As one poster speculated, “Controlling the ammo was a prerequisite for controlling Russia and China by the communists. Make ya wonder don’t it?”

There has been a run on guns and ammo ever since Obama was elected, despite no proof anywhere that the Obama administration considers limiting access to guns a priority even close to, say, propping up our failing economy or fixing health care.

The reality is that Obama is a citified intellectual who would die of exposure if left to hunt for his food, who wouldn’t know a brass casing from case law, and in any event has his focus elsewhere. He is furthermore surrounded by people like him who have no inkling of how strong folks in some parts of the country feel about their guns, and his people will occasionally judge wrong in their gun legislation, and then be quickly course-corrected.

But myths are more powerful than reality, and the central myth fueling the guns-and-ammo panic is an old and powerful story: A BLACK MAN IS TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS! Or perhaps that should be “guns,” since the symbolism wouldn’t be lost on a fourth-grader.

It’s funny (or not) how this ism has a parallel with marriage equality, in which, with no supporting evidence, the story is that GAY PEOPLE ARE RUINING MARRIAGE FOR EVERYONE ELSE!

Unfortunately, Obama has had far more impact in this area than he has on guns. It is Obama’s Justice Department that filed a bristlingly homophobic brief on behalf of DOMA, and it is Obama whose big gift to federal employees was to hand them a few ancillary same-sex benefits (because, we are told, DOMA prevents him from going farther).

Meanwhile, a shiny-pulpit minister on the west coast has been telling people — wink wink nudge nudge — that Obama will soon lift Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. A few months back, that would have excited me. Now I feel bored and appeased, as if the point of this rumor is to get me to stay quiet before I realize I’ve been duped again.

We have too many isms in America — isms that divide us, isms that we refuse to acknowledge.  White men aren’t emasculated if a black man becomes president. The sacred institution of marriage isn’t trampled upon if the doors open wider to let in more loving, committed couples. And these are all the same struggles, in the same direction.

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Harvey Milk’s Birthday, 1979

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

Last night the news that New Hampshire had passed a marriage-equality bill to legalize same-sex marriage in January didn’t even lead the stories. This turn of events — the sixth state to pass this historic civil-rights legislation — is now just part of the rolling stone of social justice happening in our country and worldwide. I can’t think of a better present for Harvey Milk — late by a few days, or several decades, depending on your point of view, but a lovely gift all the same.

I have several copies of this flyer in my personal collection; I vaguely remember handing out this flyer, back in 1979. (I don’t remember the actual celebration, though I did read about it when I did primary research for my essay, “David, Just as he Was,” published a couple of years ago in White Crane.) I was reminded of it when I heard that there is a move afoot to make Harvey’s birthday a holiday. I heartily support this idea — but for me, it always has been one.

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We have mortgages and car payments to make, and jobs to keep, and we don’t want to be seen as so Uppity that giving us rights is a scary proposition. Or we have children to worry about, or neighbors we don’t want throwing rocks in our windows.

We also know that things have improved from the days when we could be arrested, electroshocked, split from our children, or left to die in an alley with no-one caring.

Yet (to paraphrase myself from Twitter a few minutes ago) why is it I’m a full-fledged citizen when it’s time to pay taxes, but a second-class citizen when I want to marry? Why do I have the obligations of a member of a democracy, without all the rights?

And why again are we so patient?

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Note: the ALA policy manual online is six months out-of-date; I had to get corrected text from an ALA member. So no quibbling from the candidates that this submission is a day late!

7.1.1

The ALA will enter into conference-site contracts only with organizations and legal bodies in cities, counties, or states that do not by law discriminate against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

53.1.15

The American Library Association stringently and unequivocally maintains that libraries and librarians have an obligation to resist efforts that systematically exclude materials dealing with any subject matter, including sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.  The Association also encourages librarians to proactively support the First Amendment rights of all library users, regardless of sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

54.3 Equal Employment Opportunity

The American Library Association is committed to equality of opportunity for all library employees or applicants for employment, regardless of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, individual life-style, or national origin; and believes that hiring individuals with disabilities in all types of libraries is consistent with good personnel and management practices. Key factors in the selection of library personnel are training, knowledge, job interest, and the particular physical or mental abilities to do a specific job. Modification of the work environment should be considered if necessary to assist an individual in performing the job.

