Memorial Day Then......As Now

Oliver Wendell Holmes, himself a veteran of the Civil War, gave this speech before his comrades in the Grand Army of the Republic in 1884. It is long but oh my! -it still resonates today. I took the liberty of emphasizing a small bit of it as an object lesson to those who need it – and we know who you are.

Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth--but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.

So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south--each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.

But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.

So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.

When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, “Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy?” “Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs?” I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.

But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.

Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom--Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach him, or can I kill him first?These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten.

But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least--at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves--the dead come back and live with us.

I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.

I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy", and I knew that one of those two speakers was no more. The other, after passing through all the previous battles, went into Fredericksburg with strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate.

I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was gone.

I see the brother of the last-the flame of genius and daring on his face--as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley.

In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand before my memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it. I may say of them , as I once heard it said of two Frenchmen, relics of the ancien regime, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." High breeding, romantic chivalry--we who have seen these men can never believe that the power of money or the enervation of pleasure has put an end to them. We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm.

But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a race of conquerors--stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known.

I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name--who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg.
His brother , a surgeon, who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his ministrations were ended. His senior associate survived all the wounds and perils of the war, but , not yet through with duty as he understood it, fell in helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in a Western city.

I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him.

There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. He entered the army at nineteen, a second lieutenant. In the Wilderness, already at the head of his regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers. I saw him in camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we were rejoining the Army together. I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself. He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity; for, when duty was at an end, he who had been the master and leader became the chosen companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly enjoy. His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.

There is one grave and commanding presence that you all would recognize, for his life has become a part of our common history.

Who does not remember the leader of the assault of the mine at Petersburg? The solitary horseman in front of Port Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of him bade his soldiers spare, from love and admiration of such gallant bearing? Who does not still hear the echo of those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation and peace? I may not do more than allude to his death, fit ending of his life. All that the world has a right to know has been told by a beloved friend in a book wherein friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that speak for themselves. I knew him ,and I may even say I knew him well; yet, until that book appeared, I had not known the governing motive of his soul. I had admired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere him as a saint. His strength was not in honor alone, but in religion; and those who do not share his creed must see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of ideal life.

I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in his own company. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because the men I have mentioned were my friends that I have spoken of them, but, I repeat, because they are types. I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember!

It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle--set apart, even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives? I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own sex---

But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion,
weaned my young soul from yearning after thine
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder--not all of those whom we once loved and revered--are gone. On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist-- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men-- a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse.

When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Such hearts--ah me, how many!--were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march--honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.

But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

Cobra II Analysis Update 2

No I haven't forgotten, I'm almost ready to release the first part of the Cobra II review. Hey! I told some of you I would focus on depth over speed.

(Clive: I haven't forgotten about all the other little projects I've mentioned either. Priorities y'know!)

Attention Speaker Hastert: You are not above the law

Even in YOUR "House"

It appears some in Congress have their knickers in a knot over the raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) Congressional office this weekend. For Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, the issue seems to be over the “constitutionality” of the raid and he has gone on records saying “the seizure of legislative papers, no matter how innocuous, was a violation of the “the principles of Separation of Powers, the independence of the Legislative Branch, and the protections afforded by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution.”
Ohhhh Kaaay. The same article goes on citing Hastert:

Hastert also singled out Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in that statement: “It would appear that the Attorney General himself was aware that Separation of Powers concerns existed … because in seeking the warrant the FBI suggested to the judge procedures it would follow to deal with Constitutionally protected materials.”

Alright then! Heck, we can’t let the Executive Branch run roughshod over the HEY! Wait a second……
“Seeking the warrant”? They got a Federal judge to issue a warrant? And they had to describe to the judge how they would deal with the Constitutional issues before he would give them the warrant? Sounds like some due process going on. What does the AG have to say for himself?

"We respectfully, of course, disagree with the characterization by some,” Gonzales said. “We believe … we have been very careful, very thorough in our pursuit of criminal wrongdoing, and that’s what’s going on here. We have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists.”

So the story so far is this....

On the one hand we have a Justice Department eager to look at what a guy known to be ‘dirty’ might be keeping in an office where he thinks he’s untouchable. He put a pile of suspect cash in the freezer and is on tape taking dirty money for crying out loud! I wonder what he wouldn’t think to hide in his office! The AG does the right thing and gets a warrant, which is essentially a buy-in on the idea that a search is a good thing by the Judicial branch of government.

