Oral History Interview with Stephanie van Reigersberg

Title

Oral History Interview with Stephanie van Reigersberg

Interviewee

Stephanie van Reigersberg

Interviewer

Eli Bastiaansen

Description

Stephanie van Reigersberg of McLean, Virginia was interviewed by Eli Baastiansten, a Sewanee student, on November 12th, 2023 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included discussing race relations in her hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri during her upbringing. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.

Transcript

00:00:01 Eli Bastiaansen: Good morning. This is Eli Bastiaansen from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is Sunday, the time is currently 8:27 Central time on the 12th of November. And I'm with Stephanie van Reigersberg.

00:00:19 Stephanie van R...: And I am Stephanie van Reigersberg, speaking from McLean, Virginia where it is 9:27 AM on November 12th, 2023.

00:00:34 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you so much, Stephanie van Reigersberg for being here. Just to sort of begin, where are you from? Where are you originally from?

00:00:44 Stephanie van R...: I was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, which is about 40, 50 miles north of Kansas City, Missouri.

00:00:55 Eli Bastiaansen: And where do you currently live?

00:00:58 Stephanie van R...: I live in McLean, Virginia, which is a bedroom community as they're called outside of Washington DC where I've always worked.

00:01:10 Eli Bastiaansen: I guess, how is McLean Virginia different from where you originally grew up?

00:01:16 Stephanie van R...: Oh my goodness. More different would be difficult where I originally grew up, and mind you, I haven't lived there for many, many years, but it's a small town, a rather conservative town. When I was growing up there, there were many quite wealthy people because it was a center for the livestock industry and a lot of very big businesses developed around the livestock industry. There was a competition between St. Joseph and Kansas City, and eventually Kansas City became the big center, and St. Joe kind of didn't disappear, but it never grew. So it was always a small town. It had a, I guess it would be a small-ish number of people of color, and they all lived in one neighborhood or two neighborhoods.

00:02:44 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess that contrasts pretty differently with where you live now, just outside of DC

00:02:50 Stephanie van R...: Where I live outside of DC it's very multicultural. Almost every church has its name in English and then in Korean, there's a Latino church right down the street from me. And there are people of various backgrounds, not as many people of color here as there are in other suburbs around DC.

00:03:24 Eli Bastiaansen: Thank you. And what is your current occupation and how did that allow you to move closer to DC and McLean, Virginia? And I guess, what was your journey to your occupation and now into DC

00:03:41 Stephanie van R...: Well, I went away to school, to a boarding school when I was a junior in high school. That was in Poughkeepsie, New York. And the big miracle that started me on my road to becoming an interpreter was that my roommate was the daughter of the chief interpreter at the United Nations. And I had always been fascinated with foreign languages. And thanks to the fact that St. Joe was quite far from Poughkeepsie where the school was, and I couldn't go home for short vacations. I spent a lot of time at her house in New York City and I met a lot of interpreters. So I
00:04:36 Got a lot of insights into what the life of an interpreter was like and what was involved in becoming good enough to do this work. Because people thought that nobody who was born in the Midwest without speaking a second language from childhood could ever do this. And I, of course being stubborn said, you just wait. So anyway, that happened. And it was at the United Nations when I first met your grandfather, and that's another long story, which is not relevant to this topic. But after we got married, he was already working in the State Department and was living in McLean, Virginia. So that's how I came to McLean, Virginia.

00:05:30 Eli Bastiaansen: How did that communication with other interpreters sort of change your view or perception of what it meant to be an interpreter and what the role of an interpreter was?

00:05:43 Stephanie van R...: Well, I think what it did was make me realize what a challenge lay ahead and how difficult it was going to be to go from being a monolingual person to having a thorough enough knowledge of two other languages to do this. Because at the UN, which is where I wanted to work, excuse me, the rule is that you have to work into your mother tongue English. In my case, from two of the other official languages. In those days there were five, now there are seven, seven, I think seven. But by the time I left, there were still five English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
00:06:36 And I know they've added Arabic. Maybe they're only six, I'm not sure. I haven't worked there in many years. So anyway, I worked there. I was given a kind of an apprenticeship I, and it was sort of informal, but as things happen in this life, one day I was there early and there was an emergency and the secretary of the chief interpreter, who was the father of my friend Carolyn, said, Stephanie, do you think you could go down to room eight and do this meeting? And after stopping three times at the bathroom to throw up, because I was so nervous, I managed to get down there. And it was a meeting of some, I think it was called the Afro Asian. It was like a caucus. It wasn't a very formal meeting, but I managed to survive it. And after that I started working in my work. Until this day, I have worked until this day.

