 All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host over here on the end, Christa Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics of interest to librarians. The show is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week and it is then posted onto our website. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives. Both the live show and the archives are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. We cover a mixture of things here. For those of you not Nebraska local, we are the Nebraska Library Commission is a state agency for libraries in Nebraska and that's for all types of libraries. So we do have topics on our show that are for public, K-12, academic, university, school, correction facilities, special museums. We run the gamut. Really our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries, which is very broad. So you'll find anything that might be of interest to you. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products we think you may be interested in. So we're all over the board here, which I think is great. We do have Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations about things that are specific to what we are offering here, but we also bring guest speakers sometime. And today we have a mixture of that. This morning we are talking about the 2019 One Book One Nebraska selection. And I think I may just hand over to you, Tessa, if you're going to be doing guiding us through today. And we'll introduce everybody as we're going through this. Everything you know what we're all doing here, but this is what we're talking about today. Yeah. So like Chris said, we are talking about the 2019 One Book One Nebraska selection, This Blessed Earth, by our author, Ted Genoen. I'm Tessa Terry. I'm the communications coordinator here at the Nebraska Library Commission. And just go around and make sure everyone knows who we are. This is Ted Genoen. This is Ted Genoen. I'm Becky Faber. I am on the Center for the Book Board and a half chair of the One Book One Nebraska selection committee. I'm Rod Wanger. I'm director of the Library Commission and a ex officio member of the Nebraska Center for the Book Board. And I'm Christine Walsh. And I'm out in Carney. I'm the president of the Center for the Book Board and was also on the selection committee for the One Book One Nebraska. Well, why don't we start out just kind of explaining if our listeners don't know what the One Book One Nebraska program is. And I'll let Becky give us a little backstory about that. Thank you, Tessa. This is the 16th selection of One Book One Nebraska, which is a program where a single selection is chosen for residents of Nebraska to all be reading and discussing the same book. I'm going to talk about the traditional process because our process this year was a little bit different. But traditionally, we're looking for a book that meets one of three criteria. Either written by a Nebraska author, has a Nebraska theme, or has a Nebraska setting. And the book must have an ISV in and must be readily available across the state for readers. Ornarily, our nominations come from the public. And we encourage people to nominate books fitting within those criteria, meeting at least one of those criteria. And then there is a selection committee from the Center for the Book that reads, makes sure that the books have met what is necessary to be available across the state and then narrows the selection. When we reach a shortlist, which is early in the fall, that shortlist is generally publicized so that the public has an idea of the direction that we're headed. And that's great fun to be able to release that shortlist. And then the actual selection itself is voted on by the board and that is named at the celebration of books. Now, one of the things that we do want people to know is this year has been a little bit different as a joint program with all Iowa reads. But for the 2020 selection, we will be returning to our normal process and will be accepting nominations for the 2020 selection through the 15th of June. And the information for nomination is on the website. So you can go there and see, I believe there are two ways that those can be nominated. So we've been doing One Book One Nebraska for, this is our 15th year. And we've got a little slide here of all the books we've had in the past. And they really cover a wide variety of topics. Last year we had poetry anthology. So you can get a feel on the website and get more information about each book on the Center for the Book One Book One Nebraska page. So why don't we talk a little bit about the unique selection process for this year's book. I know we worked with the Iowa Center for the Book with it. Yes. Yes, we did. What was that process like? How many books did you guys look at as a joint committee? We were approached by the All Iowa Reads Committee in the summer of 2017 with the idea of doing a joint fill action, excuse me, for 2019. And the board agreed that we would do that. This is a one-time only project. So obviously the logistics had to be fine-tuned. And this was done via the wonders of current technology. There were 16 people who were engaged in this from the start, eight from each state. So we did have very much balanced input. And our initial number of nominations was 27. We worked through the nominations and just continued to do reading. And this was an immense amount of reading. And then we would telecommunicate. We would talk about books and just continue to narrow the number down. And by the end of the summer, we had narrowed down to eight and then down to five. And that short list of five was released in early October. And then our ultimate choice, The Dislucid Earth, which was announced later this fall, last fall. Great. Kristy, were you on that committee? I was. What about The Dislucid Earth? Checked all the boxes that you guys needed for a joint, one book, one Nebraska. A book that engages you to really think and gives us opportunities for great discussions. And I think opportunities to educate. Are there other groups, other points of view that can be brought in to engage too? Because I think the opportunity, books expand the mind. And if we can continue to do that and make it a thoughtful selection, I think that's extremely important. And certainly this book does all of those things. So I'm looking forward to the year of discussions and, I don't know, sharing across the state. And then having Ted, of course, come in