Pulling an Oneida, Part 2.

This seal will go

In our last post we marveled over the seal of Whitesboro, NY, which appears to show a pioneer choking an Oneida man to death.  At the time, the village had decided to keep the logo after it was put to the vote.

Apparently all the attention has caused them to reconsider, and the village has now decided to work with the Oneida nation to come up with something new.

The NYT has the story.

See also another recent post:  The Politics of Removal which is in many ways the same story....

Pulling an Oneida....

This seal will stay

When I saw this village emblem in an article on my Facebook news feed I thought I was looking at something from the Onion or some other piece of satire.  I looked for a motto such as "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."

Fortunately I'm not overly sensitive, for it appeared as though some white dude wass choking the life out of some unfortunate Native American guy, perhaps a Mohawk or Seneca (he's an Oneida).  Under the impression that this was a joke, I found it a pretty deft piece of satirical dark humor.

But wait, the link was to a "serious" newspaper.  Just to clear the remaining grit from my eyes after having rubbed them both vigorously with the top of my clenched fists, I did a quick Google and found an article in America's paper of record.  Surely, that can't be true!  The village emblem shows a man killing an Indian?  In a town named Whitesboro?  I could already see the protest signs being marched in circles in front of city hall on an Onion News Network segment:  "Whites don't borrow, they steal!"

The drawing itself is so lacking in stately gravitas....that....surely it was something popped out by an intern graphic designer for use in a little article poking fun at white insensitivity to Native American complaints about offensive place names, mascots, Hollywood depictions, municipal logos....

Nope.  The image depicts an allegedly real occurrence, a friendly wresting match won by town founder Hugh White, who in a swift and decisive victory over his challenger gained the respect and acceptance of the Oneida already living in the area.  Presumably these Oneida were subsequently forced off their lands because the village's Native American residents make up a scant .33% of the total population, according to recent census results.  But that's another story.

19th c. version

As for the quality of the image in the current iteration, it's as if they'd hired that lady in Spain who transformed a portrait of Jesus in her local church into some kind of weird, featureless monkey:  Ecce Mono!  

Better than the Whitesboro emblem

In 1977, the current emblem replaced an earlier version; White's coonskin hat disappeared and his hands are now on the Oneida's shoulders and not around his neck, in order to make it appear less like what it still seems to depict, e.g. the murder of a Native American.

In any event, this comes hot on the heels of our last post about updating place names and public art in order to reflect changing attitudes towards targeted elements of our history.  Not to mention demographic reality.  Although the slight modification in '77 was triggered by a complaint and that even the mayor at one time suggested a change, it's apparently not offensive to the majority; on the 11th of January a vote was held and the townspeople came down in favor of keeping their disconcerting village emblem.

But even if the emblem does depict a friendly wrassle, it's a bit weird when you consider that the town was founded in 1784 and incorporated in 1813.  This would be about the time that veterans of the Revolution began occupying their land grants, received as a reward for their military service....despite the fact that the land was often already occupied.  Incidentally, it's also about the time my ancestor Amos Adkins was leading his family through the area, staying long enough to give birth to Great (etc.) Grandfather Issac in Cayuga County (1817), before moving on to Ontario and finally to Newport, Ohio.  When Amos and Mary Adkins arrived in Newport (1830), the local Indians had for the most part already been forced west.

The Whitesboro emblem is more of a wound than an offensive image to New York's Native American nations, because they are still fighting in the courts to regain some of the lands wrestled away by the State of New York around the turn of the 19th century.

New York's Native Americans have tended to make slow headway, despite the fact that the very first act of the very first Congress under the newly-ratified Constitution was to pass a law declaring that only the Federal Government could negotiate with foreign nations.  Congress thus defined the Native American nations as sovereign -- which is sort of why you can buy your tobacco tax free and go gambling on the Rez.  

That Congressional action also renders un-Constitutional any treaties signed between New York State and the Native American nations.  Of course, as Native Americans were overwhelmed by ever-growing numbers of illegal aliens on their soil, their sovereignty became increasingly meaningless.  Disease and warfare continued to reduce their numbers and the tribes became a shadow of what they once were, pushed onto reservations which continued thereafter to be nibbled away as these European immigrants and refugees saw the "need" arise.

