Kansas Notable Books, Part Two

i know the best new books about kansas or by kansans i'm kate mcintyre and today kady are reasons it's been two thousand fifteen kansans notable books are too we'll hear from nine of the author's honored last weekend at the third annual cannes is the festival in topeka if you missed last week's show part one of the kansas notables it's now archived on our web site at pr that k u dot edu there you can hear about jos shrugs history of the kansas relays poet carried miriam goldberg's collaboration with photographer stephen lot the third book in alec's creations scotland yard murder squad series and much more again that's at k pr dirty you die every year the state library of kansas names fifteen books to its kansas notable book west this year only one children's book made the last

bluebird by lawrence author and illustrator lindsay yankee i asked lindsey to read and describe their first several pages of her book really 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 the wind not a leaf in her tree was staring and therefore without the when she thought i'd 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 at the illustrations for blue bird i left a lot of empty speaks the story is a bird looking for the lender and so ominous were pages can have an eerie feeling to him than a 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 will wise the bird looking for the winner is the wind gone where the bird look for the wind and so that's when the text in the holster economist are there take more form and then as far as illustrations go iowa is not studying art at that point when i had this idea and so eventually family seal illustration and an estate illustration at you know and kind of started to happen we find her figure out

what we're going to do with me illustrations and that ended up being a lot of fun open doors of lake different materials and being able to sort of to make a 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 taking place i'd say a mad more european type place les and i was looking for a publisher for blueberry that they was going to the head children's books rambling 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 but i just i think that all that stuff is really attractive to my eye and silent or draw space that can resemble that i especially loved illustration where people are sitting in a cafe reading

newspapers and there's and bits and pieces of newsprint you can catch in that illustration what's going on in that theme so the same where 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 can't remember what it is you know it was that it was right after barack 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 nice 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 that's devlin the most obvious one thing your first children's book as i know well 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 that is size picture books that i have written and illustrated yes paper it's a first ever illustrator and as an artist i mean 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 about some than they really learned that i liked in school 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 a minute and 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 and having it definitely helps guide my creative process and knowing the parts of the story that can influence the illustrations are by servers and how they can say more with the text and less with the picture a war with a picture unless with a text i'm still be informative like this and i thought this was a lovely lovely book and if you get it young readers in your household or just love a good picture but this is a really lovely woman i think he can win see what's ahead for you as an artist as a children's book author while about a couple a couple stories in mind that if i were twelve with a million 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 we read through 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 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 but festival in topeka where there were that easy question who as alexander gardner well how much time do we have five minutes five minutes

he was scottish born a reformer came to the united states set up on farmland and i were on the utopian farm didn't work and 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 pay 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 below their son was 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 railroad words speaking welsh girl and please give us a land grants so that there wasn't the multi fork hiring garner well i let's jump forward to nineteen ninety three why you retrace our center garner 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 only photographic serve it to document the changes that occurred only the polish of banjo on earlier and since no one had done an awful i had 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 railroad mileage 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 in 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 cross is 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 bumgarner took the photograph standing on south side of the tracks looking north along lincoln street 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 biden garner certainly captured two starkly 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 eight m what will have these pirate with its of the nineteen nineties two thousands indicators air serbia a revocation an arranger of that previous culture that her card itself into the sandstorm air as a beautiful metaphor for what was happening to the landscape yeah indian managed landscape to garner was catching 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 of freedom this is an unfortunately little known union or more cans 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 senator oh 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 it i will have to concessions to work and so lane one dj punish secessionist even though missouri was not technically a state of the confederacy there was a large confederate veteran pro confederate population their analog arose 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 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 white units 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 at 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 the quarter in more more soldiers for these campaigns image of the aisle but even then there were still a lot of people in the north that's honest ref because this meant equality 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 it's a

quick secession and this real motto 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 very effective and prevent tv of 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 force or standards by then october he can succeed to layoff to retain sixty two after the big battles of the 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 the 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 actually engagement hours a couple hundred are confederates about about a hundred or so black soldiers that 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 in a state organization still being recruited had not been accepted federal services but the uk insists that troops kansas officer was reportedly needed more troops and they gave these guys the opportunity they're not operating city to chase out her summer cerebral as in the area and a firsthand is going to perform very well my reading thinking that that these soldiers in the kansas first were not paid for their service but first this was this is what's really go to the heart 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 pensions

and these guys are or joining often these young men illiterate and they see this as 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 against slavery overall but also very worried that their services is not going to be your life affect with that they're going to be used for manual labour their first given in mississippi to city to secondhand uniforms they're given secondhand musket some of which operates in which are dangerous to use and are not paid amen 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 pretty 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 than you read an excerpt it's like 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 uncensored 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 all too human frailties perhaps they fought with the tenacity that only gauges of bondage conspire but the one thing that clearly separated them from white soldiers with the ever present always said if captured by confederate forces they faced almost certain death or returned to slavery in southern states that 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 they

simply 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 a kansas notable book award we're featuring seven of those folks on today's kbr presents

the list usually includes several why a or young adult books the kansas notables list has only won why a book this year girl in reverse by barbara stuber edition 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 is a book concierge as one of the best why a books of the year and was named by the international literacy association as a y a 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 billy alice put in a an orphanage in kansas city and the jets one and i have an adopted two white american parents fda just read about 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 am lest her daughter whose name was liane at the time in an orphanage in kansas city and then her birth mother as satin really tense at that event turned into gone tomorrow 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 a year which i gather has worked on me for the twenty five years i've been a docent there so it's a blind side of china the beauty of those thousands

