So, Peter, please continue with what you're kind of posing here with your op-ed.

Okay.

So, you know, we started with an opening image of, you know, shadowy figures pouring gas on a tool shed and lighting a match and being surprised when it burns down or saying, yeah, oh, we didn't mean to do that.

And so I see these dangers that the founding fathers predicted, right? could destroy us.

They predicted and they were passionate about it.

And that's what kills me is that they were saying, watch out for this, watch out for this, watch out for that.

And I feel that we're right there and they are pointing at us and saying, dudes, you better pull it together here because this is what we worried about.

But one of the things on our list, and we've been talking about for an hour now, and we need to talk about is the issue of federal involvement, interference, however you want to characterize it, with state elections.

BFA route.

BFA.

Seven years Boston Ballet II.

Every dancer we took from one of these, you know, well-trained but smaller dance programs was about a 50/50 if they made it out of BBII to the company.

Every single college graduate went from BBII into Boston Ballet, every single one, and in one year.

Boston Ballet II is designed as a two-year program.

So I, I do think it allows you time to grow.

How does a dancer or their family know when it is time to leave their local studio?

Okay.

And y- somewhere in there, you know, Ponce de Leon was in there, and, you know, the Fountain of Youth story was emerging.

But they were, they were really try- the Spaniards were really trying to get onto, from, from the Caribbean islands like Cuba and what's now the Dominican Republic, get onto, um, Florida and, and, and start colonizing Florida and, and, you know, make that part of the Spanish Empire.

And so the, and they were having a hard time doing it, and so in the late 1520s, there was a huge expedition sent under the, uh, the, the commander was a guy named Narvaez, and th- that essentially, this huge expedition, many ships, got completely wiped out by hurricanes and then by native warriors.

And to make a long story short, four guys end up surviving, and they manage to raft their way partly down the Gulf Coast from, from Florida, and some of the main guys make it that far, and then they die.

But they, they raft partway down the Gulf Cor- Coast from Florida, and I think they get, uh, maybe about as far as the Mississippi River Delta-

Yeah.

Big time.

Yeah.

And the place we chose was the Gila Wilderness Area, and I, I made a point of not going to national parks or wilderness areas for a reason, that they're, in a way, kind of too designated.

But I really wanted to go to the Gila Wilderness Area because, one, it was very central to those early Puebloan civilizations, those early Indian cultures.

And two, it was important in the life of Aldo Leopold, who was a young man who spent his time as a ranger in those forests that eventually became the Gila Wilderness.

And it was there that this concept of American wilderness, in Aldo Leopold's mind, was really kind of formalized.

And so I wanted to trace that arc.

Why?

One of the things that really attracted me to doing this is I st- I start feeling, I get depressed that the world's a homogenized place, and American culture is homogenous.