next from st. paul minnesota with the help of our local cable partner comcast we talked to carole connolly. >> i turned a corner and suddenly without warning i stand this whole amir and there it is my mother's face staring back at me in disbelief. the phase i once swore i would never have. >> carole connolly the poet laureate of st. paul minnesota. what is a poet laureate of st. paul minnesota? >> guest: at all sort of started when a legislator put a bill in the legislature to make a poet laureate since many states have one. the governor at the time vetoed saying next you'll be asking for

a poet dancer and a poet potter and even though making a poet laureate cost no money to the state because it goes through commission. there's absolutely no cost to anyone. a friend of mine had a meeting with chris coleman and she said we should have a poet laureate and he said done. that's how hard i had to work to get appointed. >> host: what is a poet laureate do? >> guest: you can do whatever you want. people do different things with their laureate ship and the thing i do is since i was appointed i think it was in 2007 i orchestrate or organize a reading by writers once a month at the university for writers who have new books for writers who are new writers. we have readings every month and we are getting great audiences of over 100 which is great for poetry reading. i consider it my gift to the

poets in minnesota really. >> host: can you talk a little bit about the literary community care in st. paul? what type of community as a? >> guest: i think we have a vibrant literary community in st. paul and minneapolis. in st. paul poetry is very respected and very revered and tons of people are writing poetry and many people are getting published and then we have the stars like garrison keillor. we have just the guy down the street who decided to read a few poems that may turn out to be really good. that's the way people get to have a book. it's a very supported art in st. paul i would say and minneapolis. i didn't start writing until i was 40 and it was by pure accident. i think most poets don't decide when i do and they don't decide when they are little kid i will be a poet. i have been keeping a journal and i decided i would go to the

loft which is our literary center and take a class about how to write a novel and how to put all the stuff into a book. someone recommended that i see a writer who she knew who had a big family just like mine. she had three children. i had seven so her situation was filled and her class was filled. i said i will take a class i'm poetry that's how it started. >> host: what were you doing before you got into all this? >> guest: i work to new york for a while for wonder woman magazine and then i was writing for the newspaper, writing for the st. paul pioneer press. also i was writing poetry but when it ended i was eight able to give a lot more time to the art of poetry. >> host: what type of poetry to you most like to write?

>> guest: all sorts of things that body, that's kind of a joke but in a way it's true. i've like to write about daily occurrences on what's good and what's that that's going on. a lot of my poetry is political because because i spend a lot of times in politics through my whole life. >> host: what was your driving force in politics that you were involved in? women's rights issues? >> guest: yes, i was very active in the women's movement and mccarthy's campaign for president. we thought we are going to end the vietnam war. he's a good friend. he's a fine poet actually. in many ways he was an inspiration for me and that he could do all that he was doing and still write poems. >> host: house the politics of the state changed its mccarthy's time? >> guest: i think they have sort have gone in perry. a liberal governor which we have

right now for all sorts of good things happened in the previous guy was the -- and he's also the one who didn't want a poet laureate because it would cost the state money. he never obviously read the bill that wasn't going to cost anything. it was up and down i suppose that's true for any kind of political life. a gentleman temptation. meet me at 6:00 at the new french café. we will share a cup of. hanson is he and debonair, his smile as wide as the english channel. but a hungry woman searching for substance could drown in a cup of at 6:00 at the new french café. >> host: now you mentioned the

budget. to the mayor ask you to write that? >> guest: i have forgotten what the first part is that i wrote for the mayor. the second one he asked me if i would write a poem for the budget. so i did. >> host: can make your little bit of that? >> guest: yes. a poem for the budget address august 14 for mayor chris coleman. the sun rises and the drama that is our daily life begins. we ride bicycles and buses, and drive gas guzzlers and hybrid cars, trucks with coca-cola logos. we worry for our daughters. we worry for her sons who pierce your ears. we work hard try to pay her medical bills and play the roles we have chosen are that have chosen us. what can we say that has not been set? the notion of no new taxes continues to stifle progress and

strangle compassion. the endless war hawks are state. we spend $200,000 every minute to sustain a government in iraq while iraqi officials disappear for month-long vacations. there is no vacation for us. the bridge has collapsed. it's a catastrophe. we are shocked. we pull ourselves together and learn new lines on the front, we become the hometown heroes we will forever revere. later back in her old neighborhood no matter how far up the road we move a thunderstorm is uprooted an ancient tree. nothing stays the same. the old tree staircase above. we pull over to the curb, stop, leap and see against all odds backyard gardens safe insertion. we are lucky to be alive. the sun begins to set.

