In 1351, on the banks of the Yellow River, in the hands of a few downtrodden laborers, history began to turn. Laurie Dennis’s fiction dredges up the vivid scenes and personages of the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Keep reading for a brief author interview and a critical essay.
The Work
Stirring the Yellow River
The eleventh year of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s “Correctness Attained” reign period, or 1351.
Mongol guards on horseback marched the laborers down from Huangling Ridge, north of the engorged Yellow River. The guards, dressed in leather armor with bows and arrow cases dangling from their waists, had to shout to be heard over the gusting spring winds as they herded the men into groups: the strongest were assigned to be diggers, the rest haulers. Han Shantong, a gaunt, serious-looking young man in threadbare indigo homespun, was placed in the silt haulers crew and handed a shoulder-pole with a wide basket hanging from each end. He peered at the rivulets of shallow water slithering below between silt and brambles.
“Will we be working in that?” murmured the man to his right.
“They say we will be clearing all the barriers and widening the channel, so that the Yellow River can be restored through here and the flooding can finally be contained,” said another.
Remove the islets and barriers? Widen the shoreline? Han Shantong’s heart pounded and he was consumed with one thought: “I will never get back home.”
Home was a three-day march to the north, in Yongnian, where the Han clan had formed a secret society. In such a time of natural disasters and moral decay, the society had proclaimed that the Maitreya Buddha, the longed for Buddha of the future, was likely to descend to launch a new era of sublime tranquility. When Han Shantong’s grandfather, the clan patriarch, died of old age, those who had not been invited into the society became emboldened, and reported the Han family’s activities to the authorities. Han Shantong’s father and uncles were all arrested. Government officials came to Yongnian with orders for a dreaded “special supplementary labor conscription,” and Han Shantong’s name was among the thousands assigned to a new river rechanneling project. He left behind his wife, their young son, and his clan’s dreams of how the Maitreya would transform the world.
The gold-flecked land will become fertile and clean, prickly brambles and evils will no longer be seen, the mountains and waters will be beautiful blues and greens.
Now each morning, Han joined the line of haulers sent single-file down the embankment into the muddy waters to collect shovelfuls of river silt from the digging crew. Guards waved the haulers back up the slope. Han and the others in his crew strained to balance their poles as they stepped carefully to the place where they could empty their baskets at the site of the new levee. This became the routine: sliding down the muddy embankment, balancing baskets for grunting diggers to fill, staggering up to the levee.
It rained every day, as if Heaven was mocking their efforts to tame the flow of water. At night, Han and the men around him tried in vain to clean the dirt from all the scrapes and cuts in their extremities. The wet conditions caused wounds to fester. In the worst cases, this led to gangrene, which had already killed one member of Han’s crew.
“I should not be here,” complained the man seated next to Han, wrapping strips of cloth around one of his calves to cover a gash. “It’s a mistake.”
Han had hardly spoken since arriving at Huangling and he did not reply to his companion, a stocky man with a calculating glance. They had just been assigned to the same bunk at the end of a sleeping platform, part of the endless reshuffling to accommodate new arrivals.
Han’s silence caused the man to look over at him.
“I should not be here either,” Han finally admitted with a shrug.
“Where are you from?”
“North of here.”
“Is that so?” Han’s bunk-mate waited for more and when it did not come he released his own story in a torrent. He was from Ying, south of the river, and his name was Liu Futong. His merchant family had never suffered the indignity of conscription, but his father’s gambling habit had burdened the Lius with debts.
“There was no money to pay for someone to represent our family when the conscription recruiters came to our town,” he said.
“Do you have children?” Han asked.
“No, no,” said Liu shaking his head. “We don’t have the money yet to arrange a marriage. What about you?”
“I have a son,” Han said. He smiled wistfully and his reticence briefly lifted. “He is very good at acrobatics – you should see how he can flip like a Monkey King even though he’s still a little boy.” But then Han’s voice broke. He slipped down on his bunk and pressed his face into the bamboo mat.
Hundreds of teams of men tackled the river sediment, starting with the buildup in the center of the channel, and working out to the shores. The days of dredging – heaving and sweating and grappling with a landscape of turbid browns and grays – caused the water level to rise. The abandoned riverbed surged menacingly back to life.
