Shaun Kenney

It doesn’t take long for even acquaintances to discover that I am a rabid bibliophile.  Perhaps not to the extent that I am piling up books I’ve never read into storage bins behind overstuffed bookshelves which have other storage bins full of books surrounding tables and chairs and couches piled with books… no no, I am not that sort of bibliophile.

I just like to read.  Let’s face it — there are other vices in this world.

Every once in awhile, I muse on the passing of the bookstore.  In the not-to-recent past, your hometown bookseller was all you had.  Then the box stores replaced your local bookworm, and the internet killed the box store, then e-books killed books.  History ends.

…yet the local bookstore hasn’t faded into obscurity just yet.  There’s something quite gratifying about combing through bookshelves of carefully bought and archived books.  Nassim Taleb’s anti-library — borrowing from Umberto Eco’s example — fits rather well:

a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelf will look at you menacingly. Indeed the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.

Of course, why have rows upon rows of books when a single Amazon Kindle will do, right?

I won’t go into the excellent reviews of the three books involved in this column.  I will point towards this one particular line that shows the great divide between the digital presence of something such as Google Books (an effort to digitize every book ever published) and your above-average librarian:

I. A. Richards called the book “a machine to think with”, yet it is curiously resistant to technological standardization. That point escapes many digitizing technologists, who are not perhaps the anti-book boors as sometimes portrayed. (Several on the Google Books blog confess to loving books.) Rather they may be the last romantics, idealizing the book as a simple carrier of information and so one that submits unproblematically to their computer algorithms. When I asked a senior Google figure, who whispered advance notice of the firm’s scanning project some years ago, which books the firm would choose, he insisted they would scan them all. About the same time, when a librarian at one of the first libraries to work with Google offered one of their engineers access to their metadata, the engineer clearly had little idea what bibliographic metadata was. Only a romantic, with faith in the simplicity of books compared to the sophistication of computers, would take on such a task in such a way. (No doubt without such naivety, the task would never have been undertaken at all.) Innocence or ignorance of the material reality of books remains; it is evident, for example, in a set of technical books whose digital file lacks most of the even pages. In their place is a note: “this page missing from the original”, conjuring the splendid fantasy of a codex of recto pages without versos.

There you have it.

One of the article’s authors emphasizes the “publishing chain” and it’s effects on property.  Essentially, an open library project such as the one embarked upon by Google Books may indeed liberate knowledge, but put those who codify such knowledge into books in literal chains, stripping them of the profit necessary to continue their craft:

Horowitz defends an interminable copyright by maintaining that scholarly publishing needs it and we need scholarly publishing, for its high standards are essential to a democratic society. Thompson also considers publishing’s contribution to the “public sphere”, but for him it is, refreshingly, an afterthought. For Horowitz, it is in the opening salvo (though rendered a little uncertain by later references to the “public square”). Publishing is the core of democracy, he argues, and its survival is under imminent threat. The implications of its collapse are “profound”. We ignore them “at our peril”, and so forth.

Of that, I could care very little.  Publishers and authors have a funny way of sorting these things out, and the liberation of knowledge is never a net negative.  To the contrary, it can only be of help.

But it does raise a curious question.

How does one go about accumulating an anti-library of one’s own when, in the not too distant future, every book ever published or excavated will literally be handed to you on a tablet the size of a 19th century schoolroom chalkboard?

For my own part, my grandfather was a bibliophile of the same sort as myself, absorbing several collections into his own set of books.  Though that library has now been split between family and booksellers and auctioneers, I am very proud to have taken the remains of that collection and incorporated them into my own.  Will it be maintained to any degree?  I have hopes… just as much as any library hopes to have their collections preserved.  Still… there is an inevitability at play:

Such libraries inevitably dissolve when their owner dies. Bonnet is aware of that. But is he right when he argues that book collecting itself is dissolving, becoming a new Atlantis beneath the digital wave? As his hard-to-move collection shows, books are indeed obdurate. (They may not even burn at 451 Fahrenheit.) Were codex production to grind to a halt in the face of the digital, it would take a long time to wind down the existing stock (including the 450,000 titles Thompson tells us are published annually) and for book sales and circulation to sink below the surface of life. Though the form may change, the book chain itself is likely to continue to endure. For ultimately, it is a communication chain, and it is hard to believe our garrulous species will cease trying to communicate.

