Women are to be bred! (5/8/2022)

Women are to be bred! Women have been put on earth to make babies and that is it! Good news, men; stack up on the Viagra that is what appears to be coming down from the Supreme Court. Women, when and if you are of a fertile age, get on you back and open wide.

Oops, hold on, maybe stack up on those pills so you can go a few times in one evening but that will be it for a few years. Soon, sex will only be for procreation. Only those few times a year when your woman is fertile, because soon sex will only be for procreation and not for fun; only to make babies. God forbid when she gets pregnant when it is not wanted, what do you do then? So, for the rest of the year, you better take pills that suppress your sexual drive or needs and she better takes some too. You can take those Viagras once a month to get her pregnant and once it hits, that’s it! When you have enough kids you might as well have them cut off; sterilization does not reduce the sex drive (I am told). One solution would be polygamy!

Oh well, if you have been following the news, you know what I am referring to. The Supreme Court seems to be on the cusp to give the right to make abortion illegal, or in other words take the rights away from women (and their men and doctors) to decide that it might be wise not to continue a pregnancy at times. It is insane.

If this all comes to pass, some states will make all types of pregnancy termination illegal. Word is that the state of Louisiana wants to make and pregnancy termination a crime. My wife and my sister both had tubal pregnancies. These pregnancies would have killed them if they were not terminated. In fact, my wife almost died, and my sister’s ex husband tried to stop the termination of the pregnancy. Even these types of terminations would be illegal in some states which would result in the death of the mother and the already non-viable fetus.

You get the idea, this is ridiculous. Therefore, in this very brief post, I just want to log my dismay with the news and hope you all do not take it laying down!

I borrowed this picture from the editorial page of the Washington Post (if the Post or author of the cartoon reads my blog and does not want me to publish it let me know and I will remove it).  However; it speaks to everything I and my blog believe in!

The Debate Du-Jour (12/02/2021)

Ok, here I am getting into the debate du-jour and telling you nothing, that you have not heard, and that has not been said before. However, just for the sake of history and since I see this blog as a reflection of what I see that is going on in society and my opinion of it, I feel I need to chime in. The abortion issue, that is now in front of the Supreme Court.

So let me put it out there: Essentially, I am anti-abortion, but pro-choice. What, how is that possible. Well in my ideal world, abortion would not often be needed. There would be perfect family planning, without hiccups, there would be no rape or incest, we would have great healthcare and the mother’s health would never be in danger, and we would have done free genetic testing before hand to know whether a pregnancy would result in an abnormal fetus.  However, we do not live in utopia, do we?

The problem is that too many conservative men and yes, also women want to control the lives of others. They believe in less government when it comes to healthcare, gun control, taxes, what you can do on your property, vaccinations, you name it; however, they do want the government to control what you do in your bedroom. It is just like what the mother of the latest mass murderer of the Oxford high school wrote in an open letter to then president elect tRump. I am paraphrasing here, she wrote that she was looking forward to him cleaning up Washington from those politicians who are fucking her in the ass, because as a middleclass working mom she would “rather be grabbed in the pussy.”

I am personally so sick and tired of hearing these folks being pro death penalty and then turn around and talking about the sanctity of life. Wanting to save blobs of tissue in a womb that were put there by a rapist, an abusive uncle, stepfather, boyfriend of their mother, you name it. Then when it is brought to term, the mother and baby can rot in hell. They are not given any support, because the pro-lifers do not believe in healthcare for all. Remember how they fought Obamacare? They are too poor to feed the child and let us make sure to cut food assistance programs, and fight all other welfare programs. That child does not need three meals a day or a coat on cold days, that makes them weak! We definitely have to cut education and not raise minimum wages.

Many of these folks have a nice story to tell (life is sacred, etc.), but they simply do not care. They may wish to adopt one of these babies if it is the correct race and mother did not use drugs. But, for the rest, stick them in a ghetto, loosen the gun control rules and have them kill each other, get a drug overdose or stick them in jail. That is a way of getting rid of them while still feeling good about ourselves and being pro-life. It is simply callus what they are doing, and why? Just to make themselves feel good, because of some internal frustration or guilt, because of some false deity they believe in? Who knows? Maybe it is because they want to control us.

