Out for that. You can purchase copies of of bears and ballots from our link in the chat and we provided a link on our website and jessica and heather are talking, please your questions to jessica or heather. We had a q a feature in the bottom of your screen. You will get to as many of those as time allows. Heather lende as contributed as a and pr and National Geographic outlets among other newspapers andmagazines. Shes the author of the bestselling book find the good, take good care of the garden and the dog and if you lived here i know your name you and i shall be discussing herlatest book , of bears and ballots an alaskan adventure into smalltown politics. Heather will be interviewed by jessica hammer, jessica is the author of the novel magnetic girl, author of the southern book, also a nominee for the crisis section, from invisible sisters was named one of the all georgians should read and her craft guide breathing fire, a guide to writing about it was praised by vanity fair and others. She teaches creative writing and directs writing a report university. She lectures internationally in writing and we are so delighted she is joining us tonight heather and jessica, welcome and i will let jessica takeit from your area. Thank you kate and heather, im so glad to talk to you and i feel like your friend although weve only met on the internet inthe past few weeks. I love this book so much and while i personally dont have the temperament to run for office, and you do apparently, you and i share a deep belief in the importance of community and the importance of democracy and its just a real honor that to spend sometime with you. I want to know if you would read for us just a very beginning of the book, if you would read from the beginning, election day through my life as an open book, the first three paragraphs. Sure. Election day. There are two polling places in haines. One is above the harbor on a dock and the other is a fire molten mosquito lake, a rural settlement 20 miles out of town. I voted at the art center and said hi to everyone as i walked in but i didnt say wish me luck or anything close to it. The public radio satan and signs on the street corners reminded resident no campaigning was allowed at or near polling places. One neighbor who lived in an old house with a wide porch was asked by the Borough Court to remove Campaign Signs from his yard since his home was too close to the polls. I did notice who was there voting go friends and foes and wondered which side of the haines right left divide would be victorious. Either way a more than half of us would be happy and a little less than half would be disappointed. Haines predicted both. I assumed it would be close area and it looked as though more conservative voters than my supporters were at the rec center and i hope to my years in town, my Community Service on the library board, hospice board and planningcommission, my volunteer hosting of the Country Music show , Coaching High School runners for 17 years , raising the children and five grandchildren and now theres 11 because of the tobias family, raising my business in lumber plus all those obituaries i be writing for the valley news since 1997 would give me crossover support and did you want me to keep going . You could stop there. Sorry, i was a little nervous being in your presence. Dont say that. We can stop there because what i wanted to do was the voice in this book which is your voice obviously is so present and so warm and i also was really shocked by the fact that theres a street in your town called Silicon Valley and the map, there is a map in this but give the reader a sense of the charm and the smallness of haines and your love and commitment to this place for a long time. My first book was a map and people have asked me so i asked my friend who was also on the Borough Assembly to draw it. Its just fantastic andit reminds me of a Childrens Book in a way. So you write in the book that you ran for local office in haines to help set an example and im curious in what ways, did you set an example . Whats the example today . I was running thinking my grandchildren would talk about their grandmother that was involved in local government and i was thinking how influential my mothers and grandmothers were and the things that they did that i didnt even realize at the time that had become part of the way i live and the things i expecting people so i thought i want to show them that they need to be involved in their community and in their government and i want them to remember me typing my notes for meetings and it didnt work out that way. I didnt become like a local star of the assembly or anything but what i did do is because i was thinking about all thetime , i realize about halfway in or maybe even sooner than that that what i was going to bring to it was a kind of sounds hokey but its civility, kindness that i wasnt going to do anything that i wouldnt want them to be proud of me for. Even if i might not be winning particular battles or being revered by certain people for my politics. It was different than that. Im going to show them how to behave in the public eye when the chips are down a little. The chips were down for you. And also how you talk to your neighbors, even theones that you disagree with , especially publicly. Im not a saint or anything. Im not a rant or rave or yellow with in talks with my friends but publicly i always try that old adage if i couldnt Say Something nice, dont say anything at all and try to find some thing in either my fellow Assembly Members, mayor, staff or the people who were kind of giving us a hard time to appreciate in them. And that helps. I want to ask you about the hard times that you referred to as the recall was then i also want to talk about at some point i was reading in the book and started circling how many times the word pregnant, oversexed showed up in the text and its really a theme in there so and you tell us a little bit about the attempt at the recall and how kindness and respect and listening even to people you dont disagree with contributes to democracy. At first the recall which you know, as you so clearly put it i wish id read your book on grief. Theres a lot of stuffabout the recall. And it was really three, it was agreed for the town that i thought ilived in. During that time i sort of felt that my town had cheated onme. What happened was right after myself and my friend editor of the chilcote valley news were arrested , on basically a fairly, we were more progressive perhaps then the other people running, there were six people running and tom and i were the top two vote getters and we joined an assembly that was already leaning more progressive , if thats the right word. Its hard in a small town and it doesnt line up the way it does, doesnt necessarily mean the same thing but it was an issue about the harbor and the expansion there and we had run on the idea that the community should have a record referendum on the design of it and we thought just before we got in, after we got in with better get that happening. And that created a lot of anger from the people who had supported that particular design so right away it didnt happen and the rest of the assembly was a make or break in the time. That was 3 and 4 oh there was going to be noreferendum. Similar to National Politics in a way they won and they were so mad that it was very much the next day we were going to recall you and then it just became something that hung over us though that at every meeting how that works is theres no assembly and they can get their signature on the petition and its snowball like that through pretty much the first, what was the first nine months i was on office and my second election was in august and my first one had been the previous october. And you came out the other side, the recall was stopped. It was myself and two other Assembly Members and then a local artist was also the third one. And the really good news about it was there that the town didnt go for it. They recognize, my community recognized it was pretty squarely so it was a 6040 the other nice thing was it wasnt personal. They didnt choose which one of the three that were targeted a rather have read it was straight across, we all pretty much got the same number of votes and it was a resounding no to that kind of politics. And that was good. Which goes to the next part of the question which is you emphasize in this book kindness and respect and listening to people regardless of if they agree with you or dont agree with you so how much did that contributeto a functional community in your mind, the ability to listen and be kind . I think its the only way youre going to have a functional community. Its just human nature. If somebody is standing there calling you names, saying youre stupid, aim bad things about your family youre probably not going to want to listen to them the next time they stand up and they Start Talking about why they need a sewer line extensionto their neighborhood. Its human nature that you backup from people that are communicating with you well and if you can at least find some way to for lack of a better word be polite, it helps. It helps a lot. And i noticed that watching people when they came to the Assembly Meetings. I should listen a long time to somebody i disagree with if they spoke to make to me in a calm way, but if they just are going like this and yelling, i had a friend who was a mayor in another small town and she told me think of Public Service this way. Every time if you shove somebody , they shove you back if you just are kind of leaning against them eventually they might lean this way or come towards you. Its an easier way to meet somebody than a slam inthe shoulder. And its a hard lesson to learn. Theres a section in the book , i love the whole book, i dont want to say theres a section i love because it implies there were other ones. When you say there was a community bath, can you talk about that section . I love reading that section and you make it a metaphor for the common good. It was at the very beginning of the book. I needed a Campaign Manager and it was all small but it was big, i had a campaign and my friend teresa said ill be your Campaign Manager and teresa is a gogetter, retired Elementary School teacher, Everybody Loves her and she has a cabin in a tiny town and the town as a public bath. Its a warm springs with bathhouse on top and thats where you go to bay. And i have always wanted to go to kennedy traveling in alaska is challenging and even insoutheast alaska , even though teresa the place for years and im a close friend ive never been out there and it involves every rides to get there. And we went just before i had to clarify candidacy as she had a book club there that i was going to talk to. I thought maybe that the bath was not as public and we get down there and its time to go baby and theres womens hours and mens hours and its a little oldfashioned bathhouse and it smells like sulfur and then theres this sign that says no bathing suits. Nude bathing only and you, im thinking maybe it will be dark in there. And it goes down into this grotto and its concrete and theres this big oldfashioned skylight and there you are in your birthday suit and there are other women and the town there and who are all ages, sizes, shapes and your bathing together and i did talk there on a book about obituary writing and it was completely different having been in the bath with people because you just realize how the stars, the things our bodies ourselves, what we put on top of each other is so different and that made me think that if we all had to base together it would probably be a lot nicer to each other. Thats lovely and its a metaphor for the common good and against maybe not listening looking as a version of listening. Seeing people as people. Theres a lot of stuff in this book about democracy and about community and also about your life, your parenting and grandparenting and to some extent your faith and yourupbringing. Can you talk about what drives you to think this way and why you decided to run for office. And why you understand something which is to listen to people who disagree with you. Ive always had