2015 Kansas Notable Books, Part Two - Encore

the holiday shopping season upon us and how about a book or two for the readers on your christmas was i'm jane mcintyre and today on cape dr frist and the best new books by kansans for about him says each year the state library of kansas elects fifteen books as kansas notable in the first of a two part series we'll hear from the authors of seven of those books including vixen nonfiction poetry and young adult literature and more this year only one children's book made the last bluebird by lawrence artist and illustrator lindsay yankee i asked lindsey to read and describe their first several pages a blue bird early one spring morning a little bluebird woken her nest eager to fly as she was about to take off she stopped something was different something was missing her friend away and the leaf in her tree was staring and therefore without the when she thought i better find a friend right away says she jump down into the park to do just that she landed by a group of dandelions to see if the wind was they're blowing their

seeds away making wishes but all the dandelions are so many chat all its seeds and there's a little bird looking at a bunch of dandelions all kind of made out of mixed media materials and scrap paper and things like that so if the illustrations for blue bird i left a lot of indie speaks the story is a bird looking for the lender and so ominous were pages can have an eerie feeling to him and over tea stain background than oil paints and different textures i cannot expression of how much i love the illustrations in this book how did you come up with the idea of this bloomberg looking for the wind and how to convey that with your art the story really started a long time ago and the nearly ten years ago and with the idea of a bird looking for the wind and that was it

and then i kind of started to develop the story well why's a bird looking for the winner is the wind gone where the bird look for the wind and so that's when the text and the whole story and i really started a take more form and then as far as illustrations go iowa is not studying art at the point when i had this idea and so eventually family seal illustration and i stayed illustration at you know and kind of started to see we find her figure out what we're going to do with mutations and that ended up being a lot of fun open doors of lake different materials and being able to outsource to make large box and pull out pieces and textures that i think we'll be fine and so really it's kind of a lot in that way although this story could take place anywhere is clear that this bluebird is not searching for the wind here in kansas where is this i'd say more european type

place way and i was looking for a publisher for blueberry today was going to be a children's book trembling italy and that definitely kind of set into my mind like that kind of european architecture and the rooftops and tiles and things like that i just i think that all that stuff is really attractive to my eye and soul and draw space that can resemble that i especially loved illustration where people are sitting in a cafe reading newspapers and there's bits and pieces of newsprint you can catch in that illustration what's going on and that's the service seems that there's little there's little bluebird on every table at the cafe and she is actually up by the teacups looking for friends the wind blowing along with the newspapers all of the people up at the tables are reading newspapers and them the newspapers themselves are clips from the newspaper i can't remember what it is you know it was that it was right after brock obama won the first election and so

that kind of tells you how long ago working on this and that it is also kind of like m and they say oh my age to lake the timeframe that i was making it and kind of them important events that were happening and some ersatz little scraps of paper and like underlying layers throughout the book and that's leveling the most obvious one thing your first children's book as i know whoa yes and no i did ahead the year before a blue ridge you know i did twenty illustrations for a collection of short stories that were english off they're from like eighteen and it's translated into the first italian edition and so i read all those stories and the illustrations for that that's lake young adult stuff says like a chapter book this size picture books that i have written and illustrated guess blueprints a first as an illustrator and as an artist and what's like for you actually coming up with a story rather than just sort of having a free

free hand to do whatever strikes your fancy i think that's something that i really learned that i liked in school perm and just like for having an assignment as having some parameters and i think that that is when i was able to i kind of get treated within them kind of push those boundaries and so having the framework of a book around and kind of having a framework of a story a narrative i know kind of money a little bit of elements that i can push him and i can explore within an incentive being so open that i just kind of get lost in a flounder for too long and then just put something away and that have done so i'd say that having a story in having a narrative definitely helps guide my creative process and knowing the parts of the story that can influence the illustrations are nice of her son how they can say more with the text and less with the picture a war with a picture unless with the text and still be informative like this and i thought this was a