Every treaty ever signed between Congress and Native American nations has been broken by Washington.  Not a single treaty has been signed that Washington has not broken when European numbers made it possible to ignore what they had signed when they had been vulnerable due to the fact that they were so few and far between.  When these newly-minted Americans grew in numbers strong enough, they no longer concerned themselves with treaties in order to acquire land.  Brute force was both quicker and had the added advantage of killing off as many of those bothersome aborigines as possible.

So Whitesboro might as well have kept the pre-1977 version of the emblem, showing a Daniel Boone-style frontiersman with a more determined choke-hold on a Native American's neck.  Unlike the wrestling match, this part of history can be confirmed.

But to be honest, I'm far more offended by the flag of my hometown of Tampa, Florida.  I mean, one can argue that Hugh White was a decent guy and by all accounts trusted by the Oneida, so the flag represents not hatred, but a friendly tussle.  But Tampa's flag, my God!  Whoever approved that thing should be tried at The Hague for Crimes Against Humanity.  Don't look too long, your eyes might fry in their sockets....

At the Mountains of Madness

The Politics of Removal

Four-square

Unmitigated drivel about public art, architecture and monuments make up a large percentage of LoS posts. From time to time we've talked about the destruction of past monuments to reflect changing aesthetics, political ideologies, practical urban renewal, etc. The erasure of the past for political reasons was common enough in ancient Rome and Egypt, where sometimes an emperor or pharaoh would efface inscriptions on monuments in order to diminish the achievements of a rival or to sully the name of a predecessor.

A few days ago, the New Orleans City Council voted for an ordinance that will lead to the removal of four monuments in that city which honor Confederate heroes.  The Atlantic says:

This decision constitutes the most sweeping removal of Confederate iconography since the lowering of the Confederate battle flag in Columbia, South Carolina, this past summer, and offers the clearest evidence yet that the Lost Cause view of the Civil War has finally lost.

It is in the larger historical context that we view this news. New Orleans feels confident it can remove four big monuments and in no way be culturally diminished, a definitive sign of the changing of the guard.

Louisiana's governor even stepped into the fray and tried to block their removal, not because of the history they represent, but because they represent history.  In an interesting twist, however, the Governor isn't some disgruntled old white dude.  He's young, conservative and of Indian heritage -- Bobby Jindal.

I have no confusion over why people want these to come down. Hard to swallow walking past some tax-supported public art erected to glorify a man who fought a war to keep your people enslaved.

The removal is said to be temporary; the goal being to put them together in some kind of park or memorial where they can be re-contextualized. I always get a bit disconcerted by attempts to alter history, something Winston Smith-y about it, but if done correctly, I suppose the monuments can be preserved in a way that doesn't insult the large black population of the city.

One thing that stood out was that the monuments were brought down for being a "public nuisance." You'd think any nuisance would be a result of the actions of people, not inert marble and bronze. Also curious is that an anonymous donor is footing the bill; what are the donor's motives? Get rid of these things ASAP....or to protect them from destruction by attaching the condition that they'll foot the bill only if they are preserved?

Apparently there's a U.S. place names bureau that periodically changes official place names from time to time. This has included eliminating offensive racial epithets from creeks, mountains, towns, etc. Battle Creek, Oklahoma, for example, was known as Nigger Creek.  Until 1990!  The conundrum came up recently in France for a town called Mort aux Juifs: "Death to Jews" (residents voted to retain the name).  In Spain, Arabs can't be too happy in Matamoros: Kill Moors.  

I'm not against periodically updating place names to reflect changing attitudes, but I do wonder where removing monuments will stop.  (A question which sadly puts me in the company of some serious assholes; where it does stop will be debated for a long time to come, but taking Confederate symbols from state flags, for example, is a start about which I have no doubts whatsoever....)

A mental flash: as of 2016 the World Fantasy Award will no longer feature the likeness of H.P. Lovecraft because of his virulent racism; attitudes which even by the standards of his time were pretty harsh.  This pissed off Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, who said he returned his two WFAs and urged a boycott of future ceremonies.  Like Jindal, Joshi is Indian, demonstrating that this issue is not just black and white....

Nor do I oppose taking out the Confederate flag from state flags, which were only added in the 50's as a middle finger to Washington de-segregationists.  By removing these Confederate flags, it's not an attack on Southern heritage or Confederate dead, but an attack on Jim Crow. 

