president clinton after the house impeached him and stood in the rose garden he knew it would wreck his chances of becoming president but he did it anyway because he was vice president and that was his duty and i think it was likely that al gore would have been president but for all of these events. >> well, ken gormley, you have written a terrific book. thank you very much, good luck with this. it has been fun. >> you have been the best host ever, greg, i appreciate it. :

>> activist in the movement against mountaintop mining, tells stories of their fight on what they call the destruction of the land for the sake of the coal industry. carmichael's book store in kentucky hosted this event. it's about 40 minutes. >> i have to wear my sunglasses, i'm sorry, i'm not trying to be cool, i just can't see. i want to read 10 minutes from my new book, along with jason howard, my co-author, who will read of after me and we spent about two and a half years

working on this book and it was the most emotionally devastating book i ever worked on. we traveled all over the region, all over appalachian, met all kind of people that are not in the book. finally focused on 12 people that we wrote long magazine style features on and turned it over to them and let them do an oral history too, so it was anser sighs in capturing people's voices. one of the things we know is being lost, in mountaintop removal, is the storytelling and the people's voices. that's what's being ground down into the ground, are the voices of the people and so we wanted to make a book to preserved those voices and would let the people tell their own stories, so this section i'm going to read from is about bev may, who was very involved in the fight against platform d, has already been active in standing up for other people, and as you'll see

in this little bit that i'm going to read, now her own land is under threat, after she fought for everybody else's land, her land is at risk. it's called "little acts of greatness." bev may moves up the steep mountain, much like she must have as a little girl, growing up here on wilson creek, 10 kick, her trusty dog rufus, a mixed breed with a noble profile is barely able to stay ahead, although he seems wanting to do so. she never stops talking, eager to introduce us to the place she loves so much, the place she is terrified of losing. like that young girl, may is conscious of everything, she points out a bluejay feather that has drifted down and comes to rest on a rot log. she runs her hand over the broad

trunk of an oak, glances up at the sky, and comments on its deep aching blue. this woman is one with the mountain. they know and respect each other. this is a parent not only in the way may talks about the mountain, but in the way she moves up it with ease and grace, stepping lightly, so as to disturb the least amount of earth as possible. even though she often says, i can't get up here as fast as i used to, this is hard to believe, may is a woman who is used to being in motion, she's a medical professional, and an old time fiddler and activist. she moves with determination, her arms pushing at the air, her legs intent on their purpose, her feet on a mission. today, she is on her way to the high rocks, her favorite place in the world. and although she wants to that take her time an enjoy the walkup, she also eager to reach

the ridge top, where she will encounter a natural castle of rocks, a secret world that only the inhabitants of this holler know, one they've been frequent i since the early 1800's. may's mission is not only to take us to the high rocks, but to save them. they, like most of the land may has known all of her life, are in grave danger. it all started one morning in november 2006 at the grace methodist church when a neighbor bragged after the service that may brother's mining company had approached him about buying his land to start mining in the head of wilson vehicle. this neighbor also claimed that three other families had already sold. it turned out the neighbor was misinformed. no one on wilson creek had sold anything yet, but the coke company is breathing down their neck and as of this writing, it seems certain that the company is if tent on mining in and

around wilson creek, including the long ridge where we stand now. and bev may is not certain that her neighbors won't seem. money talks, she says, especially when you need it. may dreamed that if only one neighbor sold out, a doughnut effect might rum. with help from kftc, she secured space from a center in may town, inviting people to organize and fight the coke company that seemed intent on invading their world. several months of before the summertime jog up the mountain, may is presiding over the meeting of residents on a cold night in keeps. concerned citizens are gathered in the may town community center, which was once the lunchroom for an elementary school. may town is made up of 200 souls, well kept houses, an old camper serves as the community

store where cigarettes, pop, and candy are advertised and spray painted handwriting on the exterior wall. the little town sits in a bowl near the railroad tracks, the mountain encircling it like gray, jagged arms. this night, a dense snow falls like tiny feathers and the cold makes the night void of a moon seem even blacker. the furnace has been fired up and rumbles as everyone files in, brushing snowflakes from their hair. they've gathered closely in a circle not only to hear, but to use each other's heat. the others are all caught up in various states of conversation, their talking is punctuated by laughter. i guess we ought to get started, may says, so quietly, that it's surprise surprising when everyone stops talking at once.

