Thanks so much for joining us for this joint effort between the american Inspiration Series of american ancestors at New England Historical genealogical society, the state library of massachusetts and as, Porter Square books. Although we are open on light and a person, with limited capacity. We ship into local delivery and have curbside pickups. A special pandemic newsletter and lots of other stuff such as a visit us at Porter Square books. Com. Before introduce our guests and our moderator i want to give you a few quick housekeeping notes but using crowd casts which so much my views before before and maybe many of you have it. First of all the that is recorded so you can watch it back if you wasted for part of the knights talk because your water was boiling or you wanted to share with a friend. It will be here at this crowd cast link as well as on our facebook page. Second of all you can really use this lovely chat window in the bottom right of your screen whats that Say Something nice. Please do. Type in and say hi. People of been using the chat a ton telling us where youre coming from, although the place it appears. Of course it almost goes that same keep it respectful and we will reserve the right to remove anyone who doesnt meet that standard which im sure will be unnecessary. And right next to that little chat box at the bottom you can see the words asked the question. Question. You can type it in there. Chat any questions for david and we will have some time for at the end of the that to look at those. The event is live stream on facebook. So just so you know we cant see your questions on facebook. If you want to participate you have to come join us on crowd cast. You will see a button at the bottom of your browser to buy the book from us and to our partnership. Were delighted to offer Free Shipping when you order through that link and david is providing us with side bookplates that you get what in pandemic land passes for a signed book. In the moment ill turn it over to Margaret Talcott and death care rx. And david. David is a producer of the literary program. That is ahead of special Collection State Library massachusetts and she will tell you better shrine. David is a local boy. Hes the author of awardwinning biographies of Charles Schultz and i have no doubt this book will add to his list of awards. Yes, david is also a fellow alumnus of margaret and mike at the wall street journal called his book super. The New York Times says it is a terrific resource. I will take my own personal connection with Eleanor Roosevelt, which is when my mom was in junior high in the late 40s mrs. Roosevelt came to visit her school in the bronx and my mother was the student chosen to escort her through the auditorium to the stage and an experience my mother actually talked about for the rest of her life. Please without further ado join me in welcoming margaret and beth and david. David, thank you. You just actually proved the point that it wanted to make your to start this wonderful evening, and thank you so much for having me. Everybody it turns out has some connection to Eleanor Roosevelt i grew up in cambridge where users were aware that George Washington had been on the comment and George Washington slept here. You go around the country and George Washington slept it was always a sort of joke of the 30s. Its not just eleanor slept too. Alinda registered deeply on every Single Person she met. Those memories just as your mother was more lifelong instead with people. I grew up in houston which i thought she was related to be. I thought i was related come i thought she was a little kid. Through such a sense of a presence. The reason was because my mother worked for Eleanor Roosevelt at wpg age. Wb gh was then in its infancy, Public Television was in its infancy, National Education television was the primitive version where in this story one half generation away from or actuly maybe for five years away from another very tall, powerful woman arriving in pionee fashion on Educational Television and julia childs from cambridge, massachusetts. But right now, thi was 1959, Eleanor Roosevelt decided she would have a one hour per month seminar like show that would be filled at brandeis and braeis was a place that she could a great deal about that she was o th board. The auditorium was a perfect primitive tv studio and the right cables and plywood platforms running all thrghout andhe theater part of the auditorium, and the show we shot there, my mother shall be secluded every month to new york to prepare the script with mrs. Roosevelt and to pick from her closet one of five identical not particularly broad waiflikek dresses, more like washday dresse she was very simple in her presentation on the show, and my moths job was to pick which addres would be this month to go over this scripted she had prepared with paul noble, the other producer and henry morgenthau, executive producer. In this time i was about four years old when he went one day to the studio and remember, it is among my very earliest memories, the impression i had was an extremely, of a gntess tually. Emotion walking down a corridor and acrs cables, and all i rememberas somehow i was able to set my foot in one spot and another innother spot, and move towards this figure and say two words, juicy fruit. She looked down at me and clearly was fresh outf juicy fruit, at no stick of juicy fruit. But s had for me to think ship fo people who she met in this y. Her eyes beame out like as if there wasight from within. Her smi was brought and she was full of a sort of sdonic almost mirth i think i a jump asking for a stickf gum, and expecting it. I think that was the main thing. Sh very kindly told me she didnt have gum. I dont remember what else she said. Theemory is of a sense that i was very close to goodness, tt goodness was point out