The problem is, the way the conservatives have stacked the Supreme Court, they are going to win and society is going to lose. Remember the latest opinion poll shows that something like 63% of the U.S. population is pro-choice and our religious Taliban is increasingly trying to control us. We need to fight back and that is what I am trying to do here in this post!

I am a tree hugger (1/23/2021)

Of all the environmental news and stories that came out last year there was one that has stayed with me. Regular readers know that I am a huge student and lover of trees. OK, you can even call me a tree hugger! When I walk in the woods there is nothing better than petting the occasional tree with my bare hands, or just laying my hands on the trunk and enjoying my connection with the wood, the tree, and by way of its vascular and root system with the earth; the entire world around me. 

In winter, I enjoy looking up in the canopy of trees and look at the branching.  This helps me in my studies for the development of my bonsai, but also just the enjoyment of the simple beauty and majesty. 

But that is not necessarily what I want to write about today. In the department that we work, we have bi-monthly climate change webinars, and sometime mid-2020 we had a talk by Dr. Jeremy Hoffman climatologist from the Virginia Science Museum in Richmond about how urban treescapes modified the urban climate. More specifically, he had studied how city sections where minorities live had fewer trees and parks then Caucasian neighborhoods. These African American neighborhoods were much warmer during the summer which resulted in heat related 911 (or emergency/ambulance) calls. Now here I was looking at the year end review in the New York Times and they showed to 10 most important articles of 2020 and there it was, an article on this specific research. Here is the link to this article. They did another article about it earlier.

While I promised not to bother you all about politics in my blogs as much as I have done in the past 4 years, the issue in Richmond and many other large cities goes back many years. It is known as environmental justice. Environmental justice is very closely aligned with racism and economic justice, where the poor and minorities were delt the short end of the stick. They lived closer to the pollution generating area; the areas that were cheaper to live in; across the tracks as it is called. They could not afford high rent, health care, the electricity to cool or heat their homes. There you have it, heat related illnesses because of the lack of trees in the summer, including asthma because trees also scrub the air.

It still amazes me to see in this neighborhood where I live, how eager newcomers are to cut the trees in their yards around their homes (even today I could hear the whining of the chainsaws), in the pursuit of, I am not sure what. More sun, the perfect lawn, more exposure and heat in the summer, more wind, and even lower temperatures in winter? Yes, having a yard full of trees is a pain. We have a lot of leaves in fall and no sun any longer for a decent vegetable garden, and my bonsais. I previously wrote about my gripe over the eagerness that some of the folks here have about leaf disposal and tree killing. 

This tree had split in two exposing this inner wood.  It shows that vascular system that connects the upper part of the tree (and me when I touch the tree) with the earth.  I just love the vein pattern.

But even planting a young tree or a smaller species in place of the old majestic one they just nuked really does not help. A lawn or a young, small tree are so much less efficient in fixing carbon out of the air and thus reducing CO2 than large mature trees. In addition, my bike and car both have a temperature gauge on them, and we can see the difference when we go from our yard down to the primary school less than a mile away, which has absolutely no tree around it. In summer, the temperatures are easily 5 or more degrees higher than in my wooded front yard. In winter, when the thermometer reads 32 degrees (or freezing), the windshields of my cars may not need scraping while the neighbor’s cars are frosted over.

Concluding trees are not only good for the soul, but they also help in moderating the microclimate around your home, they are good for the climate as a whole, and they provide great habitat for all kinds of critters, be it up there or in the fallen leaves. In other words, become a tree hugger.

I love to change the world (7/27/2020)

When I was young, much younger, I was an idealist with a goal to change the world. Don’t we all at some point have these aspirations. But then we grow up. I listened to tunes from Ten Years After where they sang in their song “I Love to Change the World:”

Tax the rich 
Feed the poor
Till there are no 
Rich no more 

And,

Population 

Keeps on breeding 

Nation bleeding 

Still more feeding, economy 

But then there was this refrain to the song:

I'd love to change the world 

But I don't know what to do 

So I'll leave it up to you 

For many of us it was a difficult thing to do, to change the world. We were flower children, peace, love, but what else?

