Doubtless, many of you here in this room know mhs is home to the adams family papers and an extensive collection largely comprised of correspondences, letters, books, diaries, literary manuscripts, speeches, legal and business papers of both the senior and junior president s adams as well as all the members of this preeminent political dynasty. These documents remain so vital in our efforts to understand the evolution of american democracy, diplomacy and identity. Mhs strives to make the adams papers and our entire 40 million item collection available to anyone with an interest in american life, culture and history and we do it for free. If you have value resource and enjoyed programming like todays talk and you are not an mhs supporter i encourage you to do so. Tonight represents one of many programs seminars, exhibitions and workshops that we host. If you dont already have a copy of our new Spring Summer calendar grab one on the way out and its on her website. I want to mention we wi
Have signed a contract with netflix to produce documentaries and childrens shows. Harry and meghan say they will focus on content that informs but also gives hope. The German Government says without doubt a novichok nerve agent was used to poison critic of russian presidenrt vladimir putin, Alexei Navalny. Mr navalny became ill on a trip to siberia on the 20th august. This image shows navalny drinking a cup of tea at tomsk airport in siberia on his way back to moscow. His press secretary says that is the only food or drink he had taken all day. Since he fell ill hes been recovering in hospital in germany. The kremlin says they have not been informed about the comments from germany. Lets take a look at the nerve agent novichok. The name novichok means newcomer in russian, and applies to a group of advanced nerve agents developed by the soviet union in the 1970s and 1980s. Novichoks were designed to be more toxic than other chemical weapons, so some versions would begin to take effect ra
Literal, you know, thing. And, but i, you know, i do feel stronger and i guess i feel stronger in the belief that there are forces that are unknown to us or barely knowable and definitely unable to be spoken about. That are around us. This isnt nearly as tedeep question, but it is a serious question. You guys are all obviously very intelligent people. So, i mean, you had to have known where you were hiking was near iran and iran is especially unfriendly to american s. Did you not have a map or any sense of how far youd going . No, maam, we were walking beforehand. Yeah, no, i remember we were in i remember seeing it on the map. The town. And its like on the eastern part of iran, but its not like of iraq. But its not like, on the border. People said go to this waterfall. So we went to the waterfall. I remember thinking, we are near the eastern side. Like, and at one point during hiking, and this is one of those thoughts that plagued me in solitary confinement, i remember mentioning, oh,
That that was the month before we were released. In short it was a big trauma. But then also to say it was a lifeline and what happened is we would go through these cycles like everybody cares about us and remembers us and then two weeks later i havent heard from anybody. I feel totally forgotten and the Group Psychology between us started going down until we could get another batch. Its interesting also about the dates because all of the prisoners i correspond with now ask the same thing for me to put a date. I think it is a fear that a letter is going to be taken away and they will never get it but i will say we have a huge industrial duffel bag full of all of those letters and every once in a while when im feeling down and i forget to appreciate life and freedom i will just get one out and read it. [applause] i dont think anybody has asked when did you decide to write the book and how you actually did it. It looked like maybe you took different chunks to narrate in your own voice. B
The u. N. 15 days can call ent constant damage. Damage so i work with solitary watch now, and i collect written histories and stories of peopleh that are living in solitary s confinement. I have in depth letter correspondences and i visit them in prison, intu people on the r outside, and some of the storie that ivi told you of how i stay human, how i resisted, how i kept myself alive, thavrn i write to have these incredible stories. The suicide rate is 50 higher s a lot of people give up. Prlot of people find no reason to keep fighting. Ry the ones that do have incredible stories to tell, p and so i wan to bring them out and publish an ithology and am also writing a play about some of the characters called opening the box. I, too, want to say thank you. I want to try to make something good out of this experience. Im traveling with a good of i f california. Eigh of whom are foreign nationals, and so they were very interested to hear your story. Imwe curious to know what thisy experience