Jori Finkel

In the e-mail, dated Sept. 8, 1999, Smith identified himself as a building contractor in Asheville, and Batzel as his client. The e-mail then linked Batzel to the Nazis. “[Batzel] bragged to me about being the grand daughter of ‘one of Adolph Hitler’s right-hand men.’ At the time I was concentrating on performing my tasks, but upon reflection, I believe she said she was the descendant of Heinrich Himmler,” it alleged, adding, “Ellen Batzel has hundreds of older European paintings hanging on her walls, all with heavy carved wooden frames. She told me she inherited them. I believe these paintings were looted during WWII and are the rightful legacy of the Jewish people.”

The e-mail included Batzel’s address and Smith’s phone number, information that Cremers left intact when he distributed the e-mail to Museum Security Network subscribers on Sept. 9.

Several readers, outraged by the posting, shot off critical e-mails to Cremers. He promptly published them, beginning on Sept. 11 with a posting from Christopher Atkins, a media licensing coordinator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:

“Mr. Smith is completely out of line for suggesting that some woman with old paintings in her home has amassed a collection of paintings from Nazi war booty. His claims, evidence and assumptions were ridiculous, and he was very disrespectful of this woman’s privacy in offering this woman’s address.” Atkins concluded by admonishing Cremers: “I think it was wrong for you to take this man’s story seriously. Please respond.”

Cremers replied in the same newsletter (and soon struck Batzel’s address from the archived version of the e-mail). “I do share your opinion about the quite odd contents of this message,” he wrote. “However, I am convinced that most of our subscribers have enough common sense to see the difference between sane and insane… In this case I have not chosen to behave as a censor. I hate to do that anyway. I must admit that my decision to forward Mr. Smith’s message may have been wrong. What is worse: forwarding messages with strange contents or censor[ing] messages?”

Another Museum Security Network reader, Earl Merkel, warned Cremers that he could be sued for libel. Merkel criticized Cremers for jeopardizing the credibility of the forum “by blithely passing along what are, without dispute, unsubstantiated rumors. You may also risk legal consequences, if your act of ‘publishing’ this woman’s name and address causes her damage. By no definition is she a ‘public figure’ who can usually be libeled with impunity as long as no ‘malice’ can be proven. At the very least, you owe this woman an apology; at worst, you may end up owing her much of what you personally own.”

Merkel’s warning was prophetic. Though Batzel says she and Smith eventually settled their dispute over the home repairs (she says she gave Smith $250, a ladder and some halogen lamps), the e-mail’s allegations have led to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. Batzel, who now lives in Los Angeles, is suing both Smith and Cremers in federal court for $10 million in defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. And while the suit against Smith is relatively conventional, the one against Cremers — which could reach court by the end of this year — tests the cutting edge of Internet legislation.

Should a Web site based in the Netherlands be subject to the laws of every country in which it has readers? Should the landmark 1996 Telecommunications Act, which protects Internet Service Providers like AOL from libel in the case of third-party postings, also cover an e-mail newsletter that publishes unedited letters and press clippings? And what future is there for a one-man publishing operation that may have just enough resources to make editorial judgments, and errors of judgment, but too few for legal safeguards like fact-checking?

Batzel did not learn about the e-mail until four months after it was posted, but she says that the false statements damaged her career. According to her complaint, filed in September, 2000, Batzel has a Nazi-free lineage and an art collection acquired from “reputable dealers,” but suffered from Smith’s allegations to the contrary. She “lost as clients one prominent Jewish family” and was the victim of a letter-writing campaign to have her disbarred. (The campaign was unsuccessful and its author has not been identified.)

“I had to sell my home in Asheville,” says Batzel from Los Angeles. “Once this came out, I was afraid to be there. As someone in the district attorney’s office told me: If the real neo-Nazis find you, we’ll never find your body; if the wannabe neo-Nazis find you, we will find your body.”

Or, as Batzel’s attorney Howard Fredman puts it, “Before taking this case I had to ask myself: Has my client really been hurt? Is this all going to go away if we just ignore it? Then she showed me the letters seeking to have her disbarred. One traditional reason for defamation suits is to clear your reputation.”

