DVD Review: Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90)

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015
Images from the Internet

Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90)

Written and directed by Scott Crawford
New Rose Films / MVD Visual
102 minutes, 2014 / 2015
www.SaladDaysDC.com
www.faceboom.com/SaladDaysDC
www.mvdvisual.com

There were so many important Third Wave scenes when the hardcore explosion grew into fruition, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Phoenix, and so on. There is no doubt, however, that the standing of the Washington, DC base is among the strongest. Two names tend to rise to the top, Henry Rollins, and especially Ian MacKaye, both of whom are represented here.

Of course, the opening shot is of Ian MacKaye talking. Without meaning this as any form of sarcasm or complaint, is there anyone in the punk scene who is represented on indie documentaries about the genre as much as Ian? After all, he was the one who started the whole Straight-Edge movement (though he did not invent the symbol of the X on the hand) that became somewhat of a preachy religion to some. And the fact that he’s this present so many decades later just proves how much he has injected into the movement.

The second person to talk is Henry Rollins. Henry, one might say, left his band SOA and joined one that was arguably bigger than Fugazi ever became, namely Black Flag. Flag had an influence on the world, but MacKaye was definitely – and rightly so – king of his kingdom, the land known as DC. Whereas Black Flag spread a sound, MacKaye spread a philosophy.

The growth of DC hardcore was nothing less than ferocious, with Little Ronnie Reagan right there, in a town mixed with rich government overlords and extreme poverty. This split personality was a societal PTSD with a beltway around it. Generally speaking, you could get depressed or you could get angry. Punk in that town went down the road towards the latter, with Doc Martins and spiked hair.

It’s no secret that the home base for Third Wave in DC is the 9:30 Club. Every town had it, be it CBGB, the Rat, or the Mabuhay Garden. In DC, it was the womb that launched a hundred bands that would have a ripple effect on every other club in every other town, even the older, more established ones.

The film is broken up into segments, each of which covers a topic or two. This is extremely well handled, as are the interviews. Yes, talking heads, but even when it’s the same person discussing her or her view, sometimes you can tell it was done over time as you can see them in different settings. Mixing in with this is some of the best hardcore photos I’ve seen, mostly in crisp black and white, and music clips that ranged from clear to pre-camcorder fuzzy, of bands and fans in action.

Let’s talk about some of the guest interviewees. There are the likes of Thurston Moore (known for Sonic Youth, but before then he was in the Coachmen, and I do believe that FFanzeen was the first ‘zine ever to publish anything about Moore; but I brag and digress…), Fred Armisen (the actor/comedian from Chicago was also in the band Trenchmouth), J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. , Tim Kerr (Big Boys, from Austin), and arguably the almost as omnipresent Dave Grohl, who was in the early DC scene and in the local band Scream. For once his stories didn’t sound like Whocares to me. And what, no Keith Morris, who is also usually on these types of documentaries?

Punk scenes that last long enough seem to follow a similar trajectory. A group of people start playing at a bar or a new space and an insular crowd with camaraderie forms. Everyone knows each other, bands respect each other (even with some rivalry), and everyone gets picked on by the local jocks and cops. Time passes and the scene starts to get popular, and the very jocks that were doing the jumping are now doing the moshing, and being violent inside the club. People get fed up and stop coming. The scene disintegrates. On some level, that fits DC as well, even though it splintered in the early 1990s, rather than disappeared.

The scene starts with the likes of the surf-inspired Insect Surfers (saw them play Hurrahs), the pop-rock Tru Fax and the Insaniacs (both these bands not mentioned in the DVD) and the garage-laced Slickee Boys (I saw them play twice at CBGBs and was a fan), and becomes the balls out Bad Brains. The BB left early on in 1980 to move to NYC, but they were adults by then. So the kids start forming their own bands, like Gray Matter (their drummer, Dante Ferrando, was amazing), Iron Cross and especially Teen Idles, began to rise.

The latter, with Ian MacKaye, didn’t last long, but they were the first to release a DIY single in the area. After they broke up, MacKaye formed the more iconic Minor Youth. It was here he started the record company that would define the scene, Dischord Records. Soon touring bands from DC would find gigs on just the strength of having a Dischord release.