lovely lovely book and if you've got it young readers in your household at war just love a good picture but this is a really lovely woman i think he can win see what i had for you as an artist as a children's book author while about a couple a couple stories in mind that if i worked well with family in the summer and down been doing the craft fairs this fall and i think the late early winter time you know hibernate and work on a new story in the new book so it will be the words that you can say that lindsey's work at lindsay yankee dot com our next kansas notable book also relies heavily on the visual image the railroad empire across the heartland is a book of side by side photographs showing the striking difference between frontier kansas of the eighteen

sixties and today though all the photographs are by alexander gardner the new photographs are by lawrence photographer john charlton with exposition by ginger role of manhattan they join me at the kansas book festival in topeka let's start with an easy question who was alexander gardner well how much time do we have five minutes five minutes get you a scottish born a reformer came to the united states set up on farmland iowa utopian farm didn't work eventually gets to usher in dc decisive become a photographer worked for the brady had an outfit and viciously strikes off on his own and dozens of war photography lot of the most famous civil war battle scenes or has he does other photography lincoln's for portraits that lincoln's last surviving portrait and then they they and union pacific eastern division later because it has a

specific letter to union pacific part him to do photographs of the building of a railroad across kansas and all the way to eventually sentences go where he ended his son photography of the route and so alan garner was an amazing photographer and very very well known in national circles try the railroad wanted to document oh yes and john very the the president of the railroad was running into some problems or reports came back to president johnson at the railroad wasn't being very well go this summer's jeopardizing the land grants for it it was jeopardizing the bonds for it and so harry wanted to have a well established through photography and i'm also through or he'd expeditions i'm taking senators representatives newspaperman that across also the tracks that have been built showing them look down that this row records a speaking world will

please give us the land grants so that there wasn't the multi fork hiring garner whom are let's jump forward to nineteen ninety three why you retrace our synagogue or stops after learning about the garner series that was in the kansas state historical society i realized that it was very historical early portrait of the state in its early stages of development along railroad and that it would be an excellent basis of a re photographic survey to document the changes that occurred only if coalition have been down a lot earlier and since no one had done it have an awful i have the background to do it a persona that this would be my project so you check his original photographs and set out to find the exact same spot where that picture was taken and to re photographed it what were some of the challenges

in doing so all kinds because so much of the state of kansas is private land there's very few public lands and of course it was all actually after save junction city at the time carter was here it was open frontier there were only a few new towns and settlements there were accounting is there were roads there were you know there were a few places names so the mold maps are not not very useful but those rare world miles garner used to document his locations and bows made it easier to find and so even when everything they had changed completely that would be the subject of the photographs i could kind of verify the locations both by using the rover until ray romano it's that was on guard has photographs and then try to

match the photographic lighting conditions that arts sees a lady should be identical if you i know and garters pictures were taken and that was also documented so they have a information i really needed to do that some animals all of them pretty much a visual imaging process one of the photographs that stands out remarkably there's two of them and two sets that that stand out for me want to serve for megaupload and governor took the photograph standing on south side of the tracks looking north a long way and straight answer some frame building's hardly anything there there are a few trees that were planted and then in the background to the north which is wide open and grassley you look at the same location today and as a very different urban setting

fully treat you can't even see beyond couple blocks because of all the trees to the north so says something's gone on there that accounts for why this kind of vegetation is there and it wasn't there previously the other photographs and pairing that i think illustrates this two degree were john was taking these photographs of them is called inscription rock i think it is and so there are all these paleo hieroglyphics carved into the sand still were not sure who those people were who put them there and we're not sure what they stood for what burden garner certainly captured historically fix beautifully you go to the same place the day there's a different set of hardware fix once as wichita says and jon and amy and so forth and what these hieroglyphics of the nineteen nineties two

thousands indicators air serbia a revocation an arranger of that previous culture that her card itself and to the sense of the air as a beautiful metaphor for what was happening to the landscape yeah indian managed landscape to garner was sketching the early transformation of that and catching places where that transformation hadn't even occurred yet and then we have jobs photographs of the same transformation brought a hundred and fifty years later that's jim scherr row of manhattan along with photographer john charlton of lawrence their cancers notable book is railroad empire across the heartland really photographing alexander gardner's westward journey our next kansas notable book also harkens back to the eighteen sixties eighteen sixty two to be exact it's the second year of the civil war and a regimen of kansas soldiers is making history if the first kansas

