I know that many of you have heard me talk and I've never laid your eyes on me until this minute. And there's always this little moment, you know where people kind of look. a little puzzled and I think that's the you know, it's a natural reaction that I don't look the way you thought I did. Which is too bad? Because this is how I look. I have I have I think stopped I stopped maybe 15 years ago asking people what they thought I really did look like. Because I asked the question at one point in the women said I thought you'd be tall and thin and very very chic. And I thought I deserve this. I was the one that asked the question. But if you close your eyes and I say it's all things considered. I'm going to wertheimer then you know that I am underwear timer. I hope This book that that we just completed is represents 25 years of the life of the nation end of my life as well. I'm a founding mother of National Public Radio. And there's another one here Chris Mortensen who's sitting over here was also at NPR when we open the doors. Chi to the founding mother There's a picture in this book, which was taken actually in 1978. It's me cocky and Nina. The three of us were you know? Hanging hanging out together even then. We all are better-looking and have better haircuts. This is My Little House on the Prairie. I think Laura Ashley has a lot to answer for. There's a one of the reasons to buy this book, which I hope you will all do. Is that there is also a picture in the picture section of Sylvia Poe Jolie. There are people all over this country who would buy the book just to see that picture. You know, there was a picture book done a few years ago, which we all thought was such an odd idea. But it apparently it did pretty well this out of coffee table book and it had it. I had lots of pictures of all the people that are on NPR except Sylvia. She was not in the book many people demanded their money back. Now we went on the air 25 years ago while the company we this is our 25th year. We went on the air in 1971 in May May 3rd, which was a an extraordinary day. It was a day of huge demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. Now, you know, it was one of those kinds of days that happened in Washington where There's so many flowers Everything Is Beautiful the sky is blue spring and there was a set of lovely smell of tear gas in the air. and the town was full of mostly young people who were demonstrating against the war and there was a huge contingent of National Guard and police and regular army folks in town as well helicopters everywhere motorcycle, the end they are the intention of the demonstrators was to shut the city down was to block the bridge is blocked the Avenues and caused the government which is Prosecuting the war in Vietnam to be unable to function for a day or two days or whatever and it didn't work because they were wildly outnumbered because Wylie bureaucrats to come to work at 5 in the morning to be sure they could get in and because they the the force arrayed against these demonstrators was so large and so much better organized and they were in fact, I think and I said in this in the introduction to that section that one of the things that was so shocking about that day was that was the force used against these demonstrators and thousands were rounded up and arrested on mass and taken to the football stadium where they were held and it was like a third-world meant and I think it was shocking to a lot of people to see that happening but we began with that day of protest and one of the things that I think was very striking to me as I listened to the tapes and then when I read the transcriptions and edited them Was that we still try to do a lot of the things that we were trying to do on that day National Public Radio is Mission is still to try to take people and put them on the street to try to take people to the experience so that they can be a part of an event and share what they have been is like Robert Connelly in introducing it. talked about that you said that was what we were going to do and we did and that's what we still try to do and I must say that When you think about all of the ways in which NPR has changed now that we have a tremendous number of reporters covering stories all over the world. We have all of the people that are much much bigger staff far. If you were limitations on what we can do, you know, we're not we're not talking to CVS here, but we do have a lot of people working for us many more than we have. Do we open the doors Chris remembers and and the improvisation that used to be necessary, you know, we couldn't send somebody to cover the President Nixon's trip to China. So we talked to reporters who's Note news organizations did have enough money to send them now, you know, we have reporters who were stationed in the Far East and we would you know, we would not have any problem with sending people to China now. And you know during the Beijing the during the events in Tiananmen Square we did. In fact, we said our fireman, you know, every network has a fireman the person who goes to the dangerous place and does whatever needs to be done. And at that point it was Deborah Amos who retired fireman a woman who is fearless as far as I can tell she never learns to pronounce the names of the places. She goes to She figures you know, I'm there. They're shooting at me who cares how I pronounce the neck. And in fact, you know who does care she is a she gets the story. There's a there's some interesting Deborah Amos interviews in here in which she talks about going behind the lines that were laid down by the Pentagon the golf or just getting out