While Fredman seeks to clear his client’s name, Stephen Newman of Latham and Watkins in Los Angeles, which represents Cremers on a pro bono basis, is trying to salvage his client’s career. Cremers, who says he “does not make a penny” from the Museum Security Network, recently lost his salaried job as the security manager for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He was asked to leave in March, after 13 years of service.

As Cremers recounted over the phone, in an energetic Dutch accent, “The museum director reacted very sympathetically when I first informed him about the possibility of libel, but the plaintiff has been harassing the museum, sending them letters, trying to involve them in the lawsuit. It’s very intimidating.”

Batzel’s attorney admits that his team, “under the impression that the Rijksmuseum was formally affiliated with and supported the Museum Security Network,” contacted the Amsterdam museum at one point. But he stresses that the museum was not named in the suit.

Cremers also says that cultural differences cloud the issue. “In our country we are not used to this sort of litigation. If this happened in the Netherlands, I don’t think any court would accept the case. But if they did, I might be asked to apologize and fined $2.”

Cremers and his attorney have asked that the case be dismissed on four grounds, three of which have been denied.

One argued, unsuccessfully, that Cremers, a citizen of the Netherlands with no real business in California, rests far outside the court’s jurisdiction. Another failed attempt at dismissal asserted inconvenience of forum. The third, also denied by the judge, identified Cremers as an Internet service provider, which under the 1996 Telecommunications Act would protect him from libelous statements made by third-party “content providers” using his service. The final motion, and the only one still pending, uses a California free speech act known as “anti-SLAPP” to try to force the plaintiff to produce more evidence. A ruling is expected by August.

If the suit does reach court, some pretrial arguments are likely to be revisited. First, there’s the question of location: are U.S. libel laws applicable to an e-mail newsletter that’s generated in the Netherlands but that reaches some U.S. readers? And, for that matter, are they enforceable? Then there’s the issue of retraction, a common mitigator in defamation cases. After posting Smith’s e-mail, did Cremers make a sufficient retraction and apology?

But what really has the attorneys talking is a single point of law: whether the Museum Security Network qualifies as an Internet service provider, which would give it immunity from libel under the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

A key precedent in this issue is Zeran vs. AOL, 1997. In a chat room operated by America Online, an unidentified visitor had posted a prank note identifying Kenneth Zeran as a seller of “Oklahoma City Bombing” T-shirts. After being barraged by angry phone calls, Zeran sued. AOL won, on the grounds that the allegedly libelous material was posted by a third party.

Newman cites the ruling when discussing Batzel’s suit against Cremers. “Even though AOL is a classic ISP in terms of connecting you to the Internet,” he says, “it does a lot more: maintaining forums and channels. In this particular case, AOL had stepped out of the role of being pure ISP provider, but the court still applied statutory immunity.” Newman completes the analogy by saying that the Museum Security Network too represents an “open forum for information” that deserves protection under the law.

But Batzel’s lawyer sees things differently. “My reading of the case is that if all you do is provide a bulletin board, it’s unlikely that there’s any liability,” says Fredman. “On the other hand, if you are carefully deciding what goes on the newsletter and adding headlines and comments, there is no exoneration of responsibility.”

In other words, both sides recognize the legal distinction between a “content provider” (a publisher which is liable for content) and an “ISP” (a platform for third-party publishing which, so far, anyway, is not). The question is: Which category does the Museum Security Network fall into?

Newman argues that the Museum Security Network qualifies as an ISP for legal purposes because it offers a neutral forum for the third-party exchange of news and information. Fredman counters that the Network is more of a content provider, since Cremers has a hand in the selection process and posts an occasional moderator’s note.

Along with testing the boundaries of Internet case law, this issue strikes at the heart of the Museum Security Network’s enterprise. If Fredman is right, Cremers’ involvement with the newsletter will leave him vulnerable in a court of law. But it’s precisely this human touch that readers appreciate. Cremers was honored by the Smithsonian this year for launching the site; his involvement in the newsletter clearly adds value over the automatic news alert that, say, a software program could generate.

Even Cremers’ loudest critics, who were quick to question his publishing of Smith’s letter, sound supportive. When contacted for this story, Atkins at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston said he used to read the Museum Security Network for “articles on art sales, art theft, art smuggling, art forgeries, etc. from all over the world. … As an added bonus, I found that there was a lot of contribution from a cast of regular characters and others who happened upon the site for professional advice and suggestions. I thought that it was a great site and a friendly atmosphere.”