colored infantry the first black unit to see combat during the civil war dr ian michael spurgeon is a military historian with the us defense department his book is the soldiers in the army freedom this is an unfortunately little known union or more cancers are more americans really need to know about it it's the first black regiment to see combat during the civil war unfortunately most people direct your attention toward east and fifty fourth massachusetts which was a fantastic regiment of the first kansas colored was raised and went into combat several months before the fifty fourth massachusetts and it's a story that more people need to know about the role of thunder my line all that he's he is the most important person for the creation of this regiment and he had a lot of holes he was very controversial matter if they're very very interesting oh man but he was i guess the supporting say about for his roth regiment he hits a session

he saw the civil war as a continuation of live in kansas and so for him he had the ground running at sixty one at age sixty two was carrying out really what we would recognize the more popular says when to come says coca cola war idea with constituents to work and so lane wanted to punish secessionist even though missouri was not technically a state of the confederacy there was a large confederate veteran pro confederate population there and like the rows move around and it was back and forth of course but for lane he saw an opportunity saw an opportunity to raise the soldiers that kansas badly needed and white populations pretty small was a large enough to really outfit that number of bridges they needed it he saw these hundreds and even thousands of fugitive slaves fleeing from missouri fleeing from indian territory and flee from arkansas into kansas you're strong able bodied men and they are former slaves and lacy says that the ultimate form of vengeance giving them to weapons turning them on the secessionists punishing the south and relieving some of the pressure on the white

population and he had a lot of abolitionists officers who had been combat veterans when it's ready to train and we'd these men and so it's really actually tried to be a very good location for what was really a radical step in each and sixty two when this regiment was first created you know just out of sheer coincidence i've been watching this past weekend burns epic mini series on the civil war and one of the things i talked about in that series is four confederates how a terrifying at the sight of armed african american soldiers would be yes and it was a it was a radical step for most of the north at sixty one the only reason black soldiers really are or are raised recruited in kansas and across the union is because the wars korea stretching all because it is becoming a long bloody conflict in which a white regiments are out sustain casualties they need to keep corporate and more more soldiers for these campaigns initially aisle but even then there were still a lot of people in the north

that's almost radical because this meant quality yelled military service was packed with quality and in the south it was political survivor insurrection mean this was the ultimate fear that have gone back for decades in the south slaves uprising grabbing weapons and fighting their masters and so that's actually what was appealing to some people like wayne the same with the session and this really will toward let's turn the greatest fear against them and what they have to really show is that actually could fight effectively the first kansas coach was very effective and prove that to be the soldiers very careful with that in mind taught me about the importance of the skirmishes island mound in western missouri yes this was it is recognized as the first time a black unit went into combat during the civil war it was a small skirmish of force or standards by then it's october he can succeed to layoff to retain sixty two after the big battles first bull run second boron in tedium shiloh

read thousands of white soldiers and thousands of casualties so something smaller which involve really a total number two hundred and fifty soldiers from the first kansas going to treat about seven hundred or so total confederate guerillas were in the area it actually engaged about a couple hundred are confederates about about a hundred or so black soldiers that's a small church that's not something that really got a lot of headlines in a significant effect though it was the first time that black unit organize black unit that was not actually mustard and federal service the first kansas was still a state organization still being recruited have not been accepted federal service but the uk insists that troops kansas officer was reportedly needed more troops and they gave these guys an opportunity they're not operating city to chase out her summer cerebral as an area and a firsthand is going to perform very well my read thinking that that these soldiers in the kansas first were not paid for their service but first this was this is what's really going to do the first of what the soldiers were reporter