cinnamon liked the seven hills of our city and they find the process the results we need to do what must be done to stabilize the neighborhoods of our beloved city. they are the foundation of freedom. >> when i listen to that i am learning something about st. paul in the area. can you talk about what you were trying to impart? >> guest: i was trying to impart despite the budget deficit which was pretty huge at the time we still have a great city and we have a great future in the city. this was written in 2007. >> host: you mentioned the bridge. >> guest: yes, yeah. it was in minneapolis so it's a different world for many of us but that people involved it was horrific. >> host: what has been the best part of being a poet laureate? >> guest: is a wonderful honorary thing. it's a lovely thing and i'm

grateful to have it. for me a lifetime appointment which is a safe bet i'm an old girl by now. >> host: thank you very much for taking the time. >> guest: thank you was a pleasure. it's a pleasure meeting you. >> lynn sherr former journalist for nbc news recalls the life of sally ride the first american woman in space. the program is next on booktv. >> all right. i am chill with the "washington post."

and i'm one of the sponsors of this event. i can report that last night i sat on my porch in and a beautiful washington evening and just loves the book you are going to hear about written by lynn sherr, a longtime correspondent for abc news and the newsmagazine 2020 about sally ride. "sally ride" america's first woman in space and this book is a barnburner. it has several narrative threads that are utterly captivating. it's not just about an astronaut. sally ride was a ph.d. physicist in the 1970s when there weren't a lot of women who were going and getting ph.d.s in physics. she broke so many barriers. i have three daughters. they are all young women. i want them all to read this book.

this book is about someone who had such an extraordinary life and as a reporter i also admire so much of lynn because lynn new sally ride. land covered the space program the shuttle program in the 1980s and sally ride made her historic flight in 1983 and became friends and they knew each other for decades. lynn is also a terrific journalist and after sally ride unfortunately passed away at an untimely early age land was brought in by friends and family to write this biography. what you see is a journalist work and it's a terrific piece of journalism because sally ride was a historic figure a public figure would also private figure and she had some secrets

including one very large secret which came out after her death. it's just a great great piece of storytelling and gives us a chance to know this extraordinary woman better and appreciate her pioneering life. i think you will love this book and i think you are going to love hearing from lynn sherr. [applause] >> thank you joe. i've been a fan of joel's work at the "washington post" for many years and now of course i want to marry him. [laughter] i am thrilled to be here. i love the library of congress. i love the "washington post." i love big washington and i love the fact that there are so many booklovers in this round so thank you all for coming. i'm especially thrilled to be here to talk about a woman who really was h. roux american he

hero, a woman who made an enormous impact on our world as a life that is an inspiration for so many of us not just joel's daughters that so many of us are craving for inspiration in these troubling times. sally ride is a woman whose name is now attached to several schools across the country. her name is attached to an impact crater on the moon and to an outer space science adventure and the rv, the rv research vessel sally ride vessel sally ride has just been christened in california, a ship that will apply the wider societies can explore beneath the sea which is what she was trying to do in our space. posthumously sally ride was awarded the presidential medal of freedom.

one of her nasa colleagues once asked sally what would it take to get you to take the job as nasa administrator? sally who spent most of her life in the perfect climate of our west coast quipped that she would indeed take the job if they moved to california. [laughter] she was also funny and mischievous and she was indeed my friend. while her real name was sally ride, how does that happen? she was not inspiration for their rock hits mustang sally with the great cursor ride sally ride. sally lamented that she ran from that song her entire life but i have to tell you of course it

was some enchanted when she flew for the first time in june of 198331 years ago. i was anchoring the liftoff and the whole mission. my favorite sign down at the kennedy space center was on a bank marquee in cocoa beach south of the kennedy space center in florida. a giant marquee. sally of course is flying with a crew of five for men and sally and the marquee read ride sally ride and the guys can tag along too. [laughter] more to sally's liking was being acknowledged by the late joe and his song we didn't like the fire. if that's the one in which he ticked off the names of 56 historic figures and moments over the past 40 years. sally ride came between wheel of fortune and heavy metal suicide. the song shot to the top of the billboard 100. sally herder for the first time

