>> i didn't want to be confused with the journalists who were flooding in and autoquickly. it seemed -- in and out quickly. it seemed better to let people settle down and see what was left of their lives. i went in three different seasons; many june, september and december. and it was almost as if it was three different countrieses and three different groups of people each time. i'll talk more about that as i

go along. the great 17th century japanese poet said the person in mourning is a slave to sorrow. nobody i saw in japan was a slave to sorrow. the pain was real and extremely deep, as you can imagine. the pain of losing people, not necessarily the pain of losing houses and cars and computers and bicycles, because this is a country so seismically dynamic that people -- all the rural people i talked to said, oh, this has talked to our family many times over the last 500 years. my great grandmother swam back to safety during the last tsunami and survived. so it wasn't an unexpected misfortune. there was an earthquake every

day that i was there in all three months, at least one. so you were constantly reminded of impermanence, that you felt as if you were in a place where landscape shaped consciousness, shaped the mind, shaped how you saw the world every day. and you see this, you know, i felt it all these years. i've been going to japan since my first visit in 1968, and it's a sense that the beauty, a sense of beauty that's shaped by impermanence, that the shaking eight islands shake you into a sense of freshness that on the flipside of the pain is this incredible open door that keeps

opening and opening and opening to more and more freshness. nobody escaped the wave from sendai to up the coast about 375 miles. everybody was impacted somehow. so i'll read of one person, we called him the swimmer. a fisherman trying to get to the harbor to get on his boat and drive his poet up over the -- his boat up over the wave. didn't quite make it. the path of water, how one swims in it and what it teaches along the way. a wave rises from a seismic rip in the sea floor. it spreads out low and travels at jet speed, mowning up as it -- mounding up as it hits

shore. he was driving when his car was almost shaken off the road. six minutes later he turned toward his parents' house to rescue them knowing that a tsunami would come, but his father was going the other way, bicycling toward the harbor. by the time he caught up with him, his father had climbed the seawall and was clutching a steel ladder, facing the sea. he remembers a roar, water was receding, surging backwards until the ocean floor lay exposed. we've got to get out of here, he yelled, but his father didn't move. the roar intensified. a white line appeared at the horizon. the wave was coming fast. as he climbed up to get to his father, water came at him. his father shook his head, refusing to budge.

one last look, then the young fisherman jumped off the wall. when he turned back, his father was gone. my father chose to stay, and in that second i accepted it too and thought it would be the same for me. water towered over him. he saw a nine-ton squid boat teetering on the wave's crest, his glass tractor lamps swinging and shattering. the waves swept him into the river that splits the up to in half. he climbed onto a metal roof, but the water caught him there too, sucking him backwards, pulling him out to sea. water roiled. it was black with diesel and gas, sewage, dirt and blood, and he rolled and thrashed inside its debris-marbled night. there was another wave -- roar and another wave coming.

water covered him again, and he was driven toward one of the privilege pillars. he saw a rope dangling. i barely got to the pillar before the ocean began dragging me back, so i reached and grabbed it. my lower half was submerged, debris was being pulled out, but i kept holding on. my legs were pulled out in front of me. i was holding tight, floating on my back with my head up. at first i wasn't worried about losing my grip, but then my hands got so cold. water came in false tidal sequences. between waves he remembers another period of stillness. the sea was a lagoon, he said, a log floated past, i climbed onto it. sitting astride the dead tree, he could see the extent to have the destruction for the first time. the spire port had been -- entire port had been demolished. fishing boats had been hurled

onto the tops of buildings. he lost his boat. almost every house was gone, including his own. a people floated by. he was swimming in the remnants of his past. the first part of my june trip i was traveling with a young woman and ended up living with her parents. we all lived together. there was just no place to stay as you moved up the coast and no place to eat, so i just ended up living with my interpreters which was wonderful. her extended family were all rice farmers, and out on the sendai plain which is a big, huge, expansive flat and then the actual city of sendai, the downtown area is sort of, is higher up. so it was safe. i mean, it had earthquake damage, but it was safe from the water. all of her rice-growing families

