Website as jessica and heather are talking, please submit your questions for heather or Jessica Jessica will entertain questions as well. The q a features are at the bottom of your screen. We will get to as many of those as time allows. Heather lende has contributed a ashes the author of the best selling book buying the good take good care of the ab heather will be interviewed by Jessica Hendler, Jessica Hendler is the author of the novel the magnetic girl winner of the 2027 book prize. Also nominee for the townsend prize. Her memoir the invisible sisters was named one of the book s all georgian should read in her craft guide reading afire a guide to writing about grief was praised by vanity fair magazine many others. She teaches creative writing and directs minor writing at a university in atlanta. She lectures International Writing and we are so delighted she is joining us tonight. Heather and jessica, welcome, i will let jessica take it from here. Thank you kate. Heather, im so glad to talk to you, i feel like you are a friend although weve only sorted met on the internet in the past two weeks. I love this book so much. While i personally dont have the temperament to run for office, and you do, apparently. You and i share deep beliefs in the importance of community and the parts of democracy. Its just a real honor to spend some time with you this evening. Thank you lex i want to know if you would read from us aash for us the very beginning of of bears and ballots. The beginning election day through my life is an open book the first three paragraphs. Sure. Election day, there are two polling places in haines, one of the art center lobby on the hill above the harbor and the cruise ship docks. The other at the fire hall in mosquito lake, woodsy 26 miles out of town. I said hi to everyone as i walked in. But i didnt say wish me luck. Or anything close to it. The public Radio Station ab one neighbor who lives in an old house with the wide fortune in Silicon Valley was asked by the court to remove Campaign Signs from his yard since his home was too close to the polls. I did notice who was there voting, friends and foes and wondered which side of the haines ratliff divide would be victorious. By the way, a little more than half of us would be happy and a little less than half would be disappointed. Haines is predictable. I assumed it would be close. It looked to me as more conservative voters than mine were at the art center thats morning. I hope my years in town my Community Service in the library board, the hospice board and Planning Commission i volunteer hosting of the local Country Music show on ks and s Coaching High School runners for 17 years five good children and five grandchildren, the sixth, seventh and now 11 because of the afamily. My Family Business lou tech lumber which my husband chip runs us all the obituaries i have been writing since 1997. How much further do you want me to keep going . You can stop there. I was nervous being in your presence. [laughter] dont say that. I wanted to do, your voice and this book is so present and warm. I was really stopped by the fact that there is a street in your town called theres a map in the front piece of this book. It gives the reader some charm and smallness of pains. In your love and commitment to this place where you been for a long time. I love having them out there. My first book with the met. People always ask me so i asked my friend, whos also in the family with me. Is just fantastic, it reminds me of a childrens book. You write in the book that you ran to local office to help set an example. Im curious in what ways did you experience set an example. Whats the example setting . I think, i was thinking my grandchildren will talk about their grandmother involved in local government and thinking in my life how influential my mothers and grandmothers were in the things they did that i didnt even realize at the time that have become part of the way i live and the things i respected people. In fact, i want to show them that they need to be involved in their community and their government and i want to talk about their grandmother on the assembly and remember me typing my notes from meetings or ab it didnt work out that way. I didnt become the local star of the assembly or anything but what i did do is because i was thinking of that all the time, i realized about halfway in, maybe sooner than that that what i was going to bring to it was a kind of civility, kindness, i wasnt going to do anything that i wouldnt want them to be proud of me for, even if i might not be winning particular battles over being revered by certain people for my politics. It was different than that. It was like, im gonna show them how to behave in the public eye when the chips are down a little bit. Box the chips were down for you. And also how do you talk to your neighbors, even the ones you disagree with. Especially publicly. Im not a saint or anything. I might rant and rave or yellow a little bit in my talks with my friends but publicly i always try the old adage, if i couldnt Say Something nice, dont say anything at all. And really try to find some something in either my fellow Assembly Members, the mayor, the staff or the people who were giving us such a hard time to appreciate in them. That helped. And wanted to ask you about the hard time you refer to, which is the recall. Then i also want to talk about at one point i was reading the book i started circling how many times the word kindness or respect or listen showed up in the text. Talk to us a little bit about the hard time the attempt of the recall and how kindness and respect and listening even to people people disagree with contributes to democracy. First the recall, which, as you so clearly put, i wish i had your book before i wrote about it. It was really great, it was great for the town i lived in. During that time sort of felt personal like almost divorce like my tone had cheated on me. What happened was, right after myself and my friend tom morford the editor of the chilcote valley news were elected basically on a