Eye everyone. I hope you can hear me. I am David Sandberg and thanks for joining us for the series of american ancestors and the Historical Geological society the state labard massachusetts and Publishers Weekly 2020s bookstore of the year. On line and inperson with my limited capacity we ship and at local delivering curse at the given Virtual Events like this one. And a special pandemic newsletter and lots of other stuff so visit us at www. Porter square books. Com. A4 introducer guess the moderators i want to give you a few quick housekeeping notes about using crowd chat which some of you may have used before but many of you havent. First of all the event is recorded. If you only stay for part of tonights talk because your water was boiling or you wanted to share it with a friend will be here as well as on our facebook page. Second of all you have this lovely chat window on the bottom right of your screen were so Say Something nice, please do. Type in there and say hi and people have been using it a lot tell us where you are coming from all over the place it appears. It goes without saying please keep a respectful and we reserve the right to remove anyone who doesnt. And right next to that little checkbox at the bottom of your screen you will see the words ask a question. You can type it in their courage have any questions for david and we will have some time at the end of the events to look at those. Hi facebook viewers. Just so you know we cant see your questions on facebook. If you want to participate will have to come on crowd chat. Youll see a button at the bottom of your browser to buy the book enter a partnership we are delighted to offer free email shipping and david is providing us with a place and youll get a signed book. Im going to turn you over to Margaret Talcott and Beth Carroll Horrocks. David sandberg this up the Historical Geological society and the producer of the literary program. Death is the head of the state labard massachusetts and im sure she will tell you about her eleanor shrine. David michaelis is a local High School Boy where bookstore existed. He is the author of awardwinning biographies and i have no doubt that this book will add to his work. David is also a fellow alumnus of margarets mind. Wall street journal called this and a terrific resource and i will tell you my own personal question connection with Eleanor Roosevelt. When my mom was in junior high in the late 40s mrs. Roosevelt came to visit a school the bronx. My mother was chosen to escort her through the auditorium to the stage and experience that my mother talked about for the rest of her life. Please without further ado join me in welcoming margaret, beth and david. Dave thank you. You have just proven the point that i wanted to make here 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 you were aware that George Washington had been on the comment in George Washington was here and you go around the country and George Washington slept here and it was the joke of the 30s. Its not just eleanor slept here. Eleanor registered deeply and every Single Person she met and those memories just as your mothers was for lifelong and stayed with people. I grew up in a household which i thought allen reports that related to me. I thought she was a relative. There was such a sense of her presence. The reason was because my mother worked for Eleanor Roosevelt. W. C. H. Was in its infancy and Public Television was in its infancy National Education television was the primitive version to wear in this story 1 2 generation away from or five years away from other very tall powerful woman arriving in planar fashionn Educational Television named jul childs from cambridge massachusetts but right now in 1959 Eleanor Roosevelt decided that she would have a one hour. Month seminar like show that would be filmed at brandeis and brandeis was the pla that she shar a great deal about. She was the board the schlossberg auditorium a perfect primitive tv studio andhere were cables and plywood atforms running all through t in the theater part of the auditorium and the show was shot there. My mother wen every month to new york to preparthe script for mrs. Roosevelt trait she picked from her closet one of five identical, n particularly broadway like dresses but more like wh day dresses. She was very simple inner presentation of the show and my mothers job was to pick what shouldress it was going to be this month to go over the script she had prepared with paul noble the other producer and Henry Morgenthau the third ecutive producer. In this period i was about four years old when i went one day to the cbo and i remember among my mories thempression i had was of an extremely, of giant actually walking down the corridor and across the cable and all i remember was that somew i was able to set my foot in one spot and another a another spot and move towards this figure and say two words. She looked dow at me and clearly was out of fruit but she had for me what she had for people who she met in this way. Her eyes beam out right as if there was ligh from within. Her smile was broad and she was fu of of the child asking for a stick of gum and expecting it. She very kindly told me she didnt have, and i dont remember what else she said. The memory is of a sense that i was very close to goodness, tt goodman was was pouring out of the human being in the form of light. This happened to me one otwo other times in my life, one very mongly when Nelson Mandela came up broadway soon after his release from ireland and his arrival in the United States. By chance i found myself downtown and as i walked toward oadway i realize something was happening and just as i arrived on broadway there was mandela in a bubble car in a parade in his glance fell to the left of me but ive could see there was thisame phenomenon of goodness appearing as