 the book launch celebration of Two Lives with author Reeve Lindbergh, best-selling author Chris Bojalian called Two Lives a beautiful essay collection, funny and rye, some moments wistful and wise at others. Lindbergh may be the daughter of two gifted aviators but she soars in her own right. This book is insightful, astute, and best of all, honest. I have to say I found this review completely accurate. As I was reading I noticed the book is about musings on birth and death, which can both be uplifting, Reeve tells us, to aging and wondering what happened to her eyelashes. These essays are both pointy and funny, and I'll share a favorite passage I have about the aforementioned eyelashes. I was actually pretty worried about the loss of my eyelashes. How could I have lost my eyelashes? I glasses, yes, I lose those all the time, but eyelashes, how and where was I going to find those? Well guess what? I did find them. They were on my chin. It's true, if I'm being honest, I know totally right. So I urge you to pick up your copy of Two Lives. We have here tonight at the front counter. If you haven't picked up your copy already, Reeve will be able to sign books after the talk. Tonight's reading and talk will be about an hour. With time for Q&A, and we do have some refreshments, please help yourself. And I'd like to remind everybody to please mute or turn off your cell phone. And to let you know that the front door is now locked, and it will remain locked just for the reading, and it will reopen once the reading is done. We do have a back door. If you need to exit during the reading, please use the back door. And we do have a bathroom located at the back of the store. Go to the back door and turn right. I'd like to thank the Vermont Arts Council for featuring tonight's event as a Vermont Arts 2018 program. Feel free to pick up a Vermont Arts sticker. They're at the front counter. I'd also like to thank Orca Media. They are here filming tonight's event. And if you're interested in seeing this video or other videos or in learning about future events at Bear Palm Books, I'd like to encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. I'm going to pass this around if you wouldn't mind. Thank you. And if you already get it, you just pass it right. Yes, thank you. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Bear Palm Books. Our next book launch event is with hometown lawyer Bernie Lambeck. He's actually right over there in the blue section. We're excited to host him for his debut novel, Uncivil Liberties. It's a legal mystery set right here in Maupilier, and he will be here June 5th with desserts catered by Down Home Kitchen. So please mark your calendars for that for June 5th. Tonight we are proud to present Reeve Lindbergh, daughter of aviator authors Charles A. and Anne Marl Lindbergh. Reeve was born in 1945 and grew up in Connecticut. After graduating from Radcliffe College in 1968, she moved to Vermont where she lives on an old farm near St. John's Buries with her husband, writer Nat Tripp. Reeve is the author of more than two dozen books for children and adults. Her work has also appeared in magazines and periodicals including The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. She is an active board member of the Vermont Arts Council and is active with libraries and other nonprofit organizations in Vermont and nationally. And we're so thrilled to have her. Please help me I'm not going to talk for an hour. What I thought I would do is read to you from this book, Two Lives, and the title was actually suggested by my publisher, Neil Raifle, his wife, Janice Ray, and their daughter, Adrienne Raifle, who is my editor. This family runs a, oh it has a small publishing company called Brigantine Media in St. John's Buries. I love them. They are, it's a treat to have your 28-year-old editor very, very gently suggest changes or you know restructuring here or there and you know and then they have a book signing at the St. John's Buries Athenean with local beer. It's just really nice. I've loved it. So I'm very grateful to Brigantine Media and to Janice and Neil and Adrienne and they have a son, Ben, but he's in business. He doesn't do this bookstuff so much. But I'm thrilled to be working right here and visiting bookstores all over Vermont, especially this one. It's always been one of my favorites. I'm delighted to be here. I'm going to read you a little bit. I'll read you a little bit from the title essay, which is Two Lives. Because of this essay and kind of some of the themes of the others, Neil Raifle, my publisher editor, said, you know, this really, book really is about two lives. That's what you're talking about. And I thought, oh, I guess he's right. And I think that's why I always write about the matter. Unless I'm writing the children's books, which are rhyming and just crazy and fun or more serious sometimes. But that's a whole different world for me, the children's books. Another life. But these books, the more memoir-ish books tend to deal with what's happening right now in my life. And then what has happened in my family history, and it all kind of seems to be separate. And then I realize over time that it isn't. You can't really completely do that. Your lives, whatever they are, however separate, they may seem to be eventually come together. I think. So here we go. I often think I live two lives, one in the foreground and the other in the background, each life taking its turn. I have a real or normal life in the country where my husband and I live on an old farm at the end of a dirt road. We wear comfortable clothes, write books, raise sheep and chickens, are active in community life and welcome our children and grandchildren whenever they come to visit. There's also an entirely different Lindbergh life, which requires putting on somewhat less comfortable clothes and traveling to places away from the farm where I attend meetings and give talks and where there are no chickens except for the kind on the menu followed by words like go down blur and a la king and give. In the second life, I stand up in front of groups of people and talk a little about the books I've written for children and adults and a lot about the lives of my late parents, Charles A. and Mara Lindbergh. I've spoken about my parents on college campuses and Air Force bases in museums and libraries and schools to children and to adults around the country for many decades. When I finished with the meetings or the talks, I come home to Vermont, change clothes and emerge from the limbo of travel and from my Lindbergh life. I settle down with my husband, the dogs, the sheep and the chickens, immersing myself in farm and community until the next time when I put on my other wardrobe again and how'd I go? Maybe it's a strange way to live coming and going and switching focus completely between one life and the other, moving from the present to the past, not even my own past, but my parents and back again. Still, I've done this for so long that it feels like just another part of my routine, like going to the farmer's