fairly progressive than the other people running, there were six people running and tom and i were the top two gogetters we joined an assembly already leading more progressive in that if thats the right word. Its hard in a small town it doesnt line up the way it does nationally. But there was an issue about the harbor and an expansion there and we had run on the idea that the community should have a referendum to get the vote on the design of it. We thought just before we got in right after we got in we better get that happening and that created a lot of anger from the people who had supported that particular design. Right away, it didnt happen the rest of the assembly with the mayor breaks the tie that was 3 a4. There was going to be no referendum and even though similar to national in the way they won they were so mad that we even wanted to do that but pretty much the next day were going to recall you. It became something that hung over us so that every meeting how that works theres always somebody whos unhappy with the decision. It snowballed like that pretty much the first nine months i was on office by second election was on august. My previous one was in october. It was myself and two other Assembly Members. Tom who was recently elected and then a local artist, the third one. The really good news about it was the town didnt go for it. They recognized what my community recognized it was pretty squarely so is 60b0 ended was it personal. They didnt choose which one of the three that were targeted, they rather have or not, it was straight across, we all pretty much got the same number of bull. It was a resounding no to that kind of politics. And that was good. Which goes to the next part of the question which is you really emphasize in this book kindness and respect and listening to people regardless of if they agree with you or dont agree with you. How does it contribute to a function community in your mind . I think its the only way youre going to have a functioning community. Its just human nature. If somebody is standing there calling you names saying that you are stupid, saying bad things about your family, youre probably not going to want to listen to them. The next time they stand up and they Start Talking about why they need a sewer line expansion to their neighborhood. Its human nature that you backup from people that are communicating with you well. If you can at least find some way to be, for lack of a better word, polite, it helps. I noticed that watching people and they come to assemble meetings and talking. If you are leaning against them eventually they might lean this way or come towards you. Its an easier way to note somebody that i slam on the shoulder. It makes sense. Its a hard lesson to learn. I love the whole book and i dont want to say theres a section that id love as if there werent other ones. When you go to the Community Bath can you talk about that section . I love reading about that section and you use a metaphor for the common good. That was at the very beginning of the book. It was all small but big. Oh you are going to have a campaign, i will be your campaign manager. Theresa is a gogetter retired elementary schoolteacher. Everybody loves her. Shes in a tiny town called syndicate springs in the town has a public bath. Its a warm springs with the bathhouse on top and thats where you go to dave. I always wanted to go to tennessee and travel in alaska is challenging. Theresa had the place for years and i had never been out there. It involved rides to get there and we went just before it declared my candidacy because she had a club there that i was going to go and talk to. I thought that maybe the bath was not as public as it was. We get down there and its time to go bathe and there are women showers and mens showers and its a little and bath. Then theres a sign that says no bathing suits, bathing only. And i thought well maybe it will be dark in there. We go down into this grotto and its concrete with an oldfashioned skylight in there you are in your birthday suit and there are other women in the town there with all different sizes and shapes and you are bathing together. I did a talk there on a book about obituary writing and it was completely different having been in the bath with people because you realize how the scars and our bodies and ourselves and what we put on top of each other that is different and it made me think if we all had to bathe together would probably be a lot nicer to each other. Its a metaphor for the common good and looking is a version of listening as turns of seeing people as people. There ares a lot of stuff in this book about democracy but its also about community and your life and your parenting and grandparenting in to some extent your faith in your upbringing. Can you talk a little bit about what drives you to think this way and why you decided to run for office and why you understand listening to people disagree with you. Where does that come from . I think a lot of it when i look back comes from my mother and the school. I grew up going to a quaker school. He was very much that. Quakers teach you there is every god in every man. Theres a little spark in there thats holy in all of us and that runs through a lot of faith traditions and im a regular practicing episcopalian and i go to church on sunday. It might sound wrote people but is called the film the blank church. They are things done and left undone but you have to care for people. Even the idea of forgiving people, god will forgive you only as much as you forgive others. Thats been ingrained in me as part of my values and while again i fall short a lot especially when im in public i feel like thats what you have to do. Your best foot goes forward and thats what all these lessons are for in a leadership role in the community. Thats when those come into my decisionmaking. Snare their codes and sure theres a constitution but how you get there comes from that ground i think. In terms of being an Assembly Person the section in the book about order, i dont even understand it. I know what it is but was