one of them served briefly as a diplomat to portugal in the late 1840 #s so they had some experience in government as well, but i think an equally interesting issue is what henry clay would have done as president, how his health would have stood up. he suffered tremendously as secretary of state from the workload. how his temperament would have fit as president of the united states. i will say that i think it was matthew carey, and economist at the time who said if clay became president in 1844, the civil war would have been postponed significantly. now, you know, how you can say, that i don't know.

you obviously can't prove it, but he felt like his economic policies would have helped to weaken slavery, and therefore, taken away the major cause for a civil war. >> booktv.org was in kentucky on a city's tour as we visit several cities over the next few months to bring you a taste of their history and culture. for more information on this and events from other cities, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> now on booktv, questioning the safety, quality, and availability of fresh water as consumption dowels every -- doubles every twenty years. it's a little under an hour. [inaudible conversations]

>> good evening, everybody. thank you for coming out tonight. on behalf of the rocky land library, we welcome you to the land series. the series continues next wednesday night as author anne discusses her new book, "the beekeeper's limit, how one man and half a dozen hn #* honey bees helped feed america," and it's a lovely account of bees and beekeepers and the challenges they face in our increasingly stressed world. tonight, the land series returns to one of the constant themes of her first ten years, the central role of water in our lives and in the life of our planet. joining us tonight is alex

prud'homme, author of the ripple effect. it's a book that helps us appreciate the fact that water, not oil, could be both the defining resource of the next century and the greatest source of global tension in the years to come. combining with the right people on all sides of an issue, alex has done justice to a very complex subject. we have the fresh and global look for the next century. alex is the author of several books including the new york times best seller, julia childs,

my life in france. it's a wonderful collaboration between alex and his great aunt julia. a water consultant who has worked across the country and across the globe from africa to indonesia, south america, and beyond. we're very fortunate to have both alex and bob share their perspectives tonight. it is on the rise, and alex in his fine new account helps us understand why. we've taken the planet's hydrology for granted for 10,000 years, and that's a luxury we can no longer afford. please join me in welcoming alex

prud'homme. [applause] >> thanks, jeff, and thank you all for coming. it's a great pleasure to be here at the tattered cover. it is important that we all support our independent bookstores, and the tattered cover has a national reputation for the writers in new york. we pine to come here, and we're very glad to see you all to see you here and being at series like this one. as jeff was saying, water is a subject of the moment and making headlines across the country. look at the south, and there's record breaking droughts. texas, new mexico, oklahoma, florida, not only the drought, but many are on fire now. there's two major fires 234 arizona, one of which is the

largest in state history. texas has already lost 1.5 million acres to wild fires. florida has had something like 2500 wild fires so far this year. it's a kind of a vision of haitis in a way. at the same time, we have record breaking floods in the midwest, mississippi, nebraska, the dakota, and there is more rain and deep snow pack, and it looks like those floods may continue well into the summer, maybe all the way through august, so what's going on here? we've got this schizophrenic weather, and it -- it's forcing people to confront water and questions about how we use water and value water in a new way. this is really also an indicator of what's to come despite

denials by some quarters, climate change is real. we don't know exactly what causes it, but it's certainly measurable impacts, and climate change will speed up the hydrology cycle meaning there's more water vapor in the area creating more intense storms changing local weather patterns. some places that are now dry become wet and vice versa or places that are very dry become even drier. places that are very wet, especially on the coast, will become wetter. this is an indication of things to come. the good news is that we do have a series of steps that we can take and strategies that will help us negotiate this new environment should we care to apply ourselves. unfortunately, as my pal, john stuart, said the other night, we

tend to wait for things to be a crisis before we do anything to which i said to him backstage, well, you know, with water, if rewait for a -- if we wait for a crisis, it's going to be too late. from my perspective this wakeup call we're getting this yearings right now, it's something we ought to pay attention to, and we ought to have a serious national discussion about water and our relationship to it. now, i came to the subject from way back as a kid. i was obsessed with water as a kid, loved to fish and swim and boat. i was a oceanography minor in college, but the specific everyonetous for this -- imptous came working with julia child's memoir, my life in fraps. we were in her apartment in santa barbara, having lunch together, and she pulled out a bottle of french mineral water