market or taking one of the dogs to the vet. One of the chief differences is that in my Lindbergh life, there are different questions to answer. Instead of, how long has she been limping or do you want a bag for those? It's, what's your favorite memory of your father or did your mother teach you to write or what can you tell us about the Lindbergh kidnapping or did your father really have other families? These questions are now so familiar that they don't trouble me much, though I can remember what some of them did. I first began to live two lives not long after my father's death in 1974. Before that, my father and my mother spoke for themselves if they chose to speak at all. Most of their communication with the world was done in writing. Between the two of them, they published more than 20 books about their lives and reflections over the years. My father rarely spoke in public during my childhood in the late 40s and 50s, though he'd done so before I was born. He made speeches on behalf of the future of aviation after his 1927 flight from New York to Paris when he was in his mid-20s. He spoke out against America's entrance into the Second World War as part of the controversial isolationist movement when he was in his late 30s and toward the end of his life, when he was in his 60s and I in my late teens and 20s, he began to speak out again. This time he talked about his growing concern for the environment worldwide and his conviction that we must achieve balance between rapid development of technology and the preservation of nature. I knew him best during this time, his conservation years, when his focus was absolute as it had always been absolute on whatever project or passion engaged in. He talked fervently about his efforts to save the monkey-eating eagle in the Philippines, the blue whale in Japan, and the wildlife of East Africa. He was so electrically energetic that even when he was away, his influence remained reverberated throughout the house. My mother was a different story entirely. During my childhood, our father was present even in his absence. His energy, his rules, his discipline lingering in the house as did the woodsy outdoor scent of his winter jacket in the hall closet. Our mother, however, had the ability to be absent within her presence. She was completely with me, especially when I needed her. She listened to my stories, took my physical and emotional complaints seriously, and didn't disappear into the world for weeks or months the way our father did. Still, she could go deeply into herself when I was sitting right there next to her. Her eyes would look off and away through the window over the mudflats and marsh grasses of long island sound, one hand fingering a brooch at her neck. I remember it as a cameo in a silver frame with a bouquet of flowers against a black background, all fashioned of tiny, colorful, semi-precious stones. I knew that she was still there with me, but that she was also somewhere else. All I'm going to read of that for now, because I want to read a little of a chapter called Chicken Yoga, Mr. Soup. Just a little. We have kept chickens for over 40 years, not the same chickens for the whole time, so it sometimes seems that way. There's always a bad hen, ill-tempered and ready to strike and strike hard. Should you try to sneak a hand beneath her feathery breast and wrapped in egg from the nesting box where she huddles? There's always at least one swaggering macho rooster. There are always a few ditzy pulleys hiding in the barn rafters when it's time to come in at night. And there's always one gawky half-grown chick that turns out to be the prettiest hen in the whole flock. That's the way it is with chickens. To everything, there is a season, and in every season, in my life, at least, there are chickens. We've raised chickens for so long that we've seen it all, or maybe I should say we've seen most of it. There may be some surprises yet in store, because again, that's the way it is with chickens. Surprising. Some of the surprises have to do with eggs. Eggs are the reason we have chickens in the first place. I don't care what anybody says, store-bought eggs don't taste as good as fresh-laid farm eggs ever. Sometimes we get bountiful quantities, clutches of rich brown or bright white or even bluish green eggs. Those are from the Arcanas. Sitting quietly in the nesting boxes for me to gather and place in the egg-collecting basket, I carry with me for this purpose. Sometimes the eggs are warm and clean, just waiting for my hand to curl around them, pick them up and take them away. Sometimes they are likely speckled and blotch with brown spots, which may or may not be part of the egg's natural coloring. If not, they need cleaning off with a wet paper towel before they're put away in the egg cartons and refrigerator, but that's easy enough. But there are other times. The hands go on strike for extended periods. They just don't like any eggs at all. Some people tell me this happens because our hands are old, and some of them certainly are. I don't like getting rid of hands. We have hands that are, you know, 10, 12. They're so nice. I just can't, I just don't like this business, this sort of strangling and putting in the pot stuff. So they're just there. And this winter, when we had that terribly cold spell, and one day a hand drop did, and the next day a rooster drop did, and I was heartbroken. And my husband said, Reef, do you remember when we got that? And then one of them was 10, and one of them was 11, and it was, you know, 10 below zero. And they were done. So I don't think you're supposed to keep them that long, but we always do. Anyway, some people tell, our hands are old. Other people tell me our hands don't get enough light in the winter months and that we should keep a light bulb burning in the barn. We would do this except that Nat, my husband, the spoil sport, doesn't want to burn the barn down. There are also people who advise us to feed the hand something other than just playing layer pellets from the grain store. Layer eggs more frequently pellets. I tend to believe all the advice I've given. So I start to think about doing something different with the hens, but just when I'm about to do it, they all start laying eggs again. They lay eggs in the nesting boxes and they lay eggs on the chicken on the floor and they lay eggs in hidden places in the haylock. And that's a real problem. When you're stacking hay bales in the barn in July, the last thing you want to have underfoot is a rotten egg from last year. Unless it's a screeching hen who thinks you're a home invader. I go on at some length. And then there is a couple we knew who have since moved away, but who live in town in St. John'sbury and they had several chickens themselves, very beautiful. And they did not travel with them. So they would, I mean, they were just beautifully cared for and kept and they were just pretty pretty hens. And the last, these people's last name was Wales, W-A-L-B-S. And we call these hens the princesses of Wales. And they would come and visit us. And they also went