The memoir, called Fighting Fire, had been written a decade before. It was about my career as a San Francisco firefighter, and it had done well, and for a moment there I was almost famous, so I was grateful for it. But frankly, that part of my life was over. I was no longer a firefighter. I had published a second book. I was working on a third. The last thing I wanted to do was revisit my first piece of writing.

I faced the fact that St. Martins Press had broken up with me, and pouted. I had the rights reverted. Then I did nothing.

Meanwhile the publishing industry was undergoing seismic changes. E-book sales were taking off, tablets were coming to the fore, and self-publishing was combing its hair and wearing cool glasses. The big houses couldn’t wipe the dazed look off their faces. But writers – a luddite group if there ever was one – were watching emerging technologies with a keen eye. What did it all mean for the books we were going to write? A few of my peers self-published, or turned to boutique presses, known as micropublishers. I vaguely thought, yeah, I should just throw Fighting Fire back in the world. But it seemed emotionally taxing and time consuming – I didn’t even know where the original file was, and if I found it, whether the ancient computer program it was written on would work. Forget it, I thought.

Then I had a bad accident. I crashed the experimental plane I was flying and spent many miserable months on the sofa. I did what many drug addled, depressed people do. I thought about the end of the world (it was soon), I thought about the meaning of life (it was shit, all shit) and I thought about my paltry legacy. It dawned on me that my memoir was no longer immortal. It existed now in a finite state, instead of that glorious, ever multiplying iteration of itself known as The Next Printing. At some point all existing copies would die slow, ignominious, wear-and-tear deaths – spines broken, pages soiled, edges ragged. They would be buried in a recycling bin. They would become 2-ply toilet paper sold at co-ops.

I emerged from my stupor and decided to republish Fighting Fire.

The old cover

Not only republish, but re-edit, revise and update it. I was a much better writer now. Why let that raw, earnest, adverb-friendly, long-sentenced version of myself linger? With e-books and Print on Demand (POD) as a garrote, I could quietly, efficiently off her. In her place I would seat that wiser, more skilled self.

But was it ethical? I had never heard of anyone tampering with their memoir. A memoir is not only an account of your life, it is specifically an account of your remembrances of your life. So now I would be telling that same story fifteen years later. I was re-remembering a memory.

Even more important, a memoir is a reflection of who you are at the time of writing. But now I would be peering backwards at myself from a new vantage point. Isn’t there a different author (older, wiser me) now? And haven’t I now changed my main character by writing her with this new hand? Did this matter?

Nicolas Carr recently wrote about a similar situation, describing how he’d brushed off some old essays and published them on Kindle. He’d then pulled a few to “tweak a couple of sentences,” and put them back into e-circulation, well aware that readers would never be wiser. Carr noted that in printed books “the words stay put.” But with the “endless malleability of digital writing … the words can keep changing, at the whim of the author or anyone else with a source file.” He compared e-books to manuscripts before the Gutenberg Press, when “books were handwritten by scribes and no two copies were exactly the same.”

Still, a misplaced word here and there by someone with a tetchy quill pen didn’t quite relieve me of the ethical dilemma. And Carr himself was editing essays about innovation, for which factual updates are necessary and sentence changes only a surface manicure. He was making it a more truthful article and a better read. But memoir seemed to be different. Changes here could disrupt a deeper, more essential truth.

We pick up a memoir knowing it isn’t “true” in the way of, say, a biography. A biography pretends at least, to be impartial. It tallies a life from a series of facts and circumstances agreed upon by more than one source, and we pick up the book because the author has assured us that she has no vested interest in how the life she’s chronicling turns out. The memoir is exactly the opposite. The author reaches into the din of facts and thoughts and circumstances and proudly, defiantly, pulls out those that resonate with her, arranging them in the pattern that best communicates her experience of that din. She scoffs at multiple sources, shrugs at objectivity, admits readily to a vested interest. The memoir is subjective. And it is this very subjectivity that at once makes revisions both completely fine, and also completely reprehensible.

