Forest Environmental Management Systems

An Interim "Good Examples" Clearinghouse

I loaded up a bit of a "Clearinghouse" on the right sidebar under "Good Examples," while we wait for a better setup by the Washington Office or some inter-regional collaboration. It's set to spotlight examples of EMS write-ups, etc. that might serve as examples of how to best approach various aspects of Environmental Management Systems procedures.

Let's begin with "good examples" from the Coronado NF in R3 as suggested as by Steve Ruddell and a prototype EMS guide suggested by Elaine Leyda from the Pike San-Isabel in R2.

If any others have examples let me know and we'll add them in. And if anyone wants to comment on them, as they are now or as they evolve, click on "permalink" or "comments" below.

PS: If anyone wants to help work out file naming conventions, URL path naming conventions, or any other conventions or systems design stuff, see our EMS Systems Support blog

EMS as "Theory X"

The more I deal with EMS the more I become aware of an inherent tendency for some to want to reduce everything to process, procedure, protocol. Those so enamored want all to fit tightly and nicely into manuals, handbooks, and control charts. They want deviation from procedure too to have it's own manuals and handbooks.

I'm OK with such to a point. When my car or computer breaks down, I want to be able to either call someone well trained in diagnostics and repair, else to be able to easily find repair and restoration manuals. But I also see a dark side. Ecosystems and social systems are not cars or computers. Both sets of systems operate typically in spaces referred to as "far from equilibrium." They are open, adaptive systems with emergent properties. So I'm a bit skeptical of those who want to reduce all to "operational controls," "performance indicators," "compliance audits," and so on.

More than 40 year ago Douglas McGregor, an organizational psychologist, coined the terms "Theory X," "Theory Y" to represent radically different managerial thinking that compels "managers" to treat employess in radically different ways. See also this from Wikipedia. Under Theory X managers seek to order up all aspects of the lives of those they "supervise." Here are "Theory X" assumptions:

The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.

• Because of their dislike for work, most people must be controlled and threatened before they will work hard enough.
• The average human prefers to be directed, dislikes responsibility, is unambiguous, and desires security above everything.
• These assumptions lie behind most organizational principles today, and give rise both to "tough" management with punishments and tight controls, and "soft" management which aims at harmony at work.
• Both these are "wrong" because man needs more than financial rewards at work, he also needs some deeper higher order motivation - the opportunity to fulfill himself.
• Theory X managers do not give their staff this opportunity so that the employees behave in the expected fashion.

Managerial outlook is much different under MacGregor's Theory Y. Under Theory Y managers seek to nurture and expand the potential of employees by giving them challenges, letting them explore beyond the boundaries, and expecting them to fail sometimes to learn from mistakes:

• The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
• Control and punishment are not the only ways to make people work, man will direct himself if he is committed to the aims of the organization.
• If a job is satisfying, then the result will be commitment to the organization.
• The average man learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility.
• Imagination, creativity, and ingenuity can be used to solve work problems by a large number of employees.
• Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average man are only partially utilized.

In Managing the Unexpexted, Karl Weick explains that in organizations we need to employ both theories, situationally, in order to take advantage of management where things can and ought to be reduced to cookbooks, and to take advantage of management where things ought not to be so reduced. Weick says, for example, that none of us would like our airline pilots to skip their preflight checklists, but we want to know too that they are competent to deal with whatever irregularities that may arize and able to deal with the novelty that always arises when operating an aircraft. So to with driving our automobiles. It is a frightening prospect to think of someone driving a car "by the book." On the other hand it is a frightening prospect to think of someone driving a car ignorant of basic law and rules of the road.

The trick in all is balance. I fear that just like Forest Service planning, NEPA, and much more the balance has tilted way too far toward cookbooks for all, and the conformance that comes only from Theory X. In seeking precision and professionalism, we may have lost our ability to be adaptive. Will EMS drive us further into this organizational, managerial trap?

EMS Information Systems and Flows

Peter Drucker once said something like, "Recurrent Problems must never recur!" In that vein I am beginning to catch a glimpse of Forest Service EMS information systems needs – else am once-again deluding myself. Here are my ideas.

File and Path Naming Conventions

To effectively structure web-based and other information systems I believe we need naming conventions for all levels (at least to the Forest level) for EMS files and paths to those files (URLs and/or filing conventions).