00:07:54 Eli Bastiaansen: Wow, thank you. And how has this position so close to the UN changed the way you received the news and even just growing up and then to your journey now to McLean, Virginia, how has that influenced the way you receive news and media?

00:08:16 Stephanie van R...: Well, in Missouri, I think that one is very, very far, excuse me, very, very far from any body of water. You're sort of stuck in the middle of the country if you in Colorado Springs know about that. So if it's pretty easy to get your mind turned into where you are, whereas if you're in an environment like the United Nations, the whole world becomes an area of interest, let's put it that way. So I got extremely fascinated with, especially Africa, because most of what I did at the beginning were meetings about, or with the African members of the UN. As you can well imagine, I knew very little about Africa. So I found it really exciting to learn more about it. Those were the days when many African countries were just becoming independent and some of the new presidents would come to visit the UN.
00:09:41 And I always, even though I was never assigned to the General Assembly, I was way too junior for that. I would go and listen to, I remember listening to Sékou Touré, I remember listening to Tom Mboya from Kenya. I mean a whole bunch of people who are like the George Washingtons, if I could put it that way, of the various African countries. So I got really interested in Africa, and when I was offered an opportunity to go and work in Ethiopia, I jumped at it and I was, I'm still very thrilled that I had a chance to live and work there.

00:10:28 Eli Bastiaansen: What was the work that you did like in Ethiopia?

00:10:33 Stephanie van R...: In Ethiopia, Ethiopia is the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Africa because of all the troubles recently in Ethiopia, I'm not exactly sure what's going on there, but there was a beautiful building called Africa Hall, which I believe has been moved from what someone told me, an Ethiopian that I ran into. But anyway, I worked there and most of the work had to do with economic development, social development. It wasn't as political because of the name Economic Commission for Africa. There's one in each region. There's one in Santiago, Chile called ECLAC, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. And I worked there with several people, including one man named Allan,
00:11:42 What is his name, Varchaver, who actually just passed away in his mid nineties. And as things happened, André Varchaver, there we go. He ended up living in Washington DC. So we came back together and saw quite a bit of each other in, and there were a couple of interpreters, including a Peruvian one who had lived in Geneva. So she was doing French English like I was. And I ran into her and Lima at a big meeting that I did there maybe three or four years ago. So it's a small world and a very big world, I guess you could say.

00:12:31 Eli Bastiaansen: And just especially with moving from Missouri to McLean as well as just the technological developments, how has it been different, the way you receive news and even with social media, how has that changed the way that you receive news and perceive these headlines?

00:12:55 Stephanie van R...: I'm really not sure how to answer that because I've been away from Missouri for so very, very long. I moved to the East coast when I was 15, and I also went to a Quaker school. And the Quaker school was extremely progressive. We had people come to talk to us and entertain us of the likes of, I don't even know if these names are familiar to you, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez. People like that would come to Oakwood. It's called Oakwood School. It's now called Oakwood Friend School. And everybody there was extremely progressive in their thinking. So even back then, I realized, let me say realized. I came to believe that the people in the Midwest were pretty provincial interned and not very aware very much that was going on in the world. I should add that people, when I would go home for holidays, the people in St. Joe thought I had turned into some sort of a strange being and called me a communist and thought I had very odd ideas. And I'm sure they still do.

00:14:39 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess in addition to that discussion on news, what is your experience like with social media?