lost their fam farms, their houses, everything. and her uncle, who's this charming guy, really rural, really kind of rough hewn talked about he and his wife were in a building like this, and the water rose. they had to tilt their head back just to breathe, and then the next wave kind of petered out, and they got to the third floor of this building. and then he tells me this long story. it was kind of breathtaking, and then he looks at me and he says the more i lose, the happier i am. the father and mother drove me up the coast. it's very much like the big sur coast, really, really beautiful. in every cove there is not a million dollar house, but gorgeous little fishing villages. so every single one was wiped

out. and, you know, you saw fishing boats all over and people's clothing hanging from big, tall cedar trees. it was astonishing. it was also the path that the fisherman took when he was writing his fifth travel diary. and one of the towns that he visited is, it's a large town. and of all the towns i visited, you know, just terrible devastation. hospitals with fishing boats up on the terrace, and x-ray machines hanging out and nurses' uniforms, places where patients and doctors and nurses had all been swept away. but for some reason the town that, or the visit that really affected me was when we arrived at the end of the day. it was getting dark. the tide was coming in, and this is what i saw.

water is heavy. after being displaced at the rupture site, it becomes a moving mass whose fluidity is like something solid. yet it slips and slides, shoves and gathers. it splits thened of things, fills and empties them and carves new shapes or that are blunt, tipping and as sharp as knives. at the port a fisherman stands in front of his boat, its bow piercing the second story of his house. a piece of due tammy jets out from the front door. his arms are folded. he stands and stares. around him the sky darkens, then a curtain of black rain begins to fall. it pours down on him. he doesn't run for cover. more than 3,000 people in this city died in one day. everything is black; black water

rising, dirt roads drinking it in, row afro of fisherman's houses are bent, crushed and battered by water-hurled fishing boats and debris. we move through hurricane and ink. -- murk and ink. in the spring of 1869 an explorer lost his way and emerged from the there's in the town -- forest in the town. even then it was of a thriving seaport not much to his liking. he wrote: hundreds of merchant ships were gathered in the bay. smoke rose continuously from the salt kilns. i thought to myself, i never intended to come to a place like this. we looked for lodgings for the night but were refused by everyone. what would basho write now on

this page of destruction? an aftershock rattles the car windows. though the road has been made two feet higher, it isn't enough. at high tide water splashes against the tires. this part moved southeast 17 feet and down more than 2 feet. all over the port water enters and reenters every wrecked boat, house and living room. when the tide recedes, water drains from the new road as though from a boat's sculptors. a single line of cars and trucks bumps over a bridge. the seawall that was to protect the town is completely submerged. rubbish, a 200-foot-high wall of it, rhines one side of -- lines one side of the road, and on the other smashed cars are stacked three high. a paper factory is in ruins, its sawdust piles blowing.

a small river is obstructed by a ship turned sideways. water eddies across its bow and stern. trying to get back to the highway, we drive on a potholed-road so narrow we almost go through the front door of another ravaged house. a buddhist priest walks waist deep in slush among buildings that have been uprooted like trees. he bows toward a submerged shrine. they were wandering, itinerant priests. we sort of identified two of them who we saw walking up and down the coast. i saw one bowing in front of a ruined crematorium where there was a handwritten sign that said please bring the bodies in one at a time. we don't have the facilities for any more. and there was a line of wheelbarrows with dead people in it. and as each one went in, the priest bowed.

these were just everyday sites there. and i have to -- i don't think i need to remind you that there were three disasters on this day. of course, the 9.0 earthquake, the tsunami that had run up heights in some places between 60 and 133 feet high and then, of course, the four meltdowns which are still, which will always be affecting that country and its people. one of the wonderful things that happened with, because of my friend here put me in touch with an american buddhist nun who then put me in touch with a japanese buddhist nun. and she's the niece of a man who, an abbott of a small

country temple. and is so we went to see her. now, i also have to say one of the crazy things that happened was in the second part of my trip my interpreter and my driver were, had strange names. the interpreter was named nicky, she's have new zealander/half japanese. nicky means diary. and the driver was named, nicknamed abyss. so we called it the nicky no abyss. et seemed appropriate. anyway, we went to this wonderful tiny temple. it's up a river, six miles up a river. nobody there thought the tsunami would bother them. but it did. the abbott's entry is quiet. slender and tall with a kind

