Dr. Kiah
My name is Dr. Kiah Nyame.
Right now I'm working on my second book and I do my work around social, cultural, and multi-generational trauma, and being able to heal from that, what that takes. My first book, which I have some with me is, You Will Never Amount To Sh*t!: An Autoethnography of One Man's Journey From Trauma to Triumph. Now I'm working on living, with this—Hmm. I don't call it a disease I call it a—
Almeta
Trauma.
Dr. Kiah
Okay. Yeah. I call it a set of violence that we call cultural trauma. And no matter how, as a black man, no matter how hard you strive and move forward, you still never get the respect.
Almeta
And part of that respect is not having access to the young people, to people like you, who lived in northeast Rochester, who lived on Joseph Avenue, and saw it as a thriving community once.
Dr. Kiah
Yeah, I grew up in the Hanover Projects, which was seven buildings, and I do have a picture of it. I got a picture a couple years ago, so I know I got a picture on my phone.
It was compact and on top of each other. The things that you would expect when there's so many people together, rats, roaches, crime, different styles of living, the hustlers, the players, and the people who went to work every day. And we all gave respect to each other.
If an elder is heading into the building and on their way to their apartment, we get out the way no matter how tough we thought we were because that's the elder—and help her with whatever she's carrying and not ask for anything. If we find out you asked for anything, we're going to take you behind the building and beat you up.
Anthony Jordan Health Center started there, as well as, there was a little satellite of Action for a Better Community, which was also on Joseph Avenue—main building was on Joseph Avenue.
Almeta
Jim McCullough
Dr. Kiah
Then you come in with—yeah, Jim McCullough—then you come in with F.I.G.H.T. who built F.I.G.H.T. Village, which is on the Northeast side, diagonally across about a quarter of a mile from where Hanover projects was. And then F.I.G.H.T. square across town on West Main Street, done by Reverend Florence and his group of civil rights fighters who actually got the money to be able to build that. They still run the Central Church of God in Christ, which is across from the jail on Plymouth Avenue right now. His son is actually pastor now.
And we did what we needed to do for each other. It was a time where you would go downstairs or next door and borrow a cup of sugar, a cup of flour, to make ends meet.
I remember my great grandmother coming to visit and she wanted to care for everyone she's just passed by coming into the building. And we said, “Well, we don't have that much money.” She took a few dollars and went to the meat market and got some chicken backs and a bag of rice and everybody ate. Even people that wasn't thinking about eating, they ate. And to me, that was a miracle. To take a couple dollars and feed everyone.
So we did things like that. We cared for individuals both physically and intellectually. And there was a certain code, a certain look that the elders would give you, a certain thing that they would say that would put you back on track, that will let you know, “Hey, hey, hey, hey, you out of line right now.” And we kind of knew that without really being taught it, it was part of the structure. No matter what we did, no matter how many times we hung out on the roof and did what we did or whatever, the little gangs we had and all of that, those types of things, all of that was just to have the structure of what we now call family. Someone to support you, someone to care for you, someone to be there for you. And in spite of the harsh conditions and lack of resources, the inability to go to certain places, you couldn't walk down Joseph Avenue to a certain area. If you did, you had to have somebody with you. There were open air bakeries, and stores were open air where you put food, outside, things like that. I know, because I used to grab some and run, and that's how bad I was, that mom was trying to struggle and work.
I'm the second oldest out of seven. My oldest brother always lived with my grandmother, which was also on the Northeast side. And I went to foster care, not to tell my story—you have to buy the book for that—but, I, for about 20 some odd years, I had a mixed idea of why I went to foster care. I thought mom didn't want me no more and why my other brothers didn't go.
But the reality is I'm the second oldest, as I said earlier, and my other brothers weren't even born yet. But I carried that for some years. So it gave me permission to behave in the way I behaved. If I took something from mom, it's okay because she owed me, those types of thoughts on a narrative that was truly false.
I know now, that's my best friend. As a matter of fact, the only reason why I'm in Rochester, or back in Rochester, is to care for her.
Almeta
I remember when you came back.
Dr. Kiah
Yeah, because I'm the one that was crossed out, but I'm the one that made the levels of success that I have made. I turned from being the black sheep of the family to being the one that everybody wants to figure out, “How did he do that? He ain't that smart. He ain't just that,” or whatever. But the community was always one where we didn't have any, electronics and things like that where we could talk instantly, but you knew, if I got in trouble, say on Clinton Avenue, by the time I walked down Buchan Park, which is now Upper Falls Boulevard, and got to Hanover Houses, the elders knew what I had did. And they either talk to me, or slap me upside my head, or spank me on my butt. And this is all before I got home to get the real spanking. It was because we were all we had and we had to do what we needed to do together. There was no ideals of okay, I got mine, you get yours and I'm moving out now.
People, when they started to move out, they immediately began what they call a reunion.
Almeta
That's it
Dr. Kiah
And it still goes on now. In fact, some of the brothers that do it, I just saw a day before yesterday. They do a reunion and people come from out of town everywhere to celebrate our legacy.
It wasn't until the doors started opening and integration became prominent that we begin to dissipate as a community, because money and things appeared that we had made it somewhere else, which is actually a trap door. So we lost that wholesomeness. And the narrative, of course, when you're in a world that, you fed, everything's taken care of—your hierarchy of needs—and people are saying, “You're not like those folk people over there, although you look like them. You are a good one.” I still get that now when I'm introduced by some of my white friends. “Yeah, he's one of the good guys.” What do you mean? And I ask them that type of stuff. What do you mean, I'm one of the good guys? What makes me different from anybody else? Because I got some papers—y'all design a program to say that I must get this paper in order to do that. We were doing that long before you all figured out you were going to put it on paper. How do you think we survived?
And then everything is, as it is now, it's capitalized and it's about reaching a plateau of riches that are only reserved for a few and only reserved if you knock on the door in the correct manner. If you don't, they ain't letting you in, and I experience that today.
I don't know what to say besides that, if there was a mother with children, then that mother had ample handfuls of support. You know what I mean? People would even literally check on—like my mom was very private. Never wanted to get on welfare or anything like that because she didn't want them to know too much, and sometimes she just tried to make do with whatever, and it will be like a six cents. And they will come and knock, “How you doing what you need?” Or just hand a bag to her or whatever because she got these children. She's by herself, and they gather around and make sure that everybody's nurtured and everybody's cared for. That's a powerful piece that you can still find in some communities around the United States, but it's become a rarity. It's more like, we're taught to be individual.
When the melanin tells you, you can't be an individual you have to be, connected to someone and something. They tell us we don't have a single heritage, but at the same time, they say all people come from. Yeah, we do have a heritage that goes across all of us. But because we're not taught these things, we don't know, and I don't blame parents and grandparents. I know that, first of all, they taught us what they knew. And second, if it felt embarrassing or, I don't know, like a check mark on the family, then they didn't want to talk about it.
Almeta
Ashe.
Dr. Kiah
Those types of things. And that became the norm: getting up, going to work, bring home the money, get enough money to move away. Get out. Get out. Get out. But then you move out here where people don't want you in the first place. Trying to establish this American dream that's really a nightmare.
So that's the gist of it. If you have any questions, I will attempt to answer them to the best of my ability. I don't speak for everyone, I only speak for my experience.
I can remember playing out front one day. Used to call me the elevator boy and I loved it because I got dimes and nickels and stuff. Then all the girls liked me because I had money to go to the candy store. I come back with all the penny candy and stuff and I felt like king of the day. I rode folks up that elevator, boy. Rode folks down and all that. I even swept it sometimes like it was my job. I went on to shoe shining, then whatever we needed to do to put a few nickels together to help out the house, and to support people who were sick and things like that in our building. If it wasn't nothing but a bowl of grits and some fat back, we made sure they ate. That was important. Nobody needed to go lacking unless they just decided they don't want it. You can look like you're hungry, but you wasn't. People would feed you. You may not be able to stay in a certain place for an extended amount of time, but they open the door and let you stay. That's it. And some people slept in the hallways who were homeless, people would come out and check on 'em. Bring 'em water, or soda or whatever.
And to me all that's caring, all that's loving. It's just not in a little box as we're taught to put it in. That arena was powerful. We had Mr. Shaw. I can't think of his first name because it's been over 50 years, I was still about maybe eight, seven or eight, and I would hang out in the pool hall when I could sneak around and go in there. I was excited and it was exciting. Guys had on long shoes, shark skin suits. It just really looked great to me, right? Not knowing that some of those guys that had those long shoes, they wore out on the bottom. And Stacey Adams and things like that. But they was wore out on the bottom or they was leaning sideways. Little shark skin, had a hole up under the arm or something. But you didn't see all that. You just saw what you thought they represented and the messages that were being pushed in media and, the movies at the time with Super Fly, and the Mack, and Coffy, and all those things. And you imitated that because it looked like a step forward than where we were.