and the french view mineral water as a health aid socially. they'll buy particular min rail waters for their particular mineral flavors and alleged health benefits. they view mineral water as a ji digestive and really treat it like wine. americans, on the other hand, julia said, like their water stripped of all minerals and tastes, went and we think of it as a healthy beverage, alternative to sew da. i thought that's a nice idea for an article or look at the two cultures through the prism of bottled water. i filed that away. that evening we had dinner with julia's family and bob muran. bob is a hydrogee yowlings traveling around the world doing

interesting water projects. he's the indiana jones of water, swish buckling water guy, and he started telling us that water is an access resource meaning that it is the resource that underlies all others, so whether you're talking agriculture or mining or oil and gas extraction or power generation -- all of these things require large volumes of water, and this century, not long from now, and that is starting 20 happen right now, these resources are going to start to come into conflict with each other because there's a limited amount of water, and this is going to force another series, a very difficult question -- how do we prioritize water use? where? when? these are not abstract questions. they are very difficult. you know, do you form that land

in montana say with alfalfa, or do you use the water there to try to extract oil and gas, you know? or do you build a mine nearby? you can't do it all. at the same time, the population is growing. as that grows, there's greater demand for water and goods. these are going to be veryings very difficult questions to answer. this got me really excited, and i decided well, forget the article. this is really a book. i 4 to finish julia's book, and we -- julia died halfway through the project, the book came out, it was successful, and i went on a book tour, and even while on julia's book tour, i began to report this book, and began collecting data, and by the time i got back, i 4 a huge mound of

information. i started in new york where i lived. i went and discovered that practically my backyard is one of the largest oil spills in the world right in the center of brooklyn, new york. it's the densest population center in the country, been there for over 100 years and until the deepwater horizon, it was the largest oil spill in america, and nobody knew about it. it was conveniently forgotten about despite the fact that the oil underground spontaneously come busted at one point and there were cancer clusters around there, i was shocked to learn this and uncovered with some help, and i went down to new york city's new giant new water tunnel number three, 600 feet under ground, this vast tunnel that they are boring out as quickly as they can because the tunnel's number one and number two are about to collapse

because nay are so old. i went to maine and met with people who are concerned with the aquifer there used for bottled water. i went to new orleans investigating the levies that collapsed dure hurricane katrina. i went to dallas, texas, nevada and phoenix, los angeles, and then i went out to alaska where i discovered with bob's help, a really interesting so-called resource war pitting salmon and the people and animals who rely on them against the potential giant new copper and gold mine sitting at the head waters of some of the very important salmon spawning streams and caused a huge debate in alaska that of course features sarah palin.

how do i break the information down so the lay public can understand it and make sense of it and hopefully be entertained and provoked by it, and what sort of town do i use? i structured the book in four parts. one is on water quality -- what's in the water. you might be shocked to find out -- and what we're doing about it. part two is about drought -- how certain parts of the country are drying out and what we're doing there. part three is about the floods, and part four 1 about water in the 21st century, how we're using it now and will use it in the future. part four was the one that gave me the biggest headaches, how we're using water now and in the future. water is constantly evolving as a subject. i would cover an aspect of this and the next week something

would change, so, you know, i was sort of writing in realtime which for a book is difficult, but one of the subjects that came up i found really fascinating was the subject of privatizing water, so i'll return to that in a second, but i wanted to read you the opening of the book because it shows you how water is a life and death issue that when you look at it through the prism of one particular story, it raises all sorts of other questions. this is a section called under pressure, and it's a prologue of the book leading into the water quality section. "thirty-five feet down bottom of a concrete tank filled with bitterly cold water lays 5 body. the lid was slightly askew.

