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Letters (April 16, 2024)

By AVA News Service on April 16, 2024

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JOURNALISTIC VIRTUES

Dear Editor,

I am happy that you are back at home and once again at the helm of your computer keyboard. One of the books I am currently making my way through is “George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality,” which was initially published in 1942.

For many years, Shaw made a living as a journalist, much of it devoted to music and theater criticism. (A couple examples of the former: “There is nothing that soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled by a finely skilled hand”; “By simply assassinating less than a dozen men, I could leave London without a single orchestral wind instrument player of the first rank.”) The biography’s author, Hesketh Pearson, writes of Shaw: “He had the four chief virtues of a great journalistic critic: readability, irreverence, individuality and courage.”

It occurs to me the same may be said of the AVA’s late Alexander Cockburn and, in the present tense, Bruce Anderson.

Doug Loranger

Walnut Creek

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THE COURTHOUSE BUNKER

Editor,

Seems like no one responds to emails or phone call messages left for the Jury Services group anymore. They used to transfer jury service to the Ten Mile Court for those living on the coast, but reportedly no longer honor such requests. This results in an over 2-hour 80-mile drive to downtown Ukiah, a rundown, seedy location. Even this planned Courthouse is in a congested, vagrant-populated location.

Walt Watson

Fort Bragg

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BIGBOXIZATION

Editor,

I would like to add a comment to last week’s front page story “Hemorrhaging Jobs, we Limp on,” which lamented the sorry economic situation in Ukiah.

City officials indeed deserve most of the blame; they blissfully ignore what economists call “economic cannibalism”: cities and counties depend too much on sales taxes, a situation that big corporations exploit by playing cities and counties or regions against each other, locating where government officials kiss their feet and fork over millions for infrastructure improvement or other perks. 

The latest example in Ukiah: Costco. Of course, Costco can underbid and starve existing small and big stores, eventually forcing them out — which means loss of jobs and loss of sales taxes. Nobody wins, except the biggest big stores.

Consumers, however, also share in the blame for our hemorrhaging local economies. The convenience of online shopping and big-box underbidding steers complacent consumers to the cheapest gas and goodies (which often means driving more and consuming more than needed; those really in need to save despite working two jobs are the victims of the wage depression over the past 50 years, and that's another story).

Bruni Kobbe

Ukiah

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Dear West Marin Little League Community,

On behalf of the WMLL Board, I want to address a very important issue that affects our beloved Central Field in Fairfax. As many of you are aware, a small encampment of unhoused people near the field developed during our 2023 season. Since that time, the size of the encampment has grown and abuts the outfield fence of Central. 

Our foremost concern is always the safety and security of our players. At the same time, we understand and respect the right of everyone to live in our community with dignity. Unfortunately, there have been instances at the field that raise concern and have required police intervention. One such incident occurred at a game on March 26th, when a person believed to either be a resident of the encampment or affiliated with a resident of the encampment made inappropriate comments about our players in front of parents and others in the stands. He was asked to leave by a parent and did. The incident has been reported to the police and the Town Manager. The WMLL Board is also exploring other measures to prevent the individual from being at the field again. 

To be clear, we have been in discussions with the Town since the encampment developed, to address these safety concerns and others. The Town’s response has consistently been that they cannot relocate the encampment. We disagree with the Town’s position and continue to work to address this issue. To that end, the issue is on the agenda of the next Town Council meeting on April 3rd at 6:30 p.m. at the Fairfax Women’s Club (46 Park Road), and we plan to attend. If this topic is important to you, we encourage you to attend as well.

We appreciate the effort so many in our community have taken to keep everyone safe. If at any time you witness illegal, suspicious, or inappropriate behavior, please immediately report it to the police and notify a coach or board member. We will continue to keep you updated. 

Jamie Williams

President, West Marin Little League

San Rafael

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AT&T’S TRICKERY–SAME ISSUES BACK EAST

To the Editor:

My wife and I are on the high side of 65, and we pay for a landline only as a lifeline as we deal with the never-ending onslaught of power outages wrought by National Grid in Massachusetts, some as long as 10 days in our years here.

