The 150 Best Kansas Books, Part One

if you were asked to take your favorite book about kansas what book would you choose what about your favorite one hundred and fifty canvases and kate mcintyre and today on cape york prisons the one hundred fifty beth kansas a list compiled by the cantor center for the book at the state library of kansas in connection with the state's death with him and he'll do that with the number of the featured others on the list today and un next week at our present including mystery writer sara borucki geologist rex buchanan and children's authors devon inquiries gilliam but first we'll hear from roy byrd director of the cancer center for the book what the roi so how did you choose these one hundred fifty books we really like the fiction telling the story about characters or sending kids as it might be about its culture its heritage or might be a historical of nature and also be a book that was written

by a recognizable author can clearly be identified with kansas are called canceled so when you look at the list of their one hundred fifty kansas books which you say that most of these titles are familiar or will readers find some surprises there will be some of the debts of the authors' names will be familiar some of the book titles will be familiar and there will be quite a few that go maybe surprising folks the purpose for one hundred and fifty books list was to raise awareness of kansas books and authors also to highlight the authors write about our state and to recruit gives residents to use their local academic school or public libraries and the reason behind that was even if a book is no longer a library is a place where you could i get you to go there at most public libraries and they have

something like a campus collection or a particular section of the library which contained campus books you could also requested of approval and ask for them to check because it probably somewhere in the state reason i think that is because we open this to the public and the week we asked for folks to use that criteria that i mentioned earlier and send him suggestions are we kept then be our best idea i was concerned that we might not even get fifty point you said don't think about it too difficult for individual twist under fifty books about kansas that would be a lot more than that look at wal mart and but that those submissions and that number of criteria to make its final selection so i will have a hundred and fifty books that that may

surprise folks they increased looks at their generic we have at their children's books there are young adult books there are a couple books there were scholarly books there are fiction works they're you know anything imaginable and that's true of characters if you look here you'll see that kansans have been involved in almost every he wouldn't be over there i'd been visiting with roy byrd director of the kansas center for the book at the state library thanks troy the one hundred fifty bantu as kansas books list has titles both familiar and unfamiliar everything from the wizard of oz to the wpa guide to the nineteen thirties kansas my first guest definitely falls into the

familiar category rubber day is the author of the bestseller the last cattle drive published in nineteen eighty seven as well as speaking french in kansas published in nineteen eighty nine rubber day joins us by telephone from his home in maryland monsieur de could you come up with the idea of a fictitious cattle drive across modern day kansas oh my god oh my too short as a writer and farm worker bought it from real life which was working at a small ranch in northwestern kansas north central kansas i would go go hire i wasn't the rookie of the melody but we do have a condition he won women who watched him initially weren't

ancient about lawyers all wars you know we moved cattle or frequently we didn't go into and fifty miles another family early twentieth century cold war the cold war ii and so i was reading that and that's about it just two came together in an overflow mother orders know about wishes for something we call an invention and as to say that the other two things come together and begun to an n and then talk about change sanctions record the cue i've never happened that although i didn't shy and all the caribou the local hotel one particular wonder good girl shot and in their own they didn't there but they're going to

sell set up the story for us why is it that they're driving this cattle from western kansas all the way to kansas city the main character's banger <unk> with truckers your question a lot of money to go out since it's an adventure for him to hire manage it was once a more global bribe shows the church of motivated to do it the actual cotton about having an evil character so for him to do it all and with it and i thought that was a bit much show i just am motivated by where the character the main character you know do you want a dog food or the spirit of it and they see that they don't so

much so that when the movement started clicking whichever next move is going to go to cook and everything else i'm visiting with robert de he's the author of the last cattle drive straight like for you to read an excerpt for us it's where leo murdoch the narrator a schoolteacher from kansas city has been put in charge of the city pour sen of their cattle drive and he's starting to have some real second thoughts about how this is going to go pick you pick it up on page fifty seven i was right actually i picture myself straw cowboy hat jet strayed well or my head back straight and the show with a bulwark mr roy hand the reins a moment why am i faded change and we weren't were true wading back into the port i could never get the adrenaline drive to go to the particular shop where were live it was much too far away for a long time