light. I saw it once in an artt when he was looking at something the same kind of attention when it was given as aure love of the subject, the same thing happen strangely at what connected me back to mrs. Roosevelt on what will really began this book for me was an odd coincidence i 2001 i was given access to a bament on madison avenue and i dug down into that basement underneath an Office Building to look for the record from 1950 of the beginning of the peanuts cartoon str light charles schultz, a young cartoonist from minnesota who had beetrying for number of years to get it started and united tchers syndicate was the national by then syncate that schultz was accepted by and his papers we down there and found schultz at e bankers boxes there to the righ with the hours alphabetical bankers boxes in the firsone i sawo my left was roosevelt my day and i just cked up the lid and a magical dust flew into the air as i looked out ang galley in the first description, i had the impression that Eleanor Roosevelt had written a column and didnt know anything about it at that momento as i began reading a description of starlight from a sleeping por and a fall morning, and early fall morning and t great hopefulns at theite of the morningstar from mrs. Rooselts porch brought into this first paragraph of this daily column, i felt the same sense of wonder and tension in joy and love and i kind of thought why dont i keep reading this . Right then i discovered shilts that i have very strong feelings that this was something that needed to be continued and needed to look more carefully there. That was the beginning strangely on the same spot it turns out i later learned in my research intoleanor and franklin and frklins mother sara that madison avenue bin where i was had been franklins mothers house in new york city. That was the house she flew from when b. Altman arrived in the neighborhood when commercial, when the commercial things began to move further uptow that was her moment of escape from 200 madison up to east th. Thats where she livedith Franklin Delano and thats another story. Fore he turned it over to margaret and beth to continue our conversation i want to give a shoutout to everyone. I wanto give a shoutout to one of your neighbors said digital and otherwise. My gat assistant eleanor rker and i wanted to shout out my train commuting buddy who i grew up within cambridge massachusetts and she and i used toun to the train in Porter Square. It was aays, we were always a bit odd on the train where there were very few people and has certified our odd all this that we were taking the train from Porter Square to concord and no onelse had been doing that. Porter square remains an outer limits. That was very far away from life as i knew it early on and then i began to go to Porter Square might teenage years so its a very romantic and heidi hily literary locus tt im so proud to be part of. Marget and beth. Thawas fascinating and i love your connection to boston. I know you are vy much in new york personnel to understand in the cambridge diehard and all of us but its fascinating to hear. I haven appreciated your thorough connection to a partner of ours in a series that we do. As i said i am margaret tcott we have a lot of partners of one of my favorites iPorter Square bookstore so its a till to be at them tonight and at the state library. As many of you kw we had amican ancestors ran this series american inspiration and i cant think of a better pers to be part of the series that Eleanor Roosevelt. Shend her family were such a looming lee large figures in american histo and eleanor paicularly isf such an encouragemt. Particularly at this te for inclusion, diversity for our great country. She is such a role model and truly inspiring. One particularly bigan of Eleanor Roosevelt is Beth Carroll Horrocks of the library of massachusts. Why dt you start off with the first question . First but they apologize for being a little late to join you. My computer shut down. I am Beth Carroll Horrocks the head of spial collections at the state library right in e massachusetts statehouse in Downtown Boston and we are a depository of documents and publications and many other things related to massachusetts histor we are very glad to be part of this group tonight. Margaret and i have questions for david and we have also compiled questions that came from people wh they registered and wille watching for questions that come enduring the talk tonight. Im going to start with one questionhat is mostly mine because im a huge fan of eleanors and it also includes questions that came in from other people. He is my first questn. Myavorite line in the whole book and there were many, many farite lines wasight up to the dedication page but before the table of contents and its that quote from eleanor that says i felt liged to notice everything. To me that sentence can apply to everything that happened in e book and everything th shaped her life. I wondered if you could give us some context for that quote and tell us if you agree with mike my talk about it . Im so touched by your thoughts about it because thats an epigraph at i hoped would sound almost as an overture to her life. I used to be an aon copland palachians and i thought o eleanors great expansionrom her old li, her own love for the country and being part of the whole country. I think her ability to notice her life began when she wasery young and she was something of a survival mechanism, coping mechanism when she was young. He became sething that i almost was shocked how many people left records of feeling her almost daring somemes at them, her looking so carefully. Sometimes and she didnt think someone was noticing her she would look very carefully at them. I dont tnk she missed a thing and i think in one of democracies great principles which is reciprocity which is that