Sailor
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
No, that’s not right. It was clearly what the Lord was leading Marlys and Ken to do.
Ever since that day in the dress shop Marlys knew that this was God’s plan for their lives. It would bring great blessing. Just outside the fitting room had lain a magnificent dog with curly fur and adorable face. It was the dress shop owner’s dog, Milo, a rescue. God put it into Marlys’ heart that she too could rescue one of God’s creatures, bring it into a good Christian home.
After all, the Lord had saved them. The least they could do as their prayer of thanks would be to save one of the Lord’s creatures, one that had fallen on hard times.
She’d been worried about Ken, the way his medical leave had become early retirement. His legs weren’t good. But having him around home all day ... well, he was at a loss for what to do with himself. He was underfoot. Her feet. A rescued dog would be perfect for him.
Ken protested. With his legs and feet he wouldn’t be able to walk the thing, not like it would need. He suggested a cat instead. Marlys was allergic. So they prayed.
The rescue society had the perfect fit for them. A parrot needed a home ... an African Gray, no less. For months it had been living in the office of a marina at the port. Fisherfolk were coming and going but there were no lasting relationships for the poor bird. And so, Lord willing, Sailor could come into their lives. Sailor knew his name, could squawk it out, or at least so the manager at the Rescue Society said.
Marlys and Ken felt blessed by what the Lord had chosen for their path.
There were background checks for Marlys and Ken to do. Their Pastor obliged. There was a contract to sign. They would have a thirty day probation period during which they could return the bird if health or behavioural issues were to be in evidence. After that, they would be on their own for any vet bills and the rescue society would charge a re-homing fee if they had to return the bird. But what could go wrong, Sailor was just a bird after all? Marlys said to the manager that rehoming would not be necessary for she had prayed about it and was sure that Sailor becoming part of their family was God’s will for the bird. And for them, too.
For thirty days in their home, Sailor said nothing. Ken tried to get it talking, took that on as a project. He would squawk Sailor’s name at the bird. Sailor just cocked his head at Ken, as if Ken’s efforts comprised strange human behaviour. Ken had a list of words and phrases he tried to teach Sailor. Amen and Hallelujah were at the top of the list. Praise the Lord and By His Grace would come later. Marlys was pleased to see that Ken had something to do, something that wouldn’t bother his legs and feet. As the thirty days passed however, Ken’s efforts abated. He became discouraged, frustrated even.
Sometimes, in God’s ultimate wisdom stumbling blocks are put in one’s path to test one’s faith. Marlys and Ken just needed to trust: trust in the Lord, trust in the bird.
They prayed God would give Sailor a voice.
On day thirty-one Sailor spoke. Out came a stream of profanity fit for a sailor. No, not a stream, a tsunami. Every coarse word that Sailor had learned from the men at the docks cluttered and soiled Ken and Marlys’ fine Christian home.
Sailor knew the name of their blessed Lord and Saviour. Shockingly though, that totally obscene swear word, the one no good creature of the Lord should ever utter, was interspersed in its adjectival form between the Jesus and the Christ. It was as though God’s plan for Marlys and Ken was to send the very devil incarnate into their home.
They asked the Pastor for prayers. He assured them that the Lord works in mysterious ways.
Sailor’s swearing impacted Ken differently from Marlys. Marlys was dreadfully horrified. Awfully so. Beyond what the words of mere mortals could ever express. Ken, who had worked in a warehouse was surprised that Marlys even knew what Sailor’s words meant for her to be so offended. Sailor was capable of swearing in both official languages, which wasn’t surprising as the marina was on the Atlantic coast where French was spoken in addition to English.
But absent from Sailor’s swearing was the malevolence with which those words were typically used. Sailor had learned the inflection of syllables, the style of expectoration with which those words were uttered, but had not taken upon himself the hardness of heart that would typically accompany profanity. For being a bird, and not subject to the fallenness of man, Sailor could harbour no evil within. When Sailor set forth it was with a naïvete, an innocence. It amused Ken. The incongruity of it all even delighted him.
