Broken Windows and Silver Doorknobs

Bad neighborhood. Sketchy. Rough area. Borderline. Ghetto. Have you heard any of these descriptions, however offensive they may strike you? Have you heard either more negative terms or their euphemistic replacements?

Come, take a walk with me.

No. Right now. Don't be afraid.

Observe this block. Schuyler Street. Take in the parade of two-story, two-family houses, built in the 1920s and '30s. Lawns manicured, adorned with daffodils, mulch, shrubs, trees. No litter. Structures not thirsting for paint or carpentry. Across the street, much the same: different architectural styles, smaller, more modest. Up the block, historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Graves dating to the 1800s, including that of a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Several blocks distant, over on Milton Avenue, a house overrun by fallen maple limbs and uncut grass, by weeds, a house choked by its longtime neglect, its metal fence interweaved by sprawling hedge branches, an empty pack of Newport 100s, a discarded Brisk ice tea, a crumpled invoice for car repair, a lone latex glove. An official notice of condemnation posted on a window and door. Blue recycle bins, tires, broken trikes, and split-open trash bags on Herkimer and Emerson. And up the hill, on Pharis Street, overlooking city and suburbs, a pristine lawn with a sign warning against having your dog use the lawn as a private bathroom, in front of a pristine Arts and Crafts bungalow freshly painted yellow, brown, and black, with a shock of red on the door.

Care and neglect coexisting. Pride and privation. Gain and loss. A fabric of multicolored threads and textures, sewn and patched, stitched and shored up. Some more than others, some less, some not at all.

Let's walk some more, keep pace, stretch your stride, down the hill, toward the creek. Oh, you'd rather not, this is a "bad neighborhood"? Be brave. Suck it up. Trust me. Really.

True, that broken, rusted pickup in the driveway looks unsavory, so does the mosaic of tossed Burger King wrappers and soda cups. An eyesore. It makes my eyes sore.

But look across the street, that Victorian painted lady, emerald and cream with surprises of vermilion. Do you see its new siding, every storm window sparkling new, the shiny metal roof? The rebuilt porch? That house could pass for brand-new if you didn't know better.

I am sure this is obvious, but I can't help noting it: we are not dodging bullets, street-corner hustlers do not catch our eye, wondering if we covet their gaze and proffered wares.

Form your own conclusions, as you will. 

In my Age of Coronavirus walks, the gods and goddesses of surprise have been my tour guides.

Surprise, surprise.

If we look for broken windows, they appear. If we search for silver doorknobs, we find them.

p.s. Ever hear the expression "my mind is a bad neighborhood"? (It's popular in wellness and recovery circles and can possibly be traced to an Anne Lamott quotation, but its provenance is uncertain.) As with the physical neighborhoods described above, be careful what you look for. As Leonard Cohen suggested, "look among the garbage and the flowers." You never know what you will find.

Ball 1

So lonely, like a lonely planet. So abandoned. Kicked (or thrown, dribbled, tossed, rolled) to the side of the road, actually the sidewalk. Air ball. Ground ball. Basketball. So many questions, so little time. Actually, as much time as we need. The parade of questions, replete with mystery, enslaved to no shot clock:

• Who left it here?
• Why?
• One person or several?
• Male or female or questioning or both or none?
• How long has it been here?
• Why was it still there two days later?
• Who won?
• Or was it a solitary game?
• Where's the hoop or hoops?
• Wouild a baseball or football lie (lay, lie, who knows, who cares) there similarly and for the same duration?
• Would someone toss a basketball back and forth against a wall as one might a tennis ball?
• Was violence involved?
• Apathy?
• Attrition?
• Anomie?
• Anime?
• Espionage?
• Subterfuge?
• How long will it stay there?
• Has anyone else noticed it?
• Why has no one picked it up and kept it?
• Is this symbolic?
• Iconic?
• Nihilistic?
• Does this prove the world is round?
• What would happen, where would it go, if an earthquake trembled the earth, wobbling the ground beneath our feet, the way coronavirus is shaking our foundations, our infrastructure, nudging downhill on the one and only Tipperary Hill?