everything with may, the way she uses her hands, suggests kindness and intelligence. this is a woman worth listening too. may launches into the meeting, intent on getting business done, but not aggressively. she wants to include everyone, to make sure all those gathered have a chance to say their peace. she goes around the room, allows everyone to introduce themselves, gives all those present the time to make their knownsment. everyone is gathered because they do not want the coal cop to come into their holler. others are here because they want all the information they can get. some have already been lied to by the company and are here to warn their neighbors. others don't know what to believe. like many of the social movements in appalachian, the rousing chorus of wilson creek is largely made up of women. there are two elegant older ladies in crisp dress pants and

sweaters, an earnest young woman who is knew not group and taking into account everything around here, a vivacious woman in her 60's, who is wrapped up in her husband's puppy coat and gives up a wonderful air of not giving a damn what anybody thinks of her. i don't give a damn what anybody thinks of me, loudly relating how she told off one of the men who came in to her house to talk her out of selling. several other women are there to represent their families, who promised to fight to the bitter end before they'll ever sell out to a coal company, known for bullying people. these are strong appalachian women, tough as the coal trucks, clever as foxes, as spirited as the music of these mountains. one of the young women is concerned about what will happen to her two asthmatic children,

if coal trucks start running up and down the road. there will be so much dust off that road, she says. looking around the room so that her highs meet those of everyone else. she twists her wedding band around her finger while she talks. her hands are hard working and happened, hands that have known scalding dish water and mop water, hands that have scrubbed counters and carried plates, grabbed hold of hot skillet handles. this woman is worn out from just trying to get by. and now, she has another aggravation. a threat to her children. finally her hands become still in her lap. she hooks down at them briefly, as if this manner of talk has worn her out and lift her head. if we let this company come in here, i just don't know what i'll do, because my children will not be able to stand it. well, bev may says, we'll just have to make sure they don't come in here then. her someway of speaking is reassuring, and many of the women nod, a gathering of strong

forces, determined to fight back. may offers a reassuring smile, and some of the frustration falls out of the women's stiff shoulders. sometimes may thinks about what it would be like to lose this mountain, but then i can't think about that, she says. it makes me feel like i'm falling off the edge of achieve to think of that, that painful, too much, so the thing to do is to hope it doesn't happen, she says. i realize that fighting the coal company is like david and goliath, but i have to keep hope, but then she remembers that david ended up winning his fight. may doesn't understand people who can't see what's wrong with mountaintop removal. at the suggestion that there might be another side to the fight, say a positive site to the mining practice, she grows fidgeting, ringing her hands, it's morally wrong, she says, because every mountain in eastern kentucky is ours,

really, our heritage. in some cases, it's the only legacy we have. whenever they blast another mountain, they're blasting away the future. the lumber, the water shed, the wildlife, tools and sustainable community, everything, there ain't no putting it back, she says. she laughs, maybe to keep from crying. when we treat mountains like they're expendable, well, all i know is that it all boils down to short-time profits for the company and no just physical at all for the people e. the companies are all the time talking about overburden, you know. well, we're just the overburden. their job is to remove overburden and retrieve the coal. we're the first level of overburden, so we can't let them remove us. we can't give in. may looks at the trees, perhaps imagining them all pushed into a valley field, so that gigantic drag lines can remove the overburden and make way for the extraction of coal. then she clinches her justify and her face is sealed with

defiance. she is fierce, determined. i just feel that we're being assaulted from all sides. that's what it's like, to live here, she says. they're taking out gas and timber and coal all the time, it never stops. there ought to be some balance. i believe there ought to be able to mine, but they want to level everything, and i am not going to sit by and watch that happen. people ought to be able to live. thank you all. [applause] >> wow. when he joined our fight, it really expanded the whole circle of us. sort of takes my breath away. so i want to tell you that silas is going to be over at the table, the carmichael books

table and he'll be signing his books and next we'll have jason coming up, jason howard is a writer, editor and musician from eastern cento. use the author of "appalachians fighting mountaintop removal," he is the former senior editor and staff writer for eco magazine based in washington, d.c. his work has appeared in "kentucky living," an accomplished musician, he plays piano, bass and auto harp. he graduated from the george washington university with a degree in political communications and interdisciplinary major of communications, science and journalism. >> hello, louisville. it's good to see that louisville

