Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV In Santa Barbara CA 20160206

Is a crack. Go this mission was founded in 1786 but the Church Structure has been rebuilt several times over the years. The current one that we occupy was rebuilt after the 1820s so it dates back for the 1830s. It was the frontier for them in this case california frontier especially in the 18th century of the incursion by other european powers, english, french and russian bath just the territories that of new spain so with the system working hand in hand with the stylish but they were part of that arm of Spanish Colonialism but had another purpose first and foremost they were here to spread christianity to the non christian population in california. Santa barbara is special in several ways but first and foremost its the only mission that wasnt closed that wasnt secular. Its been here operating as a Catholic Church since its founding so since they were closed, much of the content of the missions, the documents of the books, the art and artifacts ended up coming back to the mission and formed the core of the Archive Library so it is special in that way as well in the work in california. We are looking at a portrait of the Mission System in california that was recently canonized as saint but it is an important portrait for us because it helps us imagine what he looks like and we dont have any record that it actually that he sat for a painting that we have the knowledge that the original portrait was painted in the late 18th century. The original was lost in the revolution in the 19 tens and 20s. We have one of them and the other remains in mexico and now this is the official image that was used during his canonizations that this is an important part of the collection in the vast collection of related material. We are looking at the dedication page for the registered recording that was meant to record the sacrament and record the burial and in this case would be people in Santa Barbara but it tells an interesting story about the founding of and ultimately the founding of the mission in Santa Barbara and of Santa Barbara as a Spanish Colonial city. It was prepared with the understanding that he was a coming to the area to dedicate the chapel as well as the new mission and he really wanted to work along the Santa Barbara channel. And this was going to be the look of the deceased was prepared to record the burial of those here originally. Its been changed and this tells us a story that was later recorded in the biography about the conflict between syria and the governor in california under the spanish rule that was a constant battle between the missionary and physical and military authority and in this case, sarah disobeyed the governors order to only have one as the mission and in retaliation the governor tells sarah when youre ready you are ready to establish the mission of Santa Barbara know thats not going to happen on this trip. Only the royal will be established and the chapel and the mission is going to have to wait and in the biography in which the incident is recorded a save sarah is very upset by the development. So what we have here is not only a document that tells us about this complex relationship between the religious and military authorities but it also tells us that this is when Santa Barbara is founded as a Spanish Colonial town. This is the 21st of april 1782 and this addendum down here in a different color ink was eventually established and found in the mission four years later after the death of how president of the president of the california Mission System and down here we see the signature and its a very elaborate signature signed the president of the Mission System and i find it a remarkable piece of history all on one page. As they announced the european population came over the colonists came, the non indigenous population came out of world was changing, and to such a degree that for the people here in california to carry on a traditional life became really impossible and so often they found refuge here at the mission. It was a place where they could find food and so they did come willingly and often, but their understanding that their understanding perhaps if the commitment meant differed between what they thought of it and what the indigenous population thought of it and so i think that a lot of the native populations didnt understand as there is a lifetime commitment and so they were to be part of the mission are part of the society from here on out. That didnt mean they couldnt come and go. They were allowed to visit their home villages but they had to return and that was often a commitment they didnt understand so it was a very complex relationship. Also added the add the Archive Library, we have a very extensive collection of photo images beginning about the 1860s this is one of the examples we cherish of the big big last place we see signed and dated in the top corner. One of the reasons it is an important photo for us is that we think its the earliest known the photograph here at the mission and unfortunately whether it is in paintings or photographs people are very rarely included in the images of native american people, Indigenous People and so to actually have an image that records the women here out of the mission is extraordinary and a wonderful addition to our collection we get a sense of the church and church and the mission itself where they would have lived in the late 19th century and overhear off to the right would have been the house he would have helped them run the enterprise is happening here, the agricultural act enterprises and then hear off camera would have been the village where they lived and so we get a sense of this place and in the late 19th century you even get the sense that theres not much going on around the mission in terms of structures being built but it is an extraordinary piece of evidence for us and representative of many of images we have in the collection. The archive is a very important resource in telling the history in california but not just in california cut development in Santa Barbara and the west as the mission in particular is symbolic of the city in many ways it is a cornerstone for this Community Whether they are members of the parish or whether they are catholic or not, theres events that have happened so it has become a Cultural Center as well as Services Every weekend we have a population of about a dozen but still live here and its a living mission. Its still a vital part of the west and it will continue to be an important part of their future not just their history. This weekend we are visiting Santa Barbara california to talk with local authors and two are the literary sites with the help of a local cable partner. Next we talk with peter the author of after the grizzly about californias history of endangered species. One thing people often notice when they visit california is the state flag. On the flag we have the california grizzly. Theyve been extinct in california since 1924 so the time of the gold rush when california was being brought together as a state in the union, the grizzly was everywhere. It was a symbol