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Spring in Washington
Since first published in 1947, Spring in Washington has become a beloved classic of nature writing. It is now brought back into print, complete with the original drawings by Francis L. Jaques."As I reflect on the multitude of books published and read over the past thirty years, I can think of none to which I have returned more often and with more constant satisfaction than Louis Halle's Halle's Spring in Washington, a mixture of ornithology, international affairs, and reflections on the human scene, " wrote John W Nason in the American Scholar in 1961. "Written by a State Department official during World War II, it is an escape to the real world of nature and man. 'To snatch the passing moment and examine it for eternity is the noblest of occupations, ' writes Halle. He does so with quiet wisdom and originality. To read him is inevitably to share his passion."
In the form of a journal, the book takes the reader along on excursions through Washington and its environs -- the Tidal Basin, Rock Creek Park, and beyond -- to experience the rebirth of the season. To the movement of winds and skies, the migrations of birds, the budding of plants and trees, Mr. Halle brings a quick and observant eye. But more important, he brings an imagination that can evoke in the reader a new perception of the drama in the universe around him.
In the form of a journal, the book takes the reader along on excursions through Washington and its environs -- the Tidal Basin, Rock Creek Park, and beyond -- to experience the rebirth of the season. To the movement of winds and skies, the migrations of birds, the budding of plants and trees, Mr. Halle brings a quick and observant eye. But more important, he brings an imagination that can evoke in the reader a new perception of the drama in the universe around him.
- GenresNatureBirdsNonfiction
248 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1988
148 people want to read
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March 19, 2024
Spring is the time of year when one sees Washington, D.C., at its very best. The grey slush of a cold and wet Chesapeake winter is gone, and the brutal humidity of a D.C. summer – when everyone from Frederick to Dale City can be counted on to offer variants on the old cliché that “Washington was built on a swamp” – is still some weeks away. Local media outlets like The Washington Post, or WTOP radio, or The Washingtonian magazine, report on the profusion of the cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin as breathlessly as they might cover a major foreign-affairs crisis at other times.
Washington is, in short, a place of life and joy in the springtime; and that sense of life and joy was, in all likelihood, never more sorely needed than when Louis Halle, in the early 1940’s, made the observations of the region’s natural beauty that eventually became his 1947 book Spring in Washington.
Halle was a State Department employee, and he had seen how thousands of new federal employees swarmed into Washington with the entry of the United States of America into the Second World War. On December 7, 1941, the city that had been the center of government for an isolationist and determinedly neutral nation became a wartime capital; and the increase in the nation’s armed forces required comparable growth in the bureaucracy that would support the American war effort.
Books like David Brinkley’s Washington Goes to War have chronicled well the way in which, virtually overnight, the “sleepy Southern town” of Washington, D.C., became a fast-moving, bustling capital city where life-and-death decisions were being made on a daily basis. Photographs of the period show the classical symmetry of the National Mall marred by hurriedly built temporary office structures for federal workers. And movies of the time, like George Stevens’s 1943 comedy The More the Merrier with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, dramatize something that was common knowledge across the country during the World War II era – Washington at the time was a city so overcrowded that it was difficult even to find a place to live.
All the more important, therefore, that, as Roger Tory Peterson puts it in a foreword to this edition, “In the year the atomic age was born a young man on a bicycle appointed himself monitor of spring in the nation’s capital. Starting before sun-up each morning, he pedaled miles and saw much before his workday began at the offices of the State Department” (p. vii).
Focusing on sites that any Washingtonian could easily have accessed – Rock Creek Park, for example, or the Northern Virginia shoreline near National Airport – he sets down his observations meticulously, and at the same time with a certain element of poetry. On March 12, for instance, he records that, with unseasonably warm temperatures rising into the 80’s, “By the end of this week robins and mockingbirds were in full song all over the city. House sparrows and starlings were carrying bits of straw, the sparrows bedeviling one another noisily in the gutters” (p. 51).