I protested against the CIA’s involvement in Chile. My wife and I spent almost two years working at a leprosy center in Africa, after an obligatory period in the Dutch Army (I was too chicken to be a conscious objector, although I did my best to be as difficult as possible while serving). Did that change the world? Not in the tiniest bit, but in addition to almost losing our life, it made us feel we might have done something.

Then, after two more international development jobs, it was time to settle in for middleclass life, or as we sometime say in my native language little house, small tree and a small animal (or huisje, boompje, beestje). So here I am 40 to 50 years later, after living a middleclass lifestyle, nothing has changed, or maybe somethings have changed for the worst. I would still love to change the world; although I still am not sure how to do it. Here I sit back in my armchair and I am secretly encouraged to see that a different, younger generation seems to be taking it upon themselves trying to do something about it. Things like gay rights, gender equality, and now black lives matter.

I am far from disappointed with my almost 70 years of existence. Working for the government I have to change the world in a more subtle way, and I do that with my teaching. I have tried to do that a little bit in the blog posts that I have written in the past. While they were intended to be more educational about nature and the environment, a lot of my posts have become more political. Necessarily so, with such a horrible person in the Whitehouse.

I am hoping to have at least another 20 or so productive years to go. Twenty years where I have the freedom not to sit back, but to work on changing the world. Right now, I am wondering which of the causes to pick up. There are so many pressing ones. My first inclination as a biologist is to work fork for the environment. Without a clean environment there will be no future for the next generations. Moreover, environmental justice is a very important issue which touches the environment, children, poverty and racial minorities. Moreover, research by Richard Louv and others has shown that criminal behavior including gang affiliation can be reduced by exposure to the natural environment.

My Sermon (2): Liberation (4/5/2020)

As part of a group that takes a sermon writing class at our Unitarian Church, I am asked occasionally if I present a sermon on the days that our minister is either off or has a commitment elsewhere.  I relented and said I would do one.  Originally I was thinking of presenting a sermon on growing bonsai and spiritual growth and church growth; however, when the request came out, they asked me if I could do something on liberation.

So here it is:

It started with a low rumble in the distance which progressively grew louder. Of late this had been an ominous sign of another impending raid by marauding soldiers trying to escape north to the Sudan in advance of the liberators who were in the process of overthrowing the current government of the country. I remember it like yesterday, being liberated. 

Let me set the stage, it was May 1979 and my wife Donna, and I were living and working at a Leprosy Center in the eastern part of Uganda, a country that had been ruled by the ruthless dictator Idi Amin. We had been in the country for over a year, and I had been working at the Leprosy Center as a Farm Manager, managing a 2500-acre dairy farm, with close to a 1000 head of cattle, that was part of the Center. In January of that year, rebels with the assistance of Tanzania to the south had invaded the country in an effort to overthrow the government. In April, I think it was actually on Donna’s birthday or just before that, did Uganda’s capital Kampala fall. The Amin army fell apart, deserted and tried to flee to the Sudan to the north. The problem was our Leprosy Center was located just off the major highway to Sudan. We had been unable to evacuate in time and we were stuck at the center. During the past weeks we had been subject to the looting and harassment sprees of these fleeing soldiers. Moreover, while under siege for the past month to a month and a half we were running out of all things essential (sounds familiar?) and had to live on one candle a night; two or three matches a day; we only ate sweet potatoes and eggs three times a day; drank rainwater and locally distilled moonshine. I’m amazed that I still have a liver and my eyesight. 

Hearing the vehicles approaching in the distance meant that we needed to get ready to deal with another wave of obnoxious soldiers (corner me over a beer one of these days and I can tell you some stories, but this is not the place today) when all the sudden tanks and jeeps rolled in, very unlike the deserters who came in with stolen ramshackle cars. Here they announced that they were the liberators, the Tanzanians! It was unbelievable feeling of relief that moment, being liberated, we laughed, we cried, we knew we had made it. Let me tell you, there had been moments the past month that we thought we were not going to survive it. Really, being liberated never felt so good. On top of that, the evening of our liberation Radio Netherlands read an announcement over the shortwave radio in which it told the listeners that we were missing in Uganda and asked anyone who had heard of us or seen us to call the Netherlands foreign office, but that they feared the worst. 