year old cultures in china played a big role in the story and in lily sung discovery of her prominence 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 is 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 get every time plays a metaphor in the bits and pieces literally of optics and also because you have something that's very dynamic and there's lots of pieces to it you can take it in all it wants to

do what he did at the time 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 rented 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 you know 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 well in the art world where i spent a lot of time in our 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 and why that may be who owned it when it's connected to who even stole into fixed it had any advanced to devalue 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 league to revert to her own backstory her own bout you know weighing on 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 all lost in place that's a lovely analogy from barroom here at the accident working title of the black west provenance because at bridges on it but i knew that were not work because nobody can legally first class it is actually action is like one way to actually do that you can see she's contemplating work i get you to read an

excerpt from craig reversed 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 i'm almost always at the dinner table as a tense time and ralph tends to have the ability to white the family up with something that is going to be air 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 had 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 were intended to bring all his start with new to the new people pick shoes and clothes from that were funny turn you know what happens to our staff mother leans in cribs the table edge and glances at my father it has gotten rid of their tips his head blinks presumably considering the correct legal answer her mother shivers turns to her husband is best why should a child be encouraged to live in reverse her face looks her next amen and damn it my mind exits the dining room and enters the little girls to learn that the sisters of mercy childrens home i see this scratchy green wool blanket on my middle band they're seventh down the right side and my pink plastic hairbrush labeled lillian and my locker stacked with the chargers and the shirts i smell the incense float

smoke floating in the chapel might reverse but technically shouldn't that 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 know 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 turns 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 the 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 reverse world away in a glass of bourbon or wrapped in seen paper and small that's barbara stay over reading from a girl in reverse it's one of fifteen books selected by the state library of kansas as this here 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 a pr that take you that 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 team of truman and this is called that watermark books before the reading it's dedicated to my wife pat having arrived 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 storms 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 that'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 spider up in the prairies of illinois and in southern illinois the prairie's are undergoing by coal than coal mining was a very early industrial are called silver and white and black the head of

that visual cough the defining cough that martin was a southern illinois coal miner her cough fed by black a g spots deep within his chest that had in castaway hacking up what remained of his loans 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 on the sides of the 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 he noticed a particularly when his left hand build white cigarette vapor 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 clean 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 doesn't lead nic i can still see him but i can picture and they read the poems he flipped maybe one more page there's a poem going home lives on page eighty nine that i just love and 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 to one drowned and him and that just really struck me because every time i go back to the line 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 but a dozen 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've gone missing when i was born that's roy beck meyer of wichita reading from his collection of poetry music i

once could 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 oklahoma kansas and nebraska it's published by university press of kansas for most people at the 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 waiting prairie grasses and maybe like an anxious 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 to look around you and you notice all the things that the dozens of flowers are blooming and the bees that are buzzing in 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 bands 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 it has a place and for hearing us here in kansas it says economy we have a lot of cattle ranching and a reason that the grasses 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 people like pictures and i thought oh pictures that's the way that people will get to enjoy the grasses 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 right 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 photograph 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 them the picture of me that you're referring to the future of viewed taking pictures that telegraph those grasses yes and i guess there's several ways you could approach that denying college and that fervor to photography and one is to use flash he's flashy can curse at the plant that sets a plan to partly highlight the plant picture after 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 that i had seen an older publication that he used his method was actually just knew the plant to a location 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 just didn't 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 we 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 thought i can 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 whether all life size so that you can kind of see them side by side just like a strange question but of all the different kinds of grasses that grow in that area the country do you have a favorite well i think it's like no well flowers are some of the favorite just depending on my need 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 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 that 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 cancers 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 cpr decade 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 tenor 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 a nine 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 characters have in 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 mr kall 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 white house 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 that he can 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 here 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 vermin korea and very seriously and we're satan dollar was one of the grambling sets within your nickname back in the thirties and in one month but he went on to work for the 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 we do know there are armed guards at the door and all that so he goes out because the 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 why we don't know about him that you know in recent years that's come to light and he also 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 without warning 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 those for 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 lambert approached him about building a plan that would cross the atlantic is to be tree fused and it was never spoken of how powwow but this opposition was 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 status however he did keep his kansas connections he came back at a wichita several times visited his aviator friends that he came to dodge city and how to choose a side for the airport in amelia earhart were involved with the railroad plane combination where early and very impassioned jurors food 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 at that time and limbert was one of the shareholders and founders of the companies that did that and when he wrote his autobiography and he 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 are the 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 kansas

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 just divide global well it's part of the second installment coming out next year characters be that's dave lapham and they gave him no along with terri run that they're the authors of that astro one hundred sixty one of adventurers astronaut discovers explores eyelids pioneers scientists you can buy at astro from your local campus bookstore or directly from the kansas heritage center part of that dive city public school system that website is valued debbie debbie dai hey as heritage dot org you could register for a chance to win a copy of the ad astra and many of the kansas notable books we featured today just go to our website at our back at you that ed you click on extra us and then giveaways and

came out entire katie are presented with a production of kansas public radio is at the university of kansas