 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, a little bit in the dark here way up front, Christa Burns here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event, webinar, webcast, whatever you want to call us. We're a show, we're online, and we're here every Wednesday morning. We do the shows live at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We record all of our shows and they get posted onto our website. The recording is right on YouTube and you can go and watch any of our shows. They're at your convenience. You can't join us on Wednesday mornings. And we do a mixture of things here, book reviews, many training presentations, interviews. Basically anything library related, we put it on the show. We have the Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations and we sometimes bring in guest speakers. And this morning, we have a mixture of that. We have a large group with us today. What we're doing this morning is our annual One Book One Nebraska show where we talk about the book of the year that everyone is reading. This year it's the Once Upon a Town, The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen by Bob Green. And I guess Mary Jo Ryan is here, our Communications Coordinator at the Library Commission and Rod Wagner, the director here. And I'm just going to pass the microphone on to you guys and you can talk about what we're doing and who we all have here today. Why don't we just go ahead and start on this side of the table and see if you would introduce yourself. Okay, I'm Nancy Johnson from Central City. And I'm here with a friend who was one of the volunteers at the North Platte Canteen and she'll introduce herself in a moment. I'm Molly Fisher and I'm a member of the Center for the Book. And I worked on discussion questions for this particular book. And that's a good point, Molly. One of the things we do of course is offer some assistance for people who want to talk about the book including Molly's discussion questions and other resources. We'll get to that later. I'm Mary Jo Ryan with the Library Commission. I'm Rod Wagner, director of the Library Commission and also an ex-officio member of the Nebraska Center for the Book, a sponsoring organization for the One Book program. And Rosalie. And I'm Rosalie Lippincott and I do live here in Lincoln now. But I'm from Central City as well as Nancy Johnson. And you had a lot of great experiences during this time as a volunteer in the canteen. Well, not as many as I would have liked to have. I would like to have been there every day. Oh boy, that would have been a commitment. It was a wonderful experience, yes. Well, thank you so much for being here with us and Nancy's going to... My pleasure. We had the opportunity to...Nancy had the opportunity to interview Rosalie for a newsletter article that we did early in the year. And so we're going to kind of reprise that interview. Nancy's going to ask you some questions later on in the show. That's okay. Good. Just to kind of go over a little bit more about One Book, One Nebraska, just to kind of fill in people who haven't been with us all these years since we've been doing this. There you go. Thank you. The goal, of course, is to encourage Nebraskans across the state to read and discuss just one book. Well, we hope they'll read many more during the year, but there's one book that's either written by a Nebraska author or that has a Nebraska theme or set it. And a committee of the Nebraska Center for the Book selected the 2014 One Book, One Nebraska from a list of 71 titles that were nominated by 141 Nebraskans from across the state. And this year, One Book, One Nebraska was sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book, as Rob mentioned, Humanities Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Association, and the Nebraska Library Commission. As you can see, since 2005, we've had 10 One Book, One Nebraska books that were chosen. There's a real range. There's quite a variety. Everything from classics by Willa Cather to a mystery by Alex Kava to a contemporary book by Bill Clefkorn. Just a whole wide range of wonderful books that people have had the opportunity to talk about across the state in book clubs and other kinds of activities in libraries, in bookstores, in people's homes. It's been a real rich 10 years of reading about Nebraska and talking about the books. Let's focus on this year's 2014 One Book, One Nebraska. And that would be, of course, once upon a town, the miracle of the North Platte canteen by Bob Green. Now, this is actually a non-fiction story. And, Molly, you were saying that this time when you read it, you'd read it before, but this time when you read it, you were kind of focusing on how it was organized. Yes, yes. I just, I don't know why I focused in on that, but I just was taken with his comparison of North Platte as it was when he was there to the interviews with people, as well as the interviews with workers like Rosalie. Rosalie appears in the book. And he would go from an interview with someone that volunteered to someone who passed through, but usually in between there would be some geographic location in North Platte that seemed to bring forth the interviews. And I got interested in that this time around. Great. Do we have a... Hi, everybody. Welcome back. Well, we had a little bit of a glitch, and we're just all back together again, picking this up again where we left off. And Molly was talking a little bit about the structure of the book where Bob Green, and how he puts the book together, where he interviews people and people who worked the canteen like you did, Rosalie, who were the volunteers, people who were on trains. Just passed through. Just passing through. And then he winds it back around to the locations in North Platte and what it's like now, right? Yes. I kept questioning it. I kept thinking that he was, he says, once upon a town, but I think he's looking for the town that was. Ah. Well, that's interesting because one of the things he says is that he set out to find the best America there ever was, and he found it in a small Nebraska town. Now, he considers North Platte pretty small. I grew up in North Platte, and we thought it was a pretty big town. Rod grew up in a town. How many people in your town? 270. 