc. They finished their canteens in the first mile. They ran into some pretty poisonous gases, which they couldn't smell, but which made them sick.

In spite of this, she had wanted to go ashore, if only at the edge of the island, but was not allowed. And she wanted to try to capture what she was seeing:

I tried to make a sketch of the thing: memory sketch of the red clouds and generally hellish aspect at night, as well as the really beautiful colors of the craters by daylight, but have arrived at the conclusion that it can't be painted. Usually takes a good whang on the head to convince me that I can't accomplish something that appeals to me to do, but this time I give up.

They watched the volcano through Easter night and into the following Monday morning before returning to their work. At midnight she wrote:

We have spent the whole evening looking at the crater – flames popping up here and there and most incredible clouds rising out of it and turning all kinds of red. The moon is just about two days past the full, but enormously bright, and adds to the general strange effect.

It's a large world we live on. We in the internet age are used to seeing images instantly from around the globe. We have become used to what in earlier generations would have been strange, fascinating, and special.

My grandmother's time was modern, of course; the voyages of the Arcturus were transmitted by radio (The “wireless”) and reported in the newspapers in New York. But these were just the “when” and “where” details and brief descriptions. The bright colors and fantastic shapes of alien plants, animals and fish needed the work of artists to be brought back to the home-bound public.

So as we page through yet another collection of photos from the other side of the world, or watch a YouTube video from some far frontier, we should try to remember that, at one time, even the other end of our nation was an expedition away.

What we see as “a small world, after all” is really a vast place deserving of respect and wonder. We should not let the ease of access we have inherited blind us to the size and diversity of our planet.

Sometimes I Wonder If I Really Understand This Internet Thing

I took this photo on Sunday evening as I was finishing preparation of our dinner. I had put together a stir-fry of chicken and peppers and zucchini (with as much garlic as I felt I could get away with). I cooked it just lightly in olive oil with a dash of beer. In this photo, it is ready to put over brown rice.

I took the picture because I liked the collection of colors on the stove. I posted it to flickr and pretty much forgot about it.

Until this evening (Tuesday), when I poked my head into my flickr account and found that this little photo has been viewed 149 times in the last two days. That
is an unusually large number of views in such a short time for a picture of mine. More surprising is the fact that all of those views apparently were on Monday.

I've had popular shots before, but usually they are the sorts of things that you would expect to attract attention (the Hooters billboard that fell-over in a high wind, for example).

Why this one? I have no idea.

Snow Day (At Last)

The mid-Atlantic states have joined the south in a coating of snow this morning. Our neighbors to the north are getting hit as well with a snow-laden late-winter northeaster.

We went to bed to a dusting last night and awoke to find several inches have fallen and more coming down and blowing around. There was also a period of sleet and freezing rain and so the roads are reportedly pretty rough. This is particularly true here where people are not as used to driving on snow.

Schools are shut and state workers advised to stay home. I poked my lens out the door for a moment this morning to catch a few early shots. I'll get out later for more photos and some snow-shoveling. For the moment I'm tracking the storm on-line.

A note to my conservative friends: the jokes about global warming, every time the temperature dips, are getting old. "Warming" is not the point; climate-change is the point. And this winter's roller-coastering from warm to wintry and back again illustrates that point. The forecast for the coming week-end? Sixty degrees.

But enough of grumpiness. We have a day of snow to enjoy.

It's something of a shame that I made my crock-pot stew yesterday. This would also have been a great day to slow-cook. We've plenty of fire-wood, though. And blankets and sleepy cats. We should be just fine.

Shameless Self-Promotion #219

I'm very happy to report that I've had another photograph picked up by Delaware Today magazine. My photo of the spire on Legislative Hall, in Dover, is the "cover" of the magazine's annual Kent County Guide.

I added quotation marks to "cover" because this is really the full page intro to a section within the March issue of the magazine. But still, I'm proud that my hobby is yielding pictures deemed worthy by a pro art director. This is my third picture in Delaware Today. I had the Kent Guide and the Fall Beach Guide last year.

I took this picture in September of 2006 on one of my lunchtime walks around downtown Dover. It was a lovely fall day, with blue skies and fluffy clouds. Looking back over the photos from that day, it looks like I spent most of my lunch hour wandering around the Old Green, the colonial-era center of town about a block over from the current Legislative Mall with our present Legislative Hall and most government buildings.

I'm still wandering around at lunch, but I worry sometimes that I have already photographed everything within walking distance of my office. Luckily, there are still changes being made, so patience will likely earn me new things to photograph.