Unfortunately, his delight created a problem for Ken. He struggled to hold back on his chuckling when Sailor swore. He realized he needed chortle quietly so as not to offend Marlys’ circumspect spirit even further. In this, a relationship dance that had long characterized their marriage was brought to bear on the awkward threesome they had become. Marlys’ would take upon herself the bitter visage of martyrdom. Ken endeavoured to stifle his general delight in this wrinkle of God’s grace and grand design now manifest in his home. As time went on, it took more and more effort for Ken to do so. And thus this blessing that had come into their lives had become a blight.
As much as Ken believed his consideration of Marlys in not laughing right out loud at Sailor’s swearing had gone unnoticed by Marlys, he was wrong. Marlys noticed. It deepened her offence. Her home had descended into all the coarseness of the male world. Sailor swore away as though there was no need to be considerate of a lady being present. Ken, while not swearing, was encouraging the bird with his not-subtle-enough chuckling. Worse than that, Ken appeared to be oblivious of the evil that was so close at hand. That oblivion betrayed the weakness of Ken’s character as the spiritual head of the family. It was yet another cross for Marlys to bear.
Marlys went to their Pastor. The pastor suggested prayer. He asked discretely whether when they did their devotions together as a couple they prayed out loud or silently. Marlys confessed that they did so silently. Ken was the head of their household but he was merely a warehouse attendant, not one given to speaking to the Lord out loud, a humble man in that regard.
The remedy the Pastor suggested was to pray out loud in the bird’s hearing when the bird was in its cage beside the kitchen table. Soon Sailor learned to say Amen at the end of Ken’s prayers. Well, sort of. As a result of some strange longshoreman-ish proclivity, Sailor placed that unutterable swear word, still in its adjectival form, between the A and the men.
To this, Ken was completely unable to suppress his chuckle. Marlys glared. Sailor cocked his tiny-brained head. Ken then broke into a full out belly laugh. Marlys stormed off into their bedroom.
They approached the manager at the animal rescue society with their problem. In response to their complaint the manager reminded them that as it was past the thirty day probationary period there would be a rehoming fee. Marlys made it clear that Sailor’s presence in their home was to continue until the Lord showed them otherwise, she just needed to know the fix for past learned vocabulary. The manager had no idea, suggested putting a cover over the cage.
And so they did whenever Sailor’s swearing began. Marlys performed this task with great disgust. Sailor watched with keen interest. For the most part, this strategy worked as Sailor’s swear words gradually grew softer and further apart the longer he was in the hooded cage as he gradually fell asleep.
Ken continued to work on the Hallelujah. He feared that boredom and idleness might infect the caged bird and decided to write out Bible verses to affix to the wires of the cage when the bird was in there alone, give the bird something to look at. The mere presence of Holy Scripture would be an antidote to the swearing. Although Ken was consistently amused by the bird’s vocalizations, he was aware they were growing to almost satanical intensity.
Each morning, before Marlys was up, Ken would extricate the Bible verses from the bottom of the cage, the paper having bubbled and the ink having run with the bird’s poop. That, he could never let Marlys see.
What became clear to the couple was that Sailor needed to be Born Again. That somehow a grey parrot had come to be subject to the same fall that had so devastatingly corrupted mankind from the Garden of Eden to the present. They talked to the Pastor about this. He looked particularly perplexed as to the theological conundrum this posed. But then gave the reassurance from the book of Romans that all who called upon the Lord shall be saved.
Ken made it his mission to teach Sailor to do so.
Now, as it often happens with retirement, Ken’s health deteriorated markedly over the next few months. As much as his legs were relieved not to be walking on the concrete floor of the warehouse, the various other more serious health problems worsened. For long hours he sat in his rocker-recliner listening to CDs of his favourite singers: Johnny Cash, k d laing, and of course, Dolly Parton. He found a way to lower Sailor’s cage to his eye level while sitting in his chair and a certain degree of companionship erupted between them while listening to the music.
Ken, in response to the Pastor’s advice, had taken on the mission to teach Sailor to call upon the Lord. Sailor, recognizing the urgency of Ken’s striving would string out a repetitive Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. Unfortunately the tone of the bird was more exasperation than entreaty. Ken hoped this would be sufficient although he could never bring himself to ask the Pastor whether or not this would do.
Marlys became more bitter. She typically felt left out by the relationship developing between her husband and his evil parrot. She had feared what it would be like to have her husband under foot all day at home upon his retirement, but she had never imagined it would like this. This dread threesome clearly threatened the stability of their marriage.
