Interview with Mary Brigid Barrett | Sound Authors Radio

November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors.  Its Friday, October 24th and a beautiful crisp day out here in New York and it’s a political show for a political season.  I’ve got three guests on the show today.  I’ll talk about the second two guests first and then I’ll welcome my first guest.  I’ve got David Mendell on the show with his biography of Barack Obama called Obama:  From Promise to Power.  Now that’s a Washington Post Bestseller.  Then I’ve got Nikki Grimes on the show with a book that’s also illustrated by Brian Collier called Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope.  And then at the beginning we’ll start out by talking about a book called Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out.  It’s a wonderful collection created by 108 authors and illustrators and has an introduction by famous author and historian David McCullough and it’s my honor to welcome the person who had the idea for the book; Mary Brigid Barrett.  Welcome to the show.

Mary Barrett:  Well thank you for having me and I’m calling from Franklin, Massachusetts, the home of our country’s first public library.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about this book Our White House:  Looking In, Looking Out.

Mary Barrett:  It’s an absolutely beautiful book.  I think if you have it in front of you that you can see how absolutely stunning it is.  It’s a visual delight, it’s full of poetry, original stories, both historical fiction and non-fiction and absolutely breathtaking art.  from the cover that David McCauley did all the way through to the last double page spread in the book where illustrator Bob Kohler has created this incredible presidential timeline that also acts as a game for young people and the adults in their lives to kind of open their eyes to kind of quiz you on presidential facts.  So we cover over 200 years of American history looking inside the White House and looking outside into America.

Dr. Kent:  Looking at the book, the wonderful front cover shows little people all over the front lawn of the White House dipping their fishing poles in the fountain’s water and running around and having picnics.  Tell me about the illustrators and authors that are in the book and what inspired them to do all of this work?

Mary Barrett:  The inspiration and original idea came to me from sort of two experiences I’ve had over the last couple of years.  I had a wonderful opportunity to have a lunch with the historian you mentioned, David McCullough and his wife Rosalie down in Boston.  It was during that conversation we talked about many things.  We talked about our joint love as kids of historical fiction, specifically Robert Lawson’s wonderful books Ben & Me and Paul Revere & I, and especially how Lawson’s humorous and provocative pen and ink illustrations pulled us into these stories of Paul Revere and Benjamin Franklin.

Also during that conversation, David McCullough raised my awareness to the fact that our founding fathers and mothers adamantly believed that this great experiment of democracy was going to succeed only if all of our citizens young and old were both literate and informed.  We discussed the direct link between literacy, historical literacy and civic engagements.  Then also during the course of the last couple of years, because I’m head of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance and I’m going to Washington a lot to advocate for kids and literacy and libraries, I found myself at the White House as a tourist, and also there’s the president of the NTDLA advocating for kids.

I had spoken and discussed these issues with both First Lady Clinton’s staff at the time and with Mrs. Bush and I’ve had the opportunity to be able to wander around the first floor of the White House and while you’re there, you do actually kind of hear the echoes of voices and footsteps in the hall.  You’re being watched by all those incredible presidential portraits; the eyes of the former first ladies and the presidents looking at you and I kind of had the same feeling walking through the first floor of the White House as I did the first time I walked as a kid going into the main reading room of the Cleveland Public Library that this was my space.  And that this was our house, the White House, it’s your house and my house.

It’s our house not just the president’s house.  When this idea sort of formulated for the book, I had looked for a book, I had gone out there searching the bookstores in Washington.  My three kids were in middle grades and high school at the time and I wanted to show this White House experience, this kind of feeling, the feelings of awe and wonder that you feel wandering through the halls of the White House and I couldn’t find that book.  So coming home on the plane on one trip from Washington, putting together that conversation that had occurred with David McCullough and his wife Rosalie and my own experiences as a visitor to the white house sort of morphosized into this idea of Our White House:  Looking In, Looking Out.

Of course, I couldn’t do the book alone so I first went to my fabulous NTBLA board of authors and illustrators Kevin Patterson and David McCullough who did the cover for the book.  Steven Kellogg, Fred and Pat McKiznic, Patty McLaughlin, Nikki Grimes who you’re going to have on later and we talked about this idea of putting a book together.  We wanted to reach out to our colleagues and thankfully they responded and went beyond the call of duty because it was not just a kind of an issue book that you would have with the environment that people would talk about their experiences as a kid loving the environment and could call upon their own experiences solely.

They really had to go out and do research to do these illustrations and to write the pieces in the book; the poetry and the stories for the book.  When I started to contact them and Karen Lutz, our editor at Kendalwood Press, we started to call people and ask them to contribute.  It was after 9/11 and I think people were very interested to do something to make our country a better place, to make the world a better place and to also start to raise the consciousness that we all have to be informed citizens if we’re going to be making decisions in the future.  Why not start with our youngest citizens.