there and trying to get the story at any rate. The president to protest against the war in Vietnam was the lead when we were when we began in 1972 was the year of the Watergate burglary Susan stamberg called it. She named it the Caper of the bungled burglary. Which we didn't stick. I don't know. I don't know why that was. The next year the Senate the senate committee on water the Watergate committee began holding hearings and we had an extraordinary opportunity then which you know, it was something that we've we have become famous for and that is if there's a big event you can go to it with us will be there will be broadcasting now, you know, sometimes I think that we have given birth to C-SPAN. Maybe this is a good thing and maybe it isn't hard to know whether the Republic is better off for having so much opportunity to look in on what their Congress is doing. There's a, you know, certain laws and sausages aspect to this that is a little disturbing I think but still that that has been that has been what we have done in 1973 when the when the Watergate hearings were going on. We had a commentator who appeared on that spring named Emmanuel cellar. Now does anybody remember him? He was a congressman from New York chairman of the Banking Committee for about a hundred and fifty years this term limits not a part of his, you know thinking but he had retired and he still felt that he had some things to say. So here. He wrote this. This is just a tiny fragment. He said about Watergate in my 50 years in Congress. I have conducted many investigation Adam Clayton Powell the New York Port Authority the Department of Justice in the chase after mink coats in deep freezes, which I think was the Eisenhower Administration baseball all matter and kind of antitrust violations and always the motive of wrongdoing was greed. I was barely in Congress when The Teapot Dome scandal broke. Again, greed but Watergate what pushed Watergate a fight for power naked raw power. I don't believe for a moment that these men around President Nixon did it out of zeal out of Devotion to the person or the ideas of President Nixon. I've been around too long to swallow that sort of nonsense. They did what they did to preserve their own power their own ego satisfaction if Nixon were not re-elected, what would they be? PR men management consultants in the like but not in the White House. Now in 1973 the president was not well, he was suffering from phlebitis and he was he was in the hospital in Washington and he walked out one day. He just decided he was going back to the White House and you left and his doctors were very anxious about it because you don't have blood clots in his leg and they were afraid that those clots would break loose and kill him and he was sort of got the feeling about the president that he thought that you know as an alternate alternative. What else was happening to him might not be the worst thing. But he came back to the White House and the Watergate hearings were over by that time, you know, all of those questions. What does the president know? When did he know it? I had been asked the discovery of the White House tapes had occurred everyone in their brother was in court trying to get hold of the tapes and the president didn't want to have a news conference for obvious reasons. I mean among other things Washington's cutest couple Woodward and Bernstein would show up. And that would not be a pleasant experience but he did want to speak out he wanted to talk. So he gathered the White House the staff of the executive mansion and Inn in the Rose Garden and spoke to them and he talked about and I love the fact that he had walked out of the hospital. He said I know many say you'll risk your help, but the health of a man isn't nearly as important as a health of a nation and the health of the world. I do want you to know that I feel we have so little time in the positions that all of us hold and so much to do and what we are elected to do we are going to do let others wallow in Watergate. We're going to do our job. Now that the president was at that moment engaged and trying to work out a way to get out of a very unpopular war in Vietnam. He was under siege from the Watergate committee. In court there was a the special prosecutor that you know, he thought might be a solution was turning out to be a serious problem for him. The Judiciary Committee was about to convene hearings and hold hearings on which ultimately lead to a resolution of impeachment being approved by the committee. I know it's hard to imagine a person being under more pressure than the president was at that time and he was President for one more year after that. It was almost a year to the day in August of the following year that he resigned. Now there's several interesting things to me about that one. Is that when you think about you know, when people say that Bill Clinton has been getting a lot of negative press he's been under a lot of pressure Bill Clinton doesn't know from pressure. I mean white water is a mirror, you know Bagatelle compared to what was going on in the other thing is the willingness that we had then to cut the president some slack. The capacity that we had to to to hope that what was going on. What we thought was happening was not happening. Remember that now lots of people I think tribute the fact that we no longer trust our politicians for more than about 5 minutes is is it's right back to these terrible days Watergate, but it is it is very interesting to me to compare our reactions then in our reactions now the other thing of course it happened was that went when the president did resign in 1974 we were there and we did something which hadn't been done to that point. We had a national call in. Now it's not easy to have a national call in without a satellite without 800 numbers without any of those things that make hooking the nation together something that is just common place now, I mean National Collins are very common. Now, my mother would say that some of them are dead common noun, but it hadn't been done. So we we hooked to the come in this very jury-rigged sort of operation. We had a you know, we we we would go over head as Usain was reason radio to another city putting these cities and the people would call into at the time ksjn and we would all listen and then we would switch again to Iowa and switch again south and north and that way we sort of we were we were unable to get the whole country in because we couldn't technically Handle it but we gathered a lot of people together and it was a kind of was like one of those times when there's a death in the family or something Dreadful or frightening has happened and everybody gets together and you all hold hands and have a potluck supper. It was sort of that feeling and I remember being very comforted by the kinds of things that people had to say this sort of common sense of the American people at a time which could have developed into a serious constitutional crisis because the other thing to remember is the Gerald R Ford of Michigan who was our next president have been appointed to the job of vice president under the 25th Amendment. He had not been elected. So we were about to have an appointed president something which had never happened in our history. And the kind of thing that you know, it was a frightening moment. the next year we did leave Vietnam Saigon fell in 1975. The piece that we put in I put in the book for that occasion was actually broadcast in 1985. It's one of the few times this book is arranged chronologically year by year every year a check and and I jumped out of order in order to put this program back in 1975 were the events happened but the fall of Saigon we broadcast this place in 85 and 10 year anniversary as a and we built it around something that we just sort of came to us over the transom and that was a letter home from a young man who had served in Vietnam and it was recorded on cassette. A letter to a friend recorded on cassette by a pilot named Richard Van de Geer who had flown helicopters sorties in and out of Saigon landing on the roof of the embassy bringing people out to the to the ships offshore. Now it's a very even he's a kid and he talked about what he did and then we went back and and put with it other eyewitness accounts people who had been there Marine guards Vietnamese who got out at the time Vietnamese who didn't get out and came out later as Folk people and describe that day. One of those people was Joe McBride was a state department of official. It was his job to drive people from points around the city to evacuation pick up places and he remembers that it was very difficult to organize the departure because so many people were terrified of being left behind. And he remembers one place. There was a big Vietnamese that had he was in civilian clothes a big tall Vietnamese spoken English came up to me as I was trying to organize things and said, maybe I can help you and he said what are your priorities? So I laid out my priorities as best I could and he said fine fine. I'll take care of it. I came back for five times after that guy started organizing things and he would generally have a group of people lined up organized. I take them and I turned to him finally and I said, look, I'm running out of gas. I'm running out of time. The Choppers are leaving. This is going to be the last run. I asked the guy where is your family? It's you and your family now. And he said we can't do it. I said, what do you mean he said there are 24 people in my family. There's no way we can do it in just one run and I said listen, you know, they're telling me I have got to go home and the guy said well, it's been nice working with you extended his hand and shook mine and said see you around. Thanks for trying. We all remember those terrible pictures in that terrible night. They are left going on Richard Van de Geer said that they were only going to fly daylight sorties. But in fact they flew until 5:00 in the morning there were Huey's Air America here has had it been, dear this big helicopters by the Vietcong flying around 2 and nobody knew who belong to what it was confusing and terrifying but he got out of it with the, you know, having flown several having offloaded a number of people from the embassy to to the ships. He was then called out again when the mayaguez was stopped and American Marines were taken hostage and when he flew his helicopter out to try to evacuate some Marines from an island off the coast of crew of North Korea. The helicopter was shot down. And everyone aboard died he was considered because of what he was doing there at the end of the war to be the last casualty Vietnam. He's at his is the last name on the wall Richard Van de Geer. The the thing that I think is striking to me and looking back over these years as I say are they are the events the that's one of the things that striking to me. The Iran-Contra hearings were another big event where we were we were present at the Fort for all of it. And one of the things that happened, of course, the biggest thing that happened of course was Oliver North testified and we all remember that I know Oliver North comes in he talks about why did what he did and that he's totally innocent and you know much maligned and his lawyer performed a fairly histrionic fashion, and and it was all you know quite compelling but the mother portion of that testimony that I've included from that day is the testimony of a woman who struck me then and still strikes me as a woman who had no axe to grind no concern. She just she was not at all concerned about what she had done and she was a truth-teller. I think it would not have occurred to her to be anything else. Her name is Ellen Garwood from Texas and in a sort of shorthand that reporter she is we called her cotton heiress Ellen Garwood. Very rich lady who is solicited for money to help the contras. She ultimately gave two and a half million dollars to the Contra cause and she described how that happened. She had a meeting a series of meetings with Oliver North and it one of them she was given a list and she was asked at the hearing to describe it. She said the list had different categories of weapons had hand grenades. I remember and bullets cartridge belts possibly surface-to-air missiles and there were quantities opposite each category in after that. There was a sum of money that was needed to provide those weapons what those weapons would cost. What was the approximate total amount? The approximate total amount was over $1000000. I'm not sure exactly what it was. It was probably a million-and-a-half something like that. She was then asked what she did with the list Oliver North didn't directly asked her to come up with the cash. But he discuss the list with her and then Carl Channel who's working with North did ask her for the money and she describes what happened. She said I returned to Texas on Sunday afternoon and on Monday morning. I took the list to mrs. And glance who is the manager of my trust account at the end of First Bank in Austin. And I asked her I showed her the list and I asked her if it were possible for me to supply the funds needed for that. What was her response? She said I think you can but I think we'll have to sell some stock. We certainly don't have the cash. Now this was a lady who was maybe a little older than me, maybe not she had her hair kind of twisted up in a knot on the top of her head. And she kept it. So raining those old-fashioned, you know, those u-shaped hair pins all over the place. If so does sifted out of her hair kept coming down. And should put it back up. I collected a bunch of them from the floor around her chair after a testicle and kept them. She was she was wearing her lawyers raincoat because she was freezing, you know, the air conditioning in the capital is colder than a Minnesota winter. I can tell you and she was very annoyed when Warren Rudman who was on that can be no KO chairman of that committee suggested to her that this was a kind of classic con set up the mark and then take the money and she was she said to know what what her notion of what it happened was that she a patriot I've been asked to help her country and she had when Carl channel was there was arrested for having misrepresented his organization as tax-exempt. Mrs. Garwood was not fazed mean many people took their, you know contributions back. Mrs. Garwood was not fazed. She just said she just paid the taxes. She said she was happy to do that. She was happy to spend that money because she thought the cause was just and she took as I say great offense at the notion that she got the old one two from Oliver North Peter rodino, remember Peter rodino, he was the chairman of the house Judiciary Committee at the time presided over the impeachment resolutions congressman from New Jersey and a gentle soul who wept when he voted to impeach the president. Mr. Rodino. Masked you know pursue the question with her in a gentler fashion Colonel North didn't ask if he said White House officials didn't ask you but nonetheless it was mr. Channel who asked you for the contributions, but you recognized that this was a request coming from the principals at the White House and mrs. Garwood said yes. Oh, yes. It was the executive department at the White House. I do know Oliver North testimony notwithstanding and his lawyers Bluster notwithstanding when Ellen Garwood said that you know, you just had no notion that anything else could be true. And that's a no that's one of the moments as I say that I've been I have always remembered about about public radio's opportunity to offer a chance for people to listen to the actual events to listen to the people who can really tell you what's going on and the people that can really tell you what's going on or not necessarily those guys sit around inside the Beltway and make cracks about what's going to happen to somebody who doesn't understand how things work in this town. I think if somebody says in this town, you know, you should just not listen to what fun because what does it possibly matter? I think that. The other thing that that we've had the other interesting thing to me in these moments means I'm not all of these moments have been historic. Some of them have been really to me much smaller and in very interesting because politics, you know is my great interest no Susan stamberg and I don't agree about how interesting politics is. It's way down on her list. She thinks that that the nation in the world and our own lives are far more affected by a great piece of music or an important novel Market play, then they are by the election of someone to the United States Senate, but you know when so when she had to do an interview about Jimmy Carter when he was running for president, she thought about Jimmy Carter and she thought teeth so she called his dentist. And and she asks, you know, she asked him is that he seems to have very good teeth and Dennis it absolutely very good, too. And she said well does he have more teeth than other people do in the Tennyson TSC usual amount of teeth? And she said well, so is he is he a good patient? Very good patient. Comes for check-ups all ya comes three times a year. And she said is that what you recommend dentist said? No, actually we recommend two times a year, but he is very conscientious. Now, you know, we learned something about Jimmy Carter and that interview about with his dentist that I think, you know, if we could have we could have if we had taken that too hard, we would have known something about the next president United States. One of those moments occurred for me and 1980. Now remember 1980 when President Carter was running the whole country was physically sick of Jimmy Carter by that point. I just figured this is a man who cannot seem to do anything right most exasperating president and he has had a wonderful career as we know as a former president, but as a current President, we were very impatient with Jimmy Carter and it was a common wisdom by those folks that talk about what happens in this town that Jimmy Carter was running against the only man in America that he could beat. I sort of cranky conservative actor from California named Ronald Reagan the American people would never you know, never buy that. But in October of 1980, which is very late in the game. There was a debate now both President Carter and Governor Reagan it been dodging debates, but they finally agreed to have a debate. And Jimmy Carter wanted by all those sorts of academic, you know, scoring key people on the defensive you make you know, you make them talk about what you want them to talk about. You you score points. You make them back down the other day out of the auditor Jimmy Carter one. He was very forceful. He was terrific his staff was over-the-top after that but there was this little moment and in my own reporting thank God I said, Despite is dancing to President Carter's tune for much of the debate Governor Reagan. Zayde's believe he clearly did the most important thing you had to do on Tuesday night persuade. The American people that he is a thoughtful man capable of doing the job of President and more that he has a likeable and sympathetic person and not a harsh and doctrinaire radical now. My one of my political advisors Fred wertheimer. I came back to my very first trip with Ronald Reagan which was in a two and a half years before this and I came back I said he said so what you think I took while I liked him I said, you know, I he is a nice man and a Fred said then he's president. But it took a long time, you know for that for that to work it out, but I saw it that night as one of those moments where the country was about to change its mind and Cokie Roberts and I beginning in 1980 worked very closely together and politics, you know, she was on the ground with the voters. I was on the plane with candidates and and weak man always attract around together. We talked all the time and on this occasion, my piece was filed for Morning Edition. And so the next day poke went to see if President Carter had saved his bacon with Democrats if he was okay with his base, so she was in Pittsburgh. She called up the steelworkers and see where should I go to talk to the real, you know? Yellow dogs around here and they said try the Allegheny Center, which is a shopping center. It's a you know, it says ears and pennies soda shopping center. It's a working people's and that she went and she talked to people and here's one of the people she talked to Ronald Reagan was absolutely super I was undecided at the time. But the way he stood up to President Carter and answered his questions and show that he does have the intelligence in the ability to do that. He definitely sold me on the debate. You hear a lot of things. You don't really know them you read them in the paper. But when you see it on TV, it really changed my mind after a few of these interviews, He went back to the phone. She called at the steelworkers. She said Allegheny Center, which is located at this is where you wanted me to go and they said yeah the right place and she said I think you have lost the election. This was in this was the voter who we late late. We we later came to understand was the Reagan Democrat. We didn't know what to call them at this moment. Were you frightened of him before last night? This woman said she had been undecided and she thought that Ronald Reagan was in command. Do you know there's this is critical thing that happens when somebody was not a president stands on the stage with the president and they interact as equals. Its why presidents never want to get into debates because it's a dangerous moment. The Roberts Cokie us were you frightened of him before last night? She said yes, I thought maybe he was a warmonger and your fears were put to rest last night. Yeah, I don't think he is. I think it's just talk. So will you vote for him as a result of the debate? I think so This Woman's head and she did and here's another moment of voter prophecy. This was a 1984. Little restaurant called Bogues where you can get us in Birmingham Bogues is only open for breakfast and lunch and it's only open during the week. So it's a good place to go to unify on working people. And incest a good place to get grits. They have grits with sausage grits gravy grits and biscuits eggs grits anywhere you want to have them they got grits and it's actually very nice place I go there every time I'm in Birmingham political reporters always know where to go to eat. I recommend also John's in Birmingham if you happen to be in Birmingham, these are not yappy restaurants. Let me tell you which Birmingham actually has got a lot of now. Anyway, this fella is a real estate developer and he's talking about the Democrats and the South. I don't like the Democratic ticket and I haven't liked the Democratic ticket in many years. I think would be nice if they could get a John Glenn or somebody that was more responsive to Middle America and to the goals and objectives of people have in Middle America. The Democratic ticket is basically built around labor unions and around minority groups. Now, there's nothing wrong with minority groups, but when you build a ticket around special-purpose legislation and special-purpose groups, I believe you're building a ticket that doesn't reflect working people and doesn't reflect their values their values are basically family Recreation children schools low taxes lack of government interference in their business Affairs and their family Affairs Independence and the right to do your thing. And that was 1984 and in 1994 The South was solidly moving to the right to the Republicans now and end this fella, you know told us it was going to happen until this out. This is this tells me two things one is that listening to America is a good way to learn something. and the other is that Newt Gingrich is obviously been listening to public radio in for at least 10 years. we have also, you know when picking the pieces that go in this book one of the big things that we've tried to do, you know his dad pick the pieces that would snap you back to other times would take you back and let you sort of feel what we were feeling and understand what was going on at the time and no kind of pieces that would remind you if you lived through it or help you understand if you didn't and out it it's a funny thing to try to put radio into a book because some of it, you know, it just will not lay down on that page. You can't make their some radio programs that you Brenda transcript out and you look at it. And you think it doesn't breathe. It just doesn't have a life that it has on the radio. So we had to pick pieces that did both things and I think one of the reasons why a lot of the work that we do does do both things is because it is well written and that's just an interesting thing to me that that writing would work as it would be as important as it is on the radio because you know, The radio just goes past your ears to Mars. You can't read it unless I happen to put it in the book and then you can but you can't go back over it you is either gotta hit you at the moment that you hear it or it's just gone. And to try to find those pieces that would do that was very, you know, it was a very interesting exercise. I basically think that if you were to name over in your mind those people on NPR that you think of when you think of NPR it would be people who write very well like Alex Chadwick and Scott Simon and Cokie Roberts and Nina totenberg. These are the people, you know, just you just know their names. I think it's because their words have managed to wedge themselves into your brain and it's because they do good work and as we tried to put we know we tried to put some of those pieces in together with the other thing that I think is lovely about going back over all this stuff and that is the wonderful old voices that we haven't heard like red Barber course who who has Not been dead that long but I think many great many people miss that voice on Friday mornings, but do you remember this is Kim Williams of Missoula, Montana? Who who stopped the wild ranges in Montana picking, you know greens and and we included here Kim Williams recipe for Sunshine Flapjacks made with Cattail pollen. Just if you drive by Cattail Marsh and see yellow pollen flying through the air stop the car climb out with a plastic sack in your hand take hold of the flowers Spike of the cattail plant and shake the spike carefully over your plastic sack. You will have in your sack of yellow powder that looks like talcum powder. That's Cattail pollen. And it's the special ingredient in My Sunshine Flapjacks. And then this is typical of Kim style. She said you can also call them pollen pancakes. There's lindaberry one of my total favorites the cartoonist playwright lindaberry is one of a you know, strange and wonderful voices that you're here on NPR is Bailey why Daniel pinkwater all those people? Here's Linda Linda Berry was an introduced as a great though unrecognized expert on love. on Valentine's Day and she was she was she answered questions that have been collected by the staff and various places like Singles bars and saw him fell in a bar s what is chemistry And she says I think chemistry is the astounding and Deft human ability to gaze across a crowded room and instantly find the one person there. Who is the most liked your mother? Even though it takes from 7 to 10 years to actually find out that that's true. It's a sort of inability to locate the person who can bring you the greatest possible amount of Nazarene. And she says that last is important but she thinks what really attracts people has more to do with Neurosis. I think that there is a really nice ecosystem involved in it. She says where you picked somebody who is going to fulfil your worst fears about them and yourself thus allowing you to work out the problem and kind of move on kind of like those video games that have increasing degrees of difficulty, even though it's the same game. If you can actually get to the bottom of it without getting a brain tumor, then you can have a good relationship and enjoy your last two years on Earth happily. Takes about 60 years to achieve that sometime. And now the truth and asked why is it that you always fall in love when you don't want to you fall in love when you're about to leave for school you fall in love when you just gotten a job in another town. Why does this happen and she says The reason is that cupid is a monster from hell. And she goes on to say that. Any sensible person, you know, despite the fact that we always draw pictures of Cupid with little hearts and 7 as if it were a friendly Spirit. She's she said look. if a flying red, baby We're pink, baby. Flew into the room and aimed an arrow at you. You would know instantly that there is some kind of malicious intent here. No. In my existence, it is my personal privilege having you know, having gathered all of this material. I obviously included some of my favorite things that I have done. And some of them including again of some of the sort of Flights of Fancy that were possible to me because I work. At NPR as opposed to somewhere else, you know where these kinds of things aren't possible. I was once asked to go and take a train to Chicago and write about train travel. It was right in the middle of of the strike the air traffic controller strike. Some people are taking the train air traffic was maybe not safe and the train travel it turned from what we all remember in our childhood to Amtrak in that moment. And so we didn't know quite know what I'm track was. This fellow was my editor was a man with whom I didn't get along and so he said, you know once you to ride a train to Chicago and so I reacted as I always did whenever he suggested anything which was to say what an incredibly dumb idea. This is ridiculous. I D. I can't believe you asked me all train pieces are just the Saving Abel and then I thought You Love Trains, what are you some kind of an idiot this man was you taking so but since I had to preserve my you know my relationship with him a hostility I am I said that I would only do it if I could have a sleeping car and he said no way but we compromised on one of those little itsy-bitsy remote things, you know where the chair is also a toilet and the sink is also a table. And so I got to ride the train overnight into great train that goes from Washington and New York joins and pits in Philadelphia and goes west to Chicago. It goes to the Delaware Water Gap right at Sunset one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen it goes through Pittsburgh at night and goes down one side of the river and Crosses cuz of the other side of the river you go right past the Open Hearth furnace has the one that has swept and it's extraordinary just a wonderful wonderful trip and the next morning. I was sleeping in my itsy bitsy compartment. And I wrote this I just was sat up in bed looked around and wrote this nobody asks you when you want to be awakened on the trains nowadays. Nobody asks you if you'd rather have coffee or tea. You have to work all that out for yourself, but you still get to open your eyes to a grain elevator leaning out of a foggy Midwestern morning and set up to see Barnes mobile utiful than their houses painted red picked out with white fields of corn alternate with fields of beans and feels of stubble just as I looked at another early riser working in her garden stood up to wave as we passed. From the platform at the back of the Train the track drops back now. It's straight as a Plumb line into the fog. Now for a person whose entire career consisted of saying the bill passed by vote of 75 to 24 with one abstention. This is a real tree. This is this is as good an explanation as any for why I am still there. Here's something that under could rescue wrote not very long ago at all. It was a 1989 in December when ceausescu regime fell in Romania. The Beast begins, you know Andre as you may have noticed is not was not born here. Now he has lived here for a long time. But somehow he is never lost his Transylvanian accent and he still I mean he doesn't he talk like Dracula. I think he practices in order to hold on to it. But he says I've been dancing since 6 a.m. When the phone first started ringing ceausescu's bloody rage aim is gone. I just heard the news that Jessica was arrested in Turkey Vista. That's the town Dracula is from an appropriate bloody symbol and then further on down he says there is an untranslatable Romanian word that expresses with great Precision the kind of unbearable longing and Nostalgia that grips one's heart when thinking of home the word is door door Nostalgia for the beautiful medieval town of sibiu in Transylvania where I grew up longing for certain golden Autumn afternoons at an outdoor Cafe drinking new wine with friends all of us young intoxicated with poetry and song. I miss the smells of flowering Linden trees the blue reflections of Deep Mountain snow in the evenings the old peasant Villages that ceausescu's Insanity almost wiped off the face of the Earth. I heard someone say today on Romanian television that the word comrade was dead in Romania about time like all the other orwellian speech of the soon-to-be dust tyrants of the world. Conrad has been exactly the opposite for 25 years. Now Andre is not included that Us in any of his books, so we were able to include it in this one. He thinks it's rather sentimental compared to what he usually writes and it is. But it's wonderful, I think and which is why I included it here. I think that those those voices that's one of the things that makes NPR. Something to listen to and something that I hope you all will continue to listen to I hope it will continue to be there for you to listen to for another 25 years at least. Thanks very much.