 Well, hello from the National Archives Public Programs and Education Team. My name is Missy McNat and I'm an Education Specialist in Washington, D.C. And welcome to our Young Learners Book Program. You can find information about our future programs on the National Archives website, archives.gov, under attend an event and on the National Archives Facebook page. May 30th, 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial that honors the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. To commemorate and celebrate the 100th anniversary we have with us today author Linda Booth-Sweeney who will share her book, Minutemaker, Daniel Chester French and the Lincoln Memorial and National Park Service Ranger, Jen Epstein who will tell us a bit about how the National Park Service Rangers take care of and interpret the Lincoln Memorial, the millions of visitors who come every year. So we will take our audience questions via the YouTube chat box and have a question and answer session with both Dr. Sweeney and Ranger Epstein after both their presentations. The chat box is monitored by National Archives staff and let us know where you're watching from today. All of our programs are brought to you from the National Archives Public Programs and Education Team and the National Archives Foundation. And now it is my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Linda Booth-Sweeney, a writer, educator and researcher. Dr. Sweeney writes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. Her books have been translated into 10 languages and her writing has appeared in Highlights for Children and on the PBS learning media. Her next book with Harper Collins, Harper Collins do out in the fall of 2023 called A Part Together is a book about the magic of interconnection. So thank you for joining us, Dr. Sweeney and I will turn it over to you to share your book. Thank you, Missy. I am really delighted to be here and to be here with Jen especially to hear about the park ranger side of this story. And I'm excited to hear at the end of my small presentation and at the end of this talk any questions that you may have about children's book writing about trying to tell the story of historical figures. Those are some of my favorite questions. So what I wanna do is tell you about the person who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial. He actually sculpted the Lincoln statue. The Lincoln Memorial was a collaborative process with an architect named Bacon. But for now, I just wanna really focus on the Lincoln Memorial and the sculptor, his name is Daniel Chester French. So if we can go to the next slide. So really the interesting thing about Daniel Chester French was that he was a young boy when Lincoln was assassinated. So that really influenced his life. And you'll see that over the course of his life he sculpted a lot of statues but it was the Lincoln statue that was his major statue later on in his older years. So the opening line of the book is history shapes our lives and what we do with our lives can shape history. That's how it was with Daniel Chester French. And this book started 10 years ago, at least 10 years ago before monuments were talked about a lot before we had a pandemic. And actually this theme, history shapes our lives and what we can do with our lives shapes histories feels very appropriate for today. What are we going to do with all the events that we're experiencing now? How can we use our own creativity, our own art, our own hands-on, making talents, whatever we have to offer to turn that experience into something. So let's go to the next slide. So there's a first part of the book when Daniel was very young because I don't have both time to read the whole book I'm gonna skip to the point where Daniel was about 14 years old when Lincoln was assassinated. And this is him on the right hand side here watching people pour out into the streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So I'm gonna read just this section of the book to you. On April 14th, 1865, just before Dan's 15th birthday the family heard awful news. President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. The great man who had led the country through the terrible war to long for peace had been shot. A few days earlier, the people of Cambridge had been celebrating General Lee's surrender in Virginia which meant the year that the war would soon end. Now they cried in the streets. Girls and boys in Dan's school wore black bands on their sleeves and on their dresses and shirts in the days that followed. Some people wore black clothes of mourning for months. Dan would always remember Lincoln as, this is a quote from Dan, the man who saw straight when all the rest were seeing crooked. Next slide, please. So that was him in Cambridge. Now I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit too when he moved to Concord, Massachusetts where I actually live now and I'm speaking to you from. In Concord, he was lost a little bit in terms of what to do with his life. He had tried college and he had failed. It's just the book learning for him wasn't, it wasn't the thing that was really caught him. So let me read this section to you. And he was working on his parents' farm. Dan loved his new town and it's meandering rivers. When he wasn't canoeing, he worked on the family farm. He tended the cows, mended fences, harvesting asparagus and managed his own strawberry fields. Everyone knew when Dan had plowed the