garage sale: yes, we have no bananas

But we do have books, high-brow, low-brow, no-brow, pulp, pop, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, spiritual, you-name-it. We put some books out for the annual Tipperary Hill Neighborhood Association garage sale. Also put out a few bicycles, a scooter, a hula hoop [should that be capped, as a brand name? Too lazy to look]. Sold the bikes, for $7 and $10 respectively. Sold some books, 10 for 10 bucks hardcover, 50 cents or best offer for paperbacks. (I typically worked out a deal for less. Just want to clear space on my shelves.) One young fella, Yankees fan, from down the street on Tipp Hill, came back to talk to me. I had given him a postcard promoting TIPP HILL LITANIES, my poetry book about Tipp Hill. He was all excited. He said he had heard me on the radio last year, on "Upon Further Review," talking about my baseball book. I happened to have a copy on the step. BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT. He bought one. I signed it. Good day.

well regarded walking

Walked today from Tipp Hill to Carousel.

And back.

The angry cars snowbanks slush melted snow sidewalkless paths.

Footprints of the poor and young and old (me).

Not so much the human stain as cats and their piss making a mess of the once-pristine.

The army of cars zooms at you, if you're on the left, facing your threats head-on.

Drivers driven and grim. Some even seem to angle toward you, just for spite.

I got a loud "FUCK YOU!" angrily hurled at me from an open car window on Hiawatha Boulevard.

Now why is that?

What did I do?

"I'm walkin' heah" as Ratso Rizzo put it.

I concluded it's all perspective such as when you're in a car you come upon the pedestrian so fast then gone bang bang no time for reflection while the walker sees it in slow motion as it were.

Still.

A matter of regard, regard as in the French version or the America too, meaning:

LOOK.

So a walker is literally disregarded.

Not seen.

You are pretty much invisible.

And there's no time anyway.

Auto-mobile-ly speaking.

"He didn't notice that the lights had changed"

To sunset step by step regarding self

And Syracuse.

(I even played Sisyphus scurrying up an incline near Lord & Taylor like the claws of a scraggling crab.)

LL SAINTS

Sign on Tipp Hill:

LL SAINTS

on the building of All Saints School.

Which prompts these musings and queries:

Is the missing A scarlet?

Is [nothing] sacred?

Is it symbolic of the imperfection in ALL of us, including saints?

Is it a backward, wry comment on corporate influences, just shy of being an LLC?

Does it refer to the Little League?

Or a new hip-hop group, with LL standing as a shortened form of L'il, itself an abbreviation of "little"?

Or is the blank space before "LL" a meditation on emptiness and spiritual surrender?

where have I been?

Where have I been, in thought, word, or deed?

I've been to:

• Brantingham, New York
• Lowville, New York
• Ava
• ignoring Facebook
  
• viewing Giants games
• commenting at the Giants blog (OneFlapDown77)
• visiting Len Assante at the Delavan Center
• watching artists' paint dry on the rail overpass on West Fayette Street, Syracuse, New York
• admiring Brantley Carroll's powerful photos of African-American fathers and sons
• drinking coffee at Freedom of Espresso, at Franklin Square
• finishing Martin Amis
• loving poetry by Bob Hicok
• Skyping with my brother Jack
• Skyping with Warren
• moving Evelyn to Philadelphia
• moving around the streets of Philly with Yann and Evelyn
• making vegetable soup with Beth
• sleeping
• waking
• walking
• writing gerunds
• not attending the Glenn Beck rally (no brownshirts available in the closet from the 1930s)
  
• editing a doctoral dissertation on the history of the Cayman Islands
• revising webpages for an international environmental and infrastructure firm
• watching webpage get little red dots under it alleging a misspelling
• getting ripped off at Santillo's at the Great New York State Fair when I could've ad Gianelli's sausage
• picking up Adri after she sprained her ankle
• going to the Blarney Stone with her at a fund raiser for coach Lutwin's kid and hs wife whose home burned on Tipperary Hill
• lost in space
• sweating
• cutting hedges
• mowing the knee-high lawn, which sounds vaguely Chinese
• asked Ethan about his birthday
• taking Beth to the ER, which they cal the ED, after she got conked on the head with a soccer ball; she's okay
• seeing Jenny, down in the Crouse basement
  
• cooling off
• Eucharist at an Episcopal Church
• haiku syncopations
• lurid dreams
  
