point, also concern about the weather, there's a certain window they had before they could get in and out before the cloud cover came. so they had to work quickly as well before they get stuck. but if you can imagine landing this a helicopter, and, you know, the plan was to land and get out, but there was so much rubble and ice, and the ground was so uneven, the helicopter, some of them couldn't even land. so there were guys jumping 10 feet out of the back of chinook helicopters helicopters and landing on rubble fields, and some of them landed on this river that was running through the middle of their landing zone. they get past that without any major injuries which that alone is a feat. ten feet, imagine jumping out of that into a big gravel, really big boulders. and then they look up, and this valley is a lot -- the mountains surrounding this valerie are a lot -- valley are a lot higher than they imagined. they were only looking at

satellite images. i can only equate it to standing in midtown manhattan and being surrounded on all sides by just sheer cliffs. they consolidate their guys, and they start walking towards this village. when we say village i'm sure in your heads you think, you know, i don't know what you see in your head for an afghan village. sometimes they're biscuit-colored mud huts, but this village -- and we use village loosely for this -- was literally cut into the walls almost, and it was stone houses. these were like castles stacked on top of each other, and they were surrounded almost -- well, not 360, but almost 360 with these stone houses. and as they're walking up, it takes them a little while to find a path. but they get to the way of the hill -- to the base of the hill, and the path cuts back and forth in switchbacks up the hill. and they -- so i know a lot of

you veterans, i've met a few of you here. you know that's bad, number one, because there's only one way up. you know you're in a cul-de-sac of a valley now, and they know that you're there because they heard the helicopters. if they hear helicopters in this valley, it's not them, it's not their buddies. i mean, it's their bad guys, right? it's really quiet as they're walking up. and all of a sudden they see three guys running on -- luis actually sees three guys running on the top of the valley, and one of them's got a gun. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> for the next seven hours, booktv is live from gaithersburg, maryland. this is the third annual gaithersburg book festival held on the grounds of the city hall. here's a quick look at our schedule. we'll begin the day with two local maryland officers. b. morrison is first reading from her memoir, "innocent:

confessions of a welfare mother." she'll be followed by cathy knepper on the her book, "geraghty justice." -- jersey justice." adam hochschild, his book, "to end all wars," details the dilemmas faced by generals and critics. in about an hour, 20 minutes, we'll hear from author luis carlos montalvan, he writes about his experiences as a wounded warrior in his book, "until tuesday." in about two hours, timothy noah excomplains his thoughts on the income gap and how we can reverse it. in if about two hours, 40 minutes, marc kaufman talks about the growing field of astrobiology, the study of extraterrestrial life. ken ackerman in about three hours, 40 minutes, his book takes a look at the early jeers of j. edgar hoover's career in

1919. in about four hours, 20 minutes, we'll bring you a glimpse of the life of aaron burr. david o. steward provides details in his biography, "american emperor." david linden and his book, "the compass of pleasure," he speaks from the mitscher nonfiction tent in about five hours. in "city of scoundrels," gary krist details the environment and mood of chicago in 1919. hear the author in about five hours, 40 minutes. and booktv will wrap up our live coverage of the gaithersburg book festival with a panel on the future of the book and bookstore. jim mill yang of publishers' weekly moderates a conversation between ray sag lin, politics & prose co-owner lissa muscatine and publisher sam durant of potomac books. but first, here's author b.

morrison. >> located near the book sales tent at the front of the festival. please, be sure to fill out your festival survey to be entered into a drawing for a free nook touch. surveys are available at the back of the tent. enjoy the rest of your day at the festival. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> for the consideration of everyone here, please, silence any devices that make any kind of noise. in order to keep improving this

event, we'd love your feedback. surveys are available here, at the info booth and at our web site. ms. morrison will be signing books immediately after the presentation. her books are for sale in the politics & prose book sales tent. barbara morrison is the author of "innocent: confessions of a welfare mother." she speaks about her own experiences to dispel the myths and misunderstandings of those live anything poverty. please welcome barbara morrison. [applause] >> thank you. hi, everybody. welcome. i'm glad you're here. so i may not look like what you would expect when you think of a welfare mother, but, indeed, i was on welfare. these days i'm a successful engineer, but when i was 24, i was a very scared young woman. i had been abandoned by my

husband and disowned by my parents. i had a baby, and i was pregnant again. i had no money, and i had no job. so i had a lot of very serious decisions to make. i found temporary place, um, working as the live-in housekeeper for a family. they were very, very nice to me, but when they found out i was pregnant, they asked me to leave. so i'm going to read you a little bit from the book at that point. it was october by then, by the time i realized i had to leave. and the darkness closed in early. the house was empty and silent, the family having gone out for the evening. there were no curtains in the window of our sitting room on the third floor. i stood close to the window and looked at the small, bright stars in the black sky so far away. with jeremy -- that was my baby -- absorbed in stacking and sorting blocks, i went over and

sat at the table to count up my assets. i was 24 years old, i had an english degree, no money, a 15-month-old son and another child on the way. there were three piles of paper next to the journal, next to my journal on the table. one pile consisted of the help wanted ads to be -- torn out of the paper. i had checked them out, but i had next to nothing to offer in the way of skills or experience, and even the factories didn't want to hire someone visibly pregnant. a second pile contained the bro sures from the daycare centers. child care for children under 3 this that town was almost nonexistent and very expensive. the third pile, the most disorderly slipping this way and that, were the old envelopes, napkins from friendlies and other stray pieces of paper on which i'd been scribbling budgets for weeks. jeremy came over and crawled onto my lap.