for subversion of two hundred and fifty ish tears go to rome almon head in cairo suburb more than my mind i could say oh i could get the girl was really cool to stand in lines along <unk> yes yes that's the same room or who used to guard the pool the very same long maureen dowd without much trouble or even i know it was like we do have to come through the show over to the shower and down a shark was huge brush werner construct to kansas city kansas alone over the shuttle should really go into a more emotionally was sure that unlike a possible

or marco that was mr resch i had nothing to lose over to hold two hundred and fifty years in the middle can actually finish general replace us water for debate bush finally drop water on the show animals goddard right with michael mchale is offer to buy me a beer last one of them like the foreword one bidder and a word about it though it's shame on not told by an invading another chance to make it through the city which can get delicious into him one morning as we were drinking coffee at a house in town waiting for what you never get pushed their solution if you're still thinking about running or the kaddish a dual are paid a boatload of know we're going to get them unstuck or why the audition and a ribbon attention ai of i'll go sign out and vote every time i get their wind up when the starter grant never fails you know what did you

learn hi we're going to keep them from running up every hour long shown throughout know what my views like a trap that is going to come to a grinding halt or you can drive down the little streets were so crowded now everyone wishes is or was a god what makes you think sean hsu corporate kicker thirty two co founder of character issue robert i'm going to go on some issues two hundred and fifty ish tears coming down the street in him and bought a few ounces you nurture apollo mission that drove us sally well that change munched on down are gone by jury to really remote literature will no illusion of emotion can show called commonwealth about a young let's shift gears a little bit and talk about your other book on though kansas won fifty west and that's speaking french in kansas i'm one of you

yours it's called speaking french on volunteer read jumping from not that one the phone call in a canoe in the book if i can speak a pro career jumping the only pictures so i on it revealed an injection of until you've been about afterwards how to get here she asked him for your three point the road standing in the kitchen he had come in through the back door was showing outside of that had been for the past week or phone with little money she was down at the shack dishes were the war around from the day and board another emotion warship well it is cold and shook off that you know you might've put down on the porches showed either a goddamn pour jack away from the war and how were they going to turn

around here i don't know if you should i don't know where they'll never burnout terrible for coupons how to get here they're going to get them through the northgate her show the appropriate route and set them on a great omen for the shorter bill goes along the road there and they're going to be another way they look at the cult report on the dreidel what's more efficient and a non fiction anymore she picked it would've shown drawn over hansen shutdown assure the kitchen table on the window there were explosion in the creation of your book the harsh and beyond that there was a white culture along a couple of moving north to show the course you open trial and has shut down the overture to the table where you're from twelve budget issue shows how long the heavier oregon three days you know i was always a good to be here wade and i motored

the window i said i'd take the bus from town and they didn't have to pay for that inhabit automated to turn back and look at the worker watches from our cherished through the sharia should pledge my uncle i have looked at a shot which would wound from they were recruited who took them often total four point though if the wall of strength to show that i think a more lightly out flesh and come on a moment fish the country particularly long duration and i made them his shirt good thing i did to allow the chopping wood that will clean out he looked at her leg up motion coughing all income inequality shouldn't be an immunity from outside that you're both at the border and the sound of a pickup truck and cement talking she looked out the window there feeling of town wooden shoes shone it they put up quite a bit of hair so i would know to serve

them exactly show them around through chapter a firm grip on the table look at the dishes and took a deep breath say we're going out of eritrea of courage just to the bus station if you're being given she said you can get out or going out there really like that i'm told my mama people that they're writing teachers show read that introduction to that story to show students how the coach question at the beginning of assuring unsure answers all the questions who are all these people sand when it comes out as usual miner who was a prostitute continued for multiple merle new world for the shooting and then the world catherine kummer on line to use the demand won't register jungle under the effects with them and instead of continuing to judge whether they're turning into a wife which are those historic

plan to return to have to work and brought the grubby met another look for a hat and beer water and that will become clear dorr goes on without adult questions at the beginning which are unanswered the relationship the story that begins to explain the relationship that panic parachuted caviar and mentored for a pitcher out and throw show boat ashore alive but because of a show that doesn't get what the point of well speaking french attendant with a little too much or innocence which color robert day is the author of speaking french in kansas and the last cattle drive he joined us by phone from his home in maryland if you're just tuning in we're looking at some of the books on the list of the one hundred fifty kansas books a list