One evening, the haulers were sent to collect silt from an excavation team removing a bulge of shoreline sediment. The diggers stood knee-deep swinging their picks, hacking and sawing at the earth as the muddy water lapped dangerously at their legs.
“We will be swept away,” Han worried.
As if in reply, a chunk of silt broke free in one slice, causing the nearest digger to lose his footing and tumble into the churning water. Before Han or any of the others could reach for him, the man was disappearing downstream, his head bobbing, his screams swallowed up in the waves and wind.
The guard assigned to their team steered his horse closer to the shore and leaned from his saddle to track the lost conscript. But he quickly shook his head and turned to Han Shantong and the others. The guard pointed his whip and shouted for them to return to work.
Han sank steadily into despair, certain that he would never survive the hard labor, convinced that Heaven had forgotten him. Worst of all, he feared he would never again be able to see his wife or his son. Would that precious boy be his only child?
As Han tried to conjure his son’s face one muggy evening, the lilting sound of children singing drifted across the ridge and caught his attention:
When the stone man with one eye is found,
Stirring up the Yellow River will turn the world around.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered to Liu Futong as they marched back to the camp.
Liu glanced cautiously over to a group of children from Huangling village, singing and playing in the gravel piles beyond the new levee.
“The children’s song?” Liu asked, swatting at a fly. “It’s just nonsense words.”
“No, no. I’ve heard that tune before, but not those words.”
Han could barely contain his excitement as guards prodded the conscripts through the food line and dismissed them to their sleeping bunks. At last, in the pitch black amid the snores of the other conscripts, Han decided to confer with Liu. He needed to talk to someone, and felt he could trust his bunkmate, who Han had come to regard as worldly and reasonably intelligent.
“Stirring up the Yellow River will turn the world around,” Han repeated. “Don’t you see? The rhyme is a message to us from Heaven.”
“A message to us?”
“We’re disturbing the great river,” Han whispered. “It’s the final disorder that will herald the Maitreya, who will come down to right all wrongs. That is what is meant by ‘turn the world around.’ It’s the sign that I − that my whole clan − has been expecting. My grandfather taught us that the sign would come at the worst point, when we were all filled with despair. What could be worse than now?”
“But what about the one-eyed stone man?” Liu wondered.
“I’m not sure yet.”
Over the next several nights, Han and Liu continued to debate the meaning of the rhyme. Han decided the stone man must require a single eye so that his vision could see only Heaven’s intentions and nothing else. As for how the stone would appear, Han and Liu came to what seemed to them the only logical conclusion – the stone man was something Heaven expected them to create.
“It must be so!” declared Liu.
“My grandfather taught us that the Maitreya will be heralded in a rabbit year,” said Han. “This is a rabbit year! That is why Heaven has brought the nursery rhyme to us now.”
“May Heaven soon deliver us from this cursed place,” added Liu. He spread his fingers, which, like his face and arms, were streaked with dirt so thick it was visible in the moonlight. “Even when the rains pour down on us, the grit doesn’t seem to wash away.”
Han nodded solemnly, his body equally coated in grime and scrapes. “I want to live to see the world turned around,” he vowed.
A few days later, the two conspirators located what they hoped was a suitably large stone.
“No one is looking, quick! Tie it onto the small of my back.” Liu turned and loosened his belt so that Han could tuck the stone out of sight.
They managed to get it into their bunk, taking advantage of the exhausted apathy of those around them. As the other conscripts slept, Han and Liu etched a crude, one-eyed face onto the surface of the stone. The next day, as the rest of the workers were lining up to return to camp, Han and Liu furtively wedged their stone into the place where they were sure it would be discovered once work resumed at dawn. But their plans came to nothing. The stone was heaved up and cast aside unnoticed during dredging work the next morning as the conspirators looked on, aghast.
“We need a much bigger stone,” Han whispered at the next nightly conference. “And we need to recruit others.”
Han found a stonemason, while Liu brought in two burly brothers, one of whom walked back to camp one evening with a foot-long rock tucked into his crotch, cracking crude jokes for the next several days. The mason spent precious hours working in covert stints at night, carving the rock into a recognizable statue.
“It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece,” Han urged the mason. “It just has to look like a one-eyed man, that’s all.”
“Yes, that is all,” the mason snorted.