But, we were liberated and we were alive, we could live again without fear! Almost everybody was rejoicing and celebrating; and that night we burned two candles and had a small get-together, followed by a center-wide party the weekend following. 

During that party, the flood gates opened, the people were finally able to express what they thought of Idi Amin’s reign and the past 10 years they had lived through. We heard more horror stories about the oppression, the difference between the haves and the have nots, how you could not even trust your closest relative, because they could rat you out and that could cost you your life. 

Living in Uganda and working with lepers, we were working with a part of society that were outcasts and heavily discriminated against. Nowadays we would call this social justice. Social justice is not a new thing, but unbeknownst to us we were practicing it. We were not using those words; we were there to help. Some could ask me why the hell we put ourselves in such danger to serve and work with these folks. It was a combination of a lot of things including compassion, empathy, naivety, and the thirst for adventure. I have always been a teacher at heart and in my way, I also was there to observe and teach. While we had already learned a lot about the difference between the ruling class and the common folks, it was then and there that we really appreciated the importance of liberty and being liberated. 

The center where we worked was sponsored by the Church of England and the local Bishop was on our board. He was a regular visitor to the center; however, he would return to his Ivory Tower after his visits. 

Other religious folks we encountered were the Dutch catholic priest and the Italian nuns. Those Catholics were a different breed all together. One of our favorite story was about father Meindert van Acht, the brother of the Dutch prime minister at the time, who we frequently visited. One day, just after we arrived at his remote village on the slopes of Mount Elgon, a 14,000-foot-tall volcano located between Uganda and Kenya, we sat on his porch and watched him exiting his church. He had just finished mass. There he came, walking towards us with the bible under one arm and a crowbar under the other, a sight to behold, a priest, the brother of the second most important person of the Netherlands, in a tattered and torn robe with these two items under his arms. We never asked him if and if so, how, he used the crowbar in his service. 

Father Meindert had one request, which was that he did not want any visitors on Tuesdays because that was his weekly whiskey night, so he did not need an excuse to drink. All other days were great. The guest room was always open, and, in the evening, he would break out the mass wine or some additional whiskey for his visitors and himself. During visit with the Italian nuns at a Leprosy Center in Jinja in north central Uganda we always enjoyed fine Italian wines and good conversation. 

But it was not always fun and games or drinking to excess. It was a form of stress relief in a country where it was very difficult to work in. It was a country where we saw a lot of murders, assassinations, political and social injustice, and where we all tried to work with those folks who were oppressed and looked down upon. We youngsters, in our early and mid-20s, were in awe at what the missionaries were doing, how they were living, coping, and surviving. They lived alone; we were in a group of 6 Dutch folks who could give each other at least some mutual support. They were outwardly happy, content, even keeled and at peace with themselves and their god. I guess that is what their belief did to them. 

In those days we had not yet learned about those words “social justice” or another word called “liberation theology” that Father Meindert and his compatriots were practicing in the villages of Uganda or elsewhere in the developing world. 

Liberation Theology was first introduced by the Uruguayan Priest Juan Luis Segundo Gutiérrez in 1971. In his book “A Theology of Liberation” Gutiérrez proposed that the true task of theology was not to declare pristine abstract truths, rather ‘only by doing this truth will our faith be “verified.”’ At that time Gutiérrez and other liberation theologists in Africa, Central and South America were struggling to bridge the gulf between divine justice and social justice, trying to address the reality of human suffering and confront their own discipline. Some of them were trying to approach the Bible from the perspective of the powerless. 

In the opinion of the liberation theologists, the church should be a movement for those who were denied their rights and plunged into such poverty. Folk that were deprived of their full status as human beings. Liberation theologists were of the opinion that the poor should take the example of Jesus and use it to bring about a just society. 

A common way in which priests and nuns showed their solidarity with the poor was to move from religious houses into poverty-stricken areas to share the living conditions of their flock. The nuns that operated the leprosy center in Jinja and the Dutch fathers that were operating the boys orphanage in Mbale a town to the south of us or father Meindert on Mount Elgon, were working with folks that were either down on their luck, from a tribe that was on the fringes of society, the poor and the sick, or just simple outcasts. They were not the pious religious priests from my memory growing up on a Caribbean island, but real down to earth people who served the communities they were working in. They were not there to save souls; at least they never expressed that to us. 