A comparable measure of poetry can be found in Halle’s description of his enjoyment of his makeshift platform for observation of nature in one of Northern Virginia’s marshes:
From the spit an elevated plank catwalk extends across the marsh to the brink of an inlet, so that one walks like an angel, dry-shod and untouched, through the midst of the watery wilderness. This is the attribute of divinity, to be in the world but not of it. There is no floundering here. The red-winged blackbirds are beside themselves with curiosity and excitement at this visitation. They cling to the swaying reeds all about, clucking and whistling, take flight, hover, circle, and put down again, seizing the reeds with their feet and swinging on them. They whistle and cluck in sheer astonishment, hardly knowing whether to be alarmed. Men would behave the same, I think, if an angel stepped out on a cloud above their city. (pp. 99-101).
One senses the influence of Henry David Thoreau, and perhaps of Robert Frost, in Halle’s hymn of praise to Washington, D.C., in springtime. It is in that spirit that, mulling over the range of entertainment options available to a Washingtonian on an April evening in 1945 – “go to the movies, or a concert at Constitution Hall, or whatever is playing at the National Theater” – Halle suggests instead that one proceed instead to “the garage behind the Wardman Park Hotel, on Calvert Street”. There, every night, a vast swarm of swifts, “wandering out over the Shoreham Hotel and back again”, form “the shape…of a great wheel above the [garage’s] chimney” before “turning straight down into the opening of the chimney” as night falls. “Within a minute the sky is utterly drained of swifts, and the chorus of chippering has ceased. Good night!” (pp. 154-55). A good night indeed.
And because one of my favorite parts of the Washington area has always been the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, I was delighted to see that the C & O Canal plays a large part in Halle’s observations and reflections, as in this lovely and lyrical description:
“Where Seneca Creek (a little river in itself, flowing straight through a tunnel of big trees) empties at right angles into the Potomac, a summer bungalow colony has grown up as naturally as a colony of bees in a hollow tree. There are abandoned locks and a lockhouse here, and the canal, with its towpath, crosses the creek on a triple-arched stone bridge. The scene from the bridge presents a varied and pleasant view, looking down on the world. It embraces the colony of men moving about their affairs along both banks of the creek, beneath the overarching trees; and a community of swallows, barn and rough-winged. The swallows swarm in and out under the heavy stone arches, swerving below and shooting past with such deft celerity that the eye cannot follow. One could sit here happily all day, feet hanging over, watching life” (pp. 200-01).
For any nature lover – or, indeed, for anyone who knows and loves the city of Washington and its environs – this book is an absolute delight. Spring in Washington also benefits from the very fine illustrations by Francis L. Jaques; my favorite, on page 91, shows three migrating geese above the city. Far below, one can see the U.S. Capitol, the National Mall, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac River, Roosevelt Island, Memorial Bridge, Key Bridge, and L’Enfant’s ingenious pattern of intricately interlocking streets; but none of that seems to mean very much to the geese, who fly on serene, undisturbed.
Republished in 1988 as part of the Maryland Paperback Bookshelf series from the Johns Hopkins University Press, Spring in Washington provides a splendid testament to a wonderful time of year in a great city. For me as a Washington native, this book was a particularly rich reading experience; but whoever you are, and wherever you’re from, Spring in Washington may have you wanting to find your own way toward D.C., in some future March, April, or May.
Washington is, in short, a place of life and joy in the springtime; and that sense of life and joy was, in all likelihood, never more sorely needed than when Louis Halle, in the early 1940’s, made the observations of the region’s natural beauty that eventually became his 1947 book Spring in Washington.
Halle was a State Department employee, and he had seen how thousands of new federal employees swarmed into Washington with the entry of the United States of America into the Second World War. On December 7, 1941, the city that had been the center of government for an isolationist and determinedly neutral nation became a wartime capital; and the increase in the nation’s armed forces required comparable growth in the bureaucracy that would support the American war effort.
Books like David Brinkley’s Washington Goes to War have chronicled well the way in which, virtually overnight, the “sleepy Southern town” of Washington, D.C., became a fast-moving, bustling capital city where life-and-death decisions were being made on a daily basis. Photographs of the period show the classical symmetry of the National Mall marred by hurriedly built temporary office structures for federal workers. And movies of the time, like George Stevens’s 1943 comedy The More the Merrier with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, dramatize something that was common knowledge across the country during the World War II era – Washington at the time was a city so overcrowded that it was difficult even to find a place to live.
All the more important, therefore, that, as Roger Tory Peterson puts it in a foreword to this edition, “In the year the atomic age was born a young man on a bicycle appointed himself monitor of spring in the nation’s capital. Starting before sun-up each morning, he pedaled miles and saw much before his workday began at the offices of the State Department” (p. vii).
Focusing on sites that any Washingtonian could easily have accessed – Rock Creek Park, for example, or the Northern Virginia shoreline near National Airport – he sets down his observations meticulously, and at the same time with a certain element of poetry. On March 12, for instance, he records that, with unseasonably warm temperatures rising into the 80’s, “By the end of this week robins and mockingbirds were in full song all over the city. House sparrows and starlings were carrying bits of straw, the sparrows bedeviling one another noisily in the gutters” (p. 51).
A comparable measure of poetry can be found in Halle’s description of his enjoyment of his makeshift platform for observation of nature in one of Northern Virginia’s marshes:
From the spit an elevated plank catwalk extends across the marsh to the brink of an inlet, so that one walks like an angel, dry-shod and untouched, through the midst of the watery wilderness. This is the attribute of divinity, to be in the world but not of it. There is no floundering here. The red-winged blackbirds are beside themselves with curiosity and excitement at this visitation. They cling to the swaying reeds all about, clucking and whistling, take flight, hover, circle, and put down again, seizing the reeds with their feet and swinging on them. They whistle and cluck in sheer astonishment, hardly knowing whether to be alarmed. Men would behave the same, I think, if an angel stepped out on a cloud above their city. (pp. 99-101).
One senses the influence of Henry David Thoreau, and perhaps of Robert Frost, in Halle’s hymn of praise to Washington, D.C., in springtime. It is in that spirit that, mulling over the range of entertainment options available to a Washingtonian on an April evening in 1945 – “go to the movies, or a concert at Constitution Hall, or whatever is playing at the National Theater” – Halle suggests instead that one proceed instead to “the garage behind the Wardman Park Hotel, on Calvert Street”. There, every night, a vast swarm of swifts, “wandering out over the Shoreham Hotel and back again”, form “the shape…of a great wheel above the [garage’s] chimney” before “turning straight down into the opening of the chimney” as night falls. “Within a minute the sky is utterly drained of swifts, and the chorus of chippering has ceased. Good night!” (pp. 154-55). A good night indeed.
And because one of my favorite parts of the Washington area has always been the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, I was delighted to see that the C & O Canal plays a large part in Halle’s observations and reflections, as in this lovely and lyrical description:
“Where Seneca Creek (a little river in itself, flowing straight through a tunnel of big trees) empties at right angles into the Potomac, a summer bungalow colony has grown up as naturally as a colony of bees in a hollow tree. There are abandoned locks and a lockhouse here, and the canal, with its towpath, crosses the creek on a triple-arched stone bridge. The scene from the bridge presents a varied and pleasant view, looking down on the world. It embraces the colony of men moving about their affairs along both banks of the creek, beneath the overarching trees; and a community of swallows, barn and rough-winged. The swallows swarm in and out under the heavy stone arches, swerving below and shooting past with such deft celerity that the eye cannot follow. One could sit here happily all day, feet hanging over, watching life” (pp. 200-01).
For any nature lover – or, indeed, for anyone who knows and loves the city of Washington and its environs – this book is an absolute delight. Spring in Washington also benefits from the very fine illustrations by Francis L. Jaques; my favorite, on page 91, shows three migrating geese above the city. Far below, one can see the U.S. Capitol, the National Mall, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac River, Roosevelt Island, Memorial Bridge, Key Bridge, and L’Enfant’s ingenious pattern of intricately interlocking streets; but none of that seems to mean very much to the geese, who fly on serene, undisturbed.
Republished in 1988 as part of the Maryland Paperback Bookshelf series from the Johns Hopkins University Press, Spring in Washington provides a splendid testament to a wonderful time of year in a great city. For me as a Washington native, this book was a particularly rich reading experience; but whoever you are, and wherever you’re from, Spring in Washington may have you wanting to find your own way toward D.C., in some future March, April, or May.
April 30, 2013
I'm not much for books on birds, but I was pretty interested in the DC bird habitats Halle describes: they are still around today. Of course, this book is not just about birds: there is a certain amount of preaching, and some of it is pretty annoying. Halle says that humans and bees come from the same piece of "protoplasmic slime", and that's why humans and bees hang out in hives. Halle is pretty down on humankind.
I thought that this was a book written by an old misanthrope, and was amazed to find out Halle was only 35 years old at the time of its publication in 1947. He later became an international policy guru, who wrote economics and political treatises...not nature books. Definitely part of the hive.
The book is at its best when Halle is talking about birds, though I'll admit there's some interesting philosophy. He argues that there must be evil in the world for man to appreciate the good. And heaven won't be very pleasant unless one must spend one day a week in hell.
But don't get me wrong: this book is mostly about birds. But for all my careful reading, I still can't distinguish a manganser from a wood duck, and I'll never be able to identify any bird songs.
The drawings are quite charming.
I thought that this was a book written by an old misanthrope, and was amazed to find out Halle was only 35 years old at the time of its publication in 1947. He later became an international policy guru, who wrote economics and political treatises...not nature books. Definitely part of the hive.
The book is at its best when Halle is talking about birds, though I'll admit there's some interesting philosophy. He argues that there must be evil in the world for man to appreciate the good. And heaven won't be very pleasant unless one must spend one day a week in hell.
But don't get me wrong: this book is mostly about birds. But for all my careful reading, I still can't distinguish a manganser from a wood duck, and I'll never be able to identify any bird songs.
The drawings are quite charming.
April 9, 2012
Louis Halle's Spring in Washington is a very fine book for a spring day, whether one is in the Nation's Capital or anywhere else. Halle, working for the federal government in the spring of 1945, as World War II was lurching toward its bloody conclusion, regularly left the bureaucratic mazes of wartime Washington, D.C., and found a treasure trove of nature's beauty in Rock Creek Park and along the Northern Virginia shore of the Potomac River. He was an avid birder, and birders are particularly likely to enjoy this book. The hand-drawn illustrations complement the gentle, low-key quality of the book. To be sure, much has changed in the Washington area since 1945; the "sleepy Southern town" that historians of Washington love to talk about is long-gone, replaced by a burgeoning metropolitan area that is among America's largest. Nonetheless, it is still true that around Washington, D.C., as in the vicinity of other great cities of the United States today, there is still a wealth of natural beauty out there, if one only takes the time to look.
June 11, 2025
Nature writing and travel writing overlap in many ways: the centrality of the author’s lived experience, the balance of specific and general observations or histories, and, in the best examples, the opportunity to transcend the moment and provide real insight into the human experience. The key distinction between the two genres, in my mind, is that nature writing deeply inhabits a place and conveys a sense of rootedness. The travel writer is a guest, while the nature writer is a host. Halle is an enthusiastic host, eager to share what he has seen and learned, the good and bad, with his reader.
I won’t give a synopsis here (#halfassedreview, as with all my reviews), but I’ll say that Halle deserves a place in the upper reaches of nature writers, with Abbey and MacFarlane, if not quite with Dillard and Leopold. I may be slightly biased because of my long association with the places Halle visits and describes in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, but that bias is mostly neutralized by my lack of birding experience or enthusiasm. (You could say this is a book for birders, but that risks turning away the deserved broader audience.) Halle well exemplifies those qualities of nature writing I described above. The book is clearly based on a daily journal, and his thick descriptions of weather, plants, and, yes, birds, build a nuanced and complex picture of spring. He shifts cleanly to the more general, describing natural history or social trends. He also provides those moments of transcendent(al) philosophizing, frequently critiquing our human superpower of ignoring our place in the universe when immersed in daily drudgery. Throughout, the writing is clear and beautiful, if wordy and allusive in an early 20th century way.
It's that philosophizing though where my main critique arises. In short, he's frequently deeply judgemental and remarkably self-centered for someone so attuned to the natural world. In this he's again in the company of Thoreau, Abbey, and other nature writers, who like the Lorax decide to speak for the trees at the expense of the people. It takes a large ego to call the mass of men quietly desperate; Halle adapts this in the metaphor of “the hive”, whose (human) residents are sense-dead drones. If you didn't know the historical importance of the year 1945 you'd not learn it in this book - which provides the context Abbey omits, namely that those hive residents were in the 4th year of prosecuting a world war, an occasion which might excuse missing some of the migratory birds overhead.