of the state and of this western frontier and that sort of the idea of california as a new frontier where people came to do bold things. As you know, the species was sustained by the 1920s and so now i think people are starting to ask the question should always be the case. Conservation is a term that dates back to the 19th century in the United States. California came along a little bit later than the sum of the Eastern States in terms of developing the conservation policies and programs at the local level but in california and in the last, conservation emerged as an organizing framework for Land Management and Natural Resource management about the early 20th century and at that time most of the conservation initiatives were focused on protecting and preserving and come serving the forests or the greatest use for the longest time for the most people the utilitarian view of conservation and also the Natural Resources like water, forage for livestock and of course my old life as well and its become a major focus on conservation over the years increasing really in the 1930s and then in the 1960s and 70s with the passage of a variety of laws to preserve wildlife including the federal endangered species act of 73. I talk about the california grizzly in my book because it is incredibly compelling for a plot of different people and the example is how the conservation emerged in the United States. Grizzlies occur around the Northern Hemisphere from hudson bay in canada all the way to the persian gulf if you can believe that and all around the Northern Hemisphere in europe there is a Large Population of grizzlies in a smaller population in the continuous u. S. 48 states. Grizzlies have been listed as threatened in the lower 48 states around 40 years now. Part of the reason theyve been listed as threatened as in areas like the southwestern portion of the United States including california, grizzlies were essentially hunted to extinction by the early 20th century. At that time a lot of people really still believe that this decline was natural as a result of colonization and population growth and some people even thought that it was inevitable or necessary for the civilization to grow in a place like california and the Large Population numbers for the species to go extinct. By the time of the disappearance some people started to question that view and articulate a new vision that included large wild animals and other wild species along with population growth and that kind of development. It wasnt until the early part of the 20th century the federal government became involved in 1900 Congress Passed the act which was the First Federal law to preserve fish and game in this country country and they passed the hearings of additional laws including the treaties during the prevention into the new deal era of the 1930s and then culminating in the 1960s and 70s with the passage of several new pieces of legislation that sought to preserve fish and wildlife and even plants in ways that were not previously done and those include protection act, the u. S. Endangered species act and other laws as well. Conservation for much of its history has been a broad bipartisan endeavor in the early part of the 20th century people who were conservative and liberals and republicans and democrats largely supported conservation measures that continued through the early part of the 1970s. The u. S. Endangered species act was passed in congress in the the house by a vote of 39312 and in the senate by 920 voice vote virtually unanimous in 1973. Today you cant name a post office with those kind of votes. At the time, conservation was considered a broad interest to all sorts of people in society and the idea is that they should be preserved for everyone for the future. Since the passage of the act in 1973 about 1600 have been listed as threatened or in danger in the United States. In california theres about 300 that have been listed as threatened or endangered. California has the secondhighest number of threatened and endangered species in any state other than hawaii that has the greatest amount and the reason for that is although hawaii seems like a garden paradise, the native had been severely impacted by colonization and economic expansion into the production of the species that have taken a hold on the island and pushed out. Beginning in the late 1970s and particularly the 80s when Ronald Reagan was elected president who had a significant reaction to the conservation law of law of the 1960s and 70s by people who we leave the government has overstepped its authority. Many of these folks actually considered themselves conservationists but they believed that it should be done at the local level or the state level and at the state level and a baby leaves local land owners should be largely responsible for conservation activities on their land and in their communities and the thunderbolt government was a steward of the land and resources and that it was of those remote sort of institutions to be managing local land so the idea was the Land Management and Resource Management should go back to the local communities. This has been a controversial viewpoint ever since. And we still have a wide variety of opinions and debates about this issue today. In my work i studied a variety of species that exemplify different kinds of political debates and conflicts of the endangered species act. One is the Mojave Desert tortoise a flagship species after the Mojave Desert that attracted a lot of attention because when it was listed as threatened in the late 1980s, this invoked a new set of Management Guidelines and a process by which the federal lands of the desert were being managed so that desert tortoise became the debate about the proper management of public land in that region. I also talk about species like the san joaquin kick box, an adorable little fox that lived in the southern San Joaquin Valley in california as there was the natural area but also it found a home in some urban areas like the bakersfield triple with an that an area where it lived among the people in places like golf courses and public parks so this brought up questions about how to best manage the native endangered species in the growing urban area which is proving to be a challenge. In this area we are at right now just behind me this is the site of conservation for the bluebird which is an endangered species that has the unfortunate circumstance where people walk their dogs and enjoy the outdoors so this has proven to be a challenge for the managers and places to try to figure out how to preserve wildlife in the place where people like to go and use the resources as well. Another part of the equation is that over time weve really just started to learn about the urban ecology and this is one of the great frontiers in a way ironically of the Ecological Research in the 21st century. Most ecologists historically have avoided urban areas like the plague. Why do you become an ecologist, not to do the Field Research in chicago and los angeles. You do it because you want to be in an actual park wilderness area that we have a new breed today that are starting to study urban areas, urban ecosystems and to learn more about how they function they are proving increasingly important because we are starting to see the species used these urban areas in new and interesting ways. Wildlife in areas we havent seen for a very long time, coyotescome in here in Santa Barbara we have a small population of badgers and we have bobcats and coyotes and a wide variety of others so this is i think a real opportunity on the Frontier Corps research and conservation over the next several decades. This weekend we are in Santa Barbara california with the help of our local cable partner cox communications. Next we learn about rising sea levels and the threats they pose to coastal cities from the author of the attacking ocean. Devotion of Santa Barbara in a way it is Santa Barbara, beautiful beach, harbor, houses right on the water, and then you say to yourself what would happen if the water rose a foot, 3. 