Odd Weather

The high temperature in Dover (DE) today was 54 degrees, only about 10 degrees higher than average for the second day of February; but odd, given that the forecast for tomorrow is cold rain and snow. Skies were clear and the sun was warm. I spent my lunch hour on a brisk photo-walk and was quite comfortable in shorts and a polo shirt.

Silver Lake was iced over, but the ice was looking old and ragged and melting away from the shore. The gulls liked it.

Shameless Self-Promotion #217

I was very pleased recently to have one of my photos chosen as the header image for the State of Delaware web portal. It's a winter image, so I assume it will eventually be replaced. But, still...

Most of my Delaware-based friends have already seen this, and kindly offered their congratulations. But I thought I'd brag on-line this afternoon for my non-Delaware friends and family.

This image was created, by staff at the Government Information Center, from a photo I took in February of 2007 after a moderate snow-fall had added to the picturesque-ness of downtown Dover. I had given them blanket permission to use any of my images on the state web site in any way they please. I think they did a great job of pulling out a part of the picture that looks cool in the portal-header format.

I understand that this was one of several options presented to staff of the new Governor in the lead-up to his inauguration. I was thrilled that it was the one picked to start off the new look of the portal when it was unveiled on inauguration day.

As I have mentioned before, the changes in leadership here in Delaware, and particularly at the national level, have made me happy and hopeful and determined to get back to work. It's nice to have a little personal accomplishment to celebrate as well.

The Perfect Toy for the Moment

I give you obamicon.me, an on-line imagery toy that creates an iconic (Obamiconic?) version of any image you care to upload. It mimics that icon-like (Obamicon-like?) image by Shepard Fairey of the President-Elect seen recently on the cover of Time magazine.

I expect there to be a flurry of activity on this site. It perfectly captures both the mood of anticipation that marks this last week before the inauguration, and our national love of looking at ourselves. I know I found it charming.

And, we're just waiting. Sure, there are news stories to follow (if you are a political junkie), and football playoffs (at least in our region), but aren't we all just waiting for January 20?

So when an on-line toy that is appropriate to the time, we jump right in.

I tried a few different nihilistic inspirational posters, including the celebration of silly at right. I also tried for outdoorsy and for thoughtful. But I liked the goofy one the best.

It's All In the Choices We Make

Sometimes the smallest details stand as editorial comments. Looking through Tuesday's front pages on the Newseum web site, I found several different photographs of a cute moment Monday in the Capitol Rotunda.

Mr. Obama was walking through the Rotunda with Nancy Pelosi and her crew. He stopped to talk to 5-year old Carter Metz, of Tennessee.

I was interested to see how that was played in different papers.

I was struck by the caption the editors of the Kansas City Star chose to put just above one version of the picture: "Obama meets with Capitol Hill leaders." Placed above this particular photo, this suggests that maybe the 5-year old is the leader.

By contrast, The Washington Times chose what I think is a cuter photo of Mr. Obama bending down to talk to young Carter and includes just a descriptive caption below. This highlights the fatherly Obama and the charm of the moment.

I may, of course, be reading way too much into these design choices. But that "meets with leaders" looks like the sort of thing I would have wanted to try to get away with.

I should also note that I Find the Times' version, with Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel and the rest of the suits relegated to the background while the President-Elect speaks to a child, really cute.

Wet Day at Moore's Lake

It was a wet day today. Not steadily rainy, like yesterday, but wet. At any moment today, the world looked like it had just been rained on, or was about to be rained on. Yet I never saw it actually rain.

It seemed like a good day to take my camera down to Moore's Lake, just south of Dover, to take some wet day photos. I had spent part of a lunch hour there back in 2005. That was a lovely sunny summer day and I took a set of sunshine-y pictures.

This time, I found myself photographing lots of leaves. Many were floating downstream; passing over reflected empty tree branches. Artsy.

Others were spread all around on the ground. And on the picnic tables. And the walkways. And the dam and spillway. and on the fish ladder that I photographed a few years ago.

One of the problems I face as an amateur photographer is a limited set of subjects. The world is vast and there are many cool things to photograph, but I have a day job, and kids, and other things to do. I take pictures on my lunch hour and on the week-ends and on business trips when I can find free time. And on vacations, but those are special.

And, I live in a small place. After almost four years posting digital pictures (my first were from spring break in 2005), I feel like I have photographed everything that I see in my normal round. Yet, on days like today, I get a chance to go back to a place I've already shot and try to find new photos in new conditions.

Sometimes the same old thing can be brand new all over again.

