Atlanta History Center virtual author talk featuring Heather Lende in conversation with jessica handler. I am kate whitman Vice President of the programs and Community Engagement for the atlanta History Center. Im glad you are here and thanks for being with us. This talk will also be broadcast on cspan so look out for that. You can purchase copies of of bears and ballots directly from our official bookseller. Theres a link in the chat so you can do that. Also we provide a link on our website. As jessica and had a talking please submit your questions for heather or jessica it just to entertain questions as well. I might. Theres a a q a feature at e bottom of your screen. Well get to as many of us as time allows. Heather lindsey has contributed to npr, New York Times and national geographic. Among other newspapers and magazines. Shes author of the bestselling book buying the good, take good care of the garden and the dog, and if you lift your i would know your name. And that shall be discussing book of bears and of bears an alaskan adventure in smalltown politics. Heather will be ended by jessica handler, the author of the novel the magnetic core, when of the 2027 book prize it was also nominated for the prize. Her memoir, invisible sisters was named one of the books all georgians should read and a craft guide writing about grief and loss was praised by vanity fair magazine and many others. She teaches creative writing and rex a minor in right at university atlanta. She lectures in writing and were delighted that she is joining us tonight. Heather and jessica welcome and i will let jessica take it from here. Mq, kate. Heather, i took like to talk to. You like your friend although weve only sort of met on the internet in the past few weeks. I loved this book so much, i personally dont have the temperament to run for office, and you do apparently, you and i share the belief in the importance of community and the importance of democracy. Its a real honor to spend some time with you this evening. Thank you. I want to know if you would read for us just the very beginning of of bears and ballots, if you would read from a the beginning election day through my life is an open book, the first three paragraphs. Sure. Election day. There are two polling places in haines, one is in the arts in a public on hill above the harbor and the christian doctor the other at the fire hall, a settlement 16 miles out of town. I vote at the arsons had everyone as i walked in. But i didnt say wish me luck or anything close to it. The public Radio Station and signs on street corners reminded residents that no campaigning was allowed at or near polling places. One neighbor who lives in an old house with a white porch was asked by the clerk to remove Campaign Signs from his yard because its almost too close close to the polls. I did notice it was their voting for. Friends and so and monitor which side of haines right left fight would be victorious. Either way, a little more than half of us would be happy and the less than half would be disappointed. Haines is predictable. I assumed it would be close. It looked to me as conservative voters than my supporters were at the arts center that morning. I hope my use in town, like many service in the laboratory, the hospice board and planning commission, volunteer hosting of the local Country Music show on khns come Coaching High School runners for 17 years, five good children and five grandchildren, the six, seventh and others 11 because of the combined family, our Family Business which my husband runs, plus all those obituaries ive been writing since 1987 with kidney crossover support. How much for the did you want me keep going . You can stop there. Sorry, i was a little nervous being in your present. Gosh, dont say that. We can stop there because what i wanted to do was the voice in his book which is your voice is so present and so warm. I was stopped by the fact theres a street in your town called the map, theres a map in the first piece of this book that gives the reader a sense of the charm and the smallness of haines and your love and commitment to this place where you have been for a long time. I love having a figure my first book was a map and people always ask me so i asked my friends also on the assembly with me to draw. Reminded of the Childrens Book in a way. You write in the book that you ran for local office in haines to set an example. Im curious, what ways was your experience set an example and for . Whats the example setting . I was thinking of my grandchildren talk about their grandmother, involved in local government and i was thinking in my life how influential the women, my mothers and grandmothers were in the things they did that it did amaryllis at the time that have become part of the way i live in the things i respect in people. I thought i want to show them a need to be involved in their community and in the government and i want to talk about their grandmother and remember me typing my notes from meetings. It didnt work out that way. I didnt become like the local star of the assembly or anything but what i did do is because i was thinking of that all the time, i realized about halfway, maybe sooner than that, what i was going to bring to it was a kind of, sounds pokey the kind of civility, kindness. 