it hard to learn that . This is a hard job what you are doing. I meno was. Ive been on boards and you know theres always you make a motion in the second inning vote but it can get very complicated and the people who are you holding them to it if you are sure what to do with the 2nd amendment or how this all happens you can get stuck and that the beginning sometimes it feels as if people were using lack of knowledge. They want to make sure you can have something happen and they make this motion and you are like what . I didnt even get to talk about it and then i thought this is a bunch of who we had better learn how to do it. Theres a certain builtin decorum to it. You call each other some women or Assembly Members or a manager. We all know each other by our first names. My children called her schoolteachers by their first names outside of school and you call the doctors and her priest to church on a first name basis. In an assembly its just odd and when they stand up they have to give their full name. This is john turner jr. Even though they know who it is. They shop at your congress door lumberyard and there are two aspects of the same community. On the assembly the people who are on the dais. I wrote the mayors obituary and her nephews and other members of her family. I wrote his parents. I went around the room at any given time and there were four or five people in there that ive been involved in an intimate time in their life. You have a section where you are chatting with an native author named ernestine haiyan she is visiting your home. Youre having a really deep conversation having to do with racism and privilege and collective memory i guess and it comes up later in the book this tragedy over a generation. You talk about collective silence and im wondering, i dont know politics is the right word but the how the member of a community are representative of the community how does that help guide the community are the silence to grow in a positive way . What im asking is how does talking about difficult subjects or confronting it difficult task in the Community Help the Community Grow . Well i think and this is y. Had that conversation with my friend ernestine. I think a lot of times and i know i speak for myself in this you dont want to bring up these things like the issues of race, injustice, abuse that has happened unless someone brings it up to you for is pretty feel like its not my place in the small town you are trying to keep privacy for Different Things to. We havent balance where we might know what everybody is up to that we dont say so and to give them sort of a veil of privacy i guess but in talking with ernestine and shining a light on that in the privacy of my living room she could talk about things that she had grown up with as an alaskan native woman and her incredible stories. She was a College Professor by the time she was 70 and she was a laureate and she wrote a beautiful book but in public it might be awkward to have a conversation like you and i are having because neither one of us want to say the wrong thing or have it interpreted the wrong way. Theres so much involved with that in and the same with the other situation in the community where this horrible crime was uncovered and it turns out people kind of had an idea about that but nobody has ever said anything. Now i think especially with Community Leaders it comes through loud and clear with the lives matter especially those of us who are privileged and white. We are supposed to say hey this is right. I dont think this is right and we are supposed to call people out on the publicly and you can do it politely. Ernestine every time she speaks shes just a wonderful nice grandmotherly person, dimples and sparkling eyes preacher writes about very hard things in a way thats almost like angelas ashes. You have done it in your book you know the way sorrow and tragedy is with us and for her family the way you have a love for years. Its challenging but she installed for speeches and she posts her fist up and so smash the patriarchy. She does this in front of governors and you just want to stand up and cheer. To me thats the same as people who go to church and put their hands up. Im episcopalian so i can do the waving but im so moved and she does it in such a way that is coming from love, not hate and she says that every time. So thats a leader whether left, right or laureate native woman. She dated every time and nobody got mad at her. Maybe they did but they didnt say so. We all worry about how those things will play out in public and she did that and i love her for it. I think its balance in the way because you are talking about in the book you are writing about community disagreements are writing about physical spots in the communitys history and how people in the Community View the weimar and speak up and encourage people to look at their community and look at themselves and make a change. One of my favorite characters is for a medic or who was a longtime musical editor and there were two characters in the book which is a phase i lived in but ray was a columbia grad from new york and taught french and native alaskan. In 1975 really about and love nowhere. Not even a Radio Station or tv an array brought culture and urbain this and then he started a Student Newspaper that became our local paper for students to Start Publishing the regular news. He helped found the public Radio Station in the local Conservation Group that is responsible for a lot of land around here. He also served on the assembly for seven terms as a socialist. At one point he was called red ray. It was for the powers that be and he went right to the source of their rumor and explained the difference between socialism and communism to assure people he wasnt a communist. I see the legacy that he left in one small town and we still have the Radio Station and we still have a very strong Conservation Group in newspaper and that israeli one person in the small town. It isnt exactly what you think of as your stereotypical alaskan but very much so. He is a great character. I loved