An On-Line President

Barack Obama's candidacy was one of the most web-enabled we've seen and it looks like his transition and presidency will be as well. The transition, for example, will be on line at change.gov.

There are several cool spots on flickr that are focused on our president-to-be. There's a group called "A message for Obama" that invites users to post photographed messages for the President-Elect. I made mine with wordle.

There's also a fascinating set of photos from back-stage with the Obamas, the Bidens, and friends on election night. This photo of Joe Biden greeting Sasha Obama is my favorite.

I think this web-connectedness is part of why I'm so excited about Obama. It's not just that he's using the web the way it can and should be used. It's also the fact that it doesn't seem at all forced; his techie-ness is natural.

More Eyes on Delaware

It's not unusual that Delaware should be getting more attention now that our senior Senator is the Vice-President Elect. Web interest in Delaware had increased starting in the summer when Joe Biden was nominated to run with Barack Obama. I was a bit surprised by the sharp jump in views of my flickr pictures this week, though. Daily views have doubled since I posted photos of Joe at Return Day on Thursday.

A Cool Water Park

water park active pool 1
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

There's a cool water park at one end of Main Street in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. The Water Garden, as it is properly called, was put in in the 1970s and it has that "70s Cement Architecture" look, but is pretty fascinating. It has many levels and different types of water features.

The NSGIC retreat group wandered down there on Tuesday evening and walked down the steps to the Active Pool, which was fairly disorienting in the dark. There are cement steps of varying shapes and sizes, surrounded by the sound of rushing water; add deep shadows and a dark sky and it is otherworldly.

Will Craig and I went back just after sunrise this morning. The steps are still daunting, but not as frightening, in the day.

There's also a quiet pool, surrounded by Cypress trees and walls of gently falling water. While we were there, the aerated water pool was closed for maintenance.

So, if you find yourself in Fort Worth, take a moment to check this place out.

In Fort Worth

fort worth morning
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I'm in Fort Worth, Texas, for a few days, for a leadership retreat of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC). We're here for just two nights, with meetings for an afternoon and evening, a whole full day, and a morning, before flying back home.

There's not much time to look around, but I stepped out this morning and again just before the sun sank to grab a few photos of the downtown. I hope to get out again tomorrow morning. Fort Worth seems to have a compact and walkable downtown, but it has been quiet when I've been out.

My trip to this Fort Worth Hilton was a minor odyssey. I managed to get on the wrong "SuperShuttle" van at Dallas/Fort Worth International and got a bonus tour of downtown Dallas before catching the right van into Fort Worth. Next time I won't trust the fellow in the yellow windbreaker, with the clip-board, at the shuttle stop to make sure I don't get on the wrong van.

Meet Polly

meet polly
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

This is Polly, our third cat. We weren't planning on having a third cat, but she showed up at the Sussex Dance Academy one day last week looking cute and lost and alone. The Dance Academy at any given time consists of a dozen or so teen and pre-teen girls, most of them with feline soft-spots. There was no way they were going to let this cat stay a stray.

She spent a few days at Miriah's house, but her family had just taken on a stray in their neighborhood. We were always on call, just in case and I fully expected to have this new cat before too long. We picked her up on Friday evening.

Mocha and Shoe are not pleased with us. They were neither of them quite pleased with being one of two cats in the house. Adding a third has them a bit miffed-off.

Shoe got over it fairly soon. He's been faced with a new cat once already, so he was a bit more used to this.

Mocha has spent much of the last two days under our bed, coming out only to eat and use the cat-box. She's been arching her back and puffing-up her tail and looking very intent. But this afternoon she has come out and is napping in the sun; not fully comfortable yet, but getting there.

Why "Polly?" She was discovered outside the Dance Academy door during rehearsals for The Nutcracker while the Polichinelles were rehearsing. The girls refer to them as "the Pollies."

Deployment Ceremony

There was a deployment ceremony today in downtown Dover for the 361st Signal Brigade, a unit of the Delaware National Guard. They are headed out for a period of training in Texas and then to Iraq. These ceremonies are not all that unusual, but this one was special in part because Delaware's Attorney General, Beau Biden, is a captain in the unit and his dad, Senator Joe Biden, was on hand.

I understand that our Governor, Senators and Congressman often attend these ceremonies, and address the troops. Senator Biden's status as VP-candidate, with the Secret Service complications that go along with that, made this one a little different. Streets were closed all around the site of the ceremony -- Legislative Mall in front of Legislative Hall. Access to the ceremony itself was strictly controlled, but we were able to watch from outside a guarded perimeter.