She repeatedly accused Ken of enjoying the parrot’s swearing, as though the parrot was expressing on behalf of Ken all the pain and apprehensions that his worsening health conditions entailed. And while Ken denied this, that he would ever give in to such a vicarious pleasure, it all seemed quite plausible that such would be. Of course, he could never admit so to Marlys.
Ken noticed that when he played his CDs Sailor would move to the music, bobbing his head and shifting from foot to foot on his perch in the cage. And while the timing was not perfectly in sync with the music, it was clear the intention to dance was there within the bird. Singing those songs could not be too far behind. And thus, in the singing of a hymn, would come Sailor’s salvation.
Sailor had his favourite songs. He particularly liked Johnny Cash on Ring of Fire. Ken did not tell Marlys this, fearing she’d take it as confirmation that the bird was evil and destined to hell. And Sailor was absolutely enamoured with k d laing singing the iconic Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah.
For thirty days after Ken died, Sailor was silent.
He didn’t dance on his perch. His head didn’t bob in response to Marlys’ ministrations in feeding him and cleaning out his cage. The bird was in mourning.
Marlys didn’t play the Johnny Cash nor the k d laing for him; those CDs were just too painful a memory of Ken there in his recliner rocker in those final painful weeks. She boxed up the Dolly Partons, and even found a Leonard Cohen or two that Ken had stashed away so she wouldn’t know that he had them.
Marlys couldn’t tell which of them grieved Ken’s loss more deeply. She had the assurance of seeing Ken again in Glory. An assurance the bird couldn’t comprehend. Painfully, in this realization, she actually felt a little sorry for the bird.
But it was the bird’s silence that was the most poignant. Initially, Marlys gave thanks for it. It was a relief ... no that’s not right, it was an answer to prayer that the bird had stopped swearing. But Marlys couldn’t help but thinking that Sailor’s silence was testament to how Ken had encouraged the swearing, something that Marlys had thought all along. It had continued as long as Ken was alive to chuckle in response to those vile words. Now with Ken gone, the bird was no longer getting that encouragement.
Marlys was thankful, perhaps proud even, that she was not one to give herself over to bitterness. However, this recollection of how the bird had disrupted the last few months of her life with Ken brought her mighty close.
The Pastor came. Then after a few awkward moments with the shortbread cookies that Marlys brought out of the freezer, stored there since last Christmas, he left.
The ladies from the church came with their casseroles. Quite a few actually, all portioned for two rather than one; that was the tradition of the church in terms of supporting families of those bereaved. But it was okay, as Marlys didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.
On day thirty-one Sailor offered a chuckle.
Marlys had been vacuuming and didn’t hear it.
Once the vacuuming was done Sailor insisted out a second chuckle, this one almost to the level of a chortle. The mimicry of the bird caught Ken’s inflections perfectly. Over the next few days the chortle of her late husband reverberated through the house, as if Ken himself was there in the living room, delighting in something or other. In the past Marlys had always dismissed Ken’s chortle with a What are you going on about? or a What’s so funny now? Now when she heard it voiced by the bird, it filled her heart with a sense of Ken returning to visit her, ready to tell some surprising thing about Glory.
All those words that Ken had tried to teach the bird, but never heard himself, came bursting forward. After Marlys said something to him, the bird would confidently chirp out an Amen. In fact it seemed like the bird was in more agreement with her than Ken ever had been. When Marlys had the news on the tv, just to have some background sound in their home, the bird would bark out Praise the Lord or By God’s Grace in the most inappropriate pauses when politics were discussed or car accidents were reported on.
But the most poignant of all the newly manifest vocalizations was that chuckle. It moved Marlys to stop calling the bird by the name Sailor and begin to call him Chuckles. When she did, he responded with a head bob and a little dance along the perch in his cage. She had prayed for the bird to be saved. Now this miracle had been visited onto her very home. It was as if the bird had been reborn. And, strangely enough, in what almost seemed redemptive for Marlys, she was as well.
Ah, God’s mysterious ways.
And each night, as she placed the cover over his cage for the bird to go to sleep he squawked out, as tunefully as his voice would allow, Hallelujah. Those final months he’d had with Ken had left the bird with a decent enough k d laing impression to pull it off.