5 Million People in california live within three and a half feet of the sea level. Many of them in the bay area. See locals were 300 feet lower than today. And at the same time much of scandinavia was covered with thick ice sheets and in north america all the way from alaska bound to seattle and the great lakes and over the next six or 7,000 years, these ice sheets were effectively managed and all that water poured into the ocean and it just goes c. But a very complex process going on but ultimately its melting the ice and my book the attacking ocean, is about how people have adjusted to the rising seed rising seed bubbles but in europe it separates britain. What people dont realize is that 12,000 years ago england was part of the continent. There was no english channel. There were estuaries and weapons and low hills but by 5500 bc, the senior levels had risen because of melting ice sheets and natural global warming. All these weapons managed to vanish and its interesting because in the recent years, a great deal of research has been done on this land named after the bank and they estimate the problem is several thousand hunters lived in the wetlands and they lived in small bands and the sea level rising was probably so fast in a particular day but by the time you die your Life Expectancy was 28 baby, you are looking at a completely different landscape because the city had come in and you probably spend a lot of your life afloat. But the biggest defense you have against rising sea levels was that you could move because your positions are portable and when you are flooded people simply move to Higher Ground on either side. Today, we live in the cities in the millions and a very good example is the shanghai and california. Enormous. Shanghai is at sea level and the Chinese Government ignore it all. The problem is this falling off is only up to a certain point because at the same time they are building highrise buildings and the land is thinking under the weight and the groundwater being drawn out is causing a shift. What do you do . Do you move several Million People . If so, where are you going to put them . Have so, can you persuade them to leave because there comes a point that you have roots in a base like i have roots in Santa Barbara. Ive been here a long time and theres people in the north sea that have roots and people in the valley and saint mesopotamia their roots are totally different. One thing we did learn from hurricane katrina, one of the most important weapons in the face of catastrophic disaster are the tires in ties in the community and neighborhood and church. That is what makes life function but today in a much more anonymous urban world we are facing completely different issues and do we resettle people at Higher Ground or what . Whatever you do come at the cost is good to be astronomic and its not a problem that you or i case, it is a problem for great grandchildren lived with every day of their lives. But the will is good there to be a higher incident of extreme weather events that would be the major el ninos likely are facing now or just major storms. If we get a storm here you get the wind coming in from the southeast and a quite vicious sea and if that coincides with an exceptionally high tide, whats going to happen to houses when sea levels are higher right on the beach and what do you do . Do you rebuild . And this is already going to happen and i wouldnt be surprised if as the storms come and if it wasnt damaged in many places here which is due to the extreme weather and if you add it to back down the line the rising sea levels, it will be an interesting situation to which there is another side, too. And this isnt something we do now, passed legislation which forbids people to live at the sea level or that in effect their individual property rights. Do you simply wait for the forces of the marketplace to make the prices go down so low that people go to Higher Ground when the prices are better . Nobody knows. I went to a lecture at four or five years ago by a retired Major General in bangladesh is now in charge of the future basically and security and he talks about rising sea levels and he said that within 50 years that within a lives of our grandchildren, bangladesh is great to have to move between 30 and 50 Million People, not thousands but millions. Where are you going to put them . India doesnt want them there is no space in the country. This is the kind of question the rising sea level can make us confront because one of the Biggest Challenges humanity faces that has become the face of this migration situation in europe is what do we do with ecological refugees many of whom have ties to Agricultural Land like bangladesh. How are they going to adapt to modern Industrial City in the midwest or northern italy . Thats an interesting question. What does it say about that say about the future relationship with the ocean . A number of things. One is that we are really good at denial. Number two [inaudible] we dont always rise to the challenge. The costs may be astronomic but we do eventually rise to the challenge. Humans have lived with Sea Level Rise for a very long time but we are confronting now is a longterm problem that is unique because the silent elephant in the room is people, population, expanding populations. I dont know how many people live on the coastal plains in major cities on estuaries and parts, but its a lot of people, two or 300 million. These are the people you really have to think about at the living generations. We have a huge responsibility for the future and the sooner we start thinking about it, the easier it is going to be because the biggest lesson of all is a terrible problems in the population but we also have another terrible problem and that is shortterm political thinking and we have to develop mechanisms for locally and internationally. Stomach during the recent visit to Santa Barbara we spoke with Ronald Reagan biographer loop can about his relationship with the 40th president and the challenges of writing about a sitting president. Stomach i was a reporter in sacramento in the 60s. I covered Ronald Reagan in the First Campaign for governor he started out in 65 and he was elected and 66 and i dont know, i had been there maybe six months into the governorship and i said i dont really understand this guy. As i got into writing my first book was a political odyssey and as i got writing into with this kind of history in some ways the early parts for the political history in california i found that people would say and tell me things that gave me insight that they just never wanted as a News Reporter and i wasnt interested it wasnt so much how are you going to vote on that bill or why but where did you come from and why do you care about the things you care about and i became deeply involved in the stories of these people. I gained a lot of confidence writing it and i thought how i can do this. Its something that i enjoy doing and the other thing is when i was finished with it, although probably the critical acclaim and all of that i realized i knew an awful lot more about it than when i started and there were a lot of things i didnt know in fact i sometimes think as you get older its a matter of subtraction. You realize how little you know about anyone or anything and so i was i guess i was inspired to write more books. My second book which was simply about Ronald Reagan, he never commented. He was smart. He didnt comment on books about him. There was another book written about him and he was asked what he thought about it and he joked i didnt have time for Light Reading and he was smart enough not to get drawn into the conversation about it but he did say i interviewed him and i remember when it was because he had been elected and it was december of 1980 he was the president elect and we called him governor and he said well i hear youre writing another book about me and i said yes im going to write about you until i get it right and he said good wine, which was about as much praise or comment as you were going to get. Reporters are always struggling with questions of access to so that wasnt so much of a problem for me. When youre writing a book about someone if you have a reputation as i hope i have of being fairminded and trying to get all sides of the story, people would talk to you about books. I say most people because all these years i have helped the one person who would never talk to me he didnt want to talk about them and she didnt but most people would talk to you and the problem with reagan was a very specific problem. He was in 1968 nixon had been nominated and reagan was going around the country speaking for republican candidates and the way they put it to me is they said he will have more time with him if you mostly he was afraid to fly. He didnt like flying and they liked having someone there to occupy his time and so the second night out im going over my how i would interview him during the day. I had a tape recorder and i was going over my notes and to see i realized he had told me because he had a photographic memory, he told me almost word for word what he had said in his memoir called where is the rest of me in 1965 and so im kind of i feel anxious about this because i go to him and i say governor, this is very interesting but youve already told this story kind of word for word in your book and he looked at me and cocked his head and said if you want something new and i said yes, governor that governor that would be helpful. And so in every interview after that including the president s time it was always something he would tell me that was new and i remember going over it with a colleague at the Washington Post years later was kind of complaining retzlaff was a young colleague complaining that reagan just repeated his speeches and i said yeah but he will tell us something new and he always did you have to but you have to sort of listen for it. And so with reagan, the question for me wasnt so much about access as it was about trying to separate the chat and find out what he was telling me. After all the time i spend spent with him in all the years, i thought i couldnt get a tuneup there as part of him he held himself and mrs. Reagan bailed me out. I called her up and she said, on over to the house and she never did this before or after. This was the only time. She was dressed in jeans and putting her stuff in the laundry and i didnt tape it. I said i just feel stuck and she said there are times that i cant get behind the barrier and her and i was us of reagan was that we always focus on the alcoholism of his father but the other thing was he had been nomadic. They kept moving from town to town partly because of his fathers drinking and partly because the times and so Ronald Reagan didnt have a lot of friends like you or i might have in grade school or something. His only friend was his brother and he didnt there was a part of him that he kind of developed that was very personal and he didnt let people into so he was a challenge. He was always, always had good manners. He got angry at me for things i wrote in the Washington Post that he was never uncivil about it. Once he was good to cover because he recognized you had a job and it wasnt just promoting him. The hardest thing for anyone, for any of us is not to be judged by somebody elses premise. Somebody might say well there is too conservative and the hardest thing is to judge by your own premise because none of us ever quite come up to our own opinion of ourselves and thats why i wouldnt do very well writing about stalin or hitler or an evil person because i wouldnt have enough empathy to be able to want to see the world the way they saw it but i tried it once and im not going to say the subject but i quickly gave up because i didnt have enough respect for the person that i was writing about. I have to write about people not to dye it green with but to that i have some regard for. He wants said something to me that surprised me because i dont know what made him. My father jack was the same name as his father and he was also in oklahoma can and alcoholic. He didnt see this kind of thing and i dont know why he said it. Maybe thats one of the reasons youre interested in me. And i dont know what i said that i thought about it and i thought maybe he was right. Im very critical and what i need to stop itself from is i think becoming too critical and much more clearly there was a british historian it was written backwards but its written for word. I asked my editor at the Washington Post. He said he thought i was but we had to figure it out. Its one of the few things about getting old. I dont worry i just write it and if the writer tries to get it right, hes doing the greatest service to his readers and himself that he can possibly do. It was later used by the former professional Lance Armstrong which resulted in his being banned for the sport. The reason for this whole book and take took out to the public and have them understand the people who are going through chemotherapy because there was another because of this multibillion dollar drug. Studies started coming out over the years and became clear that the high doses of each house to veto would actually give people heart attacks or aneurysms into a stable. Every drug has a risk and reward but we have patients who needed to be told what those are and we didnt know for two decades or so. The stories they open up with have to do with jim who was diagnosed with cancer and his family brought him home. They thought he would recuperate or go in his own time and happened to be his Birthday Party and all the family had come over and theres 20 people, nephews and nieces and children and grandchildren and once all the cake has been eaten and the soda has been bought, then they go home and its just jim and his high school sweetheart. Suddenly jim starts bleeding from his ears and from his nose and from his throat and he cant even talk or ask for help and he passes out so by the time the pair an excon, they were shocked. Its like a murder scene, blood all over the walls and the couch. But what he had done was an overdose that had been given to him by the doctors at hospitals that had been carrying for him. This drug has a lovely and inventive breakthrough story. It was the first biotech blockbuster coming and it came in the market in the late 80s and 90s when a tiny company right down the road in Thousand Oaks made their first fda approved drug and they needed a partner like johnson and johnson is a lot of marketing knowhow so to begin to get into the market comedic partnership with johnson and johnson and all of us is to do with supplement the blood. It was a blow to drug not a pharmaceutical drug thats how they considered it. So it became the number one reimburse drug and you can imagine what that did for the market. The only thing that was approved for is the therapy related fatigue and that was it. If they watched television they could see that there were all kinds of commercials promoting the various brands for tired, fatigue, not having enough get up and go to film your grandchildren who are playing with you so it wasnt hard to find out that they were prescribing it an unofficial and unapproved ways that from 1997, 98, early 2000, the fda was asking for both johnson and johnson to please give us some new studies. They were using it back in the 80s. This is when they were just starting to research this wonder drug. Getting it on the white market and injecting it into overdosing in switzerland and france and so there were already red flags about the dangers of the drugs but then as both johnson and johnson began to push and promote the appropriate ways more and more chemo patient therapies were certain to buy a. Of some people i interviewed for the book blood medicine were actually dying from so that it was pulling out of their gears and nose and eyes said it was hard to take aneurysms and 80s proved to be more fatal than the cancer and the people were hoping to recuperate from. The fda does have control. They could pull the drug after theres a decent hearing. They could comply with the fda request and that should happen more often because that was absolutely going to destroy a lot destroy able to financially in the profit motives of the companies that laid fast and loose with the rules but so far theyve never done that with any part of the drug. In American Health care and it is the honey pot for the pharmaceutical companies. Medicare paid Something Like 60 to 70 of the cost of the drugs. In other words a lot of old people get cancer and so the doctors and hospitals are going to build medicare, medicaid or some others for the cost. This is why you see so Many Companies now developing cancer drugs. They are very expensive because they intend to build medicare and dedicate to the high cost in hopes to fill the money. The story really did take place and unfold in washington, d. C. Where you have the Government Agencies like the fda regulating but the whistleblowers were on the west coast and his best friend was down in tucson and they were rival salesman trying to help sell each other until they realized their shock the high cost money they were giving their clients and doctors were actually a legal so they tried to alert their bosses in new jersey but nobody wanted to deal with it so hes been on the coast trip to alert reporters and journalists in it that three years before they got to me and then i realized this is a story gone bad these men are trying everything they can to make some in right. I think nobody was taking their story seriously because you had a 2 billiondollar Corporation Johnson and johnson who makes baby shampoo and our favorite Healthcare Company and it seemed too incredible to be true. They wouldnt purposefully commit fraud and hurt people just for money but that came to be the case. Now people are much more aware of the dangers of. They were one of the makers that had to pay almost be almost a billion dollars for the fraud that it committed. Their case never got as far in court and johnson and johnson have many others they were found guilty of falsely promoting or fraudulently promoting. If a consumer finds out that his doctors just described drugs and if you want to know whether or not its safe, its kind of difficult to find out that theres been one amazing breakthrough in the Affordable Care act which some people call obamacare and that is the doctors have to disclose publicly which companies are taking their money and if j. And j. Is one of the companies they are taking money from and a consumer or patient has been prescribed that as a hint that there might be a vested interest so it might be easier than ten years ago but its not as easy as it should be and that is partly because of the muscle that the fda doesnt have to force the safety law. They are discovered were discovered to have serious side effects that are not disclosed and with the fda allowing them on the market, we have a sort of breakdown in the system. Patient safety isnt as strong as it could be in this country and furthermore, the drug and healthcare costs are far more expensive than they need to be because of the marketing. We are one of only two civilized or first world countries that allows the pharmaceuticals to advertise on television so that is a big red flag. They have a very quick fine print and you surely cannot expect the patients to be looking at all the side effects and print. They show that its not revealed until years later and then its too late for the person taking the pill. There is a little sort of thumbnail rule environment or from reporting on this book which is 30 to 40 percent dont go to medicine and another goes to fraud and another goes to marketing and this is what we have in have enough for privatesector health care and i think that to me, blood medicine is a perfect example of the failure of the system. Now the literary tour of Santa Barbara california but the hope of our local Cable Company cox communications. We start trip with the art of stillness which describes what he learned when he momentarily stopped traveling and slowed down his life. I was working in new york city and it was very exhilarating and i got into a cab to go home and we were four blocks away from times square and i was really happy. But they realized im racing around so much i never had the chance to think about how deep this happiness is. Is this really what i want to be doing with my whole life. I was in my 20s and ive been covering the magazines that i suddenly thought i can never separate myself enough from this life that i should be living so i should do something more radically different and i realized although there is a lot of excitement in my life, it wasnt really sustaining me and if i were to end a life thinking i would spend the whole of it in times Square Square maybe it wouldnt be a good life so i had an apartment on the 13th floor and a park avenue the trucks were rumbling past all night and i would get out and onto the subway and get into my other 24 office on 50th street in the middle of october center and then i would often work 14 or 16 hours a day and i was enjoying my work but at the end of the day i would get back into day after day for four years now im in a two room apartment in the middle of nowhere with my wife and her kids, we have no car, no bicycle, no tv. No media and so i wake up and have breakfast, i make a template 10foot canoe to my desk because it is such a tiny apartment desk is next to the table and i write for maybe five hours and then take a long walk around the neighborhood after that, we have a curious about the size and i will have a cup of tea and read for an hour and take another walk and eventually take care of my emails and they seem like they are coming from another planet of course and then i will go and play pingpong with my elderly neighbors and read some more and i still have maybe five hours left in the date and i realize one reason i left new york city for japan is because time was more important than money and i felt it stretched a thousand hour and would give me time to give myself i care about and talked to feel rushed and i suppose i wrote this book the art of stillness not so much for my life but all of us are running around faster and faster and machines are getting faster and faster and there is no way that humans can keep up with the machines without becoming machines themselves. So at some point i think all of us finally have to find a way to just step back and catch our breath and that is my extreme way but i think everybody is thinking about it in their own way. And of course when i gave this glamorous job for the lifegiving thing in japan, all my friends and family and colleagues were shocked and i remembered soon after they moved to japan he said it sounds like youve gone crazy. Well done. Of course my parents were a little concerned, giving up a steady income the steady income for the unknown and my colleagues thought i was mad and most of them were still in new york city and enjoying it so it wouldnt have been the right move for them. It was the one move i never regretted and i noticed soon after i got there that all the time i was in new york city i was always thinking what if i were somewhere else and as soon as i got to japan i never thought about maybe i should be in new york city. I instantly felt at home and told this is hope this is the life that has been waiting for me and i finally made my way to it so after he moved to japan i was invited to drive up into the cold dark hills beyond los angeles like what is behind me now to visit my hero and singer and i was impressed and moved to find that this man who has taken all the pleasures of the world could be living anywhere in any high style he wanted that he was living for five and a half years close doing really grueling work day in and day out, see he cq is already a celebrity in his 60s. Bill high never found trip that satisfied me in as deep away as going nowhere. I have been writing about travel for 30 years. When i was beginning in 1980. Isopril the internet, we didnt know what they looked like. Anybody watching this program can access any quarter on smart phones tonight when lying in the bath. I noticed nowadays when i say i am going nowhere, there is no tv reception or email for three days, i think this book the art of stillness adventures in going nowhere was written and to points to the fact of getting 200 emails a day, phone calls and really do justice to any of it. And complete the concentrating on something. Lost in conversation at times but when we are texting here and taking care of an email and getting in a car, most of us are not fulfilled, accelerating rollercoaster, we do not know how to get off. All powered devices are speeding up. I Love Technology and i think technology has made our lives much better and more interesting and healthier and happier but i dont always trust myself with technology and it is like having a strong drug the. If you do is really hard to get away from it. There are known 400 internet rescued camps in china alone where they literally as if kids were addicted to heroin but they are addicted to the internet, something called email apnea now. There is literally a psychological fear of being outside mobile phone contact. These devices are we surrendered so quickly that it loses balance, who, the Health Epidemic of the twentyfirst century increasing to almost every individual everyday, almost reaching a stage where we cant function anymore. We all know it is hard if you are busy to be kind, that is where the deepest fulfillment comes. It probably comes from and tendering ourselves and opening up to something more spacious. In my book i try to give a few examples and models of what Everybody Knows is feeling already which is getting more movement in our life and to cope with all the movement we need a little bit of stillness, a few drops of stillness everyday will make it more tolerable. For more information on booktvs recent visit to Santa Barbara and many other destinations on our cities turgot to cspan. Org citiestours. Booktv is on location at the university of wisconsin madison, we are talking with professors to are also authors and pleased to be joined by an emeritus professor, jerry apps. His book is called limping through life a farm boys polio memoir. Professor apps, what is polio . Guest polio is something we dont know a lot about these days, they came up with a cat vaccine that eliminated its in this country, it is still prevalent, poliomyelitis is the complete name or infantile paralysis. It is a paralytic disease for some of the people who has it. It is also, affects the respiratory system, there are two major times, i had paralytic. Host how did you get it . Guest good question. In 1947, 1918 a tremendous flu epidemic cuyahoga and killed thousands of people and people thought polio was transmitted through the air. It is not. It is a virus transmitted through bad water and poor sanitation. People did not know it at the time and were frightened to death, close swimming pools, close the fair, the parks, all of this in world war ii. Was on a rampage in this country. Host what was the connection with the flu epidemic in 1918 . They knew it was airborne, polio is not airborne. People assumed polio would be airborne but it is not. Host how much of an epidemic was in the states and how did it begin . Guest no one knows when it began because most remember when Franklin Delano roosevelt had polio candid as on the east coast very early in the 20s and 30s, and it went on a rampage and after world war ii, 1945, 45 to 55 those ten years we had a tremendous epidemic all