Merkel, a partner in a Chicago public relations firm who just sold a novel on Nazi-looted art to Penguin, agrees. While he reiterates his warning to the Museum Security Network about “serving as ‘cop on the beat,’” he also praises the newsletter as “a valuable tool, particularly for helping alert museum security professionals to the ongoing news of art thefts — more occur than you might think.”

Cremers himself received similar endorsements this March, when he asked his readers for feedback on the service. He was overwhelmed by the response: “Within two days, I heard from 176 subscribers from all over the world, from UNESCO to ICOM (International Council of Museums) in Paris,” he says. Almost all comments were raves.

Whether or not the endorsements help Cremers’ case, they do underscore the ambitiousness, and vulnerability, of his project. The international black market for art and antiques is sprawling (recent estimates put it at $6 billion to $10 billion annually, almost as large as the legitimate art market), and tracking the stolen goods is no easy feat. A news bulletin about stolen art is the kind of service that the Internet in general, and the Museum Security Network in particular, was born to deliver.

Now, saddled with the defamation lawsuit, the Museum Security Network’s strengths have become liabilities. Cremers’ involvement in the site could prove his Achilles’ heel, suggesting that an automated service is safer. Likewise, the newsletter’s international reach could pull the Netherlands citizen straight into U.S. federal court, suggesting that the Web venture would do better to keep its readership low and local. While the lawyers debate the definition of an ISP, the future of Cremers’ newsletter — and with it one model for online publishing — hangs in the balance.

It’s a supremely trivial postscript to the staggering tragedy: Along with the 6,400 people presumed dead in the aftermath of the World Trade Center collapse, there are at least as many ridiculous shoes in the closets of New York women that will never again see the light of day.

Of this small thing, I am sure. If I were sure of anything else today, I would write about that instead. But on this particular Saturday afternoon, two weeks after Diana Ross sang “God Bless America,” (disco as usual), for the women’s finals of the New York Open, and one day before she is scheduled to sing it again, (nothing as usual), for the mass memorial service at Yankee Stadium, I don’t know as much as I used to, even about myself: I don’t know how long I will stay in New York, or in the art world. I know only the things in front of me, like the hint of my hand in the darkness. I know I like waking up with my boyfriend. I know I will not work such long hours this month. And I know I will never wear Manolo Blahniks.

Granted, this is not exactly an epiphany for me. In my 10 years in the working world, I’ve never worn a single pair of Manolos or even Jimmy Choos — for reasons having nothing to do with the twin towers. No, the fact is that I have wide feet, that toe cleavage is not my most attractive feature, and that I live on a publishing salary that makes much cheaper designers seem like an extravagance. But I always had a soft spot for the women whose legs stretched from the limo to the skies, and the fine stiletto that made it happen. I was not one of those women. But if I could have stepped into their shoes, I would have done so in a New York minute.

And that is one of the many small things that changed for me with the collapse of the World Trade Center, and changed for many professional women who live here. As a breed, we are not weak. We are not stupid. We are not unfit. We can survive 90 minutes of kick-boxing, cardio-spinning or power yoga. We can climb hundreds of flights on a Stairmaster. But can we take 90 flights of stairs in a pair of 3-inch heels to save our life?

Judging from the last two weeks, the answer is a resounding no. The fuck-me shoes of last season, and the conspicuous consumption behind them, are relics from another age. I saw the change firsthand in the days immediately after the attack, when I walked downtown from my apartment on East 76th Street instead of taking the subway — both to avoid the threat of Grand Central (which, it turns out, had its share of bomb scares), and to reclaim my ground in some physical sense. I wore loafers and pants those days, and I was not alone: Women were wearing running shoes, sturdy sandals, flats — nothing fancy, nothing strappy, nothing higher than a 1-inch heel. The same has been true ever since.

This is part of the power of the World Trade Center attack, which in its scope is difficult to grasp, but in its individual pathos is all too easy to imagine. Whether we know people who escaped the building that day, or some who didn’t make it, we can imagine their sense of panic. We have phone calls and messages and witness testimony about their attempts at flight. We can imagine the long, slow crawl down the stairway. And we can toss out our Manolo fantasies without looking back.

This time the high-concept series has stooped to new lows. Milking the cash cow to its last drop, VH1 has pulled a desperate gender-bending stunt. It has organized a “Men Strike Back” concert to air on April 18, starring the Backstreet Boys, D’Angelo, Enrique Iglesias, Tom Jones and Sting. It’s billing it as “the revenge of the male divas.”

Come again? Since when did men get to be divas? Since when did straight men get to be divas? Since when were divas named Brian, Kevin or Howie? Have I missed some crucial stage in the evolution of American pop culture? In the evolution of the Italian language? In the devolution of VH1?

My guess is that the music channel that I trust (well, watch) has conveniently glossed over the heart and soul, not to mention the R&B, of the diva essence in order to grease its moneymaking machine. True, the concert proceeds go to charity, an educational fund called “Save the Music,” but that doesn’t excuse VH1′s show of disrespect for divas around the world. Save the music, they say. Save the diva, I say.

But before I let any more accusations fly, it may be time to explore the meaning — the essence — of diva. The word and its implications have evolved dramatically since its first use in Vincenzo Bellini’s 1831 opera, “Norma,” when it referred to a female opera singer of great fame and acclaim. It has evolved further since 1982, the year that French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beineix created a thriller by the same name.

Yet another spin will come with the release of an American remake of Beineix’s “Diva” produced by Will Smith and Whitney Houston. Houston, not Smith, takes the title role, playing an R&B diva.

Could Smith play the diva? Can the concept be bent and stretched to include men? Last week I broached the subject with Antonio, my hairstylist, who is one of New York’s great authorities on Madonna, opera and, it turns out, divas.

He shared a few essential rules: Divas are royalty, and they are queens, not kings. Divas play hide-and-seek with their hair. (Think Siniad O’Connor. Think Houston.) And, on a more general note: Forget everything you’ve been taught about hair. It’s not about the cut anymore; it’s all about the styling.

Do the VH1 women meet Antonio’s criteria? Well, hair definitely matters: Straightened or bent, teased or tamed, the hair has style of its own. But hair is just the beginning. Cleavage counts. Legs, too. And shoes are core — crucial to the point where it’s not clear if the heels are being used to show off the legs or the legs are being used to show off the heels. In either case, the diva stands as the supreme sexual object, one all the more powerful for being an object of her own design.

Celebrity is another must-have diva accessory. A diva is famous for being famous, with the ultimate test being the use of one name. A diva should be recognizable by first or last name alone, as Callas was in her heyday. Today Barbra, Cher, Madonna and Queen Latifah are just a few of the chosen who inhabit their names to the point that nobody else can have them. (Would you want to name your daughter Cher?)

Another thing these women have is attitude — a brand of selfishness bordering on lawlessless, perhaps evidence of Antonio’s royalty requirement. “Divas rule,” says the VH1 ad. And they make the rules. When Ross was frisked by a security guard at London’s Heathrow Airport last year, she frisked him back. (“How do you like having your breast touched?” she snapped, before being carted off to jail.) And in a more recent airport scene, Houston was detained by security at Kona International Airport in Hawaii for carrying marijuana.

A diva is the opposite of a backup singer. If she happens to be in a band, she becomes the band. Ross was never a Supreme; she was, and is, Miss Supreme. Estefan is no mere cog in the Miami Sound Machine; she is the engine, the vehicle and the fuel.

And last, VH1 standards suggest that age places the final diamond in the diva tiara. Divas have pasts. Divas are strong. Divas are huge, huge presences. (Divas in any other day and age would actually be fat; today, of course, the heavyweights tend to wear a size 6.) And, most important, divas have survived the tests of age. Turner, Cher and Ross have collectively survived a handful of rocky marriages, just as many slides toward poverty and, by my completely subjective count, 18 avalanches in popularity (15 belonging to Cher).

So how do the men chosen by VH1 compare? To be blunt, not so well. D’Angelo has the body. The Backstreet Boys have the blind adulation of fans. Sting has the singular name. And Tom Jones has the age and real career longevity, complete with dark years of playing Vegas. But none of them has anything like the roller-coaster private and public lives of Cher, Ross, Turner and Houston. Could it simply be that the so-called male divas — Sting and Jones included — have had it too easy?

For women on the diva track, there are obstacles every step of the way. If it’s not the husband, it’s the manager, or, in the worst-case scenario, it’s the husband-manager. Carey discovered her own voice and the pleasures of riding bareback through videos only after splitting with husband-manager Tommy Mottola. Cher came into her own only after leaving Sonny Bono, who controlled, among other things, 100 percent of the revenues from the “Sonny and Cher” variety show. And, most notorious, Tina went one-on-one with Ike Turner and lived to tell. To borrow the immortal words of Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer in the best door-slamming routine of the ’70s, and perhaps of all time, “Enough is enough is enough.”

I would go so far as to argue that this declaration of independence represents the essence of divahood. It’s not the Manolo Blahniks offstage or the python pants onstage that matter: The essence of diva is the catfighting, I-will-survive spirit behind the animal prints.

That’s why it’s such a tricky feat for a man to walk the walk. He can belt out the songs and do tricks with his hips. He can get arrested at airports. He can wear all the python he desires. But will his songs be heard as a declaration of physical or fiscal independence?

It’s a long shot, to say the least — unless he’s gay. Surely the fact that women and gay men both face greater odds for making it big, or making it on their own terms, works to their advantage here. As long as gay men have leg to show, and bias to face, they have a head start in attaining diva status; they have a chance of becoming comeback queens.

Seriously, can you see Jones doing a cover of Ross’ “I’m Coming Out”? (“I’m coming out, I want the world to know, got to let it show …”?) Can you picture Sting?

When it comes down to it, I can think of very few men who should be allowed to touch this song: David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Elton John (who, to VH1′s credit, joined Turner for a diva cameo role last year), Prince, Ricky Martin, RuPaul.

I know that this list, which includes some officially straight men, is also debatable. But at least it gives credit to the men who really work hard for the money. There are male divas out there, somewhere. But they aren’t headlining on VH1.

Paul Bowles discovered as much in 1946, when translating Jean-Paul Sartres play “Huis Clos” (“Behind Closed Doors”) for its first Broadway production. After weeks of searching for a title to pack the same existential punch as the French, he found his answer in the depths of the New York subway system. Leaving the Independent Subway, he saw the sign “No Exit,” finding at once his title and the American version of hell.

When I first rode the subway, as a student at Columbia College in the ’80s, hell was my word for it too. My most memorable ride was heading back to campus after an afternoon of shopping. My best friend and I, and our latest finds from Kenneth Cole and French Connection, rode the No. 3 uptown. Our talking stalled when we noticed a small, balding man seated across from us pointing a camcorder our way.

OK, we thought, whatever, its a free country. Then we heard the rustle of his down jacket and saw a flash of foreskin as the man finished jerking off, still holding the camera to catch our reactions. He got just what he wanted: I dropped my shopping bags, we dropped our guards and we were both visibly hot and bothered by the cum shot.

Now Im 30, back in New York for a second run, and the subway has become a vehicle for another kind of friction, something much more romantic. With much of its crime and grime wiped clean, or at least swept into the corners, the subway has become a blank slate for our sexual fantasies. It has become a place for flirtation, self-invention, play.

The subway has, at long last, become a train. Forget New York hot spots like Pastis. Above and beyond — and below — the latest Chelsea bistros and East Village bars, the subway promises warmth in the winter and sex in the city. As soon as the crush of rush-hour commuting passes, the subway becomes one of the citys hottest singles scenes.

The subways sexual awakening already is being played back to us on the WB and Fox, where Keri Russell and Jennifer Love Hewitt dramatically improve the complexion of mass transit. The trains also thunder through MTV and VH1, where Jennifer Lopezs “Feelin’ So Good” is getting heavy play. In the video she and her girlfriends prep for a night on the town, then dash past the turnstiles of reality to enter — what else? — a subway headed for Manhattan. The song comes from a CD called “On the 6,” named after the subway line that I take to and from work every day and that Lopez took, growing up in the Bronx, to reach Manhattan dance auditions and clubs.

The subway also has the starring role in Savage Gardens titanic hit, “I Knew I Loved You.” In the video, a swooning Darren Hayes stands in a subway car, singing to the pretty, blond wisp of his imagination sitting across from him: “I knew I loved you before I met you. I think I dreamed you into life.” The camera cuts back and forth between the lovers as they share this soulful, or hallucinatory, moment. When the ride ends, they go their separate ways, never having said a word.