• delighting in the miracle of the late-growing sunflowers of surprise, the God of Surprises
• in the dream of the night's rain, the rhythm of raindrops
  

detour de la tour

To the left off West Fayette Street, just past Hank's auto repair, is a pathway through the railroad right of way, a clearing in the brushy overgrowth. I took it. Mid-day. Bright. A track of rusted rail, not rolled on in a long time. To the left a portion of track stopped by chain-link fence. Ain't no train comin' down that track. At the end of the line, a trompe l'oeil, a trick of the eye, the green domes of Saint John's Ukrainian Catholic Church, like some iconic Oz endpoint, omega. Then the back walls of an old warehouse or factory festooned with a feast of colorful and raging and jubilant graffiti. A flatbed railcar, still, sitting in the sidetrack, literally sidetracked. How does one lose track of such a huge piece of metal, now museumed? Then unrusted and silvery tracks. Cross them. No rumbles. Strange sight lines of the city of Syracuse to the right and the neighborhood of Tipperary Hill to the left. A quiet air of menace and danger and serenity and secrecy. I head left, toward Erie Boulevard West, above and coming toward South Geddes. The sounds of traffic. The pathway from West Fayette and Geddes blocked by concrete boulders the authorities have placed to stop folks like me and the kids going to and from Fowler. A black squirrel, or is it a rat, can rats be black?, possibly pauses briefly to scout me and then languidly scurries over the barricade (if scurrying can be slowed to a languid pace). A small clearing to the left, toward civilization, toward the Hess station and Arby's and the intersection repeatedly overrun by those who ignore the red. The electric shock of seeing a fellow, possibly Latino, teens? twenties?, sitting near the rail, crouched, smoking a cigarette or a joint, like a Thirties hobo, looking sad or contemplative or merely safe, secure in a refuge above the fray.

Bloomsday blogaversary sentence

Pawlie, on the fourth anniversary of his blogging inauguration, took a night stroll without the dog, this time, and under starless, clouded cover, taking slow steps with squeaky shoes, soaking in the aftermath (the natural algorithm of I'll Go Rhythm) of this morning's curtain of delicious downpour, wondering where to find welcome in these freight-train-echoing hills and behind these doors, mourning losses unnamed and unspoken, and interrupted by the stray grammar of fireflies.

the unflagging flagness of flag day

Flag Day. June 14. As a schoolkid, flags galore, a parade around the school. Then, in the Sixties, the flag was appropriated by the "America, love it or leave it" crowd, meaning the crowd that brooked no dissent, that wanted blind allegiance during an unpopular war, the crowd that seemed to say, "The flag means this and only this or else you are un-American and disloyal" and cue the music and the bromides and the jingoism. There were backlashes to all that, ranging from flag burning (which I opposed and still oppose and don't get, but still believe in freedom of speech even if I radically disagree with such speech or expressions of speech) to clothing of flag designs, on undies or kerchiefs or dresses or ties. One person's honoring the flag was seen as blasphemous by another, and vice versa. Then right after 9/11, we put a flag up on our house. Proudly, defiantly, gladly, collectively, sadly, yes, patriotically. Our hillside street on Tipperary Hill, in Syracuse, looked picture perfect with flags rippling at dawn or dusk. But should we have castigated a neighbor if they chose not to fly a flag? No, and we did not. But I myself felt it really was a time, like my childhood, when the flag was a true unifier, when it represented a huddling of a family under a protective shelter, a collective cloak of armor and quiet pride. That's just me. For some, it was a rallying symbol of jingoistic and simplistic revenge, or would-be revenge. I guess. I can't read minds. Today? I don't know. I think the right still likes to appropriate the flag for exclusionary and militant purposes. When I saw American flags waving in Berlin while Obama spoke or in Chicago when he won, I thought that maybe we were over with parochial possession of the flag's meaning. Don't get me wrong: it would be no counter-victory for broad-minded patriotism if the left seized the flag for its own agenda to the exclusion of others (not sure, really, how that would work). The flag is broad, its stripes sweep outward. Its stars are in a wide firmament, its colors are of multiple hues. May it stand for the values no one owns alone but that everyone embraces in a civil and free society (don't forget the civil in civilization).

quiet memorial

As you enter Burnet Park via Burnet Park Drive, just off Coleridge Avenue (so many authors celebrated on Tipperary Hill's street names! Coleridge, Tennyson, Whittier, Tompkins, Lowell, Emerson, Bryant), you see a stone slab, maybe six feet high, dedicated to those servicemen who died in World War II. It is a simple and quiet memorial. It has the words "hallow" or "hallowed" on it. It has the word "neighbors" on it.

