First, I want to talk about the movement that is already underway. Our disposable culture is very pervasive, but businesses and the government are already taking that on and starting to dismantle that. And I think that we'll be able to make the changes that we need to make in the next ten years if we continue this momentum. But first, I think we need to stop talking about climate change. In the second part, I'm going to talk about some of the issues that come up with climate change. I think it's so politically polarizing and why it's a communications nightmare. And then I'm going to provide some specific ways if we reduce waste, then we can have an impact on climate change and these big global issues. Specifically, I'm going to talk about plastic pollution and the fast fashion of the impact our apparel has on the environment. And then I'm going to have some zero waste tips and hopefully have plenty of time for some questions and answers and I would love to hear your thoughts on what I'm saying. Maybe have a discussion. But before I start this, I want to tell you a little bit about who I am beyond my work with the examiner. I grew up in the Redonda Beach Torrance area of Southern California and it felt like I was always at the beach growing up. I had a fourth grade teacher, a SoCal surfer dude named Mr. Duncan and he took us down to the beach at least once a week to learn about marine biology, geology and that experience really instilled in me an appreciation for the environment. And it was actually in his class that I led my first advocacy campaign for a dolphin safe tuna and my mom likes to remind me that Bumblebee wrote me a letter back saying that their dolphin, their tuna practices were dolphin safe. So it was easy to become an environmentalist with this kind of background. I've been an environmental lobbyist in Washington DC. I was with the AmeriCorps program, I was planting native seeds and pulling invasive weeds on the side of the road in Oregon. I am an environmental attorney and practiced for several years at a law firm. And now as you know, I write for the examiner and several other publications. And I also organized for a nonprofit called Mothers Out Front.  This is my son, it was a couple years ago. He's four and I have a 16 month old daughter. And I was very proud that he was a compost man for Halloween because that's who he thought was a hero in San Francisco. And he really does get it at such an early age. He knows to ask for his apple juice without a straw. He, we get the chronicle delivered every morning, which I know is kind of sacrilege for an examiner writer to say. But it comes delivered in a plastic sleeve and he looked at it and he just shook his head and he said, Mom, why don't they know plastic is bad? And this is kind of where I want to start. My son and all of the kids that I'm seeing marched down Market Street last Friday. There was a huge student strike for climate change. The youth today are giving me incredible hope for the future because they just get it. They see where disposable culture is and they're already dismantling it in their head. So I think that today's youth, in addition to the movement that we're already seeing with governments and businesses, will really take us where we need to go. So I want to start with what we're already doing in San Francisco. We have the plastic bag band. We have a styrofoam band here. We have a plastic straw band. Thanks to some of the work that people in the audience did. Eva Holman back there. We have municipal compost and recycling program. I'm hoping that Supervisor Peskin will follow through with what he's promised us and introduce new legislation that would be further banned on disposable food where from to go that we get with takeout and delivery. At the state level, we also have a plastic bag band, a plastic straw band, a band on non-recyclable, non-compostable food packaging at state facilities. This is a picture of some of our assemblymen, Phil Ting, introducing his receipt ban. And some people might, most of the time when we get receipts, we don't really need them and we know the resources go into the receipts. Takes trees to make paper. But receipts are also made from thermal paper, which is coated with chemicals. And so I mean, this is good for our health and it's good for the environment. I'd really like to see this move forward. SB 54, which was introduced by our Senator Scott Wiener, along with some additional senators, is proposing a phase out of single-use plastics by 2030. So I would encourage you all to follow that and voice your support if possible. So there's things happening across the country and nationally. But I'm gonna skip past that for right now and just say that more than 60 countries are curbing plastic waste. We have plastic bag bands, styrofoam bands all over the world. And the European Parliament and the United Kingdom have made commitments to phase out single-use plastic. And of course, businesses. This is a list of all the businesses that, well, not all of them actually. I get so many press releases from businesses that are proposing that they're phasing out straws or plastic water bottles. And I think it's great. I wanna highlight it whenever possible. But we've seen incredible momentum. And down here at the bottom, I've included Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's plastic packaging is not good. And Greenpeace put together a change.org petition that I think got close to 100,000 signatures. In response to that petition, Trader Joe's has announced that it's going to start phasing out some of its plastic packaging, which is great. I think we need to really keep pushing businesses on this. I get into a lot of fights, and I've covered this in my column. The food delivery services like Postmates, Uber Eats. We get way too much plastic packaging with this. Plastic ramekins filled with coleslaw that we don't need. Plastic packages of ketchup and soya sauce. It would be really great if businesses caught on to the fact that we don't want this, we don't need this. And they can save money if they don't give it to us. But I think businesses are getting it, and I think we're moving in a good direction. This is kind of where I wanted to take this. So this is the cover of the National Geographic magazine from last June, Planet or Plastic Issue. And in that issue, the publisher vowed to stop putting their magazine in the plastic sleeve, and also to amplify the conversation around plastic pollution. And they have. It's really easy as a journalist as a communicator to talk about plastics, because the impacts are right there in front of you. And you can get these incredible images. This is a quote from President Donald Trump. As president, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills. He was signing an amendment to the Marine Debris Act. He was providing more funding for ocean cleanup. This is not something that you normally hear from Trump. He's not normally known as an environmentalist. Definitely keep your eye on it. But what I'm saying is that I think that this is trash and talking trash is easier for governments and businesses and people of both parties to buy into than some of the other bigger environmental issues.  Because we don't see this that often. Most environmental issues are politically polarizing. After college, I got a job doing lobbying work for a nonprofit called the US Public Interest Research Group. And they sent me to Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to get media attention, build coalitions, and sway lawmakers to protect the forests up in Alaska. Needless to say, it was very hard work and I didn't get a lot accomplished in the three weeks that they allotted me. But it goes to show that even trees, even protecting forests can be politically polarizing. And the experience really sparked in me a curiosity. Are there ways of communicating environmental issues that are more universal? And I think trash is one of them. Trash is very visible. This is a picture that Eva took on one of her beach cleanups of those plastic air pockets that come in a lot of our shipments.   We can see the chip bag that's stuck on the storm drain. We saw that video, many of us saw that video, of pulling the plastic straw out of the turtle's nose. Governments and businesses can see these issues and say, okay, no more plastic straws, boom, crisis averted. It's much easier because it's personable, it's manageable, it's tangible. That's not climate change. Who here is scared about climate change? I am. And I think that's why we need to start treating it like the terrifying communications nightmare that it is. This is a comic that I see from a lot of climate deniers. It encapsulates I think a lot of the problems that come with climate change. First of all, what do we even call it?  