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 from our politics. It was different than that. Its like 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. Yeah, and also how you talk to your neighbors even the ones you disagree with, especially publicly. Im not a saint or anything. I might rant and rave for you all of it when i talk about my friend beth a publicly i always tried that old adage, the vacancy something nice, dont say anything at all and go to try to find something in neither my fellow assuming members, the mayor, staff, or the people who were kind of giving us such a hard time, to appreciate in the them. And i want to ask about the hard time that you referred to, which is the recall for the attempted recall but i also want to talk about at one point when i was reading the book i started circling how many times the word kindness or respect or listen showed up in the text. There is really a in there. When you talk to us about the hard time, the attempt of the recall and kindness and respect and listening even to people you disagree with contributes to democracy. Well i guess first the recall, which asheville clearly put, your book, i wish i read before, it was really great. It was great for the town i lived in. During that time it sort of felt personal like almost a divorce that my town had cheated on me. What happened was right after myself and my friend tom, the editor of the valley news were elected, basically on a fairly, we were more progressive brass and the other people running. There were six people running and tom and i were the top two vote getters and we joined an ad assembly already leaning more progressive, if thats the right word. Its hard in a small town it doesnt always line up with as nationally. Those dont necessarily mean the same thing but the issue about the harbor and an expansion there, and we had run on the idea that the community should have referendum to get the vote on the design of it. We thought just before we got in, right after we got in we better get that happening, and that created a lot of anger from the people who it supported that particular design. So that at every meeting how that works is theres always somebody that unhappy with the decision. They get their signature on a petition and it snowballs like that too, well, it was the first nine months in office my second election was in august and the other was the previous october you came out and the pole was stocked. Myself and other two other Assembly Members and then a localartist was also the third one. The really good news about it was the town didnt go for it. They recognized, my community recognized it was pretty squarely so it was a 6040 and the other nice thing was it wasnt personal. They didnt choose which one of the three that were targeted, theyd rather have. It was straight across we pretty much got the same number of votes and it was a resounding no to that kind of policy and that was good. Which goes to the next part of the question which is you really 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 does that contribute to a functioning community in yourmind . I think its the only way youre going to have a functioning community. Itsjust human nature. If somebody is standing there calling you names, saying youre stupid, saying bad things about your family youre probably not going to want to listen to them the next time they stand up and Start Talking about why they needed a sewer line expansion to their neighborhood. Its just human nature that you backup from people that arent communicating with you well and if you can at least find some way to be for lack of a better word polite, it helps. It helps a lot. And i noticed that watching people when they came to Assembly Meetings andtalking. I listened a long time to somebody i completely disagree with if they spoke to me and a kind way but if they just were going like this and yelling, i had a friend who was a mayor in another small alaskan town and she told me think of Public Service this way. If you shove somebody they shove you back but if you just are kind of leaning against them eventually they might lean this way or come towards you. Theres an easier way to nudge somebody in a slam in the shoulder. That makes sense and its a hard lesson to learn. Theres a section of the book, i love the whole book, theres not i dont want to say theres a section i love and that implies there were other ones. When you go to the community bath, can we talk about that section . I loved reading that section and you make it a metaphor for the common good. That was at the beginning of the book. I needed a Campaign Manager and we were small but it was always big and my friend teresa says ill be your Campaign Manager and teresa is a gogetter, a retired Elementary School teacher and everybody loved her and she had a cabin in a tiny town and the town has a public bath. Its a warm springs with a bathtub on top. Thats where you go to beatty. And i always wanted to go and travel in alaska is challenging and even in Southeast Alaska even though teresa had theplace for years and im a close friend ive never been out there. It involves ferry rides in brooklyn to get there. And we went just before i declared my candidacy because she had a book club there i was going to go talkto. I thought maybe this staff was not as publicas it was. And you get down there and its time to go bathe and there is womens showers and mens showers and its an oldfashioned bathhouse and it smells like clover and then theres a sign that says no bathing suits, nude bathing only and i think maybe it will be dark in there but a goes down into this grotto and theres this oldfashioned skylight and there you are in your birthday suit and there are other women in the town there of all ages, sizes and shapes and your bathing together and i did talk they are on a book about obituary writing and was completely different having been in a bath with feature people because you just realize how the scars , those things our bodies, ourselves, what we put on top of each other all the time is so different and that made me think if we all had to bathe together, it would probably be a lot nicer to each other. Thats lovely and its a metaphor for the common good and maybe not listening but looking and seeing people as people. Theres a lot of stuff in this book about democracy that is also about the community and also about your life and your parenting and grandparenting and so to some extent your faith and your upbringing. Can you talk about what drives you to think this way and why you decided to run for office and why you understand something thats hard for me to dowhich is to listen to people and disagree with things. 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 grew up girl going to a Quaker School and it was very much that the quakers teach you that theres on demand and thats whether pacifists and mormons but thats why theres a little spark in there that is holy in all of us. Runs through a lot of faith traditions and then im a regular practicing episcopalian and i go to church on sunday and you hear those lessons and my husband sometimes called the thing fill in the blank church but youre reminded every sunday there are things left undone, that you have tocare for people. Even the idea of forgiving people, only god will forgive you as much as you forgive others. That has been ingrained in me and 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 forward, thats what all these lessons are for four there you are in a leadership role. Thats when those coming to my decisionmaking. Sure there is code and theres the constitution but i think its the how you get there comesfrom that background. In terms of being an assembly person, the section in the book about roberts rules of order which i dont even understand roberts rules of order. Itsso procedural lies. Was ithard to learn that . It was a hard job you were doing on a daytoday basis. Ive been on boards and theres always you make a motion and second and you vote but roberts rules can get very complicated and its the people who are holding to them, if youre not sure what you do to second and amendment or remove an amendment or how this all happens, you can get stuck and at the beginning, sometimes its felt as though people were using my lack of knowledge against me. We wanted to make sure you couldnt have something happen they would make this motion and youre like what . It didnt get tabled, ididnt even get to talk about it. So i said this is so much of who he but i better learn how to do it and theres a certain in the courtroom to it. Madame mayor, you call each other assemblyman or assembly member, and theres the manager. People in a small town that we all know by our first names and alaska is a very informal place. My children call their schoolteachers by their first name outside of school. And you call the doctors. Our church is all on a first name basis so being in the assembly is just odd and even with people in the assembly, whenthey stand up they have to give their full name. This is don turner junior and im saying this now even though we all know who it is. Thats just part of the protocols. Youve written obituaries for the families, they shop at your lumberyard and its sort of two assets of the same community. Even the people who are on the dais, i wrote the mayors husbands obituary and i wrote her nephews other members of her family. I wrote his parents, as i went around the room at any given time theres four or five people and they have their family involved with them in an intimate time in their life. In a book you chat with theres a section where youre chatting with a native author named Ernestine Hayes and shes visiting your house and shes climbed over because of weather. And you wind up having a conversation about topics having to do with racism and privilege and collective memory i guess. And this idea comes up later in the book when theres a Community Tragedy which has been covered up iguess over a generation. You talk about collective dominance and im wondering, i dont know if politics is the right word but how being a member of the community, being a representative of the community as you are, how does that help guide community of collective silence and grow in a positive way so what im asking is how does talking about difficult subjects or confronting a difficult task in a Community HealthCommunity Grow . I think what it does and this is why i have that conversation with my friend ernestine. I know i speak for myself in this, you dont want to bring up these things that might be issues of race and injustice, abuse thats happened unless someone brings it to you first. You feel thats not my place, and im being nosy west and mark in a small town youre trying to keep privacy for differentthings to. We have this balance where we might know what everybodys up to what we dont say so. To give them sort of a veil of privacy i guess. But like in talking with ernestine and then shining the light on that, in the privacy of my living room we talked about things that she had grown up with, the alaskan native woman she had an incredible story, she was homeless at 50 and a College Professor by the time she was 70. Shes written a beautiful book called the tao of reagan and another one bored indian but in public ernestine and i , it might be awkward to have a conversation like you and i are having is neither one of us want to say the wrong thingor have interpreted the wrong way. The same with the other situation in the community where theres this horrible past crime was uncovered and it turned out people had an idea about that. But nobody ever said anything. And now i think especially Community Leaders and this comes through loud and clear with the black lives matter, especially those of us that are of privilege, were supposed to say stuff. Were supposed to say this isnt right and were supposed to call people out on it publicly. You can do it politely. Ernestine, every time she speaks shes just a wonderful, nice grandmotherly person. In bowls, sparkly eyes. She writes about hard things in a way thats almost like angelas ashes and youve done it in your books, the way sorrow and tragedy but lift up a lot of for her family the way you have love for yours and its challenging but she ends all of her speeches with Cupid Service to and she says smash the patriarchy and she does this in front of governors and you want to stand up and cheer. To me thats the same as people who go to church and can hold their hands up. Im his companion so i cant do the wavin