face, he sits with impeccable posture. i have three daughters, he said. i put them through school, and they haven't been back since. then my niece came visiting and said she wanted to become a nun. i thought she was joking, so i total her to shave her head right away, and she did. that meant she was serious, so i sent her to monastery. there were two waves. one was 2 meters high. it receded and came back as a 3-meter wave, a big tsunami wave. the bottom of the river showed. this had never happened before. the temple up the road was washed away, it lost all the headstones from the graves. rice fields were swept clean. no one wants to live in that village now. he recalls that after the tsunami it began snowing hard. an 89-year-old woman showed up at the door. she was soaking wet and shivering. the abbott's wife warmed her and

gave her dry clothes. after the tsunami water came up this river, the abbott said, we had 70 or 80 people staying here. it's a small country temple, and it became too crowded. we had nothing to eat for four cay days. i sent them toen an elderly lady's farm down the road for having tables. one hundred people died near the temple. it's only a roof and a frame now. then the most extraordinary thing happened. survivors began dragging the dead out of the river and bringing them to us. some were carried over men's shoulders, others were put in wheelbarrows or in the backs of small trucks. the dead kept arriving. corpses filled our temple courtyard, so it was like a graveyard. they were lying all the way around the center pine tree. we had ceremonies for the dead even when there were no bodies. two families are missing four

family members. only one has been found, but there are still seven missing. another neighbor never found his family at all. he read in the newspaper that they had died. but the most courageous of them all was a young woman who was on pregnancy leave. she had her baby just before the earthquake, but her older daughter, a sixth grader at the school, was washed away and hasn't yet been found. so naomi, the mother, got t a license to drive a backhoe. now she digs for the missing every day. not only for her own daughter, but for the or children of other survivors. so far she hasn't found anyone, but she won't give up. and i had a friend last week and naomi is still digging for survivors, just amazing woman. and in japan it's a little

unusual to see a woman driving a backhoe as well, so we're all particularly proud of her. i wrote, i'm just going to read a couple more things that, um, tiny, short or chapters called night sort of sprinkled through the text. a bit more personal. hard rain begins and crystal instabilities cause the ocean ped to keep moving. sea foam clobbers and young waves shoulder fractured spines. two more shakes before dawn, one with a distant tsunami warning siren. for the very old, it must be reminiscence of the second world war when sendai was obliterated and news came of the mysterious a-bomb twice dropped. in the newspaper a woman tells a reporter that she's lost houses twice; once in nagasaki and again in this tsunami.

before rain stops what feels like a mask drops off. not the face mask we've been wearing to protect ourselves from toxic dust or the elegant ones i once watched being carved for the theater 30 years ago, but the hardened exterior we present to the world made with a rough skin. one small boy said i feel one way when people are watching, but i'm another person when i'm alone without my mother or father. another young boy who watched both his parents drown has not spoken a word since the tsunami. i sit up in the dark. too often we do not relate directly to experience. the mask, the scarf of around the neck, the tall boots -- which i'm still wearing -- the mask is brittle. i tear at it, and a few pieces

fall. maybe we don't have to take it all the way off. maybe it's enough to let rain waterloosen it, to glimpse the possibility of nakedness. the mask slides, sticks, slides again. i cry for only the second time since coming here. tears roll, and the whole carapace crumbles. it's not so much a question of giving it up. the mask begins to give you up because it has no function for you anymore. lying down, my rib cage floats. it rises to the ceiling and hangs there. from it dangle wrists, knuckles and knees, the bones as light as toys. rain comes hard, and morning light is washed black as if the

tsunami's shadow wave had inked the air and gone back to scrape darkness from stone. i'll read one last little bit. so, um, pause there was no place -- because there was no place to live most of the trip, i ended up going to stay at the drive's house, if you want to call it a house. it was a bit of a very wonderful traditional but very rundown place way up in the mountains. it took several hours to get there from the coast, two or three hours. and so we spent a lot of time in his van, his sort t of hippie van. it was really great. and i felt at home there, you know? i'm that generation. [laughter]

and so we -- i ended up composing a lot of the parts of the book while we were driving op my blackberry because -- on my blackberry because it was too rough to write. it became our sort of meditation time, and it was a very precious time. and this is one of those things i wrote. the ocean is heavy. as the planet took shape, water came from inside the earth. our litany of natural disasters is nothing compared with the eruptions and earthquakes of the early earth when the ten fell to 212 degrees below zero and spewing water vapor condensed into oceans as we know them today. ocean bites and buts, oceans