54.16 Gay Rights

The American Library Association Council reaffirms its support for equal employment opportunity for gay librarians and library workers. The Council recommends that libraries reaffirm their obligation under the Library Bill of Rights to disseminate information representing all points of view on this topic.

60.3 Combating Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination

The American Library Association actively commits its programs and resources to those efforts that combat prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination against individuals and groups in the library profession and in library user populations on the basis of race, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, creed, color, religious background, national origin, language of origin or disability. Nothing in the Resolution on Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination authorizes censoring, expurgation, or restrictive labeling of materials. Actions and programs to raise the awareness of library users to any problem or condition would not be in conflict with the Library Bill of Rights when they are free of any element of advocacy. Both documents respect the rights of all who use libraries to do so freely and without being subjected to pressure or censorship from within the institution.

Furthermore, ALA believes that the struggle against racism, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination is a continuous effort and must extend throughout its membership. Specifically, the American Library Association and libraries will:

1) Seek to facilitate equitable participation of all people within decision-making processes in the Association and will strive to create an environment where all are welcome and where diversity is a collective goal.
2) Encourage its membership, libraries, vendors and stakeholders to implement anti-racism policies that outline the organization’s expectations of its participants, staff and members.
3) Support anti-racism work within the broader society by monitoring, evaluating and advocating for human rights and equity legislation, regulations, policy and practice.
Thus, the American Library Association will endeavor to ensure full representation of all racial groups and have this reflected in its policies, procedures, and programs, as well as in its relations with staff, members, stakeholders, and the community at large, thereby reaffirming its commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and mutual respect for all human beings.

(See ”Current Reference File” for full Resolution on Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination, a revision of the Resolution on Racism and Sexism Awareness.)

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Milk Movie Poster

I wonder if years from now I will be more taken with where I saw Milk – in a weary, mostly empty theater in Tallahassee, sitting amid a small clutch of Southern gays and liberals (going at least by their Birkenstocks and hybrid cars) — than that I saw it at all.

Milk is a strong biopic, respectfully (but not too respectfully) crafted. Because I grew up in San Francisco and lived in the Castro district in in the late 1970s, a place and time where most of the movie takes place, and because I was at least a bystander for some of the public events, and knew what the principals looked like and in some cases how they spoke and moved, I have a standard for “being there” few movies could hope to match.

Yet Milk not only met and often exceeded my expectations but moved beyond the usual biopic you-are-there territory, doing justice to the idea of a portrait as a reflection of us all.

Sean Penn is distinctly Harvey, all geeky elbows and mobile, comical face (I have a poster of Harvey in a clown costume, a role he loved and a job he sometimes held). It is a remarkable performance, one which proves the phrase, “he disappeared into his role,” and if Penn does not get an Oscar, I give up on the Academy for good.

Scott Smith was off-stage to me by the time I moved to the Castro, so I accepted James Franco without question; he certainly evolves well from a gay hippie sprite to a sadder, wiser ex-lover tired of playing second fiddle to Milk’s political cravings.  However, though Emile Hirsch captures Cleve’s mop-top and puckish face, and the right words came out of Hirsch’s mouth, with all that skipping and arm-flopping, Hirsch is far more gamine than Cleve Jones as I remember him from that era, with all apologies for the rough red pen of memory. (Perhaps, among an movie-set army of Castro Clones, Cleve was recreated as the token twink.) Still, it is a brave person who agrees to have his fashion choices from the 1970s recreated with unnerving fidelity, and Hirsch’s impossibly-large glasses and tight tees were spot-on.