fields because his furrows were the straightest and the neatest. Dan wasn't interested in studies though. His grandfathers had been lawyers and his father was a judge, but the law wasn't for him. He tried college but failed algebra, geometry and physics. He returned to work on the farm wondering what to do with his life. What seemed like an ending was really a beginning. Let's go to the next one. One spring morning, Dan was in the barn bundling tender asparagus to sell at the market. When he spotted an odd looking turnip on the dusty barn floor, he started to throw it into a bin and then stopped. The turnip split root and bulging white belly reminded him of something. He took out his pocket knife and began to carve. And on the right hand side, you see when he heard his sister Sally calling him for lunch, he was surprised. Where had the morning gone? Dan looked at the turnip again. He had turned it into a fine looking frog. So I don't know if anybody's ever seen, you pick out a carrot from the ground. You have all these funny shapes sometimes and Dan creatively saw that and turned it into something. So next page. But what good was a turnip frog? He thought, Dan tossed it on the kitchen table and went upstairs to wash his hands for the noon meal. Gasps and laughter floated up through the old hallway floor. Halfway down the stairs, Dan heard his father say, that looks like real talent. His stepmother whispered, well, what are we going to do about it? Dan learned something new that day. A turnip can turn into a frog. What might the son of a judge turn into? Next slide, please. So from there, I'll say that his stepmother and his father really supported him. They brought the father the next week after that story and this is in the book, brought home a big kind of box of wet clay, put it in the middle of the family dinner table and said, it's family sculpting night. And Dan and the other family members started to use the clay. Dan was really the only one that came up with something recognizable, but then he realized that's really what he wanted to do. He ultimately connected with some of the people around him in Concord and Boston. He got lessons from May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, if you know a famous author, author of Little Women, it was her sister that he got lessons from. So he continued his self-study. And so eventually he produced what's called the Minuteman Statue here in Concord and that got him national recognition. And then once that got national recognition, this is when he started to roll into the Lincoln Memorial. I'm gonna read that part to you now. Praise for the Minuteman Statue rolled in. Dan knew he'd found what he wanted to do. Just as Lincoln had hoped, America continued to change and grow in the years that followed. Dan did too. After two years in Italy, he returned to America. Messages from the country arrived by mail, telegraph, and later by telephone, asking him to create sculptures for buildings, parks, cemeteries, and public spaces. Architects, city planners, and philanthropists commissioned him to create statues of monumental Americans who had helped shape the country. Okay, next, you can see Dan on the right-hand side, just looking exhausted. Okay, so now we're coming to the Lincoln Memorial and here's the story of how that came to be. Years passed, Dan became a husband, father, a leader in his field, and a teacher. He became Dan O'Chester French, famous sculptor. In 1915, when he was 65, his friend Henry Bacon, an architect, made him his most monumental offer yet. Congress had put aside nearly $300,000 for land, a building, and a statue in Washington, DC to honor Abraham Lincoln, and Bacon had been chosen to design the memorial. He wanted Daniel to sculpt a statue of Lincoln at the Memorial Centerpiece. So many statues of Lincoln had already been made. Daniel himself had created a standing Lincoln monument for the town of Lincoln, Nebraska, but the committee wanted this memorial to be something more. They wanted to bring the country together. Northerners and southerners had fought side-by-side in the Spanish-American War in 1898. The committee wanted Daniel to create a fresh view of the monumental American who reunited the nation and ended slavery. Could he do it? Let's go on to the next. Unless I love because I'm a researcher at heart myself, to find out, Dan did what he always did. He did research. He read books and articles about Lincoln. He talked with Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son. He studied cast that had been made of Lincoln's hands. He poured over photographs of the great man's wise, craggy face, and he called on his boyhood memories of Lincoln undimmed after all these years. Meanwhile, the great memorial that would house Lincoln's Daniel's statue took shape. So the building around was being formed and Daniel was creating the statue to go in it. Okay, let's go on. Just as America was built by many hands, so was the Lincoln Memorial. Blocks of white marble for Daniel's statue were blasted and cut from Georgia's mountainside by the sons and grandsons of American slaves. The floor of the memorial was built of pink Tennessee marble and the exterior was covered with marble from Colorado. The steps were made of Massachusetts granite. Next please. As he had done with the Minuteman statue 40 years before, Daniel put on his smock and began to sculpt. In his quiet studio in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, he