were made from water squeezed out of primordial earth. later in the making of earth, water-rich protop planets crashed here spilling more liquid. morning star, evening star, we live between them rocking. a rag of cloud keeps wiping away the eye, drowning a tiny eye surfaces to take a last look at the ruined earth, at human excesses and defects, at its genius. an ear lifts and hears music. water slapped them down. even underwater i try to see is the abyss dark or fed by fire? i hold a cracked tea bowl in my mind. it is lopsided, beautiful, spilling.

the chilled depths into which i slide break open like doors. my driver says you have to be alive to die. thank you. [applause] questions? yeah. >> we'll take questions from the audience, so please wait for the microphone. >> how well, how well or were you received by the people in general? did they think that you were there for curiosity or to

exploit their misery concern. >> no, no. >> or did they -- >> no, no. they were so open and welcoming. you know, because we were just drifters like they were. not like they were, but, you know, we -- i don't, when i travel in other people's cultures, i don't have an agenda or a plan. and, you know, i think people see that in you. they see that you've come to listen and we had a hard time getting them to talk just one at a time. and the beauty of nicky was that she does simultaneous translation, so she was just whispering into my ear. they didn't even realize that i didn't speak japanese. of so it really worked well. and i had this wonderful

48-year-old long-haired worker from that area. he spoke the dialect. and often he just did the talking. you know, we -- on our many trips down the mountain, we talked about what was important to think about in this situation. i mean, how do you deal with this devastation? how do you see it, see it head on? and so he just, you know, started talking. it was, it was great time. but, and also, you know, when you have these kinds of things happen in your life, we've all had many losses and all kinds of things happen to us, but it's a kind of -- it sort of breaks the doors down. all the time i was there i felt as if, you know, walking the ground was sort of made of walls, and as we walked they just kept falling away.

and i think the people that we talked to were having that same experience. so there was this great openness. it may close up later, but it was a terrific time. and there was, in june there was that euphoria of survival that's kind of bewildering because underneath, you know, it's like a coin that can get tossed either way. underneath it this, you know, real pain, not neurotic suffering, but real pain. and srt of rising out of -- sort of rising out of that is this euphoria of sort of impermanence shaking you into a kind of freshness. >> did anyone express a desire to move to some other part of japan or some other part of the

world even when they know there's so much radiation which they've been exposed to? >> right. um, well, in, you know, the village is very rural, and it's one thing for city people to move around and have other jobs, but as i understand it in rural japan and this village seems to be extremely traditional, you can't just say, oh, i'll lease some rice fields and move your whole family. these are people who for hundreds and hundreds of years have been in the same place doing the same thing. including the young people now. so nobody wanted to move. who hadn't already moved. you know, there's maybe always some, you know, somebody many a family who's young and can't find their way there, so they go to the city and do something else. but for the ones who stayed, they wouldn't be able, they

wouldn't be able to move. and so, you know, that was part of the extraordinary quality of being there, you know, which is really maybe a teaching -- for all of us there is no escape. you know, there's no escape p from surviving, there's no escape from dying. there's no escape from the illness that may come to all of us whether we're exposed to radiation or not. and, um, so you just, you know, as my friend michael there said these people were, you just face what is, you know, facing the wave is really facing the problems of living and the problems of surviving. and so it was, it actually made it all the more precious and poignant.

>> another question? >> is that okay? i can't resist asking one more question. um, how do they feel about their children who are so exposed to radiation, and what will happen to them? i mean, that would be a whole new level of consciousness -- >> yeah. >> in historic memory. >> some children have been sent farther north, farther west, you know, in a sort of boarding school type situation. a man i know who owns mont pell which is sort of the patgonia of japan built sustainable housing farther north from children from the talk about seem ma -- talk about seem ma area just to get them away. so that's one kind of movement that does exist. and when you go in the grocery stores, food is labeled according to where it's been grown or harvested. i mean, sadly, the cheapest food