We also live in a mobile phone dead zone. So our mobile phones must depend on internet Wi-Fi for all calls. When the electricity goes out, so does the internet, hence our lifeline to the outside world in times of crisis.

We plug in two touch-tone phones to replace cordless phones when there is no juice from National Grid. Whether AT&T, Verizon and others like it or not, plain old telephone service (POTS) is as close to 100 percent reliable as you can get. But now they want to tear out the copper, forcing us to unreliable telephone service.

Ben Myers

Harvard, Massachussets

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COAST CINEMA GOING UP FOR SALE

To our wonderful customers and friends,

After a great deal of consideration, our family has made the heart-wrenching decision to seek a buyer for our beloved Coast Cinemas.

In the late seventies, we ventured up from the Bay Area and bought what was then a single screen movie theatre. Thanks to the support of our local movie-loving community, we were able to develop it into a beautiful four screen state of the art movie theatre. 

In the meantime, our family has grown older. It’s now time for us to retire and relinquish the theatre to someone else. We are hoping to find a buyer who will continue to operate as a movie theatre, but ultimately the market will dictate whether it stays a theatre, or the building is put to another use. 

This has been an extremely difficult decision for our family. For nearly five decades, along with our amazing employees, we have loved and nurtured this theatre, our partnership with the Mendocino Film Festival, and the wonderful North Coast community of movie lovers.

This journey may take some time to conclude. In the meantime, we hope to see you at the movies!

With love, Laurie, Max and Tom

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ANOTHER ERA IT’S THE END OF

Editor,

I see the notice that it’s up for sale. Maybe someone will buy it and keep it going, and it isn’t the end after all.

Some high points in my memory of Coast Cinema, then Coast Twin Cinemas, then Coast Cinemas:

In 1981, maybe ‘82, they played a double bill: Four Friends; and Those Lips, Those Eyes. They both made a big impression on me. Look them up and see them if you can. Four Friends is about the immigrant experience in the 1960s, from the point of view of a young man named Danilo, who’s brought from Poland by his mother to be met at the train station by his father, who Danilo has never met, who works in a steel mill and is dark-spirited, hard, disillusioned. On the drive into town, the boy, in the back seat, sees a sign for Chicago and cries out happily, “Chee-kuh-go!” then breathes this word in awe and wonder: America! The father, driving, agreeing on the word but not the meaning, says bitterly, ominously, “America.” When Danilo is in school he has three friends. Georgia seemed to me like Melanie Safka, the singer, who ten years before that I had kind of a thing for. Sakina, at the Community School, felt a little like that to me, the same kind of person, it seemed like. Things don’t go well or badly for Danilo, at least for most of the film, just increasingly weirdly. It was the sixties. The hammer-blows of weirdness as it goes along knock the wind out of you. The scene where he’s driving a taxi, stopped because a protest parade/riot is happening, passing, and an American flag in flames washes across the windshield in jerky slow motion as he has the expression on his face that I’m sure you can imagine. I don’t remember whether he’s lost his eye yet and has the eyepatch or not, at that point.

Those Lips, Those Eyes is about a young man spending a summer working in a theater company. Frank Langella is an actor in his forties, treated with disrespect by the young actors. He teaches them all a thing or two. It’s pretty good. I remember much later seeing Me and Orson Welles and thinking that they’re not exactly the same story but they feel a lot the same. I always like movies about people filming movies or putting on plays. Bullets Over Broadway, for example, or Illuminata, or The Stunt Man, or The Fall/ (about a stunt man in 1916), or Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Robin Williams’ Popeye came when there were two theater rooms and it was Coast Twin Cinemas. I was there with Swift. The sound went off and everyone just sat there watching the film with the sound off. I waited to see if anybody else would say or do anything. No, for ten minutes. So I went up to the projection booths. There was nobody up there nor anywhere else in the building except the show room, nor outside. It was dreamlike, like a Soviet situation, the world so quiet, and the existing people silent, resigned to their fate. I could have figured it out and tried to fix it but I didn’t want to take the chance of breaking something. I waited out in the lobby until the projectionist came back from wherever, mentioned the sound, and he fixed it. I think that was Barry the guitar teacher.