I am trying to dig up some current conventions, to see if any exist in the FS, in the broader ISO community or elsewhere that might help us. Anybody know of any?

Website Development Dreams

At the WO level, I'd like to see an internet site that would house (via links) basic process requirements, and easily link to other units, required documents, some "in-process" and other documents that provide learning opportunities, and so on.

It might be that the WO and Regional sites, in addition to pointing to basic EMS educational and process materials, would primarily just point to other agency divisions (via hyperlinks or whatever) that have "turned on" their EMS, letting Forest sites carry the bulk of the responsibility for disclosure. The "divisions" (forests mostly I believe) might then have required documents and perchance formats available for the public and others to see on their internet sites. If we have URL "path conventions," it would be easy to structure internet sites and revise them when desired.

Alternatively, the WO might have a database on its server that would show, on demand, various EMS documents from each and every forest. But if this is to work, document development and storage must still reside at the forest as a distributed network. Naming conventions are still a must.

The WO and various divisions might also have an EMS intranet site to house good examples from Regions and Forests that "aren't ready for prime time," meeting (in person, conference calls, etc.) and training schedules, and so on. I have less clear vision here, since my bias is away from the intranet.

Finally we ought to have at least one external/internal EMS discussion forum like this one. Some believe we need at least one (perhaps several) that are internal only, since folks are too timid to openly "air" process improvement discussions and other information. We are right now setting one of these up for techie discussions like this one.

Blogging in Government: Catch the Wave

Andy Budd is a blogger in the UK. He recently shared his "take" on Blogging in Government (Dec. 8, 2005). Here are Budd's key findings:

• …weblogs were great for internal communication and a way of cutting down the huge weight of email most large companies are drowning in.
  
• …weblogs were essentially free (or very cheap), lightweight and disposable content management systems.
  
• …blogs could be used for internal knowledge management, by encouraging key staff to blog their collective knowledge rather than keeping it locked up.
  
• …benefits of blogging to management ... how staff blogs could help managers know what was going on in their organisation. Conversely, it would also let staff know what their manager was doing.
  
• …governments could use external blogs to connect with the people they served. An external blog could really help demystify the workings of government, while at the same time creating a sense of empathy and trust.

Read "the rest of the story" for Budd's advice on prudent use and managment of blogs and bloggers:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love EMS

I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime recently I began to love EMS—likely for all the wrong reasons.

Some observers have found forest service planning and management to be strange indeed. So a Dr. Strangelove analogy may fit. Dick Behan long ago suggested that it was "Time to Punt" when the agency codified planning into law via RPA/NFMA. Before that Sally Fairfax declared NEPA to be a "Disaster in the Environmental Movement," that proliferation of paper would overshadow any efforts to manage the land. Herbert Kaufman, author of the much-touted The Forest Ranger suggested that he envisioned deep trouble ahead for the forest service as he was researching his book. That trouble has since come to pass. See Kaufman's The Paradox of Excellence.

As for me, I see the agency at best trying to make some sense of its actions and the actions of others in the context of adaptive management. At worst, I see all as bureaucratic bungling, careerism, and professionalism run amok. The Forest Service has been accused as being maladaptive rather than adaptive in its approach. The 2005 Regulation for NFMA—the "new rule"—is supposed to change all that. Some of us are doubtful. Enter EMS!

EMS is a system developed from and structured to deal with closed loop manufacturing processes, not open adaptive natural and social systems. It will prove challenging indeed, I suspect, to see how such a system will overlay the "social mess" of forest service planning and management.

If we work EMS up with care, it may daylight the truly complex nature of our undertaking and the political wickedness of the decision-framing and decision-making faced by the agency. In this sense EMS can be a catalyst to aid the agency in moving from maladaptive to adaptive behavior.

If we work EMS up with care for the forest service we will necessarily approach the task much differently from what many other organizations have done, since our "social mess" of wicked problems and open, adaptive systems cries out for an approach much different from those in use for closed-loop manufacturing enterprises.

If we work up EMS blindly, on the other hand, we'll find it to just one more bureaucratic burden, one more way that practitioners are drawn into paper chases and process-chases that detract from our ability to interact and adapt to the ever-changing systems that enfold the agency. In this light EMS may become more a cancer than a catalyst.

The challenge is to disallow EMS to grow into a cancer that will on its own gobble up money and energy without doing the work of adaptive improvement. The challenge is also to nurture EMS into a true support system that helps ride herd on current rogue behavior in other management systems.

My cynical side tells me that the forest service will do with EMS what it did with Planning and NEPA, and Sally Farifax and others with have a heyday with it as the latest, greatest paper chase. My hopeful side says, "Let's work to make it otherwise."

The "Legal and Others Requirements" Puzzle

I've been tasked to dig up "Legal and Other Requirements." My first impression is that we don't want to go into minute detail for state, county and municipal requirements. Instead, we want to start with the basics of federal law, and add only what we need. Right now our focus is mainly on the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts as they come back our way via State mandates.

I believe that we will fully flesh out Legal and Other Requirements over the next, say, 20 years as we develop significant aspects, impacts, operational controls, rather than compiling them in detail at the outset. The task is manageable that way, and we can check our promise-making, promise-keeping as we go.

Are any of you ahead of us on this task? Are any of you as concerned as we are that we not over-promise here?

Let's begin with "The Principal Laws Relating to Forest Service Activities" as an early indicator of the magnitude of the task when dealing with the many laws that deal with forest management and use, land deals, boundary disputes, and much more.

The "Principal Laws..." tome by itself might keep an auditor busy for days. Not really, 'cause an auditor would likely only check to see that we are aware of our legal mandates. (I suspect that we'll have to come up with an up-to-date electronic version of "The Principal Laws..." at some point.)

Our bigger task is to convince ourselves, our auditors, and the public that we pay strict attention to the law, following Chief Thomas' admonition to "Tell the truth, obey the law, and practice ecosystem management." I say this, recognizing the impossibility of anyone knowing all the nuances of several hundred legal mandates, let alone "other requirements."

Developing an information system to help keep track of it all will help some, but the task still seems herculean. Oh well! That's what we get when we try to be everything to everyone: Pinchot's "Greatest good for the greatest number in the long run."

Evaluating Impacts Absent Operational Controls

{Updated 11/21}

At some point when evaluating environmental impacts of activities the question of 'operational controls' and their absences arises. It seems to me, whether or not mistakenly, that we might as well just evaluate impacts given whatever operational controls we commonly place on activities from the get-go and begin our inquiry from that base.

If we consider the impacts of, say, a prescribed burn absent operational controls we are left wondering what indeed 'prescribed burn' is meant to mean. Would we just wander aimlessly (or objectively) and throw matches or aim drip-torches? Similarly for other activities. So we need to define more closely what we are about in any with/without looks at operational controls. Perhaps we are exploring places and cases where opertaional controls might fail, and using that to help guide us in sorting out 'significance.'

In exploring various ways in which operational controls may fail we may gain information on bettering controls and also on 'significance of environmental aspects.'

And if we begin, as have some, to explore just what sets of operational controls we might think of as 'being relaxed' when we first explore impacts, I suspect that we will find ourselves on the same slippery-slope that we found ourselves on when we played with benchmarks and sensitivity analysis in the first round of forest planning.

In forest planning, as some will remember, we were tasked with exploring certain 'benchmarks' prior to developing forest plan alternatives. Our directives suggested that we would gain information (I'll have to check what type, etc when I get in the office) if we relaxed certain constraints in our models. Those of us who looked closely at this problem realized that the order of relaxation of the constraints proved important as to the nature of the information developed. In practice the so-called sensitivity analysis proved to be quite arbitrary and arguably capricious. We were all very glad to see that type nonsense die a quiet death.

I fear that we may be on another fools' quest here. But maybe I just don't understand what we are attempting and why, when we look at impacts sans 'operational controls.' I'm open for suggestions and enlightenment from whatever source. (And I'll try to edit this to make more sense of my arguments as I get a clearer picture of what we are attempting. In the meantime I thought I'd get this matter out in the open and ask for your help.).

And as we explore this, should we do so, I would also like to determine whether the ISO 14001 or other ISO materials are leading us into this with/without wonderland. If not, then how did we get the notion that it makes sense—if in fact we are doing it at all.

Perhaps we are doing nothing of this sort. Perhaps I had one too many beers when in Richfield earlier this week (and in our training sessions in Ogden before that) and this really isn't happening at all. If the latter, I'll gleefully delete this post and chalk it all up to delusion.

On Systems, Learning, Knowledge, and Ignorance

This week I had an up close and personal look at systems complexity. My hot water heater was leaking, and we'd noticed that our in-house pressure seemed a bit high initially when turning on a facet.

I learned from a colleague that in closed-loop plumbing systems pressure can build as water heats up. I remembered that when we finally got "city water," abandoning our pioneer well that had served folks at our house fine for over a hundred years, we were required to put in a "check valve" so that water, once it entered the house could not go back and commingle with city water. The check valve closed the exit loop for water requiring pressure to build up as water heats up. Simple problem, or so I thought.

I dutifully installed an "expansion tank," something I didn't even know existed until this week. I was told that it was a necessity, and remembered seeing one in my daughtor's new house, so I bought one. I also installed a pressure gauge alongside the expansion tank. My problem was not solved, however. Pressure gradually built up even with the expansion tank. I finally thought to turn off the main valve when pressure reached "normal." The pressure remained constant.

So I replaced the pressure reduction valve on the line coming into the house. Our pressure problems were at an end, so I installed the water heater.

EMS Complexity

I won't bore you with more details of my adventures in plumbing. Through the trials and tribulations of the week, though, I thought about Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and all the various and sundry systems the Forest Service is about to catalogue in terms of environmental aspects, impacts, operational controls, etc., AND submit itself to audit checks on.

Maybe other folks in the Service are a lot smarter than I am, and all will go well with our attempts to monitor and control all the open, adaptive systems (social and environmental) that we deal with. Perhaps we will find time and energy, amid downsizing, outsourcing, and all to add one more complicated system on the top of all the others that don't get enough attention to make them work (assuming that they are worth having at all—no small assumption). But as I think about how hard it was for me to pin-down the simple dynamics of my home water system, I once-again began to doubt our ability to make much headway with EMS.

It is one thing to think through and apply EMS to a production line, and something entirely different to think through and apply EMS to nature and society and culture. We deal more with the adaptations of nature, society and culture in the Service more than we do with simple production processes (changing values and value systems, changing political Regimes Administrations, changing ecosystems and climate regimes, etc.).

Many years ago at dinner John Krutilla (renowned economist from Resources for the Future) remarked that he would think forest planning a success if in 30 years we learned a bit more about production functions. About all we learned was that forests aren’t factories and that emergence, surprise, and novelty are more the hallmarks of forest management than production functions.

Managing Organizational Ignorance

So as we continue on this EMS journey maybe we ought to spend more time exploring novelty, surprise and ignorance. Study adaptive management, and read in detail books like Panarchy, Supply Side Sustainability, Compass and Gyroscope, Discordant Harmonies, and more. And don't forget to wander over and read Michael Zack's Managing Organizational Ignorance—either right now, or later after you've worked yourself into a frenzy over EMS and come up short.

Maybe I’m just a lone naysayer, and next year and every year thereafter we'll sing praises to EMS. If so, be sure and check back here, and leave me a comment and tell me the errors of my ways.

Interrelating Forest Planning and EMS

Like EMS, forest planning is a system. Both are subsystems in adaptive management (AM), with EMS fitting more into AM monitoring and evaluation. Remember that the last "Committee of Scientists" informed us that a forest plan was, paraphrasing, a loose-leaf compendium of all decisions great and small that affect the management of the forest. The Committee of Scientists' language is all-encompassing, rendering the forest plan an interrelated information system. In what follows I'll try to be more specific as to components and interrelationships, so we can figure out how, in particular, the forest plan revision might link up with EMS.

Forest plan revisions receive much Forest Service attention these days. But it is just one event in a ring of events in the plan creation set of AM subsystems. We also have a set of plan implementation subsystems, a set of plan monitoring and evaluation subsystems, etc. Each of these subsystems has its own 'plan, do, check, adapt' learning loop, and all are interrelated one with another.