is the food that's the most radiated. but, you know, this is the market economy of the world. but anyway, you do have a choice. and we were also very careful, no fish, no meat. eat only vegetables grown in 40 chi doe and ate rice from the previous year's harvest. but, you know, it's a terrible problem. >> question over here. >> thank you. first of all, thank you for your readings, which were quite beautiful. >> thank you. >> you said you visited three times, three different trips. and i was wondering if over those three trips you detected any changes in attitudes or feelings or emotions, frustration levels? >> are yes. >> and then if you could apply that to yourself, your thinking, you know, or insights. >> yeah, thank you. wonderful question. yes. in june, as i said, there was

this sense of survivors' euphoria, this great openness and, um, you know, maybe not fully comprehended, comprehending what had happened. you can't -- you can only take in so much loss at a time. but then i returned in september, and a really large force seven typhoon came up the coast. i mean, it wasn't much in the news here x. usually the typhoons go on the west side of japan. that's what everybody told me. but this one, i mean, just came blasting up the coast. and all the rice farmers i know, i mean, you know, the land was covered in three or four feet of debris and bodies and pieces of boats and -- you know, it was not a place where you wanted to grow food. but they had been buying or

donated soil and manure and stuff and were just growing winter vegetables because they had to have something to eat. they were just trying to survive. well, when the typhoon came, it completely flooded everything that had been planted, even the temporary house -- many of the temporary houses where people were moved by the government after they got out of the evacuation centers in schools were flooded, and people were then, had to be evacuate withed again. evacuated again. and any of the houses that were still standing. but in many cases the wave went through the bottom floor, but the second story was still livable. so they were repairing their houses. all that was just wiped out. finish people were -- elderly couples were committing suicide all the time because they then thought that they had to make

room for the younger people. pause there was a lack of -- because there was a lack of food, a lack of housing, a lack of everything. and so they were making space. and people were just, you know, it was just a shock. i mean, there was no way to really take it in, but they were despondent. this, the great uncle and great aunt of my interpreter from sendai said they had been really -- they had just gotten permission from government to fix up their house which was right at the edge of where the tsunami waters came, and they were really excited. he had, he's a great flower farmer and had ordered all these flowers, these hundreds -- i mean, he kind of was a little bit manic about it, you know? but he was so excited to be able to at least start again and then, and they had put in a big winter garden, and it was completely wiped out. and he i said i don't, you know,

i've told the carpenter not to come. i don't know what i'm going to do. and then in december when i returned, it was very cold, it was snowing. and people had just kind of come around again. it was more like the june visit. not quite as wildly euphoric, but a real kind of determination to just keep going forward to make things right, to reap -- they had all replanted, they were all harvesting, you know, greens and things that can survive in the snow. they were building greenhouses, and the fishermen, the government was giving fishermen between 75 and 95% of the money it takes to buy a used boat, and they were fixing up boats, and they were going out and fishing

even though the it's the worst marine radiation disaster in history. but, you know, they still had to eat. and so they were working with greenpeace, of all people, who were helping them measure the radiation because nobody else was doing it so that they knew that it was better to eat the migrating fish pause they come from -- because they'd gone through quickly instead of the oysters and the seaweed and things that -- you know, or the bottom-feeding fish. so people were, you know, they were working at it. and, of course, and my moods changed accordingly. in september i got very sick and had a high fever and was sort of delirious and was really depressed, and then i went back, and it was different. so i was just sort of mirroring whatever i was ingesting from them. but, and they all seemed to be doing, doing pretty well considering everything.

>> gretel, have you been in touch with the people that you interviewed, and also will you be able to bring your book to japan for author programs in either english or in japanese? will it be translated, is my other question. >> yes. um, the book will be translated. we're getting that sorted out now. i hope quickly. what was your first question? >> are you in touch with the people that you wrote about? >> yes nicky, um, calls them or e-mails them, you know, every few months, and so i get updates. and my other -- so i hear about the rice farmers, i hear about the fishermen. the rice -- the elderly rice farmer who had told his carpenter to go said, no, no, no, now i'm planting, you have to come here for new year's. and the little temple, i donated some money to have the big bell