everybody counts and everybys life and feelings, life and rights are equally judged and equally taken into account. I think eleanorsoticing was also extremely democratic and ual opportunity and farreaching and farseeing. One of the thingsverybody who did meet her or came into contact with her felt about her, they felt seen and i think things seen by someone who comes from the center of the government or the center of democracyr this center of washington d. C. Was a very unusual experience in those days. I think its more news will now do what ive seen in our mass world in our world for a left pa. I think to no eleanor music eleanor was to feel thawas automatic and natural to her. It was nothing, he couldnt take it. It is authentic. He was not then take wish to understand others. I thk she felt after certain point she felt there wasnt anybody she couldnt learn from. Everybody she met wh somebody who if she understood them carefuy and on their own terms and began to get a sense of what they were about she would learn something and take it back, sometimes back to the president and sometimes back to the government and sometimes backed angency that might help and sometimes mply backed her own column which you use to reflect those thoughtof those things you see in others. I have an entire file simply noticing because it was a part of the Job Description for she changed with being first lady wasnt change being a hum being was. Her job was to notice people and notice what theyere really going through. That quote meant even more to me when i fish the book than when i first started to thank you for that. Also part of that sensen this is the word obliged and i was very struck by how obligated she fel to so many people through her life starting with her father. She developed a fundamental capacity to oblige and to live subject to other peoples control in her boarding scol in england. She looked after, she looked after the girls that were there. She looked after her younger brother paul and then she looked after fdr. She had the heart to please motherinlaw and there was a lot of stepping back and obliging that she did. Was she just born for this type of service . Its amazing. I think i used to tnk of Eleanor Roosevelt when i was younger as perhaps the dogood of all time or she headed dogooder quality about her. What began to appear more subtly toe as i was beginning search and beginning to understand her was the wish to do good ande good had a great deal to do with needing to reshape peoples ideas about her father who had diein such sgrace as a drunk, as the junkie and someone who i absolutely dragged through the mud ultimately i his final years and afterwards by people in his own world and by people that s then came across. I think or wish to do good became something that translated into a nd to be useful and if she could be useful she felt she could be loved. If someone would take the care she was giving them and give back to her it became a mission really for her to be the kind of person whose ufulness was eliminating or enligening or would open somebody up or. A sense of awakening. I tnk that never stopped for her and became her transaction. Itecame the way she connected. We have a number of questions about y she did certain things, fdrs infidelity. Did she have feengs . The service you are talking about has become her capacitys for bayer . Her willingness to be tolerant wasomething she worked on to understand it herself d accepting the parts of herselfhat she knew she couldnt fulfill anothers was an acceptance that allowed her to beolerant and to be tolerant of herself first and then others. It was a struggle that i think she cant. She had to conquer one of her feelings that she understood in herself, she didnt really have a broad range, she was allowed to express ang. She would shut down. If s had a resentment or if she had even a mild pique let alone fullblown, the right to being fullblown angry she was told to go into the bathroom hang her head over the bathtub and cry it out all by herself and into the tub please, not anywhere else. She was very constrained and i think learning how to respond to people who had hurt her she first knew oy to sulk and turned to the wont be furious to herself and turn it on herself. That kind of selfimmolation was very much a part of her early responses. Its the transcendent about that allowed r to finally become obviously the independent man she later became step i step by step. One of the reasons i felt the roosevelt marriage worked out in the long run as a partnership was that she had learned early how to befriend somebody who for instance in the case of not so ch lucy mercer was a rival and was not someone who she would be friends with but people who came to help franklin and replaced her almost as a surrogate with franklin ricci learned to become part of the family and part of a parael life. Thank you. Many of the people who attend our author talks are very interested in how authors do their work. This eleanoroosevelt biography seem to me like it had a cast of thousands, many with very simila names. Thank you by the way for that list of chacters in the beginning of the book. Th was very helpful especially the neck names. Could you tell us how you managed your research and especially how you kept so many details so welldocumented. Wl i had a couple of tricks and a couple of real big sales but the trick was at i learned with mcwyatt and have continued ever since. I gave each person of color. Franklin waslways blue. Every blue index car was franklin and every green was eleanor never. Index card was her mom or Theodore Roosevelt cousin or eodore roosevelt oyster bay cousin. Its a love intere. I dont know why yellow but it worked and white is quotations from oth sources that need to be saved a white index card. Those are more akhil as we useful and helpful