the bolts were lose, shards of glass were scattered cruet the concrete floor. this was in a state of the art water purrification plant in suburban new jersey. the victim was 5 well-liked 43-year-old keep mist, mother of three, wife of 5 banker, ph.d. from nyu, and worked at the possaic water commission plant for 20 years. the plant underwent an upgrade to be replaced by an o zone system. she was promoted to senior chemist and was to maintain water qualities standards set by the epa and oversee the new generators that suffered from cracks and other problems. a colleague recalled that during the plant's rededication, she was in such a fabulous mood, but others weren't.

an autopsy showed she was forcibly subdued and was still alive when pushed into the tank. there was no way out said the prosecutor james. the water level was five feet below the opening, pitch dark, ice cold 36 degree water, no ladder, a horrible way to die. no doubt this is homicide. it sits on the outskirts of a suburb. it purr mys 85 million gallons of drinking water a day. new jersey has large water rereceivers, the rapid growth put tremendous pressure on its water supply. towns are competing for the same resources. water rates are rising. decades of pollution poisenned rivers and aquifers and the infrastructure is aging. she was proud of her work at the treatment plant, and she always conducted her water tests conscientiously. on the day she went missing, she

was alone for only a short time. that afternoon, colleagues noticed an odd sight, an uneaten sandwich at her desk. they began to search, but did not call the police for ten hours. the following afternoon, police was called in and discovered her clipboard at the bottom of the tank, but her body went into the second tank and not discovered until hours later. plant administrator were worried the water was contaminated and drained the entire 1 million gallon tank. by the time she was recovered, chlorine used as a cleaning agent destroyed any potential dna evidence. as news spread, rumors flew. officials canceled school and businesses closed. a dead body will sink as soon as the air in the lungs is replaced by water. once submerged, liquids escape

rendering the water unhealthy to drink. the pbwc issued a boil order, a suggestion that citizens boil drinking water to purr my it in 17 towns. the citizens of the the county were forced 20 confront an uncomfortable fact. they hereto jr. forth safe water supply was not as secure as they thought it was. three of the coworkers were especially suspect because the stories didn't add up. the investigation stalled in 2006. detectives were not working full time in the case, and therefore i was not allowed to view the investigative files.

with the death sill a mystery, questions remain. why would someone murder a respected chemist? did it have anything to do with the quality of the water at the plant? had the water at the pbwc turned a pinkish color a week before her murder? if so, what did that mean? did she blow a whistle on a colleague? did the new system that caused her headaches for week have an embarrassing problem? had she stumbled over something illicit like a drug deal like some alleged 1234 to the public, the most pressing questions surrounding the death is how could a body enter the drinking supply and remain undetected for a day and a half without sounding alarm? the answer was in the tank, the sensor defined to warn of water displacement wasn't working.

so, when she fell or was pushed into the water tank, no alarm sounded to warn something weighing 175 pounds entered the water. it could have been 175 pounds of a bilogical weapon as a body. this violation led to further questions. if a body con contaminates one million gallons of water without alarm, what else could be in the drinking supply? in light of the never attacks in nearby manhattan, the chemicals like chlorine, a deadly gas used as a chemical weapon in the first world war, were they used properly and secure? the pbwc is a typical facility and one had to wonder, are water supplies in the facilities vulnerable to contamination by natural, accidental, or deliberate poisenning? who monitors american water, and

how good a job are they doing? the issues raised by the death led to broader questions and forced people to consider a resource nay had never had to think about before. itis our water clean enough to drink? are we running out of it or is there too much water? how are we using it in what's the repercussions thaf use? in short, what do we know about the supplying the water, and what don't we know?" that's the beginning of the book, and it leads into the water quality section in which i discuss some of the legacy pollutants left over from the industrial growth and other emerging contaminants that we somewhere better get a handle on because they are causing all new things to happen such as intersect fish, something to be

investigated where male bass are growing eggs in their testees, and we believe it's because of chemical that is particularly herbicides used on the lawns are getting into the water and disrupting the system. it's a fascinating section, but there's also solutions in there on what to do about these things. part two is about trout. part three is about flood. part four is water in the 21st century. as i mentioned, one of the crucial questions for the coming decades is the issue of water privatization. that means a private company or individual buying up the water rights or taking over municipal water ewe utility and charging a fee for the use of the water. this practice began in france, and those companies are still in business.