Alison Pill works all right for me as Ann Kronenberg, but only because she was someone I do not remember seeing close up; but I still wonder if Pill’s pudding-face captures the toughness of a biker chick who was one of very few females in a power role in the testosterone-charged gay political era of the late 1970s in San Francisco. Ann “likes women,” but is never seen with one, and when she begins working in Supervisor Milk’s office, Ann makes an unexplained shift from jeans and leather jackets to the tight sweaters and long skirts of the Mr. Goodbar era (even as Cleve is told to wear what makes him comfortable) — a point that could have been played out a beat longer, with clarification. Yet Supervisor Dan White is played with unnerving fidelity by Josh Brolin, who carefully does not go over the top and just as carefully does not hog the screen, while Harvey’s boyfriend Jack Lira, played by Diego Luna, could be any politician’s uncomfortably unstable love interest.

I had hoped for more views of the Castro neighborhood itself, but that’s because I’m greedy; any more, and the focus on Harvey and crew would have been muddled by scenery. It’s remarkable how perfectly the set of Milk recreates a vibrant, sui generis neighborhood I have known incidentally since childhood and closely as a young adult, a place I go back to again and again both in the real world and in my mind. I think every important conversation I had in my early twenties took place either while I was going door-to-door with my friend David on behalf of BACABI, the local campaign effort to defeat the Briggs Initiative, or sitting in Cafe Flore on Market Street, drinking then-exotic cappuchinos and watching the world strut by in its tight leather chaps.

The public events recorded in Milk proceed without any surprise for me, comprised as they are of rallies, marches, campaigns, and other crowd scenes I either participated in or had related to me second-hand the day after, often while standing at a bus stop at 18th and Castro. But the movie never dragged, absorbing me in every period detail, every tension among Harvey and his lovers, every new character arriving at just the right moment, every politically-fraught moment teased out on the screen for just long enough and no longer.

A meeting between Harvey and John Briggs in an abandoned lot — where Briggs refuses to shakes Harvey’s hand, and Harvey continues negotiating without losing a beat — was both new history to me and proof of Harvey’s surreal ability to set aside anger and see opportunity, as he commits Briggs to debates that though they appeared on Briggs-friendly ground had the opposite effect statewide.

(The audience was still as a winter night in a scene where Harvey fumes that the proposed “No on 6″ campaign material doesn’t once mention the word “gay.” ‘Not frightening the horses’ was the failed strategy of California’s campaign to defeat Proposition 8. Some have wished Milk had debuted several weeks earlier; with no disrespect to those involved in the movie project, just mere hindsight, I have concluded Milk was a year late.)

Milk also captures beautifully how Harvey served time and again as the balm of Gilead, refocusing an angry crowd on his themes of hope and change. This was no mere parlor trick; it was a gift crucial to Harvey’s leadership, and the stirred, fuming crowds who settle down to chant and clap along with Harvey stand in for not just the determined gay body politic of that time, but the entire, and entirely malleable, human race. Harvey, as imperfect as the rest of us, had a supremely dangerous gift, and he used it nearly every time for good.

Biopics, like all good nonfiction, concoct their alchemy from the true artifacts of the known world, and must skilfully dance around not just real people and events, who often messily refuse to fit their narratives into tidy Aristotelian boxes, but the accumulated truths that occur after the biopic’s events. The headiness of 1970s gay San Francisco had its own powerful letdown in the arrival of AIDS in the early 1980s, and the movie manages to delicately hint at the future without introducing maudlin distractions. There is just the right prefiguring in the casual references to bathhouses, casual sex (which as memory serves was hardly the exclusive provenance of gay men), and, in an early scene cut sharp as a diamond, a speech from Harvey to Cleve about a life filled with many lovers and friends.

Milk concludes with a small, deeply satisfying “return,” repeating a scene from the beginning between Scott and Harvey. In the hands of someone other than Gus Van Sant (a director who in Elephant managed to make teen-killers sympathetic) the return might have been superfluous or even intrusively annoying, but when the moment arrived, I sighed with that sense of rightness and inevitability that only a good ending can bring.

Huffington Post put a spoiler alert around part of the ending of Milk, adding a “whodunit” angle to the movie that initially baffled me, given that Milk smartly begins with the fact of Harvey’s murder, ensuring that the movie’s trajectory is toward Harvey’s life, not his death.

But though uber-reviewers such as A.O. Scott assume everyone knows the finer-grained details of Harvey’s murder (a faint whisper of Pauline Kael not knowing anyone who voted for Nixon),  I will respect Huff Post’s spoiler except to say the ending has to do with Supervisor Dan White — not just what he did, but the frightening way he did it. I had forgotten that the murder of Harvey and the man my parents called “Gorgeous George” Moscone (a dapper, smart politico played beautifully and with silken restraint by Victor Garber) was a peculiar, distant event to many in my own country, though it was as close and real to me as my own hands.

I was standing in the records-room of San Francisco Juvenile Court, sorting file cards by the window, when we heard this news, and a co-worker, pleased with jackass self, said, “See, Karen, they got another one.” The next I knew, I was in my rented room and on the phone; sad, anxious hours slid by without memory, and then I was in the candlelit march from the Castro to City Hall that in Milk both stands in for the arc of Harvey’s achievement and rightly concludes the film.

A time long ago and far away; and now, with Milk, risen again, in all of its wit, hope, pain, and beauty.

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I met David in San Francisco in the late 1970s, when we were both campaigning against the Briggs Initiative. He was like a brother to me in many senses of the word: protectorate, champion, critic, entertainer, court clown. I was young and careless, so when I left California in 1979, David and I fell out of touch, and I was unaware of his death until decades later.

I wrote about our friendship in an essay, “David, Just as He Was,” which was published in the Summer 2007 issue of White Crane, a small, elegant literary journal. In this essay I tried to capture our friendship, but I also pushed beyond this to describe the Castro in the 1970s — a sui generis, painfully brief Atlantis that rocked gently between the closeted past and the fearful future.

(When filming began for Milk, friends who knew of my writing excitedly wrote me to tell me how the Castro had been remade to resemble this era — I wish I could have seen that.)

If I could have just one visit with any of the world’s departed, I would ask for one more afternoon at the Cafe Flore with David, sipping coffee as we argued about life. That won’t happen, but what I could do tonight is donate to the institute that publishes White Crane, a journal that has played a crucial role in recording the lost worlds, and like most literary journals survives largely on love and determination.

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So the downside of the election is that voters in California, Arizona, and Florida trounced gay-marriage rights. Sandy and I have received very sympathetic mail from friends. I am still turning it over in my head. I gave my first talk yesterday and to my relief it went well (Lizanne was terrific), so my brain is no longer singularly locked onto the idea that I’ll get up in front of people from another country and make a complete fool of myself.

I have an essay, “The Outlaw Bride,” coming out in the next issue of Ninth Letter. This essay is about our experience in 2004 — being able to marry, and then having our marriage invalidated. I just saw the proofs a week or two ago, and they are beautiful — literally beautiful, laid out on what looks like wedding stationery.  I was hoping the essay would be ancient history, but sadly, instead, it is timely response and advocacy.

Meanwhile, in the “where do I begin” category, I received this non sequitur of a comment on an earlier post about the election:

Zeke 72.226.71.192 cpe-72-226-71-192.nycap.res.rr.com

Instead I think you should consider yourself as a chicken with an asterisk concerning the lack of candor (aka lying) on your resume. When will you admit what you were doing at the University of Michigan. Is it really all that embarrassing to flub a PHD? Free range what?

I don’t know Zeke, assuming this person exists, but this puzzles me, as I have been quite direct with anyone who needs or even wants to know that I successfully completed one semester at UM in 1995 and then dropped out.  Who is this person, dragging around all this misplaced righteous indignation? (We could say “apparently a Roadrunner user in New York,” though even that could be misleading.)

Yet “Zeke’s comment,” small and angry though it is, rocketed me back to a tough time that turned out all right in the end — one I am asked about now and then. Since it is part of my pre-blogging history, here goes.

(Needless to say, as with my other blog posts, you’re still only getting part of the story.)

The academics were not the hard part. In fact, this will sound all wrong (all “tall poppy,” to be Australian about it), but the academics weren’t even hard — they felt like just more graduate-level library work. (I’m sure I would have hit a tough class later on. However, I have met enough low-voltage PhD students to think my assessment is largely on target.)