Ive met a few subway Romeos. The latest was tall and good-looking in a jovial, lets-play-tennis-together kind of way. We were standing at opposite ends of a subway car (the 6, again) around 10 on a Friday morning, when I noticed him noticing me. He walked across the car.

“You must get this a lot, but you look just like that girl from Sex in the City.

“What girl?”

“Oh, you know, the young one.”

“You mean Charlotte?”

“Yeah, Charlotte. Maybe its your hair, but you look a lot like her.”

“I might have her look today,” I said, wondering for the first time if my red sweater was too tight, or bright, for the office. “But I dont look like her.”

He moved on to other subjects, like work. Im an editor at an art magazine. He works in the art department at Time. We discovered something in common: We both show up for work around 10 a.m. I found a way to mention my boyfriends odd work hours. He gave me his number “in case.”

Red sweater aside, the citys economic health and the mayors militaristic crackdown on crime help explain why my friends and I are collecting so many phone numbers on the subway these days. Except in the tunnels beneath Times Square and a few other unnaturally resistant holdouts, the smell of urine on subway platforms has faded. Rates for robbery and murder in metropolitan New York have dropped.

You can go an entire day, including commuting, without once being hit up for money. And the long lines at subway token booths are being replaced by long, but faster-moving, lines at MetroCard dispensers. Whether Giuliani, with his hammering attack on panhandling, deserves credit for this trend (or will just take credit for it regardless), the New York subway system has cleaned up its act and cleared the way for romance.

Sure, the next time I take the train, I could witness a fight or another bald man jerking off in my face. And, yes, the subway is still at base a matter of transit — transport in the mechanical sense. I dont take the 6 from East 77th to Grand Central every morning just for fun. Nor is it entirely a joy ride when I take the 1 or 9 uptown to Zabars for a quick fix of smoked salmon or to my boyfriends, on Riverside Drive, for a quick fix of everything else.

We still use the subway for the same pedestrian purpose of getting from Point A to Point B. That said, the emotional thrust of the ride is changing. The subway is blossoming beneath our feet — coming into its full sexual powers.

Last week, a painter friend of mine received a business card from a man on the subway she didnt even notice. He had to say “excuse me” as they were leaving the station to hand her a card identifying himself as the CFO of some computer software firm. The back of the card had a handwritten note: “Meet me for lunch tomorrow?” She didn’t take him up on his offer and apologized to me for having no more stories. But she suggests that the Bedford Avenue station, the first stop on the L in Brooklyn coming from Manhattan, is “where the real action is.”

And Kate, an editorial assistant where I work, is dating a graphic-designer type she met on the N/R line. Shes a smart, sexy woman who has her choice of men, but she chose one from the fine gene pool of subway riders. She was leaving our offices for Black Book, a terribly dense culture magazine on Prince Street, to drop off some freelance editing. She had her work with her.

“Are you a teacher?” asked the man next to her, who was heading to SoHo for shoe shopping during New Yorks first tax-free week this year. He was wearing good shoes.

“No. But sometimes I wish I were.”

“Oh. I just saw you correcting those papers.”

“Im fact-checking a story on the woolly mammoth. Did you know that scientists use hair dryers to defrost them?”

A rich dialogue about woolly mammoths followed; the tension was incredible. “Have you ever had a conversation where youre on the verge of laughing the entire time?” Kate asked me later. “It was like that.”

The Friday night after their first encounter, he took her to the Museum of Natural History, to see the woolly mammoths no doubt. Now, two weeks later, theyre still on the verge of laughing. He calls her at work in the afternoons. She returns his calls. And, whats more, he just came clean and admitted that his roommate is now engaged thanks to a chance encounter on a train. She was carrying an antique table. He offered a hand. The rest is the stuff of wedding toasts. Kate insists, however, that her date is not merely matching or one-upping the roommate. This was his first time — and hers — meeting someone on the subway.

As for my boyfriend, I met him last year the old-fashioned way, at a dinner party. Our introduction, over cold sesame noodles, was completely rigged by friends. But now, when asked how we met, Im likely to lie. I’m likely to say we met each other on the 6.