A colleague and I took a short break early in the day and checked out preparations. A crew was erecting a flag-draped ceremonial arch for the Brigade to march under. We spotted Captain Biden on the street in front of our office. We stopped for a quick chat and, why not, a photo. Beau Biden is a nice guy; friendly and charming. You can see his dad in him.

At eleven, the brigade marched a short way down Legislative Avenue, under that ceremonial arch, and onto the Mall. They were preceded by a group of police on motorcycles, a platoon of Harley-mounted Patriot Guard Riders, and a set of bag-pipers. The Patriot Guard group, by the way, included Delaware blogger Shirley Vandever, the Delaware Curmudgeon.

The ceremony itself featured short speeches by the leadership of the Delaware National Guard, the Governor, the Senators and a representative of our Congressman (who was back in Washington to vote on the bailout). We expected Senator Biden to avoid the election in his remarks and he seemed to do so; his was the shortest address. The CNN story has the heart of it:

"I've come here many times before as a Delawarean, as a United States senator," he told a crowd in Dover. "But today I come, as you prepare to deploy, as a father -- a father who had some sage advice from his son this morning: 'Dad, keep it short, we're in formation.' "

"My heart is full of love and pride. ... You are the best demonstration of both our nation's greatness and ... our people's goodness," he added.

I've long opposed the war in Iraq, but I couldn't help feeling a little choked up with pride and concern as I watched these men and women marching in my state's capitol. You can oppose the war and support the troops at the same time.

I also found myself watching some of the VFW guys who were in attendance in support of the younger troops today. I was standing a short way behind a Vietnam Vet. Did he get this sort of support? I hope so. In any case, we can still show him and his compatriots respect today.

A Bi-Partisan Yard

I found this mix of yard signs on a property in Lewes on a walk with the lovely Karen yesterday. It was nice to see a bipartisan mix of support in one yard:

• Joe Booth, (incumbent) Republican candidate for the local state House seat.
  
• Barack Obama, Democratic Presidential Nominee (and, I hope to God, our next President).
• Joan Deaver, Democratic candidate for the local County Council seat.
• Jack Markell, Democratic candidate for (and likely the next) Governor of Delaware.
• Gary Simpson, (incumbent) Republican candidate for the local state Senate seat.

I think this shows the power of incumbency in a small place. Of these five races, only two aren't "open" seats; these are the ones for which this property owner is supporting Republicans. As a side note, I think at least one of the Republican incumbents here is probably worthy of re-election.

Magnificent, if Minute, Obsession

This is just cool. Dan Hanna has taken two pictures of himself every day for 17 years. Two photos, 180 degrees apart with his head aligned with the position of the sun. All very carefully set up.

The result is a time-lapse film of his face, head, and hair over time. The music is a nice touch.

I picked this up, by the way, via the MAKE Magazine blog, which has led me to some neat stuff lately.

A Labor Day Sunday

We spent the Sunday of our Labor Day weekend at North Bethany with my folks, my older sister Margaret and two of her grown kids, and my brother and his lovely wife and brood. And their large, happy, friendly, rambunctious, overgrown puppy of a black lab, Titan. (He has grown a good deal since last summer.)

Matt and his two girls are geocache enthusiasts. Their plan for the early afternoon was a walk down the beach into Bethany Beach proper to find three caches. Matt's wife Lynn, having run for what I calculate as about 20 miles that morning, was going to relax for a bit. Christina and I went along for the walk; I'm always interested in a chance to look for new things to photograph.

The beach is usually fairly generous with subject matter; on a crowded beach, though, a middle-aged man with a camera generally should keep his focus on seabirds, waves and things out to sea.

We were entertained on the walk by several pods of dolphins fishing and bouncing, apparently happily, just off shore. I tried, but failed, to get a decent photograph of them.

Once in Bethany, we were successful finding two of the three geocaches. The third was somewhere under the boardwalk, an area now off-limits to help protect new dunes that have been built. One, found by the Bethany Beach Bandstand, was what one might call a "micro-geocache."

When we got back up the beach, we found our friends Andy and Lynn had brought their girls along for some beach time. We had a pleasant few hours of surfside conversation, a chance to jump into the ocean, and a clear, sunny afternoon.

After a taco dinner that couldn't be beat, we had cake and ice cream and sang happy birthday to Margaret about six times. Her birthday is still a week away, but when you have a chance to sing to your sister you take it.

It was a find Labor Day Sunday, spent just the way a holiday should be spent; with friends and family.