made a 10 inch clay sketch model in different poses. He enlarged his favorite into a three foot working model, then began to sculpt a seven foot high model, shaping the large frame, bony face, long legs, and rumpled clothes of the log splitter and country lawyer from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. In the spring of 1917, America entered the Great War raging in Europe and Southerners and Northerners once again fought shoulder to shoulder. When the war ended, Daniel sent a plaster cast of his seven foot clay sculpture to the Bronx, New York City studio, the six Pichirilli brothers, sons of Italian immigrants. The brothers had worked with Daniel for 30 years. No one was better at carving his sculptures into stone. On the bottom, you can see the heads of all the Pichirilli brothers. And on the left is Daniel. Okay, one next more, next please. Here we go. So the Pichirilli brothers used a device called a pointing machine, to enlarge Daniel's seven foot plaster Lincoln, which is just a little more than a foot taller than me, into a 19 foot tall stone version. As tall as a giraffe, let's say. It was hard and exacting work. A single block of stone would have been too busy to move. So the Pichirilli's carved the statue in 28 pieces. The blocks of marble were transported separately to Washington and then assembled in the memorial, like a three dimensional puzzle. I think just one or two more. Go ahead. So Daniel shaped Lincoln's hands with extra care. If you've been there, you might have noticed this, but one is bald into a fist to project the firmness needed to hold the country together. The other is open as Lincoln needed to be to hear the American people's many voices and move his country towards healing. Next. So on May 22nd, 1922, seven years after Daniel accepted the commission, the Lincoln Memorial opened. Since then untold Americans have gone there to honor a great leader and the ideals he lived and died for. Singer Marion Anderson, Minister Martin Luther King, President Barack Obama and many others. Next. They are the ideals, truth, justice, equality, charity and unity that bind America together and that Americans are still striving for today. Next. Okay, we have a... When we need to be remembered of America's potential, the Lincoln Memorial and Dan's statue are there to inspire us. I think we might have one final one. Here we go. By shaping clay, Daniel Chester French helped to shape history. He sculpted more than 100 monuments in his lifetime. His tribute to the tall gaunt noble man who held America together when no one else could have was the crowning achievement of a boy who loved to make beautiful things. And that's the end of this part of the presentation. I look forward to hearing Jen and also hearing your questions and the last part. Thank you. Here I mute this scene. Sorry, I was muted. Anyway, thank you so much, Dr. Sweeney. A very, very inspiring story for sure. Everything that he did and to figure out that artistic talent and use that to create such... And really, there's so much that went into the creation of the Lincoln Memorial. It was many, many people involved in it. So it's a wonderful inspiration for us. So thank you and we'll get back to you with some questions and now we're gonna talk to National Park Service Ranger, Jen Epstein. So now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you National Park Service Ranger, Jen Epstein. She has worked at the National Mall and Memorial Parks since 1998. And the last 12 years is serving as education specialist, working with students and teachers. Originally from Connecticut, she was inspired to work for the National Park Service by her fifth grade teacher who sparked her interest in history. She began as a park volunteer at Gettysburg National Military Park while attending Gettysburg College. So thank you for joining us, Ranger Jen. And we have some questions for you. So you wanna tell us about this slide that is, I think it's part of your story about how you were inspired by your fifth grade teacher. Yes, thank you, Missy, for having me today. Yeah, so fifth grade, the world of history opened up to me and I just was just fascinated by all of it. I don't know exactly how she did it, but my fifth grade social studies teacher just must have taught in a way that just made it come alive and made me wanna go to these places. And so here from coming down from Connecticut, I think this must have been the first family vacation to the Lincoln Memorial. And I just, I look at this a lot and I think about, did I have any idea when I'm taking this picture with my little brother who now towers over me that I would be standing on these steps so many times, sharing my love of history with the next generations that have followed and it's just so funny to look at today and think, wow, I'm here all the time, but who would have thought back then that this is where I'd end up? Well, that's a great picture, I love it. And we're depending the future of what was going to happen. So you went to obviously Washington, DC and visited the Lincoln Memorial. Did you visit other national parks when you were growing up? Visited a lot of parks. After fifth grade, I was the family vacation planner, which might explain the face my brother's making, I don't know for sure, but yeah, we went to Gettysburg and Philadelphia and Washington and all the historic sites because I wanted to go visit these places and very often my father would embarrass me a bit by going up to a park ranger and saying, so how does my daughter get a job doing what you're doing? And while I'm pretty embarrassed as a kid by all of that, I guess I should be pretty thankful that here I am. And yeah, I try to encourage young people today if it is something you're interested in doing that for me, I got a great start by volunteering and I really recommend that as a way to get your foot in the door. It's a way to see if you enjoy the job and gain experience. And yeah, it's just a great way to begin. And I was very fortunate that I feel like the folks in Gettysburg raised me to be the ranger that I am and I'm very happy that I've had the experiences I've had. But so, what's interesting is that, sounds like both you and Dr. Sweeney are passionate and love what you do. And I think that is so important in your life because you spend a lot of time on the job and I love what I do too. So I think that's great. So I'm sure many of our viewers would love to be park rangers. So what do you need to do? What kind of training do you need in order to be a park ranger? What did you do? What do others do? Yeah, we're all in it for different reasons I think. I mean, I can appreciate the beauty of the Grand Canyon or the beauty of the big natural parks. And that was just never some place that I wanted to be. I always knew I wanted to be in a historic site. That was what inspired me to get into this. So I guess if you're a history person, you wanna study history. If you're into the sciences, you wanna study science. It's getting harder and harder for jobs because they are still competitive and budgets are tight. So college degree is gonna help you and any kind of experience, especially, there's a lot of different kinds of park rangers. So there's what I do, which is called interpretation and education, which is about talking with people. I tell kids all the time, this is my job. I get paid to talk about something that I like. And so you really can't go wrong there. But if you're interested in natural resources or if you're someone who wants to learn how to, we have to have people as they look at the statue of Lincoln, we have to have people who know what kind of chemicals are okay to clean the Lincoln statue with so we don't harm it. And we have to know all kinds of specific skills. And nowadays, we need people who know how to develop websites and be able to do administrative functions. So there's almost any job that you could wanna do can be found in the National Park Service depending on what you're looking for. And so there's, we're the front face of the park service because we're out there and we're talking to people, but behind us, there's all kinds of different jobs being done to keep your national parks looking good and safe, there's law enforcement, so all sorts of things. You can find any kind of job really you want in the National Park Service. So visitors when they come to Lincoln Memorial, what is a, what's the question you get most often? What do they most ask? What do people want to know? You don't really wanna know this, Missy, you really don't. But the first question you get in any national park is usually, where's the bathroom? Because that's the most popular question for us. You probably come by Metro or you've walked a long way and you really wanna know that answer. When it comes to the history of the Lincoln though, it's usually about how old is it, when was it built? How long did it take to build? Some people think he's actually buried here, which is not true. He was buried in Springfield, Illinois and this was built long after as a memorial. And so sometimes it's about the different symbols and things, but it's, the National Mall is such a busy place and Washington DC, this particular area, there are so many sites to see that people are not usually coming for a long visit at one particular site because you've got a list, you've got to check off all the sites you wanna go see and this is a stop amongst many. And so it's not often we get into the deep conversations about President Lincoln or the events that have happened at the memorial, which we find really compelling to talk about. Unfortunately, my job is education so that I get to spend time with students out and about in the park and try and share some of these stories. So yeah, pretty lucky. Usually I ask what they know about Lincoln and I will end up starting with the assassination, which is when I say, can we talk about something that happened before his death because I like to start earlier on, but yeah, there's so many fascinating stories about Lincoln. Yes, yes, I mean just, and I believe there are more books written about Abraham Lincoln than any other person, at least in American history, that's what I understand. So another question, so are you just at the Lincoln Memorial and because you mentioned the mall or are you on other parts of them because it's all part of a system, right? Right, so the National Park Service has over, I think we're at 423 or four different units and the National Mall is the park that houses these memorials. Each one of them actually counts individually as a unit, but as far as staffing it goes, we are very lucky in that we get to rotate around a little bit and the National Mall includes a lot of the major icons that you're familiar with in Washington DC, so the Washington Monument, the Lincoln, the Jefferson, the Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, World War II, Korean