compiled by the center for the book at the state library of kansas like rubber date my next guest also has two books on the list laura mari it is two thousand three debut novel is the center of everything her two thousand nine novel is while i'm falling welcome laura thank you first things first tell us about the center of everything well it was a book i worked on for a long time and i wrote a lot of it while in kansas i got my undergrad degree in social work here cameo and i am i had my so short internship at the same clinic in kansas city and some of the things that i observed there actually got me thinking and about the book at a lot of those experiences the source works it it gave me the idea of this character of evelyn a little girl who grows up in kansas and it's the story of her and her mother tina and her grandmother eileen tell us a little bit about those characters into where the story goes well there's analyst hand and it's nineteen

eighty so i think the scene opens with ronald reagan accepting the republican nomination and i am her mother as a single mother tina who's become a hot head has made a lot of rash decisions in maryland has his ten year old she's taken care of and they're living in poverty and then a lot of times the grandmother will come from wichita and a grandmother who everyone calls irene is also pretty young and she's a fundamentalist christian who loves ronald reagan bill is concerned because the year six letters into this arena in southern families of armageddon six six six it's common you are vulnerable and perspective as she does usually things and nixon in and watches this clash between her young mother and her grandmother on but they're both loving in different ways and that there's a real tensions between them that i tried to glaze over worm ask you to read a scene in this book and apple and has won her school science fair and she's chosen to go to topeka

to compete in the statewide science fair comedian from their server and she's in the car with her mother and her grandmother and she's looking out the window and thinking oh shes getting regular side there i look out my window down and the light yellow lines whizzing under us in the middle of the highway there is nothing the fields of wheat on each side of the road their feathery top swirling in the heat last year ms fairchild read some of my antonia to us she said she wanted us to see kansas and nebraska the way it is in the book beautiful a breadbasket that keeps so many people she said kansas is beautiful if you look at it the right way and that we shouldn't believe anything other people try to say about it the abundance of it she said to springer arms wide dinner wednesday address as if you were holding something more h i liked living in kansas not just because of the weak but because it's right in the center if you look at the map of the world the united states is usually right in the middle and kansas is in the middle of that so right here where we are maybe this very stretch of highway we're driving on is his accent read the whole world what

everything else was out front ms fairchild said no evelyn that's just when the map is made she said they could just as easily put india in the middle or africa for that matter she said she had seen that said have a sturdy at the top in greenland at the bottom and those maps are also write just in a different way she says the maps on her wall probably have as the united states in the middle because it was made in the united states i don't know i've never seen a map of greenland at the bottom i think meaningless their child is wrong in the united states really is in the center not just on maps but in real life because we're here on purpose i feel so lucky to live here right in the center in on purpose and eileen says yes it's just another way in of the many ways that we've been blessed that's a lovely image but it's also very disorienting if you try to think what it's like to run you know a map with when greenland at the top ten well finally see this novel as a coming of age intellectually and morally i thought there were a lot of cutting of age books for young women that were physical and sexual and i really wanted to write one about coming of age especially

intellectual and i feel like you're she's grappling with this idea that i think many adults especially perhaps maybe american adults struggle with which is this idea that that's just the way the map is made and you know there are different points and there is no center and that's just our very egocentric way of looking at the world and she's really kind of thing and the way she thinks about that right now where she says oh no we really are in the center i think it's a challenge throughout the book and she's able to see a larger picture by me and laura and what point allen describes her relationship with her mom tina who as you said is making some really bad choices along the way to evelyn describes almost a black line here between the two of them and her sense of separating from her mom she really tries to draw a line and say that is you this is me and for well you know like she really becomes this far more fundamentalists than eileen and i think it's because she grows up in this very shaky household where she doesn't always know what's

gonna happen for one day to the next and her sense of security is a very strong always when she's living with her mother and so she does make this line you know that's you this is me i'm going to have and you're not your bad i'm good and i think that's true of human nature in general as when people get really threatened either economically or in any situation where they feel threatened they're more likely to make those huge distinctions then me ben us us against them and she makes shimon says it's like the line on a map you know you were you and i to me and she does that line between herself and a mother which also gets to bolster of the book that sense of separation between a daughter and her mother is also a really strong being in your other books have won fifty list and that's your two thousand ninety novel while i'm falling talk a little bit about that storyline will process more in lawrence in the kansas city area and so i always wanted to write a book on war so i don't think this is my laurence novel