Han continued to push the mason to hurry. Their crew was dredging an offshoot to the main channel, and Liu had pointed out that they were lightly guarded.
Han Shantong felt they were perfectly positioned to summon the conscripts to turn the world around. All the signs around him, and even in his dreams, convinced him that they were receiving divine guidance.
“Once we finish this section, we will be transferred back to the main channel, where there are too many guards. Our movement will be snuffed out, just like that,” Han cautioned, snapping his fingers. “If we can rise up in this place, we can be like the flame that bursts into a beacon.”
As the carving neared completion, the conspirators hummed and sang the nursery rhyme as they worked, adding verses that suited their purpose. When Han heard another group of diggers repeating one of the made-up verses, he knew it was time to try again at burying a prophetic stone.
It took several harrowing attempts to get the one-eyed man into position. At last, when the conditions were the most favorable, it was the crude crotch carrier himself whose shovel struck the stonemason’s handiwork.
“What’s that?” he cried out, just as Han had told him to do.
Then he stepped back and let the others peer down at the muddy soil. The conscripts used their fingers to clear the dirt from the one-eyed statue. They withdrew in awe as others crowded in. A guard approached on horseback, but he was young and alone. Han did not need to cry out the nursery rhyme – the rest of the men did this for him, shouting it over and over again. They raised their picks and shovels at the guard, whose eyes flashed fear. As he fumbled to draw his sword, the guard was shoved from behind and toppled to the ground. One of the men snatched up the dangling reins and pulled the bucking horse toward Liu.
“It is working, it is working,” Han murmured to himself.
He thought first of his grandfather, the charismatic Han patriarch, and then of his little boy. Han scrambled to the top of a pile of rubble and shouted to his fellow conscripts to make the prophecy come true.
“We have been taken from our families for too long,” he shouted, and his voice resonated just as the patriarch’s had. “The guards can no longer contain us!” Han opened his hands and raised them over his head, pointing at heaven. “The Maitreya Buddha is coming and he will protect us. He will bring us peace and prosperity. The Maitreya will right all wrongs and transform our world!” Han cried, and the dozens of nearby men all stopped to listen at the sound of the revered Buddha name. “Have we not seen the signs all around us? And now the river dragon has been stirred and he is wrathful. ‘The stone man has but one eye.’ That eye can only see the one truth of the Maitreya.”
Liu joined Han on the rock pile, shouting in all directions, “The prophecy has been brought to light!”
The men in the gathering shouted agreement. A flushed and wild-eyed conscript suddenly clambered partway up the rubble and grabbed Han’s arm.
“He is the Prince of Brightness,” the man shrieked. “The one who precedes the Maitreya! I have touched the Prince of Brightness!”
The man’s hysteria coursed through the crowd, which was undulating in ever-wider circles. Han licked his dry lips and began to shiver. Then he heard Liu shout at the top of his lungs, “The Prince of Brightness is ready to herald the descent of the Maitreya Buddha!”
The men erupted, frenzied, punching their shovels into the air. Some of them were weeping, but most were militant and vengeful. Liu was pointing, flinging his arm at the road. The crowd turned obediently in that direction. Soon both Liu and Han were riding together in the cart, pulled by the captured horse. The marchers chanted the nursery rhyme that had started the uprising, repeating it over and over to the time of their steps.
When the stone man with one eye is found,
Stirring up the Yellow River will turn the world around.
“Where are we going?” Han asked, raising his voice to be heard.
“This road will bring us south to my ancestral village of White Deer in the district of Ying,” Liu shouted back.
Han wanted to ask how they would get across the flooded river, but Liu had already turned away to cheer on the men.
The marching, chanting throng made for a most unusual sight. Travelers along the way jumped aside to gape; then some joined in. Han marveled that they had encountered no resistance.
“It is because the patriarch was right,” he realized. “The Buddha of the Future is finally coming. That is why no one can stop us.”
Han gazed out at the marshes on either side of the road, cattails swaying in the evening sun. It was peaceful and beautiful. A sunbeam broke free from under a cloud and bathed the gentle features of Han’s face, suffusing him with warmth and radiance and euphoria. Han threw his arm over Liu’s shoulder, raising his other hand into the air.
“The Maitreya is descending!” he heralded. “The world will be transformed and we have lived to see this day!”
The men had to stop for the night, spontaneously choosing a threshing field near a small village. As they filed into the field, the village head rushed over, asking after the nature and leadership of the unexpected guests. He was directed to Han and Liu.
“We will require food for all the men, who will sleep under the stars,” Liu gruffly announced. “And lodging in your village for my companion and me.”
Han was shocked at such an audacious demand.
“Certainly, certainly,” the village head replied.
Han was even more shocked at such swift agreement.
“And how long will you be honoring us with a visit?”
Liu pursed his lips. “If we are fed enough, we will be able to continue on our journey at sunrise.”
That brought visible relief to the village leader’s face. He bowed and left.
Han soon found himself alone with Liu in a well-appointed room, sipping warmed wine. Han glanced around and laughed at the swiftly changing circumstances of the past few hours, but his euphoria was ebbing, replaced by a growing sense of unease. Liu, on the other hand, seemed completely calm.
“I am amazed at the power unleashed by our stone man,” Han finally said, the words tumbling out, breaking the silent contemplation.
Liu nodded. He lifted his wine cup. “Do you know,” he said slowly, “that I am an eighth-generation descendent of the great General Liu Guangshi of the Song Dynasty?”
“Is that so?” Han responded, politely.
“It is. And do you know that I had a vision last night while you were asleep? It was a dream of General Liu. He was dressed in red robes and standing with someone. I did not know the other person’s identity until the general turned toward me and smiled. That’s when I realized the other person was you.”
Han did not reply.
“Is it possible that you are a descendent of the Song royal house?” Liu asked.
Han shook his head, thinking of the stories his granny had liked to tell of the heroic generals of the Song Dynasty and their endless battles with northern invaders and duplicitous courtiers. It was a distant world that had nothing to do with his family, and was ended by the conquering armies of Kublai Khan.
“But I think that you are,” Liu persisted, his tone forceful and mesmerizing. “You are a descendent of one of the Song princes, and I am a descendent of that prince’s general and we were brought together by Heaven to lead the people. We are the ‘Two Tongs.’”
“The ‘Two Tongs’?”
“Futong and Shantong.”
Han nodded, but he felt a disturbance deep in his chest. The two ‘tong’ words in their given names were different characters, with different intonations and meanings.
“We are from opposite sides of the Yellow River – you from Yongnian to the north and me from Ying to the south – because Heaven wants to unite north and south to throw off Mongol rule. We will raise the fiery red banner of Song restoration and the people will follow us.”
“Song restoration,” repeated Han, his eyes wide. He helped himself to more wine.
Han Shantong could not follow how the Song banner fit in with the descent of the Maitreya. Wasn’t the Maitreya what they had heralded before the throngs of river dredgers? Han shook off the incongruity. He felt angry with himself for having so many doubts. His thoughts turned instead to the notion of himself as a royal leader. As the Prince of Brightness. Maybe it was true that his Han clan had some tie to an imperial line. Maybe that was why his clan was so respected. And if summoning the Maitreya’s protection would clear away the Mongols, why, he would be safe to return to his home. Han Shantong smiled.
Liu’s nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. He jumped excitedly to his feet.
“We must proclaim our sacred bond,” he said, and the two rushed out of the room.
Liu sent men to search for a cow and when they returned, he ordered a bonfire and roused all the escaped conscripts. They burned incense and ritually sacrificed the animal. The crowd shouted “Prince of Brightness” when Han Shantong stood before them. At just the right moment, Liu declared himself and Han to be descendants of the military and imperial lines of the Song.
“The Mongol termites will devour us no more!” Liu shouted. “We are a divine army, and we will fight to restore the Great Song Dynasty!”
Han noticed that the villagers, who had warily observed the strange camp from its edges, came forward when the talk turned to restoring the Song.
I have found the right ally. He gazed at Liu, amazed yet again at the end of a long day of amazement.
Shortly before dawn a boy from the village appeared in the doorway of the room where Han and Liu were dozing.
“Lords,” the boy said, stepping tentatively into their quarters, out of breath.
“Yes, what is it?” Liu asked, sitting up. He rubbed his eyes. “Can you bring us some hot tea?”
The boy nodded. “Lords, the village head rode to the county seat during the night. I know because I take care of his horse. As I was putting away the saddle when he returned just now, I heard him tell his wife that a cavalry unit is heading this way.”
Liu and Han stared at the boy in tense silence, until Han jumped to his feet. “Thank you,” he told the boy, dismissing him.
The boy turned to leave, but stopped at the door and asked, “Did you still want tea?”
“There is no need,” Han grimly replied.
Han followed Liu toward the threshing field, where the newly-consecrated rebels were assembling.
“Should we pray to the Maitreya now?” Han asked. To his surprise, Han realized that Liu was heading not for the men in the field, but for the horse captured the day before during the uprising at the river.
“The Mongols will show no mercy,” said Liu, ignoring Han’s question, intent on unhitching the reins from the cart. “It is time to scatter so that some can survive and continue. Our divine army is not yet ready for the fight.”
“But I am the Prince of Brightness,” Han said.
Once in the saddle, Liu paused and looked down at Han. He offered a hand to hoist him up, but Han instinctively backed away.
“If you take the martyr’s path, that is your choice,” said Liu. When Han did not respond, Liu turned to the men in the field. “Run for the hills!” he shouted. Then he clicked his tongue and left.
Most ran after him, but a remnant made their way serenely toward Han, who was pulling the cart into the middle of the road. He stepped into it and addressed his followers.
“We will pray to the Maitreya Buddha for salvation.”
Compared to the previous day, his voice seemed weak and uninspiring. He closed his eyes, summoning the joy he had so recently experienced.
“We saw the will of Heaven yesterday. The Great Peace is coming and in the end it will prevail.”
The few dozen men pressed in to hear his words, as they had the day before. The road was deserted and quiet, but Han felt that it was an ominous silence. He turned back to look behind him. In the distance where the road curved, Han noticed a plume of dust. It could only mean one thing.
“My children, now you too must take cover!” he shouted.
Some of the men tried to shield him, but Han Shantong pushed them away. He stepped down from his cart, abandoning it as he observed the discipline and might of the approaching cavalry, riding three abreast, filling the roadbed as they thundered forward, banners streaming.
“This cruel world knows only how to destroy itself,” he thought to himself. He hoped that his own sacrifice would in some unfathomable way lead to the dawning of a new era. A world of tranquility and harmony, full of beautiful blues and greens.
Han Shantong did not waver, not at the sight of his impending doom, not as the road shook under the weight of the galloping hooves, not when the swords unsheathed. He stood as still as a stone, lifting his eyes to a single point in the sky, chanting praise to the Maitreya Buddha as the men around him screamed and dived into the ditches and weeds. He was cut down in an instant, his blood spurting in all directions, his body trampled and destroyed.
Liu Futong waited in the hills until the soldiers were finished. Then he collected other survivors and crept back to bury what remained of Han. They pressed their fingers into the bloody dirt at the sacrificial place and touched the same fingers to strips of cloth. The escaped conscripts dyed the strips red and tied them to their foreheads like turbans, marking their bold allegiance to a new rebellion. As they formed ranks and began to march south, they chanted a new song, which the wind carried in the four directions.
The stone man with one eye has been found,
Tying on a red turban will turn the world around.
A Brief Interview
Deva Eveland: What originally brought you to China, and what keeps you engaged with Chinese history and culture now that you are back in the USA?
Laurie Dennis: Chinese was one of the languages offered at my high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We all had to take a language, so I picked Chinese. I kept at it through college, first visiting China through a summer study abroad program. I have always loved Chinese language and literature and I still read Chinese poetry every day – the Song poet Li Qingzhao helped me endure the COVID lockdowns. When the world seems especially chaotic, I find it strangely comforting to turn to a classic like Three Kingdoms and realize, ok, others have dealt with worse disasters.
DE: How did you go about conducting research for the story? How much research do you do before you feel it enough to write fiction about the period?
LD: To understand 14th century China you need to be able to read the primary sources, including the official Yuan and Ming histories, which are not available in English. I spend as much time as I can with these kinds of original texts, and often end up following various tangents. I layer in English-language scholarship if available, which usually sends me back to more primary sources. I also rely on modern scholarship in Chinese. My go-to source from the beginning of this project has been Wu Han’s seminal biography of Zhu Yuanzhang. Then, with my notes and books and maps and dictionaries strewn all over my desk, it’s time to write.
DE: Are there parts of this story where you either deviate from what historians actually think happened, or where you create something in the absence of a clear consensus about what did happen?
LD: “Stirring the Yellow River” follows events described in unofficial writings that circulated in the 14th century by authors like Ye Ziqi 叶子奇in his 1378 essay collection, Master of Grass and Trees 草木子. (These have been analyzed in English by the modern historians Barend ter Haar and the late Hok-Lam Chan.) Ye Ziqi was interested in rumors and prophesies and wrote that Han Shantong and his conspirators craftily buried a one-eyed stone man and waited for it to be dug up by laborers on the massive river channeling project. The prophetic children’s rhyme, and its connection to the stone man and the uprising, was also mentioned in various accounts, including one by Song Lian 宋濂 in the official Yuan history, who wrote that, “It all started in the Gengyin year (i.e. 1350) with the children’s ditty told north and south of the river …” Were the rhymes and rumors true? Who can say? They probably contained a mixture of fact and fantasy. One problem I encountered in writing my own version of this story was explaining why Han and Liu Futong were down in the trenches talking with the laborers. The historical records are silent on this matter, and don’t have much to say about the background of either leader. What made the most sense to me was to make Han and Liu fellow conscripts. So each retelling of this story creates its own deviations.
Critical Accompaniment
Who is Han Shantong? In the judgment of Laurie Dennis, he is nobody. The annals of history agree, though for different reasons. Records of Han Shantong’s life were destroyed during the consolidation of the Ming dynasty; propelled to power by his rebellion, the Ming were wary of future rivals. What little can be gleaned of Han’s life is the result of inference. Over the figure of Han Shantong, the historian and the fictionist meet and shake hands.
“In the eleventh year of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s ‘Correctness Attained’ period,” heaven and earth are in disorder. So Dennis assures us with the familiar images. Back-breaking labor, unjustly levied, proceeds under conditions of disaster. Individuals appear only to be swept away. At times one can almost hear statistics in the prose: “The wet conditions caused wounds to fester. In the worst cases, this led to gangrene, which had already killed one member of Han’s crew.” The tormented are impeccably tormented. Everything points to revolt. Enter Han Shantong, “with a shrug.”
The ancient idea of the pathos of the prophet is shown in Cassandra, who knows the absolute truth, but cannot be heard. Han Shantong’s tragedy is that he knows nothing, and is met with absolute belief. In Dennis’s telling he is a quintessential bourgeois, lost in the flow of events, his only wish to return to his son. The first moments of his rebellion are presented as a parody of Hegel’s ruse of reason. Here it is not history that uses its protagonists, but Han Shantong that tricks history. What appears to be a momentous chain of events is in fact only a series of accidents. When Han murmurs “It is working, it is working,” does he mean anything more than that he will get to go home?
It is Liu, by contrast, who really commands the stage of history. He has nothing but contempt for Han’s ambivalent martyrdom, but will happily turn it to his advantage. It is he who suggests they forge a political ancestry myth, to which Han reacts with confusion. How will that help him get home? If Liu pities Han for his naivete, he is wise enough not to mention it; but this is only the wisdom of a merchant, careful not to spoil a deal. Liu differs from Han mainly in that he achieves his ambitions. How happy he is “in a well-appointed room, sipping warmed wine!”
There is nothing to refute that these were the men and the times which founded the Ming dynasty. Until the descent of the Matreiya Buddha, it is unlikely that Han Shantong will have any more say. If we happen to find his face in the mirror, this must be accounted only as one of those exceedingly common quirks of history, whose eternal rule is “nothing new or old under the sun.” It will be a far more terrific day when the prophets of the past knock at our door and are received as aliens, or enemies.
—Jack Calder
Laurie Dennis is the author of The Lacquered Talisman, which launches the story of one of the most influential figures in Chinese history, Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming Dynasty. This work of historical fiction was published by Earnshaw Books of Shanghai and Hong Kong in the calamitous spring of 2020. Laurie is currently completing the second volume in her fictionalized series on the Ming founding, Red Turban, which focuses on the rebellion that led to the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Cover art by David Huntington
Interview conducted and edited by Deva Eveland
Critical Accompaniment by Jack Calder
Support by Abigail Weathers