overthrow of the regime of burma! i mean, it was not exactly, you know, sitting and pouring tea. and... [applause]. >> and i know that you are very gracious in this answer, always, about why people didn't understand how forceful you have been, as a first lady and why it puts you into some sort of, you know, sweet little wife category, and, i mean, i'm not saying you are not... >> i think that happens to everyone. >> i know you say that, but i... >> the same with ladybird johnson. instead of being really a leader in the environmental movement, a -- the founders of the u.s. environmental movement, which she was, she was thought of as a lovely little lady that liked flowers. you know, i mean, i think it is

what happens and is a shame, really, that we -- somehow these stereotypes start. and our first ladies are seen as so flat and one dimensional because they are always so much more complex and interesting than those views of them. and, certainly, barbara bush, who was seen as a nice grandmother and who instead is such a strong-willed and very fascinating woman, and... >> it was true for martha washington. but i think the caps did her in. but the... i wonder if you think it is because there is a press bias against the people didn't like your husband and... >> that is part of it, for sure. no doubt about that, i think. i think that is part of it, for sure. but, i hope and i think that maybe we're slowing moving away from that.

>> all right, let's see. goodness, these are lightly written. let's see if i can see them. okay. this is a good opportunity to talk about the center. the institute. asking what are your projects now that the book is completed? >> well, george and i are building the bush library and museum and institute at smu, and, we have already started the programming for the institute. which will be a policy institute, and as yorj said we're no longer into politics but he still want to work on policy and it will be focused on the four areas that we spent the most time on, which are human freedoms, education, opportunity, and compassion. and, so, i have already hosted the u.s. afghan women's council there, the new minister of women's affairs, came from afghanistan, we did video conferencing, into afghanistan, with the minister of education, and the u.s. ambassador to

afghanistan, the afghan ambassador to the united states was with us in dallas, along with several afghan fulbright scholars, some other afghan women, who were running great projects in afghanistan, came and, the new woman director, secretary-general of unesco came, and that is great because they are active in literacy, and this u.s.-afghan women's council was focused on literacy for afghan women and girls and i want to keep working on that. i hope the united states will stand with afghanistan. it is really important. if we don't, i'm afraid they'll go back to what they were. and, it is really important, especially for the women there. i met with this group of afghan parliamentarians, members of parliament, women, right before george and i left, the white house, and one of them said, you know, this is our only chance.

and if we can't make it now, then, you know, we won't be able to. so i hope we'll all do whatever we can to support the people of afghanistan. >> and here's a good one. this is from lisa from humbolt, texas. >> great! >> did you ever cook when you were in the white house? >> no. [laughter] [applause]. >> i haven't cooked in -- for 15 years now, i guess. we had a chef at the governor's mansion, and then at -- a wonderful chef at the white house. and i never have been really a very good cook. i love to read cook books. [laughter]. >> and i'm very interested in food and i love to eat. but i'm not a very good cook. >> if you could have taken one nonpersonal item from the white house back to texas, what would you have wanted it to be? >> well, there are so many beautiful paintings.

the white house has a really magnificent art collection. and i don't even know which within i would pick. there are so many that are wonderful. >> and you bought african-american art. >> we acquired a jacob lawrence painting, the mow expensive acquisition the white house ever made, not by far the most expensive item there but probably, the big george washington would be considered priceless as well as the painting of benjamin franklin in the greenroom. but, it is a beautiful painting of builders, one of jacob lawrence builders series and is men of all races, building together, his theory or belief if we all work together we can build our country. and, since my father was a builder, it had a special sort of personal memory to me. there is something tangible about being a builder. you have something tangible at the end. and when i would drive around with my dad, and he'd say, there's -- i built that house

and i built that house, there's something very satisfying about that. >> as a military spouse, i have always wondered how you and your husband found time to visit our troops and our wounded warriors, now that you are no longer doing first lady duties are you and your husband still involved with support the troop programs? god bless you and semper fi, thank you for your service. >> oh, that is so sweet, thank you. [applause]. >> we did visit the wounded warriors here at bethesda, and walter reed and then, at brooke army medical center where the burn patients are. in san antonio, often, whenever we could. and then, we met, of course with families of the fallen, at all different times. i remember especially in the 2004 campaign, we'd go to big events, and them, after the big event, were over, big campaign rallies, we'd go back stage or

in other rooms and meet with the families of fallen from those -- from that part of the country, wherever we were. and, that is a... you know, a grief that is very, very difficult to share with or to see with these families, and what i always saw was how the families of people who died, both in september 11th, those families that we met with after the terrorist attacks and then the families of the fallen after that, how they wanted you to know about their loved one they had lost and what they really wanted to do was tell us stories and, in fact, one sister of someone who died in iraq, had written a story that she read to george and me about her protbro and there was something moving about every one of those visits and about how precious our...