Most of the people, for most people, climate change is not personable. They haven't seen ice caps melting, they haven't seen starving polar bears. They haven't felt how much the temperatures changed dramatically over the past century. This of course is changing. I feel like most of the people last fall in here with the fires and paradise we put on our masks. And for us at that time, climate change felt very immediate. We felt like something was wrong with our environment. But a recent study said that only 22% of Americans think that climate change is dangerous now. Most people want to support climate change policies because they think that climate change will be dangerous in the future. And communicating what those dangers are in the future is really difficult. One of the things that I like about this comic is that it shows how confusing the science is for people. And this is something I bump up a lot of with as a journalist, as a writer. I was working with Dr. Irina Tazar, who is a, she studies melting sea ice in the Antarctic area. Actually, it's melting land ice in Antarctica. And what she was telling me was that it's really easy to measure what's going on on the top of the ice. You can't see how thick the ice is. You can't see the topography at the bottom. And so what she had to do is she had to develop a computer code using algorithm derived data to figure out how quickly Antarctic ice might melt. And she verified it. She validated it using historic ice melts in Greenland. And she determined she came up with a very accurate computer code. But she was very clear with me when I was writing my story that that data isn't total, doesn't paint a complete picture until you include other data from the ocean, from the Arctic, from the atmosphere. So all this is to say that while we know that climate change is happening, the science is really confusing. And that is really difficult as a journalist because I went back and forth with Dr. Taser so many times when I was writing that article because there were uncertainties and things I needed to communicate. But for a lot of journalists who don't have the luxury of time that I have, they're up against a deadline, they just get those articles out. And that muddles the conversation. And then it basically feeds into this climate denial rhetoric. And one more problem with climate change that I want to point out is that it's incredibly, progress on it is incredibly slow moving. So we're seeing this great momentum from the youth and from what we're seeing today with the Green New Deal and presidential candidates like Governor Inslee is making climate change a top priority. But then you have Senator Dianne Feinstein who's turning around and challenging all these youth activists after not doing anything for decades. And this can make you feel very overwhelmed because we got that report last October from the UN top scientists saying that we had to act by 2030 or face climate catastrophe. It's terrifying. I think that we'll be able to do it because we've done great things in the past. And when I was thinking about this, the first thing that kind of came to mind was the civil rights movement. We went from segregated schools to the Voting Rights Act for about 10 years with gay marriage. We went from Prop 8 in 2008 which made gay marriage illegal in California to the Supreme Court saying that gay marriage was legal in every state in 2015. And I know that the march to equal rights is far from over. But you just see some such incredible momentum. And I think that that's because these issues became personal to people. People started seeing images of Black protesters being brutalized on their TVs.  And I feel like that's what we need with the environmental movement. We need something that's personal. And for me, I think that that can be trash. Trash is tangible. We can see images like this. And this doesn't look sustainable. But this is actually the recycling facility that I had a picture that I took when I was touring Recology's recycling facility here in San Francisco. And so that's kind of where I think we need to start taking the conversation is that recycling isn't sustainable. When we talk about trash, we need to be talking about other things. I just want to tell you a little bit about the state of our recycling affairs. I don't know if anyone read on the front page of the New York Times over the weekend. There is a shorter article on what was going on with our recycling across the country. Philadelphia is now burning, incinerating its recycling. Memphis has abandoned it. There's places in Florida that are abandoning it. And the reason that they're doing this is because it's so expensive now to run these programs. China, which was historically one of the largest acceptors of our recycled waste, has pretty much banned importing recyclables into their country. And a lot of other Southeast Asian countries are kind of doing the same thing. India just made a similar announcement this month. I want to say that San Francisco, our proximity to the Pacific, it makes it easier for us to find markets that's not as expensive for us. So you should definitely keep recycling here. But recycling isn't the answer. And if we start talking about reducing, reusing, refusing plastic a little bit more, we automatically start saving energy. Just think about the energy that goes into recycling a plastic water bottle that you use for maybe 30 minutes. You put that water bottle into the blue bin. It gets picked up by a diesel power truck, taken to a sorting facility with all the energy that goes on there. Then it's picked up by another diesel power truck and put on a diesel power chip where it's taken to Asia. That's huge unnecessary energy if you just use your reusable water bottle. And so one of the things if we start changing the conversation around plastics, we can also start talking about the supply side of plastics and the incredible impact that that has on communities. This is a short video that was created by the Story of Stuff Project, which is a Bay Area nonprofit. And this is a teaser video for a longer video that they're releasing later this year on the story, the impact that supplying plastic to markets have. And this one specifically talks about the impact that it has on small communities. So I want to share it really quick, but hopefully I can get this working. My heart breaks for all the people in that Houston community. And I don't know if anyone's seen it in the news, but there is a fire at one of these chemical facilities in Deer Park happening right now. And that facility has been on fire since Sunday. The community around Deer Park is being exposed to this black smoke, these toxins in the air. And there's another shorter video, or maybe it's in the longer one coming up, but they mentioned that the special education departments and the schools around these refineries are significantly larger than average. Our addiction to plastic is causing health impacts to children, to families in these communities. This video can make you angry. It can make you sad. But remember that the solution is very simple. Use less plastic. Stop using plastic. You as a purchaser have an incredible amount of power to help communities. So it's just refuse, reuse, and reduce. Say no to the items you don't need. You don't need that plastic straw. You don't need that water bottle. You don't need that swag from the dentist's office or that extra beauty sample. Reuse, don't dispose. Get that reusable coffee thermos. Get that reusable water bottle. When there is a birthday party, use reusable dishes. Reusable drink dispenser instead of disposable. And reduce. Find alternatives to plastic. One of the simple things that I was doing was cooking. I wouldn't say it's simple because there's a luxury that comes with having the time to prepare meals after work. But finding alternatives to all that plastic packaging is a way to reduce the plastics. And also, it could come with health benefits. You know, this is a part of the presentation that I'm not as well versed on than some of the others. But I wanted to bring this up because a lot of the environmental groups, environmental working group, Center for Environmental Health have released studies about the toxins in our plastic packaging. And if you think about it, it makes sense.  