This is the first section of the film. Another part discusses the violence coming from outside the close-knit group, from Georgetown College boys in Mustangs who would gang up on punkers. Henry Rollins tells a great story of how a group of punks used Alec MacKaye (Ian’s younger brother) for bait to catch the guys who were doing the beating to return the favor. They needed to take actions into their own hands due to a police force ambivalent to their needs. This would be mirrored in a later section on how moshing turned into performed behavior independent of music (I’ve seen this too, where the music playing was not as important as the stage diving; it could have been Andy Williams and gotten the same action), which turned into violence as the pit became the eye of the storm of the elbows and knees of skinheads and “Drunk Punks.” This led to gay bashing. Some started DIY self-promoted shows to limit this vehemence. MacKaye, again wisely, says he realized that the music they were playing and its subject matter are partially to blame because, as he put it, “Violence begets violence.” This led to his forming the less ferocious yet equally energetic (and nationally popular) Fugazi.

You really can’t discuss the DC scene without detailing the whole Straight Edge movement started by Ian, with the black “X” on the hands. While this is a quasi-zealous group, it did have at least two important results: it lead to the All Ages shows, which opened up a whole new, younger fan market, and (b) created a backlash that sometimes broke the scene into two defiant schisms, and bands would fall on either side; e.g., Black Market Baby came out as anti-SE, calling their counter-movement Bent Edge. The legacy of that lives on: when I wrote a blog on how I imbibe just a tiny bit and called the piece “OnBeing Straight Edge, Kinda Sorta,” l had some interesting responses blasting me for not being all in; this was in 2008.

While even the director of this film, Scott Crawford, becomes part of the story as he discusses his own introduction to the scene at age 12, and also fanzines, including his own Metrozine. There is a short, interesting segment on Go-Go, a black music scene that was incorporated into the punk catalog, much as earlier British punk celebrated reggae. As MacKaye succinctly puts it, you would find punks at Go-Go shows, but no Go-Go fans at punk shows.

The more interesting and intersecting segments to me dealt with social issues, including Misogyny (the “boys club,” dismissed by one dude as “we were young”) toward the female musicians who explain what it was like. Also there was the political and social upheaval as DC became the “murder capital of the U.S.” and the mayor, Marion Berry [d. 2014] was caught on camera smoking crack (sound familiar, Toronto? DC beat you to it!). One of the results of this, in 1985, was the formation of Mark Anderson’s Positive Force organization, that booked shows and held fundraisers for various causes (poverty, end animal cruelty, etc.). They were (and are, after three decades) a bit preachy, but a definite positive influence in the region. There is a documentary about / by them called Positive Force: More Than a Witness – 30 Years of Punk Politics in Action.

The extras include 14 “Extended Interviews” (aka deleted scenes), and 10 full live song performances (each averaging around two minutes) from the likes of Fugazi, Government Issue, Gray Matter, and Marginal Man (acknowledged as the first Emocore band, coined by Brian Baker of Dag Nasty), and others.

Representing the scene is more than thirty people interviewed, including musicians, photographers, fans (titled “Scenesters,” I term I often use), fanzine editors, and organizers. It’s an excellent oral history of the period. Mix in all the stills and films, plus some interesting graphics, it’s well-edited together and gives a well-rounded view of what was going on during the 1980s in the Capitol’s punk capitol.

 

DVD Review: Circle Jerks – My Career as a Jerk

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015
Images from the Internet

Circle Jerks – My Career as a Jerk

Photographed, edited and directed by David Markey
MVD Visuals
96 minutes, 2012       
www.wegotpowerfilms.com   
www.mvdvisual.com

The one time I saw the Left Coast SoCal hardcore Circle Jerks, it was at Irving Plaza in the mid-1980s, and if I remember correctly, they opened for the Dickies (rather than the other way around). There were more bands, but for many reasons, none of them pharmaceutical-, herbal- or alcohol-related, my memory of the night is quite fuzzy. As was my tendency, I started off standing by the stage, but very quickly I learned that was not a smart thing, as slamming had become more than just moshing. This was when the transition from jocks hating punks to jocks joining punks, so they can smash, crash and bash anyone and everyone. Yes, I was and remain a wuss about this mostly masculinist (especially at that point in hardcore history) activity, but I still have my teeth, so it was worth it.

By the end of the first song of the opening band, I was waaaay in the back near the bar, a place I had successfully avoided at the joint for most of the times I was there. Even the balcony was a ruckus of flinging bodies, so I just listened to the music without being able to see the stage, and enjoyed the noise. What I do remember is the distorted sounds over the PA. This was quite a different audience than when Eddie & the Hot Rods played at Max’s a few years before, and was annoyed that those in attendance just sat there, like there was anywhere else to go in that confined space, eh wot?

Also, I remember safely seeing the Jerks do a few songs on a special “punk” version of Rock Palace in 1985 (see clip below), sharing a bill with the likes of Rank and File. I still have it on VHS somewhere, which I taped off the telly.

Yes, I have their first three albums, and enjoyed them – though honestly I was more of a Descendants fan back then – but the Circle Jerks definitely had an appeal. They certainly had one of the best logos around, a drawing of a hardcore kid skanking, possibly only outdone by Black Flag’s four black bars. The irony, of course, is that the lead singer of the Circle Jerks, Keith Morris, started his life as the singer of BFlag. With the nearly infant guitarist from Red Cross (soon to be renamed Redd Kross), Greg Hetson, joined with drummer Lucky Lehrer and a series of bassists – most notably Zander Schloss (who appeared in both Repo Man [1984] and the Ramones’ “Something to Believe In” video) – they were on their way in the early days of Hermosa Beach’s infamous scene.

Using a somewhat standard formula, director David Markey gives us a mixture of present-day interviews with some of the key players; at this point, it seems like dreadlocked Keith Morris will let himself be interviewed in just about anything, as I see him in so many music documentaries about the ‘80s. There is also some exciting live clips, and tons of interesting information. Happily, while the violence in the early hardcore scene escalated by the police and fire departments in California is mentioned a little bit, they don’t swim in it, which is fine because it’s been covered so many times.

What Markey does instead is to focus on the band itself, discussing the flow of  successes and failures, tensions within the band over songs, people coming and going so quickly, good musicianship drummers Chuck Biscuits and Lerher over some guy who replaced him  who Morris truthfully posits, “[Lerher] was replaced with a guy who played drums.”

Of course, it’s the anecdotes that make any of these kinds of documentaries, and people like Henry Rollins (who will also appear in any documentary music-related), Flea from the overrated Red Hot Chili Peppers who was in the band very shortly (there is  a clip of him playing a show), Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis, and Lisa Fancher, who ran the infamous Frontier Records, among others including other band members, flush out the stories from third parties. One interesting comment is that even though Rollins replaced Morris in BFlag, he still has respect for the Jerks as musicians, claiming in their own way they were better than his home-town Bad Brains. One thing that is missing, I am happy to say, is the music critics and writers to discuss their historical importance. I’d much rather hear it from the band themselves, and those that were there.

After a semi-disastrous turn towards mainstream – and I say this for the quality of the work, not the “sell-out” fantasy – by signing to Mercury Records, the Jerks began the very slow melt into the inevitable darkness of dissolving. One thing that often gets mocked about the band that I’ve heard in real life was when Debbie Gibson sang with them, but to tell you the truth, that made her more interesting (okay, just interesting) than putting anything on the band.  For me, it was their stage dive into more “rock” (as Morris puts it) and dreams of the Nirvana bandwagon fame and wealth that put the final nail in, years before the relative final curtain.

The last third of the story by the Jerks is sad¸ including death, resentment and fading away with the occasional reunion show, such as the one shown in 2009, outside of North America.

It’s kind of telling that with all the interviews with several of the Jerks, some obviously done at different times (no historical discussions, all done recently with rearview mirror memoirs), nearly all of the conversations are in single rooms, and not once do you see any of the other members occupy any of the same space at the same time. One of the things I liked about the story of the Cockney Rejects, East End Babylon (reviewed ‘ere), is that you see some of the band interacting, often walking around the area they grew up. In this one, you see almost nothing of Hermosa Beach or the area, other than a couple of quick shots such as Morris standing on the block where he grew up. Photos and videos of the past are good, but they a difficult to get a peripheral feel of perspective.

Usually, over an hour and a half is quite a bit long for this kind of oral history, when dealing with a single group (in my opinion), but Markey wisely not only uses many clips of the band playing in its many stages, he also either shows entire songs, or much of them. I find it a bit of an annoyance when you see a 25 second or so clip; just as you start getting the song and the direction it’s either coming from or going, it’s over. Here, you get a better picture, and if that means a longer-length documentary, then it’s worth it. That is especially true if the band was as interesting as the Jerks. If this was a documentary about, say, Maroon 5, complete songs would probably drive me bonkers (Levine has a decent voice, but the music is awful, and the productions are worse, but I digress…).

Extras include some deleted scenes and 30-minutes of some very interesting additional interviews, including one of Rollins talking about being on tour being a roadie with the Teen Idles and seeing steel-tip boots, moshing and stagediving for the first time at a Circle Jerks show in San Fran, and then bringing it back to the East Coast, where it was very quickly adopted.

 

DVD Review: Dinosaur Jr., BUG, Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2013
Images from the Internet

Dinosaur Jr. Bug, Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans
Directed by Dave Markey
MVD Visual
106 minutes, 2012
www.dinosaurjr.com
www.MVDvisual.com

The 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, is a fantastic place for the reunion of Dinosaur Jr., and for them to play out their entire 38-minute classic noise punk 1988 release, Bug. The club was to DC what CBGB and the Rat were to New York and Boston, respectively.

For the second title released as In the Hands of the Fans (the first being the Stooges doing Raw Power), the band started out as Dinosaur, and then had to add Jr. to it because the name was already taken by some L.A. classic rocker “superband” that lasted for five minutes, step on the same stage. This is remarkable for a number of reasons, two of which are the length of time from the last performance to this mini-tour, and that this band has quite the combative history of infighting of the Who proportions.

The problem with them, as trio of humans, is that they are all hyper-talented perfectionists, with their own vision of what that entails. Needless to say, there have been some classic and highly-publicized intraband clashes. Plus, being prima donnas didn’t help, either.

Getting back to the story behind the series, through an online contest (via YouTube), fans were asked to send in videos of why they should be the chosen ones to film the concert. Six were selected, and we are introduced to them (all male) before the start of the performance part. Before the show, each is given a placed to stand and a camera. Then all the film is edited together in a coherent full concert.

As a band, they are infamously loud. For example, even in a club the size of the 9:30, there is a stack of 6 Marshall Amps alone behind vocalist / guitarist J Mascis, and another stack behind bassist Lou Barlow. And yet drummer Murph holds his own against this wall of noise.

The band is often lumped into either the hardcore bands on SST (who released much of their material), or compared to the alternative scene of Nirvana and the rest of the Northwest. This is actually inaccurate. It could be more precise to posit that they are part of the missing link between those two scenes; their sound is quite chaotic, with crashing instrumentals, and Mascis’s less than pretty voice (never mind on key), bred in the hardcore scene, but they also have a sense of melody, structure and a heavy reliance on guitar, as much of the Northwest discipline did, with the likes of Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and yes, Nirvana.

With the strong reliance on classic/heavy rock, through the use of long guitar solos that had been abhorrent to the hardcore scene before it, the new breed of SST artists like DJr stretched in new ways by bringing back some of the old. Their shows, as evidenced here, were not necessarily full of jumping around… okay, Barlow shows he can move onstage, but Mascis is sturdy as a rock, and I do not say this in a disparagingly way. It’s hard to read him, with his long (now nearly white) hair hiding his face to the audience and cameras, his voice is of a thin range so there is not much that can be read into his vocal emoting. But he is the both rock and the hard place when it comes to playing his instrument, which is does with flair, even when he’s wailing.

Bug was a big release for the band, going to No. 1 in the UK in the indie charts. And yet, in his curmudgeonly way, Mascis has stated quite clearly in the past that this was his least favorite album (perhaps because it was most popular, going against punk ethics?). It is one of the more, well, commercial (relatively) of DJr’s albums, with a definite melody line amid the thrash, and recognizable chord progressions, even if the lyrics get lost in the translation. Mascis has been called monotone, and I don’t necessarily buy into that, but I would agree with the mumbles part. And since I listen to the LP every once in a while but not enough to know it well, I am not sure about the overall content / intent.

Despite the ravages of time and discordant behavior within the band, they remain tight as a trio, familiar enough with each other’s moves and licks to be in sync, at least musically. In part because of this, Bug remains a stalwart and influential record, and it’s as stunning live now as it was on vinyl (you heard me) then. Unlike the Stooges show which played the album out of order mixed with other tunes, DJr stick to the LP, and in same order.

For the final song on the album, “Don’t,” which is the only track on Bug that Barlow was permitted to sing, they bring up a guest vocalist from the audience (one of the video winners?) to scream out the oft repeated lyrics, ”Why?! Why don’t you like me?!” This may be Barlow’s protest, by saying, “You want me to sing only one tune, then fuck you, someone else can do it for me.” Or perhaps it’s a way to connect with the audience via participation (or both). With Mascis’s wild post-hardcore guitar screeching solo over Barlow and Murph’s rhythm pounding, this long piece really epitomizes the sound that followed the original basic structure of the start of punk’s Third Wave.

An interesting aspect about watching the band is that even though their sound melds so well, they could all be in separate rooms for all the physical interaction. There isn’t really much in the way of eye contact. Mascis basically looks down at his guitar when he’s not at the mic, Barlow bounces around in that hardcore back and forth motion, and Murph, well, drummers need to concentrate on the tempo. There is a b-roll shot of them talking in the back alley during the credits, probably before the show, but how much of that is staged I couldn’t guess.

The six fans do a mostly great job capturing the band, and the editing is superb at not doing that 2-second cut that MTV pioneered and has annoyingly been used to death. True, most of the cameras seem to be focused on Mascis, and I would have liked to have seen more of Barlow’s work, as he’s more interesting to watch onstage, but I understand the “lead” gets the largest draw of attention, even if unintentional.

There are lots of extras for this release, so let’s get on with it. First one up is called “On Stage Interview with Henry Rollins.” The Black Flag fronter / writer / poet / actor / etc. is a self-professed “XL Dinosaur Jr. fan.” He also mentions the opening-but-unseen-here band, Off!, which features ex-Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris (Rollins calls him the “best Black Flag vocalist bar none”; I would have liked to have seen that performance as well). He brings the band up on stage in front of the 9:30 audience while he conducts in questions. Topics include volume, evolvement of style, early career and records, touring, and general punk rawk.

For the “In the Hands of the Fans’” nearly 19-minute short, those who were chosen to film this show get to hang out backstage with DJr, and ask them questions, such as who is their favorite bands/influences, and who would they like to slam. The questions are kind of mundane, but the answers by the band are interesting if you want to know where they come from, musically speaking.

The rest of the shorts are bonus live footage of the songs “In a Jar” and “The Wagon” (9 min) from the same show (I’m guessing the encore), a co-interview with J and director Dave Markey, who is also known for 1991: The Year Punk Broke in1992 and Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (I have the original Desperate Teenage Runaways VHS) in 1986, and I am looking forward to seeing his latest on the Circle Jerks, My Career as a Jerk (8 min), and “Rollins on the 9:30 Club” history (3 min). Most of the extras were filmed in the alleyway behind the club, at least one during the soundcheck bleeding through.

There is no denying that together or individually, Dinosaur Jr. and Bug are among the most influential bands of its period, which I would group with the Minutemen and Husker Du, of music that took the simplistic hardcore scene and changed it into something else, much as the Beatles changed rock’n’roll with Sgt. Pepper’s. It then became something else, even if the genre title stayed the same.

I am hoping this series continues, and as a suggestion, how about Slade doing Stomp Your Hands and Clap Your Feet? Or Television doing Marquee Moon? Or…

Band:
J. Mascis: Vox / guitar
Lou Barlow: bass / vox
Murph: Drums

Set List:
Freak Scene
No Bones
They Always Come
Yeah We Know
Let It Ride
Pond Song
Budge
The Post
Don’t
Sludgefeast
Raisans

Bonus live footage:
In a Jar
The Wagon

DVD Introduction


Full VOD:
www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3D9Bvv_j0CThU

Book Review: PUNK LOVE by Susie J. Horgan

Text (c) Robert Barry Francos
Photos from Internet

"I cannot understate this: for many of us, those times, over twenty-five years ago, define who we are now."
- Henry Rollins, from the forward of Punk Love Punk Love, by Susie J. Horgan, with text by Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye and Alec MacKaye (Universe Publishing/Rizzoliusa.com, 2007)

It is stating the obvious that the DC scene was an important impetus to the national hardcore movement in the early 1980s, so we don't need to go there; let's move on.

Two of the prominent movers to arise (among others) out of the area were Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins. And yet, this book actually has its birth not in the clubs, but in a Haagen Dasz (screw the umlauts) ice cream shop. It was managed by Rollins and employed MacKaye, who was joined in 1980 by Georgetown student Horgan. They all became fast friends, and with the addition of Horgan's brand new 35mm, they bonded over black and white film.

As she was the only one with a camera that he knew, MacKaye asked her to take the cover shot for the picture sleeve of what would become both an iconic image and sound. It was for MacKaye's Teen Idles "Minor Disturbances" release that turned many tides (yes, I still have my copy).

Most of the shots in the book are of the mere six months that Horgan resided in the DC area, before moving on, but it was enough to capture some amazing shots of motion. Here are some thoughts of the book, and of my own personal refection...

The first part of the (mostly) photo-centric book is of Rollins & MacKaye fooling around in the ice cream store. Yeah, they are important to show the human side of the two of them, but honestly, well, I didn't care. Sure, on some historical level it is important to record this, but...well, whatever.

Horgan learned photography essentially the same way I did about three years earlier, by taking pictures of bands; for me the Ramones. Some shots of hers are amazing, and others are blurry messes, but in a good way - they show motion and passion, rather than being merely out of focus. Rollins states it correctly in the forward for both them and myself, when he says, "I see now that I was nothing but lucky. Right place, right time." I am always grateful for that.

I started taking photos as a memory trigger to remember bands I saw, as I was seeing so many; I almost always took pictures of all of the bands, not just the ones I liked. Over the years, I have noticed people taking pictures of their friends and their friends' bands, and ignoring anyone else. On some level this is true of Horgan, or it is at least in this book. Most shots are of either SOA (Rollins' group) or Minor Threat (MacKaye's). She slips in some of the other bands here an there, such as members of Government Issue, Red C, and Youth Brigade, but most are back- or frontstage, rather than performing, which I think is a loss. Happily there are some great shots of Harley Flanagan, of the Stimulators, pounding some drums. One thing that Horgan did that I certainly did not and that I regret, is take pictures of the audience. In the mid-'70s, the New York scenesters (including myself), basically either sat at tables or bounced our heads to the music, but almost never danced (we were too cool, which annoyed many a visiting group), so there wasn't much to shoot. It wasn't until the advent of hardcore that the audience really began to become more of a focal point, which Horgan does an excellent job of capturing. What is amusing is that in some shots, it just so captures that moment in time, especially the shot of the kids sitting on the steps of the Wilson Center (check the hair on the guys in front); but in other shots, especially the of the pit, it could be taken from any point in time since...though it is noteworthy that there is not one trademark or branded piece of clothing among the bunch, something that has sadly been lost.

The reason Horgan took that famous photo of the Minor Disturbances cover is because she was the only one he knew that had a camera. He automatically assumed she was a pro. Back then, if one had a camera, it was only film, and it was mostly either a professional thing or, in my case, a devoted amateur. Now, everyone has a camera and takes thousands of shots and culls the "good ones." Back then, one needed to get some skill and get it fast, because film was expensive, and developing even more so. Now, there are 50,000 photos of any band at any time; back then, it was hard to find the photos of beginning bands. Shit, I've got thousands of them. Again, right place-right time. Grateful.

In summary, though the focus of the book - pun intended - is pretty narrow on a select group of musicians in a very short period of time, but it is an important series that deserves the light of day (hey, there aren't too many pix of Rollins sans ink), and for that, I recommended this book, both for the images, and Rollins's and MacKaye's input. The most important element is that Horgan has heart because she has devotion to her subjects. And it shows in her work.