our country is, that we are so fortunate to have men and women who volunteer to serve our country like the men and women of the united states military do. >> absolutely. [applause]. >> what advice would you give your daughters in finding a suitable husband? >> i'm still giving that advice to barbara. i say look for somebody just like daddy! i think people do that a little bit. >> both of your girls are doing wonderful. >> very well, thank you very much. if you don't know, jenna is a contributing correspondents on "the today show" and is doing great and is still teaching, just one day a week though at the reading intervention teacher school in baltimore and barbara founded a nonprofit called global health corps and if you

ar interest are interested, look on the web at gh -- for global health, ghcorps.org and is recruiting recent college graduates in health clinics for the poor and she has people on the ground in malawi, tanzania and the u.s. in boston and newark. and it is sort of the idea behind teach for america, but this is to recruit smart young college graduates to work in health clinics, and they are doing things like setting up the supply chain, one of her fellows in tanzania did work for the gap and ran the supply chain for the gap, the ordering and supply chain and now, for tanzania is setting up their supply chain for anti-retrovirals for the drug ordering so people in the clinics, that go on arvs, can keep up with their medications. so, i'm very proud of beth of

them and they are doing great. >> and there's also a question of how your in laws are doing. >> they are doing very well, too. in fact at this very moment they are in dallas, in my backyard, with george, hosting a party, george's assistant, david, met barbara bush's assistant last summer in maine, and they are getting married this saturday night. [applause]. >> so tonight we're all hosting the welcome to texas barbecue for the out of town guests, and, this -- from bethesda foe a lot of maryland friends are in the backyard right now and they are doing well enough to be able to fly from houston, go to the party and fly back home, and fly back on saturday night, for the wedding, and then, fly all the way up to maine for the summer. so... >> that's great. i think, this is a good last

question. and, i would actually love for you to read just the end of your book here because it is beautiful. the question is, what do you enjoy doing now that you could not, did not do in the white house? it is probably a long list but, also you write it so beautifully. >> okay. you think the last one, right .

>> i'm eager to continue to advocate for women's rights and women's health. through a special women's initiative, i have begun working on new ways to help the women of afghanistan and the middle east. and to promote education and literacy for the millions to whom alphabets are a mystery and basic addition a complex puzzle.

and through the institute, we'll help to promote basic human freedom for these women and their families. but, as much as i treasure my public life i also treasure the quiet of my private one. sometime during that first spring and summer, back in texas, i began to feel the buoyancy of my own new found freedom, after nearly 8 years of hyper vigilance, of watching for the next danger or tragedy, that might be coming, i can, at last, exhale. and can simply be and when i raise my eyes to the sky, it is to see the sdrifts of the clouds, the brightness of the blue, or the moon and the ever shifting arrangement of the stars. look up, laura, i can still hear my mother say, with a hint of awe and wonder. and i do. [applause]. >> thank you, thank you so much.

>> thank you, so much. really appreciate it. [applause]. >> thank you all. thanks so much. [applause]. >> thanks, everybody. >> >> every weekend, c-span2 is a book tv features 48 hours of nonfiction books. this weekend on after words, the reluctant spy, the former cia officer talks about life in the agency before and after 9/11 and is interviewed by former ci inspector general, and find the schedule at book tv.org up

>> the best part of things like this are that you finally get to thank out loud and in public all the people who made a project possible. and, so, i really want to start by doing that, and the first thing i have to do is give a shoutout to my mom out in wisconsin and my family, who have been incredibly supportive, all the way through this project. and, the thing i have been dying to give, 3, 4, 5 years, thanks to alisa molder, and i'll never forget the day i drove down to the betsie ross house to see whether the project was possible and we sat up in her office, which is -- was small, at that time, and, every now and then i'd look up and say, really? no one has written the book yet and lisa would say, no, no one has done it and i feel incredibly privileged to have been the one to get to write the book and i don't know it would have happened without her support early on and now,