causes that truly lawrence yet you know would scare you reich is a twenty year old pre med student down and then her mother and father lived in the kansas city area we literally and i'm the most done pretty well you know they didn't do it and then they get a horrible divorce mom right as well as from a cousin her junior year and although veronica i don't think at this early in the novel understands the huge economic ramifications of this of course i am and also the emotional you know i knew that she does understand that her family is over as she knew it but i don't think she knew what was going on underneath and her parents marriage her mother has been one of his people's is very sacrificing for the family you know kind of put everybody before her all the time all the time and now i'm veronica really looked up to her that now as veronica herself is making life choices about what does she get a major and how important is money going to be to her un should she meet him with his boyfriend these these little decisions that can add

up later in life too am very serious consequences especially economically she's watching her mother sort of report ever she says even though she's done that their kindness and said there's a lot of distance in going on there because i think you get their stage well you know if your mother is falling and that's the aim of the book one point her mother is free falling in this book and the product is definitely at first tried to distance for even though her mother's illness this wonderful mother and she she scared of it happening to her so yeah you're right it's another line line in the sand can i have you read an excerpt from that book while and finally sir so this is very early on in the book and writer doesn't know everything going on with her mother she just knows that there's been this divorce and her mother's looking more disheveled and her mother's like working at a mall now and she's broke or herself is very ambitious and she's going to medical school and she's taking organic chemistry and she's got a study and work all the time and her mother is wanting her to take her out to dinner

so in this in this scene the mother has just taken her out for dinner and she's dropping off at the door which i call tweet hall that is really mccollum and she's getting ready to drop off says she says don't forget your leftovers she nodded at the paper box of chicken saturday the honey if you don't have a refrigerator you can cut then and you should probably just thrown away you don't mess with the poisoning gotcha i stepped out of the van with the box she reached for my sleeve i turned back honey her face was pale in the interior light i just want you to know that she kept her hand on the sleeve holding me there i know a little bit they become a mess right now but i still love you very much and still here for you for just a moment it felt like before when she was just my mother her gaze so focused and full of love and worry for me but even now that she was smiling at me and saying he's not nice words i could see that something wasn't right or at least not the same guys moved over her face in a slow spiral she'd stopped getting her hair done getting a highlighted whenever she's to do do it i could see strands of gray even in the summer darkness of her car

i said nothing i didn't want to interrupt her i wanted to believe that what she was saying was true and maybe i don't understand the way your test will be hard but i'm still rooting for you i want you to do great she squeezed my arm and smiled you got your whole life in front of you i just want you to make good decisions it's so important for you to make big decisions right now i nodded my eyes on her as her eyes at least had not changed and so i made certain they were the last thing i noticed before i shut the door when i got to the dorms front entrance i could still hear the idling engine of her than whenever she dropped me off death or dark she always waited that light shining until i was safely inside that's laura moriarty reading from her two thousand nine novel while i'm falling in that book and her two thousand three novel the centre of everything were named among the one hundred fifty best kansas books by the kansas center for the book thanks laura thank you so much terry if mystery is more to your liking there are several books for you on the list including our next two featured books in just a minute we'll hear from is there are

parades the author of bleeding kansas as well as the va were assessed the detective novels but first the virgin a small claims by nancy picard i had a chance to visit with nancy picard shortly after the virgin a small planes was selected for the state library of kansas reads program back into thousand eight the virgin a small planes is a mystery set in the flint hills of kansas but where exactly is itself a bit of a mystery people have come up to me people from the foothills because small places in the foothills and they said is this my talent and i have to tell them it's no real tehran although it's loosely based on council grove and marion and cottonwood false if small plates really existed you'd find it on one seventy seven between manhattan council grove i actually got out my map last night and try to plot out exactly where it was we're not the first person to do that people have walked up to me with maps and said sure the nose and the