they are now global. they are here in the u.s., and they are rather profortble and controversial. the reason they are controversial is because the privatizing of water gets to a moral question. is water a common like the air we breathe and therefore should be free to everyone or is water is commodity like oil to be extracted and processed and sold on the market? this is a very difficult question to answer. water -- private water companies had great successes where they've gone in and fixed up utilities and provided clean water at affordable rates, but there's also been times when private water companies have taken advantage of drought and have gouged their clients, and

there have been protests bouts this in places like ohio and atlanta and in california, central america, probably the most notorious case heard of took place in bolivia in 2002 when they privatized the water system, and started fixing up the utility, but then started charging ever-higher water rate, and a lot of the poor people there couldn't afford them, and began to protest, and the protests grew and grew and turned into riots, and the army was called in, and the army shot a 17-year-old boy and killed him, and it was captured by 5 tv camera, and this led to a massive protest, and it wasn't only about water, but water was one of the sparks, and it essentially shut the country down and led to the ousting of

president hugo. that was the notorious case, got a lot of press, but it's not always that way. in the u.s., the privatetizing of water has been a dream of entrepreneurs for many years, and it's often allieded with a pipeline or aquiduct project. we are now so good at manipulating nature that we can build our communities wherever we like. we can build them in the middle of the desert or a top of a mountain and bring the water to us which is pretty interesting phenomena, but these water diversion projects come at a price. they are often environmentally destructive. they are not always all that efficient. they are often controversial.

right now, as i mentioned, texas is in deep, deep draught, worst draught in 45 years, and there's one guy hoping to profit from that. you may have heard of him. his name is t pickens, a corporate raider who got into oil and gas. he's a billionaire. sometimes he's a multibillionaire or just a billionaire depending on how things are going for him. he's got control of a good portion of the west coastal rach gas fueling business, a couple hedge funds, and when i was on my book tour with julia's book, i made an appointment and met with him and thought i'd read a section about that to give you a sense of the kind of guy who knows about resources and thinks

as he put it the hydrocarbon era is over. one afternoon in october 2006. t boone pickens tilted his lean 78-year-old body back in a chair in the dallas officer, propped the black cowboy boots up on the corner of his desk and gave me an owlish work. it's just getting drier and drewer out there he said in an amused voice. he handed me an article about his water company, many critical of the plans 20 suck water from the aquifer, the largest aquifer in north america underlies eight states. it's also being rapidly depleted by people who are pumping it for mostly for agriculture, but other reasons as well, and there's a great deal of concern about the ogallalas.

the article notes a lack of rain combined with a population boom could push texas into an unprecedented drought. pickens signed up 200 land owners representing 400 acres in roberts county, where his ranch is, to participate in a deal between mesa and a thirsty city. no buyers yeting but he's a patient deal maker. the ogallalas aquifer is just surplus water as he sketched the route on a white board. it's stranded out there doing nothing. it's not needed in the panhandle, a tough country not suited for farming. why store water for nothing? you have an asset here, but it's dead until you create a market for it. meanwhile, north texas is just exploding. why not pipe the water out of roberts to help the rest? we have everything in place. eventually someone will need to buy our water.