to a yoga class in their own in their house, a yoga class they had in their house. So this hen would come parading around throughout the yoga class and the lasanas or something. But when they came to us, it was the roosters were not polite. Lovely, lovely hens, I think. You just kind of put them in, we put them in, close our eyes and hope for the best. And when Tom and the Waleses came back home and picked up their beautiful princesses and took them back to their house. And I would ask Tom what how the hens were, how the chickens were worried, I thought they had been molested and marauded by our roosters. And he said, well, you know, they seem a little depressed. You know, it's been a week, and he hasn't called and he hasn't written. So that's, we just might just go on and on and on about about my chickens at great length. I was writing about that Samantha has already, she's already taken away the punchline of my eyelashes, but I'm just going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to read a little, it's all right. Where did my eyelashes go? Didn't I have eyelashes? I mean, more than just a few sparsely scattered, they've always been up there, haven't they? They used to be attached to my eyelids in some quantity, with enough thickness available to pull on when I got a speck of dust in my eye in that special way of pulling on it was taught as a child. You grab the lashes between thumb and forefinger and pull the eyelids out and over onto the top of the cheek, and then let it go and the speck usually was gone. The other day I had something in my eye and I tried that eyelash pulling remedy, but it was really hard because the eyelashes themselves were gone. As if somebody had come along and pruned them like little carrot seedlings in the vegetable garden, taking every other plant prune eyelashes. But I need them, I thought. I need them to protect me from the specks of dust and pet hairs and bits of grit and sand that are kicked up to eye level by wheels or feet or paws moving quickly in my vicinity. I also have the feeling they come in handy when I'm blinking. I did quite a lot of blinking after undergoing brain surgery. It was benign, but I had a tumor. A few years ago, although I don't blink quite so often now, besides I'm used to having eyelashes, though I suppose I've never done much for them or with them. I'm not an eyelash batter and it's been many years since I used mascara and eyeliner, mostly because I never really got the hang of it. And always ended up looking less like the wide eyed beauty featured on the eye makeup ads and more like a startled baby raccoon. I was actually pretty worried about the loss of my eyelashes. How could I have lost my eyelashes? Eyeglasses, yes, I lose those all the time, but I keep several pairs. And when I lose them, I usually find them again pretty soon. But eyelashes, how and where was I going to find those? Well, guess what? I did find them. There's more. Oh, my. And this was one about my grandmother and her garden garden. My grandmother had a flower garden. So did my mother and my aunt. And sometimes my sister did too, though she lived in cities for most of her adult life, and have limited garden opportunities. As I work in my own garden each summer with dirt and plants and garden tools all around me, I can't help thinking about other women in my family, and other gardens. I can still see the sloping border of perennials that my grandmother's house in Maine, a cascade of multi colored blooms and tall waving spires and low blossoming clusters pink and blue and yellow and red and lavender running along both sides of the grassy path that led from her house down to a beach of rocks and barnacles. The only flower from that garden whose name stuck with me at the time was snap dragon. Because I never understood how it snapped. If I plucked one flower from its stalk of pale pink or blue or yellow blooms and put my thumb and my forefinger into an upper and lower part of that flower and move my fingers up and down, I could see the resemblance to a dainty, tiny pastel finger puppet of a dragon, but it seemed far too well bred to snap. My grandmother was like the snap dragon, a small energetic, warm hearted woman with very good manners. But when you looked more closely, she had the strong will of a much more imposing creature. She also seemed to me, even at the age when I knew her, to love parties. Her gardens were like elaborate formal parties, well conceived, well staffed horticultural galas. My grandmother employed gardeners with everybody invited except the weeds. My grandmother chose to have 150 gladiolas planted in her main garden. I know this because my cousin showed me an old garden booklet with everything that they had ordered at that time. I can't even believe the numbers of plants that they brought in from the nursery in Camden, Maine, I believe it was. But that was very confusing for me, because I've always heard that my grandmother and her two sisters, Annie and Edith, disliked gladiolas, disliked them so much that they may past. When one of the sisters died, the survivor or survivors would see to it that there were no gladiolas at the funeral. And Edith, the youngest and last of her sisters to survive, took this obligation so much to heart that at my grandmother's funeral, Edith went around the church ripping gladiolas from all over the world. We have a few, just a few gladiolas or have had. And I was very glad to have them because the winters were so long. So I see them as fiery, not funereal. And if the gladiolas display as a little gaudy, well, as my husband said, we can use a little gaudy in this climate. It seems outrageous that any flower so exotically colorful, could bloom here in Northern Vermont. I'm grateful to the gladiolas, because they do have a little piece about mud season. After a long winter at the end of March or early April, I forget that spring is inevitable, it really will come. I'm impatient. And I wish I could do something to make it come now. I remember the feeling as a child growing up in Connecticut. When spring came a month earlier than does here in Vermont. Still, it never came soon enough. And one year, I went around outside my home with warm water in a pitcher, possibly the same water pitcher I now have in my kitchen, with the words, Allegheny metalware graved on its base, I don't know what metal it's made of, not silver, not pewter, maybe steel. There was a steeliness to the 1950s, as I remember it, railroad tracks, the braces on my teeth, the color of my father's hair, the glint in his eye when he had something serious to say to me or anyone else in the family. So I walked around the house with a possibly steel pitcher full of warm water, and I poured the water on stubbornly wintry things. I see spears of grass along the front path, frozen mud puddles in the driveway. I wanted to do my bit to break the grip of winter under England. I wanted to thaw the whole world. And I go on to what happens when it thaws and suddenly you don't have a beautiful lawn, what you have as a whole bear area. Quite a lot of