Regretfully, we did see some missionaries from some other denominations in Kenya whose interest seemed only to be there to save souls in an effort to stroke themselves, somehow still living in their ivory tower, and seemed less interested in social justice. 

Most controversially, the Liberationists said the church should act to bring about social change and should ally itself with the working class to do so. Some radical priests became involved in politics and trade unions; others even aligned themselves with violent revolutionary movements. They were often accused of spreading or at least preaching the revolution, socialism or even worse, communism. As the Argentine theologian José Míguez Bonino said it was the revolutionary challenge of those who boldly proclaimed: “Jesus Christ is Che Guevara.” Liberation theologists were often not accepted by their regular church and told to shape up. Some tried to moderate it a bit with statements such as: “love for the poor should be preferential, not exclusive.” Things finally changed a little bit with the new Pope who led a less opulent lifestyle and paid more attention to the poor and sick. 

Although we live in a free country, even here in the US there are different levels of being free, isn’t there? If you are white, have money and often if you are male (especially a white male), you seem to be freer then others. It should therefore not be a surprise that even here in the U.S. liberation theology took root. The Protestant African-American theologian James Cone wrote in his 1970 book entitled A Black Theology of Liberation: ‘If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then God is a murderer and we had better kill God.’ Black religion, Cone asserted, began not with an abstraction but with the acknowledgment that ‘God is Black’ and present in the experience of black people, from the slave auction block to the urban ghetto. Others argue that that the Bible assigning a male gender to God was the original justification for the patriarchy. This was discussed by the feminist theologian Mary Daly in her book Beyond God the Father which was published in 1973. 

I travel a lot around the state and get to see the economically and environmentally depressed areas of the state, both black and white. The inner city and the Appalachian region. This is one of those things we have been trying to address this in our community as part of our social justice commitment. Here at the UUFP we have a social justice table that we can visit during coffee hours and find out about worthwhile causes. We go to marches; we have a black lives matter banner outside; you name it. But let’s not forget the other causes out there as well. 

We UUs have a rich history of social justice, ranging from our stand against slavery, to the voter registration in the south in 60s and 70s, to our support of the Black Lives Matter movement, to our push for gender equality, equal rights, marriage equality, and to the social justice committees that you find in almost all the UU churches and fellowships throughout the country. Social justice does not stop there, we are also concerned about environmental justice. 

After working in the 3rd world, the freedom to move around, to think what you want, to express it to friends and family, freedom of association, or even think to yourself and not be in doubt. All the things that makes me so happy to be a citizen of this country, to be a member of our UU religion, and especially of this fellowship. The UU’s 6th Principle which promotes: THE GOAL OF WORLD COMMUNITY WITH PEACE, LIBERTY, AND JUSTICE FOR ALL is so darn important to me after what we experienced in Uganda and the other countries, we have worked in. It also makes me scared of the things I see happening around me or what has happened, but at the same time hopeful about the countercurrent that is occurring as well. 

Remember, today social justice can mean different things for different religions and we need to watch out for false prophets. For example, some will even claim that preventing a woman’s right to choose is a form of social justice. Competing claims of being on God’s or at least the right side are testing the limits of a liberal social order straining to accommodate militant believers. Our fourth principle tells us that we: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This is something many dogmatic religions don’t allow; it is something totalitarian governments try to suppress, like the one we experienced in Uganda. Let’s use it wisely in defending it and applying to our efforts in social and environmental justice. 

That is what I try to do throughout my life, and I know many of you do. I had the privilege to get an education, but I try never to be condescending to anyone and share my knowledge with all who want to hear it. We are not rich but contribute to the church and other worthwhile causes both monetarily and by volunteering. We are socially active when we can and marched for women, for science, the environment and for gun control. All I can say is to stay true to yourself, like father Meindert, the Italian nuns, and the many liberation theologists and try to address the human suffering around us and in particular the suffering of those who are socially, economically, environmentally and racially disadvantaged. 

