Transcripts For CSPAN2 Neil 20240704

Opened, bill had an idea that he wantedo to sort of create and host an indepth conversation that he would moderate with distinguished guests. And overve the years, there have been so many very distinguished guests. But i have to say i think to one more distinguished than our guestgu this evening. [cheers and applause]e] wall street journal editor, Political Editor and reporter neil king. He has just published this extraordinary book, american ramble a walk of memory and renewal. E city book shop has copies for sale [applause] and neil will be signing the book afterwards. Im sure you all have seen, its just the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, to say the least. So without further ado, please welcome neil king and bill press. [cheers and applause] [laughter] thank you, mary anne, and good evening, everybody its great to see you all. Thank you for coming this evening. I want to say a big welcome folks to our friends here at the hell center. I dont know what number hill center. Of i dont know what number of talk of the hills this is, but theyre always fun and exciting and none more than tonight. I alsoal want to welcome all of our friends from cspan who are watching on cspan around the country, around the world tonight. Thank you for cspan, for covering our event tonight. Its very appropriate that cspan is here. The talk of the hill program started at the hill so 10, maybe 111 years ago now is 1 111. Our very first guest was brian lamb, the founder of cspan. [applause] yeah, so comes full circle. And i also want to take a chance to welcome all of those people who will be listening to tonights interview on my podcast, the bill press pod. [applause] thats the shameless plug. Bill press pod, wherever you listen to your podcasts im there, and our conversation this evening will be part of that podcast as well. And its such, in terms of welcome, such a great treat to welcome a good friend and a Good Neighbor in neil king who a couple years ago did this crazy thing of walking out his front door and walking to central park, new york. Now, there are a lot easier ways to get there [laughter] as wehe know. But n no way more exciting, no y fill with more adventures than neil discovered and writes all about and relates to to us in this wonderful, wonderful book, american ramble. I liked it so much, i read it twice. Wow. I encourage you to at least read it once and, again, e city books is here with copies for you to buy and for neil to sign right after the program. So, neil, lets get started. You live two blocks away. I live, yeah, just down 9th treat which is right there, yeah. Did you walk over tonight . [laughter] are you kidding . [laughter] i just want to be sure. Start us off, page 11, if you will, when you walked out the door. Set the scene here. I will say that of all the events that might have occurred at the hill center or all the books that any of you have realize, this book has the distinction of starting and finishing on 9th street. [laughter] [applause] for any of you who live on 9th street, you know what an honors that is. So the bin beginning of this book has a section called the preamble. I walk auto9 my door, and then i spend a lot of time talking about why i walked out my door and the history of the territory in between. Well get to that. Right. But i just want to get to the position im going to read you, because this is at the very end of that chapter. I set out that monday morning nine days into spring north up 9th street, eager to see if anything of interest might crop up along the way. As i turned, the Marine Corps Barracks five blocks away broke out in a record rendition of the starspangled banner. The how old speakers at the the loud speakers at the congressman adapts mansion as they did every morning at eight sharp. It was a brassy version in the style of seuss a saw, and to those strainses i padded the first blocks of an arching path over rivers and freeways and farmland to where the hudson spills into that big harbor with laid lady liberty and her torch. The sung hung warm over my shoulder, there was bird song in the trees. I had a skip in my step and a satchel on my back and could feel a little bliss seeping in. Oh, what a, what a great beginning. So one word could wrap this up hike for the entire evening, lets not take that long on it, but why . [laughter] it started as an idea right over there one morning where i said what if i just navigated as a pedestrian to new york city and didnt take i95, didnt go throughh Union Station, what would a pedestrian experience be. And so that that festered for a while and then i, i read more and thought more about the land in between and how others had taken that same trip. I thought about that to go over the chesapeake ended up and across and up the jersey shore. That would be a week and half of ocean and jersey shore, like thats not interesting. The more i thought about the route the more i realized i had to go through pennsylvania i had to go to Lancaster County where the amish and mennonites are. I had to cross the masondixon line on an important part of the masondixon line. I had to go to valley forge and across the delaware washington did certain things sort of fell into place at work must. How long did it take you to plan it . In variousus ways it took basically