pickens figured if pee -- if he could convince dallas-fort worth to buy the water for 30 years, his roberts county investments reportedly $150 million by 2008, would net mesa water over $1 billion. despite contingencies like the noncommitment, pickens youd, this could be the biggest deal of my life. the mesa water pipeline would cross private land. to make this feasible, i should explain that he's got a ranch up in the texas panhandle in the northern part of the state and plans to build a pipeline from his ranch down to dallas fort worth, but to do that, he needs to get special exemptions because it crosses private property. the pipeline would cross private land. to make it feasible, he has to negotiate with hundreds of

owners and find access to their land. it was not clear what the other way might be until 2007 when a change of state law made by governor rick perry allowed pickens to form a new water district, the roberts county fresh water supply district number one. this gave him the right to issue tax free bonds for the water pipe and electrical transmission lines, the power to levy taxes, and most important to use the power of imminent domain to claim land for the pipeline. imminent domain is a legal doctrine dating back to 1066 by william the conqueror in which the government can take or force the sale of the private property for the public good. as the full implications sank in, panhandle residents reacted with mix of anger and awe. many seemed stunned such a small district could boast such broad reach. the roberts county wawsht district was not viable without

the recent legislative changes. pickens spokesman denied connection between the donations and passing of the law. pickens opponents fear he'll poke it with such a long deep straw he'll suck unsustainable amounts of the ground water beneath the texas pan handle. it's a water hues leer to turn it into a dust bowl for his own profits. critics have dpeemed the water plan ground water mining, the term for pumping water from an aquifer faster than nature can replenish it. according to texas' rule, anyone who receives a new pumping permit can drop down an aquifer by no more than 50% over the next 50 years. the law was put into place who runs the district managing the region's share of the ogallala.

mining water is unsustainable. it's like picking dollar bills out of out of the bank out and putting nickels back. there's an end to it. that's what's happening in ogallala. when i pressed the depletion question, he said, look, it charges 5% a year with rain water. others claim texas' portions is less, more like one-tenth of a percent a year. it never ends. i can pump it down to 50% and not hurt anybody. we'll never pump it dry. why would i? i have $100 million invested in my property and there's a golf course and flashed a quick grin. this is a forever supply of water. once the buyer's in place, they have the rights to sell between 200,000 feed of water a year, enough to supply 1-1.5 million

texasians. taking part in such a deal sit over 81 million acre feet of the water. as he sees it, water is like any other resource. it's a commodity like oil he said that should be prospected and sold for profit. don't cut off people from the water. everyone deserves a bite of the apple. it provides us with a secure drought-proof source for the future. in the summer of 2009, more than 60% of texas suffered extreme drought, but by february 2010, el nino weather patterns brought enough rain to lift the draught in the state. water had yet to find a buyer, and pickens was distracted. he was worth $1.2 billion thanks to the fueling business and the success of the hedge fund, but it would be foolish to believe he forgot about water as a commodity. through additional land

purchases, he built the ranch up to 68,000 acres which not only med him the largest land owner in roberts county, but give him control of more permitted ground water than any other individual in the united states. i'm in no rush, he said to me in dallas. the people have their water want to sell, and the people will buy the water when they need it. that's the blood, guts, and feather of the thing. that's t boone. i'm going to wrap it up here, but i want to say something about the title, the ripple effect. aside to the reference to water, i chose the title because it's my observation every time we use water, it sets off a series of ripple effects. the consequences that we don't understand and we really don't even think about, and this is true for even the simplest things like washing your hands, watering the lawn, or even using electric power which requires

water. if you wash your hands with antibacterial soap, it gets into the water system and guess what? it's antibacterial, killing bacteria, the ending of the food web, and lowers resistance to disease. the herbicides on the lawn lead to cancers in fish and why should we care about that? well, the endocrin system of fish is similar to humans. if we hurt fishes, what are we doing to ourselves? we don't have an answer to that, and scientists are concerned and are doing a big study right now. power require as lot of water whether it's hydropower or nuclear power or ethanol, even solar requires water, and so industry extracts, you know, billions of gal lores, probably trillions of gallons of water

from the ecosystem every year and emits pollution with a tremendous impact on the ecosystem and on us. i just want 20 remind everyone that every time you use water, there's a ripple effect. thanks a lot. now, i'm going to invite -- [applause] thank you, questions in a sec, but i want to invite bob up 20 join me. he's one of the guys who got me into the project, and in addition to the picken's story, we drove from denver to the san louise valley and investigated a similar situation there. underneath the valley right by the great national park, there's a place called the baca ranch. we met there and traveled down there together, and bob, tell us