virgin of small planes of her friends in the title is an unknown young woman who guys just outside town talk about the birds and the legend that springs up from her death i can't tell you too much for fear given away portions of the plot but i can tell you that i've always been fascinated with the idea that but part of the legends to grow up around an arm murder victim sometimes and particularly if their body is not been identified and i've also been really interested by the fact that when something like that happens when there's an unidentified murder victim frequently community take saturn and victim into their heart and it becomes really important to the community to find out who that person was then a kind of personal connection grows up between some people in the community and the victim and although that's not exactly descriptive of what happens in the region a small planes it's fairly typical of how an idea will morph into something that i can use usually comes from some some happening that haunts me in some way and eventually the haunting

results in at a version of what i originally inspired me and so a lot of different things when into creating the verge of small planes but sent us her description i will say that i actually think you described are pretty well she's she is of an unidentified young woman and she is murdered and a legend us grow up around her grave the legend being that she can help people who ask for help the book opens in a cemetery it ends in a cemetery and much of what transpires in the book either takes place in the cemetery or about the cemetery to me it almost seems like it's a place of community and people go to the graves and talk to their friends just as i'm talking to you across this table i think that in this country and in other countries actually there's a long history of senators being place for social gatherings and tom a century or two or three co it used to be fairly common for families to go to cemeteries on sundays and they'd even had a picnic there

and they have lunch in the grass and tom it became a place for social gatherings for sure i don't think we do quite as much of that now but i do think you're right that it isn't a place of community gathering and in a way in its own strange way can be kind of comforting if you're from small town in the uk always been there for a long time because it's proof of your roots in their town has to something really funny sometimes it takes readers to tell a writer what you've done in your book and they can use that something that nobody's ever said before which he pointed out that the boxer's of the cemetery into the cemetery and there's an important scene in the middle of the book that you know that i never realized that i didn't and that really changes the sort of amazing to me i mean you're actually right of course and the whole thing is kind of anchor dan by the cemetery seems a summit will thanks so much for that welcome the cemetery i'd like to read the passage in bali and katie

washington kate is a young woman who is dying of cancer and she goes to the small planes cemetery seeking a miracle from the virgin let's hear that passage the hair had gone a greenish yellow even in the darkness she could attack the change in color becoming backed him the impending stillness in the center and there the darkest part of the storm there was enough light to be able to watch the confirmation be curled they stand here beneath them they began to rotate and then she saw the tornado a few hundred yards away and without sinking hardly knowing what she was doing and even less why she was doing it to the girl flung open her door against the rain it was healing now small hard raw thoughts that pelted her weekend body it would've hurt if she'd been capable of feeling anything at that moment except the overwhelming desire to run to the top of the hill to meet the storm she stumbled and fell to her hands and knees in the dirt road it was trained mine was the rain and

hail pelted her back in the wind pushing at her like abusive hands she crawled towards a virgin spring when she reached it she turned over in may spread eagle her face to the clouds all around her the branches of the trees danced in the trees themselves leaned one way and then the other it was a howling all around her and then there was there aren't like a train coming closer to her that's how she felt this was no different this was their third go around there are brain tumors each of the first time she had known she would like an affair diagnosis came in she lost the will to fight it wasn't working anymore nothing was working anymore she was in pain on a time now from under the plan she watched the funnel form tiny and watched it get

down once watched it rise back up again always moving in her direction when a travel directly over her it was one hundred feet wide at the ten cds dumped directly into the mouth of the revolution and the whirling around inside your was deafening and terrifying she felt her whole body as if you were eleven to back down and then some of the things inside she closed her eyes expecting to be killed by them but they fell it a talker and all around when she opened her eyes she discovered she was covered with flowers that's an excerpt from the virgin of small planes written by nancy picard miriam kansas and read by staff the proposal mystery writer syrup or rats he is best known for her bestselling be a worse off key detective stories but in her two thousand eight novel bleeding kansas for

rescue leaves the character of the eye behind in chicago and set this book in douglas county kansas syrup for ft talks about her book bleeding kansas and growing up outside lawrence in this reading she gave at the lawrence arts center in january two thousand eight well i've been on the road around the country with bleeding kansas since january second and my tour winds down and finally returning to the scene of the crime there in the months that i've been and said amazing cities is houston phoenix and madison wisconsin i've had email messages from any number of lorenz eons past and present who say that they've seen themselves or da vern miller or sheriff rex johnson and the characters of the laying low then there are any shape an area even ironies perfect read every nasty i know that its futile for me to say that all of these characters are figments of my imagination