a year period i was going to walk out my door march 2020 but something happened. Didnt disrupt my life by the way. And so i had to scratch it and decided to postpone it for exactly as i walked at my door on the 29th of march 2021. Between those two days everythingng unimaginable had happened. Including a couple of months before, before i left the whole insurrection at the capital. So i walked into a world that was profoundly changed since when id originally planned to i do it. Its increased the number of things to think about by magnitude spirit. You took off her 26 days. You take a lot of shit with you . Know peer entered very little with me. I didnt camp. So the fact that i was sleeping in their b bs and things, i had to plot those places which is not easy. I went light i had a 16 pounds or so. I had a fly rod to do some fishing. I have one pair of shoes. Not large. It was, i said satchel pair it was like hot fat or something. How many pairs of shoes did you wear out . Just one pair i only moe pair. The whole time . Yeah. We talked a little bit about this. Im a big fan of travel writers, and ive read a lot of them, some of the oldfashioned ones like hb morgan, eric newby or todays traveler bill bryson, all will. Have you read them and did they inspire you . Where you kind of following their lead . Yeah. My list would be slightly different. Im a huge fan of Bruce Chaplin or Patrick Leigh for more but thee reading i did do that realy did inspire me and kind of set the stage for the walk was a whole stream of writers that it come to had come to the United States in the 1820s, 30s, 40s ended and basically what i was doing which is to travel slowly through an important part of the country to figure out this place and it would last and could this Young Country is made up all these languages and creeds and races and everything every form into one union . Alexis de tocqueville was a famous member of that tribe but there were so many that came, and i read dozens of those books. My attitude was similar to theirs. I want to go out as if i wasnt already hugely familiar with the landscape and the people in between which are really in a lot of ways wasnt. And make up my mind about various things like going through it. There so many Different Levels of the book which there we go i really enjoyed her some interesting places you walked through, walked to, and learned a lot about so many interesting people you encounter all the way. And then kind of the big picture so many life lessons that you came back with. Lets start with some interesting places that you talk about lancaster junction. To me that railroad hanover. Sorry. This is one of t the things had decided i had read how theres a junction, theres a train station and this is one of the first rail lines built in the United States, i think was completed from philadelphia, sorry, baltimore to york in 1834. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln ellipsis mine and at the hanover junction, theres a line that goes this way that takes the train stick at his birth pair and he paused there for half an hour or so. He was waiting for the governor of pennsylvania to show up, which he didnt. And then a year and half later lincoln was on a train that went this way and kept going straight on this very long route to take them then in a casket to springfield for his burial. There was something that was just fascinating about that station and the fact that those two sets of tracks diverted there. That was one of my pilgrimage destinations was to go to that station and think about those two things. Lancaster, i got that mixed up earlier, and learned a lot about president buchanan. The only president i think to come from pennsylvania. Until joe biden if you count him. Well, im sorry, we are from delaware. We forget about scranton. Right. Buchanan and then Thaddeus Stevens who i had never heard of before. You talk a lot about buchanan and stevenson. One of the things it was great about theth walk are partf my memory in the subtitle was of that in my memories so much as those initial memory like is it that we remember and wife when i walked into lancaster they were actively debating who to rename one of the Elementary Schools after because they wanted to take James Buchanans name off, keeping the last l president before lincoln and one of these democrats who was a slave owning cobbler of the southern confederacy. Welcome soon to be confederacy. And a moral coward ever since he had died they had meticulously looked after his mansion, and you can visit it, the Junior League of been very attentive to that, and Thaddeus Stevens who would live inn saint out at the same time we became it was president , Thaddeus Stevens was the head of ways and Means Committee in the house and was way more righteous than Abraham Lincoln or almost anybody else in congress, and was lincolns conscience can a lot of oyster he was the one who really pushed lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation and someone. They were just in getting underway to sort of rehabilitate his house, and its no sooner going to become a museum, and one that you become like a civil rights decimation. But Thaddeus Stevens is one of the great thinkers of the 19th century, a person hundreds of times more important thannd jams began, and james mccann at least at that place had