and interact with the readers because people are very excited. So I'm going to hand it over to you, Ted, to talk a little bit about your book. Well, firstly, I have to thank everyone assembled and everyone involved in the selection process. Obviously it's a distinguished group to join the authors who have been selected in years past. It especially means a lot to me. The two of the past year's selections were books by Bill Clefhorn and Ted Couser, both of whom were professors of mine when I was an undergraduate. So I just, I can't say enough about what it means to join them in this group of authors who have been selected. In talking about the book and introducing the book a little bit, I felt like it was necessary to talk a little bit about what's happened and what you may have seen in the last 10 days in terms of press attention. As you may have seen, the governor of Nebraska declined to sign the official proclamation for the One Book, One Nebraska selection. And the reason that was cited was his belief that the book is divisive and he said that he wanted to have something that instead brought together the people of Nebraska. I would first, I guess, note that the governor also says that he hasn't read the book. But second and more importantly to say that the goal of this book is, it couldn't be farther from this suggestion that I'm trying to divide people. In fact, the whole notion of this book in the first place was to try to have something that would show the sort of commonality that I think that there is for this sort of rural experience in not only in Nebraska but across the middle of the country. And so one of the things also that I think is important to note is that the inspiration for this really came when my wife and I were doing, and you're going to see some of her photographs here in just a moment, Marianne Andre, whose photos are also in the book. Marianne and I had been doing reporting together on the Keystone XL pipeline and the controversy surrounding the pipeline. And one of the things that we discovered as we were covering this issue was how ill-informed a lot of reporters who were arriving from the coasts seemed to be about especially rural life in the middle of the country. And so there were a lot of kind of, I think, well-intentioned but often ill-mannered or uninformed questions that were asked. It was always a little bit cringe-inducing to see reporters arriving from New York and the first questions out of everybody's mouth was how many acres people had and how many cattle they were running. And seeing again and again as farmers and ranchers would respond, how much money do you have in your bank account? And it was just that there was a there was a cultural divide there. And we started talking about how we might make the farmers and ranchers who we have been covering more than just props in stories about the politics surrounding something like the pipeline project, and instead try to give people a deep understanding of place and of the people who live in that place. Mary Ann was the one who first had the idea of selecting the Hammonds and following them for a year. I don't know if we can put up the slides of the Hammond family. Introduce you to the Hammons here one by one. Megan Hammond was our first contact. She was someone who Mary Ann had met originally at a protest in Washington, D.C. that Mary Ann was photographing related to the pipeline. Megan was brash enough that she approached Mary Ann, wanted to know what she was doing there taking photos of the Nebraska group of protesters. And they quickly hit it off. And what we found out from spending some time with the Hammond family was that not only was the piece of ground that Megan and her then boyfriend, now husband, were in the process of taking over slated to be crossed by the Keystone XL pipeline. But the family was also, I think, quite representative of a number of other issues that have been facing rural America. Megan lost her high school boyfriend to a roadside bomb in Iraq and which gave us some opportunity to address the sort of disproportionate presence of rural people, especially young men in the military. But there was also the fact that the Hammons as a family had really come around to this idea that they wanted to try to engage in a different kind of agriculture than the conventional agriculture that they have been engaged in. But we're really experiencing some practical struggles with that transition. We can go to the next slide. Megan's father, Rick Hammond, who is very much the patriarch of the family and sort of the guiding wisdom of the operation. Rick grew up on a ranch in Western Nebraska and Curtis, Nebraska. And in some ways has what I think Megan finds to be old fashioned ideas about especially the cattle operation, a kind of throwback ranchers notion of things. But Rick is also very much an environmentalist and thinks of himself as a steward first and foremost. And so Rick had experimented with trying to move over to raising antibiotic free beef and also experimented with raising organic crops and had really experienced difficulty along the way. And so talking about the challenge of that transition was also something that we wanted to speak about. And then last in that group is Kyle Galloway, who is, as I said, Megan's husband now was her boyfriend at the time that we spent that year with the family. And Kyle, for me, provided a kind of perfect conduit that he was very much a part of the family and really embraced by Rick as someone who had and has this wide range of skills and this tremendous work ethic that made him instantly indisposable on the farm. But Kyle also arriving, as he did, not only from outside of the immediate sphere of the family having grew up in Iowa, but Kyle has adopted and where the Hammons have this deep sense of family roots, Kyle doesn't even know who his birth parents are. And so he approached everything with the Hammons family as something of an outsider and someone who was learning the ropes and learning the history and was always someone who I could rely on to have a conversation about what was going on in the family and do a little bit of figuring out of that dynamic together. And then also just wanted to introduce you a little bit to the farm operation itself. So like so many farms today, there is a central farm that has been in the family since the 1870s. It was purchased in 1874 and really established as a functioning operation in 1876. And for that reason