The wealth of books currently existing and being printed isn’t decreasing anytime soon.  There is a familiarity and a comfort level with the printed word that doesn’t quite die out.  The book chain, as the article notes, is likely to endure, all the way from the advent of the e-book, all the way down to the local bookseller who plays his own part in purchasing libraries to sell so that others may incorporate it into theirs.

It’s not quite immortality, but both anti-libraries and booksellers have their own ways of extending the idea of culture.

UPDATE (04 Feburary 2012): I keep looking for more information every year on this topic, and while I do not have anything growing this year other than about an acre of winter wheat in a south field, this is a fascinating picture of the actual root system of perennial wheat.

There’s more to this than just a freaky looking plant dreadlock. That root system represents something far bigger than itself: Soil health. Perennial plants build soil and protect against erosion in ways annual plants and their skimpy root structures simply cannot. It’s why, since large-scale corn farming replaced perennial prairie, Iowa has lost some 8 vertical inches of precious topsoil. Glover’s argument: To protect our farming resources for future generations we need to pay more attention to the potential benefits of perennial crops, whether they be grown in commercial greenhouses or outside in the fields.

Though it was mentioned below that crop yields may indeed decrease due to the perennial nature of wheat, that’s a constant tradeoff. If healthy soil is a long-term goal, perennial wheat — or even a variety that lasts 5-7 years — could be the key to restoring the health of soil damaged by tobacco, corn, or other nutrient-depleting agriculture… which is probably more accurately termed mining than agriculture, but I digress…

Your lawn grows every year. You mow it, but it keeps coming back. If you allow it to grow long enough, it will bolt to seed, forming a perfect round head of little grass seedlings to propagate itself.

In contrast, wheat farmers have to replant every year. New seed is broadcasted, fertilized, tended, grown, and ultimately reaped and harvested. A certain amount is set aside for seed for the next year, and the cycle continues.

Why can’t wheat be like grass?

Perennial wheat is the cold fusion of agriculture. Not only is it better for the soil and the environment, it prevents runoff and theoretically provides a logical boost in grain production yields. Moreover, you don’t have to replant annually — which means you get a naturally recurring food source that can be cultivated every single year.

So how close are we?

A new variety of crop called “perennial wheat” has been in the process of development for many years. Researchers have reached a hopeful stage and perennial wheat may be ready for cultivation soon. Unlike the annual varieties of wheat, which can give yield only for one year, the perennial wheat can grow annual crop successively for about 7 years. Researchers at the Michigan State University have been at the work for several years now and they are now hopeful about their success.

So how are we going about this research? Surprisingly, it’s an entirely organic approach. Some perennials have been found to last as long as 7 years and perhaps more, and the benefits not only to the ecosystem but as a reliable food source are literally a 10,000 year leap in food:

Perennial grains, say the authors, have longer growing seasons than annual crops and deeper roots that let the plants take greater advantage of precipitation. Their larger roots, which can reach 10 to 12 feet down, reduce erosion, build soil and sequester carbon from the atmosphere. They require fewer passes of farm equipment and less herbicide, key features in less developed regions. Additionally, by using black and white poly film, it is possible to control the photoperiod and ensure maximum light reflectivity to aid in vegetable crop production. You can find further information about the benefits of these types of heat shrink plastics for crop production here: https://shrinkwrapcontainments.com/t-panda-premium.aspx.

By contrast, annual grains can lose five times as much water as perennial crops and 35 times as much nitrate, a valuable plant nutrient that can migrate from fields to pollute drinking water and create “dead zones” in surface waters.

“Developing perennial versions of our major grain crops would address many of the environmental limitations of annuals while helping to feed an increasingly hungry planet,” said Reganold.

So where can you get this awesome stuff for your home garden? That depends…

Michigan State is currently having a great deal of success with perennial wheats, and is on the verge of giving samples out to organic farmers to attempt to identify the best strains of organically-produced perennial wheat. Heck — even Nazis are interested (not to point you in that direction… but the information on perennial wheat is truly that scarce). Washington State is working on a series of strains as well:

…but for the local organic gardener, it seems as if you’ve really got to look. These guys didn’t have any luck. Nor did these guys. I haven’t even considered calling the extension office at Virginia Tech just yet, but one has to imagine that it would not be terribly difficult to find something.

Of course, there are hazards, but these are typical with many strains of any plant without much variety. There’s always the possibility that, should an organic strain be perfected, one of the larger commercial agricultural firms could very well produce a genetically modified version of the strain… which naturally has pitfalls of its own.

One imagines that many thousands of years ago, wheat was perennial in its original state before humans found various strains that were higher yield, but required replanting. Efforts such as these for renewable and sustainable agriculture are great stuff, and should be heartily encouraged.

So threatening speech is bad, but when a union thug smacks Tabitha Hale over at FreedomWorks, this passes by without comment from the MSM?

Seriously?

The outrage here is palpable.  Tom White vents a little frustration with the whole episode:

Yesterday, a number of union thugs arrived at the FreedomWorks offices a few blocks from the White House. As we have all seen, these out of control mobs were everything that the left wingers accused the TEA Party if being – only there was absolutely no truth to the “fears” of violence and mayhem from the peaceful TEA Party protesters. But we all have had a big dose of the thuggery that Nancy Pelosi and the out of touch Progressives wished the TEA Party would become.

But it hits especially close to home when a friend, fellow blogger and peaceful believer in the Founding Father’s vision for America is viciously attacked by the violent union street thugs that former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is organizing and inciting to this level of hatred in coordination with Obama’s “grassroots” shenanigans. (Note: This is the exact definition of AstroTurfing.)

…and he’s right. The unions are astroturfing. No criticism from the MSM, though there is this mythical expectation for “civility” from the right while union goons are punching young ladies in Washington.

UPDATE: And this fella waving fingers in this guys face? Clearly trying to incite a physical response, and sadly, very typical…

(h/t to Tom White over at VA Right)

Ever wonder why some people would drive away a voting bloc of 50 million pro-life, pro-family, pro-business and Christian voters based on the potential that their numbers may harbor anywhere from 8-20 million people whose only crime in wanting a better life for themselves was that they came to America to do it?

Yeah… me neither.

Notwithstanding my ongoing contest between PWC Chairman Corey Stewart regarding the ill-effects of his “rule of law” ordinance, Thomas Schaller has a great post on why angering the Hispanic community with ill thought out and knee jerk legislation probably isn’t the greatest of ideas:

The ongoing controversies about the level of GOP support among Latinos, and its importance for Republican competitiveness, took on new significance after 2004 when disputes arose as to whether Bush actually received 44 percent of Latino votes. If we set aside these methodological disputes, the ultimate question is how competitive the GOP must be among Latinos. And the answer to that question is three-fold.

To be abundantly clear, my position against the “probable cause” ordinance in Prince William County nothing to do with political demography.  Nevertheless, there is absolutely no reason we should be driving away pro-life, pro-business, pro-family voters away from the Republican Party because they might happen to harbor illegal immigrants as well.

Surprisingly, the Hispanic community (like most immigrant communities) want a strengthening of our legal immigration laws, or at the very least a reformation of the entire process.  Few Hispanics believe in “open border” policies, and fewer still want amnesty.  Like many, they too want a constitutional process enforced by federal laws that have teeth.

So why do the vigilantes and nativists want something… more?  Ask them, but don’t expect the 50 million Hispanic voters to wait long for an answer as to whether or not the GOP truly embraces minorities.  There’s another party out there willing to cast the GOP as something it’s not.

I kid you not:

Landing (Tim) Kaine — a top-tier recruit who has wavered on the idea of running — would be the sort of foundational building block that Senate Democrats could build around.

You’ve gotta be kidding me?  Tim Kaine, a guy who utterly wrecked Virginia’s government, a guy who couldn’t replace himself as Governor, who botched the 400th year anniversary of Virginia’s founding, who then was promoted into obscurity as DNC chairman and oversaw the single largest reversal in Democratic fortunes since 1994… is the hope for the future of the Senate Democrats???

I think the street price on crack in D.C. just went up.  Because man… someone’s been smoking something…

I was introduced to the movie Metropolis by a very close friend of mine, and I have to admit the 1927 Fritz Lang classic has become one of my favorite movies of all time.

The script was written by Thea von Barbou, a devout Catholic who wrote of the great mind who built Metropolis — a virtual paradise on earth for the meritocracy who earned its pleasures.  Operating this vast city was a deep underground of nameless workers, whose lives are devoted to making the machinery of the Metropolis operate.

Eventually, the workers revolt… and the false prophet who incites them to do so urges them to rush the machines that have enslaved them for so long.  This is the clip from the silent movie (with a more modern score).  Skip to 4:00 for the meat:

If you really want to watch the full two hour and seventeen minute film… you’re in luck.  You can watch it here.

I’m going to ruin this scene for you though — Grot (the worker trying to explain what will happen should the Heart Machine collapse) is overpowered and the workers destroy the machinery that powers the great Metropolis, only to find out in their horror that the same Heart Machine that powered the city was the same that kept the waters from flooding the underground… where their children will surely drown.  Are they rescued?  Well… you’ll have to watch the movie.

Fast forward to today… to Wisconsin:

Thousands of labor employees — mostly teachers — are protesting spending cut measures in Wisconsin.  Everyone knows that the current rate of spending is out of control, and that spending will have to be cut.  No one wants to raise taxes — not small businesses, not large businesses, not economists, not government… because they all see the same end.  If we raise taxes, we kill the recovery.

Kill the recovery… kill jobs.  Kill jobs, and no one will be working to pay for these government salaries.  Simple math.

…well, almost simple.

Thus the workers rush the economic machine.  Problem is, we’re not talking about the folks busting their butts on minimum wage here.  We’re talking about teachers — some of whom make $100K a year or more — not wanting to surrender their “rights” or guarantees fought for under the boom times. In other words, they are perfectly willing to steal from one part of the community to pay for their benefits.

On the other hand, you’ve got a government more than happy to spend on an entitlement system that is clearly unsustainable, where a tiny fraction of that money spent on education nationwide would fix the problem… but drive a Baby Boomer demographic  right through the roof.  They too are perfectly content to steal from one part of the community to pay for their benefits.

Then you have the big businesses of the world, the ones on corporate tax breaks, who just received billions of dollars in TARP assistance and two shots of qualitative easing, which will produce inflationary pressures that will bear down on those without disposable income — namely working families.  But if we tax them, it chokes off the oxygen we need to create more jobs.  They too are perfectly content to steal from one part of the community to pay for their benefits.

Where, I wonder, does this leave the “forgotten man” of Amity Shlaes pre-recession book?

Is there a balance to be struck?  Frankly, I don’t know.  Everyone wants what they have now, no one is willing to give.  Worse still, the people we owe for this mess is ourselves as a community.  The national debt?  Is ours — yours and mine.  This $1.4 trillion deficit?  We owe to ourselves.

The epilogue to Metropolis is that the mediator between the head (those captains of industry and free enterprise) and the hands (those who do the working, living and dying in America) is the HEART.  In Metropolis, this heart turns out to be the church… but for our purposes, there’s a lot of folks that need to realize that the Saul Alinsky approach of pushing until something gives is over.

There is — literally — nothing left to steal.

I’ll admit it, I am a huge fan of the movie The Postman.  Not the Italian flick… the Kevin Costner film about a post-apocalyptic America.  No no no… I don’t have some sort of dystopian fantasy about the world going to crap rolling in the back of my head… but few people realize that this movie was based on a trilogy of books.  The author (whose name escapes me at the moment) wrote them with the idea of some post-nuclear holocaust and hypothesized that America would collapse not because of our resources — those are abundant — but that every time the government tried to alleviate the situation, the survivalists would steal it.

Red Cross, military aid, protection, etc.  All of these things dissolved… because the survivalists would steal it from the community.  Recovery was impossible… because the survivalists, the “me first-ers” came in and took.  The solution?  Bust up the survivalists.

The Postman did a terrible job at conveying that message, and probably would have been a far superior movie had it focused on this.  The point of the books, though, is that survivalism was the enemy of recovery.

Today we are seeing the first green shoots of that sort of survivalism.