from the temple up the street that had been or the road that had been washed away, i encouraged them to bring it to their temple, and they are using the money to build a sort of house for it. and so she said that's being built, you have to come for new year's. we'll all ring the bell together. [laughter] and, you know, the fishermen are getting their boats built. the one thing that's not happening in which i'm really interested in doing, um, people don't have time to rebuild, actually rebuild a house. they're still in temporary housing. and, i mean, unless they happen to be wealthy, i mean, wealthier than most of the others. but, and they're, you know, they're busy fishing and farming and taking care of each other. so they, um, i'm trying to get,

work with some in a collaborative, sustainable way some builders from here, some young builders from hoar, some builders in japan and to go from village to village and see if we can help with rebuilding, find economical but sustainable ways to build really nice small houses that have some traditional japanese aesthetic in it. we'll see if that works out. yes. >> [inaudible] >> she's -- >> oh, i'm sorry. >> just start again. >> oh, okay. we were reading in the very beginning after the first disaster the people being very unwilling to take anything for themselves that was more than anybody else had and just being

very, very not just keep itive, but beyond that. thinking of everyone together. does that continue, from what you saw? >> with oh, yes. this shin b toe priest i talked to one day said, look, everything here is based on two concepts; together living and emptiness, the 'em iness from which compassion rises. so he said you don't need to know anything else except that. [laughter] that's what we're all doing here. we're all working together. we're all, you know, we understand, we all understand each other here. and -- yeah. there was some, a little looting. i mean, it was very funny. outside of sendai are the big factories, you know, like toyota , and there were beers lying around on the ground. i mean, the wave just went

through everything. and so people were going down and getting beer. but, of course, everybody was saying, hey, we've been through quite a bit, we deserve a free beer. [laughter] that was about the extent of it. i mean, you know, there was, there were or probably some problems here and there, but nothing, nothing bad. i mean, nothing grotesque. just -- >> gretel, can you also talk about your first love of japan, going to japan to explore the culture, the theater, poetry, etc. what got you interested? >> yeah. well, when i was young, i think i was 12, my mother gave me -- my parents, my interest in japan is inexplicable. it's just something that i don't know where it came from. but my mother did give me a book of japanese poetry translated by

arthur whaley, and i still have this precious copy. and so i've been reading japanese poetry for a long time in the travel diaries. in 1968 a friend happened to go around the world on a film crew, and they ended up in japan, so he sent me a ticket to come at the end of the filming, and we just sort of traveled around. i mean, we didn't know anything. we had no contacts, we didn't -- all i knew was in those days women were still wearing kimono and gain shah, you know, you could go down a little cobblestone street and go to the public baths. you could hear -- [inaudible] being played, the japanese flute being played in the afternoons because, you know, the teacher lived down the street. and the, um, the monks were coming through begging in their

traditional way, and all the housewives were running out giving money. so those were common sights. i spent -- and when i came back from the very first trip, i was living in los angeles, and i immediately went to zen center in los angeles. i then spent a month in kyoto. i was writing a play that was supposed to be in the novel that i wrote about the hart mountain interment camp in wyoming where i live most of the time, in wyoming. i never finished the play, but i had a great month with mass carvers, two women hold who were extraordinary, and i went to rehearsals every afternoon of the plays and then to the performances at night. another time in the mid '80s with a friend who's fluent in japanese who is aer is rammist,

we just traveled around honshu. we hitchhiked, we met potters, we met farmers who grow apples, we stayed in shin toe temples, we just kind of wandered. we met mediums who live on the northeastern tip of japan, of honshu, who talk to the dead. so in the summer they sort of set up their little poots, and you can go -- booths, and you can go and ask them to talk to your dead whoever and, you know, receive messages back. but we were there in the winter, so we saw them wherever they were living and had some great experiences with them. so, and i've been, oh, you know, i've climbed -- [inaudible] and just, you know, wandered around. [laughter]

yes, leslie? >> [inaudible] >> again? >> if what happened there occurred here in the united states, how do you think the reaction would differ? [laughter] >> that's a really loaded question. i don't think i want to go there. i don't know. you know, i think it would really vary, but i'm, all i can say is that i hope that we can learn from these other examples of how to -- i've had a really interesting talk with -- [inaudible] wilson last summer because i've been working on climate change and sort of this sense that we're at the brink of extinction anyway. and he said, look, there is still hope. i said, no, really? and he said, um, we need to learn to live cooperatively, collaboratively, and, um, you