of the human being in the form of light. This happed to me one or two other times in my life. One very movingly when Nelson Mandela came up broadway soon after his relea from prison and his wife and t United States. I by chance the myself dntown and as i walked toward broadway realizing something was haening, just as i arrived at broadway that was mandela in a bubble car in the parade, and his glance fel to the left of me but i felt that i could see that was the same phenomenon of goodness, of goodness appearing as light. I thought once in an artisthen he was looking at something, the same kind of attenti when it was given as pure, a sort of yourttention, a pure love of the subje, the same thing happened. Strangely, what connected the ba to mrs. Roosevelt and what began this book for me was an odd coincence that i only realized se of the coincidence later, but aund 2001 i was given access to a basement on madison avenue, and to go down into the basement underneath an Office Building to look for the recosrom 1950 of the beginning of peanuts can of the penis cartoon strip that Charles Schultz, a yng cartoonist from minnesota had been trying for number of years to get his cartoon started and United Feature Syndicate was the worldwide,xcuse me, International Syndicate that schultz was accepted by and h papers were down tre and as i found schultz at the as part, there to the right, the our alphabetical bankers boxes and the firstne i saw to my left was roosevelt my day. I just picked up the lid and a sort of magical dust flew into the air as i lifted out a long gall in the first our member the first description i had an impression that Eleanor Roosevelt had written a column. I did know anything about it moment,nd so as i i begin reading the description of star light from a sleeping porchn a fall morning, early fall morning, and the great pefulness that this site of a morningstar from mrs. Osevelt sleeping porch brought into thi we will break away from this program briefly to keep her over for your commitment to congressional covage. We willeturn to thi iust a couple of minutes. The senate isbout to meet for a quick pro forma session with no vote expected. Now life to the floor of the u. S. Senate here on cspan2 washington, d. C. , novemb 24, 2020. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable ben sasse, a senator from the statof nebraska, to perform the duties of thchair. Signed chuck grassley, president pro tempore. E presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until 3 15 p. M. Stands adjourned until 3 15 p. M. Senators meet next electricity worked on november 30 at 3 p. M. Eastern. Lawmakers are expected to continue working on judicial nominations at that time. Live u. S. Senate coverage is here on cspan2. Cspan2. We returned to our booktv programming already in progress. Back to cambridge briefly. I wanted to say before he turned over to market and beth and we continue our conversation i want to give a shout out to everybody at Porter Square books and to david, thank you. I would give a shout to one of your neighbors, digital and otherwise, my great assistant Eleanor Parker and i want to shout out also my train commuting buddy who is a poet who i grew up in cambridge, mass. , and she and i used to run for the train at order square that went out to concord and back. It was always, we are always a bit kind of odd jumping onto the United StatesPorter Square. There were few people that certified or oddball miss and a cambridge nist that we were taking citrate from Porter Square to concord no one else really was doing that. It was a david and Porter Square remains an outer limits strength in my childhood. That was very far away from life as i i sort of knew it early o. I begins to its always a a very romantic and literary highly literary locus that im so proud to be at tonight. That was fascinating. I love your connection to boston. Yo are very much a new york person now i understand but they cambridge diehard in all of us. It was fascinating to hear, i have not appreciated your thorough connection to wgbh, partner of oursn this series that we do. As i said im margare and we do have a lot the partners but one of my favorite is Porter Square oks so itseally a thrill to be within with interne and wite state library. As many of you know, wedd american ancesto run the series american inspiration. I cant think of a bter person to be part of this series tha eleanor rooselt. She and her family, tr, fdr, or such looming leaked figures in american history. And eleanor parcularly such an inspiration. Paicularly at this time f inclusion, diversity for our great country. She is such role model and truly inspiring. One particularly big fan of Eleanor Roosevelt is my copartner tonight, Beth Carroll Horrocks of the state library of massachusetts. That come tell u about yr phantom get why did you start f withhe first question . Great. First let me apologize for being a little late to join you. My computer shutdow i am as carolearts come head of state library. Right inhe massachetts state house in downtown bosto and we are repository ofassachusetts documents and publications and many oth things related to massachusetts history. Were glad to be part of this group night. Margaret and i have written some questions for dav and was also mpiled questions that came from people when they registered and thin we will be watching for questions that come inuring the talk tonight. Im going to start with one question that is mostlyine because i am a huge f of eleanors. It also incdes that came in from other people. Here is my first question. My favorite line in t whole book, and there were many, many, ny favorite lines, was right after the dedication pagut before the table of contents, and its a quote from eleanor that says i felt oblig to notice everything. And to me that sentence can