My plan was to add some firefighting adventures. These had missed initial inclusion because they’d happened after publication. (A big fire here, a gang killing there, the explosion that could have killed me.) This seemed straightforward. But I also wanted to cut out the whole second chapter, which I now judged to be needless backstory. Another chapter in the middle would get the axe – boring, unnecessary. Sentences would be re-edited along the way, whole paragraphs would probably be strafed. Descriptions that had needlessly insulted people would definitely be rewritten; who knew that describing a firefighter as choirboy handsome was not a compliment? Now I could cut it, and my friend would no longer have to endure endless ribbing from his peers. In other words, I would rewrite the book using judgment that the young author at the time did not have.

The new cover

By now I was taken with the sparkle and shine of what could be a freshly scrubbed memoir. So I dug deep for justification, thousands of years deep. I looked past the e-book, the printing press, and the scribes, to the oral tradition, where tales had been passed from generation to generation through memory, changing each time. These accounts were memoirs too; the life stories of a people or a culture, and any changes became the evolving truth of the story. Did the story hold on to its original roots? We can never know for sure. Does it bother us? It doesn’t seem to.

In the end, I made a decision: I would overhaul the original edition. I hadn’t reached a firm ethical conclusion and it didn’t seem that I would, so I opted for plain and simple vanity: I wanted my best self forward, and that was that. Skywriter Books, a micropublisher run by writer Holly Payne, shepherded me through the logistics of the process, while I managed the complicated emotions that come with dropping back into the past. I had long, tense conversations with my younger self – why the fuck did you write that, what the hell were you thinking, are you serious, you put that out into the world? – and I relived a time that was formative and incredible, but that I thought had come and gone. For months I was unmoored, disoriented. Then it was done. And I liked the result.

I wrote an introduction, explaining the situation, so the reader would understand that there were two authors of this book – my wide-eyed, earnest younger self and my more skilled older self. Each voice was authentic, and the memoir never lied. But, still, was it “right”? Did revising, re-editing and updating alter something essential in the book? I don’t know. One thing I am sure of: as technology gives us more flexibility and more of us decide to republish our memoirs, the quandaries will become clearer and with them, the answers.

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I was eager to speak to Potter, whose Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege shows how the US government is colluding with corporate America to suppress animal and environmental activism of all stripes.

We spoke over email.

***

The Rumpus: When did the government start telling us that environmentalists and animal rights activists were dangerous, even if their protests were perfectly legal?

Will Potter: Beginning in the early 1980s, corporations and industry groups set out to demonize these activists and shift public opinion against them. To do that, they used the power of language. They created the term “eco-terrorism” and used it relentlessly. What I found in my research is that these corporate priorities slowly merged with government priorities. Through tactics such as Congressional hearings, white papers and PR campaigns, this “eco-terrorism” rhetoric worked its way into the top levels of government.

Rumpus: You begin your book, Green is the New Red, by detailing your arrest and detention after leafleting against an animal experimentation lab. But isn’t leafleting legal?

Potter: Absolutely. Leafleting is completely legal, and that’s why the case was thrown out. Often, frivolous arrests like this are more about 1) deterring activists and 2) gathering information. When I was visited by two FBI agents following my arrest, they had little interest in the court case and were much more concerned about those two points.

Rumpus: You described your fear in the face of what was obviously an egregious abuse of power by law enforcement. Now you’ve written a book to expose more government abuses of power. Am I overstepping to ask what the heck changed? Isn’t writing this book the biggest, most aggressive leaflet ever?

Potter: Ha, I think “biggest, most aggressive leaflet ever” would have been a great subtitle. But yes, I definitely had to confront my own fears. I’m glad I had those experiences, though, because it made clear to me how debilitating fear can be. As the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson wrote: “Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

Rumpus: You write a lot about the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) group, who wanted to close down an animal experimenter called Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). This facility is well known for its egregious treatment of the animals it held. During SHAC’s campaign Huntington’s stock plummeted from 30 dollars to .27 cents in a mere three years. Honestly I didn’t know that young, avid animal rights activists had that kind of savvy.

Potter: SHAC brought Huntingdon to its knees, primarily through a Wall Street level knowledge of how corporations operate. The SHAC USA website schooled activists in business: primers on investors, market makers, and pink sheets. They also listed home and work addresses for anyone doing business with HLS, from bankers to toilet paper suppliers.

Rumpus: The SHAC activists were then arrested, tried and imprisoned for up to seven years. And yet to me all their actions seemed legal. Why didn’t the first amendment protect SHAC?