been held up until now, and finally rightfully. They didnt have to tear his stature down but if there n what i wouldve been fine with replacing it with Thaddeus Stevens statute. You walked into the middle of this debate, which was great. At it seems youll find that when you read the book that every city you want to come every time you went to you connected with the town historian. Who told you the history of the place and showed you the places that you should see in terms of learning our history. Yeah, precisely. Gettysburg. Actually i didid not go to gettysburg. We talked about valley forge. So valley forge was really fascinating thing to me because, sergeant many of you are familiar but so valley forge come winter of 1778 Continental Army at which and. That whenck you have shoes but they have nothing but hardtack to eat their falling apart t the bridge had taken over huge portions of the country and they are in philadelphia all sitting around fires in the Continental Army is freezing in valley forge i went to valley forge i met in the story and there who agreed to meet me and she had written a book about what i was interested in which is not that winter it was when we decided to care about that winter. It took us basically a century to carebo about that winter. We kind of need to have that moment in the late 1800s were all these various kinds of victorian sensibilities and other things came together. We needed thisee symbol of grit and persistence and sticking it out, and valleyam forge became e place. Its a fascinating thing. We codify, speaking of gettysburg, gettysburg became more of a memorial immediately after that battle, and 13 years before valley forge became like a thing of importance, and its more, many times since then and now become a Huge National park which didnt happen until gerald ford actually. But pat toomey was also, i was walking through a landscape where we hadee been fighting ovr what statues should be torn down or not and will be a racing history or not erasing history, and the reality is history is a very fluid thing, always has been, and sometimes it takes us a long time to acknowledge that certainan things happen and the fact that some people are being erased or the statutes are being torn down is part of the process. So there so many otheral historical places, particularly revolutionary war particular crossing the delaware. And then to be one of the most interesting places was a great mound,. Ne yeah, on the drive back from new york and washington, if you take the jersey turnpike you will see these things that were not so probably building but we are building, which are these trash balance, these landfills. I saw one of them and went well, very active landfill. I want to go to the top of that landfill. So i sent them an email. A dope. I dont care its quite a structure that we building and you can see it right there by the river. So they said yeah, sure, we would love to take it to the top there. I went up with the explorer and it was from the top of that landfill that i got the first glimpse 32 miles away of the tiny, tiny glimmer of manhattan. I muse a bit in the book about how if you go to the grand canyon, and at the top you in the present, and within about five minutes you have walked out of all of Human History educate down about 1. 9 million years in geological time. The landfill, you start out like the Eisenhower Administration and then you walk up. At one point i started, i thought where are we now . Like i said about the 2006. I was like wow, thats nimrod, george bush, second term. And in the present and when you get there and the trucks are dumping stuff and its not sorta fun to make fun of but its not so funny. Its just to see the immensity of this. This is oneco countys creation. Right this is still an active landfill. Very. Guy i went up with that kind Ohio State University when we were walking upow i said you kn, theres this culture of thousand years ago thatt built mound all around the ohio river valley and on the mississippi. Might be, we should all be aware of this big he said, oh, i note that i went to Ohio State University and he started telling me about those miles and he said our valves are not like those mountains. [laughter] so many interesting places and so many interestinges peopl. So youre walking along. Youve got a water bottle and water bottle is empty and you are thirsty. And you encounter a very interesting individual. All youou want is to filter bottle, not so easy, right . To tell us. It was one of the things that was really amazing was that by the second day it only took two days for me to realize that when you go out on a walk like this where you have the destination and its going to take weeks to get there, you start to experience water like spotify parables like to have encouns with people in the road and you likehi wow, this stand for something more than justha this thing. That afternoon i was walking along and my water bottle was empty at walking through this really rich, new subdivision of these huge mansions that had been built outside of baltimore. This young guy in his 30s came down his drive and theres this big house, bottle was empty and i said to him, do you have any idea where i can get some water . I asked it that way intentionally as opposed to could you please tell my water . So we said, and he