across this country. In wisconsin it roared up the valley to green bay, thousands of pieces, many deaths, a terrible disease. Host jerry apps, january 1947, where were you, what happened that day . Guest i was living on a farm with no electricity, no plumbing, coming home from the Country School i was host perfectly happy . Guest not really. On my way home i had tremendous lead tired, more tired than i can remember. I had been sliding down hills that day on the field west of the school, one acre of land, and a farmer lived next door, lindsay gave us permission to slide downhill so we had done that, skiing and sledding. Now dragging my sled home, i cannot believe how tired i am, gerald she would have called me, i will get your brothers to do your chores for use the the expectation was i should be out in the farm. By suppertime it was getting much worse and i was developing tremendous headache, sore throats and we didnt go to the doctor, farm people did not go to the doctor, you had been your desk to go to the doctor and you are probably coming down with a cold. I went to my colds bedroom, central heat, and the idea was, it is a whiskey swing. A glass of water, a little bit of honey. She rubbed my chest with skunks greece, rendered skunk and greece, couldnt afford stuff like that. That draws out any problem they had. And sweating was the cure to everything in those days. If you didnt get pneumonia you were cured. And my right leg was not working. I said this right leg doesnt work today. She said how could that be . It was bent like this, frozen, paralyzed. She said we probably ought to go to the doctor and she loaded me up with my dad in our old 1946 plymouth which we have all through the war. It was built in 1941. Fred doctor out of chicago, built this little hospital. Hand i feel jerry has polio. He looked at my knee, and he held his cap. A longtime farmer, fifth grade education. Look on his face was the book of someone who lost their best if you are a farm person you will appreciate that more than folks not familiar with cattle. My mother said what should we do for him . He said the hospital is full. Iron lungs line the halls, a ironmongers iron lungs, keep him warm, give him lots of liquid, they thought i had it because the neighbor a little bit before that, he was losing about one day in this hospital at that time. Terrible time to have anything to do with the medical profession. Miserable kid. And trying to get over this thing and the headache finally did this. The paralysis did not lost weight and the Previous Year, quick story, we are all active and it was all late that on the fourth of july took off from farm work and my dad said lets go to silver lake and we went to silver lake the afternoon of the fourth of july. My mother had food and devoe pine trees, and i noticed off to the side, and short pants and farm kids never wore short pants, they knew better and all these kids were lined up and went over and joined them and how did they coming . We are going to have a foot race. I joined that foot race and beat these city kids, raced past the them and doing all that kind of stuff. They awarded me first place for winning that foot race was a can of asparagus. Asparagus mustve been a big deal in 1946. And my mother and two brothers, i just won a foot race, got a can of asparagus, you were in that fourth race . You know those kids are catholic . It was the nights of columbus she pointed out to me, the knights of columbus foot race for kids. We work lutheran. She said that as the knights of columbus. Those kids are catholic. I didnt know the knights of columbus from the queen of england. You got to take that back to those people and my dad said he won the race, he keeps the asparagus. That is the kind of contrast i was facing, i was remembering as i was almost caught by the wood stove in the dining room trying to keep warm, i could remember the days when i could run and walk and do all things farm kids could or couldnt do and i couldnt do that anymore. There were no physical therapist in those days, or in wisconsin. My dad said to me it was april now and the snow was melting, and i was able to be up there and you got to do something about this bomb leg. We dont want you the doctors said you will never walk again and in those days unfortunately if you had a physical disability you worry immediately declared mentally incompetent, it was a terrible thing but fairly common. I had just gotten a new tractor. We farm horses all the way through the depression and world war ii and we had this brand new farm, international tractor. We had gotten it just the year before in 1945 and my dad said we need to the days you can try that fact, youre head works. My arms work pretty well. To drive that tractor you had to you know about anything about old tractors, turn up the Steering Wheel, and i couldnt work the brake pedal and beyond this, and it wouldnt turn. It is a Beautiful Day and the birds i singing and the sun is on my back and first time i have been outdoors and going along with the tractor, pulling this and i could see this fence, this new fence we built the Previous Year with brand new fence posts that were expensive, four lines of barbwire offense and i could see it coming closer and closer and closer end this wont get anywhere near the Steering Wheel and it is next thing i knew, fly into the fence post, busted up and my dad still has work, coming with the team of horses, he says to me i thought he was going to load the up and take me home and that was the end of that and he said are you ok . I am ok but the planed sure isnt. Said i can see that. You get back on their. When you get to the fans you shut the thing off slow down or start to use he didnt say that but it was pretty obvious and i was so angry with him because every night for about we 2 weeks he would rub this need with horse liniment, that is good for horses, mostly good for people too. Rogan his knee with horse liniment and full vonage until by the end of april i couldnt stand up and begin to walk a little. If you look at the cover of this book and you see this calf which was my 4 h calf and that summer i am trying to prepare for the county fair, trying to teach this calf how to lead and that calfs became my second physical therapist because as i was teaching this calf it was teaching me how to walk. By the end of summer i could walk well enough to do the kind of work i never could run. But i could block. There is a lot more to this story but that is the beginning. Host in your early 80s. Guest 81. Host you are still walking. Is that a rarity for people . Guest it was. It was. I give so much credit to a bunch of folks starting with my father with whom i was selling grain at the time and defect i waso grai time and defect i wasangry at t time and defect i was working with this animal. It was a tough time. Lots of people were helping me that i didnt realize at the time. My teacher came out at to the farm and brought me lessons every day and the following they would sit down with me and i had to pass the county examination. I was scared wasnt going to pass the exam but i did. Thanks to my teacher who came out to help. When i got