michelle and the betsie ross house staff and thanks for hosting this event and to you for come out on a chilly day, i do appreciate that and i want to thank other folks, the museum hosting the exhibit on betsie, have been incredibly supportive and really assisted and became partners along the way and i want to thank linda eaton and katie and gina, who has been instrumental in advancing the work and there are archivists and librarians across felly who have been really instrumental to the project, probably too many to list today. but i want to give a shoutout to the folks at the historical society of pennsylvania who also tolerated my steady presence in the reading room over the last two years and lastly, i have to thank the family of betsie ross, she came from a large family as i'll mention, in a little bit and her descendants have been incredibly supportive and welcoming to me as the project

unfolded over the past few years and opened up their homes and family papers to me and i want to thank nancy conrad and kent bealer and ron lord and everybody else i have met through the family, for being welcoming and supportive. what i thought i would do with our time today is four things, i thought i would talk pow how i came to write the book. i thought i would explain why i think it is the full story of betsie ross has not been written. explain about how i wept about recovering her story. and, lastly, say a little word or two about what i found in the book. so my first book is called the needle's eye, women at work in the age of revolution and i got interested in that project because i was studying a gown maker, rebecca dickinson, a never-married woman in the late 18th century and worked with a gown maker and i was interested in knowing how she supported herself without access to male

resources, and, knowing she was a gown maker i went to the library to look and see what books i could find about women in the clothing trades in the early republic and found that not only were there very few books on that subject, but almost nothing on women and skilled trades at all and one thing the book sets out to do, is kind of rewrit the story of artisans in early america, because, most of what we know about the early american craft comes from trades that men practice, and, most of what we know about women's work comes through studies of... i was interested in kind of looking at women and -- unskilled trades and wind up arguing that that is an important sector of the early american economy, that gets overlooked as we sort of have to think through the myth of the colonial good wife, you know, larger than life figure we all probably know who dims the candles and shares the -- shears the sheep would weave the fabric and cut the cloth for the clothing and i have a peaiece

about the good wife and how we think about early american women and one artifact i talk about is colonial barbie who you find in the exhibit inside, one of my favorite artifacts of american history and i talk about betsie ross, and i talk about betsie ross because as many people here will know, betsie ross was an p upholsterer and made tassels and fringe and fabricated flags and a range of goods that decorated philadelphia interiors in that period. but in the legend she's recastb. what is it about women making furniture that is so hard to reconcile with popular imagination? so that is where the book began, to try and understand this phenomenon. as many of you know, the legend of betsie ross focuses on the one moment, june or may of 1776, on the eve of independence, and

i want to share with you the legends as it comes down in the affidavits collected later by the family in case some of you are not familiar with those pieces. in the legend, george washington, george ross, and robert morris come to betsie ross's shop in the spring of 1776 and have in hand a design for a flag. in that design the stars they have in mind, have 6 points and the heart of the family story is how betsie ross looks at that design and snips a piece of paper and shows that making five pointed stars is more efficient and that's the heart of the story, as the legend continues, they agree that that is a good design and take it to congress, it is approved and bums the first flag, what i set out to do in the book is investigate the elements of that story, and i'll come back around to that.

but the book really tries to say what ever happened on that spring day in 177 6, betsie ross has a much bigger story to tell. as some of you may know the legend became lost in the popular culture in 1870, when her grandson, gave a talk at the historical society of pennsylvania, and he had been sort of sat done by his aunt, clarissa, on the eve of a move to the midwest where her daughter settled and she wanted to get the story down before she left the city and asked him to record her telling of her mother's story of the making of the first flag. the civil war intervened. not much attention is given to that story but in the late 1860s, he revised his studies of that legend, family story, gives the talk in the -- 1870 to the historical society and really

launches family history into national history. the story is really embraced by the culture. as many of you know, this is the era women are seeking suv fragile and the betsie ross story provides a way for americans to put a woman in the pantheon of founders, the eve of the centennial, without suggesting that women should be political in any particular way. and so that is when betsie ross gets recast from the upholsterer to the seamstress because the story is domesticated and as many of you the the 1890s, the nation is looking at the columbia centennial and the attention turns to the house, art street is undergoing a lot of change, the house begins to be threatened with demolition, and, thanks to a famous painting the betsie ross scene is im imagined and the culture