reading about him and i wish that i could meet them sometime. Reading about the people in this book makes me want to reach into the pages and say tell me more about this. Tell us about the other characters. One of my favorites is stephanie who is a former mayor and retired and she is a flower farm now and she grows flowers and delivers them everywhere around town to moto rooms wherever people want them. Stephanie is diminutive person with a great dig dog and she is a buddhist. She really helped me when i was on the assembly. People were yelling at me and screaming she gave me a book called choosing civility. By cm forney. A great look. Anyone who is thinking about running for office are thinking about living in the world a little better this is a wonderful book. Hes the cofounder of the Johns Hopkins civility project and it really really helped me and stephanie had all this stuff underlined and circled from when she was the mayor and that what happened was we ended up people quit so there was all kinds of controversy when it up appointing stephanie to the state during a really serious illness. That was overshadowing us but i think the fact that she was there during that time made us all realize that what we were doing wasnt lifeanddeath and their arguments here we have somebody in a headscarf and had cancer and the service dog with her and yet she wanted to be on the assembly and that changed for me. I could feel the room change because of that and of course we all know that we are all terminal and away but to have someone saying im here to do this for the community and i know i may not have as much time as the rest of you was a real gamechanger. She is setting an example in a different way but she also set an example for you. Very much so. That really helps me because she would put her hand on me and say dont say anything. You can vote and that was just very hopeful. There would be times id say cant do it anymore and im going to quit. She would say just dont go to the next meeting. I said you do that and she said sure you can. If you miss three then they can kick you off bridges knowing that i had a backdoor, never used it but i felt like okay if it looked like he was going to be too much for me i could just not go in knowing that empowered me in a way. So stephanie was another great one and the editor of the news finding the man and he reported on it for years but he had lots of issues about the inertia of government and the slowness and the bureaucracy and all these things. He would just rail. There are many and im sure they are everywhere. Even the ones i disagree with. That comes through so beautifully. I have got two or three more questions than i want to go to the audience because i can see some red numbers coming up. Of women in politics and later shipped there are positives in this book. You write what is this expectation that we should make everything okay . What is this expectation . What is that expectation what do we do about it . I dont know. I wrestle with that. One of its generational or my family. I hate to say women this is all how we all are because they know we are different and thats in itself diminishing but the way i was raised you are the person in the room that is the good hostess to you havent had to eat are you comfortable are you warm enough cool enough like me to open the window . The golden retriever. Hi. I felt like i had more courage to be okay if people werent comfortable with that as long as i was comfortable with that myself and thats just an ongoing issue of how to be public and not bring your private expectations and how to separate that. One of the best advice i got was from one of the managers he said to me heather you have raised five children and they are all pretty good trades him and they are all kuchar being citizens of good people and she said did you give them everything they wanted all the time . Didnt sometimes they get mad at you and sometimes did they not like your rules . She said when you come in here put your mother brain on. You arent going to get that pair of shoes and know you have to go to bed now and yes you have to get up and we are going to do the firewood today. Those kinds of things and that really helped me. I can still like everybody but instead of the hostess i can be the mother who is the boss of this place. The boss of the place. That helped me tremendously then. A hostess does that. Its a good way to put on a different brain and i dont know if the word is more power that may be a way to navigate a challenge. I know that i can love someone and not trust them which sometimes happens with teenagers. I mean i adore them but careful they might not tell you the truth about where they went last night area and with all kinds of family members that happens so i just started really thinking of family members as well as the audience are the residents who were in the room in our meeting as family. On the subject of love im going to ask you one more question and then we will go to questions for. You have a great love for alaska is so clear and you write about the wilderness specifically the National Wildlife refugee and you are reading on that trip marty makary and you quote her asking in the 1920s the most precious thing in life so im curious what you think is a christian who has kuchar baited to the politics and the democracy and the community and person who contributed and thought a lot about the wellbeing of the community what was it like for you . For me its all about relationships and i think thats why politics is so challenging in a small town. Do you love and have youve been loved and how do you take care of the people around you . Anthony fauci says i dont understand how to tell you to take care of everybody by wearing a mask. I dont understand that how to explain why you should love your neighbor you know. I think thats it. The place that you were in a think you should do everything you can to leave it at least as good as when you got there and hopefully a little better. Your little patch of ground in your community, your family and friends. The