children of fortune. it's about the vanderbilt family. several decades after the commodore died cornelius vanderbilt the extraordinary wealth of that family had largely dissipated so we didn't really have that descendent who is considered one of the richest americans anymore. i'm enjoying now but is it talks about how temporal wealth was and the important of american longevity and good economic policies. pulitzer prize-winning author alice walker presents a collection of personal and political essays letters and poems. ms. walker opines on a range of topics from health care to the obama presidency for about 45 minutes.

>> i am very happy to see all of you. it's a wonderful evening to be in the city, which i know of unfortunately through so many of your disasters, but i was thinking, looking at the fountains, there is a little one you have for the children and a bigger one for the adults and i was thinking about water flows in peace of the history that is so fitted for me of the bombing of the people of the imprisonment of my media, that history is not the whole story and it's very good to remember that and to see that we make our way every day, every single step can be a different direction. so as i was thinking about what

i wanted to talk about and read about and i don't have a whole lot of time but i wanted to start by mentioning something that i find very disturbing which is that you know our country and we are not alone. this country is not the only country making a lot of war in the world that we are make you some really terrible big ones. please bomb and shoot these people over generations and starved them and have located. iran, other places in the world, and then when we have someone in the quote leadership who says well we will start a slow withdrawal and we start thinking oh well the war is over. i was reading or maybe i heard this somewhere and this is just something for us to meditate about, that the children in el salvador where the war went on forever and will never and

really, the children have been left so impoverished that they can no longer eat without having pain in their teeth because what has the war left them with? the war has left them with a toothache forever. this is what war does. it isn't just when you start -- stop shooting people and bombing their houses and destroying everything that somehow they are going to be okay. they are not. so i wanted to start their and also to go on to these two new books. now i have been trying for i guess the last 20 something years to stop writing books. [laughter] and you know, i totally get it that i work for the ancestors and i sometimes will feel very

free when i finish something. i remember finishing the color purple 30 years ago and just weeping in enjoy. okay, i am done. i have had that scenario with myself many times thinking i am done. but anyhow, so this book and i'm going to read first from "the cushion in the road" and i wanted to read a little bit about how that came about. how did i come to think of the life that i lead which is, when i'm not on the road somewhere is so quiet, so meditative, so contemplative, so happy with me and my sweetheart who is a decision. one of the ironies of life of course is that i love quiet so much that i fell in love with a person who plays the trumpet. [laughter] and so you know life i am sure

is the same with you. life is always telling us, who do you think is in charge? did you buy some dream ,-com,-com ma did you imagine that you are in charge? well i will just show you. so, this is a very short introduction to this book, "the cushion in the road." i have learned much from taoist thought. it has been a comfort to me since i read my first taoist poem which was sitting quietly and doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself. to me, this is a perfect poem. but there is also from that tradition this thought. a wanderer's home is in the road

a wanderer's home is in the road this has proved very true in my own life. much to my surprise because i'm such a homebody. i love being home with my plans, animals, sunrises and sunsets, the men. it is all glorious to me. and so when i turn 60 i was prepared to bring all of myself to sit on my cushion in a meditation room i had prepared long ago and never get up. [laughter] it so happened, it so happened that i was in south korea that year of course and south korea agreed with me. in fact in that culture it is understood that when we turn 60, when we turn 60 we become 80. it sounds like 80 but perhaps this is not how korean spell it. and this means we are free to become once

we are to rid ourselves of our cares especially those we have collected in the world and to turn inward to a life of bees, of leisure, of joy. i loved hearing this. what an affirmation of a feeling i was already beginning to have. in off of the world. where is the grandchild? where is the cushion? and so i began to prepare myself to withdraw from the world. there i sat finally on a cushion in mexico with a splendid view of a homemade stone fountain with its softly flowing water, a perfect soothing backdrop to what i thought would be the next and perhaps final 20 years of my life. unlike my great, great, great,

great grandmother who lived to be 125 at a figure at 80 is doing really well. and then a miracle seemed to be happening. america, america was about to elect or not elect a person of color as its president. what? my cushion shifted. then too an unsuspecting guest left the radio on and i've learned that toms were falling on the people of gaza. a mother unconscious herself had lost five of her daughters. didn't i have a daughter? what i have wanted to lose her in this way? wasn't i a mother even if reportedly imperfect in that role? well, my cushion began to wobble. i have friends who managed to stay agee.