UM was just the wrong place, wrong time, wrong PhD topic, and a few more “wrongs.”  Sandy and I were apart (the plan was she would join me later), my elderly cat was dying, a family member was seriously ill, and I rented a room from a woman who turned out to be a distracting wack jobby whose hooting voice and shrill giggle regularly woke me up in the wee hours.

I was alone and miserable and suddenly realized I had no idea why I wanted a PhD.

I walked away from a fellowship, and later, at SUNY Albany (where I also taught as an adjunct), I took Tom Galvin’s advice and didn’t formally pursue a PhD in that program. Sandy and I weren’t sure how long we would be in Albany, and Tom said I could afford to drop out of a PhD program once — just not twice.

Just Because I Could, I took information technology policy from Tom. Add info policy to the list of classes that should be required for library students. Add taking a class from Tom (RIP) as something not to be missed — he took a potentially deadly topic and made it edge-of-the-seat important and fascinating.

I inevitably provide my UM transcript to my employers even if it’s not required, as my performance speaks for itself.  I’m just another PhD dropout, but I did all right (and ACM published one paper I wrote during the program).

On the fatal topic — freenets and community networks — as soon as I closely examined what then appeared to be a hot topic, I realized freenets would be largely extinct very soon, and that the topic was at best ancillary.

I might have stayed in UM’s program if I had been better-equipped to ask for and make the changes I needed. But then I surely would never have gone back for an MFA in writing, which was the academic experience of my life — scary, boundary-pushing, crazy-making, wonderful.

I’ve off-and-on pondered LIS PhD-ville, but there are faster and less expensive ways to retool, if retooling is in order. For one crazy scheme I have in mind, I’ve pondered a CAS in digital libraries, to better equip myself, but again — I’d want to be sure I was leaping onto the right streetcar (and at the moment, I don’t have the fare).

In a twist tying all of this together, our decision to hit the undo button on Michigan was a defining moment in our life together, one I mention in “The Outlaw Bride” — a moment that says, regardless what the state thinks, Sandy and I are nonetheless married.

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Our marriage was eventually declared invalid, and the recent ruling in California won’t change that. We can get married again in California (or Massachusetts, or Canada), and probably will, though Florida doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages and is trying to stop them from ever being recognized, and California’s voters are headed to the ballot box to try to change the state constitution.

You might wonder why we would even bother doing this again, since so few states recognize same-sex marriages, and it could get undone, etcetera, and it boils down to this:

It’s different at the front of the bus.

No matter what, when you commit to riding at the front of the bus, and then you actually do it, you will be changed for life. Maybe next time, you won’t get to ride at the front of the bus, and maybe even as you’re riding up front people will be trying to push you to the back, but you’re still on that bus, at least for that one ride, and from that point on you see yourself differently.

As I wrote in “The Outlaw Bride” (an essay about our experience which will appear in the next issue of Ninth Letter, published by the University of Illinois), “Our marriage could be invalidated, but the mischief had been done: I no longer saw us as people who could not or should not marry.”

The state can take away our right to marry (or in the case of most states, never offer it), and it can declare our wedding licenses invalid, and it can even accuse us of ruining it for everyone else (which is the gist of Florida’s anti-marriage initiative), but it can’t take away our experiences. Once you see yourself as equal, that clock won’t turn backwards.

If you are reading this and wondering what you can do to put everyone at the front of the bus, I recommend donating to Equality California, Equality Florida, or another human-rights organization. Give as much as you’d give if your same-sex friends were getting married and you were buying them a particularly nice wedding gift. Because I can’t think of a better present.

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“‘ “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And the idea of ‘gay marriage’ — it’s hard to find a ridiculous enough comparison.’” — Orson Scott Card

The latest post-conference mishagosh comes to us courtesy of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), which gave this year’s Margaret A. Edwards Award to Orson Scott Card for his works, Ender’s Game (1985) and Ender’s Shadow.

If you know anything about Card’s views about homosexuality — or about the Edwards award,which “recognizes an author’s work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world” — that’s like the Anti-Defamation League giving Bobby Fisher a lifetime achievement award.