gave me these very elaborate direction to this place that was like two miles away. And i said wow, okay, thanks dear i appreciate that and started walking and he said, oh, by the way, i would invite you to be careful put out a set what should i be careful of course he said that are going to be people in this neighborhood who are going to be wondering why you were just walking through the neighborhood. And i said really . Are the . Ada told and then this story about the sky who was now walking like around the world essentially come and when he walked across the country of georgia, 54 nights, every night he was put up spontaneously by the people in georgia. And i said so anyway, i ended up walking away. When i was leaving because he said one thing to isolate you do when i said be careful, i wasnt talking about me. I think youre fine. I was warning you about the other people in the neighborhood. In the book i think the one to use about confirmation of hospitality. You go back to look at any of the holy books, its all about how do you treat the stranger comes down the road . In our case we basically turned hospitality into an industry, and rightfully identified by water bottle at dunkin donuts. [laughter] which is work youre supposed to get water, right . It never occurred to him to say oh, here. With no,. That i never, i ket thinking because it took nearly 45 minutes to get out of this ghastly place etiquette think hes going to show up at any moment, right . Like weight, it just struck me, heres some water. Ive got plenty of water. Never did. Know, it didnt happen. To be one of the most magical moment in the book is when youre walking through the quaker, the mennonite country and you come to some kids playing ball, which turned out to be quite a visit, right . Yeah. That now. That was one of these moments, i mean i just want to import one obvious fact but i cant overstate it. Walking is you might say 20 times slower than driving versus six miles an hour. Its hundreds of times more meaningful, hundreds of times richer. And all of these experiences that had come i need sometimes i was just walking and noticing and watching sprint and full. Ive never done that before like literally i just met a month watching sprint. But you alsohe have these encounters that you would never notice but anyway, this wouldnt have happened to him walking up the road to it i look over and a seat beside a school theres a woman, young woman, shes like ninth grade or so and shes sitting there with a long floral dress and head he had a baseball mitt underhand here i hear this, this lack, as s up and catches this fly swappable magical selected waiter what is going on . I going to the playground and there are these mennonite kids in this huge game, two games of softball, all the young women are wearing these anklelength dresses and the art amazing softball players, like full out sliding into second base the whole thing. At theov end of, they stopped playing, they all come over to me. Their teacher comes over and in terms of the whole welcoming of ast stranger, the first thing he said, what brings you here . Ada told him and he said kids, gather around come lets hear what mr. Keating has to say. It was like tell us what you were doing and i started to talk to them. They were kind of taken aback by my commentary about discussing their part of the country. One of the young women stepped forward and she said mr. Weaver, could we sing for mr. Keating . He said did you have time . I said ive got time. So i went into the school. We went down to the basement, think of the righteous, about 30 of them and they say these two incredible hymns of the afterlife, which was so bizarre because these are like 14 year old on a beautiful spring day and they are thinking about the longing for heaven. But anyway, and it was the fullest just most spontaneous like saying of thanks to me that i was there and that i had come and was interested in him basically pay him so extraordinary. One last thing, when i was leaving and all of this hullabaloo occurred and is going for a water bottle out of the drinking fountain. Mr. Weaver goes back into the class and instead of saying anything about me or anything, the first words out of his mouth are come well, as you know we were working on our vocabulary, so if you turn to page 36. 30 sixth and i was like wow, because they are just so in a moment, so focus on things. It was phenomenal. What a magic moment. So from the guy who wont fill your water bottle, tell us about Peggy Brennan which is also one of the characters. So the whole walk, im just walking person and out because if you go out on a big odyssey like odysseus in t light of whatever just to be a dragon of some kind, or something, a cyclops or something, and the dragon was i 95 for it was am i going to confront and deal with i95 . So i took this whole arcing path and then i identified cranberry, new jersey, as this perfectly preserved 19th century account of the midway point between new york and philadelphia of the old postal route and to the right of it, or the east of it, are all these warehouses, amazon, wayfair, this kind of stuff in which the money between them is this brooke and i had found before even that i was looking on google maps i said oh, ill go there, ill talk to the town fathers, the Historic Preservation people and