know, we have to change the way world works altogether. and then, you know, some of us will survive. so, i mean, it's a kind of a dark picture. but, you know, there's so many people around the world who live in this way, have been living this way for a long time. and there are people in this country, um, some of them sitting right in this room who i know live this way. and so we have people who can help remind us how to behave. question on the left? >> there's somebody in the front who's been raising her hand. yes. >> do you have any images of -- [inaudible] do you have any images or footage from your trip? >> yes, i have images, stills. i was going to show them but,

you know, they weren't that distinctive, and i don't think it's anything that you can't see online and, um -- but, yeah, you know, i took pictures with my phone like everybody else. some of the people, my interpreter was a photographer, so she took pictures. but she said it was very -- she wouldn't take pictures until i was there with her. she's terribly afraid of ghosts, and she was sort of, she, um, had problems with ghosts while we were there. well, it's a long story, but it was very interesting. [laughter] so it didn't, you know, it didn't -- i never bring -- i've traveled with arctic, indigenous arctic people for 20 years on and off, ask and for the first probably ten years i never even probably took a camera. you know, i didn't want to -- i

just wanted to -- one never blends in, and it's silly to think you will. i just wanted to be like a regularring passenger on the path. regular passenger on the path. >> was there anything that you were able to do to actually help the people? [laughter] >> well, i listened to stories. i donated money at every temple, and we heard -- because nicky is young and she reads her tweets every second, we heard of a village, a very remote village out on a peninsula that still was having food problems, is so we, the three of us each donated our own money and bought a whole load of food and drove it out there. we helped put people in contact with other nonprofit groups like people who had hogs of people

who were -- who had lots of people who were doing fabulous clean-up projects. you know, we did what we could. and then hoping to help with rebuilding projects. you know, the next step is going to be the hardest in a way because the government is -- well, while they're lying about radiation, they're also helping people in everyday ways. but once you get past the temporary housing situation, you know, then you're kind of really on your own, and you have to figure out how to build a house and how to pay for it. so that's going to be hard. >> any other questions? well, if not, i'd like to thank gretel ehrlich for her wonderful and inspiring presentation for her new book, "facing the wave." and i thank you all for joining us here at the mechanics' institute here this san francisco.

i'm laura shepherd, director of events, and we look forward to seeing you very soon again. >> thank you. [applause] >> and now, booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. this weekend we are live from the tucson festival of books in arizona. follow us on twitter and facebook for live updates and pictures throughout the weekend. watch our live coverage and more all weekend long on booktv. for a complete schedule, visit booktv.org: >> i want to move to the role of publishers in this new world. it used to be that publishers would take care of all distribution, they would take care of production, and they would provide the advance. and that, that series of services led them to take a very hefty can cut, a 95% cut.

now, now you don't need production because you can put it out on the web, you don't need an advance because it doesn't cost that much to write, or you can crowd fund the advance using something like kickstarter. and you don't need the distribution, again, because you can put it on the web. and so what is the changing role of publishers in this new world where production and distribution and financing are starting to be taken by different, different technologies? >> so there's a lot in there, and let me kind of unpack it. first, i actually disagree fundamentally with a couple of things. um, there's, there are production, distribution costs, and, you know, tasks involved whether it's digital or physical. i think it's a very common sort of misunderstanding. it's very easy to think that digital is free. and it's not. i mean, a lot of backlash, actually, if you will, over some of the early book withs. and we've got an -- books.

and we've got an extensive back list, thousands and thousands of titles that need to be converted. there was a conversion process that takes place, and there's a lot of care and feeding that must go into that, because the early days when you're just sort of literally scanning books to get them into an e-format, you just were not replicating the book properly. so, first of all, there's still a production not just cost, but an entire lu new competency around production of a digital book and presenting that properly. i'm actually looking at our head of children's publishing, um, who's smiling because she knows, she and i have these conversations all the time. when you talk about chirp's books and how -- children's books and how to produce something that is for color that, you know, conveys the gorgeous illustrations, um, that the artist intended -- >> but if that's true, surely that's only true for the first copy. >> correct. >> and every one thereafter is free. because there's no, there's no marginal cost to make ten

million costs. >> right. you lose paper, printing and binding. >> so that's marginal cost. >> yep, the marginal cost of paper, printing and binding. the other thing -- >> and shipping. >> and shipping. >> and warehousing. >> and warehousing. [laughter] >> not necessarily. not necessarily -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it does. [laughter] >> no, not necessarily. there's a, there's a deep infrastructure that is needed to support digital operations. the other thing i would mention about the state of sort of publishing today is we talk about the future of reading, the future of publishing, where are e-books going to go, that's the big question. will it be a complete swapping out of the physical for the digital media as has happened in music, for example, and in film, photography, that is. in books i believe there's not going to be that swapping out 100% of physical for digital.