As an Aristotelian, I share a great deal in common with the idea that the best state of mankind — call it utopia if you wish — is based on eudaimonia, a surpeme state happiness that Aristotle believed could only be achieved through a condition he identified as self-sufficiency, or autarkes.  God, in the view of Aristotle, was therefore a being in a supreme state of self-sufficiency and self-contemplation, or autarkestatos.

The Romans believed this as well, and sought it not only for themselves, but for their government.  Cicero and Seneca earned great reputations and fortunes on this early ethic, and naturally lost their lives despite the great accumulation of power.  Autarkes, it would seem, was not the fulfillment of life.  It was safe, and much like Metropolis our Roman forebearers turned that little town on the Tiber into a massive city not eclipsed since London and Paris became metropolises themselves in the late 19th century.

What did Rome and Athens lack?  They had autarkes, they had a polity, and yes the Western half of the Roman Empire and the pagan, worldly values it championed lasted for a thousands years, cruel as it was.

They lacked community.  What they lacked was the logos become flesh.  Now if that sounds a bit too Christian-y for you (for my more liberal friends who may have struggled this far in reading this essay) then let it be so.  Christianity introduced agapos.

It was no longer enough to love as a beast might (eros), nor was it enough merely to love on a Platonic or intellectual plane (philos) — rather, what was necessary for the city of man to become greater than itself, the City of God, was a devotion beyond self.  Community required agapos — a love of the soul willing to sacrifice for fellow human beings.

This was the great difference between pagan Rome and Christian Byzantium.  When the Islamic caliphs imposed a tax on Byzantine Christians to see the great holy sites in Jerusalem, it was Byzantium that marshaled an army of 80,000 to march on Jerusalem.  The caliphs, bewildered, immediately sued for peace at what — to them — seemed to be a disproportionate response to such a minor sign of submission to the caliphate.

What they did not understand is that, to Byzantium and the early Church, a threat against one member of the Body of Christ was a threat against them all.  It was your first glimpse at social justice in action… and it echoes today in many of the -isms that imitate but hardly capture this spirit.

Now if that seems like too religious a viewpoint, then so be it.  Our Founding Fathers were all exceptionally religious men, and yet they did not go about legislating a theocracy of any sort.  To the contrary, they made sure that their concept of liberty was firmly rooted in the natural rights of all — and that which one could not do for himself, the government facilitates or did on their behalf.  This was, naturally, not an invitation to sloth… but it was an invitation to subsidiarity and self-government.

What all sides need to understand in the coming months and years is that, whatever the means we enact to get beyond the fiscal crisis, we all need to be reassured of the ends.  Knee-jerk reactions, an instinct towards survivalism, and tearing down what makes us strong are not solutions — they are reactions.

Focusing on self-sufficiency, free enterprise, and community — those are workable ends.  Sacrifices will need to be made by all parties… and yes, it will not be comfortable for all parties involved.

The last thing we could do?  Is kill the machines that make the engine of our society work.  “Death to the machines” isn’t responsible government.

What will it take to re-evangelize the West? Fr. Dwight Longenecker offers an idea:

Those who follow this watered down, vague and spindly belief system (I can’t even call it a religion) therefore seem immune to real Christianity because they feel they don’t need it. It is as if they have been inoculated against Catholicism by having a tiny dose of the real thing. They are consequently impervious to the Truth.

H0w can we evangelize such a people? I believe the only way is through radical discipleship. The world needs to see today, what the pagan world saw in the early Christians. They need to see radiant, courageous, joyful and uncompromising Catholics. They need to see and hear such Catholics who will stand up and fight for the truth with the zeal and good humor of the martyrs.

Of course, this is nothing new.  The early martyrs lived this faith.  St. Francis lived this faith.  St. Dominic lived this faith.  St. Maximilian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Pope St. John Paul II — all lived this faith.

“Do not be afraid to live the Gospel.”  It’s a powerful message.

Our friends at The American Interest sort of shoot down the idea that Montaigne was an inspiration for the modern-day blogger:

Bakewell presents a thoroughly contemporary Montaigne, undogmatically liberal in his moral and social views, radically modern (even postmodern) in his freewheeling approach to the writer’s art. But I think she knows that Montaigne was in some crucial ways rather less like us than all this might suggest.

The superficial similarities are certainly striking. His avowed interest in every aspect of his own life and character and their frank revelation in prose of sometimes improvisatory immediacy have (to Bakewell and others) suggested affinities with the world of blogs and social media today. It would be wrong, however, to push this too far. Montaigne’s literal self-centeredness has more in common with the self-portraits of the Renaissance painters who created the form (one element in an evolving complex of ideas about Man and his place in the universe), than with the compulsive exhibitionism of today’s Facebook or Twitter users. For Montaigne it’s a matter not of self-display to the world, but of self-discovery in the world and through engagement with it. Writing in the way he does is essential to that process, as he quietly contemplates the workings of his own mind. He has none of the blogger’s fear of silence or the desperate modern need to connect and communicate.

He enjoyed his own company, it is true. As a civil and civilized man, he hoped his readers might enjoy it too. But he wouldn’t depend on that or on them. After the early loss of a dear friend, and the deaths of most of his children in infancy, dependency of any kind held little appeal. If only by way of self-preservation, he thought, every man should create for himself une arrière-boutique, a little room all his own behind the shop. That’s what he did.

…in which we read one commenter’s disdain of bloggers as having a “fear of silence or the desperate modern need to connect and communicate.”

On one hand this is very much the case.  In Virginia, we’ve had the running debate about thoughtful, independent blogging vs. splash-and-trash that has seemingly dominated the political blogosphere since “macaca” in 2006.  For many, that is the moment when the Virginia blogosphere gave up the ghost and became the appendages of campaigns and organizations.

Still, after the political supernova that was the macaca incident, there are still bring stars.  New bloggers come on the scene every day, but a few individuals who echo the spirit of Montaigne blog for themselves — the only difference being that their ideas, thoughts, and life experiences shared are done so through modern technology.

Montaigne printed his essays during his lifetime, and in doing so most certainly cultivated an audience.  Not quite certain this reflection on Montaigne vs. bloggers really holds under scrutiny, but rather points towards the excellence of the amateur essayist.

Just because the medium has changed, this doesn’t denigrate the artist.

At the very least, Montaigne’s example offers a valuable counterpoint to a media-driven, mediated modern culture that blurs the distinctions between public and private spaces, and public and private selves, and in which constant communication seems sometimes to mean no more than unceasing noise. Montaigne was happy in a way that no blogger ever could be. There is, in the end, something to be said for the little room behind the shop.

I would offer the counter-counterpoint as follows: when you write for yourself, it’s easier to please the audience.  Blogging being merely one medium of doing this, Montaigne’s collection of thoughts reads just as any conversation with another should read.

Apart from this, the book that inspired these things, Sarah Blackwell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer is a fantastic introduction to the works of Michel de Montaigne, of which I have only recently picked up and regret not having read his essays sooner.

Archbishop Gomez offers the following insights on the Catholic approach to immigration reform:

The American bishops support a comprehensive reform of our immigration policies that secures our borders and gives undocumented immigrants the chance to earn permanent residency and eventual citizenship. Personally, I believe the bishops’ approach is wise. Other good Catholics can come to different conclusions on how to support the bishops in their efforts to promote authentic immigration reform in the spirit of the Gospel. I respect that. I’m not out to change anybody’s mind today….

You know that we cannot separate our faith in Jesus from the policies we advocate as citizens. In this sense, the immigration issue is like the issues of abortion and marriage. Our words and our actions must always reflect the priority of Jesus Christ in our lives and the priorities of his Gospel.

Right now in this country, there are a lot of people — a lot of good people — who are saying things they know they should never be saying about immigrants. Their anger and frustration is understandable. But their rhetoric and many of their political responses are not worthy of the Gospel. And they are not worthy of America’s proud history as a beacon of hope for the world’s poor and persecuted.

I’m not certain I’d put the right to life on par with marriage or immigration, but certainly the ethic that we are always called to live the Gospel rings true.

The entire post is worth reading over at CatholicVote.

Barry Rubin hits it home:

This is a huge lesson in political culture. It also shows just how bad the media coverage has been! Mubarak is not resigning. He’s managing the “reform” process. He is appointing a committee to study constitutional changes. He will decide when there are elections. He is going to “consider” changing the emergency law.

He basically said: I am an Arab warrior, not a community organizer. That speech should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East.

Yup.