My Susan

Susan is gone.

I was an only child who never attended day care or nursery school, and so I was very attached to my mother. When the time came for me to start to school, my mom walked me there that first day and got me settled in, then turned to go home. I fell apart. I held onto her. I cried. I begged her not to leave me. I made quite a scene. Then a pretty little blonde girl in a frilly dress and white socks and black Mary Janes came and took my hand and asked me to come with her. She led me back to the desk next to hers and got me involved in whatever she was doing. This was Susan. I didn't notice when my mother left.

Susan and I were best friends from that first day of school when she reached out to me through high school, gaining emotional distance only when we gained physical distance by going to different colleges. She was an only child, too. I loved her mom and dad almost as much as I loved her. We had countless sleep-overs at each other's homes. I remember she had a turquoise princess telephone in her room, and I thought that was really something. There are so many memories, too many to write them all. I'll just write impressions.

Susan and I took up baton twirling in first grade, but somehow that didn't last. Susan had a real majorette dress and real majorette boots. When we were little, our mothers shopped together, dragging us along. Her mom made the best and most tender pot roast, and my mom made the best fried chicken. We were in the ninth grade when JFK was assassinated. I remember how impressed Susan was with Jackie Kennedy, her poise, grace, serenity, and beauty. Susan saved pictures from newspapers and magazines of Mrs. Kennedy. She made me love her, too. I spent the weekend after the funeral at Susan's, and we made a pizza. A weekend repeated countless times.

Susan and I loved the same music, Carolina Beach Music and Motown Soul. Under the Boardwalk. Up on the Roof. My Girl. We sang along into our hairbrushes as though they were microphones. We were there when the Drifters came to UNCG, and we saw Martha Reeves and the Vandellas at the Beach Club. We double-dated Bill and Butch to a concert in Greensboro where we saw Joe Tex, Major Lance, Chuck Jackson, the Impressions, and more that I can't even remember. My memory is terrible. I have blackouts because of my father's abuse. In the 60s, 45 rpm records were only 98 cents apiece, and we bought all we could, never duplicating, and traded them back and forth. Between us, we had an impressive Soul and R&B library. Albums were only $2.98, so we had quite a few of those, too. And shagging, the dance that fits the music! There were pep rallies and dances from 7:30 to 9:30 on Thursday nights at the American Legion Hut throughout the school year. John Mellencamp's "Cherry Bomb" always makes me think of these dances, where one of the bands that played was called the El Rays, made up of boys from school.

The "El Rays" was a twist on the Spanish for "the kings," and I was dating James Brown. Well, not really. His name was Bill, but he could dance and do splits and all the things that James Brown could do. He played the organ and the saxophone. I was mesmerized. Bill and I and Susan and Butch double-dated all the time. We did a lot of silly stuff, like get take-out hamburgers one night and then go climb up on the roof of the high school to eat them. We got into some mischief, too. Not telling. And lots of times we just stayed at Susan's house and played records and talked. And made pizza. One of the records we played was "Misty," and that became Bill's and my song.

Susan and I valued proper English and had a grand old time collecting examples of local violations. We used to joke about "secaturl" school, which is secretarial school, and rinching our hair, which of course is rinsing. I lived in the country on a farm where we had a party line telephone. As kids, Susan and I were terrible eavesdroppers, listening to old country ladies talk about their gall bladders and other ills. We were awful.

Susan's parents always invited me on all their family vacations as a companion for Susan. We used to go to Bugg's Island Lake in Virginia, where Susan's father taught me to water ski. But mostly we went to Ocean Drive Beach, SC. It's now called North Myrtle Beach, but it will always be O.D. to us. We would walk miles on the beach in each direction every day. Every morning I awoke to the sound of her father whistling tunes as he drank his morning coffee and read the paper. He was such a happy, cheerful man. I never saw him even frown. Early one morning, and I mean early, like 5 am, Susan and I walked several miles to the Krispy Kreme doughnut bakery and on the way back, we met two guys. They told us that Susan, the blonde, was the prettiest girl they had ever seen and that I, with my dark hair and dark eyes, was the cutest. I didn't even mind.