to high School Little bit of that story, all the freshmen boys were expected to go out for baseball. Baseball was a big deal. Hundred kids involved whole high school, my graduating class had 15. To go out for baseball standing at the plate, cliff simmons, never forgotten cliff simmons, had a fastball, he had a fastball that you couldnt believe. His claim to fame was when the freshman stood up, he could send that ball with in six inches of your nose. The idea being the kid would didnt have enough oomf, couldnt hit me right alongside the head. A while later there were not any emts or anything like that. Paul weiss says to me are you ok . Got a terrible headache and he said words that were unbelievably true but harsh. I dont think you are going to make the baseball team, which is pretty obvious i would say because i was knocked out. Couldnt even get away from the fast ball. Then he says Something Else which was terribly profound, you should take typewriting. Typewriting . Typewriting . That is for girls. I am 47. It was true. Girls took typewriting in order to get into business jobs so i am in this class, 15 girls. As it turned out what freshman has the opportunity to sit with 15 girls . They had scared to death. Manual typewriters, had to work some by hand. Lc smith, these girls had beautiful long fingers. How could i compete with rivals stubby fingers . After the first couple weeks they begin typing tests and their pinkies did not have in any strength and they could not get it to work and nobody knew what to do with a; anyway so that does not make much difference. I was doing pretty good. Theater thing i didnt realize was the typewriting class was also the newspaper staff for the wonderfully evocative rosebud which was good name of our newspaper. The Basketball Team was called the wild rose, with that put fear and trepidation in to you . Now i am a reporter for the newspaper because we can tight, we have machines that predated mimeograph so we type all these stories. Now an assistant editor and the editor of the newspaper, writing all the editorials, i did not know what plagiarism meant so i borrowed from readers digest, and agriculture, anything i could get my hands on i pulled out jokes and those stories, we are working enough. That is how i got into writing so i always had a second carrier as a writer, and he said jerry, we need somebody to announce the basketball games. At age 14 i have a microphone and i am announcing basketball ended was hilarious because one of my colleagues, alan walters was a pretty good basketball player so i am going it is now walters coming down the floor, alan walters two more points for alan walters sitting next to me but i was still having fun and i was in public speaking and all that stuff so that pushed me in both directions. The only person in your peer group who had polio, was their authorization . Did you feel ostracized . Nobody knew it. I did not this kid is limping, must have got hurt in some farm accident, i would not tell anybody ever when my wife and i were married she did not know i had polio. I spent ten years in the army reserve, no doctor ever asked if i had polio. I was smart enough to join the Transportation Club but i was a captain in the army reserve which people find unbelievable because i was always limping and people dont like it when guys limb. I never told anybody about polio in to my editor, when they said to me when she heard about this, you should write a book about this so i did, tough to write. Anger . No. Sorrow. Missed opportunities. A sense of worthlessness. I have lived a life of worthlessness because once you cannot do what everyone else can do meaning what 12 and 13yearolds can do, play basketball, play baseball, do all those things, if you are worthless, the fact that i was writing, that was a sissy job. That wasnt real. So you spend your life feeling worthless and people say to me what is it like to have had polio . You have gone over it. I have spoken to a lot of polio survivor groups to agree with me, once you have polio you always have polio. That sense of worthlessness, the psychological impact of that disease is for me at least far more devastating than the fact that i am living today and experiencing post polio syndrome. That psychological worthlessness prevails, how does one react to it . There are two ways basically, you either become a drug addict or alcoholic or you are an overachiever because you wanted to constantly show people i am not worthless, i am not worthless. I am the only kid in the extended family to go to college. My uncle one time, my dads brother said to my dad herman where did you go wrong . He heard i was going to college and my dad said what you talking about . The only reason anybody goes to college is to get out of work. I got a masters degree, my uncle said i didnt know jerry could get out of any more work, got a ph. D. Degree, he was completely flustered. Did your family avoid you when you first had polio . On purpose. They kept my brothers away from me which was a good thing because at that time we did not know how it was transmitted. I did not know how i got it. Other than it was everywhere. And it was a bad sanitation, no one in our community had indoor plumbing. It was pretty iffy. Host you are the only one in that area. In your family. A lot of kids in the area. A neighbors kid died. Host what is an iron lung the . Guest a gruesome piece of equipment that was probably cleo ten feet long, this big around and you were put into that thing and to assist you in briefing, for those who had polio, that is why it is called an iron lung, to help you breeze. Most of the kids and most people where children, didnt make it, they died. And i was fortunate. As i met a lot of polio survivors, that are my age in terrible shape, in wheelchairs, walkers, it affects all kinds of things, it can later affect the mentally. It hasnt bothered me so far. Host 1955 jonas salk. What happened . Guest they had been researching vaccines for polio for some while and jonas salk was one who came up with the vaccination that was so effective that where there had been thousands of cases of a sudden there were none of. It is and believably effective and one of my crusades if this is the right word is to make sure, for those who dont want to vaccinate their children, my crusade is get your children vaccinated. And to talk to you, want to share with you how much it is like to live a life of having had polio. No kid should have to do that. There is no reason in the world to have a kid goes through life feeling worthless because of some deformity. Host i used the suffering post polio syndrome . Guest yes, yes i am. I am walking with a cane. For years i did not. Last ten years it has come back to visit me. So far it is still here. People say why not get a Knee Replacement . Nothing wrong with the knee joint. Affects the ligaments and muscles. Host i use suffering mentally to date . Guest no. I dont think so. My wife and my friends host when did you let it go . When did you get over the fact that you had polio . Guest i never did. I have never gotten over it. As i mentioned earlier once you have pull you always have