00:14:50 Stephanie van R...: Well, a faithful father follower of Heather Cox Richardson, as you well know, since I sent you her letter every single day, you might as well subscribe yourself and save me the trouble. But I think that those kinds of substack newsletters are incredibly useful because she is, she's really my hero. She's one of the most balanced, intelligent people on social media. She's a person who is first and foremost a historian. And everything she says is backed by her knowledge of things that came before. One of her, I don't know if it's ever come out in anything that you've read, but one of her big specialties is the movement of white people into the Native American people's land and all of the fights and the wars. She knows the family trees of Sitting Bull. And every person, any tribal chief you could name, she knows more about them than I'm sure most people who belong to those tribes know she's incredibly well read. Anyway, from that point of view, I'm very grateful to social media. Every once in a while when I look at X as it's now known, I swear I'll never look at it again. But on the other hand, there are people who are quite smart that post on it.
00:16:55 I don't know exactly where to put the balance, whether it's done more harm than good or more good than harm, but it certainly has broadened people's perspective even when it's fake news, because at least I have become very picky about the things that I read on social media because I've gotten to the point where I understand better. I don't think I'm always so smart, but I'm pretty good at distinguishing between fake news and things that are real.

00:17:42 Eli Bastiaansen: And how did you, just switching over to a bit more of a discussion directly of the Black Lives Matter movement, how did you first encounter the movement, either in person or through social media?

00:18:00 Stephanie van R...: If I could go back to my high school days, I would like to set a baseline by saying that the year I entered high school in St. Joe was the first year that the schools in Missouri were integrated. I walked into my, what was, I don't know if you still have that nomenclature, but the first class of the day was called a homeroom. Do you know that expression?

00:18:33 Eli Bastiaansen: Yes.

00:18:36 Stephanie van R...: And in my homeroom, there were several people of color, and there was one seat on the end of this U-shaped classroom, and I sat down in that seat and the guy next to me was a black guy named Kurt Brown. And Kurt Brown and I got to be, I wouldn't know if you could say friends, because in those days, social interactions between people of color and white people were very difficult because you never would see each other out of class except in athletics. And he was an amazing athlete, and he and two other guys in that class named Blakely, Don, and I forget the name of the other brother, but Don I got to know better, were very well liked, and I think they shook things up a bit because everybody had to admire their prowess. I could still see Kurt running, what do you call those things in track where you run across, you jump across sort of things that are high, you have to jump hurdles, you have to run hurdles, thank you. Yes, hurdles. He was the champion of the whole region in hurdles, and everybody would go and watch and scream and cheer, and that was fine. But I suspect that he and the Blakely kids and the other, I don't remember any women in our class, but anyway, these guys came around to being quite well liked, and that was really my first
00:20:50 Exposure to black kids of my own age. The other black people in my world were all employees of my father.

00:21:04 Eli Bastiaansen: And what did your father do?

00:21:07 Stephanie van R...: My father owned a department store, and he had several people working for him, one of whom was named John Brown. And John Brown, strangely named if one knows much about history of the history of the United States, was an extremely nice man, very, very friendly, and he was very nice to my sister and me. And many, many years later, I learned to my horror that he had had a relationship with a white woman. And this was way after I left St. Joe, and I only heard about it afterwards, but he was lynched, and that was a very big traumatic moment for me. I was not at all aware that such a thing could be possible in my town where everybody seemed to be developing a certain respect and understanding for people of other colors. And I kind of connected it to the fact that there was a very popular Mexican restaurant and everybody loved the black athletes in my high school, but things really hadn't changed that much.

00:22:47 Eli Bastiaansen: Wow. You spoke a little bit about your immediate reaction to the news of the death of John Brown. Do you think you could also speak about your community's reaction to that killing?

00:23:06 Stephanie van R...: I cannot, because I heard about it secondhand. I wasn't there. And I remember my parents trying to sort of downplay it because I got so upset that they kind of didn't want to talk about it, I guess you would say.

00:23:35 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think that was maybe a similar reaction where some people tried to downplay and others were almost enraged and very emotional, and there's a sort of similar reaction to later deaths of, for example, Trayvon Martin and George Floyd?

00:23:54 Stephanie van R...: Yeah, I think that for most white people who lived their lives in very occasional contact with people of color, it just didn't seem real. It took a lot of press attention to make people understand that this was as horrible as it was.

00:24:28 Eli Bastiaansen: Yeah. Do you think you could sort of discuss your opinions on Black Lives Matter, and maybe from the beginning and how it sort of evolved as you learned more about the movement?