then i will make my way up that river and uncle under the turnpike by water underneath the salina talking to them, this beautiful morning and tell them my plan, and this woman a degraded booze while in her 80s said thats not going to work that i said why . She said its not. Its all water. Theres no room for a pedestrian but i haved an idea. So she gets up and she gets her phone at su culture son, at ten minutes later such as appeasers follow me. We go to his house. He pulls a kayak out from underneath his house that they take me to the lake and like six ofth them, i get in the kite and theyre all waving goodbye while i am kayaking up with this brooke after you told me i would have to go over this, this, this book and i finally get over all the that ill be able to go into the turnpike and it was the fact that she concocted this plan that became part of the great moments of the whole trip was paddling up the amazon as i called it. So then lets talk little bit about the lessons that you learned. What did you learn about the American People . I mean you know i was never on a Scientific Mission to come out with a statistically accurate sampling of americans that would lead me to some firm conclusion about what other things, if thisnd is on the one hand, sort of obvious but needs to be said all the same, that if you go and stand with people on the patch of earth, their t that you share with them at the time, and that interaction with people, who mightht be basically residing in another city or certainly have distinctly different political views from your own, in that setting your deed with a fully rounded person, right . Everything else about them thats not just three or four other political please. I met quite a few people whose politics did not align with mine. But to all person they all had other characters and traits and things that were just so amusing and funny. So it was the other side that weve almost forgotten now that we break into the tribes we break into. One guy i met, it was an auctioneer who had all s views on things that certainly didnt align with mine. I h met him disbarred for but al these incredible vintage tractors. He started told me about the tractors and it was such a great encounter. There is a world out there and that was my desire was to pay for particular attention to theo particulars that i saw o and to put out of mind the more sort of abstract things that we fill our them fill us with a certain kind of anxiety v or vem here im not saying thats the real america but i say to do that for a spell really opened your eyes to a different slice of the country. I was struck by your setting up on page 340, the love you feel for your country can depend along with the knowledge of the shameful things weve done there is ugliness but also beauty in the ugliness what we remember of an era may reflect more than anything our desire to give it the best loss. Yeah. I am a Firm Believer that i knew there are certain governors around the country that think they figured out our ministry to our history or what we should be teaching the children about our past, and anyone that thinks they figure that out as it given it appetite because its such a complicated thing. But the one thing i do know is if you dont do the valley of shame part of it, and its a long and dark one and its an ongoing one, and i encountered things almost every week and reading like we did that . If you dont continually do that for you dont come out the other side to have a love for this country. That is founded in the reality. The people that believe that, if you have a shame for your country can l youre not patrioc and youd you probably lot such a nonsense. I think exactly the other way around, that by acknowledging and fully absorbing the aspects of our past is how you have a better high respect from where we have, and when they are desperate so every as wite travel books weve talked about including yours is the discovery of a certain country, a certain region. Its also selfdiscovery. What did you learn about yourself . Well speed 26 days walking by yourself but you had a lot of time to think. I had some really amazing moments of joy along the way and the sort of rapturous moments that i think came about margie because i just decided i would devote myself to paying attention and not listening to anything, the music, the podcasts. And itt had an acute effect over those days. Accumulative test and really did come of e religious experiee come very spiritual so that by the time irk got to new york i just thought that i was sort of glowing and there was kind of a radiance about things that a lot of that is i still think is there any way. Its a funny thing come the one thing i will say speed is youve got your book there. Talk about that rapture which came at a very unusual place walking across the bridge. Yeah, exactly. There is a chapter called rapture on the bridge. When i was going up the bridge i went looking for my head but it was it was right there and when i looked up and saw that i was overwhelmed by the side of manhattan it is by the way that we dont a lot of disservice to the scottish by a lott of things we humans have done but one Distinct Service we dont is built the city of manhattan because it iss a gorgeous thing. You see it on a spring morning with the river there, with the harbor there at that