I use subsystems language because we have a set of plans that logically tier to the forest plan (or are a part of the forest plan family, if we use the Committee of Scientists language): fire management plan, vegetation management plan, hydrologic systems plan, travel management plan, etc. And often these plans have sub plans tiered below them.

Our challenge with EMS (and with forest planning) is to make sense of these systems, and figure out who plays what roles in administering, monitoring, and updating them, as well as to figure out how they interrelate with all else that we do in realms like law, policy, professional practice, and so on.

Forest Plan Revisions are designed to be aspirational, identifying desired conditions, wide-ranging objectives, perhaps a few guidelines, identifying general suitability of areas for differing types of uses, etc. Most of the details are left to sub plans. I see two potential ways EMS might be linked to forest plan revisions.

Two Paths to Link EMS and Forest Plan Revisions

One path we might follow to link an EMS and a forest plan revision might be called "the path of least initial EMS commitment." In this path, we would keep the forest plan revision quite ethereal, identifying desired conditions very broadly, and working our objectives up fuzzily as to how to bridge the gap between existing and desired conditions. This would be in keeping with a philosophy more aligned with scenario planning, where the intent of planning is to "rehash the past, and rehearse the future." Following this path we would commit ourselves to little or nothing in the plan revision, leaving that task to sub-plans, and other activities. Following this path I see no direct links to EMS in the forest plan revision, leaving such to fleshed out in sub plans, program development, and other activities. Am I wrong?

Another path might be called "the path of greater initial EMS commitment." (Anybody have better names? Different paths?) Following this path our forest plan revision objectives would be more tightly defined, not quite getting to activity schedules, but rather committing ourselves to "aspirational" rates of implementation for various general courses of action to attempt to move, say, vegetation from current conditions to desired conditions.

Following this path I see definite linkages from the revision documents to an EMS. I see EMS-related activities (that have environmental aspects and impacts) being identified in the forest plan revision as well as the EMS with "operational controls" being related to various processes at work in the forest and "objectives, targets, and programs" identified that will attempt to move the forest toward desired conditions. Such would provide a beginning to both an EMS and to at least the implementation side of forest plan monitoring and evaluation.

NEPA Challenges

Following the first path, there is a greater chance that NEPA compliance for forest plan revision decisions will be relatively easily effected. The big challenges for NEPA compliance would then rest with the sub plans, and any plans or policies that may be developed programmatically above those sub plans that direct or influence programs or activities.

Following the second path, there is a greater chance that NEPA compliance for the forest plan revision will be a more complicated task, and may well indeed require an EIS, unless the plan is specifically "categorically excluded" from such. Interesting political games!

Nuance

A national fire plan with an associated EIS, for example, may not directly interrelate with a forest plan revision decision, but might more directly relate to a subsequent fire management plan for the forest.. Similarly for a national OHV rule, and so on. I suspect that I would consider the NW forest plan to be more closely interrelated with a forest plan revision than I would a national fire plan. But all is the stuff of complex systems, complex and wicked problems, etc.

We have to remember that both EMS and forest plans are the stuff of systems and subsystems and complexes of actors, arenas, decisions, actions, feedback, and if we are lucky some organizational learning.

Other Paths?

Open… Let's hear from others…….

Developing Activity Lists, Considering 'Aspects/Impacts'

Economists have a long, tortured history with 'impact' assessment, sometimes called'effects' assessment. Of course economists have long, tortured history with pretty much everything they touch. Still, we might gain some insight into both "environmental aspects" and "environmental impacts" viewed under the EMS microscope by looking into what economist have learned. Since we seem to be focusing our attention on activities that have environmental impacts as a means to get to a list of activities that have an environmental aspect, I believe the time is ripe to delve further into impacts. First, though, let's look at aspects.

Aspects

A common idea in economics is that there are no economic problems, but there are many problems that have economic aspects. That is, almost all social problems have economic, along with political, and other social aspects.

What does it mean for a problem to have an economic aspect? It means we can look at the problem through the lens of economics. Alfred Marshall defined the lens like this: "Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life. It examines that part of individual & social action which is most closely connected with the attainment & with the use of material requisites of well-being". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_definition

So what might it mean for a problem (or an activity, good or service) to have an environmental aspect? It might mean that the problem can be examined by looking at parts most closely connected with impacts on the environment. If there are no impacts, there are no aspects, therefore no entry in EMS activity lists. Does that make sense?

Impacts

If we can get this far, and admit that it is by identifying impacts that we begin to understand aspects, then we have to begin to think about which categories of impacts we allow to draw us into the realm of "environmental aspects." Some economists cluster impacts (or effects) into three categories: direct, indirect, induced. In my hasty look into this narrow-niche literature, I came up with this distinction between the three, cast up in an environmental frame:

Direct effect: effect derived from a direct relationship between an agent (or an activity, etc.) and the environment. And, it happens within the problem area under consideration. For example, environmetnal effects from a hiker trammeling a sensitive site.

Indirect effect: effect derived from a second-order (one step removed) relationship between an agent (or activity, etc.) and the environment. These too happen within the area under consideration, albeit a wider area than the particular site. For example, that portion of the environmental effects produced by 'inn-keeping' of a inn-keeper that can be attributed to the keeping of the hiker to allow the visit to the site.

Induced effect: effect derived from third- and higher-order relationships between agents and the environment, outside the area under consideration but still tied to the initial agent. For example, that portion of the environmental effects of all other related suppliers, etc., outside the direct area, in provisionoing either the hiker or the inn-keeper to aid the hiker to effect the 'trammeling.'

Note that we can begin to get a glimpse here of the problematic nature of this line of reasoning . Note further that the whole study of 'causation' is fraught with difficulty, ambiguity, and equivicality (defined as multiple interpretations of the same thing). John Muir stated the problem well when he said, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." For more on this difficulty, see Wikipedia on causality.

Attempting to Narrow Activity Lists by Aspects/Impacts

We are now to a point where we might begin to sort out which activities have what kind of impacts, so that we can begin to narrow our activity sets (assuming that we stay with our focus on listing certain activities that have environmental impacts—all according to EMS definitions.) {We are also to the point where some will scream: Iverson has once-again wandered beyond the edge of the cliff, having not only daring to peer into the abyss, but leaping off the cliff as well.}

For simplicity, let's assume that we can ignore what I've called "induced impacts." So we are left with direct and indirect. Let's throw away indirect impacts as well, at least for now, and we can pare down our activity list substantially. How much more lucky are we than the hapless economists. Likely we'll end up with activity lists as short as those seen in Region 1 to date. Or maybe only 10 or 20 times as long.

Noxious Weed Management
  Herbicide spraying
  Biological controls
  Mechanical methods

Range Management
  Allotment mgt plans
  Permit issuance
  Improvements

{Note that strikeouts above are in keeping with notion that planning, education, regulation activites are 'operational controls.' More here.}

Timber Management
  Timber harvest
  Disaster relief - incl. salvage
  Free use of timber
  Forest products
  Reforestation
  TSI - thinning,etc.

Transportation System
  Road Construction
  Road Reconstruction
  Road Maintenance
  Road Decommission
  Trail Construction
  Trail Reconstruction
  Bridges and Structures
  Access Management

I cross-walked R1 stuff with my list of "Systems" and think we have to think more about activities (and impacts, operation controls, etc.) within at least the following categories, if the categories make any sense:

• Potable Water Systems (e.g for campgrounds, etc.)
• Irrigation Water Systems (including Dams)
• Sewage Treatment Systems
• Fire Suppression Systems
• Fuels Treatment Systems (to reduce fuel-loading)
• OHV Management and Control Systems
• Scenery Management Systems
• Recreation Visitors Use ('Ecological Footprint' Management) Systems {Maybe?}
• Wilderness Management Systems
• Wild and Scenic Rivers Management Systems
• T & E Habitat Conservation Systems
• Species of Concern/Interest Conservation Systems
• Biology Diversity Conservation/Enhancement Systems
• Environmental Management (Solid Wastes, Pesticide use, Hazardous Materials, Energy)
• Engineering Operations (Fleet management, Buildings and others structures, etc.)
• Hard Rock Minerals Exploration/Development Management Systems
• Oil and Gas Management Systems
• Energy and Power Corridor Management Systems

Forest Plan Tie?

I have no clear idea yet how we might integrate all this with forest plan revision documents, forest plan evaluation and monitoring stuff, etc. I do have a couple of possible routes that we might take. This is to be the stuff of my next post.