I saw Blue Velvet there. My girlfriend from before Juanita was still pissed at me, came in and sat directly behind us in the theater, muttering under her breath. Afterward she followed us to my car and fell on her ass trying to jerk my car door open, because Juanita, fresh from L.A. with all the instincts thereof, had reached over pushed the electric lock down immediately we were inside.

I saw Alex Proyas’ Dark City there, and City of Lost Children, my two favorite movies ever.

I saw Forest Gump there. Fort Bragg Librarian Sylvia Kozak-Budd went past us afterward, outside in the parking lot. I said, “What did you think?” (about the movie). Sylvia smiled, gestured with a finger in her mouth, her tongue sticking out, and a comical retching motion. I said, “That bad, huh?” She said, “The worst.” I liked it.

One time after they’d split the building up into many little theaters Juanita and I went to see Titanic. Weather was wild that night, and just at the point in the film where water was filling up the corridors and metal was twisting and groaning and the ship’s lights were flickering on and off, the real-world storm knocked out electricity to the theater. The theater went black, and everyone sat in the dark for a moment, listening to the rain and wind pelting the building, so much quieter and safer than just before. Ten or twenty minutes later they got power going again and the film picked up where it left off, banging and groaning and crashing and sinking again. Besides that, the sex scene in the car in the hold is the memory hook for me. When the windows are fogged up from their steam and Kate Winslet slaps the glass so her hand appears, like the alien’s tentacle-hand in Arrival. If it’s her hand. I know they use hand models for things like that sometimes. Maybe it’s the boy’s hand.

Sean, who made the newspaper The Monthly Rag, and whose gang of friends made four black-and-white slasher-horror movies in Fort Bragg (A Killer in Our Midst 1, 2 and 3, and Vampyre, forced down his OCD to go to places in public like the movies at the Coast Cinemas. I was there once when he had to leave because one of the counter people had a bandaid on her (or his) finger. That stuck in my mind because ten or fifteen years before that I learned never to use bandaids while cooking in restaurants but just tape the whole finger up with white cloth tape, because it happens that you look down and the bandaid is gone, and there are steam-table tubs all around, and food on plates, and a bucket of cracked eggs and all, and where is the bandaid. But that wasn’t why it was hard for him; it was part of the disorder. He taught all his friends to always flush a toilet with their tennis shoe. To this day, whenever I put on a bandaid I think of Sean and popcorn. And in a public restroom I flush with my shoe. (Aside: I was just in Costco in Santa Rosa. Except for one other man I was the only person in the whole building with a mask on. When I went into the restroom the man who went in before me, a customer, not a worker, coughed lustily and phlegmily on his hand, wiped his hand on his shirt, used the urinal, presumably with at least one hand, and then waltzed blithely past the soap and sinks, to go out into the world and, you know, touch other things. You don’t have to flush the urinals there; they go on and off by themselves. It might be that’s why people who don’t wash their hands don’t wash their hands. They’re not reminded.)

Oh, right, this I clearly remember: Whenever I was at the movies in Fort Bragg the bathroom was sparkling clean. Sparkling. Though I didn’t often use a restroom in a public place in those days. It’s only now that I’m old that I don’t have any problem releasing my bladder when other people are around. I used to plan around it, but you can’t plan for everything all the time. Eventually problems solve themselves by being replaced with other problems. The restroom in the Reading Cinema in Rohnert Park, that just closed permanently, offered me the experience about ten years ago of a floor sticky with urine (where it wasn’t awash from backed up toilets), and a full crowd pressing in and pressing out at the same time. Somebody in scheduling probably got fired for that. It was a long time ago; that’s not why they closed.