And each year for Memorial Day, someone, quietly and dutifully and anonymously, makes sure that there is a flag in each flowerpot on either side of the monument, and red and white nasturtiums in the flowerpots, and red begonias in the flowerbed in front of the marker with two or three dozen names of the fallen.

I may be wrong as to what kinds of flowers those are, but I am not mistaken regarding the devotion of this person or these persons.

resigned to re-signation

"Welcome to Tipperary Hill."

It is clarion clear now, yellow letters on a green background, a tocsin call to cordiality, a welcome, a radical hospitality.

The welcome sign of Tipperary Hill has been spruced up, freshened.

You are welcome.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thanks. And when you think of it, there is nothing more gratifying than acceptance, nothing more welcoming than your being greeted and warmly regarded just as you are.

signage meditation

You see the gateway sign to Tipperary Hill, at the near crest of a hill in front of All Saints Elementary School and Saint John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church. The sign is a few yards in front of that Taras guy (whose last name escapes you and thank God his name is not in Cyrillic), the Ukrainian poet. Yes, Tipp Hill: not just for Irish-Americans. Ukrainian-Americans too. The letters forming "Welcome to Tipperary Hill" (were those the words?) are faded from the sign. In fact, only your memory or your expectations fill in the gestalt emptiness of the sign, which has only faded traces of letters. Fill in the blanks, the sign seems to command you. And is such a ghostly sign a challenge or statement or reflection or editorial? And what is the content of that less-than-minimalist message? If the medium is the message, what is the medium? What sign is this? You wonder: is it burnishing or memory or loss or faded glory or clean slate or buffing or distillation aiming toward perfect clarity? Fill in the blank becomes a blanket statement. Saying what? If signs are sacraments, or sacraments signs, what does this implore us to conclude regarding Tipperary Hill in Syracuse, New York, in May 2010?

a day in the life

All times are EST and are approximate, not correlated with NIST or the atomic clock.

0633  daughter yells, "no school again, Dad!"

0633.005  semiconscious, I mumble: "So cool, iPad, hunh?!"

0839  dog barking furiously; "it's just Mom coming home from work," I mumble; it's not, I realize after hearing the doorbell ring

0840  kid with shovel asking if I want any shoveling done; "no, thanks" I say as a sleepwalker; if I were more alert I'd have made the investment; we often made money doing that as kids, up in the wealthier parts of Stamford, nto Old Greenwich

0852  breakfast; two Thomas' Toast-R-Cakes, tea with milk

0907  begin clearing porch stairs and our sidewalk and Brenda's; realize I must clear a spot for Beth

0907.01  realize this wet snow is as heavy as just-poured Quikrete

0907.02 to 0945  dig snow in street clearing space for a Honda civic; we are a one-way street; driveways are a luxury on Tipp hill

0947  Beth pulls in to the quasi-cleared spot, not far, but legal, from hydrant

0948 to 1119  with daughter's help we free or moored car and straighten it out; help Jack From Across the Street clear his white Chevy; look down the hill and see cadres of people shoveling all over or snowblowing (I don't like snowblowers); clear area around red hydrant; Ukrainian-Americans across the street yell at each other about snow removal

1129  call mom back home; suns comes out; snowing in CT; sun comes out there; during call my vision gets blurry, like the ocular migraine i had around 1998

1141 toast and tea; still fuzzy vision

1147  hard to read words while typing some emails; feel perfectly fine otherwise; still, a tad scary

1149 to 1229  lie down; can't sleep; disturb Beth as she tries to sleep

1230  wake up; vision seems fine; relieved

1249  eat leftovers from last night's supper: delicious galupki, roasted potatoes, grilled, sauteed beans and peppers

1257  drive ABK to reservoir up by Geddes Street; sun blazing; melting; from Bellevue Heights Church driveway, she climbs over snowbank, takes along trek uphill; meets friends; tussles with boy(s); watching, I am joyed and grateful

1313  actually I think I ate lunch around now

1314 to 1420  prepare invoices

1500 to 1531  call to DC, discuss June quality conference with EPA person; very good call

1547  prepare invoices to be mailed

1609  drive to Wegmans; envelopes

1710 to 1750  nap

1853  to 1924  dinner at The Black Olive

1944 to 1959  walk dog

2018  browse the Flapper blog

2118 to 2131  blog

No paychecks, no pierogi, no porn. That's my day so far.