was named Centennial Hill Farm. I would defy anyone who goes to that spot to find me the hill that is on that farm. But it is ever so slightly higher than the other spots around. So it does drain and was something that very much appealed to Constellated around that center of gravity, that farm that is the original plot in York County are other pieces of ground that the Hammons have picked up over the years to add to their operation and increase the volume to make the margins of the operation work. This particular piece of ground that you see here is in Hamilton County just over the line, just west of where Centennial Hill Farm is just south of Central City. One of the other things that I should note that appealed to me about the Hammond family is that this particular piece of ground south of Central City is about 20 miles east of the farm where my grandfather grew up. And so a lot of the landmarks and the sort of points of familiarity both in terms of the Platte River where it cuts through there, but also where they would go when going to town and that sort of thing were all familiar locations for me from my family. As you can see, they have a cattle operation that's one part of what they do. They have Black Angus cattle. I won't tell you how many they have. And then as you can see here from the top of the grain bin, they have a operation that alternates between corn and soybeans and again is planted on farms that are sort of scattered around Hamilton and your counties. Okay, and so the, and I don't know if you can let these just run, but the other photos that you'll see here, essentially what we did as this project, once we've gotten the Hammond's to agree to the sort of incredible imposition of having two people who kept showing up at inopportune times throughout an entire year was follow them from harvest of 2014 to harvest of 2015. When we originally made that proposal and the Hammond's agreed, everything was going well in the farm economy. And it was an easy thing for them to say yes, because what it appeared was that we would be showing up and seeing everything at its best. Instead, over that summer, prices crashed for soybeans and corn and really started the farm economy that we know at this moment. As all of the farmers who are planning this rotation are scrambling to try to figure out how they're going to keep their operations afloat as prices have dropped about 50% from where they were. So it was a remarkable leap of faith on the part of the Hammond's that they allowed us to come in the midst of what was a sort of emerging crisis for the farm and for all farms across the middle of the country and for us to see as they were making hard decisions and real choices that they knew would affect the future of the farm at this critical moment as Megan and Kyle were moving toward marriage and moving toward taking over part of the operation as their own. So I can do a short reading, but before I do that, I just wonder if there are any questions at this point from participants. Yeah, sure. If anybody has any questions, go ahead and type into the questions section of the GoToWeb in our interface. We can grab anything from there. I'm monitoring that here. I'm on camera here now, but I'm a laptop, so we can any comments or anything? So while we're on that picture of Kyle, while people have that photo in front of them, I wanted to just read a passage from the book that relates directly to that photo. So the photo there in question, I was going to have everybody look at that. The photo there in question is on a particular evening during harvest of the first year that we were with the the Hammons and obviously not only was I there, but Marianne was there and we were in the cabs alternating with the Hammons as they were harvesting a field of soybeans. You can see from the head on the harvester that that's the soybean reel that is sort of the distinctive head on the harvester, that part of the harvest. And then there was also the grain cart that everything offloads onto and we were trading back and forth from those places. So it's a bit of a setup, but the Hammons were harvesting this field for a neighbor who they shared costs on the rental on the harvester and a pretty typical arrangement where this half-million dollar piece of equipment no one wanted to purchase just for use once a year. So you rent it, you've got a short period of time that you can use it, and so it places this pressure on trying to get everything complete before you lose use of the harvester. So everything is about timing at that point and Rick is throughout the book and in life is always sort of airing on the side of caution where Kyle with some youth and some I would say ambition is always sort of trying to push things forward. At this particular moment the thing that I thought was so remarkable was that the conversation, you can see that the sun was setting low and the conversation was whether or not to continue harvesting for the evening. It was not a question of how anyone was feeling or work ethic or any of those sorts of things. It had to do with a discussion about what happens when the sun starts to set, the moisture in the air comes up, if soybeans get too moist they're impossible to cut and the harvester instead of cutting the plants cleanly will shape the plants and shatter and scatter the the soybeans that you're trying to harvest. You lose the beans that you're trying to bring in. But Kyle had also checked on his on his smartphone and could see that there was a price dip that was expected to come the next day based on how soybeans were trading in China at that very moment. So he was plugged into the markets halfway around the world and making a decision that if they could bring those beans in that that evening and get them to an elevator and they'd found an elevator that was willing to stay open for them late that night and give them the price that the beans have been traded at that day that they could make additional profit off of of that field. The trade-off is that if you if anything goes wrong as the sun is coming down and things are getting dark that that there's always the possibility for injury for accident and Rick was constantly saying you know only bad things happen in the dark. To make this additionally complicated and I'll explain this I'll read from this passage. The this particular field that was planted by the neighbor was not planted by GPS but was planted by I and so what they had to do and it was also