270 in Rod's town. So North Platte, we think of North Platte as kind of a big town in Nebraska. But it's a, you know, of course, it's all relative, and you live in Chicago like Bob Marine does, and I'm sure that North Platte really did seem like a very small town. Just to give you a little background, during World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte on troop trains in route to Europe and the Pacific. And it seems odd, doesn't it, that the trains just went through that one town. They went through a lot of towns. I got an email last week from a gentleman who was reading along with us on the book, and he was like, you know, I was one of those soldiers on a troop train, and I kept thinking, was it North Platte we went through? He said, no, we went through McCook. He remembered it was McCook. And so he contacted the Railroad Museum in McCook, and they said, yeah, we had troop trains come here, too. So really, not every single troop train went through North Platte, but a lot of them did, because North Platte's kind of a hub for the Union Pacific Railroad, which was a passenger railroad at that time, isn't anymore. But the railroad depot, thanks to volunteers like Rosalie, was transformed into the North Platte canteen. And even years later, long after the war when I was growing up there, it was famous in our town. It was like a thing we did that everyone remained proud of for their whole lives. And it was always something that people pointed to to show how important volunteerism was, and that kind of thing. So every day of the year, every day of the war, the canteen staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers was opened from 5 a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled out after midnight. And the volunteers provided welcome words, friendship, baskets of food and treats to more than 6 million GIs by the time the war ended. So it's a pretty impressive roster of events, isn't it? And especially done at a time when people's minds were on other things. I know that a lot of women were working outside the home for the first time in their lives because they'd been called to work in the ammunition factories in Denver and Grand Island. And I also know that a lot of people were living on a lot less rations than what they were maybe used to cook with ingredients they'd never used and here they were doing all this as volunteers with all these ingredients and the book points all that out. So it's a very interesting book to read and a very interesting book to talk about in book groups. And people, by the way, are still... There we go. People, by the way, are still, of course, because 2014's not over, they're still talking about this book, they're still doing events. I apologize for the quality of this slide that you're looking at, but it just points out that on our website, and we'll go to our website later, I'll show you where, we do have a roster of events and you can see that here in October and coming up in November there's a number of activities still going on. And they're all across the state. I'm seeing one in Atkinson, Gordon, Lincoln obviously. I think it's Brewell, I think it's Brewell and Arthur and Hastings. So you're going to see people coming together and continuing to visit about this book and to challenge themselves to think about what they might have ever done in their lives that would compete or not compete, but would equal this kind of an effort. And I think that that's one of the things that happens when people talk about this book that you find that young people, particularly challenging themselves, what can they do to show that they care about someone they don't know. Which, gosh, you know, what more could you want out of the book, right? How did this all happen? Well, we did some publicity and, um, grossly you were there at the Capitol when the governor signed the proclamation and that was kind of a lovely event, wasn't it? Well, it was. I felt very honored to be in that group. Well, we were honored to have you. Believe me. That is a something we do every year with one book on Nebraska. The governor does a proclamation and proclaims that everyone should read the book all across the state. And of course, since we all do exactly what our elected officials tell us to do, we all are reading the book. And no, we are also putting together book club kits and we've got a website to help people talk about it. There are also other resources that I wanted to point out that are not things that this particular group has put together, but other people put together. For example, in the Nebraska Studies website, there's quite a lot of information about the canteen experiment and the canteen spirit. That's the name of a program that Nebraska Educational Television did, NETV, the canteen spirit and it's actually on the web. There's resources from the Nebraska State Historical Society and quite a few resources from Humanities Nebraska, including presenters and funding for programming. And those presenters are still available through the rest of 2014 and hopefully they're still funding available from