I don't have any strong feelings against removing these four monuments in New Orleans, despite the money and manpower expended on such endeavors.  But I'm uncomfortable with the destruction of historical monuments and buildings in general.  And I wonder....Jefferson and Washington owned slaves, so will they eventually become targets? Because that's a totally different scale altogether, as improbable as it is unfeasible.  It's like the debates in literature about Céline or Ezra Pound; do we refuse to acknowledge their place in the canon because they happened to be anti-Semites or fascist sympathizers?

I would propose that the answer doesn't lie in removing these monuments, but perhaps adding context, whether in the form of interpretive signs and markers, or some kind of counterbalance, a monument to show that there is the will to spend as much time and energy on honoring another person and ideology as there is on what's currently there.

This is all part and parcel of Art History.  And this subject certainly merits close attention.  I'd like to see a survey of what has been destroyed and removed instead of what's been created and installed.  Who and what we honor, and how, are living polemics.  The struggle over symbols is in this case also a struggle over urban space.  As something tangible it is easier to quantify, to actually do something on a monumental scale that will alter the city-scape.  One could call it the Politics of Removal. 

I've always wondered when they'll go after that Pike statue in DC.... (8/15: The mayor, more than half of the D.C. Council, and the D.C. attorney general have joined activists in calling for the removal of a statue of a Confederate general from federal land in Judiciary Square.)

Removing four statues seems appropriate if you're aiming to re-orient a map -- one for each cardinal direction.  The statues represent Gen. Robert E. Lee (1884), Pres. Jefferson Davis, Gen. Gustave Toutant Beauregard (also a Freemason) and the Crescent City White League (1891).  

Of the four, the last is quite shocking.   It doesn't honor a politician or general.  It commemorates a battle in which an army of about 5000 from the White League attempted to take over the state government in September 1874.  It was the culmination of series of violent events stemming from a disputed 1872 election, including the massacre of over 220 people, most of them black, at Colfax.  Somewhere around 30 people were killed at Coushatta.  Both of these places are between a three- or four-hour drive from New Orleans these days.

The White League was essentially an extra-legal paramilitary working on behalf of the Democratic Party to suppress the vote, harass carpetbaggers, intimidate blacks and above all regain control of the government.  Unlike the KKK, the White League worked openly, without disguises.  When the Democrats did regain control of the government a couple years later, the militants in the White League were re-absorbed into various state militias and the National Guard.  What was essentially a terrorist militia became redistributed throughout the existing legal state and national military.  The Klan was finally suppressed about this time under intense pressure from the Federal government.  But in many ways it didn't really matter; the Klan had already achieved its goals by putting Democrats in power throughout the South, where they would remain firmly ensconced until the Civil Rights Era.

 

In the 20's and 30's the Klan re-appeared; it was an entirely different organization, but it had taken to mass parades and rallies as much as night riding.  It was in this "2nd generation" that the Klan membership was historically at its highest, and perhaps most highly-influential.

This could account for why an inscription was added to the monument in 1932 stating that the Yankees "recognized white supremacy in the South" by withdrawing Federal troops after the violent exploits of the White League.  Note that the monument doesn't talk about recognizing "states' rights" or the "legitimate grievances of Southerners resulting from the punitive measures of Reconstruction" which is how defenders of the monument and the confederate flag frame the aftermath of the Civil War.  Nope, the monument celebrates Northern recognition of white supremacy.  No surprise that a city which is 60% black would vote to bring it down.

To call for the removal of this inscription is not being "politically correct".  This is not "college student crybaby safe space" stuff.  This is about repudiating a publicly-funded tribute to the openly white supremacist paramilitaries which took control of the government that established the laws defining blacks as second-class citizens for the next hundred years.

This flat-out racist monument graced New Orleans until 1989.  At that time, it was removed in order to do work on Canal Street.  City leaders probably hoped to mothball it, but some angry citizens kicked into gear and had it re-erected.  In 1993 it was moved to the spot where the battle actually took place, which had the side benefit of being somewhat out of the way, silenced to some degree.  The inscription added in 1932 was covered up and a more conciliatory inscription added. 