children's books, i think, are a great example where there's a very, very strong desire to have a physical book to flip through with your child. now, that's today. five, ten years from now, you know, we might be speaking on something different. but today publishers are in a world where they can't be jumping tracks from the physical to the digital wholly. we're truly supporting two businesses. so you're continuing to support the prohibit business while continuing to support the kingal business. -- digital business. underlying that is sort of a third business that you are cultivating which is getting to a place where we're not talking about the conversion of e-books. so merely taking what used to be in a physical form and now porting it over into a digital form, but the creation of digital products, the creation from really creating a doublingal product from -- digital product from conception, something that was initially conceive with the the author, develop with the the author to be a completely new digital

product. so the role of publishers in that scenario because the one thing that you had sort of forgotten on your list of what publishers do, it's really the heart of what we do, it's the editorial. it's really bringing that story, you know, shaping that story with the author and bringing it to market in the best possible way. that still exists and exists, i think, in a more, in an even more exciting way when you talk about the creation of digital-only products. >> shaping the story may be the only role, actually, because there's almost nothing left after that. helping shape the story -- >> that's just wrong! [laughter] i always wanted to get my john mclag land on. but, no, seriously, you're wrong. [laughter] i will say this, you know, as the other side. we're partners here. she's not my publisher, but she is a publisher. >> she might be. [laughter] >> i'm happy where i am. but, you know, i had a very explicit arrangement with harper about who's doing what here.

and, again, because i came from more of a digital foundation, i was just skeptical of everything. i was like i can do that, i got spell check, what have you got? [laughter] and it turns out i was wrong about a few things, i was right about a few things, and i learned a ton in the process. so in terms of the editorial, having an editor was great. now, of course, i could have independently hired a great writer/editor to help me through the process. i was happy to have the support of the person at harper, barry harbaugh, that was really cool. the distribution of digital to still support the digital, that i ignored completely. basically got free advertising across the nation on book shelves. i can't buy that. no single person can afford to distribute 10, 15, 20,000 book into the hundreds and hundreds of bookstores and libraries all around the world. and digital only doesn't do that. you cut off the physical marketing in that sense. so that helped support the digital. when they ran out of physical books, my e-book sales spiked,

so there was a level of demand regardless of format. and people literally, you could see the charts, they switched over. but they would have probably gotten a physical one. and then the actual marketing of the thing, me and my campaign manager for the book, a guy named craig who i met through the onion, we built this rabid internet army digital plan, and harper did the more traditional big media plan and got me on msnbc and all these things that, again, individuals, it's very hard. that's a network game. and that's a roll to decks game. and there's a finite amount of people who can talk to a finite amount of people to make that sort of thing happen, and the flood of authors can't all pull that off on their own. i found i was wrong that publishers are useless. [laughter] and i was grad for it, you know, pause we were splitting this hear money, and i want today make sure we were both doing something. [laughter] and i learned a lot about, you know, the excitement, the upside and the limits of what, you

know, individual authors or authors who create a collective or create their own kind of digital presence. but there's a flood of readers. there's also a flood of writings and words, tweets, blogs, also books. there's just more books than ever. and how do you discover, how do you discern, how do you convince somebody that you're worth their time? you know, attention is the currency. and whether you spend it watching a cat, you know, play a fiddle on youtube -- [laughter] or reading about future of blackness, like, that's an equal choice to some people. [laughter] in the bit world, we're just competing for pixels, we're competing for real estate, we're competing for mental real estate, and there's so many extra writers competing for attention that a publisher who knows what they're doing can add a little extra weight on top of the individual kickstarter-moving artist or somebody who's got a blog platform, i'm going to print out b