00:24:46 Stephanie van R...: My first reaction to Black Lives Matter was that I thought it was a very odd, shall I call it, motto or I don't know what you call that, but because it seemed to me that how could black lives not matter? It seemed like something so obvious that I didn't understand why that had been picked as a motto until I started reading some of the things that I read. I remember, especially the book "Cast", I don't know if you read that, but she really gave a kind of a skeleton for understanding how difficult it is, as in India, for a group of people, in this case, black people to emerge from one cast and go to another. I mean, in India you can't born into one, and that's the way it is. So, excuse me. So I did a lot of reading. My friend Larry Brownlee, who's a famous opera singer, a tenor and who is black, came to the point where he organized a Facebook Zoom group where we discussed all of these issues, and most of the people in the group were black, and there were some white people who were just trying to understand.
00:27:00 And that was very important. That went on for about, I don't know, several months, six or eight months, where every day, every Sunday I think it was, there would be someone who would lead a discussion about something having to do with Black Lives Matter. And I think for white people, it's a real revelation to understand, I don't know why I can't get my voice back together, to understand exactly how built into our system, the lives of black people are negatively affected. I have a friend, I think you know her, you'll see her next week, Judy Kaufmann, who is married to a black man, a black man who's been an ambassador to I don't know how many countries in to the UN in Geneva and her nephews from his side of the family. Whenever they come to visit, she's terrified to let them out by themselves to go bike riding. And she's, to me, that's been a very telling thing because the fact that George, her husband has become a very outstanding person, doesn't mean that her nephews don't have to be careful when they go out to ride their bikes. And that is not something that I ever have experienced, and it's not something that she's ever experienced, but her family has experienced. So to me, that's been
00:29:17 A big lesson. When I was at the UN, I had so many African friends that, I shouldn't say deluded myself, but I kind of fooled myself into thinking that black people in Africa, black people in the United States, they're all the same. And I really didn't understand how different the life experience of a Black American is vis-a-vis a black African. I had one interesting episode when I was living in Ethiopia. I got arrested. I had to call the people that I was living with to come and get me out. And it was extremely clear that I was released because I was bailed out by a black person. Whereas in the States, if I had been in jail and a black person had come to help me, I would've said as though I would've said, I might've said maybe a white person would be more helpful, but there was the black person that was helpful, and that was very, I mean, I remember that now. I remember it was Thanksgiving Day and I was driving to Thanksgiving dinner in the home of a black American who was the one that came to get me. And he himself, his name was Bill Davis, and he himself said, well,
00:31:10 This is the right place for me to come and save you, because if we'd been back in Washington, I would've sent some white dude.

00:31:21 Eli Bastiaansen: Wow. So you've talked a little bit now, I guess, about the prison systems and sort of the systemic racism surrounding that, as well as just the importance of education. Do you think you could speak a little bit more on how Black Lives Matter has influenced both or with protests against some of the systemic racisms in both spheres?

00:31:53 Stephanie van R...: I don't really think I know how to talk about that, but I do know that in my worldview education is the difference between allowing this kind of poison to perpetrate itself and finding a way forward. I don't think that Trump and Trumpism could have possibly happened were it not for the fact that ever since Reagan, there's been this push to reduce taxes, thus reducing the amount of money spent on education, thus restricting the breadth of the kinds of educational opportunities offered people. And I think that that's very much part of why we live in a society where people think it's okay for white policemen to bash in the heads of black, even shoplifters. I mean, you don't kill shoplifters. There was just another one two days ago that got killed, and this is not okay. But I think people are not educated in school to do their own thinking, and until we turn around and decide that we need to finance better schools, I don't see a way out of this really.

00:33:58 Eli Bastiaansen: And you've mentioned also how it's been very helpful, the communication and the talks that you've had with family and friends. Do you think it's also important to have talks just with people who are very different from us? And is that another just good way to educate ourselves is by sort of stepping out of our normal spheres and seeking that knowledge and understanding?

00:34:27 Stephanie van R...: Yeah, I think so. And that's where one of the challenges for me and for a lot of people like me rests because I find it very difficult to even want to communicate with people who are very far to the right to understand why they are the way they are. And I think that's a problem. I think that we're polarizing in this society in a way that's pretty dangerous. And the people that I know who are very far to the right, I just tend to want to talk in generality. Oh, hi, how are you? Nice to see you. Bye-bye. Because I don't want to upset myself by listening to someone who's been a friend of mine for many, many years talk about we have to build the wall, or that sort of conversation. I can't deal with it. So I tend to avoid it. And that's also a problem, I think, because I think all of us need to talk to each other. It's hard to do because I think that people that think that way or somehow beneath my dignity or something.

00:36:01 Eli Bastiaansen: And just earlier you had mentioned how when you had visited countries in Africa, it was right after some of those liberation movements. And I was wondering if you could draw any similarities between, or if you had any, I guess, experiences or contact with those movements, and if that was in any way similar to the types of movements we saw with Black Lives Matter?

00:36:31 Stephanie van R...: Have to say that in the sense of being very, well, let me start over. I knew before Black Lives Matter started an awful lot more about liberation movements in Africa than I did about liberation movements here. I've been working in the international sphere all my life. I've never had, I had a lot of black friends at the State Department. I never really paid much attention really to what was going on here versus following events in places like Kenya where I knew some of the leaders of the liberation movement there. I knew some of them in Kenya in Guinea and some other places, Algeria. And so I thought that I was pretty well informed. But when Black Lives Matter started, I really was not, I wasn't prepared for it.

00:38:02 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think that the movement has succeeded in many ways or do you believe the movement has been a success or had steps forward for black individuals?

00:38:19 Stephanie van R...: I think so. I think so. When I look at the number of people of color in the Congress, in state legislatures, even governors, mayors, I really have to look back to when I was growing up and compare it to now to realize how big a change there's really been. I think people of college age and somewhat older until the say thirties or even older, have no idea how big the change has been. And I think that the Trump movement and the very far right kinds of people, like the new Speaker of the House, all of those things are a reaction to their seeing the fact that people are being governed by people who are not lily-white anymore. There's a whole rainbow of colors of people that are in government at all levels, and I think there are certain people that are very scared about that.

00:39:53 Eli Bastiaansen: You mentioned a little bit about the almost intergenerational aspects of the movement and of this fight. Do you think that certain generations have been affected more than others or been influenced more?

00:40:19 Stephanie van R...: I don't know, because my generation just bobbles along. I think certainly the younger generation, your generation, the generation just above yours has been much more affected by the Black Lives Matter movement and related movements and is much more ready to fight for what is right. I don't think that, I do think there was a very long period in the fifties and sixties of people being very passive and just imagining that life was always going to be the way it's always been, and that's people of both races. I don't think that a lot of black people thought that there was any chance there would be a black president. And when I was growing up, I certainly didn't think there was such a possibility.

00:41:45 Eli Bastiaansen: You mentioned a little bit about the 1950s and sixties and the Civil Rights Movement, or I guess first off, did you have any experience or contact with that? And then secondly, how do you, I guess you've mentioned it a little bit, but just the evolution of race relations from then until now?

00:42:13 Stephanie van R...: Well, I think if you look at Martin Luther King's speech and look at the audience, the crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial with, I don't know percentages, but there weren't very many white people. I think if Martin Luther King were alive today and there were such an event, I think that there would be a much greater mix of races. I think there's been a big difference.

00:42:58 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess, how do you see race relations today? I know you've mentioned that there's been a lot more progress, but also is very almost polarized along party lines. I guess, could you discuss that a little bit more?

00:43:22 Stephanie van R...: Yeah. I think that the polarization of politics certainly has a racial aspect to it. There is Jim Scott, who's, is that his name? Who's running for President Senator Scott from wherever he is, from, I don't know, South Carolina or something. But he's the exception that proves the rule that on the right people are white people are not college graduates, people are lower income. And the progressive side, I mean, just look at the Congress. You have Indian Americans, you have black Americans, you Arab Americans, you have a whole panoply of people who are not white. And of course you have plenty of old white guys too. So I don't know, I just, I don't know if this answers your question, but I've been very impressed with the amount of effort which the arts community has been making to become more, I don't know if I want to say race conscious, but racially blind conscious, if you can put it that way. I went to a concert the other day of two pianists, one piano, and the pianists were a Nigerian American who teaches piano at, where does he teach in Baltimore. His name is Pratt, and his first name is a long Nigerian name, which I can never remember. And he sang with, he sang, he played with Simone Dinnerstein, who's an extremely famous white, I guess from her name, Jewish pianist, and this was Co-sponsored by the Washington Performing Arts and an organization called CAAPA, which is something like Coalition of African-American musicians or something like that. And it was an absolutely fantastic concert. She was dressed in a very
00:46:33 Typical recital, long dress, pretty dress. He had dreads, he was wearing an African shirt, and they came out holding hands. They sat down and played together, and people went crazy. It was really just great, and I was so glad I was there. It really sort of encapsulated the things that are, I think, changing in the cultural world as well.

00:47:10 Eli Bastiaansen: Do you think there has been a big tie and big connection between arts, like music and even more visual arts and the Black Lives Matter movement and just this fight and struggle for equality and civil rights?

00:47:31 Stephanie van R...: Well, certainly the part of the arts world, I know by far the best is the opera world, and there certainly has been a huge effort in that direction. There are more and more black conductors, more and more gay conductors.
00:47:58 It just seems like the world of performing arts has been opened up. I don't know that much about the plastic arts. I know that they just destroyed an amazing mosaic in Philadelphia, and it's caused a great brouhaha because it was done by a very famous black artist, and they wanted to tear, they destroyed it, not for racial reasons, but because somebody bought the building and they wanted to build an apartment building, and people were coming. I'm sure Luke can tell you about this, but they were coming and collecting shards of glass from this beautiful mosaic. So yeah, I think things are being shook up by the arts world.

00:48:50 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess, do you think that will continue moving forward, just this attempt to honor and showcase black conductors and black musicians in addition to gay conductors and gay musicians, and off of that, or how do you see the future of the Black Lives Matter movement?

00:49:18 Stephanie van R...: Those are questions that are very hard to answer from here, and you'll be able to answer them after I'm dead and gone. But I think that these kinds of movements are very hard to stop. Assuming that we don't turn into a fascist country and we don't all move to Canada, I think that this is a train that is not going to stop. I think that it's really, I think this upcoming election is probably the most important of my lifetime. I think that I don't care who runs against Trump as long as his kind of blind, ignorant, it's all about me - 'ism' can go away.

00:50:19 Eli Bastiaansen: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for this time. Is there anything else you would like to add, either about your experiences with the UN, maybe conversations you've had or just experiences in the arts and just your time in McLean, Virginia, outside DC?

00:50:43 Stephanie van R...: The only thing I'd like to add is that the Black Lives Matter movement has given me an insight that I never had before because when I first started hearing about it, I thought, this has nothing to do with me because I don't, I'm not a racist. I've had people of color in my life all my life, and it was thanks to Black Lives Matter that I realized that all of us, even those of us who think that we are free of this, we've all been affected by our position in society, our privilege, and I think it's a lesson that I'm glad I learned, and I think it's a lesson that everybody else needs to learn

00:51:41 Eli Bastiaansen: Just about understanding positionality and privilege and that we're all sort of responsible for this systemic system.

00:51:54 Stephanie van R...: We all have to play our part in putting it in the past.

00:52:02 Eli Bastiaansen: And I guess, do you have any ideas or tips on how to do that?

00:52:14 Stephanie van R...: Well, just from my own experience, the only tip I would offer is that everybody needs to do more reading. Everybody needs to cross the street and get involved with people of different colors and ethnic groups and realize that, I saw this thing the other day of, you probably saw it online too, I guess it was a meme of all skeletons, and they were all labeled with different colors. And of course, they all were the same. Every skeleton looks the same. It doesn't matter what color the skin that covered it was,

00:53:13 Eli Bastiaansen: Yeah, we're

00:53:13 Stephanie van R...: All, we have to learn that

00:53:15 Eli Bastiaansen: We're all human. It's all about that love and the relationships.

00:53:22 Stephanie van R...: Yep.

00:53:24 Eli Bastiaansen: Well, thank you again, Ms. Stephanie van Reigersberg for taking this time to talk.

00:53:29 Stephanie van R...: You are welcome. It's a pleasure.