Potter: All actions related to the campaign—both legal and illegal—got posted on the SHAC website: news of legal protests, leafleting, speaking events and video screenings—and also anonymous communiqués about underground actions. In addition, activists took to the streets, the phones, and executives’ homes with bullhorns, phone blockades and plenty of smart-ass, aggressive rhetoric. The government never accused the SHAC activists of actually committing the crimes posted on the website. Prosecutors said that, through their words and their shared beliefs, they were part of a “conspiracy” and could be held responsible for the actions of others.

Rumpus: But I’ve seen anti-gay groups wave signs in public that say Kill Fags. No one is arresting them when a gay bashing occurs. How does that compare with what SHAC did?

Potter: They are very different cases, but the First Amendment questions at hand are similar. For instance, after Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered for being gay, Westboro Baptist Church protested his funeral with signs like “No Tears for Queers,” praising his attackers. Animal rights activists have done nothing like that, but some have sunk an executive’s boat—and then SHAC activists protested outside his house wearing pirate hats. Examples like this were used during the SHAC trial to argue that these activists, through their website and their words, incited people to go out, at some point in the future, and commit crimes. What’s the difference? Politics. That’s what should concern everyone about this case. It doesn’t matter if you agree with SHAC or what they said, the law shouldn’t be used at the request of corporations to silence people because of their political beliefs.

Rumpus: Now let’s switch gears, and talk about the branches of the environmental and animal rights movements that do what’s called underground direct action As you know, my brother was a member of one of these groups, called the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).  After twenty years of actions, he was arrested and imprisoned for destroying a horse slaughterhouse.

Potter: Jonathan Paul was certainly an inspiration to the broader movement, not just because of his actions but because of how he responded to the government’s case against him.

Rumpus: They initially charged him with domestic terrorism! Of course, that didn’t stick. But the US government calls the ALF and the ELF (Earth Liberation Front) the “number one domestic terrorism threat.” What about antiabortionists, militias, white supremacists, constitutionalists, and tax protesters?

Potter: That’s an excellent question. The actions of the ALF and ELF have included things like releasing animals from fur farms, destroying genetically-engineered crops, and burning SUVs. These are all serious crimes, but it’s important to note that in the history of these radical movements, not one human being has been injured. Not one. This is no accident: their codes of conduct emphasize that they exist to harm property, not people. In recent years we’ve seen an increase in violent rhetoric, particularly from a small group of animal rights activists, but it has all been words, not actions. By comparison, anti-abortion extremists have murdered doctors, militia groups have created weapons of mass destruction, an anti-tax protestor flew a plane into an IRS building, religious fundamentalists have sent anthrax through the mail, and the list goes on and on. So why are environmentalists and animal activists the top threat? I think that’s a question everyone should be asking of their elected officials. The only possible conclusion I can see is that people in power are more concerned about protecting corporate profits than protecting human life and civil rights.

Rumpus: Here’s another stat that you had in your book. In 2004, just as government rhetoric against the ALF and ELF was ramping up, there were 60 acts of “eco-terrorism.” Yet the year before, there were almost 7,500 hate crimes. Why aren’t hate crimes the number one social menace on the fed agenda?

Potter: I think part of the explanation is the social status of the victim. Victims of hate crimes do not have even a fraction of the political power of corporations. The answer to your question is broader than that, though.  I would argue that hate crimes are an extreme manifestation of values – homophobia, racism, Christian fundamentalism – that are entrenched in our culture. So hate crimes aren’t considered a “threat”: they are business as usual.

Rumpus: You mention in your book that the ALF rescued Britches, a monkey who was taken from his mother hours after he was born, and had his eyes sewn shut in order to find out how, well, a monkey would fare who was taken away from his mother and blinded. The ALF also rescued sleep-deprived cats forced to walk on boards over water to test balance and orientation. By most people’s standards, these are egregious, useless experiments. Do you think if the ALF had restricted their activity to just saving these animals instead of going one step further and destroying the labs, that the feds would have failed in their attempts to label them terrorists? Or are the fires necessary in order to really call attention to animal experimentation?

Potter: The backlash against the animal rights and environmental movements was ramping up long before the occurrence of high-profile arsons. And now, these attacks have expanded to even non-violent civil disobedience. I think politicians and corporations would be waging these campaigns regardless of the tactics used. That being said, the arson at UC Davis was the first ALF crime listed by the FBI as “domestic terrorism,” and marked the beginning of the ALF’s classification as a terrorist organization. Similarly, the ELF arson at Vail ski resort marked an increased attention on the group by the FBI. The double-edged sword of radical tactics is that they may be used to justify a government crackdown, but they also have what sociologists call a “flanking effect” in that they make other activist groups appear more moderate and reasonable.

Rumpus: You say that Republicans sent letters to aboveground environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the NRDC. Those letters stated that ALF and ELF underground actions were no less deplorable than the 9/11 attacks. Holy Shit. Really? How did these aboveground groups respond? They laughed in their faces, right?

Potter: Most aboveground groups responded by publicly condemning underground groups, distancing themselves in hopes of deflecting these Republican attacks. However, loyalty oaths were no guarantee of protection during the Red Scare, and have not protected mainstream environmental and animal protection groups from attack.

Rumpus: I was shocked to learn from your book that no governmental agency agrees on one definition of terrorism. Are you saying that we have a list of “domestic terrorists” but we don’t have a clear idea of what that means?

Potter: That’s correct. “Terrorist” is a malleable label that can be molded to fit the enemy of the hour. Attempts have been made to reach consensus within the federal government and between governments, but these efforts all miss the more important point that “terrorism” is always, by definition, applied to “the other.”

Rumpus: For many readers it may come as a surprise that we have prison units in this country devoted to terrorists. Tell us about CMUs.

Potter: There are two Communications Management Units, or CMUs. They radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the “Supermax,” ADX-Florence. They overwhelmingly include Muslim prisoners, along with at least two animal rights and environmental activists. The government will say little about who is housed in the secretive facilities, or why they were transferred there. However, through interviews with attorneys, family members, and a current prisoner, it is clear that these units have been created not for violent and dangerous “terrorists,” but for political cases that the government would like to keep out of the public spotlight and out of the press. They are currently the subject of two lawsuits, by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU, which allege violation of due process rights and inhumane treatment.

Rumpus: You point out that the government is slowly making illegal many of our traditional, nonviolent protests. This strikes me as ironic. Doesn’t this mean that the only way to protest corporate misdeeds against the environment and animals is to go underground?

Potter: Attempts to criminalize undercover investigators, target aboveground activists, and disproportionately punish civil disobedience certainly beg that question. Do corporations really want to put activists in the position of answering?

Rumpus: There was a huge scandal about domestic wiretapping at the height of government pressure on both legal and illegal environmental and animal groups.  What do you say to people who defend things like illegal wiretapping by saying that if you haven’t done anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about?

Potter: Why do you close your curtains at night? Is it because you are molesting your children? Beating your dog? If you have nothing to hide, shouldn’t your neighbors be able to look in and see everything you do? That’s really the same line of reasoning. We all have a fundamental right to privacy. And that right is especially important when it comes to the First Amendment. Illegal wiretapping has a chilling effect on free speech by making people think twice about what they say, and to whom they say it.

Rumpus: I didn’t think I would laugh at all when I read your book. But you had some funny parts, especially when talking about the lengths the feds, corporate analysts, and corporations go to show how dangerous activists are.

Potter: A nun, a bunny and a terrorist walk into a bar… Wait, I actually don’t have any good terrorism jokes. FBI agents can be pretty funny, though. One of my favorite examples is when FBI agents in Minneapolis tried to get a local activist to help infiltrate vegan potlucks (Best. Job. Ever.). And there was also the time that industry groups warned parents against taking their children to see the movie Hoot because it promoted “soft-core eco-terrorism.”

Rumpus: I imagine that after this book, and all the publicity it has received, the feds are back on your tail.

Potter: It’s unsettling to see my name in things like Counter Terrorism Unit documents, but the stakes are too high for any of us to be deterred by that. There were certainly law enforcement agents at multiple stops on the book tour. At Georgetown Law School, one FBI agent even flashed his badge. However, he didn’t need to; the students knew he was a fed because he didn’t take any free pizza.

Rumpus: Is this interview being monitored right now?

Potter: Maybe. The more important question: Is that going to stop us? 

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Sophia Raday

The Rumpus: First of all, I am going to let Rumpus readers know that you and I have known each other for a long time. But that doesn’t mean this is going to be a softball interview. No sir. I am interviewing from the perspective of Miffed Liberal, not Friend. So here goes:

Together we blocked the president’s office at Stanford to protest investments in South Africa. We were arrested at the Nuclear Test Site in Mercury, Nevada. We climbed up a billboard at night to do, um, illegal things to a Navy ad. We had long impassioned discussions about peace, nuclear weapons, the patriarchy, class oppression, and imperialism and we agreed on all of them. Now you’ve written a memoir about your life with your husband Barrett, a police officer and a military man. Is it fair to ask if someone has perhaps replaced my good friend with an alien imposter?

Sophia Raday: It’s a damn fair question. When you and I were activists I thought peace would be best achieved if the people who disagreed with us and “our side” would be proven wrong. I once serenaded a police officer who was driving me to jail with a rendition of “Peace Officer” by Jimmy Cliff, because I really believed it might help him re-think his role in an oppressive society. I was sure that people who disagreed with me were duped or misguided, or not very smart, or even evil.

Rumpus: You’re saying they’re not?

Raday: I’m saying my life experience and therefore my point of view is limited. I don’t know everything there is to know about any subject and therefore (gasp) it’s possible that I am wrong. So I try to be curious about people who are different and to ask them about the experiences that led them to their view of the world.

Rumpus: But aren’t you becoming one of them when you do that? In your book, Love In Condition Yellow, you describe being thrown into military culture when you moved with Barrett to the Army War College, You had to chuck some of your feminist ideals and bake cookies and have tea with the other wives. I’m not judging, but WTF?

Raday: I’m not going to lie; moving to an Army base in a conservative part of the country during an election year wasn’t easy. I felt very much an outsider. At the War College, my husband was studying many of the same thinkers I’d studied fifteen years prior at Stanford. I was struggling with balancing my career aspirations with motherhood, and I felt like people at the War College assumed all I thought about was recipes and diaper-changing. Then finally, one night about two weeks before the election, I got invited to a Bunco game (a very popular dice game among military spouses), and someone asked me what I thought of the presidential debates. And what did I do? I panicked. I was so sure they would reject me for being different that I came out swinging. I told them I couldn’t bear Bush’s face. “Maybe he isn’t a liar,” I said, “maybe he’s just stupid.”

While I never got invited back to Bunco, I did learn something about how fear and one’s own insecurities can get channeled into political debate.

Rumpus: So what you’re saying is that you’ve simply gone undercover for the left.

Raday: Ha. Sort of. That’s how it started anyway. One of the things that allowed me to imagine a future with Barrett was that right before we got engaged, he offered to leave the military, once he’d finished twenty years. We got married and had our first child in short order. But just before he was due to resign, 9-11 hit and he felt he could no longer leave the Army.

I felt at times like the military was “the other woman” and she and I were in a catfight over Barrett. When I found out he was going to Iraq, I worried the military was going to win, either by pulling him back to their side, or claiming his life, or his spirit, and leaving me with nothing.

Rumpus: But how did Barrett get you to even consider dating him? Those Republicans must have some pretty slick lines.

Raday: Barrett is not slick at all, disarmingly frank is more like it. We got set up on a blind date, which I went on as a lark. I was looking forward to pouncing on him (politically). After pulling out my chair, he apologized for having had to reschedule due to a recent leg injury. When I asked him how he’d been hurt, he said, “Chasing some dope dealers.” That gave me my opening. I followed up with “Man, don’t you think drugs should be legalized?”

He said, “Look I know a lot of people smoke dope and I really don’t much care. But nothing destroys a neighborhood faster than a couple young bucks on the corner slinging dope. You want your kids walking by?”

It took me out of my world for a minute and made me stop and think.

Rumpus: I’m being tough on you. The truth is I loved your book. I thought the conflicts you wrestled with in your marriage were lessons for America. Do you see it that way?

Raday: Thank you. I am confident that the secret Barrett and I discovered – that curiosity is the magic bullet – will be useful to readers seeking greater connection with life partners, friends, neighbors, relatives, who are either a little or a lot different.

Could our lessons translate into a reconciliation mechanism for larger conflicts? And if so, what form would it take? I’d like to think so. It’s so much more complicated, but it’s the kind of thing I ponder on long swims and while doing the dishes.

Rumpus: You had to take care of two kids, manage a house, and handle the very real possibility that your husband could be killed in Iraq, all on your own. In liberal Berkeley. Oh, yes, and write a book. What was that like?

Raday: Well, it was tough. There were wonderful individuals who turned toward us, and became a sort of second family. But I was disappointed in the old friends who never offered to help, never asked what it was like to have my mate in a war zone. At social gatherings, upon hearing my husband was in Iraq, many people in the Bay Area would ask me my opinion of “the surge.” It was as if in my circles people didn’t know how to talk about a wartime experience except as a theoretical item of debate. I didn’t want to talk about the surge, I wanted to talk about how lonely I was, how anxious and overwhelmed and tired I felt, how often I yelled at my kids and then sat in the middle of a messy floor and cried.

Rumpus: What do you think your book is saying to the left about what they need to understand about the right, and visa versa?

Raday: That politics do not define character. There are caring, honorable people on both sides.

Rumpus: It’s true I found myself really liking Barrett throughout the book. He’s open-minded, fun, funny. It was almost uncomfortable, how much I could relate to him. Are you sure he’s not a closet liberal?

Raday: I know what you mean. And he grants that through our relationship, he has lost many of his knee-jerk reactions. He is critical of many aspects of the Iraq war, and of McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin. But on the other hand, there was a gun on the nightstand the first time we made out, and he is a red meat-eating, pro-death penalty, Reagan-loving, lifetime NRA member.

Rumpus: So no more defacing Navy ads with me. No more Jimmy Cliff serenades. Tell me what your “activism” looks like these days.

Raday: It may surprise you, but it’s been just as scary for me to “come out” in Love in Condition Yellow as it was to get arrested. I feel that same shaky fear. I think the message – that we can approach people who are different from us with curiosity, and that the connections forged by being heard and understood can dissolve the distance between us – is the most radical thing I’ve ever stood for.

A couple years back I had a piece appear in the NYT “Modern Love” column, and afterward I was approached to be on Hardball. I almost threw up before realizing I could turn it down. Because I’m not a hardball person. I’m not even a softball person. I’m more of a ballroom dancing person.

But frankly I’ve been overwhelmed by the eagerness of people to share ideas and stories about overcoming differences. At a reading, a conservative dad thanked me for dispelling stereotypes about soldiers. He told me his son is a Marine and is also vegan and meditates. A mom called in to a radio show to share that she and her husband are both pacifists and have struggled with their son’s decision to become a Highway Patrolman. There is such rich terrain behind our differences; exploring that terrain can expand our worlds and bring us closer.

Rumpus: I guess I’m just scrabbling for what’s left of your radical lefty background. Do you still describe yourself that way and if not, how do you?

Raday: I don’t mean to be cagey about my current politics. It’s just that it distresses me that we’ve created a climate in our country where people can’t express their true feelings (even if it is an unpopular view) and explore ideas without screaming at each other. So that said: I’m an Obamaniac. In foreign policy, I think we need to listen more in our diplomatic relations, be culturally and historically sensitive, and foster self-determination. Yet I also believe in the right to self-defense both personally and as a basis for foreign policy. I believe government should be careful about limiting the rights of its citizens. Therefore, I’m pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and to some extent, pro-gun. In my opinion, it is government’s job to protect community assets (air, water, fertile soil, wilderness, wildlife). I support a social safety net and universal health care, but I recognize the devil is in the details; it’s important and difficult to craft government systems that balance equity with efficiency.

But more than anything, my bipartisan marriage has shown me how important it is to treat each other with respect. I think underneath so many of our political disagreements there is a fundamental need to share our experiences and the meaning we have made out of our lives. As a society we spend an immense amount of time arguing about narrative. And what a silly thing if that’s what we are arguing about! Not silly as in not important, but silly in that it’s solvable. We don’t have to agree on a single narrative. Maybe we could just listen to each other’s ideas a little more.

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