In all fairness to the committee, if they had asked the general question “what do we know about Orson Scott Card” (and whether you think the committee should have done that is open for discussion; I say yes, that’s due diligence), it would have taken some effort to uncover Card’s virulent homophobia, and you’d almost have to be looking for it.

A Google search for Orson Scott Card (10 results per page) lists 9 neutral or positive sites about OSC. I had to get to get to the 10^th link to read a Salon article (by Donna Minkowitz, a lesbian, no less) in which the author notes on the first page, “But I’d somehow failed to ascertain that Card was a disgustingly outspoken homophobe.”

(Note: the spell-check in WordPress doesn’t even recognize “homophobe” as a word. Then again, it also doesn’t recognize “WordPress.”)

The real damage is in that bastion of impartiality, Wikipedia. Card’s Wikipedia article barely references his opinions about homosexuality, and only in an external link; to get a fuller story, you’d have to go to the Talk page and then look for it. You certainly won’t find Card’s own words on the topic, which include:

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

Dudes and dudettes, that’s hard-core! Even most “compassionate conservatives” don’t speak that directly, not even when they agree with Card.

But if you read this blog you know I have written that Wikipedia often seems more like a Secret Treehouse Club than everyone’s encyclopedia. Card’s Wikipedia page isn’t a biography, it’s an encomium by true believers who maintain fierce control over Card’s myth.

As for Bobby Fisher, his Wikipedia page references Fisher’s anti-Semitism. Despite all the babble on Card’s Talk page, if there’s a consistent rule about what can be said about an author, I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is.

Besides, as Tracy Nectoux said on GLBTRT-L, short of saying gays should be trucked to death camps, homophobic comments by famous people don’t warrant sustained attention in the public sphere. This tsuris only occasioned a strong article in School Library Journal and mild back-pedaling from the awards committee, who said that they hadn’t researched Card prior to this award (I cringe when “information professionals” say things like that) and furthermore — ladies and gentlemen, prepare to hoist an eyebrow or two — “personal views aren’t part of the selection criteria.”

In terms of who we as a profession honor as an association — or in terms of any work effort — we need to make clear-eyed choices. We don’t get a lot of choices in our lifetime, really, not for awards, or books to read, or people to love. Card took up time and energy that could have been directed to someone else. It wasn’t intentional, but what’s done is done.

Oh well. Next year in Jerusalem.

If the award did any good, it is this: many more librarians know the truth about Orson Scott Card.

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… FSU’s associate general counsel D. Michael Cramer asked that the student union’s policy be more in line with the university’s, which does not include sexual orientation, gender identity or expression and socio-economic status.

My bottom line is I don’t write about my former jobs unless I have positive things to say, but given the FSU-centricity of Tallahassee, this story is much broader than My Former Place Of Work (MFPOW). Yesterday (after a flurry of emails that were soon circulating city-wide) the Florida State University Student Union Board rejected a proposal from FSU’s general counsel, D. Michael Cramer, to remove protection for sexual orientation from the Student Union Board’s anti-discrimination policy.

At last week’s conference, Jan Ison quoted another librarian who once said libraries should avoid doing things that make them look stupid. Of all the things FSU had to worry about — including the budget crisis — this was a priority? Please, Cramer, you make FSU look stupid.

The Democrat covered this story — good for them! — and noted that the big school down the street (University of Florida at Gainesville, gallingly known as UF, as if there were only one, not eleven) had much stronger anti-discriminatory policies. Not noted in the story is that UF also offers its faculty domestic partner health benefits.

Giving up protections and benefits was part of the package deal of moving here, and MFPOW wasn’t worse than anywhere else in the immediate area. The state itself offers little protection (and is busy trying to Defend Marriage when it really needs to be defending public services and figuring out how to fix the budget and insurance crises).

State institutions that want to compete outside of Florida (you know… like with other ARL institutions) need to work around painfully backward state laws and policies — and these institutions are often attempting to provide equal rights and benefits in an environment that enables the D. Michael Cramers of the world to feel free to get up in front of students and propose removing protections from a nebbishly little student government policy. Doesn’t spell well for future reforms.

When locals go on and on about how “great” it is here, I need to start saying “Yes, but.” A little awareness wouldn’t hurt.

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