Dr. Kent:  Wow and its such a huge book.  It has so many illustrations.  For grownup people like me, I love paging through it but what was your intention for a child picking this up?  Of course, learning about the White House, learning about so many different perspectives on it.  What was your take on should we educate our children more about the highest office?

Mary Barrett:  I think number one we wanted to draw people into American history especially kids.  So the book isn’t just full of serious things, the book is also full of wonderful entertaining moments.  For example, Tobin Anderson wrote a great piece about the ghosts in the White House and he talks about Winston Churchill relaxing in a bath with a cigar and a glass of scotch and he steps out of the bathroom naked and begins to wander the halls of the White House and confronts the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

Churchill startled him; and I’m reading directly from the book.  Churchill startled but never at a loss for words tapped the ash of the end of his cigar and said, “Good evening Mr. President you seem to have me at a disadvantage.”  I can’t think of what would be actually more startling a vision for the kids and parents and teachers reading the book, whether it would be the vision of the ghost of Abraham Lincoln wandering the halls or the vision of Winston Churchill standing there naked.  Isn’t it great?  So we want to draw the adults in with the kids, we want this to be a book that adults share with the young people in their lives and read together.  We wanted to delight people and there’s a wonderful double page spread that the illustrator Steven Kellogg has done of all the presidential pats with the presidents and he’s even tucked in the corner.

It’s a delight for children from age six all the way to 20 will love it, but it’s also a delight for parents.  Steven Kellogg has snuck in there that little bunny.  do you remember that episode in President Jimmy Carters administration where a bunny kind of ran out to a boat that he was fishing on and he sort of like we’ll just say did something to the bunny as it was coming across the river and a lot of us older folk can remember that incident.  Then when a child or young person finds that bunny in there and that illustration says, “What’s that bunny there for?”  It allows the adult reader to share some of their memories of past presidents with the kids.  There’s some really serious things in the book too.

One of the things we did was we purposely included in the book primary and secondary sources that contradict each other.  So that in the beginning of the book we have a whole section about the War of 1812 and we were somewhat surprised when we gave the initial contributors of the book very large choices in what they were going to write and illustrate because we felt we were asking for such a major contribution of time that things work better when people are uploading some points of what their interest is and their passion.  Kind of surprisingly many people wanted to address the War of 1812 and at first it was somewhat shocking because the war of 1812 is not one of the prominent areas of American history we all discuss in school but it was post September 11 and it was also sort of an interesting comment on the historical literacy level of our punditry class because after September 11 many of the news people on television would say that the only other time that our country had been attacked was at Pearl Harbor in World War II.

But our country had been attacked long before that during the War of 1812 when the British burned down both the White House and the Capital Building.  If you go back and read primary sources at that time, the effect on the nation was just as profound as the effect that was on us after the twin towers came down.  So I kind of wondered if there was a sort of subconscious recycling of history with so many contributors being interested in the War of 1812.

In the book there is a regular straight history piece on what happened during the War of 1812 by a Madison scholar and then there is a wonderful imagined letter, a creative letter written by Susan Cooper who was originally from the united kingdom and I asked her if she would write a letter giving us the perspective of the British soldier who set the white house on fire.  We wanted to show those contradictory perspectives and then on doing research because I had to do a great deal of research for the book even before we asked contributors to come on board so we had an idea of the ebb and flow and where we were going with the book.

When all these contributors were intersected in doing pieces on the War of 1812 I did more research and come across a journal by a slave of the Madison Paul Jennings, who actually contradicts the Dolly Madison story of Dolly Madison saving the great Gilbert Stewart portrait of George Washington; actually sort of the legend has us visualizing her grabbing the portrait and running out of the house while its on fire.  Paul Jennings actually witnessed what happened at the white house during that bad day and contradicts that legend of Dolly Madison.  So we also included the legend of Dolly Madison so you have a wide variety of perspectives in primary and secondary sources.

We hope that parents and teachers use that in the book as a learning opportunity to talk about the fact that if we are going to look for an objective truth both in our history and contemporary history that we search, that we seek these different opinions, that we investigate these different stories and discuss these things out loud with each other in that search for objective truth.  In the contemporary section of our White House, we also juxtapose some contradictory sources.  We have an excerpt from Tim Russert’s Meet The Press interview of Vice President Chaney as to what enfolded on September 11 in the White House.

We also have an excerpt from the 9/11 commission report that contradicts some of the testimony and that Vice President Chaney shared during that Tim Russert interview.  Again, we put it in the book and we have a website, ourwhitehouse.org that we just actually launched the first stage of and there we will have discussion questions and activities so that people cannot only use these two sections of the book, but the entire book and use it as a learning opportunity for the young people in their lives.

Dr. Kent:  This book is made possible by your organization, the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance.  Tell me a little bit more about that organization, where we can find out about that as well.