embraces the story, when women are seeking suv fragile and the nation is interested in celebrating its origins in this period and so, a movement takes off to save the betsie ross house, millions of americans are involved in that, by making contributions and the house is saved and this is the birth of the stuff then house, the -- she becomes a folk legend. as that happens, you see a lot of the cultivation of the betsie ross legend and why is it here we are in 2010 and no one has yet recovered the story of her life. i have a couple of explanations. one is she left no papers. when she decide in 1836 she wasn't fame famous or making a flags and the family kept no papers and her shop accounts don't survive and there are no

letters and diaries that survive to tell her story and part of the reason is there is no cache of papers that supports a project easily and this other reason is the history of women's history. some people will know that women's history took off as a field of scholarly inquiry in the 1970s and 1980s in the wake of the modern women's mutual and that period, the last quarter of the 20th century, as fell mist historians were trying to establish careers in this field the story of betsie ross was not safe from scholarly inquiry. scholars had to take on projects they found to be more substantive and it wasn't until now that it is part of the women's history and the academy and well established and is wok to explore the life of someone like betsie ross who many people in the 20th century came to believe was almost fix. -- fictional and the last element of the story is the

emergence of the powerful databases, a lot of academics know now there are things like early american im prints that publishes everything in print in america before 1800. early american newspapers lets you search, thousands of american newspapers. and even ten years ago i think i could not have lived long enough to write the book and now with though tools at my disposal it is possible to do. so that's pretty much how i went about doing it. i also, as i began to explore the life of betsie ross, got drawn into much larger stories, about her family and about the context of philadelphia. during this period. betsie ross as some people know was one of 17 children, born to her parents, not all survived to adulthood, but all of these siblings gave me a lot of room to move as i tried to recover the story of betsie ross. and, she was very close to her sister. and starting to ease out their stories really helped me put her in a much larger context.

i also went through the affidavits that were left behind and followed out every little line, you know, one of her remembrances, said she was fond of tomatoes and that sends me off on a query, what can i learn about tomatoes in 18th century philadelphia and another thing, she preferred one kind of snuff over another and that sent me off to the world of snuff and why she preferred one over the other and following the tidbits was part of the strategy and i tried to go through the philadelphia archives, and, really look at every organization with which she might have any relationship at all. trying to find a family history there. and betsie ross was raised in the quaker faith and i spent a lot of time looking at quaker records along the way and her third husband, john claypoole was a joyner and a member of organizations and i search out their stories through those kinds of records. and then, even things like one of my favorites, the society for the relief of poor and the and

in firmed masters of ships, their widows and children. obviously, an organization formed before acronyms were invented and to see what kinds of things were done to support betsie ross's daughters, a couple of them married ship captains and her son-in-law joined the organization to provide for his wife, should anything should happen to him at sea, as indeed turned out to be the case and finding the family in the organizational records and pursuing these family stories. and i thought what i would do is tell you one of them to give you a sense of what those stories are like and how smitten i became with the family of betsie ross. betsie ross as i said had several sisters, people who know about her tend to know she eloped when she married john ross in '73, in the quaker faith you are really not meant to marry people outside of the faith and ross was a son of an anglican minister and for

eloping and marrying a man outside of the faith she was disowned by the quaker faith and people tend to make a lot of this and paints her as a headstrong romantic woman and crossed the river and married in new jersey, and is a nice story. one of the things i found early on in the research is that when betsie ross was disowned, for having married outside the faith her parents were 4 for 4, she had 4 older sisters, all of whom married outside of unity and her older sister reconciled with the community of faith through set procedures in place at the time. if you did anything rel in violation of the quaker discipline as it was called a team of quakers would coupme to your home and talk with you about the error of your ways and if you expressed sincere regret and went through a disciplinary process you could be restored to the faith and deborah went through the process an betsie ross had two sisters below

deborah, who -- susanna and mary who also married outside of unity, or in mary's case, had an illegitimate child and in those sisters' cases they dragged the process out for over a year and that is very unusual and typically e, the whole process unfolds over the course of a few months, but month after month, s susanna would delay and tell the members of her faith who came to treat with her, she has not decided whether she's sorry, and is not sure she's sorry enough and say let's talk in a month and finally decides to accept the discipline for the error of her ways and then puts off coming back to the congregations of faith that experience, month after month after month and in the end it is more than a year that unfolds, of course, you know, the course of those events. all of that is resolved and really in a matter of days,