Humanities Nebraska to support that. The next thing we were hoping to do is Nancy, if you would be willing to kind of reprise your interview that you did with Rosalie and see if we could ask Rosalie to remember some things for us to have some memories she might want to share. Like right about there? And you can tell if we're losing sound. So that'll be kind of a fun thing for us if you wouldn't mind doing that, Nancy. Rosalie, I know that when you were married to your husband, Dick, you lived at Central City on the farm for over 60 years. But when you worked at the North Black canteen, where were you living at that time and how old were you? My first visit to the canteen, I was a sophomore in high school, 15 years old. I lived, of course, with my parents and on the farm there was northeast of Shelton small town between Shelton, between Grand Island and Carly. So when we talk about the volunteers then that helped at North Platte, we're not talking only about people that lived in the North Platte area, we're talking about people who lived many miles away. Nancy, 125 little towns contributed in the hell and many of them sent people those miles with rationed gas and rationed tires. And didn't you also go on the railroad on the rail? Well, the Union Pacific offered us from Shelton. I don't know whether they pertained to other towns but from Shelton if we were at the railroad station at 3.30 in the morning we could have a free ride to North Platte. So, that way the railroad contributed in more than bringing the soldiers in. Absolutely. They also helped to take the volunteers to North Platte and many people may not realize that. Yes. So, what jobs did you have at the canteen and what foods did you help prepare? Well, my first job was to arrange books and magazines on a long table and make those books and magazines look appealing for the fellas to pick up and let's see that took a couple hours maybe to do that because after I got done with the books then my job was to crack hard boiled eggs peel them and make egg salad sandwiches and you see the what I'm telling you is absolute fact because I saved a letter happened to save a letter that I had written to my boyfriend who was stationed in Germany at the time and the letter is dated March 1945 I guess it was and this the things I'm telling you are the things that I had written in that letter so I know that they were facts and continuing about the egg salad sandwiches that particular day we made the bushel baskets of sandwiches and you know put them in the old fashion bushel baskets lined the baskets with clean tea towels that covered the sandwiches with another tea towel and suck them under the table waiting for the train to come in no ziplock bags in those days no plastic bags and still somehow you've got a long mind I'm not sure how many you know they say that there were as many as 7000 troops go through a day how many would 20 bushel be well I'm sure that probably didn't feed 7000 but it was a start yeah my letter said that we served 8 troops trains that day and that there were probably 5000 people and it wasn't just the egg salad sandwiches there were bushel of apples whatever you could get cakes name it you know coffee milk in little pint I guess so sour little glass glass glass someone had to watch those when one train would leave they fill them up again for the next group they carried them on the train at the next stop the conductor would have collected those sub bottles and send them back on the next train coming back into Norfolk and would have cups and bottles and little plates because there were absolutely no paper products at that time and that's one of those things that we don't think about and hey you know what what I think about it we didn't work rubber gloves would you stand up please it's the one that we didn't well you probably washed your hands good though in the book you mentioned that there were some romances that you had heard about that it started among the military people that came and some of the girls at the station well yeah the one in particular that I know about came about between a soldier and a young girl who grew up in Trion, Nebraska Trion is up in the Sandhills 75 miles or so from North Platte it's way out there in the booties but it's a wonderful little town and those ladies you know made popcorn balls and then they put the name in the address of single girls in that community and passed them out well one romance developed between a soldier and a young Trion girl by just letter writing and when they finally faced to face I guess it was love at first sight because they were married very shortly after and her wedding dress hangs in the museum out in North Platte so they were married and had a family so that romance is documented at the museum absolutely who knows what else I don't now you were a young girl and all these good looking servicemen were coming through there were you tempted? well I was enjoying the you know excitement and it was a thrill for a teenage girl to be in the midst of all those young guys but no one can say I was not tempted because I already had my on a hometown boy ended up marrying him and you were married for how many years? loving him for 62 years that's wonderful Rosalie did I just wondered how all of this could happen in 10 minutes were they really there for just 10 minutes? well yeah the trains the trains stopped to take on water and fuel and so and change rooms sometimes and so those stops were only about 10, 15 minutes and boy when that train whistled those skies went up running did you dance with any of the oh I didn't dance did you see the pictures of them dancing? well you know jitterbug was popular and there was