Mary Barrett:  We have a home webpage at www.thencbla.org, and we’ve been established for about ten years.  We’re an education advocacy organization.  We believe that literacy is intrinsic to a healthy democracy and basically what we do is the website itself is an educational tool; we have all kinds of ideas and activities for parents, for teachers to get kids reading.  Also get kids reading books and we also believe that you don’t fight the internet.

There are reading materials in abundance out there and it should be a part of all of our daily lives.  The other thing we do is go to Washington, we speak to the congress and whoever is in that White House right now and tell them how much we care about reading and literacy with young people; how important education is to our nation’s future.  How we need to keep funding school and public libraries and one of the things we’re going to be working on in the future is that in 47 states right now literature is not mandatory for elementary certification for teachers and it should be.  So those are some of the other things that we work for besides being education advocates.

Dr. Kent:  Well it’s been a real honor speaking with Mary Brigid Barrett and the book is called Our White House:  Looking In, Looking Out.  Has wonderful contributions from 108 authors and illustrators.  It’s really a gorgeous book.  We can go to ourwhitehouse.org and it’s been an honor having you on the show.

Mary Barrett:  Thank you so much.  It’s been a wonderful opportunity.

Dr. Kent:  At the very end of the book there’s a picture by Leona Gore that has a picture of an empty chair and it says “The Big Chair to Fill” and it’s a great place to end the book and a great place to find out in a couple weeks how everything continues here in the elections.

Mary Barrett:  You might want to check our website next week because at the end of the book I mentioned Bob Kohler’s double page spread where there’s a presidential timeline.  In it you will see that there is a blank space next to our current President Bush.  On our website to promote this engagement we are going to have two presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, where kids and parents and teachers will be able to download those stickers and we are going to encourage families and teachers to have young people read about the election in the newspapers next week and watch for the results and they will have the opportunity to finish Our White House:  Looking In, Looking Out by placing the appropriate winning candidates sticker at the end of the presidential timeline in our book.

Dr. Kent:  Wonderful.  So ourwhitehouse.org.  It’s been a real pleasure and we will check it all out.

Mary Barrett:  Thanks so much!

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show is David Mendell and he is the author of the biography of Barack Obama called Obama: From Promise to Power.  We’ll talk to him in one minute, don’t miss it.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Childrens, History, TRANSCRIPTS, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Georgia Wythe | Sound Authors Radio

November 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  Today is Friday, July 25th and my next guest on the show, her book is called Shining Moments, Finding Faith in Facing Death.  Her name is Georgia Lange Weithe.  Welcome to the show.

Georgia Weithe:  Thank you very much.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me a little bit about Shining Moments; where did this come from?

Georgia Weithe:  Well like a lot of authors, this book is something that I wrote because I needed it but I couldn’t find it at the time that my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  When I heard the news, first of all of course I was devastated by the thought of losing my father and after that reality sunk in, the next thing that came over me was a huge desire to find out everything I could about what it was like to be with a person who was dying so that I could help them as much as possible.

What I really would’ve liked was for someone to take me to the room of a dying person to just describe what the interaction between that person and their caregiver was like.  Of course, you can’t do that.  I had all kinds of questions.  I wanted to know what I should say to him when I was with him and what he was likely to say; how could I comfort him and what would he need spiritually to transition out of this world.  This was a big one for me; how could I overcome my own fear of death?  So what I did was I started calling everybody that I knew who had some experience with death and dying and I asked them all these questions and not surprisingly nobody could give me the answers to the questions.

People just told me again and again that everyone’s death is different and that my questions weren’t answerable.  This was very frustrating to me at the time but now that I’ve been through the experience I realize that what they said was true.  But still, if just one of those people had described in intimate detail what their experience had been, it really would’ve been a great help to me.  So that’s basically what I did in Shining Moments, that’s one of the themes.  I wrote a very intimate account of my experience, beginning with hearing the diagnosis, what my reaction was like to going to visit my dad after hearing the news.  I describe what we said, what we didn’t say, the entire time I was with him right up until his death.

During that time, I kept a journal and when I read through it after he died I realized that it contained exactly the kind of information that I had been looking for from other people that I hadn’t been able to find.  So I used it to write my story in hopes that I could help other people who find themselves in the same situation which is needing to support someone who’s facing death but terrified and unsure of what to do.

So I’m hoping that by sharing my experiences and what I learned through them that I can provide readers with a tool for courageously facing the death of other people and maybe even the prospect of their own.  There’s just one other thing I’d like to tell you is my dad always told me that I ought to write a book but I never felt I had anything to say and then when he died, he gave me the story to tell.

Dr. Kent:  In this book Shining Moments, Finding Faith in Facing Death brings back memories for me about, you know, any time you have a family member or someone you know in an emergency room you run across all of these other stories of I mean worse than yours, more hopeful than yours and it’s just this collection of all these things.  How did you come across?  You certainly now run into many, many stories.  How is it dealing with death on a daily basis like that?

Georgia Weithe:  Well you know I have to say I’m now immersed in it on a daily basis but one thing that I think everybody shares in common is that when they’re in a stressful situation, they dig deep down into themselves to find whatever resources they can come up with to cope with the situation.  That’s what I did and that’s what Shining Moments are that I refer to in the title because I think that usually we have the strength and the courage to face everything that goes on in our daily lives but when we’re really tested, when we’re in a very stressful situation, that’s when we have to look for other resources.  We have to dip into the deepest pool of understanding that we have.  I think that’s one thing that everybody has in common, which is that there’s always help available if we go looking for it.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me a couple of Shining Moments.

Georgia Weithe:  Okay well I’ll read a shining moment or so to you in a moment but just to describe what I mean by that is when I was really desperate and I asked for help as I say I found it.  It was almost like there was a light that was shined on my soul and all the wisdom and understanding that I needed to make sense of every situation was revealed to me.  I actually think we all have these little epiphanies; moments of complete clarity when we’re in touch with our deepest self and somehow we recognize the best path to take.

As I’ve stated it’s exactly when we’re in desperate circumstances that we can find the source of inspiration.  I think what happens is we become reflective and self reflection seems to give us the window to our inner wisdom.  I’ll give you an example of the shining moments in the book.  Generally they are words of wisdom that helped me cope with the situation or they’re words of wisdom that taught me what my dad would need spiritually to help him through his transition out of this life.  I’ll just read you a few sentences, which helped me, put death into perspective.  Just to give you a little background, in August phone calls when I was trying to find someone who could teach me a little bit about death, not only weren’t people able to answer my questions but most people didn’t want to talk about it.

It’s not the most popular topic so I did have one friend who had been the administrator of a nursing home and she put it all in perspective by creating a metaphor for me. She said that a life journey can be compared to a train ride and throughout our lives we delude ourselves that we don’t know where the train is going, but when people are diagnosed with a terminal illness, they can’t pretend they don’t know where they’re heading.  And they can’t pretend their stop is way down the line, its getting too close for them to deny it and while they have to acknowledge their destination the rest of us perpetuate the delusion that we’re going somewhere else.  Some of us don’t even acknowledge that we’re on the train.

So anyway after I was searching for answers for weeks, all of a sudden I found myself writing in my journal what turned out to be the first shining moment and it was this.  “Climb aboard and ride.  It does no good to pretend you’re not on the train.  Acknowledge that you are already on the same journey as your father.  Look through the window and begin to see what you’re passing.  If you knew where you’re heading you won’t need to make detours.  Stay on course and don’t allow yourself to be pulled off.  Look closely at what seems obvious and find the deeper clues you are seeking.  Right outside the window are the answers to questions about life’s deepest meaning.  Don’t be afraid to look; buy a ticket and ride the train.”

So that was just telling me you’re already on the train, you might as well pay attention because you can learn a lot from just looking outside the window and not pretending that you’re on another journey.

Dr. Kent:  So the shining moments, they’re revelations that you had, epiphanies that you had.  Does this book, do you refer to this book, do you come back to this book or has the process been what’s healed you personally?

Georgia Weithe:  I think a little bit of both.  I haven’t fortunately been in the situation again.  Well, no that’s not true I was in the situation with my mother some ten years later and I did I had the courage then to face death because I had already gone through it with my dad.  Prior to that I had even though I’m well into adulthood I hadn’t had the direct experience.  A grandmother had died but I was in another city at the time so I hadn’t come in contact with it.

I had convinced myself that I had come to terms with death.  I had the philosophy of life goes on and I had thought I had not emotionally experienced what it was like.  So having gone through it once and really allowed all the emotions to just wash over me, I did feel more prepared.  But you know I do want to mention that even though these were words that came to me specifically, anybody who’s in a similar situation will find that they give them directions for coping with their fears and also for helping them support loved ones at the end of their life.  I have one that I could read to you that’s an example of what I just said how you can support people at the end of their life.

Dr. Kent:  We can visit you online at shiningmoments.net.

Georgia Weithe:  Yes, that’s where I talk a lot about why I wrote the book and why it’s important for us to face death because death is really a great teacher and a friend and it teaches us to appreciate life like nothing else.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been a real honor speaking with you.  Shining Moments, Finding Faith in Facing Death.  We’ve been speaking with Georgia Lange Weithe, have a wonderful day.

Georgia Weithe:  Thanks for calling, bye!

Posted by admin | Filed Under Medicine, Motivation, Health, TRANSCRIPTS, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST 

Interview with Charles Jacobs | Sound Authors Radio

November 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors.  Today is Friday, July 25, 2008.  My next guest on the show his name is Charles Jacobs.  His latest book is called The Writer Within You; A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing and Publishing in your Retirement Years.  Welcome to the show.

Charles Jacobs:  Thank you doctor, it’s good to be here.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me a little about the book.

Charles Jacobs:  Well the book has been written to guide retirees, seniors, as they attempt to write, as they do what your last commercial apparently said to do.  Life is calling; embark on a new task.  They have told me time and again as I speak publicly at different organizations that they’re dying to write a book, eager to write a book but they just don’t know how.  This book takes them through the process from writing to publishing to actually promoting the book and gives them all of the options.  It also gives them an appendix that gives them detailed information and resources to guide them.

Dr. Kent:  How did you get into this business of writing?

Charles Jacobs:  How did I get into the writing business?

Dr. Kent:  Right.

Charles Jacobs:  It happened a long, long time ago doctor when I was a youngster.  We did not have too much money in the family but I finally got a gift of a little printing press from my folks and I became the town crier of my block sending out little pieces of information on this 4×4 sheet.  I loved writing, loved newspapering and continued on with weekly’s as a part timer.  I went to college in New York fortunately and I was able to pay my way through college at Columbia by working at the Journal American at nights and I just continued on.

Dr. Kent:  What is your day to day right now?  You’re obviously targeting retirees with this book and you have many other hats.  What do you do from day to day?

Charles Jacobs:  Well my primary concern right now is promoting the book.  The book has been quite successful and we’re trying to capitalize on that.  It’s been named one of the best books of the year by six different organizations and we’re trying to get as much publicity and the word out on that factor but at the same time, I have a coaching operation.  I currently am doing some coaching for several clients and also doing a complete rewrite of the book and ghostwriting a book for one of my clients.  So I do keep kind of busy.

Dr. Kent:  Lets go into the book itself; The Writer Within You.  There’s a lot of books out there that say okay, here’s how to make a million bucks, here’s how to get your book into the public eye.  Do you work with people from the very bottom end, people who just want to have a book about their family, all the way to people say oh I’m going to sell 100,000 books?

Charles Jacobs:  I’m not particular about those who need my book but the book is geared more for the neophyte writer, the relatively new writer but many established writers have bought the book and have sent us comments on it and feel that the resources available in the book are particularly unusual.  What I’ve done is not only include the information on my own research and also experience, but we have on almost every page of the book a section called words of wisdom.  It’s a special box with quotes, authors, pages, publishers, et cetera on the subject matter that’s being discussed in the main portion of that section.  So it gives you not only my perspective but the perspective of somebody that are experts in the field.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s say a writers just starting out.  Do you recommend that they go by the self publishing route?  Writers often hear the word not quite as much anymore but Vanity Press and there’s a stigma attached to that.  Do they get an agent?  What’s the process for a new writer?

Charles Jacobs:  They’re going to have a very tough time getting an agent and going the traditional publishing road.  Agents are even more difficult to find than publishers today; however, the choice is not just that or Vanity Publishing.  Vanity Publishing has grown and morphed into a whole new world called Publishing on Demand (POD).  POD is a result of a new technology that can produce any number of books.  You no longer have to take a press run as you did with Vanity Presses that made 2,000 to 3,000 books and you have them sit in your garage and rot.

Now you can sign up, pay a fee to one of these POD houses and they will do everything for you from designing the cover to designing the format inside and actually printing the book.  They will even access distribution channels for you.  They will print on demand, as the name says, if you personally want for your own use 25 copies lets say, they will print 25 copies.  If bookstores or Amazon or what have you require replenishment of two, three four copies of the book, they are able to send it out then and there.  It’s a marvelous new approach.

Dr. Kent:  Before the printing happens, the writing of a book.  There’s so many people that say, “Oh, I’d like to write a book,” the numbers I’ve heard were 300,000-400,000 books published every year now.  How do people write a book that’s unique?

Charles Jacobs:  There are no new ideas I believe, but there are new approaches to old ideas.  For example, there have been almost no books, well there have been hundreds of books on writing, but there have been almost no books written for this niche that I selected, which is geared to older person, the older writer.  In every category, every subject, there are new approaches that can be developed.  In fiction of course, the stories are all different.  There’s a basic format or formula for writing a novel but with a non restrictive area there’s a great deal of latitude to do it your own way and pick your own subject matter.

Dr. Kent:  Retirement years; we’re talking about the baby boomer generation just hitting retirement the last few years.  It’s a huge market full of people that say okay I’ve got to do something with the rest of my life.  How do you specifically focus on these people?

Charles Jacobs:  They are a unique group; they are just beginning to retire.  Two years ago they were first beginning to go into retirement and they will swell the numbers of retired people and they are looking for something to continue to be productive and active and aren’t willing to settle because they’re in good health.  They’re not willing to settle and agree that this is the end of their lives.  So the way it can be reached, it can be reached best I feel through targeted work on the internet where I reach out for boomer websites, boomer blogs, and talk about my book and talk about many of the subjects I cover in the book.  I also reach out to senior magazines, print magazines as well as senior websites.  In that way and senior radio as well.  In that way I am targeting a very specific niche and also the people who are buying my books.

Dr. Kent:  What’s interesting is you’re actually promoting your book and part of what you teach is how to promote your readers’ book.  How someone can promote themselves.  So you’re almost pointing the way.

Charles Jacobs:  I try to yes.  If I’m successful and they follow the path that I suggest, they too should be successful.

Dr. Kent:  When are you going to have a chance to retire?

Charles Jacobs:  I consider myself retired already and having a hell of a lot of fun.  I would much rather be doing what I’m doing than playing golf.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you.  The Writer Within You; the website is retirement-writing.com.  Where else can we find you on the web?

Charles Jacobs:  You can find me on my blog, which is also retirement-writing.com/blog.

Dr. Kent:  Wonderful and the book The Writer Within You; A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing and Publishing in your Retirement Years by Charles Jacobs.  It’s available all across the web, just like your book can be.  It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you.

Charles Jacobs:  Thanks so much doctor.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Publishing, TRANSCRIPTS, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Caroline Herring | Sound Authors Radio

November 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  That was a haunting tune called Paper Gown from an album by Caroline Herring.  It’s her newest, called Lantana.  Welcome to the show.

Caroline Herring:  Thank you it’s a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about that song.  That song is about the woman who drowned her children.  What inspired you to write that tale into a song?

Caroline Herring:  Well the story of Susan smith seemed to me like one of the most macabre tale of rape in history.  As a 23 year old woman in a small southern town, blaming her crime on a black man and very much in love and it was just a great recipe for a ballad.  I just thought it was too important of an opportunity to pass up as a southern traditional folk writer.

Dr. Kent:  It’s very much in the tradition of the murder ballads from the hills of Appalachia but at the same time your sound is very much Texas.  Something akin to Nancy Griffith or Emmy Lou Harris or Steve Earle.  Talk a little bit about your background in music.

Caroline Herring:  As far as my Texas connections I lived there for several years and I made this album in Austin, Texas coproducing it with Rich Brotherton who’s a wonderful guitarist and he produces his own records. So I’m very much influenced by my time in Texas though I live in Georgia now.  And I grew up in Mississippi so even though Appalachian folk country was not the standard around there I heard a lot of the traditional music growing up and my parents weren’t an influence there.  They didn’t play a lot, but they listened to a lot.

Dr. Kent:  Your voice itself is so haunting and really stunning.  The songs are deep and beautiful; where do you get your inspiration?  Obviously this song is a unique one.  Do you page through newspapers?  What’s the process?

Caroline Herring:  No, I don’t page through newspapers but I read like everybody else.  I don’t know, I think the draw for me was just I’m hopeful to continue to do that.  You never know when the muse fades in or out and it’s that inexplicable thing that I wish I could give you a great answer to.  I don’t know exactly.  Stone Cold World, the first song on the record was partially inspired by the news that I took and Songs for Fay the last song on the record was about a book by Larry Brown a Mississippi writer.

Dr. Kent:  We’re going to listen to that at the end of the show.  Your career could be partially in the folk world, partially in the news, where do you fall?

Caroline Herring:  I consider myself traditional country definitely with some emphasis in folk but mainly traditional country.

Dr. Kent:  Does that mean someone who grew up listening to Grand Ole Opry and George Jones and all the traditional country music?  How would you define that?

Caroline Herring:  I definitely grew up listening to some of that.  I also grew up listening to Joan Baez and The Kingston Trio.  So just a mix there.

Dr. Kent:  Are you on the road for the album Lantana?

Caroline Herring:  Yes I’ve been doing a good bit of traveling on and off the road and will be probably for awhile.

Dr. Kent:  Its such a stunning sound that you have.  How do you find the musicians to back you up?

Caroline Herring:  My Austin years were definitely a help with that.  I often call on them when I’m out on the road but there’s some good Atlanta musicians as well.  Now that I travel all over the place I just find them wherever I can.

Dr. Kent:  Is there a difference for you between a good southern audience and a northern audience?

Caroline Herring:  My emphasis is usually different.  I suppose since I’m so southern I’m a little more gentle in my themes.  Different subjects depending on where I am is something northern audiences or western audiences aren’t going to understand I suppose and other things that people would be more interested in.  anyway I don’t tailor my stories for the audience but I do try to remember who I’m talking to.

Dr. Kent:  What’s your next project going to be after this one?  Have you already started planning?

Caroline Herring:  Yes I hope to have an album out late next year, on what I’m not sure.  It won’t be semantically related as much but I’m doing a lot of writing for that.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s listen to a little bit of Song for Fay.  Tell me about that before we play it.

Caroline Herring:  Song for Fay is based on a character from a book by the same name, Fay, written by Larry Brown, a Mississippi writer.  I originally wrote that for Tribute Records.

Dr. Kent:  Your Mississippi connection, do you still connect to that place you grew up in, Mississippi?

Caroline Herring:  Oh yes, my parents still live there and I go back there pretty often.

Dr. Kent:  Lets listen to a little of Song for Fay.  It’s been a real honor speaking with Caroline Herring.  Her album Lantana came out in 2008 on Signature Sound.  It’s stunning and we’re going to hear a little sample of it.  Thank you so much for being on the show Caroline Herring.

Caroline Herring:  Thank you.

Dr. Kent:  Listen to a little of this tune, Song for Fay.

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  That was a beautiful tune by Caroline Herring called Song for Fay.  Her album is called Lantana and it was released in 2008 by Signature Sound.  Thank you so much to everybody that was on the show today.  Georgia Lange Weithe, Charles Jacobs, Danalee Buhler and Caroline Herring.  We’ll see you next week; have a safe and happy week.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Danalee Buhler | Sound Authors Radio

November 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors!  Today is Friday, July 25, 2008.  We’re in the middle of summer; it’s gorgeous out here in New York.  I’ve got four guests on the show today.  My first guest is Danalee Buhler, my second guest is Charles Jacobs, third guest is Georgia Weithe and my last guest is the musician Carolyn Herring with a couple of beautiful tunes for us.  Before I go any further about the books that are going to be on the show today.  My third guest is Shining Moments: Finding Hope in Facing Death, her name is Georgia Weithe and we’re going to talk about that in a half hour.  Before that, we’re going to do a little writing.  Charles Jacobs is an expert on teaching authors how to write.  His book is called The Writer Within You, A Step by Step Guide to Writing & Publishing in your retirement years.  And my first guest Danalee Buhler has written a book called Running From Coyotes: A White Family Among the Navajo Memoir.  I believe she’s with me right now on the line.  Is Danalee Buhler here?

Danalee Buhler:  Hello, I’m here.  It’s beautiful in San Diego also.

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to the show.

Danalee Buhler:  Thank you.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me a little about this book.  I’ve been watching some old television.  I’ve been watching Lonesome Dove and doesn’t seem like it has a very honest portrayal.

Danalee Buhler:  I grew up on the Navajo reservation from ages 11 to 12.  After that we moved to Phoenix and then ended up in Reno.  During our first year on the reservation we adopted two Navajo boys.  One was 14 months old and a few months later we adopted another little boy who was 11 months old.  They joined five girls so that gave us a family of seven kids and we had a great time on the reservation.

When we moved back to the white world in 1962 it was of course during the beginning of the civil rights movement so most people didn’t quite know what to make of a mixed race family of white girls and Navajo boys.  So this book is the story of how we came to adopt these children and kind of what happened to our family as we transitioned into being a mixed race family.

Dr. Kent:  How has the response been to the book?

Danalee Buhler:  Well I’ve had a great response; I’ve had a really nice review from Tony Hillerman and those members of your audience.  You know who he is; an author who lives in New Mexico and writes about the Navajo.  My family has been very responsive; they are happy with the book.  My mother is quite unhappy that I told everybody she sold Avon for some reason.  I guess it’s not a cool thing to do.

My brothers and I have become much closer I think because of the book.  Since the book came out I’ve returned to the reservation and met his Navajo family.  He’s close to his Navajo family and close to his white family but the two families have never really had the opportunity to be together or know each other so it’s been very nice to get to know his Navajo family.

Dr. Kent:  The book itself introduces an audience to the Navajo culture, something that many of us never get a chance to see.  It’s a very small culture compared to I guess mainstream America, but tell us a little about what insights you got into that culture.

Danalee Buhler:  Well the Navajo is the largest Native American tribe maintaining a livelihood on a reservation.  Most other Native American tribes in America have either lost their reservation or moved into mainstream America but the Navajo are really still trying to maintain a way of living.  Many of them still live in hogans, which is a small Navajo home.  Many of them still live way beyond what we would call civilization by themselves and herding sheep and they don’t have electricity and they don’t have indoor plumbing.  This is a life they’re choosing to try to maintain.

Of course there are a few facets of the Navajo culture that are trying to merge with the white world and its just hard in some sense to encourage your children if you’re a Navajo to graduate from high school and go away to college because the moment they leave and go away to college, very few native American children return to the reservation.  It’s not quite the same as living in New York or living off of the reservation.  So its kind of a difficult position for them to be in but it’s a lovely culture and I encourage people if they have the chance to visit New Mexico and make sure they see some of the Navajo culture.  Most people I think in the white world see it through jewelry or beautiful rugs that are part of that culture.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s talk a little about the jewelry and rugs and the culture itself.  What I hear most about Native American culture is the alcoholism, the trying to make ends meet.  What do you think is happening to the face of the Navajo people or others?

Danalee Buhler:  Well I think what you hear is fairly accurate.  In the world of the Navajo so far and I think it might be a losing battle, they have not found the way of casinos.  My youngest brother Danny he’ll be a nice example for you.  He grew up in the white world, he looks like a Navajo on the outside but he is every bit a white man.  When he returned to the reservation in his early 20s and met his family, he tried very hard to become whatever that means, Navajo.  To learn the language, live on the reservation; he in fact became like most young adult males on the Navajo reservation and other reservations.

He became an alcoholic.  He struggles with trying to maintain a job and have some kind of a life on the reservation.  Ultimately he left and decided that he needed to live in the white world and maintain his relationship with his Navajo family though from a distance, from the white world because that was the world he knew.  But alcoholism is a large problem on all reservations.  I can’t quite tell you why reservations have not evolved so that there are jobs and tract housing, highways, doctor’s offices, parks and things that you see in most cities.  They just don’t exist there.  I don’t know the answer to that, but it is a problem, alcohol is a problem because there’s nothing to do.  There are no jobs.

So if someone out there has a brilliant idea to solve this problem, it probably would be welcome.  At least in the world of Navajo, they have not put casinos on their reservation, they have not resorted to gambling as a way to fund schools and fund upgrades on the reservation.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing.  Certainly most Native American cultures have gone that route.

Dr. Kent:  Do you speak the Navajo language?

Danalee Buhler:  Oh no.  It’s very difficult and when I was a child the white school teacher, my father was a school teacher, lived in a chain link fence compound.  We didn’t live with the Navajo, either they were really smart and ahead of their time or it was just the nature of where all the whites or teachers were living.  There was this chain link fence around those houses and we had probably the only wooden houses in the town.

When I lived in shiprock, it was very different than the Shiprock that Tony Hellerman portrays in his writing.  There were I think 11 churches, a boarding school, the houses for the white school teachers and a gas station and a trading post.  That was it and from a child’s standpoint, it was great, it was wonderful.  We could do whatever we wanted to do and my parents weren’t particularly good at watching what we did or didn’t do so we spent our days looking for arrowheads and hanging out at the trading post but it was not a typical 1950s town to grow up in.

Dr. Kent:  Did you find yourself running up against stereotypes yourself because your family members and friends were Native American?

Danalee Buhler:  Certainly when we left the reservation.  My family went to Texas each summer while we lived on the reservation and my Texas relatives really didn’t know what to make our family.  Some people put plastic on their furniture when we came.  My uncle wanted to teach us all to shoot guns so we could protect ourselves.  I mean we crossed some line by allowing Navajos into our home.

That to some extent followed us into the white world.  My brothers faced prejudice from the moment they hit the white world.  So it’s all the things you’ve seen on television, read about and seen before of being called names, being picked on and as they got older beaten up and that kind of thing.  Because they were choosing to live not only with a white family but in a white community that hadn’t seen a Navajo, that didn’t know what a Navajo was; therefore, fear always seemed to kind of lead your behavior.

Dr. Kent:  Your career has also been in childcare and you wrote a book about ###.  I’d like to hear a little bit about that and also what your next book will be.

Danalee Buhler:  Okay, well before we leave my Running from Coyote, my next book is actually about a character from this book; my grandfather and my next book is about his 1931 trial for murder.  So again it’s a memoir but I just happen to have family members that have had interesting lives.  But I got started writing in 1989, way back then when I wrote a book called the Very Best Childcare and How to Find It.

It was the first book of its kind that only talked about infants.  So it was for parents who were going to put an infant in the licensed care, family care, or with a nanny.  It really mattered; I tried to cover the bases but only talk about infants because they need a very different kind of care than a four year old or a seven year old.  It was selected by the Literary Guild as one of their selections so that was very exciting.  And it led me into years of politics and talking about childcare.

Dr. Kent:  Do you have more stories in the closet about other relatives and is this going to be a series, these memoirs?

Danalee Buhler:  Well the exciting thing about the Running From Coyotes story is that it was just received an honorable mention in the Hollywood Film Festival and that particular festival looks at books that can make some transition to the film world.  So I’m currently working on a screen play and I have some people in Hollywood who are waiting for me to hurry up and finish it.  So that’s the exciting news happening with Running From Coyotes.  I suspect that the murder story will follow in that same path.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been a real honor speaking with Danalee Buhler and I have to say, am I saying your name correctly?

Danalee Buhler:  You’re very close.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been a real honor speaking with you.  Where can we find you on the web?

Danalee Buhler:  Well my webpage is danaleebuhlerwriter.com and you can find a whole lot of things on there; photos and more reviews.  You can write me at danaleebooks@gmail.com and I’d be happy to answer anyone’s questions.

Dr. Kent:  Wonderful; well have a wonderful day.  Running From Coyotes: A White Family Among the Navajo Memoir by Danalee Buhler.  Thanks so much for being on the show.

Danalee Buhler:  Thanks a lot.

Dr. Kent:  My next guest is the author of the writer within you: A Step by Step Guide to Writing & Publishing in Your Retirement Years.  Charles Jacobs will be on the show, he has been working with writers for many years.  So come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, TRANSCRIPTS, Fiction, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

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