i envied them. for me big years following my 60th birthday seemed to be about teaching me something else and yes i could become like a child again and enjoy all the pleasures of wonder of childhood experiences. but i would have to attempt to maintain this joy in the vicissitudes of the actual world as opposed to the meditative universe i had created with this calming ever flowing fountain. my travels would take me to a celebration in washington d.c. where i are new president barack obama would be inaugurated. they would carry me the morning after those festivities to faraway burma myanmar which would lead to much writing about unsung su chi. they would take me to thailand for a lovely trip up the river where i could wave happily at the people who smiled back when smiled upon. they would take me to gaza,

guests and much writing about the palestine israel impasse. to the west bank, to india to all kinds of amazing places like for instance petra in jordan. who knew? i would find myself raising a nation of chickens in between travels and visits to holy people in oakland would take her and -- my cushion the fountain because of my attention to some of the deep suffering in the world sometimes seemed far away. i felt torn. a condition i did not like and i did not recommend. and then in a dream that came to me, there was a long asphalt highway like the one that passed by my grandparents place when i lived with them as an eight and 9-year-old.

my grandfather and i would sit on the porch in the still of georgia heat and count the cars as they quizzed by. he would choose red cars, i would choose blue or black. it was a sitting on cushions of sorts i suppose for the two of us because ours could go by and we were perfectly content. perhaps that is why in the dream the solution to my quandary was available. they are in the middle of the lawn perfectly straight highway was a slightly faded yellow center line that i had known and loved as a child sat my rose-colored meditation cushion, directly on the yellow line right in the middle of the road. so what do i believe? that i was born to wander and i was born to sit.

to love home with a sometimes unbearable affection that to be lured out into the world to see how it is doing as my beloved larger home and paradise. [applause] so, in my kitchen for many years i have been supported by all the photographs and sayings and poetry of people and recently i decided to take down most of it because it had been there so long the edges were curling and the paper was turning yellow but when i came to this quote from walt whitman i could not remove it. i will read it to you because one of the things that is so

lovely about having a history and my place is to have poets who have gone before and who have left these wonderful guides to us. and you probably know this quote. this is what you shall do. love the earth and the sun and the animals. love the earth and the sun and the animals. despise riches. dare i disagree with them. [laughter] i think it should be shared riches. give alms to everyone that asks. stand up for this stupid and crazy. i loved that part. stand up for the stupid and crazy. now really, this will test us. [laughter] but it has to be done. you have to stand up for them and to them. [laughter]

devote your income and labor to others and to yourself. when deserving. hate tyrants. really. you know, the tyrants, i don't know of hating them is going to change them. it's not seeming to work very well. anyway, hate tyranny. argue not concerning god. that is an argument you have to create is futile. you know, really. looking deeply, peering closely. have patience and indulgence toward people. now that is also a tall order especially in hot weather. [laughter] have patience and indulgence toward people. take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men.

go freely with powerful -- go freely with powerful uneducated people and with the young and with the mothers of families. read the sleeves in the open air every season and every year of your life. re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any look. re-examine it. dismiss whatever, whatever insults your own soul. dismiss it. and your very flesh shall be a great poet. hallelujah. [applause] i want to read something called ending the age of waste. now, and this time, we always wonder about what is the most

crucial thing to do and one of these essays i say that to me the most crucial thing that we can do is to regain our health. and the second most crucial thing to do was to help other people to gain bears because if we are a healthy people we are less easily lead in destructive ways and we are so much less gullible and so much more clearheaded and awake. in fact we were listening just last night. a friend who has a little dog named duke. every time we visited these friends old duke was just sleeping on the cushion. sleeping, not meditating, sleeping. and then duke's people put him on a diet and the entire time we saw duke last evening duke was just bouncing all over the place, bright-eyed and happy, full of himself.

that is the way it can be with us. but anyway, in this particular piece i'm saying something else. the most important thing humanity can do is believe in itself. and i do believe this is true. i think we are in such danger of not believing in ourselves because we have gone so far. we have lost so much of what we thought was good, what we thought was possible, what we thought was right. the most important thing humanity can do is to believe in itself, that we can grow, that we can change and we can rouse ourselves. gratitude is what makes us wealthy. by respecting her limits to the only planet mother we had ever known. gratitude, to the only planet mother we have all ever known. until i was a teenager i had no

experience of waste. growing up on a farm in georgia everything we grew builds raised or so it was use intel was used up. there was no extra. and no such thing as litter. my parents were puzzled when they received in the committee among relatives and friends and among the children the age of waste. neither of them knew what to do for example with styrofoam containers or plastic cups. they thought items so wondrously made so sturdy should certainly be prized. they carefully washed and use them until their replacements began to appear at an alarming rate.

now isn't that sweet? don't you just love my parents? just such a dear understanding of what would become the problem but anyway, for a long time they collect data and stash these new inventions in the kitchen pantry believing i suppose that at some point they would come in handy. now isn't that you know -- [laughter] i just want to hug them. i just want to hug them. they were so wise. perhaps they could be used to carry food to picnics. maybe they would be useful to share food if someone came to dinner and wanted to take food home. i mean really, that makes so much sense. how could they know that this plastic by almost all plastic from that time to this would end up in the oceans, killing turtles dolphins and whales and fish and presenting major health challenges to humans, used onced

thrown away. my parents heeded their homes never more than three small rooms in the kitchen with wood that they cut and carried inside themselves until they moved to town where everyone used electric heaters and in the chilly concrete rooms of the projects brand them in winter almost all the time. rarely feeling warm but even so. my grandparents were even more frugal than my parents and lacked for a longer time than my parents both electricity and refrigeration. all food was eaten fresh, canned in jars for winter or smoked. in summer than favorite fruit watermelon was kept cool by placing the melons under the bed oh, a magical place. to me as a child for the round dark green treasure.

i'm going to stop it here and recommend that when you go and buy watermelons especially those green ones and if you have children put the melons under the bed for the children to find. it's absolutely heaven. [laughter] they had kerosene lamps that they lived just as darkness fell and tell in their late 60's. they like my parents grew everything they ate except for citrus fruit sugar salting coffee which they bought in town a few times a year. like my parents also the pigs chickens goats and ducks and groove garden of healthy produce that made them some of the best fed people on earth. they knew nothing of artificial fertilizer, nothing of lifestyle. nothing of pesticides. there was as i recall one major infestation of their garden among the tomatoes, giant tomato worms that were carefully picked

off the plants by hand. as children we chased each other around the yard with these worms , huge and scary to see. like miniature green dragons. the largest of them even had horns. i was not afraid of them. my sister ruth was terrified of them, which was really unfortunate for her. [laughter] what i have learned from these countryfolk and from my own life is that it is not necessary, it is not necessary to be rich or even quote well off, to be happy. what is essential though, what is essential though is to have enough. much energy might go into educating human beings about just what enough is. as a culture we in america have rarely seen. part of this ignorance is because we inherited the

consumer driven capitalist system and paid no attention to the people of the indigenous cultures already here who are more like my parents and grandparents. extremely careful not to waste anything. if my parents and grandparents have had health care that included even a yearly visit to the dentist and of schools that were well-equipped with teachers and materials and work that provided a decent wage, our family would have been content with a happiness that went beyond the main peaceful existence we managed to make out of but we did have. will we need to endure another war on american soil? the many wars that have been fought here, it is a civil war that we must think of as war. the quote indian wars genocidal wars against indigenous populations are largely forgotten.

but are we to have to have another war on our soil before we learn what is precious in life? god for bid and yet i think of the story a friend of mine told about being in nicaragua during the contra war against the sandinistas. you will recall that the united states backed the contras, alas. she said wednesday she would watch the member of the sandinista government stoop down to pick up a paperclip that it dropped onto the floor. nicaragua had been so impoverished by the war that there seemed nothing they could consider office supplies. she could tell by the look in his eyes that the paperclip was cherished. this was the most moving moment in her time of witnessing there. this may well be how it is for us, so wasteful of so much for so long. but maybe not.

nostradamus's prophecy of nuclear war during this very period notwithstanding. perhaps we can learn how to change our course in a way that means that we and all of earth's resources will not be consumed in war. war which is perhaps the most blatantly unintelligent and unproductive activity that humans are engaged in. of course there are others. a general waste of earth's resources constituting a major and unwinnable war. unwinnable war not only against our common mother but against ourselves. that the planet is fed up. the planet is tired of us. my friend of lakota and kickapoo ancestry is to come to my house

exhausted from speaking up for mother earth and would collapse on a bed in my guest studio always sprinkling tobacco in honor of her and saying to us mother earth is so tired, so weary, so disrespected and ravaged i can hardly bear her suffering. sometimes in sorrow he would weep. it always felt as if he were talking about his very best friend as well as his mother. he was. he died talking and singing and drumming to her preying on top of -- where corporations were stripmining cool or chanting beside pristine rivers into the polluted from every conceivable contamination caused by mine fracking and other grotesque forms of ecological ways. he was always thinking of her, always in prayer full alignment.

he was her son. he did not forget this for a moment. we must all learn to know her as bill did, to feel with her, to know she is alive, that she is alive and needing affection, caring, love. that she gives us everything. who are we to give her nothing but basically grief? massive amounts of faith will be required that we can change enough to be worthy of her caring for us, all these millions of years, all these millions of years caring for us. there is a bit of comfort in knowing that having done all that we can, all that we can, that we must go down, we will go down together and heartfelt alignment. earth mother and her earthling children hand-in-hand doing oura

fate that unfortunately for us humans is all too easily without a drastic change of course and is already in so many parts of the world apparent. [applause] i want -- i understand, i don't have all the time in the world that i wanted to read redo a poem if i can find it. it just came to me. it's called but do i get for getting old? [laughter] and wait, here it is. what do i get for getting old, 72. i really like this one because

you know one of the problems -- there are so many things that you can plug in anywhere but the whole idea of being afraid of getting old even though you don't want to die is so bizarre. would you rather just die and not get old? [laughter] what do i get for getting old? a picture story for the curious. uh-oh. how much more time? okay, in that case i am going to read some short ones. oh, oh, oh. wait, wait, wait, okay, okay. okay, thank you. what do i get for getting old? a picture story for the curious.

you supply the pictures. i get to meditate in a chair. now, how many meditators out there, because you know in the ideal scenario you sit on a cushion and cross your legs and you do the whole thing and you have to be really correct, right when you get old you can meditate in a chair. [laughter] i get to meditate in a chair or against the wall with my leg stretched out. that is really bad news if you go to a meditation center. or even embed. when you get old you can do that. ..

i get to snuggle all morning with my smuggler of choice. counting the hours by how many times we get up to pee. [laughter] i get to spend time with myself whenever a want. i get to eat chocolate with my salad or even as the first course. i get to forget. abcaeight to paint with colors simex myself, colors i have never seen before. i get to sleep with my dog and pray never to outlive my cats. i get a set play music without reading a note. i get to spend time with myself whenever i want. i get to sleep in a hammock under the same stars wherever i am. i get to spend time with myself whenever i want.

i get to laugh at all of the things i don't know and cannot find. [laughter] i get to greek people i don't remember as if i know them very well. [laughter] [applause] after all, how different can they be? [laughter] i get to it grow my entire garden. agate to spend time with myself whenever i want. i get to a see and feel the suffering of the whole world and take a nap when i feel like it anyway. i get to spend time with myself whenever i want. i get to feel more love than i ever thought existed. everything appears to be made of stuff. i feel this especially for you,

though i may not remember exactly which you you are. [laughter] how cool this is. still, i get to spend time with myself whenever i want. and that is just a taste, as the old people used to say down in georgia when i was a child, of what you did for getting old, reminding us as they witness our curiosity about death, that no matter the loss, there is something fabulous going on in every stage of life, something to let go of maybe but for darn sure something to get. [applause] [applause] okay. this is the last one. this is a poem about recognizing that sin is actually a part of

discipline that makes us who we become, that there is no such thing as living without it. and we might as well, you know, accept that and work with it. and by doing that we can grow a lot. so this is called hope to send only ended the service of waking up. hope never to believe it is your duty to harm another simply because you have mistakenly believed they are not new. hope to understand the suffering as a the -- even in school, even in school you wish to avoid but could not. hope to be imperfect. hope to be imperfect. all the ways that keep you growing.

hope never to see another, not even of blade of grass that is beyond your joy. hope not to be a snob on the very day love shows up in loves work clothes. [laughter] hope to see your own skin in the wood grains of your house. hope to talk to trees and at last tell them everything you have always thought. hope at the end, at the end to into the unknown knowing yourself, for getting yourself also. hope to be consumed. hope to be consumed, to disappear into your own love. hope to know where you are,

paradise, if nobody else does. it hope that every failure, every failure is an arrow pointing toward enlightenment. and hope to send. hope to send only in the service of waking up. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> do you want to take some questions? >> now? okay. >> hi, ladies and gentlemen.

i am the director and designated bad guy this evening. we have about ten or 15 minutes to take some questions. if you have a question, please raise your hand and we will get a microphone to you. there is a gentleman in the back on the left with his hand up. cam. yes, sir. >> i recently read a book one day in december by nancy stark. you wrote the introduction for the book. it is a biography of sylvia sanchez, and in reading the book i felt that her biography has a special relevance, especially to women in this country. briefly just to say that her life shows that it is possible

for women to become leaders in a struggle to guarantee that everyone has top-quality medical care as well as education as well as an attempt to eliminate poverty. so i wonder if you could just give the few words about why you decided to write the introduction to this book. >> i would be happy to. she was really the equal partner with fidel castro in the cuban revolution, but nobody in this country hardly has heard of her. and so i get a lot of manuscripts' of people asking me to, you know, read them, right introductions, and i picked this one up. i started reading. it's about 400 pages long. it is so astonishing, the life of this woman who made the

revolution with castro, you know, the people that many of you in this audience are somewhat familiar with. she was a society young woman. her father was a doctor, and she -- i think it was because he was a doctor she got to see some of what was going on to the people in her country. for instance, cuba at that time was a place for a lot of pedophilia brought in -- i mean, the people who did it were brought in from the united states often or were members of the mob. so they would come to cuba and campbell and, you know, avail themselves of prostitutes, very young children. one of these children was a child that syria had known because of her work with her doctor father.

and this child had been raped to death. this was a turning point for her and for many of the women, all of these revolutionary women who took up arms and workover instigators of the revolution to get rid of batista, the dictator who was in the pocket of the united states. so i read this through. it is just amazing. the writer had access to the archive and all of the letters between celia and castro, for instance. and it is such an eye opening breed because she understands that part of what -- you know, we know so many of the reasons why we were kept in the dark about cuba. one of the big things that we had no idea about was just how strong the women component was

in that revolution. because we were always shown just these men that basically had to be eradicated. and celia herself lived to be 60 and died of lung cancer. she was a terrible smoker. her father before her was a smoker. he died of lung cancer. i think she was always so stressed because she was always trying to protect castro. they tried to assassinate him 648 times. and in the course of all those attempts -- it is amazing. they are really an amazing people. fidel and celia adopted children. the adopted children of some of the people who were killed making their revolution and traced them, even though, you know, half the time they were trying to find a place to hide

him so that, you know, hoover, whoever was looking could not find them. one of the other fascinating aspects was that they were a revolutionary partnership. they never married. and cuban society at that time -- i don't know about now -- but they were very rigid about things like matrimony. you were supposed to be married. if you lived with the man, you were supposed to be married. they were like, when are you getting married? eventually fidel initially to get around to a feeling the heat and said, you know, do you want to get married? he did this at least twice that we know of. each time she said no. and what they ended up doing, what she ended up doing basically was every time he proposed marriage she would build another room on to her house and fix it up really beautifully. she did this from the very beginning.

she was the person who made sure of that up in the mountains he was comfortable and had his own room. she had her space. it is a really interesting piece . it really is. anyway, i read through the 400 pages -- pages. it was so astonishing that i went right back to the beginning and read it through a second time. this is our impression is kept from us. they put up an embargo, tell you that the people are evil. tell you why they're killing them. you just have to find out for yourself. i have been there four times and have always had a wonderful time, even when there was practically no food, gas, no nothing. i still felt that these were some great people, and i am very happy for them that they have had so many people who truly love them, who truly love them.

one day we will have somebody who truly loves us. [applause] >> right here in the fifth row. >> hello. hell are you? i am karla. i'm sorry. >> hi. >> i am kind of close to the ground. i wanted to thank you for writing your short story. recovery community when i teach parenting about valuing every day things and valuing ourselves . parents say no to their children i want to thank you for that. >> you're welcome.

[applause] >> the gentleman right behind. >> thank you very much. thank you very much. wonderful poems and inspiration. i love the lessons that you teach. such as the one about letting go of resent. that has been a lesson that i really need to learn. i will admit -- i just want to say i -- just say, i highly recommended. that's all. >> thank you. [applause] >> we have time for one more question. for testimony. [laughter]