and the only real prison any of them is based on is me because they represent different aspects of my own personality as my brother jonathan explain to me yesterday we are all of us as readers bring our own lives and experiences to what we read so that in a very real way we're always present in someone else's novel i do understand that sort of anyway but really everyone inbreeding can says is made up of course some of the things in the novel are reality based including the old free mantle peretz the gilmore house i also benefited greatly from john in camp pendleton his willingness to open their farm to me whether i got very many details right about farming is certainly open to question but i came away from my time when then much impressed by not just the constant round of work but the amount of creative thinking that has to go into a successful farming thanks today

karen i am a proud honorary member of the meadowlark chapter of four h ide baseball of largo years four h project somewhat i saw this very impressive bunch of kids doing for the fair i couldn't make a desk i couldn't identify the three thousand beatles of northeastern kansas i couldn't build a raft out of orleans among discarded plastic water bottles but those are just a few of the things that my fellow chapter meets have been doing michigan's in the grille year is that true farm families who make up the heart of my story occupy an extra half mile of land that i added between lawrence a new door now i didn't want my publishers to include a map of douglas county in the end over leave but they refused to add to the expense of printing a book

by doing a different car tires especially since it would've meant freehand drawing in the extra half mile now they're done and the ground here is my sort of main family my hero family there the new crops but michigan's a dairy farmers and i did spend a very small amount of time on an organic dairy farm near to keep the arms when i was eleven i read dracula this book completely terrified me i didn't so i think that was the start of mine lifelong hobby of insomnia many many many nights before i slept i kept up controlling the house looking outside for vampires and as you may know vampires can take the form of walls and then they'll jump the window break the glass and then they'll turn back into vampires

or ones night around two in the morning as i was patrolling the perimeter i looked out and there they were wolves in the back door and i scream really loudly and we'll both parents and four brothers who walking running and looked out and they were actually cow's the famous and they hired thousand douglas so the neighbor's cows are not given the benson the reading my mother's cooing i have to confess that someone cannot tell the difference between a wolf and a cow is probably not ideally a quick to write about a dairy farm i gave it my best shot their savings as i said a dairy farmers in one part of the novel is the perfect red heifer they have on their farm heifer that's needed to fulfill the prophecies about jesus' return given i

think in the book of revelation a different writer than me dan brown for instance would have discovered leaking natural prophecies from isaiah even mary magdalene and i would be making a billion dollars as raymond chandler put it it's always a question of who the writer is and what we have in us to write with in my novel the work of my hands i wanted to explore the landscape of my childhood but the interior and the exterior and look like this couldn't take place in chicago there's no place for me i was asking that sharp tongued risk taking problem solver in the world of the shape ins in the grille years there's no room for any outsider there especially not ones eccentric as gina harry the wiccan let alone a movie on

i certainly wouldn't be able to have the bonfires in chicago or a perfect read have her nor could i have the winter wheat coming to life i needed to return to my childhood to be able to write about jim and susan growl year to write about land and the cycle of life and death it presents to us the winter wheat had broken dormancy i'm starting to grow all week and pale green and shimmered under the brown tufts barely visible like a shy girl at the school dance don't look at me i'm here this morning though the whole field was suddenly alive the sky was still dark early paler than the land beneath it and you could smell the greenness of the plant's afresh tang like why i'm rising from the land when he meant to feel the stalks they were supple and soft as we're down

between his fingers he heard footsteps we careen through the grass and then susan not beside him like him sing than to feel so i o n roots it smells like spring day squatting for a time without speaking all the poetry about spring that lie was studying for her english class april is the cruelest month wasson by blossom the spring begins now that april with his shower of sweet and liars own ernest clumsy mindset celebrated becoming blue skies and pink roses why did no one write a poem about the winter we come into life susan took a deep breath and i'm sorry about that and so you had to sell the reception that he had to sell it for army to had to sell it to army i'm sorry for letting you down for being the reason you had to do