between the resolution of the last discussion about those two girls, her older sister sarah also comes before the quaker faith forth breach -- for breach of discipline and you have to wonder what her parent are thinking to have the constant conversation with the community of faith and when betsie ross eloped the same thing happened, the congressation, meeting comes to her to talk about her error, and she unlike any of her sisters cuts the conversation short. she says we really don't need to go go through that, i'm not interested in repairing the relationship, i'll go ahead and join his church and what i see from that is a certain decisiveness about her. some of you will know she was married three types and each of those court ships were also very brief. and so if any of you know the myers briggs... i like to think she was rock solid and decisive

and knew what she wanted to do and had strong opinions about those things and her estrangement from our community of faith at the time of her first marriage persisted until the pre-quaker meeting up the street was founded in the 1780s. and i think what really appealed to betsie ross about the free quaker meeting is they rejected disownment of the practice itself and felt members of a religion should not sit in judgment on one another and gives me another tiny in sight. >> her personality, really. and when i say in the book, i think that she was headstrong, doggedly loyal and practical, perhaps even shrewd i think she liked a good joke but her own sense of humor was more subtle and more than anything else, her choices in life also suggest a steely resolve, perhaps a smidge of obstinance. and that is the feel of her i feel like i recovered in the book and to share with you

briefly a little of the trajectory of her life a explored and in the question and answer period you can ask, if you have particular questions about this, betsie ross began a career in the upholstery trade in the 1760s when she joined the shop of john wester, and that is where she met john ross a fellow apprentice in the trade and they married and started their own business on chestnut street and john ross died, after they were married only two years, in january of 1776, leaving betsie ross a widow. this is the season of the first flag story. and i think i will leave to you to read in the book the ins and outs of how the legends holds up but the short course is if you take the families' affidavits and reason them line by line and look at each element of the story, certain elements are very easy to confirm in the archival

record and ring very much true. other elements cannot have been true. for instance, in the latter case, it could not have been a committee of congress as the family remembers that came to her home in spring of 1776 because george ross, a member of that contingent that she remembered coming had not been elected to congress. so that's an example of the kind of thing that comes down in family memory that doesn't hold up. but we all know from our own family stories that parents tell things to children and they tell things to children, certain elements become a little muddy. and the... what is interesting about george ross is he is betsie ross's uncle through her marriage to john and was deeply involved in the defense of the delaware and george ross makes perfect sense for a member of a party of people coming to her shop in the spring of 1776. philadelphians were concerned about the defense of the delaware and bridge, and so when

i imagine that scene in spring of 1776, washington was in the city, he had left his encampment in new england and he was in philadelphia gathering up things he'd need for the military including tents he ordered from another philadelphia apolls terror and is making the rounds through the shops and george ross is a visitor to the shop as well as robert morris who was a member of congress in these years and deeply involve in the defense of pennsylvania. so as you work through those stories, a lot of it does ring true and the part that means the most to me, as a historian of women and work is that cutting of the star. when i think about that moment, i'm seeing a young woman, widowed in her 20s, worried about the future. right? the partnership that she had with her fellow up holsterer husband is not to be and over the course of the winner, 1775,

1776 the continental congress begins to build a navy and women around philadelphia are getting contracts for the suite of flags those ships will need. and so when i think about that moment and the cutting of that star, what i see as a young artisan, getting a government contract, betsie ross the first government contractor, probably not the first is saying to washington, you know, the 6 pointed star would be fine but if you need a lot of these fast, five pointed stars are more efficient to make and i see her in sight in that story and that is what is most important to me about the story and she remarries after her early widow hood to joseph ashburn, a mariner and spent much of the war at sea, in part because he was a privateer and he was at ask during the occupation of philadelphia and is captured and imprisoned in the old mill prison in england and dies

there. and betsie ross, by 1781, is widowed a second time. a man comes back, also imprisoned with ashburn, john claypoole and comes back to betsie ross's house and tells her, i was with your husband when he died, he was a gal lantz man and he told her of being with him -- and they begin courting within a matter of months and by may of 1783 they marry. finally, this is the partnership that gives her the family she has been seeking and she'd have two children with ashburn, one of whom survived and five additional daughters with claypoole, and, now she has the family that will support the upholstery trade. john as trained as a tanner, but, never really worked in that trade. he eventually land aid job as a customs service, inspecting

ships that come in from all over the world to make sure they -- the hulls have what the man test says they ought to and is a great plum job with the federal government and becomes the punitive head of her shop and if you look at newspapers and city direct tricks they'll say john claypoole, director and all of that is bra and they have a flourishing marriage, and family and trade through the end of the 18th century and around 1800 john has a stroke. in this period, before banks are invented and so there is not much of a safety net and hard to save for a rainy day and the family fortunes begin to decline. in the early 19th century they begin to accept charity from the free quaker meeting, who donate funds for shoes, and clothes for john, tuition for the kids, and so they are in some need of funds. but this is also the period, one of great surprises of the book, over betsie ross's greatest flag-making, the best documented

area of her flag-making. in the run-up to the war of 1812. betsie ross seems to have had almost a monopoly on the orders out of the arsenal. they come through a man, who was the purveyor of public supplies in philadelphia in this period, and he and clay poole knew each other, volunteering in the abolition society and, another flag maker and her mother recently moved out of philadelphia down to baltimore, where mary will in time make the star-spangled banner and their departure from city leaves an opening for betsie ross and her daughter, clarissa, who moved home, ironically from baltimore to join her mother in the flag-making business and so in the run-up to the war of 1812. betsie ross gather a staggering order for flags and this is what is most moving and exciting to me. in one order, she's asked to

make 46 garrison flags with all dispatch for the arsenal. these are large flags. i calculate in the book, thousands of stitches it would have required and so, betsie, her daughter, nieces, the whole family would be set to work to deliver these flags. there is one order for a set of 6 flags that are 18 x 22 and that is 32 square feet and at the time her house was 46 square feet on any given floor and i don't know where they were made but these were tremendous orders the family depended on in this period and clare race sa a-- clarissa and betsie ross, kept the letters going out and it was the core of their business, and they continued to make venetian blinds and curtains and bread and butter of the upholstery trades through that time. toward the end of her life, her

eyesight declined. she quit working in the late 1820s, and, moved on up to abbington and had a daughter who settled up there, after a time, the abbington girls couldn't take care of her any more and she moved back to philadelphia, where she moved in with her daughter, jane and i thought i'd read one passage from the book in closing, today. betsie ross continued to stay with her daughter's family, eventually her health failed. too feeble to move easily, she sat through the day in an armchair in her daughter's back parlor close to the fire. for a time when the sun was high her sight was good enough to read the bible, but, after a while he was content, simply to keep the bad to book near her. the heavy volume would lie for hours unopened on her lap. sometimes, her grandchildren would sit on a stool near her feet and read to her from it. now, a little old woman, bent with years, grandma claypoole's

story telling days were behind her and hardly a wrinkled marked her, quote, smooth, white face about which the lack of luster in the sightless eyes an sunken lips over a toothless mouth, there seemed to shine a soft raidian and continued to wear acute instruments of her trade, the silver hook from which her scissors dangled but she was no longer able to sew and her fingers traveled constantly around the edges of a large handkerchief. thank you. [applause]. >> i would love to take any questions anybody has. yes? >> any surprises in your research? >> i was.

>> and what interested me about that is his mother, sarah, was committed to the pennsylvania asylum for lunacy, when john was a teenager, and, so i sort of know that john's family, struggled with sarah's mental health, john struggled with mental health, and, then, betsie had a cousin who was really raised with her, a sister, rebecca, who also at the end of her life, described herself as

having john lunatic, and, seems to fear -- today you would call it a persecution complex and seems to see people all around her who are conspiring against her and, i'm interested in the history of mental health and so to see that in the 18th century was the -- surprising to me and the family stories led me a lot of different direction and i never knew, the duty of biography is you have to follow the story where it goes, and so i got taken to a lot of interesting places. yes. >> lisa. >> [inaudible]. >> i could never find anything, any information about it, i wonder if you uncovered anything new. >> joseph ashburn is such a mystery i could not find any clear reference to that he ashburn family on the eastern seaboard of the u.s. and, so i just don't know. and i think at some point, as these genealogical databases become richer, i bet that story gets solved, and i do notice, there is an ashburn road in

abbington and i kind of wonder if some deeper digging of their -- up there might yield something but auto find no evidence in the papers of contacts with the ashburn family, and he's just kind of a... a free agent, floating at sea, and of course, him being a mariner, i don't know that he was born in pennsylvania. he could have come to the city from almost anywhere and he does remain something of a puzzle. >> i know it isn't a book about flag history. but, is there any insight into how the circle of stars gets connected to betsie ross? >> that is another excellent question. you know, the family never makes that claim. and, that i think is very important to notice. the family anecdotes when they talk about the stars, they say that betsie ross's critique was the 6 points versus five but that also in the sketch brought to her, the arrangement is irregular and betsie recommends

that they be somehow arranged in line or circle or something. and, so the family does not insist on the circular arrangement. ander. >> as i can figure, that element the first flag had -- stars and circles, enters the story, sometime around the 1850s or 60s. and then i think the two stories are sort of grafted together, the early flag must have been arranged that way and betsie made the first flag that must be the same. but, i have not found sort of the smoking gun, the first time that that claim is made, that she arranged the stars, in a circle. yes? >> why would she have known how to make a five pointed star? >> oh, yes, another excellent question. i speculate some about that in the book, baugh ecause it is a r strick and those of you who work in the betsie ross house, can do it and i've tried to do it a

hundred times and it's hard. a couple of things come to mind. one is john ross as a member of the masonic lodge and they did at least a little work for the lodge and in masonic symbolism the five pointed star has meaning and so, it could be that they had occasion to make templates for the masonic's goods and that she learned that way. there is also a pennsylvania german tradition of paper cutting. called -- i'll butcher it... something like that... and some people, curators suggested that perhaps betsie threw her -- through her contacts in the city came to know the techniques of paper-cutting, and linda eaton, suggests that this is a period that geometry is becoming an increasingly important part of the school curriculum and perhaps she would have known about folding stars and symmetry like that through her education at school and those are the

three theories i have so far but it is interesting, you know, maybe any flag maker they would have talked to could have done the same thing, i don't know why she had the little gimmick at hand. it is quite the thing, in the -- as i said at the top of the talk, i spent all time with the family and they can all do it. they are all raised to do it and can whip out the paper and do the folding and i'm struggling ven but it is a part of it that they all learned how to do that. lovely. anything else? thank you all for braving a chilly day. and, i'm happy to hang around and chat more, and, sign some books. thank you. [applause]. >> marla miller is the director of the public history program that the university of massachusetts, amherst. for more about the author and her book,o to betsierossbook.com.

>> the idea, crisis events are predictable and rare, my good friend... you might know of his book, "black swan, the second edition is out this week and black swan events occur, when there is a -- an extreme event occurring rarely that can have a big effect but coming out of nowhere and one of things i learned, by studying financial crisis through history and the most recent one and the book

looks at the current financial crisis and goes back through history and through time and across the world. is that the first chapter of the book, the title of it is white swan, as opposed to black swan and why swan? first, because, crisis in my view are predictable, not just random events but the outcome of a build-up of macroeconomic, financial and policy risks and vulnerabilities, and, excessive leverage and excessive credit and easy money, and, lack of supervision and regulation of the financial system and are not coming out of nowhere, they are predictable and being predictable can also be prevented. and the second thing about crisis is the -- that is important is that, you know, the type of -- title of the book, "crisis economics", i'm be a academic and i teach macroeconomics and if you look at any textbook of economics they barely have a chapter about

boom and bust and financial crisis and most of the books don't refer to them and unfortunately, events that were supposed to be occurring on the -- only once every 100 years, are occurring much more frequently, both in advanced economies an emerging markets, you know, this first couple of chapter of the book, we go through the history of the financial crisis back to the netherlands in the 17th century and the crisis in the 18th an 19th century and great depression and many other episodes of financial distress in emerging markets, and, in advanced economies and when the world -- watching and doing policy, every other quarter, an emerging market country was going bust, mexico, asia, turkey, argentina, pakistan, uruguay, brazil, the dominican republic and were occurring with

a frequency that was scary. and, also discovering crisis, and many to come and they occur more frequently than people think and are not rare events and are unfortunately the norm and secondly are becoming more violent and if you think of the damage caused by financial crisis, you have the recessions, falling employment, and fall in incomes, and destruction of wealth, housing wealth, and stock market wealth and usually, the fiscal cost of cleaning up these financial crises tends to be huge and, financial institution, the fiscal stimulus is needed to avoid severe economic down turns and so, not only are they occurring more frequently, they are more virulent and damaging and the cost of cleaning up the mess is significant and that is why understanding economic and financial crises and, two, you know, trying to prevent them is