As a final note, Halle frequently frames nature as eternal and unchanging, destined to outlast humanity's brief impact. In the spring of 1945 this still might have been a sensible position, but by the time he wrote the book in the fall of 1945 mankind's ability to upset the natural order had been profoundly demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder what he would think of the fate of nature in a climate changed world.
I won’t give a synopsis here (#halfassedreview, as with all my reviews), but I’ll say that Halle deserves a place in the upper reaches of nature writers, with Abbey and MacFarlane, if not quite with Dillard and Leopold. I may be slightly biased because of my long association with the places Halle visits and describes in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, but that bias is mostly neutralized by my lack of birding experience or enthusiasm. (You could say this is a book for birders, but that risks turning away the deserved broader audience.) Halle well exemplifies those qualities of nature writing I described above. The book is clearly based on a daily journal, and his thick descriptions of weather, plants, and, yes, birds, build a nuanced and complex picture of spring. He shifts cleanly to the more general, describing natural history or social trends. He also provides those moments of transcendent(al) philosophizing, frequently critiquing our human superpower of ignoring our place in the universe when immersed in daily drudgery. Throughout, the writing is clear and beautiful, if wordy and allusive in an early 20th century way.
It's that philosophizing though where my main critique arises. In short, he's frequently deeply judgemental and remarkably self-centered for someone so attuned to the natural world. In this he's again in the company of Thoreau, Abbey, and other nature writers, who like the Lorax decide to speak for the trees at the expense of the people. It takes a large ego to call the mass of men quietly desperate; Halle adapts this in the metaphor of “the hive”, whose (human) residents are sense-dead drones. If you didn't know the historical importance of the year 1945 you'd not learn it in this book - which provides the context Abbey omits, namely that those hive residents were in the 4th year of prosecuting a world war, an occasion which might excuse missing some of the migratory birds overhead.
As a final note, Halle frequently frames nature as eternal and unchanging, destined to outlast humanity's brief impact. In the spring of 1945 this still might have been a sensible position, but by the time he wrote the book in the fall of 1945 mankind's ability to upset the natural order had been profoundly demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder what he would think of the fate of nature in a climate changed world.
May 16, 2021
I love this book so much. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before as a classic of nature writing-- I only learned about it thanks to a Washington Post article about the best books set in D.C. Written in 1945 by a State Department employee who was far more a fan of nature than of his job, Halle's reflections and close reading of the subtle day-to-day changes in the natural world surrounding him feel as relevant today as they were 75 years ago. His daily morning explorations by bike and foot in DC, Northern Virginia, and Maryland made me see this region through refreshed eyes, and I plan to reread this during many future springs.
He does focus a lot on birds-- they are signals of change that surround us everywhere, so having some interest in them will add extra enjoyment, but I don't think that a close familiarity with birds or the DC area is required to gain something from reading this-- like so many other nature classics, it's specific to a place, but the lessons apply to anywhere in the world.
He does focus a lot on birds-- they are signals of change that surround us everywhere, so having some interest in them will add extra enjoyment, but I don't think that a close familiarity with birds or the DC area is required to gain something from reading this-- like so many other nature classics, it's specific to a place, but the lessons apply to anywhere in the world.
October 15, 2022
I bought this book in 1988. This is probably my 2nd or 3rd time of reading it. This book is everything you ever wanted to know about birds in and around Washington, D.C. in the Spring. Louis J. Halle wrote this book about birds in particular during the Spring of 1947. He and a friend rode their bicycles around the area, primarily in the early morning, to observe wintering birds, but also migrating birds that come into the area. He is a keen observer and listener to the songs of the birds. How he can distinguish between warblers is amazing to me. There are so many different ones as well as wrens. If you are a lover of all things about birds and their habits this is the book for you. The author is a lover of the birds, trees, and flowers. The author has written this book, so that everyone can love birds, especially in the Spring.
March 22, 2024
Never seen the term somnambulistic used ever in my literary journey, let along as many times as it is employed in this book. But enjoyed the championing that even people who work in govt (or aerospace defense) can be a naturalist on the levels of a career biologist.
Also crazy that he was writing about spring in Washington almost 80 years ago and seeing the many differences (such as no meadowlarks or bobwhites downtown) but also many of the things that still happen like clockwork (certain flora emerging around the same dates, etc).
Also crazy that he was writing about spring in Washington almost 80 years ago and seeing the many differences (such as no meadowlarks or bobwhites downtown) but also many of the things that still happen like clockwork (certain flora emerging around the same dates, etc).
April 26, 2021
(4.5) “The discovery of spring each year, after the winter’s hibernation, is like a rediscovery of the universe … knowledge of spring gives me the freedom of the world.” For Halle, who worked in the State Department, nature was an antidote to hours spent shuffling papers behind a desk. In this spring of 1945, there was plenty of wildfowl to see in central D.C. itself, but he also took long early morning bike rides along the Potomac or the C&O Canal, or in Rock Creek Park. From first migrant in February to last in June, he traces the spring mostly through the birds that he sees. More so than the specific observations of familiar places, though, I valued the philosophical outlook that makes Halle a forerunner of writers like Barry Lopez and Peter Matthiessen. He notes that those caught up in the rat race adapt the world to their comfort and convenience, prizing technology and manmade tidiness over natural wonders. By contrast, he feels he sees more clearly – literally as well as metaphorically – when he takes the long view of a landscape.
I marked so many passages of beautiful description. Halle had mastered the art of noticing. But he also sounds a premonitory note, one that was ahead of its time in the 1940s and needs heeding now more than ever: “When I see men able to pass by such a shining and miraculous thing as this Cape May warbler, the very distillate of life, and then marvel at the internal-combustion engine, I think we had all better make ourselves ready for another Flood.”
This was a lucky find at Hay Cinema Bookshop back in September. For me it was the ideal combination of thoughtful prose and vicarious travel, though I imagine it might not mean as much to those without a local connection. The black-and-white in-text illustrations by Francis L. Jaques are a particularly nice addition.
Originally published, with illustrations, on my blog, Bookish Beck.
I marked so many passages of beautiful description. Halle had mastered the art of noticing. But he also sounds a premonitory note, one that was ahead of its time in the 1940s and needs heeding now more than ever: “When I see men able to pass by such a shining and miraculous thing as this Cape May warbler, the very distillate of life, and then marvel at the internal-combustion engine, I think we had all better make ourselves ready for another Flood.”
This was a lucky find at Hay Cinema Bookshop back in September. For me it was the ideal combination of thoughtful prose and vicarious travel, though I imagine it might not mean as much to those without a local connection. The black-and-white in-text illustrations by Francis L. Jaques are a particularly nice addition.
Originally published, with illustrations, on my blog, Bookish Beck.
May 27, 2024
The book is mostly focused on birds, but is still a thoughtful reminder that there is plenty of nature even in the city.
October 17, 2024
Better titled "Birds of Spring in Washington," the book might have appealed more to non-Audobon members with broader descriptions of spring that included other plants and other animals. His philosophical maunderings can also become tedious at times.
Still, his energy shows through, and his descriptions can be beautiful. His discussions of turkey vultures and elm trees show that Washington has changed much more than we would like to acknowledge.
Amazingly, and appropriately, although the book is written in the spring of 1945, when DC was in a state of perpetual chaos chronicled by David Brinkley in Washington at War, Halle does not once bring up the word. The only hint is on April 12th when he mentions "the death of a leader" as an opportunity for time-off. Cool.
Still, his energy shows through, and his descriptions can be beautiful. His discussions of turkey vultures and elm trees show that Washington has changed much more than we would like to acknowledge.
Amazingly, and appropriately, although the book is written in the spring of 1945, when DC was in a state of perpetual chaos chronicled by David Brinkley in Washington at War, Halle does not once bring up the word. The only hint is on April 12th when he mentions "the death of a leader" as an opportunity for time-off. Cool.
June 25, 2014
Birding and nature in the Washington DC area in the late 1940's. Brought back many memories of my childhood. A delightful read.
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