thing dont you go back and read all the f. Scott fitzgerald what where he talkse about it and many others about that gorgeous site, and it was a gorgeous site so i described here this weird rapture they went beyond mere gratification. I had seen this skylight before a thousand times over the years. I caught sight of it from all directions, as a cabdriver and become a traveler. But on this morning the sight of it physically astonished and stand me. That days and all those steps had pried openum a part of the human spirit that magnifies the potency of otherwise simple things, and grants the commonplace attach of the divine. Beautiful. So the second time through your book i sadly said you know what . I remember now something that really struck me once about Union Station. So i went back to Union Station to double check it, and there on like youre facing the Union Station on the upper left side of Union Station is this quote from samuel johnson. So it is in traveling a man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge. Thats because actually talking here when i say the meaning you bring. Does that fit to your experience . Absolutely. You know, to the extent that a summary says rambles, he rambles, how do you ramble . What qualifies as a ramble . My think is you pick a place that is important to you, thats about how far away it is come you leave your house to get to it because i think that continuity of where you live youror normal life and this plae you want to go to is really important, and you stand a certain amount of time preferably months really study and thinking about and steeping yourself in what seemed between the stories, the travel, who moved to their white e geology . Them or maybe you bring with you the more meaning to get in return for its xrated, and its not just the people you meet. Its when you arrive at the system on the river and you have read a lot about that river and you know how old that the s you fully respect that river. It pays you back when you arrive at that. It gives you things can return. Its a transaction. The onlye regret is that we all couldnt go with neil on an american ramble. [applause] questions about the road, the people, the places . We have to, please use a microphone so cspan can pick up your questions. Do we have another microphone over . Just one, okay. Have you heard from anybody since the book o has come out ce any of the people you encounter . Thats a really interesting question because did everybody hear the question . More importantly have you heard from the water guy . [laughter] a lot of people have said you should bring him the book of. [laughter] i have to do that. So the one thing i havent really tried to convey is my firm belief that we all live under certain sort of regulated time, thats the kind that goes faster that time the n its over and then theres this other form of sort of touched time that you can see for yourself that has higher, i dont know, resident and meeting about it the whole of this walk took place in that kind of type. I was in new york to mexico and we had a party and the guy who took me across the aca boat was at the party. I mean, i remained intact come like brain shift touch, probably i dont know if 20 people from that thing, the walker including the mennonites. I was up at the same school two weeks ago and 200 people came into the basement, attic talked with him and then 50 of the kids sang songs for half an hour. And im like how did i form a bond . I was within 45 minutes two years ago. But they invited me up last christmas and it went for a christmass concert. I think a lot of it is if you put yourself out and you are really open and he rested other people and what they are about, they respond. Followup. So when you met people, obviously microphone. Sorry. Did you tell them im neil king, im a wall street journal report in writing a book . At what point did that conversation come up . For the most part i kind of did that. At least i made it was i was walking and i was a writer. That became an issue laid when it was writing about because some people had to go back and make sure they needed going to be in about but thats a different thing. Mary ann is coming around with a microphone. Right here. Neal, thank you for doing a lot and sharing your story with us. Really enjoyed the book and found one at a beautiful part of it to be the dedication to your brother, whom you said noticed things others missed. It seems in some ways this walk for you was about doing just that spirit absolutely. Help us understand how your perspective on life perhaps changed after the walk. One of the things that was so interesting about the reading going back meeting was i recreate in the book which you will know if you read it, this walk that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison took to Lake Champlain in 1792. I was so fast and by that thing because jefferson had, and medicine had dyspepsia or Something Like that and they both decided to muddy go up there. Jeffersons travel jottings were filled with the most incredible details i was just like, like to go over the mountain and they come down to Lake Champlain and he says come weve noticed there are no more persimmon trees on this side of the mountain appear im like, what . Like nobody notices the lack of persimmon trees. He crossed the delaware and he wrote i heard the first katydid, and i was like wow, so it was spring, the first katydid. I read a lot of the rose jottings like that where the road is famous for noting when certain flowers first blue and when the last leaves are on what shes at the end of the season and all that stuff. Immersing yourself, its an anecdote that we spent so much of our time now, im not saying the things that we salivate over on television are not worth being worked up about but theres Something Else going on in the world thats also worth noticing. The more you can at least counterbalance with that kind of tactile, the unfolding of the season, thet whole event, it ws an exercise in noticing. For the most part you were, lets forget the water bottle jerk, pretty well received. Absolutely. Right. Did you ever think about what your reception wouldve been if you were a 55yearold black male doing that walk. I wrote about it a fair bit. I have two thoughts on that one is i wouldnt for a second act as if i faced less risking what i am walking down a road that all kinds of other people, black men, women, i probably faced the least risk of anyone actually because i am trained in this kind of thing as a journalist. On the other hand, i would not just hesitate but not say that anyone set type of person shouldnt do this pick it really, an event in philadelphia there was a guy probably 55yearold black man sitting in front and asked me a question along those lines l and answere, he came over and introduced himself and i knew his name because he actually last you walk Harriet Tubmans birthplace to thehe canadian border, and he introduced himself ken johnston i said oh, my god, we have communicated i had not met him in person. I stayed why did you asked me that question . He said i just wanted to see a response. But part of what his point was is if you are predisposed to doing Something Like this and feel that youre good at it, thats a different matter. On the other hand, weve all seen the atrocious things that have happened in the last few weeks, and that level of just like insane, if you see the road in a way that you fear, feel fear for a person looking through your door at them and you just shoot as a result f that, thats like a mental illness, right . And that is out there. The one thing i didnt do by the way, you take a walk like this you noticed that the people who are the most intent on multiple no trespassing signs generally live in houses you would never want to go on the property, like or theyve got like five cars and their dogs at the the end o, like im not going to go on your property, you know . [laughter] and their like no trespassing everywhere. Okay, we got it. Neil, you just said it was an exercise in nursing and i for you quote mary oliver before, attention is beginning of devotion. Life as we all know has a way of the noise of t it, the distractn of a, the incessant bombardment can know all having done this walk do you y feel like you can access that more quickly, more readily, that sort of paying attention, steeling yourself and getting back to that place . Yeah, i do. And im not acting like im on some higher plate or Something Like that. I do think it carved out a space of sorts that is accessible. But thats also im not acting as if i dont get involved in distractions like nobody else pick one of the ironies has he written his book about walking in your is doubt i have now spent hundreds of hours driving back and forth. This morning i drove back down through most of the same territory. Its just braindead time that just evaporates. That again going to the different forms of time, time spent going back and forth in the car is not remembered time. Time that will be the last thing you think about in your final moments on earth. Weirdly enough, this walk probably will bemo among those moments. Its this crystalline quality certain stretches of time can have. The next question is from someone who is mentioned in your book,. More than mentioned. Bill press. Firsttime longtime. Talk radio. Longtime listener firsttime callers for exactly. My Business Partner who did a radio show for 14 years together. Indeed, indeed there it mentor neil, ive been struck by how many specific experiences you had onr your journey that resonate with current events. Imagine somebody getting shot through somebodys front door for example. One thing an think about is we are were finally having a serious debate about solitary confinement anden you had experienced about the origination of that. Can you talk about any one of those experiences that seemed to inform your opinion or your observations about any current event . Wow. You can use the one i gave you solitary confinement with one example. There is that. Just pause on that. I had to wrestle a little bit with how i would do with the city of philadelphia whichlp is like, like you could write english books aboutso that. I decided to focus in large part on the fact there was this really fascinating person called eastern state penitentiary which ironically was one of the things that drew alexis to tell phil to come to the United States because he was in the u. S. To write about our prison system. It was only when he was here looking at our prisons that he became taken by the hypocrisy aspect of americans to write about that. At that time solitary confinement with seen as