loves mountains. it's a great crowd and we'd like to thank everybody for coming out and supporting yours in the fight against mountaintop removal. we would like to thank the acts that have went on and kate larkin, wasn't she great. she is a local publisher here, and my next project will be out in a couple of weeks. it is an anology called "we all live downstream" and it's writing about mountaintop removal about people from across the country, including lots of students, and they are paired alongside writers like wendell barry and silas and ashley judd and denise sardina and many, many more, so i'm really excited about that. i'm going to take us just over the river, in to west virginia tonight across eastern kentucky and over the river and i'm going to be reading from a piece about judy bonds, and it is titled "the endangered hill billy."

there's a heaviness that hangs over the town of west virginia. like the fog from the nearby big coal river, it seeps through the streets, past the empty store front, on up the mountainside to the rows of house that is overlook the town. it has become the invisible resident, a testament to the flight that has taken place over the years, even as the profits of the mining industry have soared. many of the buildings on the main street are vacant, pocked by broken windows, boarded up with plywood. only a few businesses barely hold on, an auto shop, a law office, a motel. the sign for a local diner boa boasts hot fried baloney sandwiches. inside, a handful of people gather at the counter for their midday dinner. one can hear the exhaustion.

people are tired, although the town is located within boone county, the leading coal producing city in the state, nearly 30% of residents live below the poverty line. ever the faceless lover, coal has left much of waxville high and dry. this town is drying, judy bonds mourns in the storefront office of coal river mountain watch. growing up here in the 1960's, this was a pretty booming town. my mother tells me that in the 1940's, it was even more booming. the more coal we mine, the poorer we get. such candor has made the 57-year-old grandmother a controversial figure around waxville and beyond. coming from just up the road in birch holler, bonds is used to taking her share of knocks. her fierce hazel eyes and commanding voice are clues that she has descended from tough stock. it's something that has sustained her as the outreach

coordinator for coal river mountain watch, a grassroots organization devoted to stopping mountaintop removal. i have the reputation of being a pretty angry person who speaks her mind, bonds says. sometimes the words don't come out right. if it's a spade, i call it a spade. that's who i am, and i can't apologize for that. i lost my diplomacy a long time ago. bonds was raised to speak her mind. the daughter of oliver thompson and sarah easton hanner, she's proud of her country upbringing in the coal river valley, where her family has lived for 10 generations. my first memories was of my father and grandfather, plowing the field above my home shells. i remember the smell of the rich, beautiful, black earth. the town is in appalachian, you are the mountain and the mountain is you. bonds also remembers playing with her father's mining gear and finding one of his

paychecks, made out for only $15. that discovery, perhaps more than any other, put a nagging doubt in her mind about ethics and the coal industry. her father's pay was barely enough to provide for her family, she says, let alone to compensate for the risk to her life and health. i remember walking up and down the railroad tracks at night with the pillow case, picking up lumps of coal so we could stay warm, she shakes her head. my memories of coal are not good memories. bonds doesn't recall ever hearing her father grumble. it was my mommy who complained, who railed and ranted against the company and the industry and how they treated the miners and the people. my mother was the one who talked about mother jones and joan yell lieu wills. her mother was also responsible for making sure her father received his plaque lung benefits. my daddy got old and he was used up by the coal industry and he had black lung and needed to retire, but he still had

children and grandchildren that he had to raise, says bonds. the coal company didn't take such things into account. they di denied him compensation, giving him an ultimatum, go back to work or quit. he went back in the mines. meanwhile, bonds recalls, her mother much ad a brillan scheme. my mother thought i'll get life insurance on cob, so the agent come to the house and come back after a physical and looked at my mother and said ms. thompson, we can't insure your husband, he's very sick, he's ill and she said west whoas wrong with him and he said he's got black lung, he might live six months. my mother said, can you prove that? he said, yes, sir, ms. thompson, right here is the paper that proves he's got black lung. despite her request, the agent refused to turn over the piece of paper. not batting an eye, says bonds, her mother pulled out a pistol that she had tucked in the big pockets of her house coat. she pointed at at that insurance

man and said sir, you're not leaving here with that piece of paper. and so that's how my father finally proved that he had black lung. bonds surprised that a proud, rebellious people have kind of lost their spines, something she blames on the coal industry. i'm awful proud to be a hill billy, she shouts, and let's out a big grin. i choose to call myself an appalachian american, because people need to realize that appalachians are a distinct, ethnic group. her identity is something that bonds always mentions in her speeches. and an anti-mountaintop removal rally at a church in harlem in may 2007, she's filled with righteous indignation. i never knew that america thought that i was an ignorant hill billy, until i went to ohio. when i was six years old and i found out that i was an ignorant hill billy, it amazed me. bonds' feeling of inferior has been very deep inside her hall these years. it bubbles to the surface whenever she thinks about mountaintop removal and the fact

that it's destroying her culture. in fact, she is so adamant about preserving mountain culture that coal river mountain watch recently created a t-shirt, emblazenned with the rallying cry, save the endangered hill billy, they can't keep enough in stock. some people say if you're from a coal mining family and you speak out against coal, you're betraying your heritage. i pretty much say the modern day miners are the ones betraying their ancestors, by destroying this land and who we are, bonds says with her trademark bluntness. god made mountains and mountaineers. greed made coal mining, i'm sorry, but that's the truth. here she pauses and looks out the window of her hometown. she throws up her hand in acknowledgement as somebody passes by, leaning back on the warm couch, her posture softens. i've lost a lot friends over speaking pout, bonds says.

nobody in my family, nobody real close, i consider them people who were never my friends to begin with. my daughter bought me a stun gun for christmas, because i've been threatened a couple of times. you can't look down when somebody looks at you, you have to look them right in the eye, and keep something. -- keep going. it's an old company strategy, divide and conquer, and waxville has been torn in two. this, bonds says, is a fact often acknowledged in conversations around the supper table and inlined at the local derry queen. there, a weathered man walks in wearing a t-shirt with what appears to be a man's face, morphed in to that of a big. a devilish mustache curls its way out from underneath the fought. what gives away the identity of the swan is the bold, black text above the picture, an ode to the state's largest producer, massy energy sucks. the big is massy's c.e.o., don

blankenship. a patron looks up from his chicken strip basket, nice shirt. thanks, brother, the man says, ambling over to extend his calloused hands. another customer rolls her eyes and gig else, nudging her friend across the table. she turns and shakes her head in disgust. bonds cab ems at mention of the man in the t-shirt. i'm so glad he's out today, ain't he great. located about 10 miles downstream from whites vim, the elementary school stands in the shadow of one of west virginia's largest impoundments, operated by massy energy. standing 385 feet tall, it holds 2.8 billion gallons of coal slurry, another impoundment, built a few miles upstream contains eight billion gallons of coal slurry. the ponds that surrounded

whitesville, making some residents concerned for their safety. despite assurances from massy energy, many, including bonds, still have their doubts. the disasters at buffalo creek, west virginia, in 1972 and martin county kentucky in 2003 are still too fresh in their memories. we had better remember, she says, going on to blame the union's absence for the domination of the coal company's over area residents. she recently witnessed the partnership between union and company when she traveled to washington, d.c. to attend a congressional hearing on the oversight of the surface mining and reclamation act. what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. i was standing there with my stop mountaintop removal t-shirt on and i lock over and there stood cecil roberts, coming from a union family, i about puked. it makes me sick to know how corrupt the leadership and the union has become. bonds also refuses to cut the

local churches any slack. a practicing christian, she credits her faith with informing her views on the environment and fighting mountaintop removal. mountaintop removal is a destruction of god's earth, she says, more churches don't fight back, because they have coal miners in their congregations, and there's a history there, most of the pastors in the old churches were owned by the company, churches don't want to divide their congregations. many mountain churches are also subsidized by the coal company she knows. it's very complicated, it's not black and white. they just teach god, gays and guns and don't talk about the environment. it's changing, but a lot have joined the fight. maybe more would enlist if they had been on the walk that bonds took one day, some years ago with her 7-year-old grandson, like any other child, he wandered over into the creek to play. his handful of stiff and shad, he hollered up at his

grandmother, what's wrong with these fish? they were dead. bonds panicked and began screaming for him to get out of the creek, the look of confusion on his little face cut her to the quick. anybody who sees their grand baby, or any child in a streamful of dead fish under a corporate outlaw, there's no way it can affect you, she says. bonds says that the coal company did more than just ignore her concerns. they laughed at her. i called the lawyer right up the road here, she remembers, he said, well, ms. bonds, what do you want? i said, i wanted the trains covered, you wanted them to quit running them at night, i wanted the blackwater stopped. i wanted the blasting to quit. he said, this is coal country, he went on and on. he said -- but i saved, i don't think you're the lawyer i'm looking for. so i didn't work with him. instead, bonds joined up with a coal river mountain watch in

199o. the calls keep bonds so busy that she barely sleeps. it's overtaken my life, she confesses. i write letters to the editor in my sleep, i spend a lot of time on the road. it's hard for an appalachian to travel that much. i've had people tell me i'm doing it for my children and grandchildren, but it's hard to give up that family time. in harlem, she tells the delegation to the united nations that she's outraged. most americans think their electricity comes from electricity fairy. that's what they think. you asked them where it comes from. they say, well, from the light switch. excuse me, but i know where it comes from, because my blood, sweat and tears pays for it. every time up flip on that light switch, you're blowing up my mountains and poisoning my babies. when you come to appalachian, you're no longer in the united states of america, no, sir, you're in the united states of appalachian, and king coal rules with an iron fist. bonds is determined to losten

the coal industry's grip on the mountains. mountaintop is destroying and it is the mountain. they film parts of a film right up the storefront window. james earl jones was interviewed and i think he put it best. he says, mountain people are a different type of people, and their landscape makes them different types of people. they're not used to going anywhere the straight way. they have to be determined. to that, bonds adds, we have to keep working, keep fighting. that has become her mantra, keep fighting. it's something she whispers to herself in quiet moments, a guidepost she uses to shout down her doubts. looking out at whites vim, surveying its despair, she has no intention of turning back now. i'll be there every step of the way. thank you.

[applause] >> and what a pleasure it is that i get to work with both of these great william on a regular basis and really honor them. next, we have -- and i just want to remind you that jason is going to be signing his books over at the carmichael book table, so if you want to go over there and purchase a book, jason will be glad to soon it for you. next, we have a very special person, a great friend of mine, eric reese. eric reese is writer and resident at the university of kentucky, he is the author of "lost mountain with, a year in the vanishing wilderness," which chronicles the year he spent watching the systemic destination of a mountain, called white mountain. the book expresses mountaintop removal to a national audience. it won the sierra club david

broward's award. he'll be appearing on npr's fresh air with terry gross to talk about it soon. eric? [applause] >> thank you very much. i grew up in louisville, and i spent a lot of time in car michael's book store when i was growing up, thinking about how i wanted to be a writer and i just want to say congratulations to carol and michael and carmichael's book store for being the number one independent book store in the country. that's amazing. [applause] i want to -- i live in lexington now, we have the large he per capita carbon footprint in the country, and i want to talk a little bit about how we can begin to work on that.

i know you'll have to really big one too, but i want to start by talking about this false dichotomy between jobs and the environment. in 2006, two miners died in an underground mine, because of a conveyor belt that caught on fire and they ended up dying of smoke inhalation. a few weeks before they died, don blankenship, the president of massey energy sent a memo to all employees of massey energy saying if you've been asked by your group president to do anything other than run coal, you need to ignore them and run coal, and that's what they did, they ran coal 24/7, they didn't clean the conveyor belts, the conveyor belts caught on fire and these miners died. the coal industry does not care about miners and it does not care about their jobs. it has never done anything to help the miners of eastern kentucky. what we need to do is we need to move to a real just and

sustainable economy, in eastern kentucky that really will put people to work. i justwant to tell a little story about that. there's a group over in west virginia, called coal river mountain watch, and they use their own money and they did a feasibility study to find out that they could put 220 wind turbines on the top of coal mountain and they could generate enough energy for 18% of the state of west virginia. they could generate over $3 million in taxes, and they would have jobs, far longer than any of the coal that is there under coal river mountain. the only problem with this was, massey energy already owned the mineral rights to coal river mountain and when massey energy realized that there was real movement for this wind project, they began immediately blasting

on coal river mountain. people petitioned the governor of west virginia to stop this, he wouldn't, he had taken over a million dollars from the coal industry, and it just seemed like there was to way that these citizens of coal river mountain were going to beat king coal, particularly massey and don blankenship and when the blasting started to eliminate the top of coal river mountain and completely eliminate the possibility for a wind farm, local residents named beau web, he sat down and wrote a letter to barack obama and he began the letter like this. he said, as i write, i brace myself for another round of nerve-racking explosives being detonated above my home. i beg you to relight our flame of hope and honor and immediately stop coal companies from blasting so near our homes and endangering our lives. two weeks later, the

environmental protection agency suspended the entire massey coal permits. [applause] there has never been a better time in the last 30 years to get involved with this fight than now. people in the coal industry say, well, wind energy would only generate 5% of the electricity. and the mountains. mountaintop removal only generates 5% of the electricity in the mountains. so now is really the time to be -- for us to be pushing this fight and begin thinking about a new economy, a sustainable economy, for the mountains. a prophet said without vision, the people perish, and i think what we've lacked in this state for a long time is a vision, a vision for the mountains. and this now is the time for us to really begin to push your

utility company, lg & e, to stop buying mountaintop removal coal and to begin being renewable energies. we have the technology to do this. we can put up the wind farms, the wind turbines. we can mount solar panels on south facing mountain hills. we can feed all of that energy in to a direct current smart grid. we can decentralize the power of kentucky and we can take the heart-breaking power away from people like don blankenship at massey energy. my teacher at the university of kentucky, he wrote a sentence that stuck with me for a long time and the sentence is this. distance negates responsibility. and like jason said, a lot of people living in louisville and

lexington, don't even know where their energy comes from. they don't know when they build bigger homes in louisville and lexington, they're leveling the mountains of eastern kentucky and this is what we have to close, this gap, this gap between our consumption of energy in the city and the production of energy in the mountains of eastern kentucky. so i urge you to do what you can to really begin to take responsibility, to take responsibility for the way we all consume energy and do that in whatever way you can. nobody has to do everything. we can all do something. can you do something in your church, in your school, you can do something where you work, you can do something in your community. think about your sources of energy and think about what you can do to begin working in a way

that will stop the destruction of the mountain. i think we're at a crisis now where we begin to recognize this american dream of accumulation and status and stress is really -- it's not really what we want, so i think we're at a very radical place right now, where we can say two things. one, we can't sustain the way we're living in this country, and two, we don't really want to sustain it anyway. what we really want is solid communities, local economies, and a common cause. i came across a statistic lately, that said, all these social scientists are measuring happiness now, and what causes happiness, an one the findings is that people are happiest when they're doing two things, when they're dancing and when they're volunteering.

you can do both tonight. i think that's just a testament to how much we need that sense of community, we need that sense of common cause. gandhi said something that i think is very important to this fight. gandhi said, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. they've ignored us. five years ago, they started laughing at us. now they're going to spend $90 million this year lobbying congress to fight us. and then we're going to win. [applause] a lot of people ask me how i do this without getting depressed, and i just want to leave you with something, the best answer to that question comes from something wendell barry said 42 years ago, when he was writing in the sense of the red river

gorge, when the army corps of engineers wanted to flood the red river gorge, wendell wrote a book about it and was part of stopping that, that flooding of the gorge, and wendell wrote this. he said, a man cannot despair if he can imagine a better life, and if he can enact something of its possibility. this is what we need to do. we need to imagine a better future for louisville and for the mountains, and then we need to work to enact it. thank you. [applause] >> silas house is a best selling novelist. he teaches at lincoln memorial university in tennessee. jason howard is the editor of "we all live downstream," he's also written for equal justice magazine and the louisville review.

>> well joining us now is richard wieler, and he is the author of "chasing normality, and joins us from lincoln, nebraska. why did you call your book "chasing normality? >> i fought with coming up for a

title for a long time and one night in bed thinking i thought, well, that's what my life has been, has been a chase for normality. people with polio have always been chasing normality. >> and have you been able to do so? >> i think i've done so to a point but lately i've had more physical problems, which has made it impossible to live the life i had lived. >> well, mr. wieler, temperature us about the life you had lived. you went to law school and after that, what happened? >> well, i guess i'll start at the beginning. i got polio at 15, just before the shots became available, so i struggled to get through high school, thanks to the

superintendent of county schools, i started in college living with my uncle, because he said no one would give me a chance unless i could of prove that i could do it, and then i spent a year in south dakota doing that, and then on to missouri, they had developed a program for handicapped students and i was accepted there and law school had always been kind of a dream, because the original rehab hospital for lawyers, they seemed like they had something going for them, they wanted to finance their normal -- continue their normal lives and that's what i wanted. so i wanted to go to law school, i applied, got accepted. it was a different era back then. they invited a bunch of people in and then tried to weed you

out. >> what was it like to be in a wheelchair during law school in the 1960's? >> it was interesting. thank goodness for law school at the university of missouri, didn't have that many steps. the only room i couldn't get into was the trial practice room. but there were no aids, very fuel elevators, you -- fuel elevators, you depended on people. but i didn't have any trouble there. people were always picking me up and taking me to the next class. one good thing about being in the wheelchair, i might have been conspicuous, but i think the professors didn't want to call on me. so my theory was to hang low. >> and what does that mean?

>> that means keep your head down, keep writing notes, and try not to get called on, because the democratic method was rather brutal in the 1960's. >> let's go back just a little bit, mr. wieler. what happened at age 15 to you? >> i woke up one day with a severe headache, it was the classic symptom of polio, i checked into a hospital two days late, and i started losing muscle over the course of a week, to the point where i had to be put in an iron lung, just to keep breathing. >> within a week? >> within a week. yeah. it all changed within one week. >> now, most polio patients don't live but a few years, is

that correct? >> i don't know. we seem to have the ability to live fairly normal life span. one my friends died of cancer, one died of a brain hemorrhage. franklin roosevelt died of a brain hemorrhage, but i think that was the result of overwork and undermedication. >> so overnight, mr. wieler, he went from playing baseball and being part of 4h and being a farm boy as you say to being in a wheelchair? >> this is true. within the space of a week. actually, i went from farm boy to iron lung and i spent six weeks in that iron lung, and believe it or not, i didn't want to come out of it when the time came. i was scared to death. i was comfortable in that steel

cocoon and i wasn't ready to come out of it. it's like you're comfortable where you are, so what i did, i got pulled out of it by people that knew better. it expanded my horizons. >> now, this book has been endorsed, you've got a couple of blushes on the back of the book by two well-known folks. former attorney general john ashcroft and also jack danforth, former missouri senator. did you work for both of those gentlemen? >> yes, i did. i got a job with the attorney ow school, and three months later, jack danforth swept into office, and thankfully for my sake, he retained me, and it was a good working relationship. he brought in a lot of new people, it was a good time. the attorney general's office

overnight became a front-runner, sort of a bellwether for the state of missouri, and same with mr. ashcroft, he and i had moved on to some other agencies to try to do some direct work, and when he was elected, he asked me back, so i had a good working relationship with both of them, and they were kind enough to write the little editorials on the back of the book. >> well, richard wieler, this book came to our attention at book tv via justice clarence thomas. he told us about it. what is your relationship with him? >> >> i've known clarence since the first day he arrived in the attorney general's office, jack danforth recruited him out of yale, and so our relationship goes back some 35 years. weactually worked together on

several cases, consulted with him. i probably spent every day eating lunch and discussing the events of the world. so clarence is a good, good, good friend, and i had a feeling somebody must have given you a tip on the book, because it hasn't had much publicity. i haven't been able to market it. >> how long did it take you to write it? >> well, i started writing 10 years ago. i wrote the first three chapters. i did it because clarence and another friend were urging me to put my story down. they said i shouldn't pass from the scene without people knowing what happened, and then it just stalled. i couldn't find a way to make it sound realistic or something other than just modeling stuff. i didn't want to be that way, and then three years ago,

maureen clark, say dip it's, just walked into my life, and she's a freelance writer, never done a project like this, but she said she would help me with it, so between the two of us, it took about three years. >> what do you want people, when they read this book, what do you want them to take away from it? >> that as long as there's life, there's hope. it doesn't matter what you do, just do something. i'm not a leader. i'm not -- i don't see myself as a forerunner or someone to look up to, but i hope the book would give people a chance to say, well, gee, look what he did, i can do that. >> now, given the fact that you're in a wheelchair and have polio and essentially, paralyzed from the if he can down, correct? >> yes. yes. >> how did you write this, was it dictated or --

>> maureen and i spent time with a dictation unit. she would feed me outlines and sample passages and then i just took those iron bones, and filled them out. with a computer and a mouse stick. i have typed it one key at a time. >> tell us about your parent. >> well, they're the kind of people who don't give up. they're farm family. my dad had an eighth grade education, but -- and mom's family is a little more educated, but they're -- dad was an optimist. when anything went wrong, he said well, we'll get them the next time. it will get better. mom is more of a realist, but a fighter for a cause. she did more to push me through

high school and in to college than anybody. dad died about four years ago, and left a big hole in my life. >> now why are you in lincoln, nebraska, now if you lived in the state of missouri for so many years. >> well, i moved back from missouri to nebraska, my little hometown is called west point and i wanted to spend time with my parents, they were getting aged, and i got some time with dad before he died and then this last summer, as we had just finished putting finishing touches on the book, i came down with an intestinal problem that led to respiratory arrest. so i am in lincoln with an extended stay -- in an extended stay facility.

i have a trach now, i have several other holes in my body and i don't think i can maintain any independence. there's too much need for professional help, so here i am. >> now, how many years did you practice law before you retired? >> oh, about 22 years. not long enough. >> you enjoyed it? >> oh, yes i enjoyed it tremendously. i enjoyed the work, i enjoyed my colleagues, i thought i was an asset to the office, in some way, which i don't really -- talking about myself is difficult sometimes, but it was a blast. it was something nobody ever expected me to do. >> well, i want to point out that your book, "chasing normality," it's not just the story of your professional life, but it's -- or just in operational, but it's also a lot of personal, a personal meir as well. >> yeah. i wanted to tell a story, the

story of myself, you know. the professional life was part of it, but i don't know, it gets boring talking about tax cases. so i -- it was an attempt to say who i am, what i did, and it was probably one of the hardest things i've ever done. it's much easier to write a law brief. >> if people are interested in buying this book, where can they go to find it? >> right now, they'd had to go -- they could google my name. i have two websites. www.chasing normality.com, and the other one is w wieler.com.

a friend of mine offered to

finance the start and we did it ourselves. >> richard wyler is author of chasing normality with help from family and friends. co-author is maureen o allen clark. thank you for joining us on booktv. >> you are very welcome. i enjoyed it. >> this weekend on booktv, deborah amos on what has happened to the sunni is following the fall of saddam hussein. and the war on terror. democracy in indiana and india/pakistan relations and field notes on democracy and new york post columnist and fox news analyst ralph peters looks at u.s. foreign policy in his latest collection of articles endless war. find the schedule at booktv.org and follow us on twitter. >> brian ross is part of the

investigative unit for abc news. what is new in here? >> there's a lot knew about the relationship between bernie madoff and ruth and what drove him to do it and when it started and his total lack of remorse. and who else was likely involve. he didn't do this alone despite claims that he did. >> did mrs. bernie madoff have a row? >> they started in the early 1960's. she was still keeping the book the day he was arrested and she didn't know directly. she was certainly long for the ride. unlike an them to bonnie and clyde. anyone who didn't buy guns was part of the scheme. >> did you see that the story will continue with more trials? >> it is the layers of the onion being done peeled. i recommend the failure of the federal government.

as investigators were after bernie madoff again and again from 1992 on they always missed him. and their defense is they were inexperienced and incompetent but i don't know if that is a satisfying answer. >> as head of the investigative unit one was the first time you heard of bernie madoff? >> the night he was arrested and was sitting in new york next my colleague. we had just finished reporting on rubble of its, the governor of illinois and bernie madoff was arrested, $50 billion scam. i don't know who he is but that is a typo. that would be the biggest in history. i soon found out. >> what kind of resources did you and your unit turned over to this investigation? >> we had the entire abc news investigative unit jump into action. the person agreed details and facts that did not get into the

world news. is the first book i have written. i am a rookie at this but i enjoyed it. i'm used to a minute and a half and here i had as much as i wanted. >> how much did you spend? >> 4:30 in the morning was a good time to write and they gave me a few days off over the july 4th weekend. right after the sentencing at the end of jenna wrestling into action and i was in good shape to get about quickly. >> did you talk to any of the bernie madoffs? >> i got close to bernie madoff's secretary. she brought a stack of documents out of the office. she felt so betrayed and a angry and felt so badly. she answered the phone for bernie madoff and when they called saying it is not true, she wa