it he put his finger over a religious person the bubbling it's recalling to each other their long line of song counting the metal arts the bombings have come back from south america a week ago as they had every spring for twenty thousand years and working in earnest on their nests they sailed around gm and susan in the dark they know more attention to the humans into the silos across the fields in the east a faint strain of pink heralded the rising sun fifty three writers fearful if he's reading from her two thousand eight novel leaving kansas the one hundred fifty best kansas books list also includes a number of non fiction books including our next selection a kansas ear is a collection of photographs and essays from wildlife photographer mike boyer i interviewed mike blair by phone

shortly after a kansas here was selected as a kansas notable book this is not meant to be a photography book but what i have is a hundred fifty illustrate of photographs that can help tell the story of different things that happen the seasonal unity of this year so you starred in january does get some ideas or how you work your way through the year and how you came up with this collection of photographs we'll let people know me as a wildlife photographer kansas wildlife and parks in the course of doing this a project totally on my own i do a lot of freelancing as well but in my many years of experience about thirteen hours an outdoor and nature photographer in kansas i have come to realize that at any time during the cannes this year and the things that you say in the air an experience or things that tell us all right julia what were you were as well steve vick i draw people's attention to just look around us

in and warren observed more about the kansas outdoors an eye relates to us on a seasonal basis mike the photographs in this book are an arm or just but one thing that surprised me was it's not just a book of photography it's also your essays about what was happening or why or what you captured in each photograph you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words and that's really true is it up and look at this book myself right now and look at any picture their you know you could write a whole book about any one of those things that but that the photograph really is kind of a snapshot of what was actually going on and then the flavors of those things are which you put them in the words i'm afraid to ask you this but do you have a favorite phonograph says that would be you know that would be hard to say there isn't there's a lot of photographs in there that there are no worthy to me i guess one of the ideas that a big program were crippling nature center last night and i showed the picture of the bobcat crossing where bob cat crossed

that a lot and i actually set that up by a concept in mind that with a trail camera and it took me about three and a half months or three months to get that picture the way i wanted it and i was very frustrated i thought i'd be i would get it within a week or so and in the cabinet believe me i have offered to cut his ron paul white walk straight away from me and i just the hindquarters and i kept ryan over and over again that's not my favorite picture but that certainly comes to mind as one of the shot oh you're gonna make me smile when i think about i had to work pretty hard to get that shot my favorite pictures are always moves that showed the drama something i've got a picture called eagle joust i guess it's just little segment in the book called legal joust where a bald eagle made a shock global warming aerial shot at a crow that had been actually end of that of that moment of drama that you

see his unexpected and it's always fun to see that kind of stuff those are the frosting on the cake every time we get to see not only legal way to get to see him do something unexpected that it you know that makes the moment special mike return to february eight there's a photograph there that really caught my attention interestingly enough you know and this was something that i didn't notice as a photographer when i was shooting this picture was like dudes coming and i was in a blind unnatural situation there but later in the photograph when i was looking at them in detail i saw that there was a board and a club like for whatever reason and that the burden to heal the normally on one side you've got the normal big web fluid and on the other side you've got like a chicken bone hang and downright paranoid idea hilda completely interesting to me that as place normally after run along the

water service to take off he seemed to have absolutely no problem swann around even swam off kilter you didn't deviant daily trouble taken flight he operated just normally as anything else and the promise of that story was that unlike us who are blessed to have doctors and medical help or when a wild animal that has an injury which can happen in so many different ways they've got a gift to be able to live through and survive in wait times they do enjoy normally about their business i'm i'll admit that i am a petty indoor person that we think for your book it really made me think it to get outdoors more i appreciate you saying that day and i heard that many many times from people at a red my blood know they said you know there's so much out there that we never get to go see are never take the time to go see and you don't have to go to the hinterlands to see these things you can go to the city park you can do it in your backyard

you know the i've got one entry in here has talks about the only scar on a black walnut tree and we'll get that looked just like a monkey face and when you look at a close up as i did with macro wins on my camera there's this odd monkey face look on this twitter at and it's very very striking and there's no eyes and there's a mouth and those guys and the mouth are actually vascular bundles course they're called and those are the little pipeline that carries tap a nutrition from the roots to the leaves of a plant in back and and so all of these details of nature are right around this and there's so much stuff you know to a nature walk with a naturalist this is always fun because they point these kinds of things out to people you know that no normal ordinarily have any idea they're passing by sets great stories that are all around us and it's just simply the fact that most of us are busy and we just don't know what to look for and we don't know