dog poop. But I talk about raking and how good it feels to rake. Even though I never can believe that having raked the lawn off of my minor perennial debts, having raked and raked in the fall. I don't understand why I have to do it again in the spring. All those leaves that I raked away in their back. So that's what I've been doing just lately. My mother used to talk about the need for human beings to affirm what she called the ongoing use of life, to find a way to move along with change and become part of it season after season, year after year, even during times of great trouble. The need to celebrate the arrival of a new baby, for example, the very month that a beloved family member has just died. I understood this when I first glimpsed my younger daughter after her birth in early January, six months after my father's death. I saw that she had a dimple in her chin like my father's tiny, intensely blue eyed, stunned as I was by the enormity of her young bird. Her view of the world not yet focused with recognition of anything I knew, still, she had, is dimple. Family recognitions and confusions are not uncommon at such moments. So gardens for me and renewal, and definitely birth and all of that gets very, very deeply connected through my living here. And that, that I think is true for all of us, but has it doesn't have to do with living two lives that has to do with just living our human lives. But in connection with what I call my two lives, I have an essay called seeing the airplanes. And it starts, my mother never flew in the spirit of St. Louis. This always seemed odd to me, although I knew that my father's most famous aircraft was built to hold just one person, the pilot. And there wasn't much room to spare inside the cockpit. The idea was to carry enough fuel for the 1927 flight from New York to Paris with a little to spare and to save weight in every other way. Some people call the spirit a flying gas tank. Because that's pretty much what it was. It certainly wasn't designed to carry passengers. Still, in the flight log, my father kept for the spirit, a number of people are listed as having flown with him in that plane, one at a time, and usually for no longer than 10 or 15 minutes, 20 at longest, having looked into the very compact cockpit, where my father six feet two inches must have felt confined already. I've always wondered where he put these people on his lap. And how hard was it to fly the plane with somebody else in there with him? According to aviation legend, the spirit of St. Louis was not an easy plane to fly with or without passengers. I once heard a story about the creation of the flying replica of the spirit in the 1950s for the film in which Jimmy Stewart played my father. Apparently, the people who built the replica had followed the original specifications very carefully and believed that they had successfully copied the airplane. However, when their plane was finished, and it was time for the first test flights, something seemed terribly wrong. The replica was unstable in the air, the test pilot reported, it shook and shuttered constantly. If the pilot allowed his attention to stray for even an instant, the spirit would stray off course. What had they missed? While those responsible for construction were still pondering this, my father visited the set. He wanted to see the flying replica is actually hoped to fly it. After a certain amount of discussion and concern and maybe even a little panic, the decision was made to let him fly the replica. After all, he knew a thing or two about the original. Maybe he could figure out how to correct the mistakes made during this one. He took off in the replica, while a group of anxious people waited on the ground below. He was gone for five minutes. Then he was gone for 10 minutes. The people on the ground expected at any moment to see him bring the plane down upset and disappointed. But he was gone for a long time before he finally brought the little plane into land. Everyone waited anxiously to hear his thoughts. And when he emerged from the cockpit, he exclaimed, I had forgotten what a wonderful little plane that is. And then and you've got it. You've got it perfectly in every detail. And that really was the point of that airplane. I think it had to it had to carry all this fuel. It had to be unstable in order to keep them awake. That was part of it. They didn't build in the instability. That was it was helpful, I believe. After and after he flew to Paris, then he went did a tour around the United States. He was in Springfield, Vermont. And they still have a film that I saw that I want to do a reading in the Children's Room. They showed me this film of my father landing in Springfield in 1927. And all the all the dignitaries were wearing three piece suits and hats. And it was a middle August. Even in Vermont, you don't want to be dressed like that. And then he went after going around the US, he went to Mexico, and that my mother, but when he when he was flying to Mexico, he followed his usual practice, because of course, they didn't have airports. He would, he would fly low over the over the town over a railroad, railroad station, and he would look for the name of the town. And then he would figure out, figure out where he was going to go to the next town, fly low over that railroad station. And see the name of the town that he could pretty much be sure he was on the right track. But when he crossed the border into Mexico, in order to confirm his route, it seemed reasonable to fly low over a railroad station. And when he looked for the name of a town, he saw this word, Caballeros. So he checked the roadmap for the location. He could not find any town called Caballeros. He flew to the next town, found the railroad station and discovered another sign, Caballeros. He flew over three Mexican towns before he realized that Caballeros meant men's room. And then he made his way to Mexico City, where he met my mother's father, who was then the ambassador to Mexico, and the children of the family, my mother, and her two sisters and her brother. And that became the moment that my parents met. And he took her flying when she went back to Smith College. And he went and took her flying in, I guess, was in 1928. And then they engaged and married a few months later. And then he taught her to fly and she went over all the airways, they helped to track, they tracked the earliest air routes for the aviation industry that went over the pole to Asia. And she wrote about all this. And that went on for several years until after the death of my first child, and then the births fairly quickly thereafter of the rest of the children. And she did not, then she stopped flying. He never did, but she stopped flying. I found that during their lifetimes, I didn't often visit the artifacts, the aircraft, and so on, once or twice, in the aviation museum in the National Air and Space Museum. But I became in recent years, I've really gotten to love visiting. I've been asked to visit and talk a little bit about them. But I love visiting the airplanes, where they used to be these kind of metallic bits of history. And I didn't like it because they weren't part of my life. They were, they were from an earlier period of their lives I've gotten. So I just love them. They're like the members of the family. And when I go, I'll find, you know, look through the cases and see what kind of instruments they use and what food they were eating. And there's somebody who I found a little bit of some pressed flowers that my mother had found in Greenland, I think. And to see that material, rather than pulling them away from me, kind of brings them back, which is, which is a delight. I love doing that. And I realized that as you, you know, as you get older, you're all the different parts of your life, the history, the parents, the children, the pieces of life kind of pulling together and become part of the same thing. And I love that. And I guess that's why I wrote this book. So I don't know if you have questions or comments or thoughts to share. Whatever you like. When I was reading to kids, and I would say, do you have any questions? And sometimes somebody greases him and say, my dad just got a new truck. This isn't really related. But I recently rewatched a movie called Along Came a Spider, in which it's about James Patterson's book character Alex Cross. Mormon Freeman plays the title character. And it's about the Charles Lindberg story. But it's a parody. There's a guy who likes the story so much that he wants to repeat or imitate that crime. Kidnapping kidnapping story. Okay. Anyway, I recently rewatched it. And I was wondering if you or your family were ever asked to be a part of that along came a spider. We've been asked to be I don't think I've been asked to be part of that. I've been asked to be interviewed for many documentaries or show any whatever comes along. If there's something new that somebody finds or thinks they found about the kidnapping, we generally get asked and we don't get involved. You know, we try. I was none of us were born at that time. And so all the only thing we've got is what everybody else has. The researchers are going to do a lot better job. And I just meant in terms of like, if they had asked you, do you want to come to the set? Because there was a lot about Charles Lindberg that was a lot. I didn't know if that was something that I'm pretty sure I just did it. Tell me again, who was the producer? Well, I don't know. But it wasn't. I mean, it was a 1990. Yeah, it may have that may may have been one that I may be 1997, 98, 99 around there. I mean, I was sure. But I wouldn't be it's very possible. Second movie in the Morgan Freeman series, because he did remember this. Yeah, it was Morgan Freeman. Right. Anything else? Yeah, well, I just wanted to maybe maybe, you know, met him. That would be all wonderful. That would be great. Yeah. Never talked about it. Oh, no. I mean, they did, they did it. Well, I can tell you once, but my mother talked about the death of her child when I had a little boy who died. And it happened at her house, actually, he had been ill and he died in the night. And she was wonderful. And then talked to me about what what it was like for her and how and how you and she said, you know, you sort of die a little bit. And then you are reborn again. And it was very she was extraordinarily helpful to me. But she they didn't talk about it with us at all. Of course, they didn't talk about he didn't talk about the flight either. There are the things that were in the past in the past. And they talked about now, or they might talk he might have talked about his Swedish ancestors on the frontier in Minnesota, which was then a frontier, or she would talk about her her grandmother that I had never met. And that was fascinating. But they didn't talk about the Lindbergh sonoma. That that was not of interest to them in talking about talking with us. So those kinds of things we found out for ourselves, started from the outside, just the way everybody else felt. And that's how you found out about the other families? Oh, the other families, it was different. I had I had a letter from one of the families in Germany, who did not want the story to get out. And his cousin, half sister of his had three families, one of them, their mother had died and they wanted to hope to kind of open up the story to the world. There were two, two others absolutely did not want this. There, they were these were three German women my my father met two of them were sisters. This was just after the war. They had all had that had family situations that had been devastated by the war. And he became involved with these three women and there were seven children all together. This was between 1950s to the time he died in 1974. And we didn't know a thing about it. I don't think my mother did. One of my aunts said, well, she knew something, but she didn't know what she knew. And it was not until after she died that that they approached us where things began to come out. And I went to Europe and met them all like them very much. And then it kind of calmed down. I think they they wrote a book or family that wanted to write a book wrote a book and the others just don't think they are all connected. And we just said because they all grew up together but the the family that I people that I I know best are two brothers who now live in Switzerland and they I'm still quite quite connected and very very fond of them. I like them all and I think people say well what would you ask your father if you could these are real people and they're just lovely and I met one of the mothers liked her so much that kept thinking these are just like friends of my mother's you know these are very well educated and quite artistic and quite gentle people and I don't want to make a big sensational story about them. I just like them. In your book I'm going to let my sister raise her hand because she just asked earlier. I don't have a new quote. Do any of your you or any of your siblings are are aviators? None of my siblings. I mean I think we were all taken to Sly and like two older brothers I think which we learn most but I have a nephew my oldest brother son Eric Lindbergh who is who is very much an aviator and if you look him up it's ERIK if he's involved in all kinds of kind of cutting edge environmental aviation and he's been he's been flying forever wonderful young man oh gosh he's got to be 50 by now excuse me but but that that's the one Eric it's very very much not of the children no no and you know actually I've got a brother who did a lot with not hand gliders what am I thinking of Kitty Hawk flyer? yeah what did you just say? Kitty Hawk flyer? Paragliding. Paragliding. It's it's uh when he's he's going over the canopy of the jungle with these yeah I don't think they're not gliders though but anyway he's so he was he's been somewhat involved but not in it not as a profession at all and our father actually did not encourage it he said this is it he said you want to find something that is as as exciting and innovative and adventurous as aviation was for me he said it's different it's a different world now so he wasn't what he wasn't he wanted us to experience it so he did take everyone take us offline and the older ones got to do more than I did because uh I was kind of little at the time he had me I mean I did have to kind of use the stick and get the aircraft this way and that way and forward and back and it was it was kind of fun but I couldn't really reach anyone and he and I I had the one um I was the one person aside from his own father with whom he had a forced landing because they we were in a um an aranca little aircraft and we were flying out of Connecticut and the engine cut out and there was an automatic choke supposedly but it wasn't working so we had to land in like a pasture and he had to put your head down and put your arms like that and I did and it kind of went boom boom boom boom and we landed and then they couldn't get the note course and nobody could fly it out they had to take the plane apart to get it out that was fun I'm sorry we'll have more and your book uh under under a way yeah uh at the 20 20 and you mentioned when um your mom had which it was so difficult to imagine had had dementia yeah and you were at a family gathering and probably one of the great grandchildren serving ice cream or something your mom had the idea that the ice cream was poisonous or something oh yeah and took it away yeah and I thought wow here's this woman who was so articulate and so such a keen mind and this child would only remember her as this person who took away the ice cream there were other there were other uh there were other times and uh but that was it was hard for him he was young he was quite young then and when that was going through all that but he also had time so he would he would just be there and he would be quiet and it was so it wasn't entirely that but that was hard so he had a lot of other memories of her I don't know but I but I know there were other times so if I mean if you asked him he might say say oh you know she took away the ice cream but there were there were other other periods and he's a pretty he's a pretty thoughtful guy now sweet one and uh it'd be interesting to ask but but she lived with us and was around and until they you know they saw each other quite a bit but there were things like that I have I wrote actually I didn't write a book I had the journal and my editor was interested in and there was a book published called no more words about that period she didn't speak much then you never knew if she did you never knew what it was going to be so I had a summer in that book and wrote about driving her from I was you were going from St. Johnsbury to Littleton and over that really beautiful highway and um you know I was losing a lot and thinking this and that and my mother who never didn't speak but like to be driven places she suddenly said I'm afraid and I said I asked her I was thinking about her condition and I said what is it is it losing friends or feeling getting older and not able to do it wasn't this wasn't that and she looked at me and she said it's your driving we make that you have this drama in your head and there's something quite practical going on or the impractical who knows were you closest to your mother I don't I don't and we all think we were closest to my mother but I was there um at a I think I was there at a period where I felt very close to her because you know everybody else had grown and gone and um I was probably around at a time of her life like when the others weren't how close do you think Jimmy Stewart claimed to uh portraying your father I think he was quite a bit like my father as a he was in his fifties when he when he played my father at 25 and he did have a they were similar I mean I think there was a quality of kind of I don't know American lanky uh somewhat reticent personality that that they shared I guess he really wanted to play that role so it was uh it resonated it he wasn't he wasn't a kid when he did that but did they ask your advice or anybody in the family but they I think my father met him and liked him and thought it was just fine I mean he he wasn't didn't get too much involved in the um once in a while he uh got involved I think they had there was a fly I don't know if you know a movie there's a fly that is in the cockpit and buzzes around in it that's right I remember that yeah my father wasn't crazy about the fly but then somebody got really carried away with it and he wanted like he wanted the fly they wanted the fly to wake him up at a critical moment and my father swaps the fly and the fly dies and he puts him up and he said no so they just have the fly fly around as much as he was able to stop them from burial at sea and fly it gets it does get silly sometimes you know sometimes you just say what and it's just as often me being silly as anybody else yes I'm sorry all the way all the way over I'm so sorry I was just wondering what your favorite music was and is what what music do you remember from when you were younger and part of the family growing and what is music for you know oh my oh my mother's a box so I probably wouldn't go for that anytime anytime I hear it there was a lot of music but it was all hers she was even he would he liked it but he uh who about you what music do you like most I like everything I like uh I'm just trying to think there's not much I don't like but I I don't think I have a um I mean I'm very I love classical music and I'd like and I also like I love all the traditions love that I think that's pretty great um yeah I can't think as torch songs jazz uh Frank Sinatra so much so much I think I think let's stick with classical music okay I love both and I like I love Mozart I love Mozart and I like Motown I left Motown after a while yeah did you and your mother have a relationship as fellow writers probably yeah I think we did and we would talk about how how you know what are my sister as well you know what what different you know what it took to write and what my mother was the one who when we were young would you had something you were thinking about and talked to her about it and it was interesting and something about nature or something about something you were thinking about that was important to you which you would always say write that down just write it down so that that was a big impetus I have a question of rich people beyond just your book and that is uh our libraries are changing so and now for instance this particular library here in Montpelier no longer carries the encyclopedia because there's online creation that people can get but you know this I feel this is a form of discrimination against again the very poor who have no computers so then that keeps them from the library what do you see as a solution for that well I think the library what the librarians feel the librarians feel that in the library is is all the online material I mean there are there are our libraries at johnsbury there are banks of computers and people and you could come in and use them for free and you can get instruction as well what if you don't know how to use the computer there is instruction as well there are there are people people who will help you learn how to do that and I think there are also reference books I don't think they're all gone but I think it is what's hard is to kind of keep keep it up keep them up to date and there is a sense that there might even be more information now online I think they're I think that's true about the online what I'm concerned about is the young people in private schools where they don't have all these that's really that's really hard because they absolutely need them they absolutely need computers to function now I just I've just had it corresponds with a archivist actually one of the archivists at the Airspace Museum historian who's very worried about the absence of papers she spent her life with papers and gathering materials from a from lifetime which would be would be all correspondence especially and whether it's business or personal and that there could there's a great deal of concern that that's gone and and very difficult to retrieve so and there are some very important things going on but I guess we technically you know do you have any suggestions though as to how one like me could could work to to see that these deprived children who they are deprived learn the the techniques of using a real encyclopedia if they don't have the online access I asked the people who are working with those children what kinds of opportunities there are and and then work work to get those opportunities improved I'd like to know what you know what they've actually got and some of the very small schools I'm amazed at how much access they have but um access to what access to computers there's much more access than than there was even even you know 30 years ago when you'd have a librarian and say we can use we have a computer and we can use it from I get we can use it from one to three when the person who knows about it comes in that's not true anymore there are people are very computer literate in libraries and in schools because they've had to be um but I check it out and I don't go to that through that libraries and if somebody tells you we have nothing in our living in terms of computer access for our children that's crazy they've got to have it I would just say I work with special ed and some of the issues that I see are not that the resources are not available it's that those families don't know how to get out their front door um whether or not that's apathy whether or not that's a drug addiction whether or not that's um the inability to see beyond their culture um their culture is very embroiled in the system hates us we hate the system that's the culture that's the mindset so it's not necessarily that the resources are not there they're there their mindset is I don't want your resource I don't want your library I'm gonna go and I'm gonna rip all your books up oh boy I'm gonna go and I'm gonna you know smash in your computer that's the mindset because uh the world is the enemy um people who are trying to help you are the enemy that's that's the mindset so my work is to help them step out of that mindset of I'm not your enemy I am trustworthy I'm not an adult who's going to hit you abuse you punch you so that's trust the boundary right so so basically they're they're they're very hurt people very hurt um and they come from generations of hurt and if your parents can't read and if your parents can't write their defense is that reading and writing is bad and stupid and dumb and if you grow up in that household if you can read and write your parents might say you're dumb because you read and write why are you reading and writing you're dumb to do that so not only do they have an internal pressure against them they have external pressure and then they're peer group if they can't read and write you know who are you to be smart who are you but it changes you know so so that's the mindset that's the mindset and then we're trying to you know put a growth mindset one of the children I tutor comes from a very rural and it has a lot of the same kind of association but but a very this child is very wholesome online and quick conversation at the dinner table and all but getting back to your issue she did is when I brought when I brought this student down to the Kellogg library to use the computers I was amazed at how much he knew how much he didn't know just from this little rural school he it was not a it was not a deprived atmosphere over there as even though it didn't have a lot of the bells and whistles in the bigger schools he had he knew a tremendous I was impressed that's interesting so there's deprivation that has to be of spirit that has to do with your internal situation and then there's the the literal deprivation that you're worried about behind that you're worried about not having not having access but you can always always volunteer time resources money always the schools are always welcome for more people to volunteer to go to homes to be a big brother big sister a mentor take that child and get an ice cream cone there's a lot of a lot of volunteers and lots that we love help do you work through boys and girls or um no I work uh through spalding high school I just wondered if you have anything you're excited about growing in your garden do I have anything excited but I'm going yes I found I dug down and found a little bit my stillby is coming up and I love that stuff oh there's something that I think I thought was I did Daphne which I was very fond of I thought it was isn't they are hard to come by yeah um I'm listening to you talk and listen and listening to you read your text and it's I feel a lot of yours talking in general is like writing yeah and so how do you delineate and gather the pieces that you're going to put in the book and does your language change a little bit do you think I don't it changes after somebody good has edited it but I can't I try not to have a change I would like it to be I would like it to be the same the same thing I don't want to do and I work and I do some teaching and writers and uh you don't have to be something called a writer you know if you just if you're talking sometimes people will talk to me and say these wonderful things and then they start to put it on paper and it's it becomes more formal it becomes a little stilted I keep thinking no just keep talking but you know talk on your computer or with your pen or whatever it is because I think it should be I think it should always be a conversation for me because otherwise I'm getting fancy schmancy or something that I don't like or I'm getting didactic or it and usually if I do that I just have to take it all out and start again so do you write with a pen or on the computer both both I usually start with a pen because that I kind of that keeps me going and I'm not scared of it and then I'll start and then I'll work on the computer I cross things out it's amazing yes you know it's this in one of Philip Ross books he wrote about are you familiar with it he wrote about his about your father oh yes and he fictionalized