Steve Heckeroth showed a movie at Coast Cinemas once about the General Motors EV1, an electric car in the early 1990s that was ahead of its time and was obviously sabotaged as a production car. He gave a presentation about electric vehicles in general and his own in particular. He showed pictures of the carport at his little farm, whose roof was all solar panels, and his electric car, truck, electric tractor. I half-remember him saying, “I haven’t had to buy gas in ten years.” Or maybe it was five. I think of that whenever I read someone complaining that electric cars are stupid and pointless. There are parking lots all over anymore that are roofed with solar panels for the buildings they serve, and the chargers, more and more of them all the time, and panels on roofs. At Juanita’s place, the woman in the apartment downstairs that’s nearest the laundry shed just plugs her car in there at night. A woman who lived there before her got so angry when anyone ran the washing machine at night that nobody does anymore, so there’s no problem, plenty of electricity.

I haven’t called Coast Cinemas for a long time, but it used to be, I really liked calling for info about the movies playing, and the times. The number was easy to remember: 964-2019, because the library was 964-2020. Those are two important cultural institutions in any town: 1. the movie house (“Merry Christmas, you old movie house!”) and 2. the library (“He left the library to the folks of River City but he left all the books to her. Chaucer, Rabelais, BALLL-zac!”).

Marco McClean

Fort Bragg

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SENIOR SOLIDARITY

Editor,

Today I received a second copy of the March 20 issue instead of the March 27 which I especially want as it is the last print issue from what I have read. [The last print issue will be May 1. A replacement for the March 27 issue has been sent. — Ed] I knew this would happen given the age of Mr. Anderson and others there, but I am sorry to see it. I know too the paper may cease. I have certainly enjoyed it for decades. I hope Mr. Anderson recovers. My wife died of melanoma cancer last year. I am nearly 82 and badly crippled by adult onset scoliosis and other health problems. I would have had to quit putting out the AVA years ago, so my kudos to Mr. Anderson and the other “seniors” there who have kept it going. 

Lloyd Dennis

Lodi

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WEST VEGAS

Editor: 

Is Sonoma County becoming the Las Vegas of California? Looks like it to me.

The proposed Koi Nation Shiloh Resort & Casino in Windsor would be the state’s largest, followed by Graton after its $1 billion expansion. Geyserville’s River Rock is expanding. Thankfully, the Petaluma casino proposal is on hold — for now.

What’s really going on here? While the Koi stake their claim to Sonoma County, they continue with legal battles over land use in Lake County, where they vehemently defend their cultural resources, villages and burial grounds. The Oklahoma Chickasaw Nation’s Global Gaming Solutions Group, not the Koi, would actually build and operate the $600 million resort and casino in Windsor.

Shiloh would use about 400,000 gallons of water daily, which doesn’t make our community more sustainable. Sonoma County taxpayers, not those in Oklahoma, would foot the bill for road and other required improvements; in a county already plagued by wildfire risks, a stressed infrastructure and unchecked growth.

I urge readers to write or email the Bureau of Indian Affairs with comments before the April 8 deadline. Make your voices heard. Another casino is wrong for Sonoma County.

Anne Gray

Santa Rosa

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LAKSA, LUCRE, AND THE ’LOIN!

Editor,

A recent online article talked to Tenderloin business people about a City PR Campaign designed to bring customers back to the beleaguered nabe. While I agree with them that crime, squalor, and lack of law enforcement are the over-riding concerns, the eatery that offered all-tasting menu Malaysian food at $100 per person might have misread their intended market. 

David Svehla

San Francisco

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PITY? WHY?

Editor,

Regarding the recent Chronicle article entitled “As San Quentin’s Death Row empties, condemned inmates get a glimpse of hope”…

The Chronicle’s coverage of moving San Quentin’s death row inmates to other prisons to cheer them up falls on deaf ears.

I have numerous items on my care and concerns list, but death row inmate David Carpenter and his cohabitants are somewhere around 6,000 on it. Each of Carpenter’s numerous victims died thrashing in terror and agony and each of their wide circle of family and friends was forever destroyed and their lives shattered.