Where it goes now is anybody's guess.  Soon after the council's vote, various plaintiffs filed suit to block further removals: the Louisiana Landmarks Society, the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, the Monumental Task Committee Inc. and Beauregard Camp No. 130, a New Orleans chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Of course, what happens will not be determined by questions regarding what we honor and how, but by legalities regarding who owns the land where they are situated, the fact that two of the monuments are on the National Register of Historic Places, and various laws protecting historical monuments and veterans memorials.  Laws created, in other words, exactly for this kind of situation.

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Winners writing history:

US 3rd Army blowing up swastika at the zeppelin field in Nuremberg, 1945

Taliban blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, 2001.

A "spontaneous event" stage-managed by a US Psyops team. Firdos Square, 2003

Background on the book From Vaquois Hill to Exermont

author W.L. Sanders, WWI

The 138th Regiment, 35th Division was formed by combining the 1st + 5th Missouri Nat. Guard Regiments.  Both were recruited, in the main, from the St. Louis, Mo. metropolitan area.  The 1st was an old established outfit.  The 5th was organized after the start of WWI.

Brother Tom enlisted in Company A, 1st Mo. Regiment in April 1917.  He was "Killed in Action" Sept. 28, 1918 at age 25.  Brother John enlisted in Co. K, 5th Reg. in late August, 1917 at age 19+.  Soon after his arrival overseas he was hospitalized in an English hospital with a form of Rheumatism (Note: In his  earlier teens he had suffered from this ailment). However, he participated in all the action in which his outfit was engaged.  After the Argonne battle, he was assigned to battalion intelligence.  At one time, he told me he was one of a detail assigned to cut the barbed wired in front of the lines before the Sept. 26 advance.  After the armistice, he was hospitalized and came home on the USS N. Carolina.  He was discharged as a total disability with a heart ailment that eventually caused his death at age 47.

From reading the book [From Vaquois Hill to Exermont, James E. Rieger, 1919], the chief of staff's report and from other reliable sources, it is evident that the 35th Division had excessive casualties.  It is also fairly clear that the Div. was definitely underofficered and suffered from poor leadership.  Any success achieved seems to have been the result of individual effort with little competent direction from on high.

It is also fairly evident that the Division was not adequately "battle hardened" for such a tough assignment as the Argonne drive.

From the evidence I have been able to come up with the Div. received this assignment because of their proximity to the site and because of the difficulty in getting nine Division into ["line" ?] + 3 Division into support on short notice following the St. Michel offense[ive].

The normal procedure was to ease the new Divisions along more gradually.

[signed "W.L. Sanders"]

--

The author is my Great-Uncle William "Bill" Sanders.  Uncle Bill served in both the First and Second World Wars.  He volunteered both times; for WWI he was an enlisted infantryman; in WWII he was a Lt. in the Navy, serving as a Seabee in the Pacific theater.  He was 42 years of age.  This little text was discovered in his copy of  From Vaquois Hill to Exermont.  I have reproduced it here, respecting his text to the letter as much as possible.

Be there with bells shells on

Conques as seen from St. Roch Chapel

Conques is a little village in the Aveyron whose greatest claims to fame are the relics of Sainte Foy and the monastery which grew wealthy around them.  This is a tiny town, yet it boasts a large and magnificent basilica in the Romanesque style, well-maintained and in a context so picturesque you may begin to wonder where the film crew is hiding.  In French -- as in English -- the word conque means shell and is descended from the Latin concha.  I giggle at this because in Argentina the concha refers to the female genitalia. My wife says it all the time when she's pissed off at say, an olive jar she can't open: "¡La concha de la lora!" Which literally means "The (female) parrot's shell!" but really means "Cunt of a whore!"  It's used where an American might say "God fucking damn it!" or some such.  Why not?

The metaphor is more clear when seen

When you see a conch, with its flesh tones and here smooth/there bumpy texture, not to mention the overall form, it's clear from whence the metaphor arrives.  Shell metaphors are not entirely lost in English, either: surely you've heard of the bearded clam?  It's not strictly feminine, for that matter.  A pair of masculine accouterments, depending on the region, can be referred to as "mountain oysters."  Curiously, there actually is a Modiolus barbatus, or "bearded mussel."  It is also known as the "horse mussel" or (getting so clever here) the "bearded horse mussel."  In any event, this isn't some term of modern perversion; the shell's connection with the vajayjay is of ancient provenance.