that your father had become president and he claimed that your father was very anti-Semitic uh well I think anybody would you know he made he made speeches anti-war speeches pre-war and my mother said if you write if she read the speech I said if you if you say that they will be you'll be called anti-Semitic for the rest of your life he said but I'm not he didn't he didn't I think understand what that was don't think he did and I think there's a lot of a lot of residual kind of racism anti-Semitism still in this country and we don't recognize that he was he was an object lesson for me because I didn't think he was anti-Semitic or racist but I look back at some of those a language and I think oh no this is not who I knew I don't understand it um but it made me very humble about thinking that I was a good guy because who knows that's tough stuff yes I did not read that book the plot against demerit I thought I just can't it wasn't his best book but it wasn't bad but of course it wasn't bad but I just some some of it I just think I can stand it even even though um you know they somebody says things and writes things by golly that's what they've done you can't get away from it yeah well of course most of his writing was about his experience as a Jewish person so of course and it was and he was also very very good he's very funny he did stuff finally impressive yeah and did your father later on sort of acknowledge that his position was more misguided no never he believed that he was um he believes that it means he fought you know he went fought as a civilian he you know went up in the Pacific and flew combat missions and helped the pilots to economize fuel and he certainly believed in in serving his country in wartime but he he was absolutely in isolation to America first um and he I don't think I've ever known him to um to say oh I was wrong nothing I may I may be wrong about that but I don't remember him changing my mother was much more that way but that would have been very difficult for him I think I don't I didn't know him as as a as a racist anti-Semitic I didn't that wasn't how we were raised or any of that but on the other hand you wrote what he wrote said what he said and did not believe that it was anti anybody that's interesting what are you referring to precisely at three war speeches and my father was a was a an isolationist in the America first movement which did not wish the U.S. to enter World War II okay and the um there was a large percentage of the population that wanted to stay out of the war for a long time and that was all over once of course but um but he was definitely in the vanguard of that movement okay and what was his reasoning I mean beyond just we should take care of our country we should take care of our country this wasn't our war right um and that there was something about and I should know this much better than I do but that we would the Europe would be destroyed and uh I guess the Russians would come and take over something like that but I don't mean to belittle it because there were some very very well respected intelligent people who um who were of this persuasion when it came to Brewster of Yale they were a number of people who went on to do all kinds of other things my father definitely was accused of being in that position because of racist or anti-Semitic feeling and he claimed that wasn't true and yet some of the things that he that he wrote sounded pretty close okay but I don't think he knew that yeah I think I might have remembered but this could be misremembering that aviation was in such an early stage and that your father um and please correct me if I'm wrong had great hopes that aviation would bring people closer and that it would be a peaceful world horrendous to him to think that then planes were being used to drop on definitely that was very much what had what happened that was really I think that brought him into the environmental movement in a funny way his his sort of view from the air gave him a sense of what we had to lose if we kept on destroying the planet and somehow planes the fact that we could communicate more quickly would bring people together he had hope that yeah complicated many faceted individual yeah um were you aware whether he experienced bitterness about his you know his sort of reputation as this great american hero being somewhat tarnished by the politics of the time and his views I think he was he was shocked and saddened I don't think he particularly liked being a big you know so hugely famous so I don't think that would have been the difficulty I think it was the notion that he was anti-american unpatriotic and he almost was not able to serve and of course he wasn't serving wasn't serving in the air force anyway not officially but he was he was very pleased to be able to fly in the Pacific and that meant a great deal to him and he was then reinstated officially later on and I think that made a great deal to him but he definitely was you know up there and down there and then kind of won his life sort of evened out as best we knew uh I think that was a very good time for him that I think those environmental years did he remain an isolationist so to speak after pearl harbor oh no he flew in the pacific he joined up so he changed his mind essentially he I can't say that he changed his mind but I can remember him talking to one of my brothers who refused to serve and we did not serve in the vietnam war left the country never came back and my father argued with him and said I was against a war but I served and like served my country that was his feeling was very cut and dried and and very um that's very characteristic of him my brother said no no this is something I can't do yeah this isn't necessarily something you would know but my sister is involved in a project uh where they just declassified women air service pilots uh wasps and their role in bringing planes to and from different bases yes um and I I just wouldn't know if you your father would have crossed cross oh yes he knew them he knew them and I knew one I knew a wonderful wonderful and a group of there are still I mean there are those who are still with us there they still there are still those who meet and they are often honored um that was a remarkable group of women and they were uh first they couldn't they couldn't fly them after they brought them to the men to do right then if I may ask um would I be able to get my sister in touch with you she interviews women air service pilots and she's filming a docu-series about them but you need to find the women I mean you right she she she has but I was just wondering if I could also connect her to you if she I don't think I have much information but you know okay that's fine I might be able to refer to somebody if I oh yeah well maybe that and maybe that yes thank you yeah will you sign my book I will sign your book you know I'm not sure whether he knew him or not I should I could I should look in the blackbird biography and he might he might have met him I don't know because I'm a sort of these both extraordinary