Pie in the (Not) Sky

The surprise of it all. The look on their faces. The initial suspicions. The relief. Simple and radical.

We started on Jamar Drive, just down the block from the church. Someone had suggested it as a gesture of radical hospitality. So, on the preceding Saturday, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, a group of older and younger members made a bunch of pumpkin pies, more than 20, I'm told. Then we distributed them Tuesday night. Jim drove slowly in his car, stopping as Win and I knocked on doors or rang doorbells on opposite sides of the street. Jim crossed off names of families who were home and made notes of those who did not answer the door in the darkness of an early November evening.

I can only report on what I saw and heard and felt.

People not showing fear or apprehensiveness toward a stranger ringing a doorbell or rapping on a door in the dark, though I surmised fear, or at least practical safety considerations. The flickering light of a television screen in a distant room; television sets: America's new-found hearths, as John Updike once put it.

If I recall correctly, I saw not one male answer a door. Is that possible? Is it only women who answer the door in suburban America? Has Dad, if he is there, popped upon a stereotypical beer or is he living out a cliche by watching a sporting event? Would it be different on Tipp Hill?

Three young girls. I told them I'd understand if they could not accept a pumpkin pie from a stranger, but, see, here's a card from the kids in church school. Then a few minutes later Mom came home, in a van, into the driveway, with another girl, and as I stood in the driveway I surprised the mother, telling her that was the last thing I wanted to do, scare her, and I just want to tell you, I gave a pie to your daughters a few minutes ago. We're just saying Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for being good neighbors all year round.

That was the message.

What?

Oh, how nice of you! Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

What was your name again?

No strings attached.

No Bible or prayer card or schedule of services or "Come, join us" or encyclical or chapter and verse. None of that.

A gift is freely given, with no conditions.

Stopped them in their tracks, faces transformed from puzzlement to wonder and gratitude and delight.

What a blast.

Then Kurt and Jack joined us.

Four men, huddled in the dark.

Almost a quorum.

As if giving thanks had legislative requisites.

We knew without saying the motion, the movement, the tidal pulse, was carried.

Unanimously.

meditation on de-automation

On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, Election Day, I elected to become decarcerated, de-automobiled, vehicularly divested, unincarnated, car blanche, carnally challenged.

You get the picture.

Unwilling (and pretty darn incapable!) to pay $1,100 to $1,400 or more to repair the timing belt and valve(s), I chose to hand the car, a 1999 Ford Contour (I believe it was made in Mexico) over to the repair shop for fifty dollars U.S. currency plus credit for the limited time spent trying to repair it or discern the need for repairs.

I am free.

After emptying the car of its Detroit detritus (sitting in a box on the porch) and depositing the check, I later walked home, from Freedom of Espresso, about 2.6 miles to Tipperary. "It's a long way to Tipperary . . . "

All kidding aside, I did feel a degree of liberation, a lightness anchored in humbling dependency, fewer responsibilities, simpler choices.

It's back to the future. As with most of us in the Fifties and early Sixties, we now are a one-car family.

We are only partially incarcerated.

I am driven, learning the passive voice.

Dewatering Hole

As I strolled through Burnet Park this evening, I was greeted by the shock of emptiness, an alabaster rectangular hole with black crosses painted at the far end. The pool was empty. Stark empty! On August 19! No lifeguards? (Back at college?) No cash? Where did all the turquoise madness drain to?And what did all the kids do as they approached the railings only to find this stark absence of cerulean-emerald shimmering in the heat?

Empty. Gone.

And summer, rudely hanging around, sweating.

Walking the Walk

It is easy to possess simplistic (yes, simplistic and not merely simple) and sentimental notions and to take them seriously. For example, someone might hold dear the quaint idea that if we all had a front porch, life would be safer. We would be more of a community. We'd engage each other. Of course, that assumes that one could, and would, use that porch constructively, interacting with neighbors cordially, and so on (picture the opposite of the character Clint Eastwood plays, at least initially, in Gran Torino).