what we see when we see it so that you know tries to explain to lose faith in india it really does try to encourage people to look at the beauty of this day you know her by last victims and make fun of the so nature photographer i can't think of a state that it doesn't work in its gut the tremendous diversity and beauty that we do here that you can have to grow to appreciate it i'd been visiting with wildlife photographer or mike blair his collection of photographs and essays at cannes this year was published in two thousand nine by the university press of kansas we close today's program on the one hundred fifty best kansas books with a collection of poetry to the stars kansas poets of the ad astra poetry project was edited by former kansas poet laureate denise flow to me is what exactly is the ad astra poetry project as poet laureate of kansas two thousand seventy two thousand

nine i collected a series of poems and then wrote explanations of them and biographies holden about the poet all to be contained on one page so that this could be printed out and posted are used in schools as they were armed and then at the end of the two years i collected what i had into book form how did you select what poets and which poetry and made it into your collection well i feel bad because there are many many good poets that i just ran out of time and energy because i could've doubled the size but it started to thinking i would do a lot of historic poets i start with langston hughes and william stafford and gordon parks and then as the project evolved i began to be more committed to making people wear of contemporary poets

around them and so then i buy a kind of collected there needs to be a second volume of the pre nineteen ninety eight though now poets and gotten the oysters just focus on living poets but i did try to slight people who had at least one published book probably preferably to son longevity and i wanted the book to not be self published are somebody who had some stature reviews of there work and involvement in the writing community now i know better than to ask you if you have a favorite or two but i'm i'm hoping you can pick out one or two that you read for me today ok ok one of my favorite characters in kansas is so argo born guy albert gold bars at wichita state who's lived here so long now again i had to think about what about these immigrant hanson's arm

he's then there which just ate over twenty years and i think he now if he can survive the climate that lawyer deserved to be called a kansan and so he is one of the most celebrated poets of our day he's won every kind of a warrant you can imagine including the national book awards national book critic circle award and so forth and i'd like to read you an excerpt from his poem wings i always wondered why they called them wings perhaps because somebody's always waited in shadow in them with a rope with a rope like a great graded nerve and while some sweet singing or bloody melee completely filled the central light this person would raise or lower for god it's some are hard some are the land to eat now

mold i find the bird already have dismantled by ants the front half it's flying steadily into the other world so needs to be atheists still do a mumble yes though i actually pray yes yes but not for the bird when we love enough people a bird is a rehearsal that's lovely is another may seem like another one for me look at our home you know another wonderful poet and that is in their nets and and i celebrated anytime i can this can either be he'd just won a wonderful prize michelle a prize that's geologist a huge national on air but this is a poem

on for ed to warren to april nineteen twenty nine to ten december nineteen ninety nine in the far back past year animals have lined up and lament dog goat pony horse and beyond them i cowan as astronomical agility a real dog and pony show giving tree get back on their hind legs musicians at the window lacking the caucus call the show if the world along the fence rows in with the hedge apples that night twitter craig bushes are in bloom that kray what are they that is there a crime that's denise lull former poet laureate of kansas reading from to the stars be and asked her poetry project denise close nineteen eighty eight book store water is also on the list

of the one hundred fifty best kansas books based in east you get to the stars a kansas ear bleeding kansas the virgin a small planes while i'm falling the center of everything speaking french in kansas the last cattle drive pro we've barely made a dent in the one hundred fifty best kansas books compiled by the kansas center for the book at the state library of kansas i'm kay macintyre i'll be back next week with more selections from the list you can find the entire list of books at the state library's website a f l i b that info or by entering one hundred fifty best kansas books in your favorite search engine by the way the books are not ranked rather they're listed in alphabetical order by book title i hope you've enjoyed this look at some of the bass kansas bugs if your comments or questions about tonight's program let us know on k pr is facebook page or send me an email to my address is kate mcintyre at k

u that edu that's k n c i n t y r e k u that ed you and did join me next week for part two of the one hundred fifty best kansas books tv our prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas