=so050327 Memo, SO List, input 27 Mar '05 Excerpted and rewritten from handwritten memo sent to ZR, and I think cc to Mr. Gebel, 2 Feb '05 ------------------------------------------------------------- Respects and best wishes to all. I hope all is well with all in the Abode__Zenith Family, and that everyone's work is going well, and that everyone is looking out that no_one is getting lost. This memo will summarize procedures I use in Archiving PVK material. But first, a few preliminaries, which you may skip. --------------------------------------------------------------- Things are ok with me, heaven be praised. It is an overcast drizzly Easter Sunday in Campra, with a fresh dusting of snow at about 1800 meters, about an hour's walk up from here. I have just dined on whole wheat pasta, with extra-virgin (ie, simply natural) olive-oil, garlic, mixed herbs, and a passable if uninteresting Swiss Merlot, one of the ones with a bird on the label. One copes, "with a little help from my friends." (Beattles) I'd like to stress "and that nobody is getting lost". You can't send astronauts into orbit and then put ground control on vacation, as_it_is_said, "They'll stone you and then they'll say, Good luck" (Bob Dylan). To pack someone off to a mental hospital when they flip out at a spiritual camp or community is, in my opinion, treason. One does not need Marcuse to indicate the generally socially repressive nature of psychiatry. I think R.D. Laing clarified the distinction between spiritual and socio_pathologic breakdowns. PVK indicates it with remarks, relevant to the 'alchemical process' as "and then you lose all your charm." To set one's own opinion (Plato, doxa) against PVK's knowlege (Plato, nous) is a long_shot, but he did have a few limitations -- AoK recalls that when he first met PVK he asked "but what about Shadow+ and PVK replied, "Oh, we don't -- deal with, or some such -- that". And he once remarked (Zenith lecture) -- "'Vilayat' -- it's not an easy name to bear." In my childhood, USA 1940s, there was a comic strip, "Prince Valiant". ----------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES ON ARCHIVING PROCEDURES:L This memo will summarize procedures I use in Archiving PVK material. (I have done a bit of amateur (only) work on Archiving, primarily with teachings of R. Shlomo Carlebach, my work is posted to my Website, www.geocities.com/sa73122a , although "goat can't get through the clutter".) I would very much like suggestions for improving these procedures. Someone must set an "industry standard" for format to be used in Archiving PVK material, and method to be used in distributing it. I assume that distribution would be private, not public. However it might be practical to use a public medium for private distribution. A chap I met suggested www.ourmedia.com as a platform for file_sharing for files of ca. 30 Mb each (which is the size of an MP3 Save of the input of 1 side of a 45-minute tape, input via Audacity, at (I'm told) the default of 44 KHz. That chap, named Matt, whom I met over a pool table in Andermatt, suggested that 22 KHz would be more than enough for spoken text. So that might knock the size down to around 15 Mb per side with MP3 (*.mp3), and 10 Mb per side with Ogg Vorbis (*.ogg) He said that Ogg Vorbis, which is two-thirds the size of MP3, around 20 Mb per side at default 44 KHz, is at least as good as MP3, is public not proprietary, and can be played if you download, I think he said WINAMP. If anyone has security concerns with regard to distribution of exoteric PVK material (ie, material taken from distributed tapes and from publications) please tell me ASAP. I lay no claims upon any Archiving work that I do, neither ('RSC'='R. Shlomo Carlebach') nor PVK. But I do ask that anyone modifying something I've done indicate its Source, with filename, primarily so there exists an "audit trail". ------------------------------------------------------------------ OK, basic information: sa73122@yahoo.com www.geocities.com/sa73122 www.geocities.com/sa73122a In process: www.geocities.com/sa73122b www.geocities.com7sa73122c Yahoo Briefcase: UserName (UserID): AdobetoZenith (Adobe, not Abode) Password: CarwashCharlie (case-sensitive) Main Folder: /PVKsa0412 To repeat: I have posted almost all my PVK files to that Briefcase, and in that Folder. The procedure for getting them to download is: 1) Go to: www.yahoo.com 2) Click on: Briefcase 3) Enter as UserID: AdobetoZenith 4) Enter as Password: CarwashCharlie 5) Click on Folder: PVKsa0412 A list of about 40 files, all text, most or all in *.txt format, most transcriptions (but some inventories) should then be displayed. Click on the file you want to call it up, and download it if needed. I have lately input the PVK article in Emergence 8, and tacked it on to the topdoc of =pvnto136.txt on my Website, www.geocities.com/sa73122a I did it that way as a workaround because most public Internet terminals don't have a workable A-drive ("floppy" 1.44 Mb Drive) from which to upload files. ------------------------------------------------------------------ MY PVK MATERIAL AT CAMPRA: At Campra I am sitting in the modified "container" that sits behind the Restorante. This was used by the construction crew who rebuilt the "Pont des Oiseaux" staring in 1999, after it was washed in 1997, I think. I am typing at an old computer that Nico Vanzetti lent me. Most of my PVK material sits on the D Drive (which I bought and Nico installed). Most of it is in subdirs DVD1...DVD8 but some is also in subdirs /MP3* Most transcriptions are in \DVD2\oldsteve1 Some PVK material is in C:\steve Some in is C:\steve\steve2 and in C:\steve\oldsteve This material is not currently password-protected, nor is the computer. Nico can tell you how to access the material, especially if he adds a password and/or moves the computer elsewhere. AG may have a key to the container. Incidentally, those heathanish Tarot etc. games are sitting there too, on the top shelf, because I took them out of the Refugio when "The Russians are Coming" for Christmas holiday, and now I don't have a key to put them back in the Refugio. They were very nice young Russians, here for a ski competition. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MY PVK MATERIAL ON DVD: I have sent a complete set of that material on DVD to Devi Tide, c/o the Abode, hopefully to be compied onto an Abode computer and then passed on to Suhrwardi Gebel, present USA National Secretary of the SO , who lives nearby. I have also sent a complete set to Aziz Dikeleous. I almost always mail PVK material Registered Mail. I gather that this is a nuisance in some cases, as in some places one must go down to the Post Office to sign for it. And in one case, a DVD was returned because no-one got to the Post Office on time. My apologies, but this is valuable material -- one might wisely sell a castle -- I have in mind Disagreeable Castle in Rh„zns (Rhazuns) owned by the Polyester Baron of Domat Ems -- to buy DVD2. A reduced set has been sent to the SO Suresnes. That includes all the files, I think, but most of the audio files only in mp3 and ogg format. Reduced sets have also been sent to AG and Alev. I think it is important that duplicate complete sets of archive material be stored in geographically seperate locations, and also in duplicate locations in cyberspace. I said to Harvey, the Watchword is 'Multiple_Redundancy' He said back, That's redundant. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know where things stand now at moving audio material into text. This is a voice-recognition problem, of course. Harvey once told me that was 10 years away, and that was close to 10 years ago. As I have repeatedly said: PVK's lectures should be exceptionally easy to move into text. He had exceptional mic_control. He always spoke at a constant distance from the mic, at constant volume and speed, with clear, almost dispassionate enunciation, and with a surprisingly limited if high-brow and specialized vocabulary. (RSC showed almost none of these virtues except the specialized vocabulary.) Once I wanted to edit RSC's talks into proper academic English. And once I thought all PVK's lectures should be transcribed into text, properly editted of course. I still think all of PVK's work should be put into text, in a single data-base, to facilitate topical searches. The illustration I usually give is: Suppose you want to search for all his remarks about Cancer. You can't do that with an audio file. And a transcription is about 65K, compared to about 40 Mb minimum for an audio input. And one can summarize information from text far more easily than from audio. Of course one must customize a voice-recognition for PVK, but that should be easy to do. I suppose one would simply input a PVK tape and then correct the errors in an Audio Special Dictionary of words as spoken on tape by PVK. And keep doing that as long as errors recur. All that said, I now think that the first step in Archiving PVK material is to input it as digitalized audio. For one thing, that preserves it. Ben-Zion Solomon has noted that tapes deteriorate with time. Past 30 years, its risky. ZR once remarked that some of the Zenith tapes show deterioration. For another thing, PVK was a masterful speaker, however understated his delivery. Surely it is much more moving to hear a PVK tape than to read a transcription, though the latter might equally well help teach a dedicated student. I find PVK almost effortless to listen to, except that it takes great effort to even attempt to take in what he is saying. But one is almost never aware of any breaks halts or re-runs in his teaching. I have then done a 'Flying Edit' on each of my verbatim transcriptions, and am surprised at how different the latter is. Alev says or said that she prefers the verbatim to the Flying Edit, finding the former more evocative of PVK's presence. As I repeatedly note, my Flying Edits