If you have been reading the blog, here is the link to get back there Blog
No, that’s not right. It was clearly what the Lord was leading Marlys and Ken to do.
Ever since that day in the dress shop Marlys knew that this was God’s plan for their lives. It would bring great blessing. Just outside the fitting room had lain a magnificent dog with curly fur and adorable face. It was the dress shop owner’s dog, Milo, a rescue. God put it into Marlys’ heart that she too could rescue one of God’s creatures, bring it into a good Christian home.
After all, the Lord had saved them. The least they could do as their prayer of thanks would be to save one of the Lord’s creatures, one that had fallen on hard times.
She’d been worried about Ken, the way his medical leave had become early retirement. His legs weren’t good. But having him around home all day ... well, he was at a loss for what to do with himself. He was underfoot. Her feet. A rescued dog would be perfect for him.
Ken protested. With his legs and feet he wouldn’t be able to walk the thing, not like it would need. He suggested a cat instead. Marlys was allergic. So they prayed.
The rescue society had the perfect fit for them. A parrot needed a home ... an African Gray, no less. For months it had been living in the office of a marina at the port. Fisherfolk were coming and going but there were no lasting relationships for the poor bird. And so, Lord willing, Sailor could come into their lives. Sailor knew his name, could squawk it out, or at least so the manager at the Rescue Society said.
Marlys and Ken felt blessed by what the Lord had chosen for their path.
There were background checks for Marlys and Ken to do. Their Pastor obliged. There was a contract to sign. They would have a thirty day probation period during which they could return the bird if health or behavioural issues were to be in evidence. After that, they would be on their own for any vet bills and the rescue society would charge a re-homing fee if they had to return the bird. But what could go wrong, Sailor was just a bird after all? Marlys said to the manager that rehoming would not be necessary for she had prayed about it and was sure that Sailor becoming part of their family was God’s will for the bird. And for them, too.
For thirty days in their home, Sailor said nothing. Ken tried to get it talking, took that on as a project. He would squawk Sailor’s name at the bird. Sailor just cocked his head at Ken, as if Ken’s efforts comprised strange human behaviour. Ken had a list of words and phrases he tried to teach Sailor. Amen and Hallelujah were at the top of the list. Praise the Lord and By His Grace would come later. Marlys was pleased to see that Ken had something to do, something that wouldn’t bother his legs and feet. As the thirty days passed however, Ken’s efforts abated. He became discouraged, frustrated even.
Sometimes, in God’s ultimate wisdom stumbling blocks are put in one’s path to test one’s faith. Marlys and Ken just needed to trust: trust in the Lord, trust in the bird.
They prayed God would give Sailor a voice.
On day thirty-one Sailor spoke. Out came a stream of profanity fit for a sailor. No, not a stream, a tsunami. Every coarse word that Sailor had learned from the men at the docks cluttered and soiled Ken and Marlys’ fine Christian home.
Sailor knew the name of their blessed Lord and Saviour. Shockingly though, that totally obscene swear word, the one no good creature of the Lord should ever utter, was interspersed in its adjectival form between the Jesus and the Christ. It was as though God’s plan for Marlys and Ken was to send the very devil incarnate into their home.
They asked the Pastor for prayers. He assured them that the Lord works in mysterious ways.
Sailor’s swearing impacted Ken differently from Marlys. Marlys was dreadfully horrified. Awfully so. Beyond what the words of mere mortals could ever express. Ken, who had worked in a warehouse was surprised that Marlys even knew what Sailor’s words meant for her to be so offended. Sailor was capable of swearing in both official languages, which wasn’t surprising as the marina was on the Atlantic coast where French was spoken in addition to English.
But absent from Sailor’s swearing was the malevolence with which those words were typically used. Sailor had learned the inflection of syllables, the style of expectoration with which those words were uttered, but had not taken upon himself the hardness of heart that would typically accompany profanity. For being a bird, and not subject to the fallenness of man, Sailor could harbour no evil within. When Sailor set forth it was with a naïvete, an innocence. It amused Ken. The incongruity of it all even delighted him.
Unfortunately, his delight created a problem for Ken. He struggled to hold back on his chuckling when Sailor swore. He realized he needed chortle quietly so as not to offend Marlys’ circumspect spirit even further. In this, a relationship dance that had long characterized their marriage was brought to bear on the awkward threesome they had become. Marlys’ would take upon herself the bitter visage of martyrdom. Ken endeavoured to stifle his general delight in this wrinkle of God’s grace and grand design now manifest in his home. As time went on, it took more and more effort for Ken to do so. And thus this blessing that had come into their lives had become a blight.
As much as Ken believed his consideration of Marlys in not laughing right out loud at Sailor’s swearing had gone unnoticed by Marlys, he was wrong. Marlys noticed. It deepened her offence. Her home had descended into all the coarseness of the male world. Sailor swore away as though there was no need to be considerate of a lady being present. Ken, while not swearing, was encouraging the bird with his not-subtle-enough chuckling. Worse than that, Ken appeared to be oblivious of the evil that was so close at hand. That oblivion betrayed the weakness of Ken’s character as the spiritual head of the family. It was yet another cross for Marlys to bear.
Marlys went to their Pastor. The pastor suggested prayer. He asked discretely whether when they did their devotions together as a couple they prayed out loud or silently. Marlys confessed that they did so silently. Ken was the head of their household but he was merely a warehouse attendant, not one given to speaking to the Lord out loud, a humble man in that regard.
The remedy the Pastor suggested was to pray out loud in the bird’s hearing when the bird was in its cage beside the kitchen table. Soon Sailor learned to say Amen at the end of Ken’s prayers. Well, sort of. As a result of some strange longshoreman-ish proclivity, Sailor placed that unutterable swear word, still in its adjectival form, between the A and the men.
To this, Ken was completely unable to suppress his chuckle. Marlys glared. Sailor cocked his tiny-brained head. Ken then broke into a full out belly laugh. Marlys stormed off into their bedroom.
They approached the manager at the animal rescue society with their problem. In response to their complaint the manager reminded them that as it was past the thirty day probationary period there would be a rehoming fee. Marlys made it clear that Sailor’s presence in their home was to continue until the Lord showed them otherwise, she just needed to know the fix for past learned vocabulary. The manager had no idea, suggested putting a cover over the cage.
And so they did whenever Sailor’s swearing began. Marlys performed this task with great disgust. Sailor watched with keen interest. For the most part, this strategy worked as Sailor’s swear words gradually grew softer and further apart the longer he was in the hooded cage as he gradually fell asleep.
Ken continued to work on the Hallelujah. He feared that boredom and idleness might infect the caged bird and decided to write out Bible verses to affix to the wires of the cage when the bird was in there alone, give the bird something to look at. The mere presence of Holy Scripture would be an antidote to the swearing. Although Ken was consistently amused by the bird’s vocalizations, he was aware they were growing to almost satanical intensity.
Each morning, before Marlys was up, Ken would extricate the Bible verses from the bottom of the cage, the paper having bubbled and the ink having run with the bird’s poop. That, he could never let Marlys see.
What became clear to the couple was that Sailor needed to be Born Again. That somehow a grey parrot had come to be subject to the same fall that had so devastatingly corrupted mankind from the Garden of Eden to the present. They talked to the Pastor about this. He looked particularly perplexed as to the theological conundrum this posed. But then gave the reassurance from the book of Romans that all who called upon the Lord shall be saved.
Ken made it his mission to teach Sailor to do so.
Now, as it often happens with retirement, Ken’s health deteriorated markedly over the next few months. As much as his legs were relieved not to be walking on the concrete floor of the warehouse, the various other more serious health problems worsened. For long hours he sat in his rocker-recliner listening to CDs of his favourite singers: Johnny Cash, k d laing, and of course, Dolly Parton. He found a way to lower Sailor’s cage to his eye level while sitting in his chair and a certain degree of companionship erupted between them while listening to the music.
Ken, in response to the Pastor’s advice, had taken on the mission to teach Sailor to call upon the Lord. Sailor, recognizing the urgency of Ken’s striving would string out a repetitive Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. Unfortunately the tone of the bird was more exasperation than entreaty. Ken hoped this would be sufficient although he could never bring himself to ask the Pastor whether or not this would do.
Marlys became more bitter. She typically felt left out by the relationship developing between her husband and his evil parrot. She had feared what it would be like to have her husband under foot all day at home upon his retirement, but she had never imagined it would like this. This dread threesome clearly threatened the stability of their marriage.
She repeatedly accused Ken of enjoying the parrot’s swearing, as though the parrot was expressing on behalf of Ken all the pain and apprehensions that his worsening health conditions entailed. And while Ken denied this, that he would ever give in to such a vicarious pleasure, it all seemed quite plausible that such would be. Of course, he could never admit so to Marlys.
Ken noticed that when he played his CDs Sailor would move to the music, bobbing his head and shifting from foot to foot on his perch in the cage. And while the timing was not perfectly in sync with the music, it was clear the intention to dance was there within the bird. Singing those songs could not be too far behind. And thus, in the singing of a hymn, would come Sailor’s salvation.
Sailor had his favourite songs. He particularly liked Johnny Cash on Ring of Fire. Ken did not tell Marlys this, fearing she’d take it as confirmation that the bird was evil and destined to hell. And Sailor was absolutely enamoured with k d laing singing the iconic Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah.
For thirty days after Ken died, Sailor was silent.
He didn’t dance on his perch. His head didn’t bob in response to Marlys’ ministrations in feeding him and cleaning out his cage. The bird was in mourning.
Marlys didn’t play the Johnny Cash nor the k d laing for him; those CDs were just too painful a memory of Ken there in his recliner rocker in those final painful weeks. She boxed up the Dolly Partons, and even found a Leonard Cohen or two that Ken had stashed away so she wouldn’t know that he had them.
Marlys couldn’t tell which of them grieved Ken’s loss more deeply. She had the assurance of seeing Ken again in Glory. An assurance the bird couldn’t comprehend. Painfully, in this realization, she actually felt a little sorry for the bird.
But it was the bird’s silence that was the most poignant. Initially, Marlys gave thanks for it. It was a relief ... no that’s not right, it was an answer to prayer that the bird had stopped swearing. But Marlys couldn’t help but thinking that Sailor’s silence was testament to how Ken had encouraged the swearing, something that Marlys had thought all along. It had continued as long as Ken was alive to chuckle in response to those vile words. Now with Ken gone, the bird was no longer getting that encouragement.
Marlys was thankful, perhaps proud even, that she was not one to give herself over to bitterness. However, this recollection of how the bird had disrupted the last few months of her life with Ken brought her mighty close.
The Pastor came. Then after a few awkward moments with the shortbread cookies that Marlys brought out of the freezer, stored there since last Christmas, he left.
The ladies from the church came with their casseroles. Quite a few actually, all portioned for two rather than one; that was the tradition of the church in terms of supporting families of those bereaved. But it was okay, as Marlys didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.
On day thirty-one Sailor offered a chuckle.
Marlys had been vacuuming and didn’t hear it.
Once the vacuuming was done Sailor insisted out a second chuckle, this one almost to the level of a chortle. The mimicry of the bird caught Ken’s inflections perfectly. Over the next few days the chortle of her late husband reverberated through the house, as if Ken himself was there in the living room, delighting in something or other. In the past Marlys had always dismissed Ken’s chortle with a What are you going on about? or a What’s so funny now? Now when she heard it voiced by the bird, it filled her heart with a sense of Ken returning to visit her, ready to tell some surprising thing about Glory.
All those words that Ken had tried to teach the bird, but never heard himself, came bursting forward. After Marlys said something to him, the bird would confidently chirp out an Amen. In fact it seemed like the bird was in more agreement with her than Ken ever had been. When Marlys had the news on the tv, just to have some background sound in their home, the bird would bark out Praise the Lord or By God’s Grace in the most inappropriate pauses when politics were discussed or car accidents were reported on.
But the most poignant of all the newly manifest vocalizations was that chuckle. It moved Marlys to stop calling the bird by the name Sailor and begin to call him Chuckles. When she did, he responded with a head bob and a little dance along the perch in his cage. She had prayed for the bird to be saved. Now this miracle had been visited onto her very home. It was as if the bird had been reborn. And, strangely enough, in what almost seemed redemptive for Marlys, she was as well.
Ah, God’s mysterious ways.
And each night, as she placed the cover over his cage for the bird to go to sleep he squawked out, as tunefully as his voice would allow, Hallelujah. Those final months he’d had with Ken had left the bird with a decent enough k d laing impression to pull it off.
If you have been reading the blog, here is the link to get back there Blog