A similar notion, I've long felt, applies to square dancing. Yes, square dancing. Why? Because it permits, even encourages, a limited form of physical flirtation. Theoretically at least, square dancing allows one to experience the margins of marital infidelity or the borders of sexual experimentation or the contours of gender exploration, all within permissible realms. The thinking here is that if more people went square dancing, they'd get "it" out of their system; they'd find ways to sublimate carnal mischief, as it were.

Both of these quaint examples are clearly flawed, but, hey, that's what "simplistic" is all about.

My new simplistic notion is this: if we walked more, we would not only be more physically fit but also more mentally and spiritually fit. We would have better communities. I got this idea empirically on Saturday by walking to Wegmans from Tipperary Hill, about, oh, 1.5 miles each way. I could have driven, but it was pleasant and I did not mind spending the extra time needed to walk.

Walking, you discover lots of things.

You find out first-hand and close-up whether you live in a walkable community.

You see where there are sidewalks, and where there are no sidewalks.

You see litter, nearly everywhere.

You see what it is like to live without a car or a bike or a bus.

You experience life at a different speed. (Read that again, s-l-o-w-l-y.)

You see things differently and you hear things differently.

You experience gratitude for the grace of being able to walk, or you see how difficult the terrain is for someone in a wheelchair.

And here's the simplistic and sentimental part: what if we required all our political candidates to walk in the places they serve, all by themselves? What would be the implications? What if people sentenced to community service had to walk and pick up litter (I know, there are at least two drawbacks to this: why make walking a punishment, and why not prevent littering to begin with?)?

What if we literally walked the walk?

What if we really did walk a mile in someone else's shoes, or at least trod their path?

This is not a liberal or conservative issue, neither left nor right.

I invite you to try walking.

I do not mean a little stroll in the park with your dog (as I try to do anyway nearly every day) or around a suburban cul-de-sac. No, I mean something like this: going to buy that milk or bread or cereal. Take a reusable cloth sack and walk to the grocery and back. Live in the country? Hmmmm, you probably do a lot of walking already. Live in the city, you probably do a lot of walking already.

But if you live in an exurb or suburb, you probably drive.

Walking.

Tell me what you find.

What are the hurdles to walking?

And what are the rewards?

Just imagine if our communities made walking easier.

And how will we ever know how hard it is or how easy it is to walk in our communities if we don't try it for ourselves?

urban haiku III

front lawn tulip leaves

sloping to downhill sidewalk

corabell spits fire

Evocative Vocative

Sign above a bathroom at a Tipperary Hill cafe:

CUSTOMERS ONLY PLEASE

Without the vocative comma after the word "only," we can surmise that customers only please if they are in the mood, or if someone or something suits their fancy. Or we can conclude that said customers only please, but nothing else.

And why the pleasing in the private confines of the bathroom? What the heck is going on in there? I won't ask, if you won't tell.

(Of course, switching the position of "only" invites other questions.)

All the difference one comma can make.

Chief Commando, Serial Comma Brigade

detritus

the detritus of winter rising up like pacific atolls volcanic garbage not even a rousing rain can wash away can clean cleanse as in a rite of absolution ego te absolvo the melted snows dribble down the hill tipperary hill and you get surprised seeing anything a squashed plastic bottle invitations to subscribe the head of a child's smiling stuffed pal a flattened pancake fabric why the smile the vacant stare along with beer cans and bottle caps and runaway trash can covers branches leaves all tawny almost colorless not even teasing spring so monochrome so much dogshit on the curbs and near the sidewalks winter's borders dogshit being erased and dogshit not at all evaporated dogshit stubbornly still just dogshit some definition some definition called for here detritus I had thought it was pronounced more like the latin more like deh-tri-tiss with the accent on the deh now there's de treatise eh didn't know it almost sort of rhymes with detroit us unfortunately no disrespect implied inferred or insinuated to a town i've never been to and why does merriam-webster say the plural is detritus and not detriti as latin would dictate take a letter or two detritus funny how one word one flotsam jetsam sort of word can just set a laughorist off and running at the keyboard