are quite conservative, I try to delete nothing substantive, and to add practically nothing substantive. (That does not extend to by inserted titles and appended notes, but those are easily taken out or ignored. All are enclosed in {squiggly-braces}. But before running a macro, note that tape-position references are also enclosed in {squiggly_braces} --------------------------------------------------------------- So ok, what are the basic Archiving procedures. Suppose I go down the valley all the way to to the Lake of Lugano to see the daffodils, and then keep going, and find a treasure_trove of PVK tapes, what should I do. The first step is to list them. Maybe that means putting little stickers with unique letter_numbers on each, but most likely they are already clearly identified. One then types up a list of each tape, indicating Date of lecture, Place, Camp, Camp_Week, quality of tape (Type I, Type II) etc. One also ensures that all tapes are properly stored, safe from dust, moisture, etc. The next step is to input the tapes. In the same operation, one inputs the tape as digitalized audio, and also makes a backup copy of the tape, using a new tape of adequate quality. As far as I know, it can be a Type I -- as far as I know, there is no gain in using a Type II, and it may even be less good. But I may be mistaken on this point. However, the new tape must be of a reliable name brand -- TDK is, I gather, the best, tho I think SONY is ok, but maybe less good. One cannot use an El Cheapo brand (as was done for many, maybe most, of the customer copies of Zenith tapes, although the Master tape was always made on a good tape, usually Type II. I am speaking of my time at Zenith, 1988--1999, with two missed years.) When that is done, one puts the original Master Tape safely away, to be retained as archive, and used only in exceptional circumstances, eg if a truly crucial word in a lecture cannot be understood, or if technology enables a re-mastering. One then works with the new backup tape, or with the digitalized input. So ok, now let's go back. How do you make the digitalized input. You can work from either an ordinary two-deck cassette recorder, or from a two-deck Tape-Deck. Back at Mevo Modi'in I worked from a two-deck Tape Deck. Here at Campra I have worked from an inexpensive 2-deck cassette recorder, a Philips. Of course, working from a Tape-Deck is better. You need a simple two_male_prong cable, one prong at each end. On the cassette recorder, this runs from the headphone hole (female connection) of the cassette recorder, to the audio_in of the computer. On the Tape Deck, it runs from the Audio_out of the Tape Deck, to the Audio_in of the computer. All PVK lectures were recorded Mono (tho as I recall, Aziz Dikeleous recorded one Cosmic Celbration, which included a Camp Bach B-Minor, in stereo). So, with that exception, there is no need for a dual_prong connection. And in some cases, the Tape Deck, and surely the Cassette Recorder, and maybe the computer, will not accept a 2_prong connection. Incidentally, Matt from Andermatt , the chap who said that www.ourmedia.com would be an ok platform for private file-sharing or audio files, said to look out that the input program does not input your tape in stereo, even though it was a mono tape, because that will of course double the size of the file, with no gain in quality -- the 2nd track may be just blank, but takes up just as much space. Ok, so the next question is: What program do you use for input. At the recommendation of Ben-Zion Solomon of Mevo Modi'in, who does quite a bit of work with computerized audio input, I have been using AUDACITY -- www.sourceforge.net This is available from my Briefcase and on my DVDs, although no doubt they are continually producing new improved versions. Matt said he had heard of Audacity, and thought it was OK. Katrina uses another program, the name of which I forget. She as using it to record Shahabudin's Frankfurt lecture directly into digital format, until one of the customers found the hum of the computer distracting. And that brings to mind the town in Germany whose residents reportedly found that Sunday tennis games disturbed their mid-day nap. Ok, I am an amateur blundering my way through this field, and asking directions of every passer-by who pauses. So someone who knows this field should make a decision on which program to use for audio input, and what parameters to set. MegaHertz and all that, whatever it is. Ok, the next question is: What format do you Save the Audio input in. Audacity allows: Audacity, WAV (Microsoft), MP3, and Ogg Vorbis. Audacity and WAV files are large, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis are about as small as possible. For a 45-minute side, Audacity and WAV run about 300 Mb, MP3 runs about 30 Mb, and Ogg runs about 20 Mb. All that at the default of 44 MHz, and in Mono. As noted, a text transcription of both sides of a 45-minute tape will run under 65 Kb. OK, here's one example: for =pvkh992c.* -- au/aup (the basic Audacity input) -- 258 Mb WAV (Microsoft ) -- 253 Mb MP3 -- 46 Mb Ogg -- 20 Mb Ok, if it's any help: I installed -- or rather, Nico Vanzetti installed for me -- a SONY DRU-530A using DLA packet-writing software. In my input on this Campra computer, and in the DVDs I sent out from it to Devi and Aziz, I included each tape in all 4 formats. But that does not seem necessary. And if we did it, we'd have to buy a lot of external DVD Drives. So I suppose it comes down to MP3 or Ogg. MP3 is of course the most accessible. If I recall, Matt said that Ogg was designed because MP3 is proprietary. Again, he seemed to say that Ogg is at least as good as MP3 and maybe somewhat better, and that you can play it by downloading, I think he said, WINAMP. --------------------------------------------------------------- Before I forget -- The DVD program I am using is a SONY 440W. It is a Distributed Packet Progam, or some such. It enables you to work with a 4.7 Gb DVD as easily as with a 1.44 Mb "Floppy". That means you can work on the DVD under DOS. But the limittion is that these DVDs can be read only on a machine with DVD_RW (I do not know the difference beween plus_RW and minus_RW ). So the DVDs I have sent out cannot be read on a computer with a DVD_R (that is, a DVD_Read_only) Drive. Now there is a "Make Compatible" option in Windows that you can use, to make your DVD readable in a DVD_R as well as in a DVD_RW drive. But if I recall, running that option makes all your DOS files unreadale. That means, all the text files, ie the transcriptions and support docs that I often include on a DVD. But I suppose one can expect everyone to have a DVD_RW Drive. --------------------------------------------------------------- As to the reliability of my work: I think the verbatim transcriptions are quite accurate. I transcribe from a simple desktop cassette player -- usually a Philips AQ6355 that I get at the shop in Campra, the same model, or same design, that Zenith used since 1993 for helping the tape- copyer find his place. I have also done all my RSC transcriptions on that player. For years I hoped to get a foot-pedal transcribing machine with an adapter to take standard cassettes (most use, or used, mini- cassettes), and especially with automatic backspace. I transcribe start_and_stop, holding each phrase or sentence in memory until I finish typing it. My typing speed used to be up to 80 wpm, but with many errors. After I have transcribed, I do a proof-reading pass, replaying the tape while I read my transcription on-screen, stopping to make corrections as necessary. I do not often find substantive errors. When I have finished, or during transcription, I note the tape position, usually at intervals of {100}. So anyone can recheck my transcription of any segment against tape. I then do a 'Flying Edit'. Again, this is a once-through edit, but very conservative. In general, I elminiate only 'false starts' -- where PVK started to say something, then stopped, usually in mid-sentence, and repeated the point in different words -- and superfluous expressions, eg 'I thiink' 'In my opinon' etc. I think there is no substantive loss in my Flying Edits. But there is a stylistic change, PVK's tentativeness of conceptualization is no longer apparent. And much of the warmth of his discourse is maybe lost. I always present my Flying Edit's juxtaposed with the verbatim original. So the Reader is no longer at the mercy of the editor, the Reader can always re-check the edit against the original. It happens that I type under DOS in EinsteinWriter -- version 8.2 to be precise, the Beta Test that got away. EinsteinWriter is about 96K, complete, including the Hebrew. I think it is at least as good as MicroSoft Word for Windows, for everything except Desktop publishing, and for everyone except illiterates, who may need the Spellcheck and even the Grammarcheck. I then convert my files into text format -- the same as *.txt -- using EinsteinWriter's T.EXE Now the advantage of EinsteinWriter is that it allows a vertically split screen (called 'Compose'). So that means that you can have the verbatim on the top half of your screen, and the Flying Edit on the bottom. As I've repeatedly said -- I used to denigrate my Flying Edit's, saing "a Flying Edit is to a professional edit as is to lunar cartography, the memoirs of The Cow who Jumped Over the Moon. But I'd not recommend my Flying Edit's in proference to a professional edit. I am indifferent to eventual publication and sales, and even to outreach, all of which concern a professional editor. Again, even a choice of word or an apparently casual phrase by PVK may convey depth and complexity that someone not familiar with and -- well, striving to be attuned to -- hiss teaching might overlook. My present best example is his use of the word 'surreptiously' in his article in Emergence 8, which I have tacked onto my Website version (but not the DVD version) of =pvnto136 . I don't have that phrase at hand this afternoon -- he was speaking of the way we barely acknowlege our higher self and deepest aspirations as we make our way through the everyday world. As fine an apercu as the best and most nuanced of novelists -- Tolstoy, Henry James, Huxley, I don't know -- might reach -- I'm very taken lately with Robert Frost's poem, "The Death of the Hired Man", and others from "North of Boston". Now I do hitch_hike onto my transcriptions a lot of personal remarks and reactions that are mostly, but by no means entirely, top_of_the_head "jive" -- free-wheeling at best, off the road and into the mud otherwise. But I then "deep-six" most of those off into a seperate document, and as noted, all are clearly marked as my remarks, and enclosed in {squiggly-braces}. In short, I try to make it as easy as possible for the Reader to disregard them. I don't re-read these remarks, you might say that it's a way of letting off steam while I work, in a beautiful location but under something less than luxurious conditions. Incidentally, I would like to put in a plug for retaining every word PVK said, even if some might embarass some of his followers, or even family. This is a problem we have confronted in connection with teachings of R. Shlomo Carlebach, and in recollections of informal remarks about him. It was Prof. Paul Wienpahl, in Philosophy at UCSB -- he approached Spinoza's Ethics from something like a Zen standpoint, and it all became , as they say in the USA, "crystal_clear" -- who said, yes, you have these lovely ideas about spiritual masters, but have you ever seen one. Often it is when we see the humanity of a great teacher that his teachings can most help us in surmounting our own problems. I recall a line in what I think is the standard biography of HIK, distributed by Omega -- " [Pir] Vilayat was in constant touch with his pawnbroker" -- a line like that really does encourage one to carry on despite material inconveniences. Some might say it brings discredit to a great person, but I would say that it adds the 3rd-dimension to our image of his greatness. It is said, "no man is a hero to his valet", to which it is responded, "not because the former is not a hero, but beause the latter is a valet". But one might respond, in the spirit of PVK, "but if the valet only had eyes to see, he would see more than all the great man's followers". I am told now that a 1.5 hour DVD has been made of 19.5 hours of reminiscenes by PVK. I would take the original material to be invaluable, and hope that it is preserved, even if only in restricted access. --------------------------------------------------------------- Someone expressed the hope that PVK's work would be as completely archived as HIK's has been. Well, of course. But note that this is a much larger project, since PVK's Nachlass is much greater in quantity than HIKs. Note too that most of the printed material of PVK teachings is at best minimally Source'd to the original lecture, and most that was printed was editted, albeit usually by one of the senior members of the Abode Family. But even then one must expect that some errors were made in editting. I would guess that if Arifa Goodman editted PVK's Emergence articles she did so only minimally, but one should check with her. As I have noted, it is my guess, from retyping the PVK article form Emergence 8, that these articles were written directly by PVK for Emergence. The one I input is quite dense, much more so than even the one-language Camp teachings at the Abode Camp, not to mention the dual-language teachings at Zenith. A dual-language format required PVK to keep his remarks short and coherent enough to hold without error in memory until he translated them. He once remarked at the start of a Zenith week - - I think I have that remark in transcripption -- that to have to speak in 3 languages would be -- something like, very difficult. I don't think he said 'excruciating', but if I recall there was something of that sense. -- Puran Blair once said that he once asked PVK if it wasn't uncomfortable sitting in lotus position on the "throne" to give a class, and that PVK replied, "Oh, it's excruciating." So as I have remarked, I would guess that the Emergence articles are a sort of exoteric precursor to the -- esoteric -- KITs. Incidentally, the KITs do stand in need of editting, but it would take someone very good to do it. Or even a collaboration of several advanced students. ---------------------------------------------------------------- One might draw a few lessons, all negative, from the way Wittgenstein's Nachlass was handled. L'havdil. Some of his most striking remarks, published in "Culture and Value", did not appear until about 40 years later, -- all that comes do mind at the moment is "Streich Gelt von jeder Fehler" and (apr.) I am like a barber, snipping his scissor in air until he sees something to trim. And also, "In philosophy, the race is sometimes to the slowest." Amd we still do not, as far as I know, have public access to his complete Nachlass. And there has been too much fuss about getting the text exactly right -- though with Wittgenstein, it is in general not his precise words that are the key to his meaning, but -- I can't quite say, following Tractatus, 'what he is pointing to' -- better, drawing from a remark in his Preface to Philosophical Investigations -- "I would not like to spare my readers the trouble of thinking for themselves" -- one might say, that to understand Wittgesntein's later work, you have to reconstruct the unstated ongoing argument with himself of which his remarks are indications, like the fin or fluke of a whale breaking surface for an instant. -------------------------------------------------------------- I think I'm about done with these remarks for now. A few leftover odds and ends. I Save each side of the Tape as a seperate file, since that's what Audacity does. Almost all my PVK files start the letters 'pvk' or at least with 'pv' I follow DOS format and so limit my filenames to 8 characters, plus a 3-character suffix when needed. Verbatim transcriptions are almost always with filename pvk*.* Flyine edits usually have filenames pve*.* Documents of my notes usually have form pvn*.* For audio input I try to indicate the 'Generation' from which my audio input was made. I use a sort of odd-even sequence, for Side A and Side B respectively. So a and b refer to sides A and B respectively of the Generation 1, G1, that is, the Master Tape. So then c and d refer respectively to the 2nd-generation, G2, tape, that is, any of the tapes that were made from the Master, and sold to customers. Many of those copies, at Zenith anyhow, were made on El Cheapo tapes. Ben-Zion has pointed out that such tapes use less -- Chromium Oxide, I think it is -- and so will deteriorate more quickly. Also, El Cheapo tapes were typically about 45 minutes , whereas the Masters were made on name-brand tapes, usually Type II, which have about 47 minutes. So if a recording ran all the way to the end, up to 2 minutes of the lecture could be lost on the copy given to the customer. (Aziz pointed that out to me.) In retrospect, though I did not think or it nor remark on it at the time, I think the Masters should have been put away unused after they were recorded, except that a G2 should have been made to serve as the Master for making the Customer copies. Also, the G2s at Zenith, and I would guess at the Abode, though I don't know, were made on FastDub, about 6 minutes to copy a 45- minute side. I do not mean to embarass anyone with these remarks, but it is information relevant to archiving. ZR once remarked to me, PVK says almost the same thing at every Seminar/Camp, only the attunement is different at each. I tried to respond, but at each Camp, in each set of a week's tapes, there will be a few new remarks, a few new ways of putting things, a few refinements on previous formulations of a point, a few enhancements. And any one of those may be invaluable. As I turn back to tapes from the 70s, I find a much wider range of ideas than in the Zenith tapes. At several points during Zenith weeks PVK remarked that he would speak only of those things of which he had personal experience. Well, as I have remarked elsewhere, PVK often remarked that Buddha could speak, knowleably no doubt, of how life was on earth "before there was smoke" -- that is, before the evolution of mankind. And a spiritual master -- which PVK surely was -- is "united with all the illuminated souls" -- so I reckon one can take PVK's intuitions as at least trustworthy hypotheses. Take, eg, his remark, at a Zenith Camp, that while there might be life elsewhere in the universe -- or maybe he said 'intelligent life', though that does give humankind the benefit of the doubt -- that maybe this was the only planet with such life in this Galaxy. Well, millions or billions of government expenditure might hang on such a remark. Incidentally, I would guess that, although PVK was not widely known, that this may change quite a lot, for better and worse, in time to come. And then I would not have to have had pasta for dinner today. Although on that basis Rembrandt could have lived in comfort too. Well, I suppose that's more than enough for now. Stars must be out by now, so time to daven the evening prayer, and maybe boil up some more pasta. With very best wishes to all, as always Steve Amdur ------------------------------------------------------------------ Campra, 27 March '05 -- the end of Easter Sunday -- 17 Adar Bet, if the stars are out -- and so 20 Safar -- a grey drizzly day here, but with a dusting of fresh snow on the higher portions of the mountains -- the cross-country ski season over now here, and the sidewalks rolled up -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================ ===============================================================