 Okay, maybe what we could do is go back and just recap a little bit of what we've been talking about. We are talking about the One Book One Nebraska Deaf Zones and Darling Spies, Seven Years of Vietnam War, reporting by Beverly D. Keever. Apparently you probably didn't hear any of what we said, so I will just introduce ourselves real quickly. I'm Mary Jo Ryan, I'm the Communications Coordinator for the Nebraska Library Commission. I'm Ron Meyer. I used to live at Superior, Nebraska and was an NMA Vietnam Petron. I'm Lois Meyer and I am a member of the Board of One Book One Nebraska, which is one of the, excuse me, of the Nebraska Center for the Book, which is one of the sponsors for the One Book One Nebraska program. I'm Ron Wagner, Director of the Library Commission, a member of the Nebraska Center for the Book Board and also with Lois and some others, a member of the One Book One Nebraska committee, selection committee. Great, and as we talked about earlier, the One Book One Nebraska program encourages people all across the state to read the same book and talk about it. It happens in libraries and bookstores and individuals and friend groups and book clubs and all kinds of things all across the state. A committee at the Nebraska Center for the Book, which Rod and Lois are on, reads these books and right now you're reading for this coming year, correct? We are. We are. And so they each read, what, three, four, five books? Did you say? Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, maybe. Yeah. It's a busy summer and the committee members divide the books up. We want to be sure that every book is considered that it's nominated and we offer our observations from our readings and determine or narrow down the number of books that were nominated to a small number that we then pass on to the board to make the final selection. Great. And at this point, we are getting very close to narrowing that down. The One Book One Nebraska for 2016 will be announced at our festival in November. Yeah. The Celebration Nebraska Books here in Lincoln, November 14th. So we'll be making that announcement for 2016. And the short list will be publicized as well. Yes. That's right. Finalists will send a news release out in a few weeks probably. Is that right? When will your committee give us the finalists? Within a few weeks, a couple weeks probably. We need to get it to the board so they can make the determination by the celebration. Fabulous. The board will vote and that'll be how they'll make the decision. This whole program, the One Book One Nebraska program is sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book, Humanities Nebraska, Nebraska Library Commission, and University of Nebraska Press. We're moving kind of quickly, theoretically, through these slides. There we go. These are the books that we've had in the past 11 years, 2005 to 2015, starting with my Antony in and this year we're reading Death Zones and Darling's Pies. Again, a nonfiction story by a Nebraska author. She was a Pulitzer Prize winning or not Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist. And she, her story about the besieged outpost of Quezon in 1968 was what she was nominated for. She's the longest serving American corresponding correspondent covering the Vietnam War. And this is truly a story of the Vietnam War and many sides of Vietnam War. And she's the one that I would say. Her goal was to tell the story so that people at home knew more facts about what was really happening in Vietnam. But in the process, she also tells a lot about what was happening, not just to our American soldiers, but in the politics and government of Vietnam as well. And that's one of the things you mentioned, right, Ron? The people of Vietnam on both sides, telling that that story of the politics you mentioned was one of the interesting points here that you learn a lot about the politics of North Vietnam and South Vietnam boat. And Lois, you mentioned that as reading this book as a woman and as a teacher gave you a lot of insight and. Yes, it did. I think it especially in the field of journalism. It's a wonderful example of very fine journalistic writing. And I would encourage people who teach journalism in high school, especially in college to have students read this book because of. Journalism now, I think, is too often shouting matches and arguments and not a whole lot of facts to back up these arguments. And what she does in this book is really do the hard work that is necessary to find out what is truth for people on both sides. And what is truth for people on both sides isn't always the same truth. And I think that's an interesting concept to discuss. And an interesting thing to have teenagers high school students explore because they won't remember any of this. Obviously, of course, you know, this is way beyond their years. But but those issues of the what is the truth and what does it mean to tell a story of truth? That's a cool thing for them to be thinking about. Well, I am when I originally recommended that my husband read the book because of his experience in Vietnam as an American Marine. His perspective at 19, you know, was one that he was, well, I'll let you know when you're going through military training, you're indoctrinated into believing that what you're doing is the honorable thing to be doing. And so you go into these situations with that mindset. It's only afterwards that you begin to question what the whole thing was. And part of where my questioning began is when I started reading other journalists that served in Vietnam and some of their the books that they had written. This book just reinforces everything that I had read about Vietnam since I served there. Such such a big picture. Look, this book. Yes. And when you're, as you say, a 19-year-old Marine, you have a more narrow, obviously, perspective because that's what you need to focus on. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I guess what we're hearing is all across the state that people are reading this book in groups and libraries are checking it out, checking out the book club kits, and that it's really making quite an impact. And we're getting a lot of feedback that it's an excellent book to read. And I thought, listening to her, I did get to hear her when she was in Hebron to visit her mother on her mother's 111st date. So I did get to hear the author speak and they had a special library program at the nursing home where her mom lives. And she was really great. And her recall of all of this is fabulous. And so someone asked her that, of course, when she was speaking, said, how can you remember all this? And she said, well, I don't remember it all. I kept everything, every note, every posting, every story, every photograph. I kept it all and sent it all home. And so I had it to go through to do research when I was writing the book. So it's all based, it's not based on my recall, it's based on everything I wrote and took notes on and everything from that time period. And she had a great story. Her husband, Chuck, was there with her. And she had a great story. They said, well, how did you meet your someone asked her the question? How did you meet her husband? And she said, well, when I was in Vietnam, I was tramping all over, I had a pair of combat boots, and I bought a pair of set of tigues. And I was tramping all over trying to follow the troops around and see what they were doing and go to these outposts. And finally, the Marine said, we better find somebody who can kind of show her around so she doesn't get herself hurt or something. So she said, so they assigned this young Marine to show me around. And he's been doing it ever since. It just goes to show you give a Marine an order. He takes it seriously. So they were very cute. And I had a great time talking to him. And I just respected everything that she experienced and related so much. She was just a really an exciting thing for a young woman who grew up in a small town, as you said, in Nebraska and went to country school. And what she said is she really, really wanted to go to China, but she and the suggestion of a professor, she decided to stop in this place called French Indochina and see what was really going on there. And of course, could never leave because it was just so compelling to tell the story. So we, of course, all of us are really recommending the book. We're sorry that the first part of our discussion may have been lost in translation here. We might have not been able to catch it, but that's okay. We're going to move on. We see it's while we're moving on. I don't have the details, but her papers have been she has given her papers to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and are being managed by the archives staff at the University Libraries. Yes, Mary Ellen Ducey is someone who could definitely give us more information about that. Hopefully she will. We at the celebration of Nebraska books will have more details on the archiving of her materials and papers and her story that's been captured there. I just wanted to mention that we know that Nebraska and Salah across the state are actively engaged in reading this book and talking about it and they'll keep on doing it throughout 2015. The book club kits are booked already through March 2016, which is a good reminder that you don't have to read the one book one Nebraska during the year. You can read it the next year if you want to. And if you want to check out the news and events tab on our website, which is one book dot Nebraska dot gov. If you check out that news and events tab, you'll see what's going on with one book one Nebraska where the programs are that are being held and the book discussions. We also invite you to join the conversation here on Facebook. One book one Nebraska has a Facebook page and I will actually go to that potentially. Let's see if I can see it. Try that. Okay, here we are. You can see that we have a variety of things that we've posted on Facebook. One of these is the museum exhibit at Washington D.C. featured the press pass for Beverly Deep Keever at in one of the exhibit displays. And so I took a picture of it because I was so excited to see her press pass. But you can see she's just a young kid really as so many of the soldiers were in Vietnam. And it was funny when she left that said in the legend here on the exhibit board said fellow reporters gave Beverly Deep Keever this North Vietnamese Army shovel when she left in 1969, noting her mastery of Vietnam's journalistic vagaries in the inscription. And this was her press pass when she was reporting for the Christian Science Monitor. And then on Facebook, of course, you just get more reminders about celebration. But I did have Yeah, this is the actual exhibit in the museum and you can see it was a very moving thing by the way. There was one one room which was nothing but television reporting from the Vietnam War on an endless loop. And it was hard to be in there. You know what I'm saying? Very hard because it was a horrible reminder of that time. But also very, very interesting juxtaposition to the kind of reporting we see now, versus the kind of reporting that Americans saw in those days, which pretty raw and pretty immediate as opposed to translated for us later, you know, kind of thing. So I recommend that you join our Facebook page and join the conversation. I also really want to suggest that you create a local program. We have publicity tool kit, which is a digital media kit. We have posters that are easy to use on our website. Just go to that. Right. Not that. Website is there right there. One book, one Nebraska or one book dot. That's not it. Whoops. The website is one book dot Nebraska dot go. And you can see again, we have information about the book, information about the author, information about how to get involved and news and events. And under get involved, there's quite a bit of information. One of them is this digital media kit, which can help you with publicity. The other is some promotional tools, which includes some posters. Okay, we also have this discussion questions that are very helpful. Ron and Lois worked on those. And I think that we've gotten a lot of good feedback on those being very helpful in the discussion. We have book club kits that libraries can check out for their book clubs, which includes some bookmarks and some some of the books, of course, website and other resources. But one of the things I really wanted to point out is that Humanities Nebraska has through their Speaker's Bureau set us up with a presenter and