Against the will of the voters, Carpenter, Cary Stayner, Richard Allen Davis and friends are alive to play on their free computers and tablets but need more “ability to socialize.” Each of their heinous cirme victims would have begged for just a few more minutes of life. 

Governor Gavin Newsom’s grandstanding San Quentin reform should be replaced by advocacy for victims and their families.

Carol Lankford-Gross

Muir Beach

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AN EASTER POEM

Editor,

Here is my poem, "Easter Bunting" — opening day, the holy of holies.

Easter Bunting

Opening Day —

No rock

to roll away.

Just an 

umpire's 

Cry: Play!

Williiam J. Hughes

Sacramento

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GOLDEN MILK

Editor,

You better save up. A horn of Zeese in Healdsburg nowadays could really set you back around here.

We have a new place in town -- vegan -- and you can get a hot morning drink for $7.50. It is really terrible tasting, but they say it's good for you. It's pale yellow, called a Golden Milk. Oat milk, turmeric, ginger — sounds good so far. But then comes maca, cordy seps, mucuna, topped off with pepper and maldon salt.

I dare anyone to guzzle it. I go once a week and choke it down by the spoonful, going with the notion and hope that it's good for me. I would bring one to you door dash style but I don't think reviving it in the microwave does it any good. The vegan place is called Little Saint.

I've been here for 40 years. My husband bought our house in 1969. As I mentioned, we relished the arrival of the AVA at Levin & Co. years ago each week. Then we moved away and something happened to our brains. We forgot about it. You can't imagine our surprise to find you hadn't lost one iota in all these years — maybe 15! How this miracle occurred is that I had a bolt of lightning thought about the AVA and I googled it. There you were — not at all diminished by everything that could have happened to a paper.

Today as I sat in the vitreoRetinal "consultant's" office waiting for my eye injection, I pulled out my AVA, full spread out newspaper, and the entire packed waiting room was in envy as they pecked away on their phones.

Get better soon! I've had many friends come back stronger than ever from the damnedist ailments. I had a brain aneurysm myself. My Irish luck: the aneurysm occured while at a doctor's office. Sutter pulled me back from the brink. No problemo!

Best wishes,

Mary Olson Welch

Healdsburg

PS. I like to write letters. I am a good penpal type.

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PROTEST: DO NOT COOPERATE WITH THE WAR MACHINE

AVA,

My late partner, James Houle, maintained that in order to be a President, one must be a psychopath. I did not believe him. I began to believe during Clinton's bombing of Kosovo, done to bring peace. Next was George W. Bush and his administration. Clearly, others' lives had no importance for them. They were determined to kill and destroy for the American Empire, and truth was immaterial. In Obama's time, our President hunched over his Oval Office desk deciding on a weekly, illegal kill list. When Genocide Joe appeared with his ice cream cone and his hope, it was crystal clear. Our elected leaders - and we are limited to whom we can elect - are psychopaths. Biden and his band of murderers are determination to facilitate the Palestinian genocide - by bomb AND NOW STARVATION.

Sadly, men are not alone in their slaughter. Please note Victoria Neuland, architect of the Maidan uprising, which morphed into the present Ukraine/Russia war, Madeleine Albright, "half a million dead children are worth it," and Hillary Clinton, destroyer of Libya and cackler: "We came, we saw, he died."

For decades after WWII, The world pilloried the German people for not stopping Hitler and his genocide. They said they didn't know. Hitler intended to take over Europe. The US intends to take over the world, and to that end has destroyed country after country, regime after regime. And we know; we see it every day on TV.

Protest our psychopath MIC/Congress/President/Administration. Do not cooperate in the quest for world domination which benefits our greedy elite, not the rest of us, and certainly not our victims. Write your representatives, write our President, support anti-war efforts, scream from your windows: NO MORE WAR, NO MORE GENOCIDE.

Joan Vivaldo

San Francisco 

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ESSENTIAL BASEBALL

Editor--

Tom Hine's ‘Mark Fydrich, Shooting Star’ is the best baseball column you'll ever publish.

Some of your readers already know that and will have reread it, savored it 3, 4, 5 times. Those who missed it in their at bat get another swing, online.

Jonathan Middlebrook

Redwood Valley

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A GOODBYE PAPER-PAPER PARTY & MORE

Dear AVA,

As you may know I have collated all my AVA articles into a book, and it was my goal and intention to come to Boonville when the project was completed to have a book party in commemoration. Now that the AVA is transitioning this month can we have a book opening slash AVA farewell party combined, one last hurrah, have a minor superspreader event, and call it good?

Do you think we could yank enough local writers out of their Saturday or Sunday afternoon bingo games (or weekend internet porn sessions, I’m not judging) from the senior centers to have a quorum? Maybe we could all bring sleeping bags and crash on the floor of the AVA with the printing press humming nearby, running off the last paper-paper, EMT standing by of course? No, better have a high noon event so we out-of-towners can get in and out, have our cake and tea (or wine), drink to the mighty AVA, and get home to bed by nine.

No, I’m not kidding, I really want to do this, or at least try, I’ll bring the cake, wine, tea, and signed copies of my monumentally unnecessary hundred articles, and toast the AVA goodbye. (Face it, the real last goodbye may come before we know it. Online edition? Doesn’t do much for me.)

Who can I work with to help make this happen, pending Bruce and Mark’s approval? Terry Sites seems like a good prospect, all the Anderson Valley denizens who ever wrote anything in the AVA would be welcome, and maybe I could even see what a 90-year-old man looks like. (Do I need to wear my eclipse goggles? Jeez, who among us will still be as articulate as Gregory Sims when we reach that milestone?)

What the hell, this is a celebration for Bruce Anderson, who made it all possible, who made it happen, so everyone had the opportunity to express themselves, lo these last four decades.

Paul Modic

Redway

PS. THE WEED ODYSSEY

Remember when we just put some seeds in the ground, and waited for October to come around?

In those early days the plants were always healthy, and after a few years we all felt wealthy.

From living on food stamps to thousand dollar pounds, there was never any powdery mildew around.

We were beginners with the crops we were raising, it was a moment in time, the money amazing.

Hiking for hours up and down mountains, looking for springs and places for gardens.

There were lessons to learn especially about mold, the enemy within that destroyed the gold.

Wood rats, ripoffs, and Camp claimed their share, copters invaded and the hippies got scared.

We hid plants under trees and even up in them, with loppers we carved out our camo kingdom.

After Camp came the nineties and the greenhouse years, hiding plants behind Remay calmed the fears.

Then the mites joined the mold in a symphony of terror, vacuuming webs off buds the most stressed-out era.

When predator mites failed with Pyrethrum you bombed it, then the last hippie ethics were spewed out like vomit.

Growers counted the cash as the prices were soaring, exotic beaches in Costa Rica needed exploring.

With houses and land the hippies became entangled, as the sinsemilla boomed across The Triangle.

When coke came along we were like Hollywood, snorting that sweet powder whenever we could.

The frisky hippies had sex and then crying babies, and built country schools in the booming eighties.

It was an unusual way for those kids to grow up, learning not to call the cops no matter what.

Teenagers got the green thumb and planted out Usal, and biked the crop home in backpacks every fall.

When medical was legalized the price dropped lower, every stoner from everywhere came to be a grower.

If you still wanted to continue making bank, you had to grow a hundred plants of dank.

It was harder to sell if your weed lacked aroma, the market wanted clones that put you in a coma.

Hordes of wannabe trimmers came for awhile, foreign girls on the street greeted us with smiles.

Everyone was in it for the cold hard cash, the colorful workers vanished after the crash.

The whole mess was legalized in twenty sixteen, and the enforcer John Ford showed up on the scene.

So that's the story of a very green dream, we rode it for decades starting when young and lean.

It was an utter surprise which dropped in our laps, a forty year boom which finally collapsed.

Paul Modic (hillmuffin@gmail.com)

Redway

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