like a very humane thing because the alternative to it was being thrown into place like sing sing where you were surrounded by all kinds of other criminals who were going to be beating on you while you were, it was like, if all of us were in prison, they would lock the doors and would all be in your together and you all prefer to be in solitary thats an interesting example of how our view of these things can change so much and what something that seemed at one time to be humane becomes anything but over time. I certainly would see it that way now. Hey, bill. Neil, what a wonderful story. Im waiting to hear bills memoirs. Im going to come to that early. Looked, and 80 event but it 80 0 finished undergrad i had the best job of my life. I traveled around the country, 44 states, selling 800 set of cookware distinct limiter i did it, it was like a hope chest item. One thing i learned there were these kind of regional quirks usually if im selling to a mom and her daughter, if i would say in the Rio Grande Valley they wouldd get up, all of their friends and neighbors would come over and i would be talking to 12 or 15 people. When i was in south louisiana, every household unlimited and its the only place it happened in the country they would bring the beer. When you were like north of arlington and durham they have like, north carolina, just the oddest accent ive ever heard that people sound like they have marbles in their mouth. Anyway, i see these quirks. Did you notice like we were Walking Around the city, like i was south jersey from north jersey . . How was lancaster different from 30 miles away . Yeah, no. I write about what i called micro nations and they gave names to this various places. I called kind of Greater Washington Greater Kashmir connecticut into maryland it was south leyva because Northern Maryland is quite something in a lot of ways. That area of york county as well. An across the susquehanna from yorktown into Lancaster County i thinkf is one of the biggest cultural leaps anywheree in the country because youre going from a very frontierish place with a very different way of approaching farms and Land Management to this very prim and very exacting anabaptist way of farming and the farmhouses were like really big and proud. It wasas a striking difference. I sort of trace those, somewhat tongueincheek, walking, another sociologist but the imprint of who settled where win is very much of an ongoing feature in American Life everywhere. And may remain that way for centuries more, despite all the movement somebodys ideas just dont change that much. Another thing that can raise your hand if you have a question, another thing thatru struck me and that you point out is you could be walking and talking to people about the history but, but you have to sometimes stop and recognize that whats really striking is thean land. Yeah, yeah. This land of ours, beautiful land of ours which is shortness of a lot of them came to appreciate. Yeah. I have at the end of the book where i can summarize some of my conclusions. I have a little riff on how it wasnt really, you know, we americans like to think it was the principles that we came across the atlantic with, whether it was like adam smith or our form and are straight at her resourcefulness and persistence and all that. In the not disputing that those things are not a fight with one thing, the place that we found. That was by the way very inhabited from the first encounters all along the coastline. I think waiting for inhabited that a lot of people are aware. But those people had done no damage to the place, and so we arrived ones the shores where so much of our greatness that was to come was because of this place, right . We have in r some ways done that place relatively few favors and we continue to do it relatively few favor. By the beauty of the land really absolutely, yeah. Here we go. Right here. Okay. American ramble signed by the author by the way. Spirit cycle up in the west and as youou talking about this unthinking is a very east coast kind everything how dohi you thk this trip would have been different in different parts of the u. S. . I grew up in colorado and i am, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things is that, i just read by the with a guy who wrote a fantastic book called the oregon trail, which i couldnt recommend more fair ift such a good description of that whole passage. It with his brother in a covered wagon and is really a fantastic story. But once you go further west, the density of the stories become less come and pick up when you get out into the mountain west. There is just not as much to write about in terms of the human side of it. So you would have to travel large distances to have kind of the narrative thread in my case there was always civil war sites, the construction of the railroad, canals, all the revolutionary war sites and so much that was but am really drunk to doing something out that way. Longer walks. American ramble a walk of memory and renewal. Neil king, jr. Thank you, neil. Thank you. [applause] thank you for doing the walk. Thank you for writing the book and thanks for being here tonight. Thank you all for being here. This is amazing. And ecity books is here and there will be happy to sell you all books. Thank you. 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