i held him with my left hand and with my right, moved the budget papers back away from his hands and spread them out. i kept trying to make the numbers work, but looking at them now, it seemed clear that the salary i would have to make simply to pay for room and board and child care was well out of my reach. with no alimony or child support, i would have to work two or three jobs just to survive, but then who would raise my children? i wanted to raise them myself, not dump them in some group home for 16 hours a day even assuming i could find such a place. as i looked at the pile of much-erased and rewritten budgets, i realized that with no job, no money, no child support, no health insurance and looming medical bills for my pregnancy and for my baby, i had no choice but to go on welfare. a choiceless choice, as my

friend jill -- who was also on welfare -- called it. i had fought against going on welfare for so long, trying to find some other situation, communal situation or a stay-at-home job. the idea of taking handouts, asking for charity made me cringe, but i didn't see any other way to provide for my children in the coming months. welfare seemed to be the only door left open to me. getting welfare, i reasoned, was like getting unemployment. i had paid taxes for years already, and i would again someday soon. it would be as it was meant to be, a temporary safety net during a difficult time. indeed, i felt like the victim of a hurricane. my life had been picked up and shaken around and dumped to the ground leaving me without resources of my own to care for my children. welfare was not an attractive option even then in 1974, even in massachusetts where the allotment was one of the best in the country.

i had seen what it was like for my friend jill. in return for food stamps and barely enough cash to pay rent on the cheapest apartment with the most minimal utilities, she was subject to surprise inspections from social workers who were entitled to criticize every aspect of her life. when she handed over food stamps at the stop and shop, the other shoppers inspected the contents of her cart, ready to condemn anything frivolous. she often had to fight to keep her meager allotment from being cut at some administrator's whims, dependent on an office where social workers were told to act as if money were coming out of their own pockets. as jill sometimes cried in frustration, how bad, how bad do your choices have to be before welfare seems like your best choice? i felt so old, as if i'd lived 100 years already. i had only one bit of philosophy

left, one motto to hold my life together: the kids come first. the kids come first. every decision had to be based on what was right for my children, jeremy and this new baby. i was all they had. i raised my head, darkness filled the corners of the room. beyond the feeble circle of light from the table lamp, i shivered and held jeremy closer, pressing him back against me. he craned his head back to look at me with wide, surprised eyes. it's all right, sweetheart, i said, and kissed his neck. everything's going to be okay. okay, jeremy repeated as he patted and stroked my cheek with his small, square hand. we were like the babes in the wood, but i couldn't allow us to lie down and die. i had to be an adult even though i barely knew how having relied

on my husband's knowledge of the world since leaving school. the lives of two children depending on my making the right choices. the october wind rattled the window, threatening our precarious refuge. hazards of all kinds pressed in around us. and deciding to go on welfare, i had the sense that a door had slammed shut behind me, and i was stepping out into the cold, setting off on a journey with no map without even knowing what my destination would look like. all i knew for sure was that i would never give up my babies. now, i grew up in a middle class neighborhood in a two-parent family, i went to college. so going on welfare was, um, a shock, shall we say? it was like going into a new country for me. so this book is really a coming-of-age story. it's about learning to be an adult, about learning how to be a parent and, also, learning how to deal with this crazy system.

for example, in order to apply for welfare, i had to have my own apartment. i could not share with somebody else. so that meant here i was with no money, i had to somehow scrape together rent and a security deposit and get an apartment. and once i had an apartment, i had nothing to put in it. i had a crib, i had a changing table, i had a kitchen table that someone had thrown out. that was it. no refrigerator, no stove, no couch, no bed, nothing. well, my friend jill came to the rescue again, and she told me about emergency assistance. okay. they would provide some money for furniture and appliances, but would they give me the money so i could go to goodwill or yard sale and get something secondhand? no, we can't be trusted with cash, so we are given vouchers, and we have to buy new things. i'm going to read you a little bit about that.

with the furniture and appliances i'd gotten through emergency assistance, there was one voucher i hadn't used yet. it was for a crib, a second crib for this new baby. the voucher was made out to the mart, the discount store on main street where they supposedly had a crib for the price on this voucher. the welfare office policy was to find the lowest price in town and issue a voucher for that store for that exact amount. and there was a caveat on it, that the recipient could not administer money to purchase a more expensive item. that was to protect us from bait and switch tactics of unscrupulous merchants. running out of time to get the crib -- at this point i was nine months pregnant -- [laughter] i went to the mart awkwardly holding the glass door open to push jeremy's stroller through, and i walked past the table where old ladies in zippered house coats fingered messy

stacks of nylon panties. i presented the voucher to a middle-aged salesman with pink cheeks and a tie holding the unbuttoned collar of his short-sleeved dress shirt together. no, he said. we don't have a crib for that price. but you have to, i said. no, we don't. he started to walk away. hey, i said. he turned back. this voucher, the welfare office hats you down -- has you down as having a crib for this price. he looked down his nose at me, the flour rest sent lights gleaming on his forehead. we don't, we used to, but it costs more now. he turned away. i stood there gripping the metal handle of jeremy's stroller, not sure what to do. the social worker had been very clear, she was not allowed to change the voucher no matter what the circumstances, not even if the store raised their prices. it was this voucher or nothing.

and i couldn't make up the difference in the price for the caveat on the voucher. all my childhood training came back to me, all those good little girls don't make a fuss admonitions told me to back down and leave without an argument. i looked around embarrassed. i was embarrassed and hoping that none of the other women had heard. i thought briefly, well, the baby could sleep in a cardboard box or maybe a bureau drawer. maybe we could get by until jeremy didn't need a crib any longer. then i thought of my friend, i thought of jill, and i stood up a little straighter. jeremy twisted around to see what i was doing, and then i, i, the child who'd always hidden in the shadows, slipping into neighbors' yards and hoping no one was looking out of the windows, i raised my voice. so, i said, loud enough so that all the little old ladies stopped what they were doing and looked up, so you won't sell me

a crib at the price you promised? the old ladies started to murmur. so, i said, raising my voice a little more and laying a hand on my nine-month stomach, you want my baby to have to sleep in a cartboard box? imagine that -- card both box? imagine that, the ladies muttered, moving closer. jeremy looked up at the man with a scowl. you're a bad man, he said. [laughter] the man stepped back. he looked to his right, he looked to his left, the store was silent as everybody listened to what he had to say. uh, no, he stumbled, no, of course not. you can have the crib, of course. of course we will honor the voucher. i kept my hard look on him as the ladies sighed and turned back to their shopping. thank you, i said. now, please, show me which one it is. well, i actually didn't learn that lesson very well, that lesson about having to speak up

to get what you needed. when i did rejoin the work force which, of course, i did after a few years as we all did because the average time to be on welfare has always been less than two years, and so after a few years when i was working again, i didn't tell anyone i had been on welfare. i felt the stigma too strongly. so i listened to my coworkers as they complained about greedy welfare moms ripping off the system, and i didn't want say, as i could have, that welfare worked for me and the people i knew exactly the way it was supposed to. it kept us and the children alive during this little bit of time when we could not work. then a few years ago i met writer and teacher maria golden. she's actually in the d.c. area, i think she teaches at american university, and she's a wonderful writer. but she encouraged me to tell my story and to write this memoir, to write a true story. so this book isn't just a

coming-of-age story about learning how to survive, learning how to get along with the biker gang in the neighborhood, learning how to deal with landlords who burn down their buildings for the insurance money. it's a story about real people. i didn't want drive a gold cadillac d i didn't drive a gold cadillac, i didn't have ten children, i didn't have more kids to get a bigger check as some people have mentioned to me, i didn't do drugs, i didn't try to rip off the system. and of all the people i knew, and i knew a lot of people on assistance, no one -- not a single one -- fit any of those stereotypes. we were just parents, just parents trying like any other parent to do the very best we could for our children, to provide for our children. thank you. [applause] i think we have a couple of minutes if anybody has any questions. yes.

[inaudible conversations] >> the question was, have things changed since i was on welfare. they have changed. um, in many ways they've changed for the worse. the welfare reform act, tinf, reduced the amount of time you could be, by law, on welfare. most people were off anyway, and still the average is less than two years for people to be on welfare. but a lot of the training programs which i discussed in the here, it was really the comprehensive education and training act that helped me train for a job and get the experience i needed for a job. and jill too. it's not around anymore. there are some other job acts. i'm not up-to-date on all of the legislation, but the whole support network has really been reduced, and as barbara

ehrenreich wrote in her most recent edition of nickel and dimed which is a great story about blue collar workers, people who are poor are increasingly being criminalized, and i felt like a criminal. and that's why i called the book "innocent," because not only was i very naive, i was very young, but i was made to feel like a criminal. so thank you for that question. be. >> [inaudible] >> do my parents talk to me now? [laughter] yeah. well, not now because they've passed away. luckily. i mean, luckily they don't talk to me now. not luckily that they've passed away. but even by the end of the book, and that was also part of my growing place, was to learn how to get along with my parents again. and for them, you know, to learn to get along with me. so, yes, we had reconciled by the end of the book. any other questions? okay. thank you very, very much. [applause]

and i will be over here signing books. [inaudible conversations] >> that was w. morrison -- b. morrison talking about quality innocent: cob possessions of a -- confessions of a welfare mother." in just a few minutes our coverage continues with cathy knepper reading from her book, "jersey justice: the story of the trenton six." >> be entered into a drawing for a free nook touch. surveys are available at the back of the tent. enjoy the rest of your day at the festival. [inaudible conversations]