One year, the night before we left for the beach, Susan and I made a list of things that would disqualify a young man from our consideration. Socks with sandals. Arms hanging out the car window while driving. White zinc oxide noses.  Panama hats, which I now think are cool. Things like that. We were terrible.

Susan had a sleep-over party after the prom. Back then the prom didn't last all night. We had a wonderful time and music was at the center of it all. I remember we all cracked up when Janet introduced a record, "This is Gladys and these are the Knights and these are the Pips."

My home life was so tumultuous and traumatic, and Susan's family understood that. I had my own bedroom and bathroom at their house with a toothbrush and clothes that stayed there all the time so that I could go home from school with her any day on short notice if my family erupted. We could talk all night and never run out of things to say. But this wonderful friend and her loving parents gave me a home to come to whenever I needed it, no notice required. The value of that gift can never be calculated. Even when we didn't sleep over, we talked on the telephone into the morning many a night, whispering, trying not to get caught. We just never ran out. God sent me a family.

I went to church with Susan very frequently. I got into a bad relationship and Susan's parents arranged for me to receive counseling from their pastor. I still remember what he said about Mike, and he was right. If only I had listened.

Every Christmas season, Susan and I worked together at an upscale men's clothing store called Hooper & Moore. They did offer a few items for women, some very conservative skirts and sweaters, and of course they sold Bass Weejuns. We all had Weejuns in every color and style they made. Olive green, navy blue, brown, with and without tassels, you had to have Weejuns to shag. On our first day on the job, Mr. Moore had to break us in right, so he sent us to his competitor, Williams and Company, to ask for shelf stretchers and sky hooks to borrow. Silly us. We went and asked, not thinking it through, not realizing there were no such things as shelf stretchers and sky hooks. Everyone had a great laugh at our expense, and we laughed at ourselves.

Once there was a controversy among the girls in my peer group, and everyone was mad at me for something except Susan. She stood by me. After a few days of mulling things over, I had a change of heart, and I said to her, "I'm wrong, aren't I?" Susan replied, "Yes, Vicki, I think you are," but she would never have told me had I not realized it on my own. She stood by me.

There was egging at Halloween, the capturing of a downed - we didn't down it, honest! - stop sign. But that's the worst we ever did. We were good girls. We didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs. We were so happy and had so much fun, we didn't need to. We wanted to be cheerleaders more than life itself, and we got to be JV cheerleaders in the tenth grade. The fun, the cutting up, the AWAY games, the memories...it was the highlight of high school for each of us.

Because we were so close, we thought it would be best to go to different colleges, to make new friends and to learn to stand on our own. But we grew too far apart. Susan went society and I went hippie. Susan met her future husband the first semester of freshman year. They are still married. I was in their wedding in the early 1970s. There was an empty seat next to me at the rehearsal dinner, reserved for my estranged husband George, who did not come with me. Susan and Eddie have two beautiful daughters, one grandchild, a boy named Walker, and another on the way. Susan drove from Richmond to Arlington several days a week to help with Walker until recently. Last year she planted 500 impatiens plants in the yard of her house on Monument Avenue.

Recently, Susan's parents' home was on the market and I was shopping for a house, so I considered buying the home where I used to spend so much happy time. When I went to view the house, I was struck by the collection of very large professionally taken black and white photos her mother had placed on one living room wall. There was the fair and blonde Susan with her two blonde little girls. She was the prettiest girl I've ever seen. Those photos revealed the essence of beauty and motherhood.

Cancer has been dogging Susan for about ten or twelve years. She has faced it with the spirit and disposition of her father, always cheerful, always hopeful, always brave. And she has held it at bay until now. In the meantime, she has lost her father, and her mother has developed Alzheimer's. Susan passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by her husband and daughters on Friday, April, 22. She was only 62. I cannot bear to think that she will not see her second grandchild. My heart aches for Susan and her family. And for me. We can't make up the times we've missed. But no one could have been a better friend to me. No one could have given me better memories. From the day she took my hand the first day of school to this moment, Susan is My Susan. And she always will be.

Cutting taxes does not create jobs

Cutting taxes does not create jobs. For example:

From: Ben Horn [mailto:Ben@Horn.net]

I am sick every time I hear the Republicans say that we must lower taxes for the “job creators” (aka business owners) so they will create more jobs. It is the biggest lie of the year.

How many business owners have stood with those Republicans and promised to hire more workers if the taxes on their business profits were lowered? I have not seen any.

I have been a business owner for about 20 years and currently have about 10 employees. You can cut and cut and cut my income tax but I will not hire any more employees because of those cuts.

I hire more employees when demand for our products increases and I determine that profits will increase by adding staff. It would be stupid to hire more employees simply because my income taxes go down. Lowering my income tax just means I will have more money for me; it is not justification to add staff at my business!

The Republican stance makes no sense to me. Am I missing something?

Ben Horn
Minneapolis

The disappointment of Obama

A friend said today, 

"I voted for Obama…made the calls ..walked the walk..sent the money…Now..I can’t stand to hear his voice or look at him ..He was a stealth Reagan Republican. I pray he is challenged in the primary. We are so screwed …It is a win win for the oligarchs…With electronic voting they have all their bases covered.."

And another said:

"Why, if we hadn't elected Obama we might have had a president who refused to roll back taxes on the wealthy, who refused to establish a windfall profits tax on oil companies, who refused to investigate activities carried out by telecom companies who illegally helped the government tap our phones, and who continued to tap phones without a warrant, who would have turned his back on Miranda, who would refuse to investigate any of the Bush Admin. lies, incompetence, corruption or torture, who would support anti-democratic, murderous coup regimes in Central America, who might refuse to restore Habeas Corpus, who would have left Guantanamo open indefinitely and maintain that its inmates had no rights at all, who might have continued extraordinary rendition and torture, who might have fought to keep Dick Cheney's remarks to Plame investigators secret, who would have done nothing of substance to rein in Wall St., who would have continued to issue signing statements, who might have continued to delay investigations of CIA torture and even investigate those who protest that torture, who would have traded away the Public Option even while saying he was in favor of it, who would have expanded the war in Afghanistan, who would have opened "vast expanses" of Atlantic seaboard, Gulf of Mexico and Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, who would have 'put politics before science' and at first minimized the BP oil spill and then might have claimed that there was practically no oil left and that "the microbes ate it!", who might have continually filed briefs in favor of large corporate polluters, who might have even been in favor of whale hunting, who might have used cluster bombs on civilians in Yemen, who might have refused to investigate Bush's political firings of US Attorneys, why we might even have a president who would appoint a bunch of right wing psychopaths to the Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and try to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and middle class while allowing Wall St. Banks, the filthy rich and military corporations to continue plundering our economy, or who might try to institute policies which would effectively shut down the Internet.

But wait…no. That's what Obama actually did do."

And another:

"I want help for the poor. Funding for programs that helps people who need it, and that group is growing every day. I want legislation to regulate big business like banks, GE, BP, pharmaceuticals and others that get away with doing pretty much what they want, then when they screw up get bailout money from government, then proceed to pay huge bonuses to their employees. I want our service people home. I want funding for education instead of education being the first on the chopping block. I want the elderly to not have to chose between food and medicine. I want the rich to pay and the Repubs to stop the BS stating they pay for jobs. They have been saying that forever, and all of our jobs have gone overseas. I want women to have the right to chose and have access to birth control. I want women to have equal pay for equal jobs. The list goes on. I thought these were things that the democratic party wanted as well. I don't see Obama standing up for these things, and this is discouraging."

And another:

"Remember when teachers, public employees, AmeriCorps, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither."

And one more:

"Whatever happened to "transparency" in government?  Whatever happened to candidates keeping their campaign promises?  Whatever happened to those easily verifiable paper ballots?  Whatever happened to Congress Members and the White House actually representing the will of the MAJORITY of their constituents not just the majority of Big Business or special interest?"

I don't buy the argument that because the President, or Members of
Congress "sees things and hears things" which are unavailable to
American Citizens, we should meekly follow, support and comply.  If
that was indeed the case, then we need to reexamine transparency in
government quickly.  "Insider" excuses have gotten a lot of Countries
in a whole lot of trouble as their masses were lead to believe they
didn't' need to know why, but simply trust their leadership.  Those
countries ended up with a dictator and a fascist form of government.  I
refuse to be a "Good German" and blindly follow anyone just because
they are in a "leadership" position and "knows things" I don't know...
even President Obama who I worked for to be elected and voted for. What
a HUGE disappointment he has been."

Things look bad for Obama among progressives. It looks to us like Bush's third term. I don't understand why rabid Republicans hate Obama so much. He's the perfect Republican. He's no socialist. He's a corporatist. The election of 2012 really IS a win-win for the oligarchs. 


On April 5, The Raw Story ran a report called "President Obama's Top 5 Broken Campaign Promises" by Stephen Webster. The story points out that right now less than half the electorate want to see Obama re-elected and that disaffected liberals are multiplying rapidly. Here are the five broken promises. The comments are mine. So is disappointment number 6.


1) Health Care
Health care, you may recall, was to be paid for by the money saved by the expiration of Bush's tax cuts. which mostly benefited the wealthy anyway, and was to include a public option so that the mandate to buy health coverage wouldn't lead us all like lambs to the slaughter at the hands of for-profit BIG INSURANCE. Well, Obama let it be known through back channels early in the wrangling that the public option was negotiable. In fact, it was a bargaining chip. And he caved on extending the Bush tax cuts. He was too willing to compromise too early in the game. He gave away the store.


2) Close Guantanamo
Obama promised to close Guantanamo within his first year in office. Instead, we are still holding prisoners with no charges under indefinite detention. And now we're using Gitmo for military tribunals, showing a shocking lack of faith in our Article 3 cours. We'll be trying 9/11 suspects there in military tribunals instead of New York where the crimes occurred. And there's no end in sight for the prison.


3) Support Labor
Remember when Obama said that when unions needed his support, he'd put on comfortable shoes and walk the picket lines with them? Does he even know about Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and all the other states where labor is under attack? Maybe he doesn't have any comfortable shoes.


4) Reform the Patriot Act
Obama failed to reform the Patriot Act. The act had a sunset clause, but he extended it even further in time than the Republicans asked, and he extended its reach dramatically when he declared that the president has the right to order any American citizen suspected of terrorism assassinated. No charges, no trial necessary. This statement goes way further than the executive power grabs of Bush 43.


5) End the wars
Obama promised to end the wars. Instead, he introduced a surge in Afghanistan, began bombing Pakistan, and started a new war in Libya.

6) Proper treatment of prisoners within the law
The torture and isolation of Bradley Manning, who has not been convicted of anything, is obscene. I expected such behavior from the Bush administration, but I cannot believe that this is happening under Obama. So far nothing ties Manning to Wikileaks, yet he is already being punished for something that wouldn't be a crime in the first place. And the punishment is forced nudity, solitary confinement, and so much more. Many human rights groups have judged that it equals torture.

Why don't the Republicans love him?
Oh, I forgot. He's black. Don't you just love how that drives them crazy?

And now here we are with the Republicans trying to roll back all the gains of the twentieth century. And Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the EPA, and PBS are fighting for their lives. And the R's don't believe in global warming, belief in which is critical for our survival, and I don't feel safe knowing Obama is there to fight for us. He'll fold. He'll cave. And you won't be able to tell him from one of them. 

That hopey changey thing would have worked out really well for us if only we had gotten it.

Kia hides from the storm

Well, I just learned that Miss Kia is afraid of thunderstorms. Here in the first two photos, she hides between the sofa and coffee table, drooling that Great Pyrenees way and panting. See the drool spots on her quilt? She won't go out; she won't eat or drink. The sweet baby just wants to be with her mama. And she can. In the third photo, the storm has intensified, and Kia has gone behind an end table. From that position, she raises her head to check out things. The last photo shows just how great a problem these storms have revealed. She is terrified and miserable. We WILL be talking to the veterinarian this week. My baby needs a little help from her friends.

A few of my favorite things

my beetle, my sox, flicks, horses, teaching and learning, readmore, nc outer banks, shoes, pandas, the blue ridge mountains, honeybees, politics, tar heels, music, books, my mac & ipod, polar bears, capitol hill, chocolate, language, my bike, flowers, wolves, boston, the walker tartan, rainy days, charlottesville, amnesty international, god, snow, shadowcat, lucy, strawberries, things Celtic, peace, miss kia

So unlike your Christ

Gandhi said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ." I could not agree more, especially if you are speaking of our country's so-called Religious Right. One of their number, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainsville, Florida, has just done something stupid that has cost the lives of up to 20 people, including ten UN workers, two of them by beheading, and 5 Afghans, at the hands of Muslim extremists in Afghanistan.

He burned the Quran.

Pastor Terry Jones touting the burning that he postponed in 2010.

He said he would, and he did.

Last year there was a firestorm of controversy over the building of Park 51, the Muslim cultural center that was to be built two blocks from nine-eleven's Ground Zero. This controversy, this planned project brought the bigots out in force. Pastor Terry Jones of Florida stood out in that motley crowd. In September he proposed to burn Islam's holy book, the Quran, in a ceremony on September 11. He said it would "stop Islam" and that "what we are also doing by the burning of the Quran, we’re saying stop, stop to Islam, stop to Islamic law, stop to brutality." He did not realized that brutality breeds brutality.

Immediately Gen. David Petraeus called upon Pastor Jones to give up his plan, saying that such an action would endanger our troops and our overall effort in our current wars, remarks for which he drew fire from the right, his most prominent critic being Frank Gaffney. President Obama called the proposed action the "destructive act" that it was, and, well, he draws fire for everything, so never mind.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates personally called Pastor Jones and asked him to please not burn the Quran. One wing nut cried plaintively, "If we stop doing things they don't like, where will we draw the line?" But this action was not just something Muslims would not like. This was the ultimate lack of respect for their holiest book, the revelations of their Prophet Muhammed.

Pastor Jones agreed to postpone the burning, and we all breathed a sigh of relief, taking his action not as a postponement but as a cancellation. Well, ignorance is bliss, and we were shocked out of our ignorance this week when Pastor Jones held his Quran Burning.

On March 20, in his church, the house of God, he held a so-called trial of the Quran and found it wanting. Pastor Jones served as judge from the pulpit of the Dove World Outreach Center. A Muslim convert to Christianity prosecuted the case, and an imam from Texas defended the Quran. There was a jury of twelve church members. At the trial, the Quran was faced with three charges: "1) Crimes against humanity: training and promoting terrorist activities throughout the world. 2) Death, rape, and torture of people worldwide whose only crime is not being of the Islamic faith. 3) Crimes against women, against minorities, against Christians with the promoting of prejudice against anyone who is not a Moslem."

"If the Koran was found guilty then there there four forms of punishment," Pastor Jones said. In a YouTube video, he challenged Mulsims, threatening, "There are four possibilities! The Koran can be BURNED!… or the Koran can be DROWNED! OR the Koran can be shredded… into little bitty pieces, destroyed, shredded. Or a firing squad! Muslims, we challenge you! Last time y'all had a big mouth. …Submit to us… a defense attorney. Come on that day! March the 20th!"

There was an online poll to determine punishment. "The one that the people chose was burning," said Pastor Jones. "That is why the Koran was burned after it was found guilty." Jones supervised while another pastor soaked the holy book in kerosene and then burned it. But the mainstream media missed this. Everyone was asleep at the switch until after Pastor Jones finally had burned his Quran. We were all shocked and surprised. Jones posted pictures of the burning on the internet, with the effect that they knew in Afghanistan before we knew here what he had done.

Fifteen people were killed yesterday in Afghanistan because Pastor Jones held his Quran burning. That number is now possibly up to 20. In Mazar-i-Sharif, one of Afghnistans's most peaceful cities, about two thousand people were demonstrating the burning peacefully when suddenly an angry mob overcame the police and stormed the UN compound in that northern Afghan city. They killed ten UN staff members, beheading two, and they killed five Afghans while they were at it. Police turned their weapons on the mob, killing at least four.

And now today the violence has spread to Kandahar. Hundreds of angry men ran in the streets protesting Jones' action. Nine were killed. Eighty-one were injured.

Pastor Jones says that he is not responsible for the violence in Afghanistan and that it proves his point. On Nightline, Pastor Terry Jones said, "We wanted to raise awareness of this dangerous religion and dangerous element. I think [today's attack] proves that there is a radical element of Islam." As if we need Pastor Jones to bring THAT to light. Pastor Jones justifies his actions by referring to  New Testament scripture, the book of Acts in particular, which he says tells of newly converted Christians bringing their old books, like books of magic, to be burned.