I believe we all can learn from the example the liberation theologists gave us and incorporate them in the way we live our UU faith.

Donna and I visiting one of the male nurses and his family at his home in the village in Uganda

Invocation:

Rev. Karen G. Johnston

Do not be alone right now...

Gathering together grows courage...

These things add up: your one thing & my one thing; his one thing & their one thing & her one thing…

Do not be alone right now. Do not let me be alone. Any liberation – all liberation — is collective liberation. My freedom is bound with yours and yours with mine. Inextricably...

Reading:
The Gift— Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
’O please, O please,
Come out and play.’

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and Light!”


Benediction:Barack Obama

Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
We are the change that we seek.

Green economy (1/24/2019)

It was somewhat encouraging reading Thomas Friedman’s editorial in the New York Times the other day entitled “A Green New Deal Revisited.” In it he mentions that there seems to be a group of new U.S. representatives who seem to take global warming and other environmental issues seriously. I hate to use the word crisis in particular since we were joking about starting a drinking game and having a shot of bourbon every time Trump mentioned the word crisis during his White House address the other day or when he talks about his famous border wall, but in reality our environment is in a state of crisis.

According to Friedmman, it seems that congress woman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have actively started the ball rolling. Leave it to this young lady to have the guts to do so. Not that I want to sound like an old man who is set in his ways. Yes, I recently wrote an account about an old guy going into the woods with his dog. I just wanted to write something different, more story like. I wanted to change the narrative a bit while still being serious about the environment. I wanted to approach nature’s beauty and importance from a different angle; discover it and enjoy it. I wanted to write about the excitement and importance of being out there.

Let's go back to the “Green New Deal” as Friedman calls it. This one is really exciting. This group of legislators are understanding that we getting close to reaching a point of no return. It is now or never when it comes to environmental protection! So they are calling for the U.S. to completely transition away from fossil fuel in the next 12 years. How the heck would we do that, you may ask. Well, according to Friedman, in order to protect “Mother Nature”, ourselves and future generations, we will have the be nice to “Father Greed.” What does he mean with that? He proposes passing environmental regulations, fuel efficiency standards, green building codes and all those wonderful things. This would make it much more attractive for innovators to develop alternative (green) methods of doing business, of transportation, of living, etc, It would make it more cost efficient. For example, whenever you look into solar energy it is always compared to the cost of energy supplied to the home that is generated by fossil fuels by the energy companies.

In 2007/2008 Friedman published something like the four zeros. Zero-net energy buildings, or buildings that produce as much energy as they consume; zero-waste manufacturing; zero-carbon power grid; and zero-emission transportation.

This all seems very ambitious, and my first reaction is that this will the hit the economically underprivileged harder than those who are richer and well off. The poor will suffer either way, when we live greener and combat global warming or when we do nothing about it; under an increasing warmer world. But then, what will happen if we do nothing about the trajectory we are on?

Most ordinary folks, it seems, are aware of global warming and know it is an important issue. They know we need to do something about it. However, we are at the mercy of a few rich manufacturers; the few elite, rich capitalists who can buy off our politicians. It seem that they don’t give a damn what happens to the world’s climate in name of the almighty dollar, their profits; the stuff they can’t take with them to hell, when they die. But for right now, they can afford more powerful air conditioners, better insulated homes, and protect themselves from us when disaster strikes, or so they think.

Our world currently has somewhere around 7.6 billion people running around on it. In the next 10 years we are expected to add another billion to it. These billion folks also want to have somewhat of a comfortable life, air to breath, clean water, transportation and maybe a Western standard of living. All I can say is: “Good luck.” At least if we continue with what we are doing right now. Something has to give. We have to take care of our children and grandchildren.

Where do we start? Well, my next car is going to be a hybrid. I use as little chemical fertilizer in my yard as possible and no pesticides. I teach, blog, preach and talk about the environment. I try to live what I preach. Does it help? Who knows, only time will tell. But if we all contribute our small part it will, or at least it may! If we don’t, we can guarantee the we or our future generations will live to experience the consequences. For the rest we need to support those politicians that are actually fighting for the environments, against global warming. Those folks and politicians who have the foresight and vision and want a better world, instead of the status quo.