On the other hand we have a House of Representatives that seems to think they should be untouchable when on ‘hallowed ground’.

Hmmm...

RECOMMENDATION: Speaker Hastert and his ilk should shut up, quietly cry in their beer, and worry how this perceived attempt to keep themselves above the law will look to their constituencies.

Crap. Of course, a bazillion people will read about this first at Instapundit. Looks like Professor Reynolds posted about the time I finished my first paragraph. I feel good knowing I'm on the same wavelength as the Blogfather, but I gotta either get off work earlier or learn to type faster [;-)

NO BIG OIL COLLUSION

Sorry (Not Really)
The speed at which the investigators looked into the possibility of major oil companies colluding to manipulate oil and gas prices, and found NONE, will shortly have someone, somewhere, screaming COVERUP! and WHITEWASH! Oh, there were isolated instances at the retail and distribution levels post-Katrina, but no major oil company involvement.

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the ‘oil gouging’ investigation to wrap up. It was impossible for it to take much time. I mean, we only keep more excruciating public details on all aspects of the oil business than just about any other commodity, including:oil production,imports(PDF),petroleum product exports (.xls),transportation, and refinery operations.

Remarkably, even with much ambiguity over the mere definition of ‘price gouging', investigators found NO “big oil” collusion.

Of course that won’t keep the innumerate, paranoid, politically ambitious or possibly somebody suffering from any combination of these faults from claiming the investigation was a whitewash or coverup.

Update in midstream...

….report shows ``that federal investigators don't have the tools they need to protect the American people from gas price gouging,'' Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said today in a statement.

``The FTC ignored the 800 pound gorilla in the room, namely that the oil companies engage in price leadership - setting prices higher than what real competition would merit,'' Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.

Look for a gripping performance by Reid’s or Schumer’s proxies (right column) when the FTC chairwoman appears before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee tomorrow.

Should be a hoot.

Oh, one more thing. Chuck Schumer's wrong about that gorilla; the gorilla is the fact that federal and state governments make much more off every gallon of gas than anybody in the actual production/supply chain. Especially in Schumer's state, where the state taxes on the total value of the sale instead of by the gallon. Now that's a definition of gouging I can live with!

Air Force Changing Uniform, It Must be Wednesday

The Air Force is messing around with the uniform....AGAIN.
One of these may appear to be a USMC ripoff, but it is really a pure CARTOON of an Eddie Rickenbacker-era uniform with a modified Sam Brown Belt.
The other one appears to be the product of a forbidden act between a 1940’s uniform and a zoot-suit. Lapels are evidently the latest rage!

Honestly, how many years of therapy does senior leadership need to undergo before they get over their insecurities well enough that they stop remodeling the uniform every time you turn around?

Or is there a mysterious process by which dead fashion designers channel (Chanel Channel?) fashion diktats via clueless general officers?

There's a certain LT I know thinks they're using this as a way to lower retention and get under the manpower cap.







But a colleague at work is reminded of something else:

'allo 'allo 'allo What's all this then?

Working Off Line: Not Blog and Blog

Not Blog
Been burning the late hours at work. You know you are under the gun when even though you are salaried, you have almost 12 hours overtime by the end of the first day of the workweek.

Didn't get to see a local airshow this Saturday, I just got to hear it from inside the lab. My daughters did get to go, and my youngest caught some good pics including this one.
Trivia for afficionados
I talked to the owner/pilot in the BX the last time he flew here (Nice Gentleman BTW). Suprisingly, he has no problem getting most parts. Some come from Russia and other former Warsaw Pact countries. but many parts come from China (his was license built in the PRC). The few parts he can't get, he gets fabricated.


Blog
Finally finished Cobra II, and am preparing an in-depth review. It ain't pretty.

Air Force Reshaping BS: A Milestone

I'm the grandson and son of non-career military men, son-in-law to a retired military man, a retired military man myself, and a father and father-in-law to people now serving. Once upon a time, I would have heartily recommended Air Force service to anyone. Be it for a single hitch or a career, responsible individuals almost always got more out of it than they should have expected. But these days, I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.

Today and tomorrow the USAF will be letting 1LTs know who survived and who didn't in this round of so-called 'Force Reshaping' Reduction-in-Force (RIF) .

