I’ve been monitoring this issue with a sinking heart. And now it appears that worst fears are well on their way to coming true.

The gray wolves of the Northern Rocky Mountains were taken off the Endangered Species list on March 28, because their numbers across Idaho, Wyoming and Montana had reached around 1500. In the month since the ban on shooting wolves was lifted, 35 wolves have been shot. (And we’re not talking about ranchers protecting livestock here. Nearly all of the wolf deaths were caused by plain old hunting.)

Take for example the three-legged male Yellowstone wolf known as 253M and nicknamed “Liimpy”, a creature with a dark black coat and an off-kilter gait who used to delight tourists and locals with frequent glimpses. He was arguably the best known wild wolf in north America (Tales of his meanderings often turned up on local papers.)…and he was killed the first day the ban was lifted.

In response to the rush to shoot wolves, a consortium of 12 environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Monday in the hope of halting the killing.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Missoula, Montana, asks for reinstated protection for gray wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

As regular readers know, I have personal emotions tied up in the issue. I’ve tracked wolves in the wild with biologists, have a beautiful wolf hybrid dog named Loup-Loup, and give dog cookies to the neighbors’ two gorgeous nearly full blooded wolves when they come to my back door on mornings when I’m at home working. Yet, the fact that I like wolves doesn’t impair reason.

I’ve outlined the issue in more detail here. But this morning’s LA Times has a good editorial on how the wolf policy is going off the rails and what ought to be done to fix it. Here’s an excerpt.

The gray wolf of the northern Rockies was ready for delisting. [NOTE: I don’t think so but honorable people could honorably disagree on this issue.] The population exceeded all goals for the program, and species should not be kept on a lifeline forever, if at all possible. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was remiss in this case, primarily because it failed to ensure that state regulations for the wolves would protect them. Obviously, with more than 2% of the population killed within a month, existing state management plans are inadequate.

Some residents of the three states — ranchers, hunters and people who just don’t like wolves — have been waiting for this chance. Protecting livestock is one thing, but hunters have been complaining that the wolves keep down the population of elk, which they would like to hunt themselves. Yet part of the reasoning for reintroducing the wolf was to restore the natural balance in which animal predators kept the populations of elk and deer in check.

The federal government will not intervene again on the wolves’ behalf until their numbers fall as low as 300. Taxpayers will then bear the burden of re-listing the wolves. That’s partly why environmentalists have gone to court over the delisting.

The Fish and Wildlife Service should re-list the wolves until it receives more reasonable management plans from the states involved, and should demand that the population fall no lower than 1,000. The wolves weren’t reintroduced to provide target practice for hunters.

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Last week the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it was taking the gray wolf off the endangered species list. Under the delisting rule, states will assume legal management authority of wolves in the northern Rockies on March 28, 2008.

In more practical terms this means: let the killing begin. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming will begin hunting wolves in the fall—or, in some cases, perhaps earlier.

In response, eleven conservation groups announced yesterday, the Sierra Club and the Humane Society among them, that they are taking legal action to protect wolves in the northern Rockies. Within hours of the publication of the delisting rule, the groups notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that it violated the Endangered Species Act by removing the northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population from the list. The groups intend to challenge the Service’s decision in federal court in the hope of overturning the Service’s delisting rule before the hunting ban is lifted and hundreds of wolves are killed.

“Wyoming’s plan classifies wolves as predators in most of the state, where they can be shot on sight without even a hunting license, ” says Derek Goldman, of the Endangered Species Coalition. “Idaho plans on eliminating 85 percent of the wolves in the state through hunting or state eradication programs.”

The approximately 1500 wolves that presently exist in the northern Rockies have had a long and difficult road back from eradication, one that many wolf watchers—myself included—feel that it’s premature and irresponsible to disrupt.

Although the gray wolf was placed on the federal Endangered Species list in 1974, there had been no wolves to protect in the western US since 1925. It wasn’t until 1986 that a biologist named Diane Boyd was able to document the first den of gray wolves found in the western United States since they were systematically eliminated during the forty-year period stretching from the mid-1880’s until the mid-1920’s. Boyd found the mom and seven pups in the upper reaches of Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. As she attempted to track the elusive group, they seemed to appear and disappear “as if by sorcery,” so Boyd named them the Magic Pack.

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Today the LA Times has a feature on a man named Steve Searles who purportedly “talks” local Mammoth Mountain black bears out of bad bear behavior rather than having the authorities shoot the beasts. A bear whisperer, they have (naturally) dubbed him.

He tries to think like a bear. He studies their habits and social hierarchy. He has participated in Native American ceremonies to learn what the tribes perceive as bears’ spiritual nature. He even has been known to spread his own urine to drive away territorial animals.

“I’m the biggest, baddest, meanest bear in this town — that’s what I want them to think,” said the 48-year-old. “I’m the alpha male, and they must obey me.”

Actually, Searles doesn’t so much talk as use negative conditioning—loud noises, shots with pellet guns, and the like— to discourage certain undesirable activities on the part of the bear . (He also has gone on a campaign with local residents to change the humans’ undesirable behavior—namely their habits of leaving out unsecured, bear-attracting garbage and restaurant food scraps.)

According to the Times, the California Department of Fish and Game officials are “dubious.” And Mammoth Lakes Police Chief Michael Donnelly praises Searles “out of the box” methods as “things Fish and Game or nobody else had ever suggested.”

Well, not exactly. What the Times doesn’t say is that Steve Searles’ methods are not new or unusual at all. They are slightly more primitive versions of the “bear management” policy that biologists at Glacier and Yellowstone Parks have been using for well over a decade to deal with problem grizzlies:

It used to be that when bears in Glacier or Yellowstone became too unnervingly acclimated to people, they were trapped and relocated to wilderness areas where they were less likely to have human contact. Then biologists rethought the whole thing and realized they might be removing all the more socially balanced members of the local bear population, leaving the weird, loner, Ted Kaczynski bears—not exactly an ideal plan. Now, unless the griz proves to be agressive, biologists have found it’s far better to leave the bear in place, but repattern its behavior using “aversive training”— banging on pots, shouting, rubber pellets, tossed bean bags and an occasional bout of barking and chasing by specially trained Karelian Bear Dogs.

On the other hand, maybe that’s an even better story: with absolutely no formal training in biology, Steve Searles has devised the same successful bear management method that it took a team of experts years to design.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

(And, no, this isn’t a social issue. It’s a bear issue, and we’re really into bear issues around here.)

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Okay, I figure we all need a levity break today… as people deal with the fact that homes are lost, and as the accusations begin to fly fast-and-furiously as to who ought to be blamed for these catastrophic fires.

With that in mind, I offer the following odd anecdote from my friend Sooki Wheeland. Sooki works in the film industry and is also a fellow Topanga mom. Her house is closer to the Pacific Coast Highway than mine is. Thus if a fire came roaring up the canyon from Malibu, her number, so to speak, would have come up first.

On Monday,” she says, as the winds and the rumors grew ominous, she busied herself loading more of the requisite family photos and Important Papers into her family’s van, while her husband Ken drove up to the ridge that separates Topanga from Tuna Canyon in order to see what he could scope out about the status of the Malibu fire.

NOTE: It is a rule of thumb, if you’re potentially in a fire’s path, whatever you see on the TV news is either dead wrong or of little use when it comes to decision making so, in the absence of updates from the firefighters, such look-sees are often wise. (Plus, we lost TV reception in Topanga on day one of the fires.)

“We all felt the adrenaline of impending danger,” says Sooki, “and worried that clogged roads would impede our departure if we waited too long to evacuate.” On the other hand, they wondered if they’d be able to get back in if they left prematurely. “We had already heard that residents were having trouble with access.”

But as husband Ken, plus a neighbor pal, headed out to do fire reconnaissance, (both appropriately supplied with emergency radios and face masks), they rounded the corner on their home street only to have their access to Topanga Canyon Blvd. blocked by “the arrival of TWO stretch hummer limos, loaded with stressed hairdressers.”

It seemed that this double gaggle of very nervous-looking stylists had been scheduled for a “rejuvenating seminar” at the Topanga-located “Institute of Courage.”

The fact that fires were exploding all over Southern California and that Topanga might or might not burn, had evidently not dissuaded the hair people. They were scheduled for rejuvenation, and by gum they were going to get it.

(No, although I’d seen the sign, I had no idea what the Institute of Courage was either until I Googled it this morning after Sooki emailed me the story. You too can become similarly informed if you click on the link.)

How the hell the duo of mega limos got past the Highway Patrol people is a question that no doubt some other intrepid reporter will want to investigate.

No word at….um…press time whether the hairdressers stayed for smoke-haunted spiritual renewal… or not.

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POST SCRIPT: I was checking the National Weather Service a few minutes ago, to see what the coming days held in terms of heat and wind, I found that the NOAA people actually have a designation for what we see overhead, complete with a nice little smoke-billowy graphic.

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My longtime close friend, writer John Leone, lives in the city of Del Mar, near San Diego. Tuesday morning, he wrote the following essay and sent it out to a list of friends, myself among them:

THE DAY OF THE DEVILS

John Leone

Rancho Santa Fe
Del Mar
Oct 23, 2007

45 houses burnt to the ground in Rancho Santa Fe, California’s most exclusive suburb, last night and this morning. The rich inhabitants escaped yesterday after a mandatory evacuation order.

My maids Ana Maria and Ana Luisa, who occupy servants’ quarters in Rancho Santa Fe, spent the night with three of their children in my guest bedrooms and downstairs. Their husbands had returned to Mexico to attend to extensive fire damage in Baja California.

California Highway Patrolmen came across an encampment of indocumentados running from the flames in McGonnigle Canyon, crossing an unfinished segment of CA Highway 56, according to radio reports. The group were camping in the billowing smoke on an unopened stretch of the highway. The Mexican workers told the CHP that they had become separated from a group three times their size, who were trying to simultaneously escape the conflagration and avoid detection. They had no idea what had happened to their compas. “It’s the Day of the Devils,” said one man in Spanish.

The biggest and most destructive of all the fires, the Witch Creek fire, after burning 600 homes in Rancho Bernardo, has ramped like a flaming caterpillar into this most exclusive area and is burning down the Del Dios Highway towards Via de la Valle and Del Mar, where some 5000 people spent the night under mandatory evacuation orders at the Del Mar Race Track.

My friend Bill Brooks’ 86-year-old mother was told by police to leave her Del Mar home and dutifully reported to the race track. She spent the night in the ash and respiratory danger zone instead of comfortably at home. But she has a very nice place to return to, which the nursing home and hospital patients, evacuated by the thousands, do not. Many sat out all night in the open under the smoke.

The works of man are resisted everywhere by Nature, and most of the destruction until now has taken place in new developments, in suburban cul-de-sacs, once chaparral which used to have natural yearly burn-offs. It is the equivalent of building in hurricane zones.

The flames continue to consume the lavish homes of the extremely rich and flush out the extremely poor who serve them from the ravines and arroyos in which they hide from la migra. “The flames are climbing over the ridges,” says a woman in Elfin Forest, an Encinitas suburb abutting Rancho. “We can see them on three sides. The poor Mexicans are walking along the roads. It’s like a war scene.”

The ashen air makes breathing difficult. The firestorm has a peculiar inevitability as it marches towards the west and the coastline, devouring fantastically expensive real estate, making the unthinkable come true. This has never happened before, not in the history of the state. Natives say it’s because of development, the cause of most ailments in the state. The average cost of the homes destroyed in Rancho Bernardo is over a million dollars,
and in Rancho Santa Fe many times that.

The malevolence of the fire makes one imagine purposeful violence against these places, and the helpless refugees evoke imagery familiar to all from war documentaries, but they’re not being shown on television, because these poor souls are not movie mavens or big shots or anything except desperate human beings with nowhere to go, fearful of the authorities who are helping the rich all around them.

FIRE UPDATE #1:

For those of you following Rebel Girl’s Santiago Fire evacuation saga, as of 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, she reports that, according to a neighbor who managed to get back in to Modjeska Canyon, her house is still standing, and the sprinklers she and her huz managed to get up on the structure’s roof, are still up there and sprinkling away.

Photo of the burning mountainside in Rancho Bernardo by Genero Molina/LA Times

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TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE: 9:50 PM:

We have been very lucky. Topanga is open again so that those who work up here, but live out of the canyon, can once again get through. The Malibu fire is not out, but barring a freak occurrence, it is contained. Smoldering but not flaming.

Word is that the true this-could-go-bad moment was noon yesterday, when the fire was running along the coast and threaten to breach Los Flores Canyon…but then the winds changed.
We are hoping for a quiet night with the understanding that many of our friends and fellow Californians—and firefighters from all over—still have harsh and scary hours ahead.

Also, as of this evening, Rebel Girl says she thinks there’s a good chance that her house in Modjeska is still standing. May this very good news be true—and stay that way.

PS: Earlier this evening, two of my smart, big-hearted neighbors Dianne Porchia and Clare Brown, took it into their heads to drive down to the Command Post for the Malibu Canyon Fire where they delivered to the firefighters two huge pans of their home made pasta with chicken sausage and two huge lemon and chocolate cakes. Good work, girlfriends!

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UPDATE: 2:30 PM: Commenter Rebel Girl writes to say that they’ve pulled the firefighters and the air support from her home area of Modjeska Canyon, which is one of the places most affected by the Santiago Fire. She says that if the fire does it’s worst, 300 homes in Modjeska will burn. She and her huz and their five year old are with friends. We are thinking protective thoughts for all those in that little canyon. She’s blogging about her experience here.

Here’s an account from one of her neighbors, who also happens to be an an LA Times reporter.

Also, Kevin Roderick at LA Observed reports that KPBS—the public TV and radio station in San Diego—has been knocked off the air when their transmitter site was engulfed by flames. They are now broadcasting from FM 94.9.

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TUESDAY

In the wee hours of the morning, I felt the winds change. Suddenly the smell of smoke was different. Stronger. Then at 1 am we heard that they’d closed Topanga Canyon Blvd., even to residents. Several Topanga people have been prevented from going home. Not good.

A very snippy Sheriff’s Deputy at Lost Hills station, whom I call at 1:30 am to try to verify the closure, is not, how to put it? …helpful.

“We didn’t make the decision,” she says.

Okay, whom would she suggest I contact for more information about conditions that may have triggered this worrisome closure? (I’ve already tried the on-sight fire guys and they are wisely trying to ignore their phones for a few hours.)

“The Emergency Operations Command, but they won’t talk to you. They don’t talk to the public.”

That’s fine, I tell her, doing my best to fight the snotty tone that now wants very much to creep into my own voice. “I’m the press.”

“I used to have a number for the press to call,” snaps the deputy. “But I threw it away.”

O-kay. (I should note that the Lost Hills deputies are usually uniformly nice. So she was an an exception. I’d give her lack of sleep but all the fire guys I’ve talked to in the last 24 hours, have been up for two days straight and they have been heroic in their courtesy.)

In any case, the entry ban for residents disappeared around 7 am this morning according to the T-CEP emergency website where we Topanga folks get our info in situations like this one:

The restriction on Residents entering Topanga via all access roads has been lifted. Topanga Cyn. blvd is closed to all but Residents With Proper ID. The reason for this restriction was the Fire & Sherriffs concern that the Mandatory Evacuation areas may have been entered since patrol cars had not been adequately posted at the entry points.

Slightly strange logic. But whatever. The winds are supposed to lessen tomorrow, so if we can make it until then, we will have dodged the bullet again this year.

Others are not as lucky. My friend, Father Greg Boyle, just sent me a Blackberry message that his brother and family have been evacuated in San Diego.

And I just heard from regular WLA commenter Rebel Girl, who lives in the Irvine area and evacuated last night at 10 pm. She is being threatened by what they are referring to as the Santiago Fire. You can find her here in the comments section. I’m hoping she’ll keep us updated about that fire as she can….and that she will have good news and the fire will keep away from her house.

I know firefighters in that area are suffering because they don’t have the air support they need. Resources are far too stretched.

In fact, for me what is the most amazing—and scary—photo to come out of these fires so far is this one, taken in Santiago Canyon, by Karen Tapia-Anderson for the LA Times. It shows 12 firefighters who got trapped on a ridge as the fire roared toward them. Having no other choice, they deployed their portable shelters, and Ms. Tapia-Anderson got the photo. All 12 survived without serious injury.

Another reminder why one should smile gratefully at every firefighter one passes on the street. Ever.

While you’re thinking good thoughts about Rebel Girl’s house (and the thousands upon thousand who’re threatened in San Diego County), feel free to think bad thoughts about this fool whom Marc Cooper writes about. (Yes I know I linked to this in yesterday’s fire post, but it bears repeating.)

NEW NOTE: Conservative blogger “Jon Swift,” also takes the odious Glenn Beck smartly to task for his vile fire remarks.

A half million to a million people have been displaced, and counting. This is the largest evacuation in California history. The LA Times is keeping a good running tally of burned homes and structures.

MORE SOON

(sky crane photo from Malibu Surfside News)

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MONDAY - UPDATED: The winds shift, evacuation orders come and go, and fires all over Southern California still rage out of control. An astonishing two-hundred and fifty thousand people have been forced out of their homes in San Diego alone, one person is dead, dozens injured, 130 837 dwellings and businesses have burned, 600 of them in San Diego, with thousands more in danger. hundred and ten Close to four hundred square miles of Southern California land has burned.

AS OF MONDAY NIGHT, the Malibu fire has gone from 10 percent contained, down to 8 percent, with winds blowing north.

In Topanga, we are still here, still fine, still under temporary evacuation orders except for one area of lower Topanga, where leaving may mandatory, although no one seems quite sure. All the valuables at my house are still packed by the door. The cat knows something is up and has been complaining bitterly. (The dog is more philosophic.)

This morning, the Malibu fire (or what they’re calling the Canyon Incident fire, not exactly a snappy title), was on the move with approximately 1400 firefighters making their stand at Rambla Pacifica (below) as the fire pushed eastward, toward Tuna Canyon and Topanga. At that time, it was declared 10 percent contained, “but still we have terrible conditions,” said LA County Fire Inspector, Ron Haralson. “To get a handle on this we need a break in the weather.” And that isn’t expected until Wednesday.

The next “trigger point” for the Malibu fire said LA County Fire inspector, Frank Garrido, is Los Florez Canyon. “When it hits Las Florez, it’ll trigger another whole group of evacuations.”

All morning and into the noon hour, the fire moved steadily toward Las Flores. But, suddenly, just about 12:30 pm, as the so-called trigger point was about to be breeched— meaning mandatory evacuations of Big Rock, Tuna Canyon, and lower Topanga—the winds shifted again.

After that, instead of moving down the coast, the fire marched up the mountain toward Piuma, and Schoeren Roads near Saddle Peak, where a brand new set of mandatory evacuations were called around 1:30 pm.

With things so uncertain, last night, most Topanga people moved their horses and other large animals out of the canyon. This included Molly Hogan of the non-profit Wildworks, an animal rescue group up the road from me. Molly has a couple mountain lions, a gray wolf, several African servils, an extremely cute baby gray fox, and a bunch of other felines and assorted critters, plus some horses she’s rescue.

At Pierce college, horses were being brought in all night-–My neighbor, Rebbecca, was busy gathering, loading and transporting around 46 of the neighborhood equines, until after 1 am last night. This was an eventful endeavor. For instance, Henry, the rescued former Santa Anita racehorse, now owned by Antonia, the voice-over actress, was horrified at the notion of getting in the borrowed trailer so took off down the road and hid unhappily behind some bushes, until Antonia managed finally to coax him out.

I wish I could give you the personal stories of all of the horse owners gathered last night. None are wildly wealthy. Most are simply working people who love critters. More than not, the horses that they care for have been in some way or another rescued. (Yes, we’re bleeding heart liberals in Topanga, and the bleeding heart thing includes horses.)

NOTE: For lists of mandatory and voluntary evacuations in the Topanga/Malibu area and most in between, go here. (The LA Times is not as accurate.)

This evening, I spoke to Frank Garrido again, who is now working on the Agua Dulce fire. That one at least, he says, is 30 percent contained.

The news from Malibu fire is not anywhere near as upbeat. As I said at the beginning, tonight at the Malibu firelines, the progress is moving backward—from 10 percent back to eight.

In the meantime, in Topanga, we wonder if we should pack more, or leave it be and hope that the fire goddess is kinder to us than those hundreds of now-homeless people in San Diego. We have no television, so we aren’t temped to stare at the mesmerizing images of destruction up and down the state. (The TV went out yesterday.)

Even the coyotes are quiet tonight. Like us, they’re hunkered down, tired and waiting—-for the wind to abate, for the smoke to clear. Waiting for the fire, if we are lucky, not to come.

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POST SCRIPT: Be sure to read my pal Marc Cooper’s rundown on what the truly hideous CNN talking head, Glenn Beck, said about the fires. Color me speechless with fury.

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(Photo of planes dropping fire retardant on the hills above Malibu by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times; Horse photos at Pierce College Barn by Doreen Clay; Rambla Pacifico, AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

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When I got up this morning, Sunday, at 6:30 am to let the dog out, the air was as dry as paper and the winds were unusually high, even for Santa Ana season.

I was still half in the throes of sleep. Yet, the implications of the weather broke through my mental haze. We’re going to have a fire today, I thought. Then I wandered back to bed for another hour or two until the phone woke me again a little after 8. It was my neighbor, Rebecca. “There’s a fire in Malibu Canyon,” she said. “So it’s not that close to us yet. But the Highway Patrol has already closed Topanga Canyon Boulevard to everybody but residents. Will you call the people on your list?”

As most of you know, I live in Topanga Canyon. In Topanga we are fire prone, so we have these neighborhood lists. I’m the block captain for my little street. Rebecca who is the area captain (and my close friend) is supposed to call me, and I’m supposed to call all those on our semi-paved road. Being street captain also means I have a walkie-talkie. Whether I have secure knowledge as to how to use the stupid walkie-talkie, is another matter.

All day Topanga people call each other and confer about the fire’s movement. Still, so far we are safe, but jittery as the winds shift, then shift again.

However, at 6:15, as I am writing this post, it changed. I receive an automated call from the Sheriff’s department or the LA County fire guys, or I don’t know…whoever it was. We have been asked to evacuate. At the moment the evacuation is voluntary. Mostly, they want those with large animals—AKA horses—to get them out. And I tend not to be much of a voluntary evacuator anyway. But I don’t know when or if voluntary will change to mandatory.

I will update as I can. But for now, I leave you with the slightly infamous essay I wrote for the LA Times Magazine right after the 1993 Topanga/Malibu fire.

Thankfully, my fiscal circumstances are better than they were back then. (If you read the essay, you’ll see what I mean.) But the story should act as a reminder that it’s not just rich people who are threatened in these fires.

LEAVING THE LIMOGES

The first thing you rescue in a fire is your kid.

I was in the car that morning heading toward the Valley when I saw the dark plume roiling in aggressively expanding billows against the Wedgwood blue of the sky above Old Topanga Canyon. I made an extremely precipitous U-turn, down Topanga Canyon Road, speeding toward my son’s school, toward my home, toward the fire.

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I’m headed out into the John Muir Wilderness with my smart son, Will, and Loup-Loup-the-wolf-dog. (I will no doubt freeze my butt off, but, hey, if your kid asks you to go back-packing, you go.)

I may not post again until Tuesday morning. Then back in full force.

(But, if you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, send out the mounted patrol.)

In the meantime, read the excellent Time Magazine cover story, titled “The Incredible Shrinking Court,” about the emerging trend of the Roberts court to take on smaller and smaller issues, focusing on narrower and narrower points of law, shying away from the larger questions of the day–and what this all portends.

(Sorry no photos. I’m doing this from my blackberry.

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UPDATE: Back safe, sound, slightly sore, shower-challenged and supremely happy.

Went to Cottonwood Lakes, an enchanting place to backpack. It did, however, get down to below 22 degrees at night, with an occasional nice, bracing breeze thrown in for good measure. So even the dog was a bit chilly after dark. (We wrapped a tarp wrap around her, nest-like, which she seemed to appreciate, while we relied on the miracle of down.)

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The AP article begins like this:

“The state Supreme Court has dealt with gay marriage, education funding and abortion rights - and now, it can add “inflatable rat” to the list.

The case is about whether a town can ban a 20-foot inflatable rat…..”

Read on. (Hell, who can resist?)

It seems that rats are a favorite union symbol, and the things seem to run afoul of law on a regular basis.

(Don’t blame me, I got this story courtesy of legal scholar/blogger Howard Bashman.)

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