War Veterans Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, those all fall under the National Mall and maybe a big reason why I've stayed here on the National Mall for so long is the variety of sites that we get to work at and so one day I'm talking about Lincoln and then the next day I could be talking about Vietnam and then I'm talking about Jefferson and we just have a lot of variety and so for me it's I go wherever the school group wants to go and whatever sites they wanna visit, the Rangers who work the sites rotate around and every day they're at a different place so they get the variety as well. So it's a busy place. You gotta know a lot about a lot of different things or a little about a lot of different things. I forget how that goes, but lots of variety here. Yes, so you have another slide. It's a beautiful slide in the Lincoln Memorial. I'd love to see that. Do you wanna pull that up? The next slide, yes. I think that's- One of my colleagues took this picture for our social media page I think and I've just borrowed it for a number of uses. It's just such a nice time. The National Mall is open all the time so you can come out in the evening and it's a very popular place to visit after hot summer day when all the museums have closed for the night. The visitors can come out and enjoy sunset or evening with the lights on at the Lincoln and the other sites around the mall. So that's open 24-7. You can go there anytime. Yeah, that's wonderful, but not staffed by Park Service Rangers. Park Police though, our law enforcement branch is out and about all the time. Oh, okay, they're checking out things all the time, but that is such a beautiful, beautiful shot of the Lincoln Memorial. And then you have another one too, I think you wanna share the next slide. Yeah, the Lincoln Memorial story is about Lincoln but it has also become about the events that have happened here and I love to tell the story about the events as we are reflecting on this 100 years. We're looking at how the memorial's meaning is sort of evolved over time to the point where when it was built, as Dr. Sweeney was saying, it was all about this reunion idea and all the symbolism and everything went into this idea of unity of the country after the Civil War. But yet when most people coming to visit today, I think they see it as a symbol of freedom and that's what has come about because of the events that happened there. I love to talk about the Mary Anderson concert of 1939 when she was denied the chance to perform at a local building nearby and she instead performs outside on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and 75,000 people attend. And it's this kind of monumental event at the Lincoln Memorial that kicks off this whole string of events, including this one in the 1963 March done Washington with Dr. King giving his very famous, I have a dream speech. But while I love this picture of a passionate Dr. King giving his speech, I hope you all can see in the side shot of this and down front that there are some park rangers. And since we're talking about my job as a park ranger, I have to share this all the time with the students that I talk to. Neat to see that park rangers are right there when big historic events are happening here, especially this big event because it's really 250,000 people attended the March on Washington. And it was a truly big day for the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial. And so to see park rangers right in the middle of it is really neat. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's some wonderful. And as you say, so many things have happened there that have shaped our nation. And yeah, and Lincoln, this whole concept of freedom and bringing people together, he represents that. And so it's, in fact, it's right there in the reflecting pool. So it's a perfect, perfect spot. So Dr. Sweeney, you wanna join us again and just some questions. So actually the first question for both of you and why do you haven't been on for a while, Dr. Sweeney and you're muted, okay, I'm muted. So you just share that wonderful book about the creation of the statue of Lincoln and what went into that. But what does, and I'm guessing you have visited the Lincoln Memorial, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about that, but what does the Lincoln Memorial mean to you? Well, I think it has definitely evolved, can you hear me okay? Yes, it has definitely evolved from the time I was a little kid and went to DC to now, but the now version is, I think if I put it in one word, it would be aspiration. And the reason I say that is two reasons. One, I'm particularly locked on to the hands of the Lincoln Memorial. I think Dando Chester French really got the tension that's here even right now between the need to be firm and move forward and the need to be open and listen to diverse voices and different perspectives. And I think Lincoln was one of our models for doing that. And so I'm always, always inspired by those hands and just a good reminder that it's the both and, we need to kind of be able to do both. And then the other, I would say are the, these are more the words on the walls, but malice towards none, charity for all, peace amongst ourselves and within all nations. I think he was, both he was a uniter and an emancipator and I think we're still working. We have so much work to do and yet we can aspire and keep. So when I go there, I lift my head up and I think about what's possible now. And he just remakes me think to ask that question. So yeah, wouldn't it be wonderful? We could have another Abraham Lincoln who could help us to come together as a nation again. Missy, I think there might be one on this listening today. We don't know, right? Right, yes, that's a good point. Or that goes up to Jen and asks her where the bathroom is but it could be that person. So how about you, Jen? You're there all the time. Yes, and that makes my answer seem so not as beautiful as the first answer. No, no, your answer's great. Well, the problem is that when I first started on the mall in the late 90s, they stationed me for three solid weeks at the Lincoln Memorial, which you would think would be just wonderful, but that's some hard marble. And so it's a lot of repetitive questions and after all these years, I have such a better appreciation for the story and the site and what it means and the meanings people come with that I certainly didn't have when I was there as a kid. I don't even remember being there as a kid. The only evidence is that photo. For a long time, I didn't enjoy being there because I had been there for a long time and it kind of lost its for me because I was there for so long. And then I realized, you gotta put yourself in the mindset maybe of the people who are coming to visit and you have to, that whole thing when you're in visitor services like we are and you have to remember that while you may have heard this question a million times, it's the first time that this person is asking. So I learned to sort of station myself by the steps and wait for people to come on up. And as you watched their faces when they came up the steps, you would just see kind of their eyes open wide and you would see just the awe that other people had for this statue and for this building and that kind of gave me new feelings about it. And as you learn more about a place, you, I think you care more. That's what we try to do is inspire people to be interested in these places so that they'll care and wanna help us protect and preserve them. And so, yeah, now it's just, I look at it, it's a hundred years, man, it's just amazing that this site has had so many different meanings and things happen there over time. And so, yeah, I don't know, it's, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not so eloquent. But I am. No, that's wonderful. I love that story. I mean, and how it has come to mean more to you over time. And Dr. Sweeney, you were referencing the words that are in the Lincoln Memorial and they are the Gettysburg address and the Lincoln Second inaugural address. Both of them words of reconciliation during an extraordinarily difficult time in our nation. And I think it's worth just reading those words over again at times too. So, to you, Dr. Sweeney, so what inspired you to write your book about Daniel Chester French and the Lincoln Memorial and the statue of Lincoln? Yeah, can you hear me okay? Yes, yes. Okay, well, it's actually a funny story, not as funny, sorry, to keep going back to the bathroom, but it's like really random to tell you the truth because I would, if you had asked me 12, 15 years ago, who was the sculptor of the Lincoln statue, I would have had no idea. And honestly, I think a lot of people would have no idea. They know the Lincoln Memorial, but not the American sculptor. I happened to move into the sculptor's small studio in Concord, Massachusetts. I had three kids, we were spilling out of this little place we had lived in, we moved to the studio and I had no idea. And all of a sudden, people would be knocking on the door saying, we wanna come in and see, he had left behind, it was his studio. So it was not, wasn't meant to be lived in. So over the years, the people who had lived there built on a kitchen and built on something else. But he left a freeze, it's like a sculpting over the fireplace that you could see an original work. So literally people would knock on the door and come by and want to come in to see it. So I figured I'd better understand who this person was. And as I got to know him, I realized he was very quiet. You never really found a lot of words from Daniel Chester French in the history books but you could see by his actions, what kind of person he was, what he chose to sculpt. And as a creative myself, as someone who just appreciated that whole process, I started to dive in. And then one day the person who had written his dissertation, Michael Richmond came over for dinner because like I said, there's this pilgrimage of people that were coming to my house. He said, I think you're the eighth most knowledgeable person about Daniel Chester French in the world. And I said, okay, I think I can write a book now. So I wanted kids, I thought, you know, that's what I really wanted kids to understand. And then I had the really amazing opportunity to work with a representational artist. I don't know if you've noticed the illustrations have almost a feeling of Norman Rockwell, sort of, you know, but Sean Fields lives not far from Chesterwood, where Daniel Chester French did the Lincoln statue. And Sean and I just went back and forth and found the thread in the story to be about history shapes our lives because there were so many different ways you could go. So that's the inspiration actually starting in his whole studio. And that's such a great, great story. So that's awesome. Yeah, I love that, I love that. And then how about also, if you'd actually, a little bit more about how you were inspired to write, well, in your introduction, we said you write for both children and adults. Do you prefer one over the other? And how did you become a writer? Well, honest, this is, well, the truth is I have three children. The oldest is 23. And when that oldest was tiny, there was a storm that happened. I was trying to get this little kid home in one of those fold up strollers that would have collapsed at any weight. And the storm was so significant that it was lifting up his stroller. You know, the little canopy was like a sail. And my like 18 month old or two year old was gonna fly off. And he was loving it. He thought it was the best thing ever that the signs were shaking and the awnings were flapping and everything was going on. And I just realized for a moment what it was like from his perspective. And I went home and I just wrote some words down, awnings, droop, whatever I did. And I started to rhyme. And then once I did that, and they love hearing me read out loud all the time. So then I took that little rhyme that I wrote about when the wind blows. And then over time I started to learn how to be a children's book writer. I went to conferences. I got critiques. I got a lot, a lot of rejections. And then finally I started to get nice rejections. And I realized that they're actually writing back to me versus no. And then you, so you start to see this progression of, you know, your skin gets a little tougher, right? You don't want to get more rejections because that means people are talking to you. And then eventually after a number of years, I found an agent and then that book got published. And then I wrote when the snow falls and then I'm off and running. And I have to say I love the books I write for adults are, they're about, this is complex systems. They're about systems theory. They're a lot more dense. And important work. But I find the two to be the children's books and that work to be very complimentary because I can, a different part of my brain can take a break, you know? And then I can go back to the complexity again. That's amazing. So we are getting close to the end. So I've got one last question for each of you if you can answer this in just a minute or so. What advice do you have from your own lives or even inspiration from sculptors like Daniel Chester French or President Abraham Lincoln? Do you have for young people today? So either of you. You want to go first, Jen? Well, I gave for my job. I think I already said that you got to go for it. You got to reach out and if you can volunteer or gain experience in the field that you're looking for. I'm wondering if you and your research, it's been, as I said, over 20 years I've worked here and I just recently did some more research on the actual people who were involved beyond French and bacon. But like you said, the Picharellis who I wasn't even pronouncing their name right for all these years. I just found out. Yeah. But like, there was a woman that that Daniel Chester French mentored and she was involved in carving the details around the speeches. And she's got this fascinating story and I just feel like there's inspiration everywhere and that there are so many untold stories that we don't share enough of. And I now mention the brothers. I mean, I think they're fascinating. Six brothers, all the same family, all good at this one art form. And this Evelyn Longman who is the woman who was helping French. And there's a photo I found from her family collection or maybe French's collection where it's bacon, the building designer and Daniel Chester French and her, three of them looking at the construction site of the Lincoln Memorial. And I don't know to think that there's a woman involved in this business is just, to me, very inspirational. I feel like we need to make sure we tell some of these stories and let young people know that the options are endless out there. Like if in 19 teens, we can have a woman sculpting the Lincoln. I mean, lots of opportunities out there. All right, well, that's awesome. And that's, I mentioned her in the back of the book, the book material, but I've never seen the picture. So maybe you could share that with me at some point. So my quick answer to your wonderful question, Missy, is for anybody listening to this, is pay attention to what you see. Your eye is, you're the only person with your eye. And if you see a tree leaning a certain way and that's interesting to you and it makes you think of a woolly man. Or if you're like, Jen, and you are just fascinated with history and you wanna know more, that's the thing to write about, sculpt about, create a collage about, create a song about, write a story about, just pay attention to yourself. And I will tell you quickly, I have, I won't even go up and won't embarrass myself, but the way I do it is notebooks filled, like all around my office. Like it must be, I don't know, 100, I don't know. But many notebooks to just put it down. You can do it in your own way, but that's my recommendation. Well, those are fantastic both, great. So thank you so, both of you, so very, very, very much for joining us today. And you know, you've inspired me in so many ways. So both of you take care and have a wonderful rest of your day and a great Memorial Day weekend. Yes, for sure, and you as well. Thank you. Thanks for having us, bye. And please join us in June 16th, when we meet Thomas Edison at 11 o'clock Eastern Standard Time.