You can purchase copies directly from our official bookseller a cappella books, theres a link in the chat so you can do that, we provided a link on our website, as jessica and heather are talking, submit your questions for heather or jessica if jessica will entertain questions as well. I will. We have a q a feature at the bottom of your screen, we will get to as many of those as time will allow, heather has contributed essays in new york times, and National Geographic traveler, among other newspapers and magazines, she is the author of the bestselling book find the good, take good care of the garden in the god and if you lived here, i would know your name, tonight she will discuss her latest book of the alaskan adventure in small town politics, heather will be interviewed by jessica, she is the author of the novel the magnetic girls, the 2027 book price, and a nominee for the townsend price invisible sisters his name one of the books all georgians should read an aircraft guide a guide to writing about craved by vanity fair magazine among others, she teaches creative writing interacts at university of atlanta, she has International Writing and we are so delighted she is joining us tonight, heather and jessica welcome and i will let jessica take it from here. Thank you, heather i am so glad to talk to you, if you like you are a friend even though we just met on the internet in the past few weeks, i love this book so much and while i personally do not have the temperament to run for office and you do apparently, you and i share deep beliefs in the importance of community and the importance of democracy and its a real honor to spend some time with you. I want to know if you would read for us the very beginning, if you would read some the beginning that my life is an open book, the first three paragraphs. Sure, election day, there are two polling places, one is in the lobby on the hill above the harbor and the cruise ship dock and the other one is in the fire home, settlement 26 miles out of town, i voted at the art center and said hi to everyone since i walked in, but i did not say wish me luck or anything close to it. The public Radio Station on the Street Corner reminded residents that no campaigning was allowed at or near polling places, one neighbor who lives in the old house was asked by the clerk to remove Campaign Signs since his home was too close to the polls, i did notice it was their voting, friends and foes and which side of the right left would be victorious, either way a little more than half of us would be happy and a little less would be disappointed, it is predictable, by assuming it would be close, it look that more conservative voters than my supporters were at the art center that morning, i hope my years in town and Community Service in the library board, the hospice board and Planning Commission by volunteer hosting of the local Country Music show, Coaching High School runners for 17 years, by five good children, and five grandchildren, and 11 because of a combined family, my family grew longer which my husband ship runs in all obituaries of inviting for the valley news since 1997, which gives me crossover support. How much further did you want me too keep going. You can stop there. I was not sure i was a little nervous being in your presence. Dont say that, we can stop there because what i wanted to do with the voice in this book is so present and so warm and i also was really stopped by the fact that there is a street called silicon valley, there is a map in the front piece of this book on the subject that gives the reader a sense of charm and the smallness in your loving commitment to this place where you been a long time. I loved having a map there, my first book was a map and people ask me, i asked my friend who is on the Borough Assembly whitney. Its fantastic it reminds me of a Childrens Book in a way, you write in the book that you read for local office to help set an example, im curious in what ways did you set an example in for him. What is the example your setting. I was running around thinking grandchildren will talk about the grandmother involved in local government, i was thinking in my life how influential my women and grandmothers were in the things that they did that i did not even realize at the time had become part of the way that i live in the things that i respected people. I thought i want to show them that they need to be involved in their community and government and i want to talk about their grandmother who is on the assembly and remember me typing my notes for meetings and it did not work out that way, i did not become the local start of the assembly or anything but what i did do, because i was thinking that of all the time, i realized halfway in or maybe doing that that what i was going to bring to that it was going to be 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 are being revered by certain people by 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 a few. And how you talk to your neighbors even the ones you disagree with, especially publicly, im not a saint or anything but i might rant or rave or yellow little bit in my talks but publicly i always try if i cant Say Something nice, dont say anything at all, and try to find something in either my fellow assembly movers, the mayor, the staff or the people who were giving us a hard time to appreciate in them and that helped. I want to ask you about the hard time you refer to which is the recall. I also want to talk about that we will circle how much kindness or respect and listen in the text and you talk about the hard time and how kindness and respect and listening even to people you dont disagree with contributes to democracy. The recall in which in which you so clearly put, i read your book before i wrote about it, we have a lot of stuff about the recall. It was really great for the town that i thought i lived in, during that time it felt personal like going through divorce, like my town had cheated on me. What happened was, right after myself and the editorial, on basically we were more progressive perhaps than the other people running, there were six people running and tom and i were the top gogetters and we joined in assembly that was already leaning more progressive in the right left, if that is the right word, its hard in a small town it doesnt line up the way does nationally and it certainly doesnt mean the same things, it was an issue about the harbor and expansion and we had run on the idea that the community should have a referendum and get to vote on the design, that is why we were elected and we thought just before we got in we would do better and get that happening and that created a lot of anger from the people who supported that particular design and right away it did not happen, the rest of the assembly with the mayor breaking the tie of three 4, there is good to be no referendum and even though similar to National Politics in a way, they won, they were so mad that we had even wanted to do that and pretty much the next day we would recall you and then it just became something that hung over so every meeting how that works, there is a somebody that is unhappy with the decision then they can get their signature on the petition and it snowballed like that for pretty much the first nine months that i was in office, my second election was in august in my first one was the previous october. You came out on the other side, the recall was stopped. Yes it was myself into other Assembly Members, tom was recently elected in a local artist was also the third one in the really good news about it, the town did not go for, they recognized my community recognized it was pretty swirly so it was a 60 40 and the other really nice thing it was not personal, they did not choose which one of the three that were targeted, it was straight across and we all pretty much got the same number of votes and it was a resounding no to that politics and that was good. Which goes to the next part of the question, you emphasize in this book, kindness and respect in listening to people regardless if they agree with you or dont agree with you, how did that contribute to a functioning community in your mind . Would they listen and be kind, i think its only way youre going to have a functioning community, it is human nature, if somebody is standing there calling your name saying that you are stupid and say bad things about your family, youre probably not want to listen to them, the next time they stand up and talk about why they needed sewer line expansion to the neighborhood, it is human nature that you backup from people that are not communicating with you and if you can at least find some way to be lack of a better word polite, it helps, it helps a lot, i noticed that watching people when they came to Assembly Meetings and talking, i could listen to a longtime to somebody that i completely disagree with if they spoke to me in a calm way, if they were just going like this and yelling, i had a friend who was a mayor in another small alaskan town and she told me, think the Public Service this way, every time you shove somebody, they shove you back, if you are leaning against them, eventually they might lean this way or come toward you, and easier way to move somebody then as lamb in the shoulder. That make sense, it makes a hard lesson to learn, the section of the book, i love the whole book, theres not just a section that i love because there were other ones but when you go to the Community Bath in a rural community, can you talk about that section, i love reading that section. That was at the very beginning of the book, i needed a Campaign Manager, it was small but big, you will have a campaign and my friend teresa said ill be your Campaign Manager and teresa is a gogetter, retired Elementary School teacher, everybody loved her and she has a cabin in a tiny town and the town has a public bath, warm springs with a bathhouse on top and thats where you go to bathe, ive always wanted to go there and travel in alaska is challenging and even southeast alaska, even though teresa had a place for years and ive never been out there, and i went just before i declared my candidacy because she had a book club there i was going to go talk to. And i thought maybe that the bath was not as public as it was until we get down there and its time to go bathe and it was mens hours and womens hours and it was a little oldfashioned nafta and then theres a sign that says no bathing suits, nude bathing only and im thinking well maybe itll be dark in there so we go down and then youre there in your birthday suit another women and so the town there was so under different size and shape, and then i did a talk about obituary writing and then it was completely different having been in the bath with people, you realize how the scars, the things, our bodies, what we put on top of each other all the time is so different and that made me think if we all had to be together, it would probably be a lot nicer to each other. That is lovely in a metaphor for the common good and many that listening but looking as a version of listening and seeing people as people. There is a lot of stuff in this book about democracy that is also about the community and your life in your parenting a imprinting in your faith in your upbringing, can you talk a little bit about what drives you to think this way and why you decided to run for office and why you understand to listen to people who disagree with me, where does that come from. I dont know, i voice had a lot of empathy but i think a lot of it when i look back comes from my mother in the school, i love going to a Quaker School and so it was very much that, quaker teach you that there is that of god in every man and thats why their passiveness in every woman and thats why theres a little spark in there that is holy in all of us, that runs through a lot of things tradition and im a regular practicing, i go to church on sunday and it might sound gross to people, i have to call it the fill in the blank church because every sunday things done and you have to care for people, the even the idea of forgiving people only god will forgive you as much as you forgive others, that has been ingrained in me as 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 forward, thats what all these lessons are for in a leadership role in how you get there please comes from the background. In terms of being innocently person. I dont even understand the order, i know what it is but its a procedural, was it hard to learn that, this is a hard job of what youre doing just on a daytoday basis. It was, anybody has been on board and you know you make a motion in the second but robert can get very complicated and the people who are holding you to them, if youre not sure what to do the Second Amendment or removing an amendment or how this all happened, you can get stuck at the beginning sometimes it felt as if they were using a lack of knowledge against you and we wanted to make sure that we cannot have something happen, they say theres a motion and they did not get to talk about it, then i said this is it just about there is a certain builtin decorum, madam mayor, we called each other assemblyman or assembly member, the manager, people in a small town that we all know by her first name, alaska is a very informal place, my children call their schoolteachers by their first name outside of school and we call the doctors, her priest and churches all first name basis being assembly is odd and people would speak to the assembly they stand up and have to give their full name, this is don jr. And im saying this now, even though we dont know who it is, that as part of the protocol. You written obituaries for their families, they shop at your Hardware Store and lumberyard, its like two aspects in the same community. Really on the assembly the people like the mayors husband and her nephews, other members of her family, i wrote his parents, i went around the room at any given time, there is for five people that involve in a very intimate time in their li life. In the book you chat with a section where youre chatting with the native author ernestine and shes visiting your house and shes hung over because of weather, you end up having a really deep conversation about physical topics with racism and privilege in collective memory and this idea comes up again later in the book when theres a Community Tragedy that has been covered up over a generation, you talk about collectivist and im wondering, i dont know that politics is the right word but how being a member of the community or being a representative of the community as you are, how does that help guide to community out of collective silence and grow in a positive way, when asking, how does talking about difficult subjects or confronting a difficult past and the Community Help the Community Grow . I think what it does, this is why i had the conversation with my friend, i think a lot of times, annoy speak for myself, you dont want to bring up these things that might be an issue of race and justice, abuse that is happened and thus someone brings up, first if you like thats not my place, the gossip and mib nosy, and a small town you are trained to keep privacy for Different Things too, we have this interesting balance where we might know what everybody is up to but we do not say so to give them avail of privacy i guess. But in talking with ernestine and shining light on that, and the privacy of my living room we talked about things that she had grown up with, alaska native woman who had an incredible story who is homeless and a College Professor by the time she is 70 and shes written a beautiful book. In public ernestine and i, it might be awkward to have a conversation like you and i are having because neither one of us would want to say the wrong thing or interpret the wrong way, there is so much of that involved, the same with the other Situation Community where the horrible path of crime was uncovered and it turned out that people kind of had an idea about that but nobody ever said anything. And now i think community leaders, this is come through loud and clear with a black lives matter especially those of us that are privileged and were supposed to say stuff, were supposed to say this is not right. About very hard things in a way thats almost like angelas ashes and the way you said it in your books, the way sorrow and tragedy lift up a love for your family the way you have a love for yours and its challenging the she then goes on in her speeches and she puts her foot down and smashes the patriarchy and she does this with governors and you wantto stand up and cheer. To me thats the same as people who go to church but dont hold their hands up. Its a different experience and i cant do the waitingbut i love it when people do. Im so moved and he does it in such a way that is coming from love, not hate which is what i want to do and she says that at the end of every time she speaks thats a way that a leader, here she was native woman and to heck with her, im going to do this every time and she did nobody got mad at herabout it or maybe they did but they didnt say so. We all worry all those things sometimes will play out in public and she did that and i love her for it i think youre doing it in of bears and ballots as well in a way because youre talking about, in the book youre writing about community disagreements or your writing about difficult spots in a communitys history and how people in the community, you specifically this is a memoir take a stand and speak up and encourage people to look at their community,look at themselves and make change. One of my favorite characters in the book is ray whitaker who was a longtime newspaper editor and came to characters in the book in my life but ray came in 1955 and 80 veteran, columbia grad, jewish new york to alaska in 1955, a logging town and in