I guess should be noted planted with a with a planter that was that was narrower than the harvester that they were working on. So what this meant was that you had to almost row by row site down and figure out where you were going to follow and and follow the the lines as they had been planted you couldn't do it automatically as they sometimes do and frequently do these days and of course losing the visibility there was always the possibility that you do what they call laying down rows where you get offline and instead of cutting you're you're laying the plants down so I'll read from that passage and Seth by the way is is the neighbor. As the sun started to set the mood seemed to shift with it because Seth had planted by I every turn of the combine required lining up with where he had tried to match row spacing between each pass at planting farmers call these guest rows the 16 rows laid out by the planter are perfectly spaced but the furrow between passes can be slightly narrower or slightly wider than the machine spaced rows because the harvester is 12 rows wide it's impossible to split each planted each planting swath instead you have some some passes within the planted pattern and some where the harvester is straddling this the places where two planning rows come together but if the light failed and the shadows were longer it was getting harder and harder for Kyle to keep track of the guest rows and remain within the pattern he leaned forward peering down over the steering wheel to be sure that the spinning reel of the harvester was standing up the rows and cutting everything cleanly Seth back in the spring had planted across had planted around the concrete platform of his new center pivot for the first time and rather than setting his row spacing starting from that platform he'd started from the edge of the field and worked in ordinarily farmers won't plant closer than 30 inches from their pivot but Seth hoping to get a little extra from that field had allowed just five inches so as they near the platform Rick and Kyle had to figure out where to set the floating bar on the outside of the harvester head but they called the snout in order to stay aligned but without having to take multiple passes to get around the pivot we try to put the outside of that head on the guest row Kyle explained but the eye planted rows can sometimes run together if you don't guess right you're taking half a swath trying to fix it which takes fuel and time and if you get off by too much you miss a guest row and don't notice or just try to keep going you can start to run over rows breaking the pods or treading the plants into the mud muddy soil and making them impossible to harvest seeing the trouble it was causing Seth told them not to worry about the rows right around the pivot but even in the neighbor's field Kyle wanted to capture every bit of the yield so between passes he would come down from the cab study the rows with Rick and then hustle back behind the wheel at dinnertime Megan drove to pick up food Heidi's Rick's wife had waiting for them at the house Megan returned with tacos wrapped up in aluminum foil and a cooler full of coax everyone sat at the tailgate of the pickup or leaned against the bed eating quickly Rick kept eyeing the sun now sinking into the line of trees that stood behind or between the edge of the field and Seth's house I think we should call it a night Rick said finally it's all right Kyle said there's just a few more swaths a few advance of photo or two here this is them harvesting this is that conversation so you can see sort of how it's going um Kyle was hoping to finish this field before it was full dark so they could load up the head and the combine for another field for tomorrow if they could get done in the next hour they would have a jump in the morning together Rick and Kyle walked over to the remaining rows getting a read on how many rounds were left to complete the field but also going back and forth about whether to continue or stop finally Kyle won out he took the combine down to the north edge of the field then turned back toward the pivot watching the spinning reel below him and steadying the wheel as he neared the south edge of the field Megan waiting in the grain cart came on the radio you're driving crooked she said you're knocking over rows Kyle looked down at the reel everything seemed in line so he stopped the harvester and climbed down to see what was going on right away he could see this now it was bent in and the plastic body of the soybean head was broken he'd hit the pad of the pivot and never even felt it god damn it Kyle rasped under his breath this could be thousands of dollars of damage worse still if it was more than he could fix himself it could be days of waiting for a John Deere certified mechanic he pulled back the plastic body and he stuck his head inside Kyle told me later that he could see that the snout had been pushed in and bent up the hydraulic arm on which it goes that arm was rubbing on a pulley belt that runs the cutting sickles pulling putting slack in the system and creating thick friction it was still cutting Kyle said but it was already getting really really hot he reached in to see if he could straighten the bent arm by hand by hand no dice I should have just left that row Kyle said still tugging hard on the arm it was planted right up against the pad that's what Seth said Rick snapped you cannot harvest something that's planted that close yeah I probably should have just left that little bit if Megan wouldn't have seen it it could have started a fire Rick said he couldn't hide his anger but Kyle was already thinking about what needed what they needed to do now he said he could straighten the arm if he could just heat it up but he couldn't afford to wait until morning to fix it if they were going to finish this field in the morning and still stand a chance of loading up and getting some beans out of their own fields Kyle was going to have to make the repairs right then in the dark he asked Seth if he had a cutting torch and a wrench he could borrow Seth told them to pull around to his shop and he set off her across the field by the time Kyle and Rick had driven up to the pickup driven up in the pickup Seth had already rolled out a portable light and the tank and a hose and a rosebud heating tip for the torch he grabbed a couple of wrenches Kyle asked if he had any fender washers Seth pulled out a box and shook several out into his