i asked him about ninety five percent of the first kansas coach approval for slaves there were slaves up until right the point when he joined a warrant escape slavery some point during the previous year or a few months or so many of them were very excited with it for opportunity to define how also add though the most literate so we had to try to reconstruct her story based on whatever resources to come about articles in newspaper about at the time or tension and these guys are or joining often these young men illiterate and they see this is an opportunity to fight for their own freedom they see it as an opportunity to fight for the freedom of their families and in a very literal sense as well as as slavery overall but also very worried that their services is not going to be your life affect that they're going to be used for manual labour their first given the city to city to secondhand uniforms they're given secondhand muskets some of which don't operate some which are dangerous to use and not pay homage and initially they were told they were supposed to be paid at a lower rate

than when soldiers according to a militia act based on what these men and surgery to pre high because these men we had a lot going against them and a lot of critics they did not have the best equipment and they weren't sure they were going to be used effectively but but again because there was such that meat and they had good strong support from white kansas officers and james blunt and then politicians like james lane eventually the work they did receive their pay and much better equipped you read maxim it's the law their white counterparts in the war the men of the first kansas colored infantry overcame obstacles pride and suffered from injury disease fear and homesickness some deserted some resistance military authority and censored quietly with few records to distinguish them from any other soldier black or white during the civil war they were brave and afraid sometimes capable of extraordinary feats but also of all too human frailties perhaps they fought with the tenacity that on the ages of bondage conspire but the one thing that clearly separated them from white soldiers

with the ever present knowledge that i've captured by confederate forces they faced almost certain death or returned to slavery in southern states they finish the war with remarkable comeback record place among the hardest fighting regimens of the war and it played a vital part in helping to begin the long and painful process of countering white prejudice by defying stereotypes essentially wanted the opportunity to show that they were men not property and that was and remains the point too long overlooked this is their story that's dr ian michael spurgeon reading from his book soldiers in the army of freedom the first kansas colored the civil war is first african american combat unit i spoke with him and most of the others featured on today's program at the fifth annual

kansas book festival held in topeka on september twelfth two thousand fifteen each year the kansas but festival honors the fifteen winners of the kansas notable book award we're featuring seven of those folks on today's kbr presents the list usually includes several why a poor young adult books the kansas notables list has only won why a book this year girl in reverse by barbara stuber admission hell's it's her second time on the campus notable list her debut novel crossing the tracks one in two thousand eleven her new book girl in reverse was chosen by npr as a book concierge as one of the best why a books of the year and was named by the international literacy association fly on her book it's the story of lily firestone an asian girl growing up in kansas city in the early nineteen fifties at the height of the korean war lily alice putting in

a an orphanage in kansas city at the agents one and i have an adopted two white american parents at the age of street that her ethnicity is chinese so somehow in her history her birth mother had traveled all the way from china and then to san francisco in july and and then all across the country ham halfway across to kansas city and left her daughter whose name was un at the time in an orphanage in kansas city and then her birth mother as satin really tense at that event turned into gone along and disappeared so the story has to do it really number one figuring out her true creation story who was that woman and white kansas city and what it means for her to be in kansas city there's a link they're so

i also i'm a docent at the nelson atkins museum and we have a huge chinese collection player which i am has worked on me for the twenty five years i've been a docent there so this a blind side of china the beauty of those thousands year old cultures in china arm played a big role in the story and in lily sung discovery of her provenance or her backstory her true story in her search for her identity she encounters a nun sister eventually in and i want to read a quote from your book says rubin jillian says a complicated past is best understood a bit at a time that's in part because of all of course lilies history is very complicated and bits and pieces of her past are literally artifacts chinese

artifacts that she didn't know belong to her that she finds so a bit at a time plays a metaphor in the bits and pieces are literally about optics and also because you have something that's very dynamic and has lots of pieces to it you can take it in all at once to do it he did at the time you find your way of stepping stones into your history why have her be chinese at the time of the korean war was about that setting and bat at the city of her character china had just become involved in the korean war and they were supporting the north koreans in china and they were iran and are mortal enemies the us is mortal enemy where we had been allies during world where do now we're mortal enemies so they read threat was at its height and in

a work of fiction if you want the conflict to be at its peak at its pinnacle you would put a key chinese girl in another all white sateen at the height of the moment when the world are united states is demonize the chinese you know propaganda against so a poet slowly in this very tough spot in her high school inside iran skin on the bus on the playground everywhere she goes and she is being bullied in the name of patriotism and back in that day on that was left out of a building kept that from happening so she couldn't be american and she couldn't be chinese either one the title of the book first what does that mean to you will indeed art world where i spent a lot of time understanding a precious

objects whether it's a painting or sculpture whether it's reverse means understanding its back story not just who painted it in why that may be owned it when it's connected to who even stolen to fix that and it gets to the value on our work to no it's worse he's back story literally can have too is that you so i'm using the word leaders here for the lee to refer to her own backstory her own bout you know weighing and the pieces the broken pieces of her past that can be puzzle together and make her whole and make her more valuable yes aware so far she has felt like she is a busy road that you at a lost in place that's a lovely analogy from the art world here at the accident working title of the black west

provenance because at bridges are at but i knew that word but not work because nobody can legally first class and it's optional action is like one way to actually get you can see she's contemplating work i get you to read an excerpt from craig first we're sitting at the dinner table with lily firestone and her brother ralph was a natural born son of her parents and her mother and father are almost always at the dinner table as a tense time and ralph tends to have the ability to wake the family up with something that is going to be aired controversy or he's gonna definitely get stuck with the dishes afterwards for having brought up

something difficult so toward the end of dinner these words pop from ralph's now and crash on the table so everybody i have something there is no question really he turns to data when kids get adopted he pauses adopted it shatters a chandelier pierces the ceiling mother danced her mouth leaving tomorrow smears on her napkin well like when airport five years old or something does that work then get to bring all his start with new to the new people pitch you some clothes from the orphanage or you know what happens to our staff whether it means increased the table edge and glances at my father it has gotten rid of their tips his head blinks presumably considering the correct legal answer our mother shivers turns to her husband is best why should the trial be encouraged to live in reverse her face looks comics

amen and damn it my mind exits the dining room and then there's the little girl's doormat the sisters of mercy childrens home i see this scratchy green wool blanket on my metal band their seventh down the right side and mikey plastic hairbrush labeled lillian and my locker stacked with the chargers and the shirts i slowly in a sense float smoke floating in the chapel might reverse but technically shouldn't they are still a lot of key provinces that does not look at me he chuckles a phony huh uh oh now they're isn't easy to kind of a latin says if you don't follow in my footsteps in the construction business and you've got the makings of a fine attorney no one has asked rob why he's asking such a question no one has asked what i think mother stands like a

juggler who has lost her parents she chairs the study's her face in the mirror above the buffet and clear is that her precious crystal cabinet she walks out with a new law calls often they all pile in the front hall and has upstairs to the tiny upholstered place inside herself with no adopted chinese daughter knows smartly eleven year old boy scout know old orphan belongings know economies are chinks or korean war just breaks remix manicures darting and silent tear don't live in reverse that's my mother's always some inklings that exiting a difficult conversation before it starts in our house hard topics are realists world away in a glass of bourbon or wrapped in seen the paper swab that's barbara stay were

reading from a girl in reverse it's one of fifteen books selected by the state library of kansas this year is kansas notable books if you missed last week's program our one of our annual kansas notable so it's now archived on our website k pr that kate you dot edu and j mcintyre you're listening to k pr prisons and kansas public radio there are two books of poetry among this year's cannes notable books we featured one of them chasing whether by karen miriam goldberg and photographer stephen lot on last week's program now we'll turn to poetry music by once can dance to its by roy beck meyer of wichita i always liked to read a love poem when i began my readings and one of things i tell people often is that a love

poem does not have to have the word love of a parent a local menace in all of the local on to anyone but the person to return and this is called that watermark books before the reading it's dedicated to my wife pat have a right to early we browsed the tables of books i watch you wondering your hands held out before you as if they're dousing sticks you always do that your hands dipping and bobbing to the hidden rush of words that you somehow scientists are splashing and swirling between the covers you open the book with a smile and words pour out across the page watching over your defining hands where does that reflect light away creek water towers as

its stumbles over sterling's and you look up touch my cup your hands and motioned for me to share of cold syrup from the swell of words that you have found what's lovely figure why is really despair that your readings that lump on well i started writing poetry and high school arab world to my girlfriend and she became my wife and we've been married fifty four years ago so let's go back to the origins of why i wrote poetry it were first voice that worked right the second time i'd like you to read it is set in white and black and lived in kansas for more years that i've lived anywhere else but i grew up in the prairies of illinois

and in southern illinois the prairie's are undergoing by coal and coal mining was a very early and just ruin our listeners called in white and black the head of that visual cough the defining cough that more tumors of southern illinois coal miner liftoff fed by black a g spots deep within his chest that had in castaway hacking up what remained of his lungs into away temperature after all those years underground surrounded by coal now he delivered it in his battered pickup we nephews and nieces room along perched on lots of coal or on the sides of the pickup bad streets of black writer faces dusty black hands serbs hands were perpetually outlined the cuticle of his nails the

whorls and ridges of his fingerprints all etched in black you noticed a particularly when his left hand held white cigarette paper in a v shape or when his right hand clutched a white cloth bag tapping out a line of tobacco the black was still there were knife last saw him even the undertaker's careful attentive work had not been able to cling to those fingers and i can still see the black marks on his folded hands start against the pristine white satin that wind the coffin the coal black coffin that would cripple him for over in his mind dark grave it really paints a picture that those low voice i can still see him in future and they read the poems he flipped maybe one more page there's a poem going home nerves

on page eighty nine that i just love so thank you perhaps the most famous kansas poet as william stafford who was born in hutchinson and his polls always inspiring perhaps because a lot of those chances poems in particular related to small towns and there's a line from his poem the title of his poem is it still happens now and the wine as you make me walk my town till i'm drowned and and that just really struck me because every time i go back to the land to the town i grew up in so this is called going home there is no anonymity in the small town where each

tombstone might just as well be a porter everyone recognizes my father's ears astride my striving face the day doesn't stanford junior and saddest but they all think it goes so here i am i wandered the world but will always belong to the stark frame house where the swing wrote dangles and corn pollen dust the path once daily traversed by my father's morning show the site at the edge of town has said population one thousand for ever i was a senator and stalked roots search the memorials for that one particular face i know must have gone missing i was born and that's roy that meyer of wichita reading from his collection of

poetry music and i want to dance to i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to or were you knew all cancers notable books so hard to run the home stretch with just two more cancers notable books to go if you've ever looked out on a prarie field and wondered just what is all that grass our next book is for you i really bernardo hope kansas field guide to becoming grasses of oklahoma kansas and nebraska it's published by university press of kansas for most people they had pre seems kind of daunting or overwhelming because it's so huge and often the metaphor they see that people often use is chair of the ocean with the undulating green hills and though the waving prairie grasses and maybe like an ocean is to sell them and flat that can scare some people but some people also think of it as freedom that openness and and the way to really

appreciate the prairie is to get out in the prairie to actually sit there for a little while and look around you and you notice all the things that the dozens of flowers are blooming and the bees that are buzzing in like the wind in your hair and just and just experience it and i think that's how you really learned about the printed familiar with that how did you learn about prairie grasses how did you become interested in the subject of grass lands well i guess i was always interested in nature and always enjoyed the outdoors and and from that just kind of one thing led to another and it really was when my husband and i first meet the prairie we live out in the country and that was forty years ago and that's when i started studying the plants and getting to know all the plants and eventually working over at k state and herbarium where i learned even more about plants and grasses i guess i just have always enjoyed it was something i was lucky enough to get a chance to learn more about why are

the grasslands so important the grasslands are important like so many ecosystems just for themselves for what they contribute for the diversity that they haven't each each is a little bit different but it has a place and for hearing us here in kansas it's sad sad economy we have a lot of cattle ranching and the reason that the grass is provide an income for us here in kansas what made you decide to write this book it said i was like a light bulb came on one day i guess i was out with a friend and i thought you know these are so special and it's so hard to find information about grasses there's nothing there's not a lot of books about grasses especially in kansas and those that we have are i really outdated and i thought another thing is you see books that are just a lot of text and you've got a lot of measurements and

that's you know not any fun and and people like pictures and i thought oh pictures that's the way that people will get to enjoy the crisis and so that's what set me off was getting started with pictures i kind of took a few and i thought oh i think this'll work but now what i do i had never read a book before so i contacted the publisher and and that was the beginning of the book your book is full of wonderful pictures of all kinds of grasses that grow in kansas oklahoma nebraska but my favorite for graft in your book is the one that's down on page ten or page acts of the preface can you describe that picture for me and talk about how you went about taking these pictures of the grasslands that i was fortunately alison good friends family and that we're helping retake that take my picture and that's how i got my picture on there's a picture of me that you're referring to the future if you taking pictures

that telegraph those grasses yes and i guess there's several ways you could approach that denying college and that fervor of tit for photography and one is to use flash he's flashy can curse at the plant that sets a plan to partly highlight the plant which are after and another way is to just that but khan testing board of some sort of behind the plant but that's gonna difficult when you've got very large plans to be on the field in take these boards with you and i had seen in an older publication that he used his method was actually just knew the plant to look station where he could take photographs and an end and that seemed to work so well that i decided that was the way to go and so that's when most of the photographs were taken it's just a nice visual reminder of the physical act of how do you photographs that

single blade of grass in a way that makes an identifiable and that you can see the structures and the things that help you identify what whatever that is when you have to look closely at all of these things i tried to select things that people could see at least i thought i could see them and i felt like in most people be able to see them because a lot of grass stretches are pretty tiny so a lot of the photographs are maybe larger than life but i do have different sections of the book and there's one with the leaf comparisons where they're all life size so that she can kind of see them side by side this might seem like a strange question but of all the different kinds of grasses that grow in this area the country do you have a favorite well i think it's like my well flowers are some of the favorite just depending on my meet a lot of my favorite grasses is porcupine grass and it's such a pretty crass and it's so interesting and so different and so i just let that grass it's got long

on some neon sign it you when you see a chill know they just they just raped out and they look actually like porcupine quills so that's i've got its name you really have a number of quotes in your book i've opened up two page thirty six and read a couple of quotes you have about grasses that first quote is to the casual observer the grasses are but grass and tv is a diversity their beauty and their value apparent this is by mary francis baker from the book of grasses in nineteen twelve the second is how john weaver from north american prairie which was written a published in nineteen fifty four and his quote says nature is an open book for all those who care to be beach grass covered hillside is a page which is written the history of the past conditions of the press and the predictions of the future

some see with that understanding that listen closely i really bernard kansas reading from field guide to becoming grasses of oklahoma kansas and nebraska kansas public radio has a copy of that to give away as well as many of the kansas medical books featured on today's program if you'd like a chance to win a kansas noble book go to our website npr that kate you that edu click on the extras and then giveaways again that's k pr back hey you that edu will also be giving away a copy of our final kansas notable book it's at astro one hundred sixty one adventurers astronaut's discovers explores pilots pioneers and scientists at

astro is by dave webb terry run back and becky tanner published by the kansas heritage center in dodge city it's the first of what's hoped to be a nine part series called nine hundred ninety nine canvas characters a biographical series i spoke with dave webb and becky tanner at the kansas but festival in topeka thanks to the internet and the other he's a research nowadays it was it was very easy together amassed a huge collection of interesting folks with kansas connections so rather than try to put them all between two covers we divided it's essentially in line sections well were not sure that we're going online sections published this is number one have a series we hope what would you say that these one hundred sixty one character's having common with each other they all either reach or reached out in some way some explored what

later became kansas some exporting the field of medicine some explored in space and aviation essentially someone was a pioneer the only quintessential pioneering as we have it is at mccaul who was so it's better known as the catcher woman on the covers of several books but these people made an effort to go above and beyond where they began and peter did so in kansas or they were born in kansas in windows were to make a name for themselves here but have a lot of very familiar names to kansans in terms of pioneers and explores but it also has a lot of people that most of us have never heard of but he can't just pick out one person that we may not have heard of and and tell me about him or her well one of my favorites is worth seeking dollar

one of the things that i worked the eagle i've worked there for thirty two years it always amazes me how we continually shape our history that there are always people that are coming to the front that we may not have a story about word satan dollar grew up in hoisington and he became one of the nation's top physicists and worked on the manhattan project and he actually was considered a cram boy winston cram was an incredible physics teacher and you know the expression of how we cram for a test that was from winston cram drummond korea and very seriously and we're satan dollar was one of the grambling sets within your nickname back in the thirties in and whatnot but he went on to work for manhattan project and i love the story on him we used it a ball team hammer to illustrate it he was part of a new crowd in here to work the late shift ended at one

point he had the fate of the western world in his hands and he was working late at night and he was working with the plutonium and there is the silver it's the year that he had to put the entire plutonium him and he dropped it and when he caught one half of it but the other half fell on a table and dented and so he did what any kansas farm boy which you know there are armed guards at the door and all that so he goes out he goes to a garden shed he gets a gas mask and a balding hammer comes back in and slowly taps the other sphere back into place taking the downtown so that the plutonium with it and the ball unheeded incredible story and you know we don't know about him that you know in recent years that's come to light meal so it was one of the first people to witness the atomic bomb when it went off talk about keeping a cool head under pressure absolutely didn't ask you to pick out another

character that we may not have heard of i guess i might mention of this is a well known person but he does have a kansas committee did have a kansas connection that's charles lindbergh charles lindbergh was not born in kansas and he was taking flying lessons in nebraska when the company he worked for back in the beginning days of aviation went bankrupt and the planes were sold today a gentleman in birds city and for northwest kansas that had an air service and because feinberg had not completed his training the deal included him to go with the planes and be taught how to fly and so he did in the summer of nineteen twenty three he spent flying in and out of his own face adversity and there you might say well it's a few weeks or three months in the summer qualify him as a kansan but i will point out that he was good friends with several of wichita aviators

how water beach especially was a good friend and weinberger approached him about building a plan that would cross the atlantic is to be treated used and it was never spoken of how how lab at the supposition lawyers there used to be huge was a little hesitant to build a plane that might go down in history as having killed a young man tried to fly across the atlantic so instead of the spirit of wichita he flew across the atlantic in the spirit of us however he did keep his kansas connections he came back at a wichita several times visited his aviator friends it came to dodge city and how to choose a side for the year port in amelia earhart were involved with overrode plane combination where early and daring passengers flew in ford tri motor plant in the daytime across the country and then they landed one case though the senate they were a garden city and in another case of one of oklahoma just south of wellington chances traveled by

sleeper car at night and then early the next morning at their destination they would dare get on planes and why can it was the fastest way across the country that time and limbert was one of the shareholders and founders of the companies that did that and when he wrote his autobiography is famous solo flight in one section he writes very eloquently about flying all over the waves and those waves reminded him the waving fields of kansas wheat that he had flown over as he first learned to fly so what one hundred sixty one that's just where we store it but there's nothing magic about that number no as i said other nine hundred ninety nine is based on all these categories and actually in the database i've been collecting we have about fourteen hundred names potential cases characters we were afraid that if we didn't publish soon that would be

the book would be ten inches thick so it helps to justify global well it's sort of the second installment coming out next year and you think you have a state lab and tanner along with terri ramesh is the author of ask one hundred sixty one ventures astronaut's discovers it's too words eyelids and scientists published by the kansas heritage center in dodge city he was one of fifteen books selected by the state library of kansas this year as he uses a notable blow to join us next week fifi arthur sense for part two of our annual cannes is notable books program kansas public radio has several kansas notable books to give away when one of them go to our web site the pr guy for you ed you work on that stress and then available giveaway again that fifty

artifacts take you edu and kinect entire at our present is the production uses public radio at the university of the week it's been