The 'victims' will soon figure out where their futures will lie. The 'survivors' get to continue wondering what their future will bring, in a military service that maintains a deafness to its own self-inflicted idiocy.

After retirement, I have continued working closely with the services, and have seen what has been, and is now, going on. I have this to say to the survivors:

Take a look around at the Air Force as it is today and remember it. Although the Air Force started sliding downhill under Merrill McPeak** and is but a shadow of its pre-Bottom-Up-Review self, this bonehead manpower exercise called Force Reshaping has put an Olympic luge under the AF. Sorry boys and girls, right now active duty is as good as it is going to be...for a long, long time. So from here on out, try and enjoy the ride.

What a f*&#%&$ shame.

**For you young kids who aren't aware of the McPeak legacy click here and scroll down and read the comments from those who served with/under him. Its a hoot.

The Why's of Missing Leadership on Immigration

Killer week at work, including an 11 hour day Saturday, so I've blogged-lite this week and weekend to keep up with my real life. This is another killer week at work that will probably end up with another long Saturday, but I still managed to look in on what’s going on in the well-traveled parts of the Blogosphere. I wanted to wait until something came to me that wasn’t being beaten to death elsewhere, but that hasn’t happened, so I thought I’d ruminate on some of the less talked-about aspects to something that was widely covered.

There is a lot to pick from, but no other topic seems as fertile as the illegal alien issue. Any discussion of the problem with our borders raises a lot of questions (so far) that seem to go unanswered, Tom Tancredo aside, in Washington. I guess my biggest questions on the issue all begin with a “Why?”

Why was the first instinct for a large number of Republican lawmakers either to drag their feet or work to subvert any effort to secure our borders and enforce our laws?

Why are elected officials who are otherwise security-conscious, trying to turn a blind eye to the near and long term security threats of an open border?

Why are so many in Congress, who haven’t met a piece of not-one-more-dead-child legislation they didn’t pass lest they appear to be indifferent to any American’s health, and the President, who thought no price was too high to pay for yet another federally funded health care giveaway, ignoring the enormous threat the unchecked flow of illegal aliens pose to our health and health care system?

We will catch this problem in time, I think, but no thanks to the so-called ‘leaders’ (of any stripe) in Government.

The answer to all these "whys", I believe, might be very simple. The National Legislators and Administration, are gun-shy on any issue that could be framed as a ‘rights’ or ‘discrimination’ issue. And in the end we the Public are to blame. Over the last four decades, either we’ve been raving liberal moonbats who see oppression in every corner of public discourse and browbeat anyone who dares challenge the ‘Cause’, or we’re the chronic apologists who let them do it.

Bottom line: in a free society, we get the government we collectively deserve.

Again, I think (hope it isn’t just ‘hope’) we are catching this problem in time. The national mood is swinging towards a rational point of view. The mainstream dialog seems to have shifted quickly into a ‘facts-based’ discussion rather than an emotive one. This should bode us well and prevent irrational counter-movements that could give rise to an American sympathy similar to those that gave energy to France’s LePen or England’s BNP.

I guess we will see.

May Day Mayday

Well golly, the "numbers" weren't quite where the wackos and militants wanted them, even in Los Angeles. Baldilocks and the Pajamas Media covered Los Angeles pretty well, including pictures I'm pretty sure won't be shown on CNN.

What really caught my eye in Baldilocks' post was this:

Within my earshot, someone said that it would be easier for Mexico—with its demonstrably hard-working population--to reform itself were it not for the fact that it exists right next to the most prosperous nation in the world. With the border so close, open and inviting, however, who could blame a poor Mexican for fleeing instead of standing up to Mr. Fox’s notoriously brutal and crooked police and military?

Which reminded me of my earlier 'Co-Dependent No More' post, where I wrote about (among other things)...

"Rationalizing":

"(Mexico is an economic pressure cooker and) needs to blow off steam. (Mexico) has problems that can’t be dealt with any other way."

"Projection":

(American dominance is) enough to drive (any country) to (ruin).

The Icons are not loading at the top of the page for some reason. I'll update later, but file this one under Cultural and Economic Elements of Power.

Round Up The Usual Suspects

If the Feds want us to believe they aren’t just a bunch of “Captain Renaults” and are serious about rounding up illegals they need to do a couple of things...

First: Don’t let them go after you catch them
Second: Keep gathering them up.

Crime Stopper Tip: The meat processing industry seems a pretty good follow-up to the pallet-making industry.