hand hoping to get out of the way I went with Megan back to the house where we waited saying little for close to an hour before Rick and Kyle came rolling into the driveway they stomped into the mudroom laughing kicking off their boots you asked for that fender washer and Seth just said how many you need Rick said slapping Kyle on the back why can't I have a shop like that I assume everything's working Megan called from across the kitchen yeah Kyle said with a long sigh we had to draw out some rivets and get the plastic bent up so that we could get the torch in without burning everything up and then we had to heat up that arm and get it straightened out so it quit rubbing it was really hard steel and we couldn't get it bent by hand and then a little piece on the backside broke so we had to weld that back together Rick interrupted I want you guys to know the combine is better than it's ever been better than before Megan asked skeptically at least Rick said we should hit every center pivot pad before long they were seated together around the dinner table recounting stories of all the near disasters of past years the time Dave their hired a man took out a power line with the unloading auger the time Megan had swung wide to make a turn on the country road with the bean head strapped onto the flatbed trailer and clipped a stop sign they laughed until all the tension and worry of the accident the adrenaline of what could have happened had been shaken off and disappeared so some glimpse of the family both the tension that can arise and and also how quickly they they fly back and come together we do have some questions here I don't know if you want to be great so here's a question how the farmers reacted to this book so the the thing that's been most gratifying to me is to hear people who are still farming and people who have grown up on farms say that that they feel like the book gets right all of the the tensions and all of the the pressures of of farm life today my my sense is that you know that that Megan in particular always kept saying I don't want people to think that I you know I wake up in the morning and and get my my milk pale and go across the field of daisies to milk the cow so like I want people to know what it's it's really like to live on a farm and so you know the Hammons were really open and really transparent about what everything was like they were really willing to let us be right in the middle of the action as things were happening and to answer questions about what was happening when we didn't understand all the complexities and I I really think you know the extent to which this has been embraced by farmers and and sort of endorsed in that way is a is a tribute to how open and forthcoming the Hammons were with us at every stage throughout that year so we've got a few more questions about how the Hammons have reacted to this book and its selection by Nebraska and Iowa as their state reads yeah so this has been it's an interesting and complicated thing for the Hammons that in the introduction to the book I talked about the fact that that they in the the fight against Keystone XL had had taken a really public stance and had really given a lot of interviews and that public profile had led the group bold Nebraska to approach Rick about building a solar and wind powered barn on some of his farm ground and he agreed to do that though it cut into their profits by eliminating that part of the field but it was also ground that sat directly across the road from rented property and um the neighbor who they had rented from from for many many years didn't like all the attention didn't like all of the the sort of presence of of uh protesters from bold as they came and used the the what they call the solar barn as the backdrop and they canceled the contract that that Rick had had um to farm that ground for many years which presented a really serious financial hit for the Hammons and so they're hyper aware that that every time they open their mouths every time they talk to a reporter a writer like me and I go out and say what they've said that it puts their operation at some risk if there's a neighbor who doesn't like it and so they've asked you know that that I go out and speak about the book but their they see their role as complete and I absolutely respect that I talked to Kyle a few days ago just to see how everybody's doing in in light of some of the publicity that had come after the some of the comments from the governor and I thought it was absolutely typical of the Hammond family that I asked Kyle you know if there were any questions that were being asked and he said you know a few people have asked me um about what's going on and he said I told them that they should read the book just like the governor should okay absolutely um and then another question what's your overall takeaway about family farming from your experience writing this blossoms I mean the my main takeaway I suppose is that that farming has always been dangerous and difficult and high pressure it's you're always at the mercy of the weather and the fickle markets um and but all of those things have become even more difficult and more high pressure and high stakes as the technology has evolved and the decision making is in fewer and fewer hands and each each farmer is expected to be responsible for more and more acres uh a cousin of mine who um for many years ran the the the a section of the tri-state irrigation ditch in western Nebraska told me a few years ago that that you know it was not unusual when he was younger to see an operation that was 800 acres as a huge operation um now he was explained to me that it was not unusual to see 8 000 acres in the in the hands and that under the responsibility of a single farmer what that means is that that every uh gamble um the effects of it are magnified and um every time someone guesses or as as the saying goes every time you bet the farm and and guess wrong the consequences could be really severe and so it's it is that cousin of mine Austin um he always said you know that that gam that that farmers were the were the biggest gamblers he knew um and that's uh I think that's true or every year that the that the way that that you can kind of survive in this kind of environment is by guessing and guessing right but that gets harder and harder for an individual to do year to year and so it it puts tremendous pressure on families and of course what that means going forward is that