a lot of empathy but i think a lot of it when i look back comes from my mother and the school. I ended up going to a place for school and so it was very much that quakers teach you that there is not in every man and thats why their pacifists or mormons but thats why theres a little spark in their that is holy in all of us and that run through a lot of traditions and then im a regular practicing attorney and i go to church on sunday and you hear all those lessons and it might sound baroque to people, my husband called it to fill in the black church but youre reminded every sunday , the things left undone. That you have to care for people. Even the idea of forgetting people, only god will forgive you as much as you forgive others. Has just been ingrained in me so its part of my value system and while again, i fall short a lot, especially when im in public, i feel like thats what you have to do, your best foot goes forwardand at all these lessons are for. In a leadership role in the community, thats when those come into my decisionmaking. Sure theres code and ensures theres the constitution and other things but its how you get there comes from that background i think. In terms of being an Assembly Person you have a section in the book about roberts rules of order i dont even understand roberts rules of order. I know what it is but its so procedural. Was it hard to learn that . It was such a hard job you were doing on a daytoday basis. Theres always you make a motion and a second and you vote but roberts rules can get very complicated and the people who are holding to them, if youre not sure what you do this to second and amendment or remove an amendment or how this all happens you can get stuck and at the beginning sometimes it felt as if people were using that lack of knowledge against you when they wanted to make sure you couldnt have something happen 80 know, theyd make this motion and youre like what, i didnt even get to talkabout. So then i said well, this isnt just a bunch of who you, id better learn how to do it and there is a certain builtin decorum to it. Madame mayor, you call each other assemblyman or Assembly Members and theres people in the small town that we all know about first name area alaska is a very informal place. My children all their schoolteachers by their first name outside the school and you call thedoctors , you know, are all on a first name basis so being in the assembly is just on and even when people seek to the assembly when they stand up they have to give their full name. This is on turner junior and im saying this now even though we all know who it is area and its part of the protocol. You wrote an obituary for the families, they shop at your lumberyard and its sort of like two aspects of the same community. Assembly, even the people on the dais, i wrote the mayors husbands obituary and i wrote her nephews, other members of her family. The gresham family, i wrote her parents and went around the room at any given time and theres four or five people in their that i have been involved with them in a very intimate time in their life. In the book you chat with people of other profession where youre chatting with a native author named Ernestine Hayes and shes bending your visiting your house and she comes over because of weather. It ends up being a conversation about politics having to do with racism and privilege and collective memory i guess and when this whole idea comes up later in the book when theres a Community Tragedy which is covered up i guess over a generation, you talk about collective sentiment and i dont know about out if politics is the right word but about how being a member of the community or a representative of the community as you are, out of that help guide community of collective silence and grow in a positive way . Im asking is how this talking about this these difficult subjects or confronting a difficult path in a community a Community Grow . I think what it does and this is what i have that conversation with my friend ernestine. I think a lot of times and i know i speak for myself, you dont want to bring up these things that might be issues of race and justice and abuse that happened unless someone brings it up to you first. You feel like thats not my place, am i being nosy and in a small town youre trying to keep privacy for Different Things to. We had this interesting balance where we might know what everybodys up to but we dont say so. Give them sort of a veil of privacy i guess. But in talking with ernestine and then shining a light on the, in the privacy of my living room she could talk about things that she had grownup with as an alaskan native woman and she had an incredible story, she was homeless at 50 and a College Professor by the time she was 70 and shes written a beautiful book called the tao of reagan and another one born indian. And in public ernestine and i, it might be awkward to have a conversation like you and i are having and interpreted the wrong way, theres so much of that involved and the same with the other situation in the community where theres this horrible past crime that was uncovered and it turned out that people kind of had an idea about that but nobody ever said anything. Now i think especially the leaders that this has come through loud and clear with the black lives matter, especially those of us that are so privileged and white, were supposed to say stuff. Were supposed to say hey i dont think this is right and were supposed to call people out on it publicly. You can do it politely. Ernestine, every time she speaks shes just wonderful, nice grandmotherly person with dimples, sparkling eyes. She writes about very hard things in a way that its almost like angela bassett. And youve done in your book, the way sorrow and tragedy lift up our love for her family the way you have a love for yours and its challenging but she then ends all of her speeches where she puts her foot down and she says athe patriarchy and she does this in front of governors and you just want to stand up and cheer. To me thats the same as people go to church and hold their hands up.