dancing going on but I I just never did dance and so no I was busy making egg salad sandwiches you were Rosalie we're discussing this with you because of Bob Green's book once upon a town did you meet with Bob Green when he was writing the book since you are in the book? the answer to that question is no I did not face to face meet him I met him was I had a couple years before this all took place I had written my memories of the canteen just simply so that someday my children and grandchildren would know some of the activities that I had participated in so when I learned through my sister who lived in North Platt and took the North Platt paper there was an article that said Bob Green was interested in contacting and hearing from people who had worked in the canteen so I thought well holy smokes I got that all written and so I just put it in and sent it to his office there and it wasn't very long until I had a telephone call from his office and the girl said you know would you talk to Bob Green and I said oh my goodness yes I talked Bob Green so we had probably a 25 30 minute chat on a telephone and I told my husband after we had that talk I said you know I think that's the first time anybody has actually ever listened to what I had to say it was a good listener it was just delightful talking to him it was very easy to talk to him so that's how I met Bob Green but when we did a book signing out in North Platt then I met him and I had my presentation with him and he signed your book oh absolutely but you cannot read these right you have to know that it was Bob Green and your story is one of the ones that's really compelling isn't it what he read once upon a town you know see it and then my story is the first story that he tells it's on page 19 so even if you don't read the whole book read page 19, get Rosalie's story absolutely now you said that he was the first person who listened to you tell about your story I believe that since the book came out that you have told your story to probably close to 50 different groups of people I got started talking about it after a neighbor lady was a program chairman for her group of ladies and she needed a program and she said you're going to talk about the canteen I said oh that I did I got started and so far I've given that 45 minute presentation about 45 times to groups all kinds of groups can I tell you about the most thrilling one again in uniform I gave presentation to the crewman of the nuclear some Nebraska and it was just the most wonderful evening at the end of it my talk those fellas played it up gave me a hug and a kiss and made me an honorary crewman of the nuclear sub and then they presented me with the dolphin pin which I learned is a very coveted pin among the sub people and then another group that absolutely ignored me were middle school group here in Lincoln and the teacher had the kids all had read the book and if you don't think we didn't have a good interchange of information it was delightful well you're delightful and we're so glad that you have had the privilege for you but privilege for everyone you've spoken to to bring this history to them so thank you so much I'll tell you what at my age it's been just absolutely wonderful experience now your talk can be seen on youtube is that correct? your entire talk and what do people need to look under for that under your name right Rosalie Lippincott just Lippincott Lippincott can ski or can team Lippincott search but you know that was about the first first time that I had given that talk I think today I could do it much better than once on youtube then we'll tell people if they have the opportunity to hear you speak they should go absolutely I should run out of dates my booking agent because she's going to her son who has turned into the booking agent and driver and daughter in law too you're very booking agents right perfect well thank you very much and that is a good note for us to move on to people to continue to get involved with this book because even though we're starting to talk about what's going to be the 2015 one book one Nebraska we're still in 2014 and there's still time to schedule a book club or a book talk book a program like Rosalie's have her come to your group you're still available and we will put your contact information up on the website so that people know how to get to you we also are encouraging people to still go into local radio and TV talk shows they're still looking for great stories and this is a great story and then also we want to really encourage everyone to join us at the November 8 celebration of Nebraska books and that's going to be from 3.30 to 6.30 here at 1200 Ann Street that's the library commission here in Lincoln and we'd also invite you to join us for the Center for the Book Annual Meeting which is an hour before that at 2.30 the celebration always includes an awards reception book signings and the announcement of the 2015 one book one Nebraska book choice but before we move on to that Chris if you wouldn't mind sending me over the mouse I'm going to show people what resources are available on your website just want to point out that we do have a website we'll see if I can find it is that it that should be a tab we do that tab okay there we go I just want to point out that we do have a website it's onebookonenebraska.gov oh wait no it's not man it's onebook.nebraska.gov sorry anyway onebook.nebraska.gov is that right we'll have it included in the show links so you can get to it correctly sorry as you can see there's a lot of resources on here a little description of the book a little information about the author we were just talking remembering that Bob Green did a weekly column for years and years and years and now he's actually doing an online column he's doing a CNN blog column and then there's this section called get involved and this is the section I really wanted to point out to anybody who's still thinking about doing any programming with 2014 onebook.nebraska there's a toolkit here which has a whole lot of resources and a whole lot of materials that can help people put a program together and that's for librarians for teachers for just individuals who have a book club they want to use this for there's discussion questions which Molly mentioned she worked on early in the year lesson plans and activities these are a little more school oriented but you can pick things out of them for adults and pick things out of them for groups and then there's also a community on facebook onebook onenebraska and we get a lot of really interesting comments on facebook about programs people have seen and like I said I got a comment from someone who was trying to rack his brain to think if he had been through the north butt canteen and then he remembered he was at the butt canteen you can also obviously find a copy of the book if you can't see or you can't see to read regular print or hold a book we do have the book available in digital format through our talking book and braille service and so that's something to keep in mind that if you have a customer a library customer that can't hold a book or can't see the regular print we do have it available through talking book and braille and then we also have these book club kits that many of you are familiar with we actually have now what over 800 that right 800 and some book club kits this is one of them and you can borrow a number of books for your book club and you do this through your local library or the local library does it for you and borrow some part through us and we send them out and you have them for as long as your book club needs them and then turn it back in and we send them to another book club so another thing to remember is that there is this humanities Nebraska speakers bureau option there's also one of the things I wanted to point out Rosalie mentioned that the wedding gown and the wedding pictures of the couple who were met through the popcorn ball are at Lincoln County Historical Society Museum there's also an online exhibit that you can link to right from our page and it's the Lincoln County Historical Museum online exhibit on canteen and the Lincoln County Museum has had several activities this year they have a junction with the book we've actually gotten a lot of great activities going on the the Nebraska tourism council had their annual tourism meeting in North Platte this year and the canteen was the spirit the canteen spirit was the theme of their of their conference and so one of the things that's happened because one book on Nebraska has a lot more interest in the canteen and interest in the book so that's all good I think the union Pacific has a canteen exhibit too at the Durham Museum in Omaha yeah it's in Council Bluffs oh in Council Bluffs now it's a smaller exhibit and I have not seen it but I know I would encourage people on this end of the status they need to I would sure go to the North Platte canteen exhibit yeah if you have a chance well and there's other things here there's I believe there's Rosalie's video is on here if it's not we will get it on here there it is Rosalie Lippincott on the North Platte canteen that's the video that's on YouTube there's other videos on YouTube and here's somebody performing his own song telling the story so I mean the thing about this book and this story is it has inspired many people not just those of you who had this experience with Rosalie but here's a guy who wrote a song about it it's been a great something for us to all look up to I think that people like you were willing to do so much for people you didn't even know which is really a beautiful thing and so if you go on through down the page you can see that we've gotten a few articles there's been some interest but one of the things that we really encourage is that if you're doing an event promote it and let us know and here are just some of the events that we knew about and put up on our calendar through the year and you can see it has been well received there's been a lot of interest but please don't think that doesn't mean that it does not mean just because it's been well received it does not mean that there's still not time here's a program in Beatrice I love this Candy of the 1940s talking about what you did in the 1940s to still have candy which I think is just great I mean people have taken a lot of creative attitude towards this once again to point out that coming up here on November 8th is the celebration Nebraska books here in Lincoln and we'll be featuring the canteen as well as announcing the 2015 book so if anybody has any questions have you gotten any questions Christa or if anybody would like to share anybody who's out there would like to share either your canteen memory if you remember the canteen yourself or anything you'd like to share about doing the book discussion either in your library or in a bookstore in your home if you've been or if anything you'd like to share about this 2014 one book experience we'll just give you a minute I have a question I keep wondering what can even compare to this what what do we have that is in volunteerism today that can can compare to what happened in those years I do not know I mean I was just amazed if they didn't have meat they used pheasants they had pheasants sandwiches yeah it was funny somebody said in season when the pheasants were in season pheasants were shot and we made pheasant sandwiches and then somebody else said well sometimes when they weren't in season we shot it too and eggs eggs to make the cakes they used different you know not just chicken eggs turkey eggs I wonder if it takes as many turkey eggs to make I wouldn't think so you know usually you measure by the cup even chickens it takes different number of eggs to make a cup of egg whites to make your inch of food change I just wonder what we can compare this to today I mean people were so giving they used their rations for the soldiers that was the thing because people were giving up things anyway yes and then what little sugar or the tires on your car if you were going to drive in people really did give and give and give and I think the other thing about it is it was such a big effort just like you mentioned all those towns all around opposed to maybe you could think of things right now that are amazing examples of volunteerism mother Teresa's work but you know you think about this this was so many people I mean it was just so many people who came together and that I think is what makes it so special in part because there were so many people who stepped up and they were willing to volunteer for so long I mean who a volunteer activity two hours and then I'm done or something like that or when will the project be over you know we talked about having the free ride on the train if we were at station at 3 30 well then we didn't get on a train in North Platten until almost 11 o'clock at night it was 1 o'clock when we got back to Sheldon so that was 22 hours yeah that is really a long day for those young people well even at 15 it was a long tiring day yeah but you did it and felt good about doing it what has always struck me though is the it's like trying to imagine anything comparable but this happened every day over a long period of time years that is just so extraordinary it's just beyond comprehension to me but there was that kind of ongoing sustained commitment people to do that it's just remarkable yeah just like they say at least as a miracle and how it got moving so quickly you know just almost overnight that way Wilson put a letter in the paper they called the meeting she got nominated as chairman and then that was early in December but at Christmas the canteen was moving wow it is amazing and I think it's inspirational and I love that you mentioned that the middle school kids had a lot to say about this because obviously this is well removed from their history they don't know much about it until they read a book like this and it all becomes real to them you know it's just such an awesome part of Nebraska history that everybody ought to be talking about it I think so too and I think sometimes when people talk about it they talk about it in terms of patriotism which was of course a very big part of it that's one of the reasons why people step forward but I think to me it's a story of caring about human beings you don't even know which I just think it's one thing to help your neighbor it's another thing to be so strong in your humanity that you're willing to just step forward for people you'll never see again who don't know you from a load of goats but here you are and here they are and you've intersected in their lives and you're going to do something for them the soldiers mentioned that over and over again that they didn't know us and they treated us all the same with dignity and respect and they really cared they kept saying they could see it in people's eyes and that's an amazing thing so as you can tell those of you who are out there you can tell that we definitely recommend you read this book this year if you haven't do it it's time to read it because it's going to be another couple of months of 2014 plenty of time to read it, plenty of time to discuss it librarians if you're looking to get a book club kit you can contact our reference desk if they can't get it there's some kits out in the systems too so contact us or the systems and we will definitely get you a book club kit for your group in your town anything else anybody would like to share for the good of the group no questions have come in no questions, okay we do a bunch of different libraries listening in so hopefully they'll get some ideas and have some more events that they'll either have a thrown library or participate in very good, well I put the screen up just to remind you again what the address is for the website because now it's big enough I can actually see it onebook.nebraska.gov and then the facebook page for those of you on facebook it's www.facebook.com onebook.nebraska so I'm definitely recommending that you take a look at those resources see how this works with your group with your community and stay tuned join us at the celebration November 8 to find out what's next year's book anything else thank you all thank you Rosalie so much it was a pleasure to have you here with us today well thank you very much alright thank you very much everyone everyone who's here in the room and are in the background helping make this all happen that was great the show has been is being recorded we did have some technical difficulties earlier briefly but we've got two recordings that we will put together and make one awesome one to put out not a problem thank God you are here to take care of the problem there's a question absolutely one of those ma'am he has been identified positively seriously he was from back east I can't tell you where but he ended up coming back to Nebraska his name is John Zug and he lived spending spending his work in years in Cozad I think it was really he came back to Nebraska after the war and worked in Cozad and he did pass away