But the one thing that I can say is that, we had the unity that makes community. And if you was out of pocket, if you were wrong, everybody gonna get on you. Everywhere you look, it's almost like being banished. In some countries you can be banished, right? They'll tell you up and then they'll bring you a plate of food. And say, “You all right now?” So there was this expression of love even though you were wrong. “Yeah we're gonna make sure that you don't do that no more. But we're still gonna care for you like you're family.”
And that's what people did. I've ate with people I never knew their names. Never, and still don't. Never know what happened to them, whatever, as I continue to grow up. But I know that when in their dire need, or in the dire need of all of us, we were able to sit down and eat, and if it was nothing but the hallway, we had shelter.
You don't see that much anymore. Even in the complexes where people live, I have literally—because I do the trauma and all that—I literally ask some of my clients, “Who's your neighbor?” They don't know. Okay, this is the person that lives right next to you, that has another set of eyes, another nose, another mouth, that can support you. If something goes wrong and you don't even know their name, you walk by him in the hall and you give a perfunctory hello. That's not community. That's just some people living around each other. Community is about togetherness, support. No, you ain't got to be in their face every day. You don't got to go do chores for them or anything. You just say, “Hello. Good morning.”
Almeta
How are you?
Dr. Kiah
How are you?
Almeta
How you?
Dr. Kiah
And they mean it. They don't mean, “Oh yeah, I'm aight.” “Nah, that didn't sound right. Sit down boy. Let me hear what's going on.” They'll take that few minutes. As you well know, as being humans and being students now, that sometimes you just want somebody to shut up and listen, and they would do that, and most of the time we have the answers. Or they would give us—lead us to it—the answer we already had, because it was community, man.
I'm getting emotional because I'm really big on that. That's why Mark kept yelling because when I see him or any other guy, I ask him, “Yo, how you doing man? How's everything? How's the family? Everybody good?” I'm not just talking. I'm seriously asking because if I just try to be “What up” and keep stepping. So people that I come to know, I come to care about them because I still live in that vibe of community, even though I'm one that's been outside of the community a few times during my lifetime. Whether it was the foster care, or going to jail, or things like that, or just hiding. I hid about six blocks from my mom. Every blue car, I see, I duck because I knew I was doing wrong and I didn't want her to know what I was doing. I was embarrassed. But survival.
So I say all that to say that, the ideal of reaching the American dream, gains for the individual but it destroys the community, cause now I got this and you don't. So now I'm somewhere better. And that's really because collectively all we wanted was respect. That's really—right now, you may know or have heard of someone getting seriously hurt or even killed. And the person’s response is, “They dissed me.” Especially men, young men, because that's all you think you own. To literally become violent about that, in the moment, it's like you're taking the only thing I own and I can't allow you to do that. Hindsight, of course, it's like, well, I shouldn't have did that. I'm doing 20 years now or whatever. But, that was environment, and that's why we respected everybody because if we don't have that, we felt like we didn't have anything. Never mind there was no food in the refrigerator sometimes. You had to go down to, Amiel's or somewhere and get Bobos—get the Bobos, right? $2.99 and, what was the doggone store on North Street? Oh, I can't remember it.
Almeta
Yeah, that was North Street.
Dr. Kiah
Yeah, right there next to S & T's now. Yeah, arrows market. You would go there and you would buy your little Bobo sneakers. They got a stripe on them so they're gonna make you run all those things. Those things were like diamonds to us as kids because we didn't have—you wore the same shoes and things until they wore out. Cold, wet, rain, it didn't matter. The thing that I would hear from elders is you're lucky you got fit shoes on your feet. I would hear stories about them being in the south and walking miles barefoot, which holistically, that's a great thing to do, but we didn't know that. We just didn't have it. And then to come here and feel like we're doing so much better—you're not called the N-word all the time by the opposite, right? Any of those things, and you'll be able to have a home and raise your kids in community. That was a reprieve for us. It was a migration, and everybody from south practically went straight up. If they're from Louisiana, they're in Chicago, in Detroit. If they're from Carolina and Florida, they're up here or in New York City because we were trying to get away from the violence and the Crow, and all of that they're down there fighting to bring back.
I got a conference coming up this fall that we are dealing with the trauma of that. What's the trauma of your rights being taken away? As they're pushing—and I'm sure y'all, hopefully, y'all are keeping in touch with what's going on in our community. Behind the smiling faces and hearing what they're saying. Abortion is about us stopping making children, they need more because the vibe is changing in the United States. The voting rights, why would those of melanated be the only ones to have a time limit on how we can vote. Gotta go back and have it to the courts and have it—or Congress—and have it reinstated.
My book is banned in Florida and Texas. My book is not that bad. My mentor, Dr. Joy DeGruy's book is a motha.
Almeta
Thank you. And she is bad.
Dr. Kiah
It is banned plus, plus, plus.
Max-Yamil
What was her name again?
Dr. Kiah
Dr. Joy DeGruy. She wrote and created the theory, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. She's my mentor. She's always my keynote. So she'll be here in October. God willing.
Almeta
She comes here every year.
Dr. Kiah
Yeah I have a keynote every conference. Whether I have it in Georgia, I've done one in Alabama—wherever I've done it at, she's the keynote. Not only because she delivers the message that nobody said existed. When we first started, they said trauma wasn't—because you can't take a pill for it. It don't make no money. Of course, they're not going to try to teach you all that. But the other thing is that literally, after I was free from the life that I was living and I got clean, and I became a single dad to my two boys, and all of those things that you do as a human being, I didn't know what was stopping me.
And then to realize that I was traumatized, all the shootings I've seen, all the times I've been shot, all that traumatizes us and we don't deal with it. Tthen it goes on with us because it alters the DNA, especially in y'all females. Trauma, whether it's abuse or whatever it is, it will alter your DNA and when you have a child, your child is susceptible to the actions of that happening, and they wasn't even born. It's called epigenetics, look it up. Y'all are here discovering and understanding what community was like, I would submit to you that, yes, you start talking more about things like epigenetics, things like trauma. Some of you have experienced trauma in your own life, as part of your upbringing, didn't know what it was, thought it was regular because it's like it happened to everybody, but no. Those things are going to be important as we continue to grow and generations continue to come, simply because you can't prescribe a pill for it. All you can do is change it from generation to generation.
Almeta
And a big part of the change is talking about it.
Dr. Kiah
Y'all all we got. At the end of the day, when I leave here, that nice car I just drove up in, it's not going nowhere. You know what I mean? It's not going to my last resting place with me—clothes, whatever. But you all, because we had an interaction, will be doing some things in your own way, of making things better. And it can just start from your family. You don't have to go out and be a super advocate, all of that. You just be kind to yourself and be kind—love your shorties that hopefully you have family, and teach them to do that. You're breaking the cycle, and when you talk about historical events and things like that, you use words of enslaved. Because they ain't like they walked up and say, “Here's my ticket. I want to be here.” They were enslaved. That means the human did something to him. Trauma lasts longer, and it's more devastating when it's by human design.
So you can have a flood. You can say, “Oh, we had a flood in 2022. We got everything built up now. Let's go on with our life.” But when you have internal trauma, multi-generational trauma, socio-cultural trauma, it stays with you. It allows you to be fearful of certain things that relate to the trauma that you have. And only we can break it. We deal with ours and we pass the healing on to our kids, but we also pass the information. Because it can't be talking about, “I want our family to be whole and healthy,” and you don't tell them what they're trying to be whole and healthy from, as they do now. They just don't talk about it. No, it's our history. It's our American history. It is what it is. What are we going to do about it? That's the bottom line. So I hope I gave you something.
I appreciate it and I think it's a creator's will that I showed up when I showed up, that mark called me out. That can help you move forward with what you are doing.
Any questions?
Almeta
Any comments, questions?
...
Mark
Did you speak anything about Mildred Johnson?
Dr. Kiah
Oh, Mildred.
Mark
She was a Savior.
Dr. Kiah
I knew of her and I knew who she was, but I didn't get to really engage with her except for barbecues when she would be coming around.
She also brought, Malcolm X here, her and Reverend Florence. There's a nice portrait of them on the sidewall of East High School. If you ever go down Main Street, it was done a couple years ago. It's very beautiful. And most people had no idea, a lot of famous people have come through here that were in the civil rights movement, that were in the women's right movement. Of course, we know Susan B. Anthony House is here. These people, although they may have disagreed at times and may have been of different ethnic groups, they were all fighting for the betterment of something.
And it comes through here, just like the drugs. This is a mainstay. You can get to Canada. You can get to bath. Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, you can get to New York City. So this is a hub.
Almeta
It's a freedom, trail.
Dr. Kiah
So information came just like the hub. When they started having the war on drugs, they started instead of the people, they started sending drugs?
But yeah, Mildred Johnson. She did a lot for women's rights. She did a lot for housing. Take us out of this dilapidated housing and help us to realize some of this thing we call the American dream. There's a complex across town that's named after her.
You know, her son, I haven't seen him a couple years. I don't know if he's still around, Phil.
But there's a great history here, and you're right. There's a lot of stuff being taken out of our public library system. They're there. You just can't find them. Just like at U of R, where that main desk is, if you go by that row of books, that's by the main desk, there's a big room back there—archives. It looks like, I don't know if you ever seen an Alfred Hitchcock scary movie. This is like an old scary movie. One light bulb in a big old room, cobwebs and stuff. That's what it looked like. I found some of my information from my dissertation from there because I graduated from U of R, from Warner School. And somebody else told me about it, somebody out of Georgia, because they showed me the one in Georgia, and was like, you got one right there at U of R, and most universities have one. When these great scholars of other ethnic groups pass on, they go to the families, which many of them are in need, and they give them quarter million dollars, half a million dollars, whatever, to put these in the archives.
You think as a family, “Okay, my people's stuff is going where all the books go.” No, it's going in the back, never to be seen unless somebody specifically asks for it. Like you can't get in that room right now unless you ask for it. And when you ask the person that's working, they gotta go get their supervisor because a person who's working is usually a student. They don't even know. But that's the reality of it. They literally put it right up your sleeve while you're looking at them and tell you it ain't going on. It's something kind of like the political realm we're in right now.
Only other thing I'll say, man, is that we have to be real careful and vote, especially locally, but nationally too, because you hear these things going on in Florida, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Arizona, with these different things. Like for instance, if I said, she had an organization called Black Girls Rock, where she worked with black girls. They will put a lawsuit against her and say it's reverse racism. They're doing that now. That's how, affirmative action got overturned, which helped white women more because they had the access. So things like that are happening in these states. At the same time, they're trying to make the president, federal office, allow states to do what they did before the civil war. They make their own rules. So that means they're coming for you. LGBTQ+. They're literally hiring people to kill people or hurt them real bad. Put it on TV and say, “Well, a gang of thugs, anti this and that did this.” Then they disappear. They got their money and gone.
It's literally like, The Wizard of Oz. There's all this stuff going on, and there's this guy behind the curtain, but in this case, a bunch of guys, and ladies too, that are looking at this world like this belongs to them, the United States belongs to them, and, “You're not taking this from me,” type of thing.
So don't be fooled by what you learned in school. Always look for the additional answer because we gotta do what they want in order to qualify, in order to get our diploma, our degrees and all that. We have to do what they say, but at the same time, we can learn about what they don't say. And it makes you more powerful in whatever area you're in. Whether you're in a science, whether you're in anthropology, whether, in the soft sciences, the hard sciences, or whatever you're doing, it makes you just that much more informed as a human being just to serve.
Because that's all we do. In some capacity we serve. We could be making little trinkets, right? But obviously if there's a market for it, there's people that like it, that want it, so we make them to the best of our ability and we sell them. That's service, that's it. We just have to think dually. We can't be centered on, I gotta pass this exam. I gotta do this last paper. Do it. Give them everything they want. But, if you have conflict with some of it, get the research for that and add it in there. They're gonna question you or whatever, have the answers ready.
My dissertation was about discipline practices in African American families. What I did was wrap it up with the whippings and all of that, that they were doing on the plantation. That's where getting beat with extension cords and belts and switches and all that stuff came from because that's all they knew. You're talking about 12 to 13 generations. That's 4, 096 people. There are 12 generations ago that had to be alive for one you to show up. All you got to do is do the ancestry backwards. 12 generations, it's 4, 096 people. When we think about things from that view, you know that this is not about you. Yeah, your name is on it. You get to put it on your wall. You get to carry it and say, I'm going to do this, this is what my life is going to be about or whatever the case is. And if you change your mind, you're young enough to do that, cause I originally started off as a chef, cause my grandmother was a chef, and now I work in the trauma area. You do that, you get that additional information because you're going to have to treat her and me differently. Even though we're getting the same type of treatment, because our experiences are different. So you can't just say, “Okay, your nose running, this is what we do for nose running.” But, that stuff may make your ears bleed. You understand what I'm saying to you?
So we have to be thorough. We have to investigate. We have to always know there is another side. It's not popular, but we need to have the knowledge of it so that our work can be competent, and it's hard because we can just give up and say, “The hell with it. I got this degree in anthropology. I'm going to teach and that's it. And that's what I do every day. And I got my house. I got my car. I got my stacks and f you.” Or we can say, “You know what, I got my car, I got my degree, I got my stacks, I got my family, and I also belong to this community organization. Or I also make sure that my grass is cut and my neighbor who's elderly, I make sure her snow is plowed or her leaves are raked. And I just don't say nothing, I just do it. That's community. And nowadays they may say, “Hey, here's a couple of dollars,” or anything like that, but that's not why you're doing it. You're doing it because you live in a community.
So, I don't mean to lecture, but y'all asked me to come over. We need everything that y'all bring. Good, bad, or indifferent, we need it. This is the survival of us as a people.
Almeta
Ashe
Dr. Kiah
Believe that. And whatever you fit into, got all these boxes or whatever,I would encourage you to have your own box. That's one that you control. This is who I am. I like these things. I like doing those things. You might find them strange. Well, find other strange people that like doing them. Especially now that we on the internet, and create community that way. There's so many things that we can do that doesn't take a lot of effort. It's not a hard job. It's just part of what I do.
Like even being here with the old timers, I just had my second knee surgery—Nah, I'm going to be on my bicycle in a few weeks—I come over and they say, “Hey, we need a certain dish.” I go buy the stuff and make the dish. And if I can't stay, I just drop it off. “Nah, man. So what? No, y'all owe me nothing.” Because that's my contribution to the community. It's very simple. It's a very great way of being, man. And maybe that one person did—that other person got a smile from that day, might just be you.
And it's scary out here. Being you and being bold and being brass and living life to the best of your ability is our responsibility.
How many y'all walk on campus? How many y'all say hi to people first? Now, you notice a whole lot of people don't say nothing back, right? Sometimes, when I was on campus, I'd be saying in my head, “I know you heard me talking, how loud my voice is, nobody at you. I'm just saying hello.” But we have to understand how much damage is done. They can walk by you every day, sit in the same classroom, like I said about the neighbors, you don't even know their name.
Almeta
Never connect.
Dr. Kiah
Doesn't make sense. What happens if somebody break in your house? They looking, “I ain't see nothing and f them. If I saw something I wouldn't say nothing anyway. They don't speak to me.”
Almeta
I really appreciate this
Dr. Kiah
You're welcome.
Almeta
I'm speaking for all of us.
Dr. Kiah
Every time I run into you it is a gift to me. Every time you come out and you do something for one of our programs or you have a program going on, it's always a gift because if you can still get up and do it, God damn it, I can still get up and do it.
Almeta
Does anyone have anything that they want to ask or even comment?
Mandela
You and your siblings, were you close with them and what was it like growing up with them?
Dr. Kiah
I was the only one in and out. And I said I had a certain ideal for about 20 years, I didn’t get my high school diploma until I was 31 so you can imagine, that's 31 years, something was going on.
So my baby brother, who was born on the same day as my baby son, who was murdered a couple years ago, me and him are the closest ones. We have relationship with the others. You know what I mean? We're not close-close as I would like a family to be, but it's really how we was brought up. We was brought up pretty separate. My oldest brother, he always lived with my grandmother. It's very hard to have a deep relationship with him, and then he spent a lot of time in and out, in and out, in and out, things like that. I wish those things, but I have closer friends than I do my brothers.
But I haven't given up yet. I always try to do something, like usually I have a cookout and I invite them. My baby brother has the food trailer. So he'll bring that. We invite the community. We just enjoy each other the best we can. It's not like I would like it to be, but that's okay. It is what it is. We still got to do what we got to do. Making sure that we make a place for others after we transition. It's the most important thing. They talk about you, you're still alive. if they don't talk about you, your ass is just dead. And I don't want to be just dead. I want to be an influence to somebody, did something. And I'm sure you all want to do the same now that you really understand how important it is.