Jones had promised last year on the Today show that he would not burn the Quran, "Not now, not never." But he had come up with a rationalization any addict would love. He said his church was, for the moment, no longer a church. It was a courtroom. And that plus the trial and guilty verdict made everything all right.

There is reason to believe that Pastor Jones went ahead with his plans to burn the Quran for publicity, not principle. The Daily Beast reports that he had grown despondent over the lack of media attention, which he had come to enjoy and expect, and he missed the media trucks and journalists camped out at his home. Last year, after he had "canceled" the Quran burning, he traveled to New York City, hoping to meet with the imam behind the Park 51 project, which Pastor Jones called the Ground Zero Mosque, which of course it was not. But Feisal Abdul Rauf would not see the pastor, dressed all in leather, and the cameras that had been following him, hoping to capture the meeting fell away. Pastor Jones was reduced to touring New York City and visiting Ground Zero like any other tourist.

Despite his worldwide impact, Pastor Jones is truly a fringe element. The man who was mayor of Gainsville at the time of the Park 51 incident said that Jones did not speak for the community. Pegreen Hanrahan, who left office last May, said that for every person who agrees with Pastor Jones, you can fine a thousand who find him ridiculous. Jacki Levine, editor of the local paper, says that Pastor Jones has an "exceedingly small" congregation, perhaps as small as 30 people.

The right is full of these characters. There is John Hagee who commands much more attention than Pastor Jones. Hagee is pastor and founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a nondenominational evangelical church with more than 19,000 members. His John Hagee Ministries broadcasts in more than 200 countries. And he has written twenty-five books. No Pastor Jones is he. John McCain wanted to link himself to Hagee in 2008 until some of Hagee's quotes became public, and now that famous sinner and seial adulterer Newt Gingrich has sought the Hagee seal of approval and the use of Hagee's name in his run for the presidency in 2012. Hagee could fill a book with his anti-Catholic, anti-Islamic, and, despite his Zionism, his anti-Semitic remarks. He has called the Catholic church a cult and a whore. And we all remember others.

I grew up in one of these churches, a fundamentalist, evangelical, Bible-thumping Baptist church, too conservative for the Southern Baptist Convention (which itself was formed when the Baptist Church became abolitionist). We were not supposed to go to the movies, to play cards, to dance, to do anything really, and my father would go through periods in which he would enforce these strictures. My mom ran interference for me, so that I had a fairly normal social life with my school friends, to my father's dismay. And there were were such hypocrites. My mother and father sang in the church choir, and my father treated my mother terribly for years while he pursued an affair with another choir member, whom he eventually married. He's divorced from her, too, now.

There was much adultery, wife-beating, child abuse, alcoholism throughout that congregation of saints, and they looked down on those who were baptized other than by complete immersion. In the Sixties, the pastor said one Sunday that if ever any Black people came to the church, he would pronounce the benediction and end the service immediately. Some members sent their children to Bob Jones University, where you could be expelled for holding hands. It took me years to find my way back to God after I grew up and got away from my father and that church. The intolerance, the self-righteousness, the quirky interpretation of scripture, the hatred of certain Others, the hawkishness, the hypocrisy, and so much more, made me avert my gaze to save my life. So unlike your Christ, said Gandhi.

And now this little wing nut pastor of a tiny congregation in Florida is putting the Quran on trial, finding it guilty, and ceremoniously burning it, directly causing up to twenty deaths in Afghanistan. Time Magazine Online said, "Jones has a right to burn the Koran. And Rick Warren has a right--no, more than a right: a moral responsibly--to blast Jones for the nitwit bigot he is, and to rally mainstream evangelicals against this profoundly disgusting, and extremely dangerous, act. Warren tries to stay out of the political spotlight and he is to be admired for that. But this is different and, as David Petraeus warned last time Jones threatened this sort of unChristian behavior, not just the lives of unarmed UN and other aid workers, but also of American troops, are at stake.

"But there should be no confusion about this: Jones's act was murderous as any suicide bomber's. If there is a hell, he's just guaranteed himself an afterlifetime membership."