According to legend, Conques (Concas in Occitan) was named by its founder, a hermit named Dadon, who thought that the hills encircling the village resembled a shell.  Being a hermit, he may have been, uh, lonely.  Whether or not the origin story is true or not is beside the point. Maybe it does resemble a shell, which might partially account for why the area holds a special place in the hearts of pilgrims along the Saint James Way, which passes directly through the village. The symbol of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage is the shell. I recall a lecture in which the professor described the shell as a representation of the journey of the human soul; in this interpretation the road to Compostela would also be the journey of one's soul towards a state of plenary forgiveness, perfection and paradise.  It is more than metaphor, because in Roman Catholic doctrine, making this pilgrimage did in fact earn the pilgrim total absolution from his or her sins.

The magnificent reliquary of Sainte Foy

Dadon came to this wild place at the end of the 8th century but apparently didn't stay long.  Perhaps he left after he was joined by a group of Benedictines; it certainly would have messed with his plan to lead the hermit's life.  These monks founded the monastery which still exists today. 

The monastery would have probably drifted into obscurity if not for Sainte Foy. In 866 her relics were brought here from Auch in what has been called a "furtive translation"; stolen, in other words.  Once ensconced in Concas, the relics and the monastery soon came under the protection of the Carolingian monarchs.

St. Roch showin' some leg

At first, Conques was a local attraction, but over time it developed into an important destination for regional pilgrims; in the 11th century Conques became an important stopping point along the Saint James Way as well.  During the same period the village was becoming a monastic center of the highest importance, a status attested to by the quantity and quality of the cult objects in its treasury.  Conques is today a tiny village of less than 300 permanent residents but it still has the single largest collection of goldsmithery in France.  These relics are not just museum pieces; they are still used in religious processions and services.  The reliquary of Saint Foy in majesty is an important example of the style and iconography of the Romanesque and typifies images of the Virgin dating from this period, including contemporary and later "Vierges Noires" or Black Madonnas.

Pilgrims coming to Conques from long distances, even from beyond the Pyrénées, were first recorded in the mid 11th-century; this is an example of the growing popularity of pilgrimages which turned many local shrines into centers of international importance.  It was also in the 11th century that a kind of "cult of femininity" developed in the song and poetry of the the Troubadours and the theology of the Church. (See LoS: Women)  In addition to Pilgrims, the Way was also a major route for the Troubadours, whose voyages did much to spread the notion of courtly love, the cult of the Virgin, and the cults of obscure saints such as Sernin, Liberata, Quitteria, etc.  The patron of the Saint James Way is male -- St. Roch -- but the shell which serves as the Way's "logo" is a female symbol.  As a metaphor for the vagina, the shell evokes (among other things) maternity, sexual desire and original sin. 

The cult of the Virgin took off in the Romanesque period.  Hitherto a background presence, Mary rather abruptly swung into place as a central figure in the Christian narrative, a place she still occupies in Catholic France today (See LoS: The Virgin and the Cross).  Both in hymns and iconography, she changed from a distant and ethereal figure into something more earthy. Laced with liberal doses of conscious and unconscious sexual desire, worship of the Virgin was also inexorably linked with feminine concerns; praying for her aid in childbirth was common, and her symbolism at this time -- e.g. her foot crushing the serpent -- was an evocation of her perpetual Virginity, her exception from the pains of childbirth and the expiation of original sin.  The evolution of the Virgin into a more intimate and "earthy" interlocutor was almost certainly due to the influence of St. Bernard, a towering figure in the Medieval Church, both in theology and concrete affairs.  He wrote the Templar Rule and was instrumental in creating what would become Christendom's most powerful order; he whipped up internal pogroms against Cathar/Albigensian/Bogomil heretics and preached the Second Crusade against Islam.  He was instrumental in drumming up support for Pope Innocent during the schism beginning in 1130.  One of his disciples became Pope Eugenius III.  He was also one of the founders of the renewed Cistercian order.  A big deal to be sure.

The tympanum of the Basilica of Sainte Foy

The pilgrims' patron, St. Roch, is recognizable by a plague sore or wound on his inner thigh, a kind of gash that never heals, which bleeds but never bleeds out. Roch is often pictured daintily lifting his garment to reveal this wound.