ply to everything that happened to her in the book and everything tha shaped her life. I wonred if you could give us some context for that quote and tell us if you agree with my thoughts about i. I am so touched by your thoughts about it because thats exactly, is at the graph, what a help that sound almost as if an overture to life epigraph. I used to listen to appellation spring when i begin work, and at some of the sound i thought o eleanors great expansion from her own life, herwn personal life to the life of the country andeing part of the whole country. I think her abilityo notice her le began which is very good young and it was i think something of a survival mechanism, coping mechanism when she was yng. It became something that almos was shocked how many people left records of feeling her aost steering sometimes at then, looking soarefully. Sometimes when she did think soone was noticing her, she would look very carefully at then i dont think she missed the thing and i think in one of democracies great principles which is reciprocity which is everybody counts and everybody life and feelings, life and rights are equally judged and equally taken into account. I think eleanors noticing was alsoxtremely democratic and equal opportunity ands far reaching and parsing. Onef the things everybody who did meet her or who came into contact with h felt about her, they felt seen. I think being seen by someo who comes from the center of the vernment or the center of democracy or the center of even just whington d. C. Was a very unusual experienc in those days. It would be evenore unusual now to really feel that seen in our mass world, and are pain. I think to be glimpsed by mebody like Eleanor Roosevelt at the time was to feel as if youre very humanity have been take into account and recognize. That was o of her gifts was at with automatic and natural to her. It was nothing, you couldnt fake it. It was ahentic, and authentic wish to understand others. I think she felt quite, after certain pointhe felt the wasnt anybody she could learn from, that evebody she met with somebody whom if she understood them carefully and on their own terms and aga to get a sense of what they were about, she would learn something and taket back, sometimes back to the the president , sometimes back to th president , back to some agencyhat might help, since it back to her own column which used to reflect those thoughts and things she had seen in others. So the noticing was, i have an entire file called simply noticing because it was part of the job desiption where she changed what being first lady was somewhat she chang being a human being was. Her job was t notice people and to notice what they were really going through. Great. The phrase, the quote means even more to me after finish the book then when i first started, so thank you for that. Margar . Also part of that since is the word obliged. I was very struck by how obligated she felt to so many people throu her lif starting with her father, she developed fundamental capacity to obligednd to live subject of the peoples contr. In her teen years in a boarding school in england she looked after, she looked after the girls that with there. She looked after her young brother endlessly and that she looked after fdr. She had a very hd to please motherinlaw and is lot of stepping back and obliging that she did. Was she just born for this type of service . Its amazing. Yes, i think that her i used to think ofleanor roosevelt when i was youngers perhaps the greatest dooder of all time, lets sayome for a sort of dogooder quality about it. What begin to appear more subtly to me as i was beginning research and begin to understand her was that the wish to do good and be good was come had a great al to do with neeng to reshape people against about her father who had died in such disgrace as a draw, as a jkie, someone who is absolutely draggedhrough the mud ultimately in his final years and tt afterwards by people in his ownorld and by people that sh then came across. I think her wish to do good became something that translate into and need to be useful. She could be useful she felt she could be loved, someone would take the care that she was giving them and give bk to her. It became a nation for her a mission to be the kind of person whose usefulness was illumiting or enlhtening it would open somebody up or almost create a sense of awakening. That never stoed for her and it just became her transaction, th way she connected. Weve got a number of questions about why she whispered certainhings. Fdr infidelity, when she and introspective . In this service youre talki about, ds t capacity to forbade her . I think a willingness to be tolerant became something she first worked on to understand yourself and fin excepting the parts of yourself that she knew she couldot fulfill in others wa an acceptance that allowed her to be tolerant and to be tolerant of yrself first and then others. Itas a battle, struggle but i thinkhe conquered. She had to conquer one of her feelings failings she understood himself was she didnt have a broad range come she was allowed to express anger. As a cld she was aolutely shut down. If she had a resenent, it she had even a mile people let alone fullblown come with the right to be fullblown angry,he was told to go into the bathroom, hangar i over the bathtub and cry it out all by herself and into theub, please, not anywhere else. She was very, very constrained. I think learning how to respond to people who had hurt her come she first and only to turn to the wall and the serus to something turn on herself and at kind of self immolation was very mh a part of her early responses. It the transcendence of that that allowed her to finally become obviously the indepdent woman she later became in step by step by step. One of the reasons i felt the roose