about the valley. >> well, it's a spreading center on land that's filled with in places, sentiment, and it's much of it is filled with water, and when i started working on it in the 70 #s, you can go down there and the wells were what we call call -- they flow without a pump, and there's 10-feet ice found fountains next to the homes because they flowed to a natural pressure and then freeze. it's also an area where the water flows into the rei -- rio grand, and then flows into

new mexico. it does flow in, but by that time it's greatly depleted and greatly contaminated so, there's been tremendous disputes over this. several governors of colorado owned the land grant. >> just to cut the chase a bit. there was 5 guy named morris strong, a canadian oil man. he bought the ranch for reasons i won't get into, and decided to live there, and i know he said he was not aware of the water under the ranch, but low and behold, he discovered there was a great aquifer under his property, and at this point denver was booming, and the suburbs here were growing and they were running out of water supplies, and he thought it would be an interesting idea to suck the water out of the aquifer, pipe it up and pour it into a river to take it up here,

and he was looking at making same kind of money t boone was looking at, and one of the things he did is he's hired law firms and hydrogeologists to look at the property, and one of them was this guy. what can you tell us about morris strong? >> well, morris strong what ran the company that took over the baca was the head of petro canada years ago, and he has lots of champions, people who thought he was quite a well-known guy. represent -- reputable guy. he drilled out the baca for oil and gas. they knew what they were getting after, and all the suburbs of

denver were growing, and they bought it up and use ag lot of canadian money and were going to -- they had several plans for diverting the water to the front range or into the other texas markets or the new mexico markets. >> long story short, there was a big controversy. the farmers in the valley didn't want the water sucked away. mo strong said he was just trying to do a good thing. he didn't want to hurt anybody. i think the state finally denied him permits to do this, and he threw in the towel, but one of the main antagonists, a rancher from the valley named gary boyce, who had been taunting him decided this was a good time for him to step in and try to do a similar deal. [laughter] don't you love water? it brings out the best in people, and he caused another

controversy and ultimately was shut down, and the nature conservatives, i believe it was, arranged with the federal government to name the great sand dunes a national park, and they thought they had everything safe and secure when low and behold, a oil and gas exploration company called lexam, based in canada, and their partners conoco phillips revealed that they had senior water rights meaning they had the oldest water rights for a very ceo ecologicallycepstive area in the -- sensitive area in the new wildlife preserve down there, and that they had the right to go in and drill, and this caused a huge uproar, but they were right. they legally had the right, but there's ban lot of wheeling and dealing, and the last i heard

about this they -- the water rights have been purchased by the state or the feds, and they are now officially off the table and lexam i think, has gone away for now, but your family has a long history of dealing in the west. ..

>> what does this main? is there a future for the sauntered printers to one to privatize water? zero our our way now environmentally aware enough paying careful enough that those guys 95 we in business for long? >> one change that has happened over the last 40 years that we tend to privatize the science. now it is easier for the

investor to hire his own consultant to generate his own answers and the public has the hard time to know what is the truth so that sleazy argument homage and damage would occur we need to go back to have independence fourth station attendant science. >> denver was the market and it continues to thrive. will there be a private water brought here? >> i think there is already. but we also have suburbs in douglas county where the original water table has dropped several hundred feet. it is a major issue. >> thank you for coming. i would be happy to sign

books and hear your story is the first live there is any questions we've would love to hear them spin my people feel water is greatly undervalued and under price that is why we don't manage it very well but do you touched on the value of collecting water and the solutions? >> i do. the question is about the liu and pricing of water as part of the issue that is so contentious how do you price it? the debate is the breakdown this way. if you don't price water people use it wastefully because there's no incentive to conserve. review to price it too high