becoming really important and there is already a backlash because of the financial crisis, against market economies and free trade and capital flows and against trade liberalization, i think part of the backlash is because the economic and social cause of the crisis becomes so large and excessive there is a populist backlash against them. so, the point about the book is, crises are predictable and preventable, and crises are not black swan but white swan events and we try to understand them and they occur throughout history. across countries and throughout history. now, another thing that i think is important to consider here, that relates actually to what is happening now, is that while many of the financial crises come from a build-up of excess tiff risk taking and debt and leverage in the private sector, for example, in the recent

crisis, too much debt an leverage, by households and banks and by other financial institutions, even by some subset of the corporate sector, when you look at the data today, you see that... the private sector, now stabilizing at a very high level and haven't fallen much and the process of deleveraging of the private sector... one thing that happened is instead we have had massive releveraging of the public sector. and what is this next stage of the financial crisis? we large budget deficits, and very large accommodation of public debt and the reason for this accumulation of public debt and deleveraging is three-fold, there are automatic stabilizers during the recession and financial crisis, and taxes and revenue falls and you have automatic stabilizers on the spending side like unemployment benefits, for those who lose their jobs, and secondly, we did

proactive fiscal stimulus during the crisis, u.s. and europe and japan and china, because, private demand was collapsing. if you look at the recent crisis, you know, in the first few quarters, the falling... e the... the beginning of the great depression, it was scary in the first quarter of 2008 and 2009, the free-fall pattern, because of economic contraction, like the beginning of the great depression and we needed to have fiscal stimulus to prevent this great recession of '08-'09 from turning into something uglier and worse, and that is the second reason why that is and the third reason is that of course we decided, rightly or wrongly, there is debate on that, we needed to socialize some of the private losses and put them on the balance sheets of the government, call it bailout or call it back

stopping, and putting hope to balance sheet of the government some of the private liabilities of households and corporations, or banks and other financial institutions, and, is an additional reason why there has been a build-up of public debt and deficit. so, the paradox we are facing right now is that we need this policy stimulus, monetary easing, fiscal easing, budget deficits, and back stopping the financial system, but, it was never a free lunch, whenever you ran large budget deficits, accumulation of public debt, eventually leads you to a problem, if you have very large fiscal deficits, you have to either to raise taxes or cut spending, to avoid fiscal crisis and if you don't address this looming fiscal problem, then there are only two options. either you default on your public debt or, if you can run the printing presses and monetize the fiscal deficits, which some countries are trying

to do eventually you have high inflation and that is a tax 0 on public debt and reduces the value of public debt from creditors and savers, to borrowers like the government. so, in my view, that is an important point, what is happening today, in greece and europe, is an iceberg, the next stage of the financial crisis, the first stage of the financial crisis was the fiscal problems or debt problems of the private sector and, the housing bubble an bust did not occur only in the u.s., where the similar kind of bubble involved the u.k. ireland. spain. in iceland. in a number of countries, in central europe, in dubai. and so on. so there was a bubble that went bust, and, then, the second stage of it was the partial response included a socialization of the private losses and that is why, for example, we have large budget

deficits in spain today, the fiscal cost of cleaning up the banks will be huge, the same in ireland and iceland add other parts of europe and we have had the deleveraging of the public sector, and one of my concerns is, while the stimulus on the fiscal side, the financial system, as i said, it was necessary, to prevent a greater recession from becoming a great depression, now, we're at the next stage of the financial crisis. one in which if we don't address the fiscal issues over time, by raising taxes and cutting spending eventually we'll have a fiscal train wreck or if we monetize the fiscal deficit we'll have infl will be also disastrous. >> what were hitler's ambitions in world war ii, author of over 30 books, john lucas takes on his unanswered questions, in his new book, the legacy of the second world war. this is about an hour. >> it is truly very nice of you

to come on a april afternoon, where you know, where i live. used to be rural. it is now more and more suburban. but, as most of you know, it is -- there is a lot of work to be done in april, especially on saturday afternoons. it is very nice of you to come. and, the... i usually find it not very easy to talk about books that i have written because i'm a cathartic writer. i wrote it and it is out of my system and when i have to talk, it doesn't happen too often, but, bikes have written or just published, i fear i'm repeating

myself. i have just written it. this, fortunately, is not true about this book, because books have their publisher... this book i finished more than three years ago. maybe three-and-a-half years ago. and, my publisher decided to publish another book and they postponed publication which was all right with me and just published this year: