"A Buffalo Soldier Speaks" is an audio podcast featuring National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson as Sergeant Elizy Boman, Troop "K," Ninth U.S. Cavalry, who was dispatched to Yosemite National Park in 1903 and served there through 1904. On their routine patrols through the high country of Yosemite, these Buffalo Soldiers recorded the pertinent but mundane details of their journeys in ledgers that were housed in the remote patrol posts that served as both the beginning and end of long days spent in the saddle. Certainly they must have entertained thoughts more provocative than "encountered 500 head of sheep in Return Canyon. Brand "P," which mirrors the sort of entry you can find in the historic patrol reports! This podcast is an exploration of those thoughts via the imagination of Ranger Johnson, but based on years of historic research of what a particular Buffalo Soldier by the name of Elizy Boman, a man who did exist but of whom we know practically nothing about, might have been feeling or thinking after one of those long, arduous, but inspiring patrols through the "Range of Light."
Sgt. Boman talks about Time as its own sort of geography, that in the Sierra Nevada you can get lost in the when, the here and now, as easily as taking a wrong turn in the mountains.
This is Sergeant Bowman. One of the peculiarities of being in the mountains is you start getting lost. Not lost in terms of where you've been or where you want to go. Not lost in terms of losing your mind or not knowing who you are anymore. You start getting lost with the way the sun go up and the way the sun come down. You start getting lost, seeing the moon rise up high over Unicorn Peak. You sort of get lost when you see that swirl of stars rolling up the side of the sky and rolling down again, the way the wind come up at dusk or at dawn. You get lost all in that, and you realize there's some things in this world you can't put in a clock or a calendar. And so I realized after the time I've spent in Yosemite, that there's a different sort of time, and 'cause I ain't quite figured out what that time is, I'm just going to call it Yosemite time. With Yosemite time, you wake up when the sun come up. With Yosemite time, you go to sleep when the sun come down. With Yosemite time, when it get warm enough that the flowers start bursting out of the ground, well that's called spring. Yosemite time is when you see that last flower shrivel up, and in the coldness of the air the leaves around you start to turn gold and bronze. Well then that's the fall. But all these things, it's hard to put on a calendar or on a clock because they may not happen at the same exact moment the following year or the year before that. So it makes you look at when something happens as much as you look at and think about why something happens. You don't have thoughts like this when you in a city, when there's a steeple above a church and a clock ringing the time of day that don't happen to you. You just do what you're supposed to do with the clock tells you to do with some sound out of brass or steel. Ringing the day away with that tells you what to do. Mountains don't tell you what to do. And So what I realized on these patrols in the high country, a Yosemite, that Yosemite never tells you what to do, but it can make a strong suggestion. And that suggestion is in how those leaves of those trees start to shrivel from the coldness of the mountain air in September and October. Or when that rain that's coming down ain't rain no more. It stings. When it hits your skin that tells you it's time to get out of the high country, or that time is drawing near. But you cannot mark it on a calendar until it's history. And you never know what each day and what each night might bring in the time between the rising and the fallen of the sun. So there's a lot to get lost in when you in Yosemite. Not just the mountains, not just some Canyon, not just being alone at the edge of the world. When is a place in the mountains and you can get lost in that? When in that time, which is its own kind of space. So I know I've been here for over a year now, but what does a year mean in Yosemite? What does a year mean to these mountains round me now? What does time mean to them? And whatever it does mean to them, it ain't at all like what I think it could be or should be. It ain't at all what I imagined it to be, 'cause I'm lost in Yosemite time, and that time is now, as you're hearing my voice, as I'm speaking to you about this, that time is now. You always right here in the now in Yosemite and it's Yosemite time.
Episode 35: On Two Fronts III
Sgt. Boman’s final thoughts on fighting that war for freedom, for true emancipation.
This is Sergeant Elise Bowman. I've just been talking to you about what it's like being a colored soldier versus a white soldier. And I've just been telling you about that little boy I met on that dusty road outside of Jerseydale. And I'm thinking, and I've been thinking ever since I had that conversation with that little boy, all the things that I said and all the things that I didn't say. Sometimes it's something as simple as knowing you served in a war and you see men that you call your brother die around you, and then you come back from that war and you're tired and you're thirsty. You want to just go in and have something to drink. Someplace, somewhere. You just want to go into some establishment somewhere, and you just want to sit down and have yourself a good meal. Not army rations, but a good hot meal. And that happened to us on the way to Yosemite, riding through the Central Valley. Few of us went out on our own. We didn't desert. We just went out on our own and we found a place to eat. And I'm not going to tell her the name of the town because you probably never heard of it, because we didn't and hadn't. And we got seated and we were sitting there and we were sitting there and we were sitting there and we were sitting there. And no one ever come up and gave us give us water. No one ever come up and asked us if we decided what we want to eat. No one ever come up at all. It's as if there were 3 ghosts sitting there, 3 ghosts in cavalry uniforms, 3 ghosts that were a Sergeant, a corporal and a private, 3 ghosts. We might as well have been dead men sitting there. That's the amount of attention we got. But the people that were already seated at their tables, they got attention. The people who come in after us, they got served, they got asked questions, they were given food. No one paid us no mind at all. And we could have stood up, we could have demanded that we be served, or we just figured, what's the youth? That sometimes a battle is done before you even have a chance to say, hey, wait a minute, that just ain't right. All we did was just got up, put the chairs back where they were before, and we walked right on out. And when I looked at at the private's face, he's looking at me and I'm looking back at him. And there was a pain in his face, a discomfort in his face that I'd never seen there before. Even though that man that I'm talking about, that private, had seen men killed right in front of him or to one side of him in the Philippines. He had seen men just like him with their blood spilling out in the ground. And he knew what that pain was like, to lose someone who's become a brother. But this was a different sort of pain because he was expecting that he was fighting and had been fighting for the United States. So he would be treated with respect. He would be treated with dignity. And that is a dangerous thing. When a colored man has an expectation that he will be treated with respect and dignity, we all walked in with that paid for nothing. We're served nothing, but we walked out, and that dignity and that respect didn't come out with us. So when we walked out, it looked like somebody who just walked out of a battle that they lost. And we realized the war that we were in, the war that gave me these stripes was nothing at all like this one right here. This one that were no shot was fired where no blood was spilled in the ground. That battle, that battle we had lost. And it was a war that started before we were ever born. And it was a war that would be raging on long after we turned to dust. And that is a kind of war that reduced you to whispers and a silence and a look at the people around you who your family, and with a pained expression and with sadness in your heart. I didn't tell that, that little boy. How could he understand when I hadn't figured it out myself?
Episode 34: On Two Fronts II
Sgt. Boman continues this conversation about colored men who serve in the military, and their fight for freedoms that are elusive once they return from the battlefield.
You know there's something I didn't tell you about that little boy I saw out there in Jerseydale, the one that was sitting along the road, the one that saw this colored Sergeant in the 9th Cavalry ride by, the one who asked, is there a difference? What's the difference between colored soldier and a white soldier? I didn't tell you everything about what that conversation did to me. Not for me, but to me. Because when I started thinking further about what that boy was asking, I realized there's something I didn't share with you. And that is how hard it is to serve your country and come back home and for it to not make a difference. You see a lot of the colored men that I know that join the army there. They joined for a reason. It wasn't to fight Indians during the ending wars. It wasn't to fight the Filipinos. During the Philippine insurrection, they joined the army to prove that they deserve the right to be treated as citizens of this country. And if it meant drawn blood, if it meant dying on the field, a battle, then that was the price. We were all willing to pray because we figured somebody sometimes got to make a sacrifice for things to get better back home. If you from Alabama or Georgia or Louisiana, Things are not really changing all that much in those places. And where I'm from in South Carolina, it's probably the same today as it was yesterday. And my mind is filled with so many yesterdays that I wish I could forget. So putting this uniform on and going into the Indian Wars and fighting people who look like my relations, now that's hard. Going to the Philippines and seeing people who were as dark skinned as I was, who looked like some people I knew back home, that was hard. But by doing something hard, by doing something difficult, sometimes with that sacrifice, things will get better. And that's the hope that even if you have your blood spilled on the ground, someone can say my uncle, my father, my grandfather served in the United States Army. And you should treat him with respect because he fought for this country. For the problem is most colored soldiers, when they get back home, and I know this to be true, they expect things to be different. They expected the world to be different. But it is a hard thing, I tell you right now to change the world. And it is a hard thought knowing that when I leave this army, if I were to go back to South Carolina and I'd have this medal unpinned to my chest saying what I did in the Philippines, telling people what I did in the Indian wars, it would not matter a bit. All they would see is some uppity saying he did this and did that in some war. But that ain't why I did it. That's not why. Any colored man joins the United States Army not to get someone else's approval, but to make a statement that America belongs to us too. And being an American means being willing to hold that flag high and never let it touch the ground again. And I know men who did that and died doing that. They weren't just soldiers. They were citizens of the United States of America. If Diane means you have become a citizen, I'm willing to go to that place because I'm willing to do anything so that my Mama and my daddy is never called a again. That's the battle that we all fighting in the 9th Cavalry, that we all fighting in the 10th Cavalry, We fighting for our own people. We are fighting for our right to be treated with respect. That's what makes a Buffalo soldier a Buffalo Soldier.
Episode 33: On Two Fronts
Sgt. Boman tells of an encounter in Jerseydale that prompts him to consider some of the differences between being a colored soldier versus a white soldier in a time of war.
You know something I remember from just last week was on a Friday. I was at that patrol post in Jerseydale, near the edge of the park, and I was riding along by myself on this old dusty road. And there's this little boy sitting on a log watching me, this little white boy watching me. And I was in my uniform, of course, and I'm standing tall or sitting tall in the saddle, of course. And that little boy looked at me. He saw my uniform. He saw these stripes I got being a Sergeant and all, and it seemed to impress. And he said, excuse me, soldier. And I looked down at that little boy and I says, you, what can I do for you, Sir? He said, what's it like being a colored man and being a soldier in the army? And I looked at him and I thought, well, this boy's wise beyond his ears. I mean, I never had a young boy like that to ask me a question like that in the way that he did. And I said, are you saying, young man, what's the difference between being a colored soldier and being a white soldier in this man's army? And he looked at me and says, that's what I'm saying, Is there a difference? And I looked at him and I was quiet for a bit. I mean, he made me think that's what children always do. They ask you questions that you never got asked before. And it does make you think. And I said to myself, and I looked at him and I said, well, I think the difference between being a colored Sergeant and a white Sergeant or just being colored in the Army is that if you in a war. And I've been in a few the Indian wars, and I was in that Philippine war as well. When you're in a war, you always know in general who the enemy is. You look at the person who's trying to kill you and that pretty good indicator that that's the enemy, the man that wants you dead, that's trying to put you in the sights of his car being. But if you were a colored soldier, the enemy is not just the man on the other side of all that smoke who's shooting at you. Sometimes the enemy is really hard to see. It ain't like you've been drinking. It ain't like you got hit in the head and your vision's not right. You just can't see sometimes that man who also means you nothing good, I said. That's the difference between being a colored soldier in this army and being a white soldier. If you're a white soldier, the enemy, it's pretty straightforward. It's the man that's out there trying to kill you. And you could see somewhere out there. That's where all those bullets are coming from. But if you're a colored soldier, the man who's trying to kill you is not just on the other side of some field. It could be the man behind you telling you what to do. Your own officers can sometimes not have your best interest at heart. If you got a second Lieutenant who's from Alabama or Mississippi or Georgia or Louisiana, and do I really have to say Texas? If you got a Texas, a Texan, and he's wearing those bars, he's a captain or he's a second Lieutenant or a first Lieutenant and he looks at you. He is not seeing a corporal, he's not seeing a private, he's not seeing a Sergeant, He's seeing a. And when you got any white man and all he can see is A, and he can't see that you got stripes, which you earned and you got years in the Army, which you earned and you served in a battle, not just one, not just two, but sometimes many. And you earned the right of being treated as a human being by that man. Well, that makes you different from any other enlisted man who's white in the United States Army. What I'm saying is this. It's hard enough fighting in any war, because war is about killing. War is about staying alive. War is about death. It's hard enough just waking up in the morning and wondering if you're going to see the sun go down that day. But when you wake up and you're not quite clear who it is that you're fighting, the people over there that you can't see, or the man or the men right around you who you can see and hear clearly every single morning, afternoon, every evening, they don't have your best interests at heart, necessarily. They ain't. They ain't all the same. No one's ever the same. I've served with some white officers who were proud to serve with colored troops, proud to be an officer in the 9th Cavalry. But there are others who seem to be always thinking, how did this happen? How did I end up serving with these colored troops? And I'm being polite right now. And when those men are behind you with their Sabre drawn, of their pistols out in there firing, and you can see and hear them out of the corner of your eye, and they're telling you what to do. And every once in a while one of them might say, come on, you boys, you go ahead and fire. You wonder who you really at war with, who you really fighting. You wonder what war is all about and what is the real meaning of you being there on your knees fighting someone you ain't got nothing against. And meanwhile, the man that called you in there who's wearing who's an officer, I'm not talking about all of them, but there are few out there like that, and some of them, and most of them don't think you are as good. I'd say that all of them, none of them think you are as good as a white man. Now that that's a harder war to fight, what kind of strategy do you develop to fight the people you serve? You got to be more than a tactician to figure out your next move. I'm not talking about a game of chess. I'm talking about human lives and you trying to figure out who you fighting and who you're at peace with. That is what makes a colored soldier different from a white soldier. Well, I told that little boy some of that, and his eyes just got bigger and bigger. And he just looked at me and I looked at him and I just said to him, well, I'm sorry, son. You asked me. You asked me what's the difference between the life of a colored soldier and a white soldier? So I figured you need to know you, you at the age where you want to learn you an open book. Well, I hope I filled a little bit of that book up, but that's the difference. Before I joined the military, I was enslaved. My family was enslaved. And when I signed up to be a soldier in the United States Army for three years, ain't much difference. Not much to change from being a slave in South Carolina and being a soldier in the United States Army, But there's some difference. I get $13 a month, don't get whipped. At least haven't yet. I've been taught how to use a gun and I've been taught how to stay alive, and that's all right. That's something that's education that I that I need and that's what the Army has provided me. But that don't mean that sometimes it's difficult, sometimes it's just hard. And sometimes you feel like shooting somebody and the person you want to shoot ain't on the other side of that field. He's right nearby yelling at you and you just thinking, I just want to stop that yelling right now. But if you do that and you act on it, something much worse is about to happen and you going to be in a much darker place. And there are worse positions to be in, believe me, than a Sergeant in the United States Army. So what did I tell that boy at the end? I said I'm proud to be a soldier in the 9th Regiment, the cavalry, Because no matter how bad my worst day is, it's better than the worst day, but a good day for any sharecropper in Mississippi or Alabama. I've been blessed. Even that second Lieutenant from West Point who thinks he was born knowing more than I could ever learn in my life. That's still a good thing, to have a conversation with a man like that than with a KKK in South Carolina.
Episode 32: Power
Sgt. Boman reflects on his status as a sergeant in the Ninth Cavalry and the meaning in his own life of the word “power”.
Every once in a while you get one of those mornings where you just don't want to wake up. I was just tired, but I knew if I didn't get up, my men wouldn't get up. And when you're a Sergeant, your job is telling those men to get up in the morning, go to sleep at night, and sometimes you might even tell them today's the day we all going to die. Because it just feels like that when you in a war, when you in the field, when you in the Dakotas during the Indian wars felt like that plenty of times. And so sometimes I ain't got very many people to talk to about how I'm feeling when I'm feeling down low. There ain't a lot of people around me I can speak to about what I'm feeling in my gut, except my mule mules are good listeners. Mules always just move their ears from side to side. They look at you with those big dark eyes or theirs. They seem to be, listen, listening carefully to everything you got to say. And you know what? It makes sense. They might understand a Sergeant. There's a lot going on between a Sergeant, any Sergeant in the US Army, and a mule. You ain't in charge, but you think you do. Mules think they do, but they ain't. But they don't know that. Sergeants think they in charge, but they they ain't. And they know that that's the difference right there. I don't know if my mule knew much about what it was like to be enslaved like my Mama and my daddy did. I don't know what a mule knows about being a sharecropper when when slavery was supposed to come to an end on January 1st, 1863, but it didn't. I don't know what a mule knows about the 13th Amendment or the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment. I don't know if my mule has trouble sleeping tonight wondering whether or not slavery really did come to an end on January 1st, 1863. I don't know if my mule was troubled by the 14th Amendment and wondered if if colored people really were citizens of the United States of America. Don't know if my mule slept that night either. And when the 15th Amendment was passed, the one saying that colored people could vote, go right down to that courthouse and register themselves and make their voice heard. I don't know if my mule ever heard that. The more I think about it, I got a lot in common with my mule. Now, my Mule's name is Ezekiel, but we just call him Zeke, and I value his opinion more than some of the enlisted men I got serving under me. He never lies to me. He keeps things hidden for me sometimes. But I know one thing. If you mistreat Zeke, you're going to hear a bit hear about it and you're going to feel it too. And I'd rather hear about it than feel it. But every once in a while you kick that mule because you get upset with him and he don't find you right at the beginning. But somewhere near the end, a hoof of his will find you and you'll wake up in the following week. Yeah, I think Zeke understands everything about being a mule, being a slave, being told what you can or cannot do. I don't know if he ever voted, but if he had tried to vote down in South Carolina, where I grew up, long before I joined the US Army, you know, he couldn't. Even though that amendment had been passed the 15th saying that we could vote. You needed to have a poll tax. You needed to be able to pay that poll tax. You needed to have that money in your pocket to pay that tax in order to vote. And if you had the money in your pocket and you could vote, then you had to be able to read this literacy test they have for only colored people. I mean, the colored people had a test. They ain't like the test they gave to everyone else. If you read a lot and you were a lawyer, maybe you could pass that literacy test. But if you were something not like a lawyer, then you probably wouldn't pass at all. So say you pass that literacy test and you paid that poll tax and you could vote and say that now you no longer enslaved, but your parents were, and memories die hard. That makes it seem like that you a human being. Well, that might have been the case, but then no one seems to inform the Ku Klux Klan that you were a human being, 'cause they out there in the middle of the night setting crosses on fire, burning your home down. Maybe you dragging out of you out of your bed and pulling you out into the woods and stringing you up to some tree. Now that's justice down in South Carolina, in Mississippi or Alabama. So what I'm talking to you about, I'm talking to you about power, and I know all about power. And the only people in this world that really understand power are those that don't have any cause. The folks that got it don't even think about it. But if you ain't got any power at all, well, that makes life a bit of a challenge. And if you're a Sergeant, you got this feeling, you got power. You got this feeling deep inside that you, you add up to something greater than 0. But every once in a while, some second Lieutenant who just got out of West Point will remind you that he got power over you. And that don't set too well, knowing that somebody who's never been in a war, someone who's never seen people blown apart on one side or the other of them, someone who's never experienced death staring at them in their face, knows more than you about war, knows more than you about the army, knows more than you about what it means to be a soldier. So that's my problem right now is that I wish I had someone else to talk to about power and how to get more of it, how to even use it without being so much of A threat to someone else. That someone gets rid of you because they afraid of the power you might have over them. Because any man that's trained to use a pistol, that's trained to use a crag got power and that finger got that itch and it's right there in that trigger and it wants to pull it back against all those people who say they got power over you. So when you a colored boy from South Carolina, you always thinking about who got power and who don't. And most of the people you know ain't got it and most of the people who do they not doing anything to help you. Well, that's the army. That's what it means to be a soldier. That's what it means to be a Sergeant. And I think I I figured I got that all worked out of my mind till I got here to California. And then I found out that here in California they got these anti testimony laws. That means if you a colored man, if you a Chinese, a Japanese, that means if you an Indian, and I'm part Indian myself, if you any of those things, then your testimony is not allowed in a court of law. Which means it don't matter what you've seen with your own eyes if the man you saw do something wrong is a white man. Nothing, absolutely nothing you say can make a difference at all. It won't even be heard. Now I know everything about having a voice that is not heard in this world and right here in Yosemite in Sequoia, our word is not allowed in any court of law in this state. So even though we see people doing something wrong, even though we can tell them they need to leave, and we can enforce that declaration, we can say you are leaving and we going to take you out of Yosemite, We're going to remove you from Sequoia. Even though we can do all those things underneath it all, if it got into a court, what we said wouldn't matter. Our authority would matter. We had no power. The judge would say it. You ain't got no power in this court. We can't even hear your own voice. So what is power? What does that mean here in Yosemite? What does it really mean here in California? It means this silence in a court of law. I ain't got a voice in a court of law. My lips may be moving, tears may be coming out of my eyes, and I might be yelling at the top of my lungs, but that judge doesn't hear anything because my testimony ain't allowed in that court, which means I ain't really here at all. And all this time I thought I was casting a shadow on the earth, but I was never here. My voice cannot be heard. I don't exist. And that's some to think about. When you're someone who's been the victim of power and want it for yourself just a little bit. That's not all. That's not bad. Just to have a little bit of just for a short time, just to see what it feels like to have power, that'd be something.
Episode 31: Moonlight on Banner Peak
Sgt. Boman feels the power of Yosemite on another memorable night in the wild.
You know, when I first come up here with Troop K and Troop L back in 1903 just last year, there were a lot of things that we were warned about. A lot of things that the captain, Captain Nance warned us about. He told us there were bears up here in the high country. He told us that their Mountain Lion up here too. He told us that the trail can suddenly beneath your feet, beneath the hooves of your horse. That trail could just give away and you find yourself falling with your horse down the side of the mountain, He said You got to be careful when you up here and you got to look for something that might kill you every bend of every chair, every day of your life in these mountains. He warned us about these sheep herders who are herding their sheep illegally and how someone might decide to take a shot at you because you telling them that they can't make money doing that no more. He told us there are these poachers who shoot the deer to feed their families. Because those poachers sometimes are just people trying to stay alive like everyone else. And they see you as getting in between them and a dollar bill or getting in between them and feeding their family. All these things the captain warned us about. But what he didn't warn us about is something he should have spoke a little bit more about. And that is beauty. Now, beauty is all right when it's sitting in a painting in some museum. Beauty is all right when he's standing outside in the light of the sun looking at some statue some sculptor made right there in San Francisco. Beauty. All right, then. Beauty is something that you can look at and it's safe to look at. It's safe to view and you can sit there on some bench in some park and look up at it and just say I ain't that nice. What the captain didn't say is that beauty in the Sierra Nevada can get you killed. Beauty draws your attention away from what you really should be paying attention to, like being on a horse, washing the trail that you want. That's what you should be paying attention to. But when you're looking out at a mountain, a mountain such as any you've ever seen in your life, unlike any you've ever seen in your life, that mountain just says, look at me, you've never seen anything like me. And there's a little bit of snow right around the top and the lights hitting it just a certain way. It can distract you from what you're planning on doing, which is staying in that saddle on that horse on that trail high, high, high above the rocks below. That's what he should have warned us about. And so when I'm on patrol, I'm looking for the things that I should be looking out for. And those things are beautiful and beauty distracts you. It keeps you from looking at the things you should be looking at. But what he didn't tell me about what? He didn't even lower his voice to a whisper and say, Sergeant Bowman, there's something I neglected to tell you. What you also need to be careful about is at night, when you get up to go out and pee. Be careful If the moon is riding high. And if you happen to be up at 1000 Island Lake and that moonlight is shining on Banner Peak, you want to be careful, 'cause you could lose track of time. You could lose track of who you are. You could be so pulled in to the beauty of that light on Banner Peak. You forget where you are, you forget who you are, you may even forget why you are. And at that point you may take a step in the wrong direction and that could be the last step you ever take. And what are you going to say afterwards? I broke my light, I broke my leg because the light was shining on Banner Peak. That don't look good in the patrol report. Now, how do you explain that to your horse if you riding at night, which you shouldn't be doing, but what if you were? Horse is not going to allow itself to be distracted by beauty. What's the point of beauty? What's the purpose of beauty? To make you stop and consider there's more in this world than what you can see, what you can hear, what you can touch and what you can feel. And when you're standing there on your own 2 feet at 1000 Island Lake in the middle of the night, looking at what the moon is doing, the banner peak, you don't save yourself. Does the moon got permission to do that to a mountain? Is it legal to change a mountain into such a thing? How does it do that? You don't got time to do that. Your reason for being there is not to watch the light change, But there you are and there it is. And whatever is happening to you inside, don't ask your permission to make that change. The change just happens. It's like when you take in whiskey right in your body. That whiskey starts doing something to you. It changes the way you see. It changes the way you look at yourself, and beauty has the same effect. And no one, no one ever warned me to be careful of beauty and Yosemite, to be mindful of the danger of something so pretty you can't take your eyes off it. No one ever told me Watch your step when you're looking at the moonlight on Banner Peak. They never told me that, but they should have. Because there's beauty here in these mountains and if you not careful it'll get you killed.