It's because it's coated with materials. Some of those materials, the health impacts are known and they're regulated to some degree. So Bispinol A is an example, BPA. That's an endocrine disruptor, which means that it mimics estrogen in our body and it could cause infertility reproductive problems. But there are a host of other potential chemicals that could be in these linings, in these packaging. And it's regulated in a very patchwork way. The FDA is pretty permissive. Some states and cities have more strict rules and then it's also, there's industry standards. But it's kind of all over the place and it makes me very uncomfortable as a consumer and as a mother. Oh, before I get there, I want to just change the conversation a little bit and start talking about fast fashion and the impacts that that has. So I don't know if anyone has seen the TV show, the Netflix show Tidying Up. But it's kind of one of my favorite shows. In the show, Marie Kondo, she's an organizing guru. And what she says is that all of the items in your house, your clothing, your books, your Christmas decorations, all of it should spark joy. And this method immediately spoke to me. I decided to con Marie, I think is how you say it, are clothes. This is a picture of all the hand-me-downs I have for my daughter. And seeing it on the bed, this is what she instructs. Put it all on your bed so you can see what you've consumed. That was enlightening just in itself. And then I folded it all nicely and put it away. And I did, my husband, I did the same and we did the same for my son's clothing. And it was, we live in a small 950 square foot condo here in San Francisco. So I didn't think that I would have a lot to get rid of. But there was a lot that we ended up giving away. And I realized that I had subconsciously bought into this idea of what I should be wearing. I wasn't really wearing clothes that I thought that made me feel confident and comfortable. I was wearing what I thought I needed to. I was wearing clothes that didn't bring me joy. And since I've gone through this process, I haven't felt the need to replace anything. I've really enjoyed opening my closet, seeing space, opening my drawer, seeing space. My only regret is that I wish I hadn't bought all of those clothes that didn't bring me joy to begin with because they have a significant impact on the environment. At every stage, this is just the supply process. There's resources that go into it. Cotton, some of the synthetic fibers come from oil wells. There's wool that comes from livestock. There's all that, you know, the plant crude oil and animal fibers, all are sent to facilities for yarn preparation. Then it's sent to for fabric preparation, leaching, dying and finishing. And then cutting and sewing fabric into apparel. According to a recent report, the apparel industry represents 6.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. I've actually seen this, this is a low number. I've seen it up to 10%. And most of this comes from the early stages. It comes from yarn prep, fabric prep, and bleaching and dying. And because the apparel industry is concentrated in Asia, a lot of the energy for this comes from fossil fuels, from hard coal. So according to this report, if we continue on the path that we're on, the apparel industry's impact will steadily rise over the next 15 years, reaching a projected 49% increase in climate change impact by 2030. So this could go up to 13%. And this is just the impact on energy. There's also water demand that goes into this. Cotton is a very thirsty crop, requires a lot of water. I've seen statistics, I have to look at my nose for this, that it's like 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt, enough for one person to drink for two and a half years. There's also water that goes into bleaching and dying at all stages. There's water pollution. Textile mills generate one-fifth of the world's industrial wastewater. And that's, again, from the dying and bleaching. You can imagine the runoff from the cotton fields, from the livestock areas. Cotton requires a lot of pesticides and insecticides. I wish people talked about the land impact a little bit more. Growing all of that cotton, raising that livestock, drilling that oil, takes up a lot of land. And we really need to be preserving land as wild places for species. We have seen dramatic losses in insects, in birds, because we're just taking up too much of their habitat. The human impact does receive some news, but not enough. I saw that Oxfam recently released a study that delved into the lives of people living in Bangladesh and Vietnam who work in garment factories. Through the hundreds of interviews that they conducted, they found that almost all workers were being paid below a living wage and were struggling to feed themselves and their families. And all of these impacts occur before we even buy the clothes. After we purchase the clothes, or we have the tags, the paper, plastic, the labels, which is more dying, more fabric, the transportation costs, and everything that goes in with that, packaging. The plastic sleeves that it comes with, the plastic air bubbles, the cardboard, the bags that go into it, the dyes, the paper. I talked about receipts already. And even just swiping your visa or clicking on Amazon has an energy impact. Amazon and Visa and MasterCard, any kind of big data provider, has data centers, which are facilities where they store all their servers or routers. And these take up a lot of energy for heating and cooling, and they take up a lot of land. So then we get our clothes and we wear them for a little bit. At some point, we decide that we're done with them. It's time to dispose of them. At this point, I think that's when most people start thinking about the environmental impact of what they're wearing. I get a lot of questions from readers about what to do with their clothes when it's time to dispose of them. What I say is that if they're all wearable, try to give them to someone else. Give them to Goodwill, a consignment store. There's plenty of places that will take our clothes. If they're not at all wearable anymore, Recology does accept textiles, clothes, and shoes. You put them in a plastic bag, a clear one, not like they're in this picture. This is just a picture I got from Flickr, by the way. And tie it up, and put it in the blue bin, and they'll take care of it. But like I said, recycling should not be the answer. It's better if we don't buy into the fast fashion industry anyway. So these are some ways that we can unsubscribe from fast fashion. Only purchase items that bring us joy. Shop at used clothing and consignment stores. Wear the same item more often. There was actually a New Jersey teacher, a middle school teacher that I saw recently in the news. She wore the same hemp dress for 100 days in a row. And I think it was really cool, because she was teaching her class about the impacts of fashion. But she was also modeling for those young girls that you can look fashionable, and you can be clean and presentable, and wear the same thing more than once. Mending care for the clothes you have. Dry cleaners are a great place to take your clothes if they've been ripped. You can take them in there and just sew them up. And it's good for the local economy. And then when you purchase new clothes, support lines with ethical and sustainable business practices. So now I'm going to wind up the presentation and talk a little bit about my own personal experience with this, and provide some tips. This is something that I wish, it's a quote I wish I had read when I first started this process. I decided to go towards zero waste in 2017. It was my New Year's resolution. Donald Trump had just been elected, and I was looking for ways to feel empowered in the face of Donald Trump. And I went all in. I thought I had to make everything from scratch. I had to do just completely do upheaval in my life. And that's not where you should start. I have a friend. She runs a consulting business called The Joy of Zero Waste. And she has really been an amazing resource for me through this process. Because what she said is this experience should be joyful. You can start with the easy things, and you build up your skills. And it becomes a lot easier over time. And I will have to admit at this point that I'm not at zero waste. When my kids are in pain, I give them ibuprofen, which comes in a little plastic container with a plastic dropper. I don't always remember my reusable containers.  But the empowerment I felt when I started this process is being sustained by joy. And I feel like I'm moving in a great direction. So now I'm going to provide some of my tips that I've learned along the way. The first one is prepare and plan. When we go grocery shopping, we put up a list on the refrigerator. And when we're out of things during the week, we just put it up on that list. At the end of the week, I do all my meal prep and I circle all the items that I can get from the bulk bin. We always go shopping at Rainbow Grocery because they have an amazing assortment of bulk bins there. And the items that I can get from the bulk bin, I put it into these reusable containers that I bring with me. And that's how we do grocery shopping. It saves me a lot of time because I just go grocery shopping once a week and we have everything that we need. It's the same prepare and plan when we go out to eat. I pack reusable straws for my kids because they're still too young really to drink from regular cups. We bring our own to-go containers. I really like the feeling of being organized when I go out. The second is practice. So Starbucks and Pete's in all coffee shops mostly. I have reusable mugs that you can get there. They do exist. The first time I went to Starbucks and asked for a for-here mug, I was uncomfortable because I'd never done this before. And I think I gave the woman a long explanation of what I needed.  And it was quite simple. So I'm just sharing this experience because it's a little bit uncomfortable when you start, but you get much better at it as you go along and then you get all these hacks. This is a, that will save you time. Eva went to, she was picking up some cream cheese over the weekend for a beach cleanup that she was putting together. And she brought her reusable container to the house of bagels and they filled it up with cream cheese for her. When you can take a reusable container to a pizza place and have them put pasta sauce in it or we can go to a Mexican restaurant and get tortillas wrapped in foil which is much easier to recycle. There's a lot of little hacks like this that you get as you start to practice a little bit more. The third is replaced. We rely a lot on just disposable goods in general, disposable razors, disposable pens, disposable juice boxes at birthday parties. It's always nice to replace those things with things that you can reuse again and again like a reusable razor, fill a pen up with ink again. Use these drink dispensers. I just got from the, that image is from the Pottery Barn catalog. That's not what my drink dispensers look like. But you can see how beautiful they could be. The fourth, this is my favorite part about, I guess trying to be zero waste is the community that you get. I'm part of a Facebook group called Buy Nothing SF Families and every Halloween they have a Halloween costume swap. So you don't have to go out and buy a costume for your one year old that they're going to use for a little bit, one day and you're never going to need again. And you know the impact that has on the environment. So there's this community of parents out there that do this swap and it's fantastic. And you get, you know, the more you're in this, the more you meet other parents who, and other people who support you on the journey. And you get to know the businesses that are around you because you're not buying everything off of Amazon. So I found a needle point store on Sacramento Street, which I never would have found before if I was just automatically buying things off of Amazon. So, you know, I would like to have a little bit of discussions and questions and answers, but I want to just leave with a notion.  And I don't think the environmental movement needs to be that way. I think that you can feel empowerment, feel joy, feel, you know, community, feel creative, you know, in finding new ways to reduce your waste. And I, and feel an appreciation of the world around you. And that is what environmentalism should be. It should just be appreciating the world around you. So I just want to, oh, I forgot to say, one other thing is waste is very Instagrammable. It's just the aesthetic of it. So I just want to say that I appreciate you guys for being here tonight. And I would love to answer sorting questions or just hear your thoughts on what I said. So thank you so much.


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Daniel Highland. Rudolph Rocker and The Will to Power, Part 1. In my last essay, I discussed the lust for power and how this theme has played a key role in classical liberal and libertarian thinking. I now wish to discuss how a brilliant libertarian historian, Rudolph Rocker, 1873-1958, incorporated this theme into his history of libertarian ideas, nationalism and culture. Rocker fled Germany in 1933, shortly after the Nazis had attained power. Almost everything that Rocker owned was seized, including 5,000 books, and he escaped with little more than the manuscript of nationalism and culture. Between 1936 and 1939, translations of Rocker's book were published in Spanish, English and Dutch. In his Epilogue to the Second American Edition, 1946, Rocker writes, In this book I have tried to present an outline of the most important causes of the general decline of our civilization, causes which, ever since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, became more and more apparent, and which a few years after the publication of this book led to the monstrous catastrophe of World War II. Many things that had been predicted in this volume have later come to be literally true. That prognosis, to be sure, was not so difficult to make. Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist, so it should come as no surprise that he identified the growth of state power as the root cause of the catastrophe of World War II. Moreover, given that Rocker was a left anarchist, we would expect to find denunciations of capitalism in nationalism and culture. And so we do, though Rocker sometimes targets state capitalism specifically. What may surprise some readers is Rocker's fair-minded and highly sympathetic historical account of classical liberalism, including its laissez-faire tendencies. Rocker, a remarkably learned historian, understood the basic reasons for both the rise and the fall of classical liberalism. Indeed, despite my predictable disagreements with Rocker, I rank nationalism and culture as one of the finest intellectual histories of classical liberalism ever written. I will examine some details of Rocker's history of classical liberalism in a subsequent part of this series. In this part, I wish to discuss his general theoretical perspective. Rocker categorically repudiates the standard Marxian approach to history, according to which historical events and institutions are strictly determined by economic factors, most notably by the prevalent mode of production. Rocker rejects all attempts to reduce historical causation to one type of cause. All social phenomena are the result of a series of various causes, in most cases so inwardly related, that it is quite impossible clearly to separate one from the other. Social events and institutions do not arise from mechanistic causes. They are not the deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events, but emerge from purposeful human actions. And since every idea of purpose is a matter of belief which eludes scientific calculation, social phenomena are contingent rather than necessary, a matter of probability rather than certainty. We cannot say of a particular social process that it must be so, but only it may be so, but it does not have to be so. Social facts are explained by referring to the beliefs of men. Thus, although the historian must employ causal analysis, this is not the kind of analysis that we find in the natural sciences. The history of human events has not been determined by impersonal forces or by necessary laws of development. History is the great arena of human aims and ends. So the historian must take into account the ideas and values of individual human beings. Although man is subject to physical laws, he cannot change his biological nature, for example. His actions are not determined by physical necessity. Man's social life is shaped by his willing and doing, and so can be changed by volitional effort. If people view their social condition as foreordained by God or as the outcome of unalterable laws, this may instill in them a passive attitude about social change. But if people understand that social life is conditional, that it can be changed by human hand and human mind, this belief may encourage them to work for a better society. Social and economic conditions will obviously influence our actions. But our actions are ultimately shaped by our subjective beliefs and attitudes about those self-same conditions. According to Rocker, a major motive in human history has been the lust for power or the will to power. The will to power, which always emanates from individuals or from small minorities in society, is in fact a most important driving force in history. The extent of its influence has up to now been regarded far too little, although it has frequently been the determining factor in the shaping of the whole of economic and social life. Rocker cites the conquests of Alexander the Great to illustrate his contention that the will to power has played a more fundamental role throughout history than have purely economic factors. There are historical events of the deepest significance for millions of men which cannot be explained by their purely economic aspects. Who would maintain, for instance, that the invasions of Alexander were caused by the conditions of production in his time? The very fact that the enormous empire Alexander cemented together with the blood of hundreds of thousands fell to ruin soon after his death, proves that the military and political achievements of the Macedonian world were not historically determined by economic necessities. Just as little did they in any way advance the conditions of production of the time. When Alexander planned his wars, lust for power played a far more important part than economic necessity. The desire for world conquest had assumed actually pathological forms in the ambitious despot. His mad power obsession was a leading motive in his whole policy. Rocker maintains that freedom and power are the two great forces that have shaped human history. Freedom is the creative engine of society, the sphere of spontaneous order in which individuals interact voluntarily. Power, in stark contrast, is the sphere of authoritarian control and governmental coercion in which some people attempt to control others through law or other threats of physical violence. In all epochs of that history which is known to us, two forces are apparent that are in constant warfare. Their antagonism, open or veiled, results from the intrinsic difference between the forces themselves and between the activities in which they find expression. This is clear to anyone who approaches the study of human social structures without ready formulated hypotheses or fixed schemes of interpretation. Especially to anyone who sees that human objectives and purposes are not subject to mechanical laws as are cosmic events in general. We are speaking here of the political and economic elements in history which could also be called the governmental and social elements. Rucker presents an interesting sociological analysis of power and freedom. Power, which is based on a consciousness of authority, cannot tolerate opposition to its will and so tends to become absolute. Different power groups within a society will struggle for supremacy while sovereign states will seek to dominate other states. Concessions and compromises may be made because of weakness but these are merely temporary. Power by its very nature seeks to bring everything under one rule, to unite mechanically and to subject to its will every social activity. The will to power, which is inherent in human nature, is hostile to individuality, social diversity and change. It demands the conformity of every social activity to a definite norm and since there is no rational basis for this conformity, the claims of power must ultimately rely on mystification and faith. Even when rulers are unable to expand their sphere of influence, they must at least convey to their faithful subjects the illusion of the boundlessness of this influence and thereby reinforce their mystical authority. The exercise of power requires the bifurcation of humanity into two classes, the rulers and the ruled. This division into higher and lower classes, which occurs in every power structure, is generated by an inner necessity of power itself. Power is necessarily hegemonic because rulers must claim for themselves rights and supposedly legitimate powers that they deny to others and it is in order to make this hegemonic relationship seem inevitable that rulers appeal to the prescriptive authority of tradition and legend. We see this in Plato's defense of the state in which class divisions are attributed to fate and explained metaphorically. God, according to Plato, created the ruling class from gold, the most precious metal, naturally, the military class from silver and the laboring class from iron and bronze. Plato's effort to imbue power with a mystic sanctity, has, says Rocker, been the chief aim of every power policy. Power has no creative capacity, whatever. Nothing is more erroneous than the customary view of the state as the real creator of cultural progress. Throughout history, the state has been the greatest enemy of culture. They are irreconcilable opposites, the strength of one depending on the weakness of the other. Culture flourishes best when the state is weak or dying. Culture is not created by command. It creates itself, arising spontaneously from the necessities of men and their social cooperative activity. No ruler could ever command men to fashion the first tools, first use fire, invent the telescope and the steam engine, or compose the Iliad. Cultural values do not arise by direction of higher authorities. They cannot be compelled by dictates, nor called into life by the resolution of legislative assemblies. In no civilization has culture been created by political rulers. At most, rulers have appropriated an already existing culture and made it subservient to their own political ends. Such appropriation, however, has always led to the decline of culture, owing to the political demand for uniformity.  Rulers cannot tolerate the innovation and diversity on which cultural progress depends because these require an autonomous sphere of freedom that is immune to power and to acknowledge the limitations of power is inconsistent with the inner logic of political dominion. Cultural progress is a spontaneous development of freedom and since the social effects of freedom cannot be predicted or controlled, culture is as much a threat to power as freedom itself. Culture stands above all state organizations and lordly institutions and is, in its innermost essence, anarchistic. The modern nation is a creation of the state, not the people. It is a political artifice, not a social institution. Social institutions grow spontaneously from the interactions of individuals and they serve the general interest. State organizations, in contrast, are designed to serve the interests of the political class and they are imposed on the people by their rulers. When we speak of the people as a collective noun, we are referring to a natural social unit, a mutual association of individuals who share the same language, inhabit the same general area and possibly have other traits in common. This natural unit, which is held together by the inner relationships of its members, can neither be artificially created nor dissolved. The nation, on the other hand, is the artificial result of the struggle for political power, a unity that has been imposed on the people from above. Peoples and groups of peoples, societies, are spontaneous associations that existed long before the state, whereas nations are products of state activity. Various peoples, who, owing to their different languages and ethnic backgrounds, might naturally form different communities, have frequently been forged by the state into a single nation, a political entity with territorial boundaries. This coercive transformation of natural social groups into nations has bred suspicion and hatred between peoples, a morbid condition that rulers seek to perpetuate as a means of enhancing their own power and prestige. Nations, which are based on artificial, rather than on natural, distinctions, would tend to disintegrate, unless rulers fanned the nationalistic flames of antagonism and discord. Thank you for listening to Excursions. To learn more about libertarian philosophy and history, visit www.libertarianism.org.


Hey everybody, welcome back to your weekend love reading and take a look at your weekend from September 8th through the 11th So if you have a birthday on the 8th 9th 10th or 11th, happy birthday Specifically for you guys. I hope you have a lovely birthday weekend and everybody else happy birthday to you as well My lovely Virgos. So, okay personal reading link is below this video. I just realized that I didn't update that I put the link bank it back in so I just did it So if you want to get a reading with me through September go ahead over there to my website and you can book it All right, you guys, let's get into your reading This is a channel if you're new for Virgos only Virgo Sun, Moon, Rising or Venus, okay? So as you know, some of the messages may or may not resonate, but just take a fifth sleep the rest Let's see what's coming up for you for the weekend Okay, wow, you've got passion amazing insane chemistry liking each other equally Having fun. Okay. This is awesome something Pretty yummy is happening. It's just like living in paradise happiness expansion joy playfulness oneness enjoying time with each other and heart with a key Beautiful welcoming love meeting the one opening your heart getting together and perfect.  Okay, it's going to feel Joyous enjoying each other over the weekend. Whatever you're doing whomever you're doing it with. Okay, let's see Let's get into this reading. See what else is coming up for you. This is awesome. You guys Awesome, even if you're just staying home it could be going somewhere like I Don't know. Maybe go to a gym called Paradise Gym or you are Well, I wouldn't say well, some of you could be poolside or somewhere near the water There could be somebody you're drinking some passion fruit cocktails Just just um, okay Some of you are going to be looking at homes or houses this weekend. You might be purchasing a home maybe you're going to an open house or You are going somewhere with a real estate agent Doing some shopping for some of you. Okay, and yeah, I feel like you're gonna meet somebody over this weekend Let's see. Let's see. Let's see Okay, so wow six of pentacles in the reverse Okay, some of you might be going to a charity event, but you're not You're not being charitable, I don't know. I just heard that Hmm, let me see Let me see what else going on here. So this feels to me like you're keeping to yours like I Was gonna say keeping to yourself or your I see somebody like Standing by oh Okay, they just said Okay, um Now for some of you if you're doing something I Just so it's so strange that they're showing like if you're at a restaurant or something They're showing someone there's an event that happens. Someone forgets to tip the server Someone forgets to tip the server. Why is this important? I don't know. I just feel like It's either you or someone you're connecting with or this like this other person forgets to tip the server and it seems to be like Someone says, oh wow, did you forget or are you just a selfish? Whatever you are like, there's such a weird message. Okay, but then they're like, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh No, I totally forgot. I totally forgot to tip the server. Let me do that or forgets to pay for something for some of you okay, there might be someone here expects you to pay for everything and I Don't know what this means, but I feel like you might be saying No, we'll go halves. We'll go halves. Okay. That may not be for It's just for somebody here that wants to go Dutch. Okay. I don't know.  Okay Um It's interesting. It's very interesting. All right. Let me just keep moving here. I don't even understand Okay Okay, you guys just give me a second because they're also telling me that um Okay, they're telling me that there There was some person that you're connecting here with Um over this weekend, you might have known them before and they were extremely selfish Like a very selfish person or they were extremely dependent On like either financially because I'm seeing a lot of money stuff coming up here financially dependent on you Or other people All right, and there's kind of like this wake up call this person is having Where they're not going to be that way, especially if you're celebrating a birthday this weekend Okay, where somebody is like maybe in the past If you knew this person in the past They may have forgotten your birthday or things like that or they weren't very giving Okay, or they they just kind of it was just very wrapped up in themselves Or maybe a miser and didn't want to spend money But I feel like even if you don't know them, that's how they were before With others But something here with this person over this weekend that you connect with them They're like not even that person anymore. They just completely like there's an opening up here with judgment.  I'm gonna reconcile this bill. I'm gonna reconcile everything I'm gonna pay for everything.  I was very selfish before in my life With other people and that's one thing I don't know if somebody's having like an epiphany or a wake up call and I'm not just talking about like Okay, someone paying for everything equates to True love. I'm not saying that it's not necessarily just about money. It's about making a sacrifice So I feel that overall message here is someone is making a sacrifice for you over this weekend so that you both Can enjoy yourselves it just Not like I said, not just about money because we are seeing financial things here But there's a giving nature here with someone who Perhaps in the past was just none So when we talk about love language and gifts and access service, I feel like this person has now adopted To those types of a love language. Okay, so they are now performing access service. They are now more giving This could be somebody that you know, you connected with in the past where something is different Something here has changed If you knew them before let me see what else is going on Oh, yeah, so Okay, I feel like this person It may have a lot of regret and remorse because they were not a very giving person and again, let me reiterate We're not just talking about materialistic ways That is an aspect of this but it's also in regards to someone even Certain things like let me give you an example um, you you They walk through the door first be At front of you and they don't hold the door open for you They just kind of kick it back with their foot so that you can get into you know what I mean I'm feeling like chivalry in some areas and I'm also feeling like for example um If someone goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water Um, they get it and then they come back with it just for themselves Where this person I see is going in to get a glass of water and then is like do you would you like something and then Coming back with something that you would like or that you are you say yes. Yes. I'd like a glass of water Like I know these are very simple examples, but it just feels to me like somebody was extremely Just self about self, you know, it's like me first and then maybe you later I don't know if that's something that you have experienced, but I feel like They if you know them they were like that with you in the past and if you Didn't if you don't know who this person is that they're coming in new Um, because judgment can be reconciliation like I said So this could be you spending time with someone from before But if you didn't know this person and this is like a new person you're connecting with over the weekend um There's an energy here of like they used to be that way and they're not being that way anymore They've made some huge changes sacrificing Giving just a more giving energy. Oh my gosh. Like I feel like this person has a lot of Feels a lot of stress and guilt about you know, maybe who they used to be or the way they presented themselves in the past Even like simple like I'm at these simple examples like I don't know not not being timely not being consistent Not reaching back out not letting you know certain things It's just all about them first Do you know what I mean? And I'm not knocking self putting yourself first But we can put ourselves first and still give to others. That's being well rounded, right? It's when we're putting ourselves first and forgetting everybody else And not sharing and not being nurturing and a giving type of a person that that's like, okay There's a disconnect. I feel like this person is having a reconnect To self and understanding, you know in a relationship. Yes, you know, I I have to have my needs met But I also want to meet yours as well and vice versa and then that's the reciprocity I feel like with the six of pentacles in the reverse that was lacking. There was no reciprocity Okay, there was just this very selfish energy very dependent Also, or someone who was like broke busted and disgusted And I mean that in like in all forms spiritually emotionally physically financially every which way and so this person Very stressed about the way they were and I'm just hearing Making it up to you Okay, making it up to you. So if this is someone that you know You've got somebody here who's going to make something up to you on this weekend Okay, what else? Oh, wow 10 of pentacles in the reverse And the night of wands in the reverse. Okay Yeah, so this is kind of telling me that this person was Wild and crazy and impulsive in their past Um Not cohesive with the family security safety and trust this person If you knew them before they they They gave the message that they could not be trusted. Okay And if you don't know them yet, this is just whoever they are how they were in their past How they were before this person was possibly a player Going outside of a relationship cheating Being like a sexual deviant as well Just but it's like extremely pulsive Native wands energy in the reverse is like all over the place You know, at least when the night of wands is in the upright That means that the person's energy is they may be impulsive, but they're going in a particular direction They know what they're doing. They're charging forward and they keep moving in a linear fashion But in the reverse the night of wands is someone who is Um makes lateral moves. They're all over the place. They're here. They're there They they you never know what they're they're just very impulsive and scattered With their physical activities and their energy. So that's kind of like a tremendous sleeping around energy with this person And yeah, there's there's some major thing A major change because all of these cards Surround the judgment card and this is like self-awareness This is like wow my behaviors. Wow. I'm having a wake-up call I'm aware of how I lived my life and I know what my purpose here in life is and I know what I need to do Okay, and this is what I'm going to do to make these changes and it feels like over the weekend There's going to be something Just like wow this person will wow you is it false? No Because with judgment I feel like they are coming into tune with You know who they need to be That they need to give their needs to be reciprocity in a relationship Okay, so we have the king of pentacles So Virgo Taurus Capricorn energy could be connecting with that person Or this is just an energy of someone who is now very stable And grounded, you know the king of pentacles Is like a business person king of pentacles is not someone who is you know, they're quite reserved Um grown up really just mature king of pentacles is actually the most mature sign In the tarot. So I feel like this person's energy. They're coming in with with you know, um safe Pentacle energy always makes me feel like with earth energy safe someone that can be trusted So this is wonderful. This is wonderful.  So that energy I feel like there's some communication here With this from this person where they're telling you like my focus Now is on stability and I want to provide for you And this is their way of either making it up to you or showing you Okay, this is like action. This is like it's like it's it There's a little bit of show and tell but the show is going to be the tell Okay, let me see what else is going on here. Okay Yeah, I feel like this person so the two of swords, they're very intuitive and or they've become that way um I feel like there's They just said double-edged sword. I don't know what that means but the two of swords Yeah, this is giving me um something here about making a decision There's a big decision here that this person is sitting in contemplation mode Why what's going on here? What are they deciding? Oh, okay Yeah, it's not what they're deciding is that they've decided to walk away from those past behaviors Okay, new chapter They're starting their life over. So I feel like if you don't know this person They may tell you that they've you know given up that lifestyle. They're not doing that kind of thing anymore They're starting over and for some of you This is a shift in a change that they made At the end of 2021 You may not have known them So but they may tell you about it Or you might be in separation and reconnecting with this person again And 2021 was huge the end of the year going into january was was a huge shift for this person Let me see Okay Hermit and reverse so I feel like I feel like the person's energy now is like an opening up. Okay, they'll I feel like they were quite isolated Uh, very isolated all alone At one point up until now. I feel like they've just been kind of hiding out So the hermit upright is more of an energy of just taking some time away But the hermit in the reverse is like going into hiding going into hiding. I feel like this person Went into deep self-awareness deep self-reflection, which is Lovely. I don't feel like this person has any kind of like Malignancy as far as like, you know personality disorder Because of their ability to self-reflect And become self-aware which is a lovely energy So I know somebody here must be thinking that would not be my person because they're a narc And narcs can't self-reflect so it might not be this person has the ability so for some of you somebody knew This person has the ability to self-reflect. What was their self-reflection? They were drinking too much indulging too much dating. Like I said that night of wands and reverse a lot of What I want to say like possibly sleeping around or over flirting and never committing to anything just spreading themselves thin Okay, so let me get a few more messages to see Tell me about this weekend that vergo is going to have with this person. What is this weekend going to be like? Oh, okay. They just threw out a whole bunch of cards the sun. Look at that judgment is here again okay eight of pentacles And the king of swords and the nine of cups So vergo, I feel like there's a huge awakening joy Like I said, there's a tremendous amount of self-evaluation with this person a renewal Okay decisiveness So, um Okay, give me just a second here Okay, someone's going to I just got this message There might be plans to do some type of halloween Um, they're telling me Like a haunted house walkthrough or something. There might be talk about that over the weekend Hey, you want to do this thing? So it's kind of like plans for much later. This is specific Um, some kind of halloween walkthrough, but I feel like there's going to be um An outdoor event possibly or maybe there's like a fall festival or a fair or something Uh, you might meet this person or you guys might connect with each other and or you get invited to go to some kind of like You know, I don't know it's september I don't know if people are having like pumpkin festivals up in the northern area You know or something along those lines or some kind of like outdoor event um Where there's swimming or there's you know getting ready for you know going into spring and Being outside more if you are in the southern hemisphere, there's there's like an outdoor type of there might be children around children's party or face painting i'm hearing or something along those lines They're also giving me like, you know When you go to like one of those like carnival and games You got to you know throw the ball and see how many out there could be bowling or throw the ball and see How many like cups you can knock over with one hit or something? I don't know if anybody's doing that but um Yeah, it looks like I mean this is kind of like this Nine of pentacles. Sorry nine of pentacles interesting nine of cups there's um I'm hearing Okay, so they're telling me like a win-win situation. They're telling me achievements a win-win situation with this king of swords Okay, for some of you. So this might be a separate message Some of you might be connecting with um a leverage M&I Aquarius over the weekend as well and there's like some type of fun events Um, okay, so they're just telling me like a work event. There might be a work A work event a work picnic a work festival or something along those lines also Overall like I don't know if you're going to have two people to choose or this person is Somebody that you work with and then you spend some time with them over the weekend Okay, or you go somewhere together do some things together So you have Teamwork, okay teamwork. Yeah. Oh now here's the the king of wands. Oh my gosh There's going to be a lot of people around on this weekend or wherever you're going There's going to be I just see like maybe a crowd or there's a lot of people And I'm feeling very strong like here we go. Here's now the queen of pentacles There's a lot of people over this weekend.  It's like, oh my goodness male or female energy fire air earth Okay, the lovers the ace of cups. So there's like a new beginning. Here's an invite for some of you There's an apology coming over the weekend But there's also this invite Some of you might be going to a psychic fair. I just heard as well You've got like someone who's crushing on you as well. You have an admirer Wants to have like a brand new beginning. These are the three best cards here Okay, so I'm feeling like overall the message here is so is someone is making a sacrifice Being less selfish making something up to you Maybe an apology Having a new beginning or meaning somebody new and and them telling you, you know, how they used to be in the past that they were Kind of like, um, you know, just very selfish or a player or something like like that meeting you changes everything. Yeah So they were a goaster I don't know if it's it's goaster like they ghost you or they ghost people or they were non committal or there's The ghost theme something to do with like haunted houses or halloween or something along those lines. Very interesting Um, yeah, this person had so many options. There's so many choices multiple possibilities and opportunities Um having to pick and choose so many decisions and then procrastinating Because there was just they they had too much on their plates spreading themselves thin living in fantasy land wishful thinking um dreaming uh about Idealizing someone or the having the perfect person You know, but now being more grounded. Um, somebody here is, you know, seriously making A very grounded um faith-based offer something that's like, you know, why I'm going to finish Finally what I start I feel like there's somebody that was so impulsive that they Oh, I get a being a bonnet about doing something I want to do this one do this and then as soon as they got over it And it was like not satisfying then they went to the next thing, you know, and they never really like Followed through with something consistent long-term basis That was an issue for this person and it feels like oh That's changing why because you are the one There's something here This person comes to realize Oh, this is the one that is what changes everything for this person A recognition Okay, so over this weekend, I feel like whatever you're doing if there's a birthday party or some kind of celebration You're definitely going to hear from someone. There's going to be a connection that gets made For some of you and this is kind of like I'm just feeling like Someone's saying, you know, I'm too old for this anymore. I need, you know, I really want to settle down and I you know, I've lived my whole life never really committing and just playing around so much and You know going from one person to the next and the next to the next and Something about you gives this person like they're incentivized To want to change their ways as well. Okay, um or to keep moving in that direction It's like a beautiful I was just going to say it's a beautiful gift And here you are. Here you go the ace of pentacles Okay, this is a this is a new this is a gift Investing someone investing security stability. Happy birthday Virgo Maybe you're just getting some really nice gifts for your birthday as well or or really nice Um, they could be giving you a gift as well. There's something brand new. It could be money or um It's but this feels more like a spiritual thing. That's being brought down. This is your birthday gift here You know, it's it for some of you. It's tangible for others. It's more like Uh universal it's more like Divine timing like a divine gift that's being given. It's crazy. Sometimes how these messages come out Let me take a look here at The romance angels Let's do the romance angels want to say for Virgo Okay, heart to heart conversation is coming out this weekend Honestly discussing your feelings with each other and that's what I was saying I feel like this person is coming in with this heart to heart. I feel like they're going to You know explain or talk to you about this past energy or these things that they've done Or how they used to live their lives and how they've woken up to You That's not satisfying Um becoming getting rid of that impulsive activity when it comes to love, right not not It's okay to be impulsive in love when you're with another person if you're impulsive in love This is my opinion and you're just sleeping around constantly with every Tom Dick and Harry Sue Jane and Nancy then you know, that's That can wear very thin and That that's what I feel like's happening here. Somebody is like so tired of that lifestyle Okay Healing family issues. Yeah your love life benefits is you forgive your parents somebody had a parent that slept around a lot or cheated or was Well, this person There was a lot of inconsistency things they saw a parent do And that's very specific somebody may have had a father who had a ton of children with different women or Had a mother that was just You know from one husband to the next that kind of energy there. There's some family trauma or something Within a family doesn't specifically have to be that but there might have been a relationship between parents that um This person kind of what's the word? mimicked In their personal relationships with others Okay So I feel like that that that is definitely playing a role and there's some healing of these this family stuff Which is going to be part of that heart-to-heart conversation It it might get really deep it might get deep some of you might be like, all right, let's hold this off for another time You know or it might they might just tell you kind of like nonchalantly You know about their past behaviors and you know Now they're trying to yeah, here you go clearly decide what you want to come to you now This person is definitely remember I said making a decision. They've made a decision They've decided they're they're done with that past lifestyle. Okay. Maybe they were a bachelor or bachelorette And it just is not satisfying them anymore. And they've either made that decision in 2021 to make these changes Um, whatever it is, there's a conversation about this from this person And this could be the one you've already met their romantic partner you seek So this person either they know you or they've known you in the past Okay, um, or you guys meet and then reconnect later There this is it. This is they look at you this person looks at you and You there's something about you Mary I don't know who Mary is but there's something about you that this person feels like I'm ready Virgo is the one Virgo is the one that is the incentivizer Virgo is the one where I feel like I can make these changes So your advice is to go slow Take time to get to know each other either for the first time or again over this weekend. Try to understand Um, if you can hear somebody out firm boundaries are needed now Virgo So you want to keep your boundaries right intact. No need to change anything here.  I'm hearing Okay, so there's an apology coming for some of you You can expect the apology you want to hear and that's what I was saying Somebody is definitely going to try to make something up to you Okay, use your intuition You already know the answer that you seek Virgo. So stay in tune with your Intuition and also abundance. You've done the work abundance is flowing to you now, especially over this weekend. Okay Any red flags that you see? Pay attention to them if you see them Okay, and call them out when you see them. Don't be afraid. I feel like it's a really strong message Virgo You got to call people out on their red flags a hundred percent if somebody is like I don't know if you just get a sense of someone is kind of like Blow and smoke call them out on it Ask more questions if they run away and they don't want to answer any questions then you know When you call the devil out the devil will flee Every single time that's how you know you're dealing with someone But you're not as long as you're not holding anyone accountable or calling people out on things And and and that doesn't mean like in a mean way, but just addressing red flag issues Then those red flags will continue that has a lot to do with your boundaries Okay So I think that's going to be it. I think we're good. So I'm going to leave your weekend reading here And again, I hope you guys have a fantastic birthday And an awesome weekend and I will see you all back here Sunday evening. All right. Take care. Bye