more and more young people decide that they don't want to continue on the farm that they would rather um go into town go to the cities and find work and and very often the the farm ends up changing hands uh one of the things that struck me with with the Hammons as I mentioned there's that that central piece of land that they have but then all these other pieces around they still refer to all of those pieces of ground by the name of the people that they bought them from they still think of them as being to possession of somebody else who's no longer there and in some cases hasn't formed the ground for a generation or more um and that it's very common um that that there's this this what I refer to is sort of this ghost geography that the places um that no longer exist that people still remember and still navigate by um my my father who grew up on a farm in in western Nebraska I always give him a bad time because the that when he's trying to direct me when when we're out there and visiting those places he's always navigating by landmarks that no longer exist um and so he's it's always you know turned north where the store used to be turned right where the old farmhouse stood and then you go north again where the school used to be and I I think that's that's indicative of just how high pressure this is and when you live in that landscape reminded constantly that that if you fail you you sort of disappear from from that landscape um it's it's a daily pressure so we have some good questions about um book club groups and more discussion which kind of um moves us into talking about how to brass and our engaging in this book so the commission itself has 20 books that in our book club kit currently that we already have um 13 reservations for throughout the year and we have such a backlog that we've ordered 20 more books for our book club kit but um we've got some good questions just about um your wife Mary Ann's um site and the photograph from this project and about how they can be used as a complement to a small group book discussion um which is a great idea that's what we're doing today yeah um these photos are from correct yeah and and i'll say that that um there's a so the book is constructed in according to the four seasons um if you go to my website which is just tedjanaways.com you'll find that there are excerpts from each of the the four seasons which is intended to give people a a kind of brief introduction to the um the challenges of that are going to be discussed in each of those sections but you'll also find in each season about 15 photographs of of Mary Ann's which are there to again uh give people some sense of uh of who the Hammons are visually and and just that sense of things and all of those photos um are available i'm i'm glad to use them in presentations and whenever possible um would also love to have Mary Ann along to talk about her experience of photographing the Hammons and supplement the uh the book presentation in that way as well so we have a question that two questions that i'm gonna join together um will you be doing a speaking tour in Nebraska and Iowa and then what do you most look forward to as you present and discuss your book yeah so um as i told Rod and Becky when they first approached me about this and asked what my availability would be um for the first half of this year i'm i'm on uh writing deadline which for me means that i'm looking for absolutely any excuse to be out of the house so if you if you want to have me for an event i am um i'm absolutely available and it's and the best part is that uh what could be a better excuse for my publisher than to say that i was out selling the last book that's right i was trying to help you um so uh so yes i'm i'm i'm absolutely available uh i i am freelancing full-time so uh my schedule is extremely flexible and um being based in Lincoln i can get to um just about any point in Nebraska or any point east into Iowa with equal ease and um it's my intention to do as many of these events as as i possibly can um as far as what i'm looking forward to it's it's exactly that it's getting out and talking to people um getting the opportunity to hear people's reactions to the book the book has been out for a little over a year in hardback so i've had the opportunity to do some events around uh Nebraska and Iowa already and every single time i'm impressed by the sort of diversity of experience that that people bring to those events uh i've had farmers who arrive at the events who very much agree with with the uh the challenges that they haven't sort of perceived them and um are in their camp and others who strongly disagree with with the way that the Hammons are looking to solve some of the problems of modern agriculture and seeing the farmers get into dialogue with each other is fantastic and of course with these events often being hosted in town seeing town people getting to interact with farmers and talk up through those issues has also been uh really exciting and gratifying and so my ambition as much as possible is to provide an opportunity for for people to come together and discuss these things as I said at the outset there's there's no question that some of the issues that are raised in the book are are complex and that they are sometimes contentious but I don't think that reading about those issues and then getting together to talk about them is divisive by any means I think it's just the opposite and seeing people not in their isolated camps bickering with each other online but actually coming into a room together talking about a shared set of facts that come from a book that they've all read and and are equally informed on and then bringing their own experience to that and um using that as a platform for for conversation I I think it's the best possible outcome that we could hope for and I'm really excited to see that play out over the year and we have a quick follow-up what's the best way for libraries and book groups and bookstores get a hold of you schedule them right so um there's been a sort of uh sudden rush of of interest and um so I'm I'm a little backlogged you you can you can reach me directly um and my email address is is as simple as it could be it's just my last name that's jennaways at gmail.com um you can also uh if you look on the website you'll see that that that my publicist at Norton his email address is there that's will scarlett and um will be working with tessa to keep a calendar that's current so that um I can see what what days I'm already booked and also hopefully uh then try to especially for some of the trips that that require distant travel try to group uh some of the events together so that um I'm not driving the same stretch of i80 over and over again but hopefully can uh can group some of those things together and uh there's a there's a scarcity of books right now um but I just got the uh really outstanding news from Norton this morning that they're going into a second printing of the of the paperback and they assure me that we'll have more than enough copies um very soon and so yeah that's it's wonderful news it's really great and um it's a testament to the to the sort of the interest uh in the book and uh and so the the plan will be to try to um have most of the events I guess after those those books are more available so that anyone who wants to be able to buy a copy and and uh read it will have them on hand and no we also do have the image of the book groups in um online too as ebooks and audio books both Iowa and Nebraska have them in our collections in overdrive uh both versions there so that is something that you how you like to read your books or listen to your books um they are in there um as well that's great um do you know anything about a large print edition coming soon you know I don't know anything about a large print edition I um I know that there's the audio version I I would say that um in in my opinion the audio edition is is not the absolute ideal way to experience this that um the the reader of the book was not especially well versed in some of the the terms uh and hearing um you know hearing somebody talk about a combined is not always the best so the uh so but my my understanding is that there's that there's also a version of it that that has been created um that that is specifically for uh the the blind and dyslexic that is working yes yeah our talking book and braille I was just wondering about that just we were they're working on finishing that up I think yes yeah so yeah so if you're a Nebraska talking book and braille user we have um dyslexic earth available for you hopefully soon they're just finishing up the reporting finishing touches on that so that will be available that's great um our last question that we have on our um comment blog is um what did you hope to accomplish by writing the book and has that happened well my my hope in in writing the book was to try to present um farmers and in a in a more complex light than they they often are um I think that that we have a tendency to think of um farm life as sort of pastoral and removed from the worries of the world and what I wanted people to see was that in fact the the farm though it's isolated it really sits at a kind of crossroads of so many national and international issues and so many things that we would think of as being far removed from the farm energy policy and international conflicts like the iraq and afghanistan wars they run directly through these sorts of areas and and often because they're isolated and because they are increasingly depopulated they tend to be politically ignored they they are taken for granted and um and don't become part of the discussions that are so central and and determining of of their lives and their legacies and so I I most of all wanted to have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with one family for them to be able to not think of this as a kind of quick interview where they had to tell their story in in in a rapid way and and make themselves immediately understood but where we both spent the time to to really come to understand this family and to try to portray them in all of their complexity and um and of course then my hope was you know if you're if you're saying that you want to to provide a platform for people my hope is that the book goes out to a wide readership and and allows them to be heard by the the largest group of people possible and certainly with this joint selection by one book one in braska and all iowa reads that's that's a huge uh step in the in that process to to make so many people aware of the book and to have the kind of infrastructure that allows me to get out and to to talk to so many people about this book um so yes i i i think uh i wouldn't say that it's that it succeeded all the way yet i think we're still in the process in january that's right but um but this is a really exciting first step um let's talk over to the other slideshow sure if you want to um there yes let's go so like i said we have book club kits circulating from the brask library commission i believe some of the systems offices have their own book club kits they all have each one of them has their own yeah each of our four regional systems have well yeah so if our book club kit is um reserved when you want it um check with one of your your system directors and see if they have more available schedules um you can find more information on our one book one Nebraska website um we've got a little blurb of it there so you can see what it looks like you know you're in the right place and we do have an event news and event page where we will have a calendar of places ted will be so that you can keep up with him and know if he's in your area we also have a facebook page dedicated to the one book one Nebraska that we we share events on um whether it's a public library event a bookstore um or it's just a little glimpse of what ted's been up to and then we always want to make um resources available to anyone who wants to have an event so we have bookmarks and promotional uh business cards available you can get in contact with the commission and get a package of those sent to you if you want to have those available at your library or bookstore and like we mentioned before you can contact himself and schedule an event the last thing we wanted to make sure we mentioned is that we kind of have a culminating event at the end of the year in the fall where we celebrate the current one book one Nebraska and have a presentation on the book and then we also announce next year's one book so we don't have a date yet for the year celebration so keep an eye out for that but it is always a really great time to hear from Nebraska authors and I always go away with a new book list that I have to read so um I so I have a question about the fall that um now you'd mentioned that we just the joint between Iowa and Nebraska and I believe that's also related to the fact that the Nebraska library association the Iowa library station association is doing a joint um annual conference this fall as well so is that something that you are going to be participating in or do you know yes if you're going to be that's certainly my plan because they haven't I know they're still working on they they they don't have a schedule out yet exactly so yeah that's my that's my intent yeah okay and that will be in La Vista, Nebraska closer to the border but so that people all of all the people from Iowa and Nebraska can be up there and I think we already have you um earmarked for the Nebraska book festival as well um on September 7th so he's going to be one of our speakers that I think they that we already have that's the camera the NLA and all ILA conference is in October you're gonna be busy yeah that sounds great that's perfect do we have any last minute questions or anything else anything else wants to share Christine anybody type into the questions section if you want to I would just um encourage people to also visit the Nebraska Center for the book website and facebook page to watch for other events related not only to the one book one Nebraska but letters about literature and a variety of other things um that we participate in definitely great point those are all linked off of the one book page too correct yeah so they're all yeah circular lots of cooperation yeah definitely and if you're in Iowa check out the Iowa pages state library Iowa their center for the book they're all I will read websites or Iowa specific events and information yeah the last slide that we have is my information um I'm a great way to find out information about the one book program as well if you have anything we have one more yeah interesting are you gonna be visiting the Iowa State Fair in August and now what's the Nebraska State Fair I don't want to create too much uh buzz that I may be running in 2020 um but my I would love to do any events like this sort of thing uh I don't have any plans for for state or county fairs yet but I'm open to invitations yeah who doesn't love the opportunity to see things sculpted out of butter I think we're getting close to being out of time no problem all right anybody has any last minute urgent questions any last words before we do do our wrap up I don't think so just feel free to be in contact with me if you have any questions and I look forward to hearing from people great thank you thank you just turn this camera towards me I'll show you good stuff all right this is all very manual we're high tech here so anyway oh so thank you so much Ted and um everyone else for being here with us this morning um this is great to hear about you we do this every year and I promote it and we hope okay um okay something that just popped up but it's for afterwards no problem okay um and we hope I will read the book and come to all the any of the sessions any of the events that we're going to and reach out to them for more things to do so you can travel instead of right this year all right so we're going to get our tape over there and I am going to pop out to our website uh so this is the Rascal Library Commission website and I'm actually going to go to can you type in M Compass Live I'm going to show you where we're going to have the archive of today's show it has been recorded is being recorded and so far and Compass Live is the only thing called and Compass Live on the internet awesome so uh you can find it on our website but if you just look it up so uh this is the main page for the show uh we've got our upcoming shows here but just underneath that is linked to our archives and this is where you'll find all of our um shows here today's show we posted up here probably later today as long as YouTube and everything cooperates with me and it'll be at the top of the list the most recent ones the top there we'll have a link to the recording a link to the slides um the slides and photographs if you don't mind be sure the time but post those as well as well through the look through uh everyone who attended today and registered for today will get an email for me let you know it's available and then we post it out to our various social media I'll let you know while we're here on the archives page that we do have a search feature here it's just recently been added um but this is actually the beginning of the 11th year of Encompass Live uh one book one The Brands of Little Olders in the show our show and this is our entire archive here I won't scroll all the way down but if you just scroll all the way down you just find this all is going back to January 2009 so that you can find what you're looking for on certain topics we have a search feature you can look for the through the entire history of the show or just most recent 12 months you have something really up to date so do keep that in mind when you are watching our archives look at the date of the show everything does have a date on it you know when it was originally broadcast there will be some old information there will be expired things services don't exist things aren't going on anymore possibly broken links to different websites and whatnot but we are librarians this is what we do we archive things so our entire history is there for you to go ahead and look through so please do take a look at that and we are also on Facebook we have a Facebook page for Encompass Live you can click there to get to it we post reminders of our shows that are coming up I'll let you know when the archives are available here's info to log into today's show so please do give us a like if you do like to keep up on things on Facebook and I hope you join us for next week's show when if our topic is information literacy and the ESL ELL students alleviating library anxiety two of our librarians from the University of Omaha Chris library Claire Chamley and Aaron Peter will be with us to talk about how they are working with their English with student language and English language learners students who are having you know issues with being you know concerned about how am I going to get my work done in college so if you're at a university this would be a topic for you so please do join us for next week's show or any of the other shows that we do have on the schedule here any days that aren't on here we'll be filling in please so thank you everyone for attending thank you everybody for being here with us this morning and we will hopefully see you next time on Encompass Live.