they will actually provide libraries and other nonprofit groups with the funding to pay for the presenter's expenses. The name of the program that Thomas Berg presents is Beverly Deepkeber, an unconventional woman for an unconventional war. And I think that would would draw a lot of people who wanted to talk about the book and wanted to hear his take on it. He's a history, partner history lecturer here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His name is Thomas Berg, and he describes his presentation as the fact that she champions women as capable war correspondents and trounces the misconception that American press quote unquote lost the war for America. So I really think this is a very interesting program and we will have him at the celebration to give us some some of these insights and share with us some of what he's learned in his research. So that should be good. So get involved schedule a book club or book talk in the library book a program with humanities in Nebraska with that speaker that I just spoke of or local veterans, local journalists who want to talk about journalism then and now a history professor at your high school. I mean, you can think of a lot of people who would be interested in a panel discussion or some programming on this. I would invite you if any of you out there interested in doing a local radio or TV talk show, I would be happy to help you put together some materials to try to get your local TV or radio station interested in this. There are several videos on our website of author interviews with Beverly Deepkeever and like I said, she's great talker, great speaker, she does a great interview. So that's would be an interesting thing just to do a screening of that for people. And any other ideas you have for programming on around this book, can you guys think of anything or that libraries could do or bookstores could do or schools could do that anyone be interested in? You know, I think, like you say, if you could get the the humanities Nebraska speaker, the professor, I think that would be an excellent he's available to schools and any kind of organization. Yeah, we really get I think it would get people talking. I think so too. I think so too. So just a reminder to join us at the November 14 celebration of Nebraska books. Like I said, we will be featuring the humanities Nebraska speaker Thomas Berg, but we will also have some other activities going on. It takes place at 1200 Main Street at 130 the Nebraska Center for the book annual meeting will be held and that is open. It's an open meeting at 245 is the presentation by Thomas Berg at 330. We will have the presentation of the Jane the 2015 Jane Geske award. And that's an award. It's a secret right at the moment. We do not know who's going to receive it. But it's always given to a Nebraska organization that really exemplifies their work in supporting literacy and literature, reading, writing. So it there's been a list of fine organizations that have received that award. There'll be another one receiving it that day secret. So who it is at this moment. And we will also have presentations by the 2015 Nebraska Book Award winning authors and Raj, you've been talking to some of them. It sounds like several of them are coming right? Yes, we've had a great response from the people who have books selected as our winners. And we expect to have really good participation from them. They're inviting friends and family to join them. So it'll be a great celebration. Yeah, we're really looking forward to that. That's always interesting to hear them read from their work. And also sometimes they'll talk a little bit about how they came to write that work. And it's always fascinating. The other thing we'll do, as we've said earlier is we will announce the 2016 one book one Nebraska book read. So you will if you come there, you'll be the first to know what will be the book for 2016. We'll have a little awards reception and book signing by those winning authors. And we'll be done around 630. So hopefully a lot of you will join us. This is just my little reminder that it's that you can currently nominate a title for 2017. It seems ridiculous. We haven't announced 2016. But people are actually starting to nominate for 2017, which is great. And so if you go to this web address, which is center for the book dot Nebraska dot gov. And you go to programs, and then you'll come to this online form. And you can either use the online form or send an email. So please don't. Don't forget that now is the time to do it. And if you have any other questions, or would like any other information, you can certainly contact me or go to our website or go to our Facebook page. Rod and Ron and Lois, do you have any other questions or anything else you want to add? Well, I think one was interesting about this book also have the whole complexity of war. When you get to the end of the book, there's lots of surprises. Oh, I know the last chapter. I know, I know. That was one of the things there was a one of the discussion questions says, let me see if I can find it. Did you find the final chapter surprising? Discuss why or why not? You could spend the whole this whole time talking about that couldn't you? Yeah. Very interesting. Anything from our audience, like any questions that you can type in the chat box? I don't see any there. We apologize for the problem we had earlier and hope that you were able to catch up with us. We had a great conversation, but I don't think anybody heard it. So we started over. And now we're good to go. Thank you, everyone. Do we know what show is next week? Next week's show is steam at your library. So steam at your live talk about science, science, technology, engineering, art, arts, music, mathematics, music and mathematics. They are the same. No, but they are similar. Music and mathematics have a similarity. Yeah. So arts does include me. Yeah. Chad Marin at the St. Petersburg College in Florida. Great. And it presents great on how to do incorporating steam into the educational framework and what the library can do. Great. So sounds like a very good program. We're gonna have a great program next week. Okay, join us again next week. Thank you, everyone for joining us. And we will end now. So thank you. And we'll see you next week.