high, you play with people's lives. water is an essential resource. the criticism is people cannot afford it. the experts i have talked to have said the answer is somewhere in between. you guarantee people a certain amount of water per person per day and the figure was given 13 gallons then beyond that is a tiered pricing system so those who use the most pay the highest rate. it have been to santa barbara 25 years ago when there was a terrible drought and instituted the tiered system. it reduced water use. but it was not perfect and it is a tricky issue that we

have to grapple with. >> part of the problem in the west is aggravated by the role of the federal government with various agencies using subsidized funds to build the ems and so why the so it keeps the price of water artificially low for decades. second, the user to the question depends on where you are. i worked in bolivia where people were involved in the riots. they get crazy if you mentioned the idea of putting a price of water. they cannot afford that. also, they come from a background the believe the water is the right.

it is not the answer but it is a different story in very poor countries. >> just to go for the context and of what was said like a growing population i went to discuss caring capacity and also have everybody in your position dealing with the resources may talk about the population but failed to make knowledge there are conversations about constrained resources baja of population growth of what is sustainable really means it. >> that is big.

[laughter] i was sitting next to a fellow and read quickly got into the 1960's, '70's, 80's professor who have the guts to say there were limits to growth and there should be limits to population. it is pretty fundamental. politicians cannot talk about it. there is not one mention of population in the last election. >> to that i will complete the ad, and dial so completely agree that there is a big disconnect between land planning and water planning. we play and a community in the desert somewhere there is a water then we worry about the water rather than building committees where the water is and having

rational growth based on water supply. this leads to another question eastern and western laws are different there is no system we don't have a national water board messing accord says it has the most efficient water system in the world and is a very different country but it is a useful model and i talk about the limits to growth and raise the issue we should think about the national water supply and a holistic way. we should have a water board or a seller but we're getting to the point* it is a serious issue.

we need someone to connect the dots. >> how does curio not deal with recycling? >> we actually have lawyers och in the audience. i don't know all of its but individual industries have been able to lobby for different legal approaches to what they do with treated water into the ground war disposing of it into the ocean. there is not a simple answer but i don't know the legal part. >> we will wrap up we

hope we provoke do and you think about what you heard today and maybe take some action. thank you very much. >> we have in the capital city of kentucky and we have been in business 33 years which is pretty outstanding for a small bookstore. we have had music

here, we're community centered and exchange community information. i think we are the hub of downtown and the hub of frankfort in fact, in right across from the old capitol building so we have a lot of tourist coming through and visitors to me to go through the offices so folks of all different types coming from downtown. >> going through history bookseller political books? >> this is a political town so quiet if you read political books and resell a lot of lincoln material but historic images of old frankfort. >> people read differently nowadays.

>> they're reading differently bent still reading in good difference the way things will end up but we are not there yet. there is some resistance to the electronic readers especially where people are a little older and they don't travel as much. if i lived in the metro area i would be on with my amazon can go but right now everybody is waiting to see how it will go. authors are excited in the book comes out as that the book form but hopefully they given as against. >> how has business ben? >> this is where mark twain said if i die i want to die

in kentucky because it happens 20 years later. it is of little later the first couple years have not been too bad but then the state government started to falter and it hit a bit harder but everybody is hopeful with the bigger picture to be hopeful with the big box stores closing we're hoping some of that trickles our way. that was from when i was 27 we have been added for quite some time. it is still exciting every day to open the box and pullout the books it is like christmas every day of the year.

>> the kentucky book fair started 30 years ago who of our founding members to are still the ball today but the purpose is to provide grants to public schools and libraries to bring readers together in the literary atmosphere to promote below that of a reading through the commonwealth. 4,000 people attended be primarily focused on in kentucky's off fares better with the past 30 years we

have a wonderful array of mickey mantle rosalynn carter, people to draw in the crowds though we do focus on the kentucky author. >> what role does it play? >> after 30 years one of the oldest in the country. that is in the surface we have a third a member board. >> how have you noticed has the leadership and attendance changed? >> baby boomer and the but since we offer such a wonderful array people bring their grandkids so we build on t