way those relationships are different with all different people. I have another friend my dear friend beth whos never had any children has this whole family around her that she has created these relationships for years and years by caring for people by being fair and being good and being generous in the community. Sure you can write checks but its more than that. Its volunteering and being part of things. It inspires me. Shall we go to questions . How do we do that lacks. I think what we do is we go to q a. I think i do it and we have got one person who said Many Americans are focused on politics especially how it has an impact on their daily lives. How do you look at those roses participation in the process and how can we move forward and moving running for office. In terms of everybodys aware of local issues and not so much national. National sure people argue about the coffee shop for the bar or something but in general itll probably be more about whats on the assemblys agenda. All the time i emphasize the local and more and more we are seeing that now clearly. Issues of Public Health issues of social justice. It comes right down to decisions that are made every single meeting by small groups of people in small towns, medium towns and big towns and just issues about hiring policies, issues about the women who work at the library get. Less than the men who work or public works. It never occurred to me and all the news in the last few months have brought that front and center than the idea that her Assembly Meetings and many Public Meetings in small towns require you to be at present and now we are all doing bills and guess what my kids have been attending to family family meetings and they have never gone before. Its tuesday at at 6 30 in the night and they they are going to sit in the Assembly Chamber but now they can do it on sale. Anyway you can change the process to get more people participate in you that decision could be made at the local level. I just think its critical. The local people hire Police Departments and they set the policies and they set the budget. Those things are how we live. Is that participation away to convince as away to condense as the questioner as more women to run for local office . I think so. The go might be an especially women are so busy. We have to do everything. We have to raise the kids and now we have to run the place. Come on. We can maybe change how its done and james the times of the meetings and i thought about that again. I just thought this is what i have to do. I have to have dinner with my husband that night because he doesnt get home until later. Have a meeting on zim later instead of dinnertime which is the worst time for mothers. Youre just getting home and you have all these things to do and then its politics. And i think women frankly and no offense to the men but women are good at this because they see the things that matter to people. I think in general women and i dont want to be too whatever but the women spoke up more for families, for communities and thinks that, schools and parks and with men it was all about business all the time and about the money. Not that it isnt important but and women certainly contribute to it in a big way and have a lot to say about it but why is daycare still an issue . Get more women and their end make it normal. Why do we have to go back to work six weeks after having a baby if youre lucky. If you have that kind of insurance where every other country in the world they give you time and then they tell you the most important thing is to be with your kids. How are you supposed to do that if you cant take off or . Thats why women need to get there because those children are our children they are going to be the leaders next. We have to get this right to. I feel we need ernestine. Another questioner says do you think alaska might be more progressive . I do. I think right now very they are interesting things are happening in alaska because we have a challenger republican incumbent ed sullivan and dr. Al gross who is a really good doctor and operated on a lot of people and alaska is a small state produce a commercial fisherman so that helps and you know hes not superliberal but hes a democrat and health care with all thats going on hes right there and we also have the least alvon who is neckandneck with john young. I think it is possible and Lisa Murkowski of course is always kind of a little more medium than you would think and alaskans tend to support her. It could happen. It very well could happen. With the question from galen who says what did writing obituaries teach you about the sensitive terrain of grieving families and she wants to note those lessons informed the way you are approached third World Politics . May be. I guess my focus of writing obituaries and what i did all the time was to find a good but to look when someone dies in the first thing i usually ask the family is tell me what you loved about them. Be as specific as you can because everybody has Different Things and when they start doing that the personalities come through. So do that and things like in terms of difficult death someone died of alcohol or took take their own life. These things happen as you know. I asked them how would you like us to handle this . Do you want to mention it and this is important to you as a family to Say Something in the obituary or not . Things like if there have been several marriages and they dont want to necessarily talk about them all say how can we do that . There have been children from them so will put their last names and that we dont have to mention that if you dont want but i try in this helps in politics. It certainly finding the best in people and trying to find something in people. The other one is when you are writing an obituary you want to think about what needs to be said and what doesnt need to be said and if there is, but you also want to capture their personality preference and said someone in a running feud with their neighbor you dont quote the neighbor saying she used to shoot over my head every time