Roch was said to have born to a mother who'd been barren until she prayed to the Virgin. When he caught the plague, he retired to live in a forest, where his dog helped him to heal by licking his wounds.  In the forest he was sustained by a miraculous spring. Miraculous springs are all over Marial legends, a survival perhaps of Celtic traditions:  sacred groves, springs and high places are associated with any local Virgin of note.  LoS has recounted numerous examples of such springs associated with:  the Virgin; many obscure saints such as the aforementioned Quitteria and Liberata, (sisters and Virgin Martyrs of the distant pagan past whose cult stretches from Aquitaine to northern Portugal -- essentially along the St. James Way); and even male saints such as St. Fris, who also exhibits many of the characteristics of the Virgin. Upon his death, St. Fris' body was swallowed up by a rock; when it was later re-discovered, a miraculous spring appeared from within the rock.  The body was incorrupt.

This echoes the story of St. James.  When brought ashore in Iberia, a massive rock closed around his relics; this rock was then taken to Compostela.

One of the seven sisters of Quitteria and Liberata (there were nine in total) was named Euphemia, or Eumelia.  Cornered by pursuing Roman soldiers, she threw herself from a cliff to avoid capture.  Where she fell, the rocks opened and swallowed her whole; a spring immediately appeared on the spot.

Picturesque, you say?

I've had occasion to write about "the Milky Way" before; I'll here reiterate that, like Rome, Compostela held significance way before the Christians adopted it. The pilgrimage to Compostela was a Celtic tradition that symbolized the journey of the soul from birth until death, following the sun until it sank into the sea at the end of the known earth. Unlike today, the Celtic pilgrimage did not end in the city itself, but at the beach and into the very ocean -- following the Sun towards death as it disappeared beyond the horizon at a significant westerly point. Perhaps this ocean terminus is why the shell is the Camino's symbol -- the journey is the destination. As previously stated, the medieval mind, attuned to a more visual language as opposed to the written word, recognized the shell to represent the soul's journey through life. Think of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus"; the goddess is being birthed from the waters riding a shell. The goddess of erotic love is here a bit demure, but she surfs a giant shell, a vagina basically; "con" in French is the rather commonplace translation of the English "cunt". The root of course the same as concha. So it's not just the Argentines who make the link between the shell and the female sex. It's found in the Latin roots.

The basilica today

A small tower at the cemetery is marked with this pair of circles inscribed with a star.  I took a compass reading and it's not oriented towards any of the cardinal points. 

Ostensibly, the cult at Conques is centered around Sainte Foy, a.k.a. Santa Fe, a.k.a. Saint Faith. Faith personified. Faith was first associated with the city of Agen, where she was martyred during the reign of Diocletian for refusing to sacrifice to Pagan gods.  This was said to have occurred in the 3rd century. In the 9th century a monk stole her relics and brought them here. Legend has it that where he fell, exhausted, he struck his staff upon the ground and the water broke: a spring sprang and he survived. Today a small chapel stands at this spot.  The sexual imagery is inescapable. A man wields a phallic staff and, driving it into the ground, causes life-giving waters to erupt from "mother" earth. 

St. Fris is said to have created a spring when he planted his standard in the ground.  His cult, which is highly localized in the Gers and almost unknown outside a few scattered places, developed around the same time as that of Saint Faith, that is to say when the nameless monk stole her relics.  Fris, Roch, Sainte Foy, the Virgin, all associated with healing waters.  Even today, the Pyrénées are dotted with towns built around thermal spring; cures effected at these spas are reimbursable by the national health insurance.  No coincidence then that Lourdes, another Pyrénéen town, one of the most famous pilgrimage sites in Catholicism -- is based around its healing waters.  The modern pilgrim still honors these saints by carrying symbols of the masculine and feminine powers and the sexual union behind the miracle of life, as well as the source of the sin he or she is trying to expiate:  the modern pilgrim carries a staff, to which they usually attach a shell.  All in the name of the Holy Faith.

----

And I was going to do more with this when I began months ago but its been sitting around as a draft for so long I'm just gonna ding the bell and hand it off to the runner who takes it straight to the presses.  Then a sniff of cocaine, a Tom Collins, and a few hours of stimulating talk before the fireplace with my manservant Jacky.