i went to check on my chickens. Instead you quote their best friend sang oh gosh she was in that restaurant in chico out and fired a gun right over his head every day. And its a complement. So much of it is the message of politics to and i watched it. I dont know if i necessarily modeled it but when a basketball coach stands up and talks about clean water the environmentalist in the room and when the coach says Everybody Knows you to keep your water clean bingo the Development People will listen to him because its a different voice. Its someone they trust. Its a how you deliver the message. And who. Sometimes it comes down to who is saying it. They trust someone they know. Its a and talking about touring digitally. What havent i asked you that you want to talk about . I dont know. The one thing i guess i would say thats important my life when i learned you are changing all the time. Ideas change in towns changed and a lot of what happened and whats happened happening in the country has to do with people who want to go back to some kind of good old days and people who want to go forward and really they are the same thing. Everybody really wants the same thing. They want help and stability in enough to eat and to be safe and have a job to go out to the park and i think finding that somehow and trying to govern ourselves with that moving forward that might help especially as things roll into the fall and the election in the winter and understanding that. I think we are always going to have the good old days and we are always going to have people who want change and understanding that its okay. One of the elders and old gal that is one of my dear friend who passed away who came here into me was very romantic. Everybody went to dances every friday night and they all brought food to the potluck and i said to her we are going to miss that. Oh no she said are you kidding . It was so hard in all that snow and we didnt have a car in the couldnt listen to my operon the radio and look at all these well appointed home she said you have to let change she dont like change you die. Its like what c. S. Lewis said you cant go on being a good egg forever. You either or you get eaten. The weekend hatami can keep going. I have changed a lot. Im better at it now and i got a lot of courage from it. Its a and a book about how we are living in the past the president of future all the same time. A really fine writer if you are looking to learn about the rural is beth kantner locked writes a lot for orion. He observed in rural alaska we are living in the past all at once because of Climate Change in the scope of development and the internet. The world is so fast to these places there were so remote and no wonder we are stressed. Thats how the whole country is right now. It seems like how the world is. Everything is zooming faster and faster. We dont have any control and a lot of this is about leadership even at the local level statelevel national level. What is it that we all want an or we get there enough so government does. All government is is a collective agreement on the rules to live by. Its not some big bad thing. Its this is what we need to do to live together in communities in the country and these are the things we all collectively agree are our values. Last question, what is next for you . Joining me zoom events. Im sure i will write another book. Right now i am treading water like we all are at the pandemic could i have a granddaughter. On march 16 when i cut the umbilical cord and the state would into lockdown and i literally started and i havent seen her in a tough to figure out how to see my daughter and that the sun in australia who i also got to see just ahead of the pandemic. I was ahead in january but, in my dad. We are all worried about the same things that everybody is pretty the dad in new york and im worried about him and my sister is they are. Pretty much im taking it day by day and im sure i will write about it all when i get it sorted out. And its all about amenity and family. We are done with questions and im going to look at this shot and somebody says the good old days were so good. I want to thank you. This has been wonderful and your voice is an important voice and its just a pleasure to talk to you. The link to purchase of bears and ballots and other books as well can be found in the chat so go there and buy the book and i dont know how we are doing that now. I cant say enough about this book especially now and heather i just want to thank you so much thank you. Its really been nice to meet you after reading your book and im going to pass your book onto my local class think it will really help people right now as a resource. Please do. Are you still writing obituaries . Yeah. There were two less to get into because i was doing all this other stuff but i will do one for the newspaper. Heathers book is very much that way is also thank you all so much. I appreciate it. Thank you and i think the atlanta history center. Truly nice to be in georgia. I think we had the multiparty democracy in the u. S. For a long time. I think what we had was much more akin to multiparty democracy with different factions and coalitions than a twoparty democracy that we have now. The twoparty of 2010 is the truly radical deviation from the american pletka one and i also think if you look at what the framers were writing that they did like hardees but what they really didnt like was the twoparty system. Madisons federalist number 10 which is the one about factions saying look the key to a stable democracy is fluid prohibitions and you have different factions on different issues that you want to have a democracy so that note or feels like its going to be enough permanent minority and doesnt view the system is legitimate and a permanent majority and therefore its an opportunity to impress the minority and thats fundamentally of vision of multiparty democracy. Welcome to the commonwealth club. Im chair of the form which organized the event but im happy to welcome back a. J. Baime. We had them here a year and a half ago or so. His last