driving along in her car and nearly drove off the cliff. so did her good friend billie jean king who told me that she would always turn up the volume to catch sally's name on the radio. i have to tell you i did the same thing. let me start with a cartoon. this is the cartoon that was published after sally died. there were a number of editorial cartoons commemorating her life and her death in july of 2012. the one that i liked the best is a teenaged girl bedroom a surprisingly neat teenage girls bedroom and it's bursting with science textbooks and physics and astronomy and has a poster of the space shuttle and models of rocketships all over the place. a teenage girl is sitting there at her desk looking at her computer and on the monitor is

sally's obituary. so sally ride 1951 to 2012 and there's a picture. the girl's mom is standing behind her and the girl was talking the teenage girl and she has the look of shock on her face. it's not the sally died. it's the back story and the caption which is the girl talking to her mom reads, wait, are you saying there was a time when there weren't any women astronauts? so that's really what this story is about. of course there was a time when there weren't any women astronauts. our glorious space program was a men's club only for the first 25 years and as a result women like sally were smart and adventurous just didn't grow up with astronaut dreams. sally certainly did not. the job was not available. when sally cared about was science. she loves science as a kid.

she also cared a lot about tennis. she was nine years old when her mom put a tennis racket in her hand for the first time. it turned out this incredibly lean and supple and athletic woman was a great tennis player wound up with lessons from their pro-named alice marble and accomplished tennis player. sally played on the juniors women's secret -- circuit. shackley considered becoming a professional can't tennis player player dropped out of college after year and a half to give it a try and very quickly figured out that the combination of not being what she considered in the top and also all the practice of required letter to go back to science. later in life people would say what was it because you not to be a professional tennis player and sally would always answer my forehand. but she pivoted.

sally was a great pivot her. she would have been a terrific politician but was not interested. and went right back to science. after she had gone -- she grew up in southern california and had gone to college outside of philadelphia for a year and a half. dropped out to try to be a tennis player and when that didn't work out she went to stanford where she would go for, she would get her undergraduate, her masters and her ph.d. ultimately in astrophysics. in fact she was in the midst of writing her first graduate school applications in january of 1977, just finishing thesis when she wandered into the stanford student union one morning in january. she tried to settle in with a cup of coffee and a sweet roll in order to wake up before cla class, picks up the stanford daily, the school paper and

never got beyond the front page. they're above the fold on the right-hand side of the front page was the headline that read nasa to recruit women. wow indeed. sally's future had just landed in her lap. after 25 years of space, at that point it wasn't 25, actors 20 some years almost 20 years of the space program that has been as i said men only and white men only nasa was joining the rest of the country and appreciating the fact that women and minorities could expand the corner very good way. there were also laws and there were rules and the federal government had said okay everybody has got to get onboard with this. the rest of the country was pretty well along at that point. harvard yale and princeton most of the big schools had our integrated along sex lives and

race lines. it just took nasa little bit longer but once they got there they were totally evolved. it actually 1976 a year earlier they had put out a new class of astronauts pool to be trained for the space shuttle program and they specifically wanted to add women and minorities. the article that sally saw in the stanford daily was an interview with somebody at stanford who had been contacted that they were looking for women and minorities. sally read the article and she read the job description for the new breed if you will, the new category of astronauts called a mission specialist. nasa had a new space shuttle which was a plane like a 727 that was going to go up, orbit the earth, and build a space station, launch a space

telescope, do experiments and in return. it was going to be the first reusable spacecraft. it was no longer a tiny capsule like the ones we sent our brave men to demand an end. in fact john glenn used to joke about the mercury program when he started that the capsule wasn't exactly something you got into. it was something like that you put on. so now the space shuttle was much larger vehicle with a much larger crew compartment. the crews were going to be larger. there was room to move around and because of that there was room for four different genders and they felt there was room for a little more privacy and there was the need for the mission specialists who would do the scientific things in space. sally read the article, sought the description and said to herself, i can do that. she puts down her coffee, puts down her sweet roll walks up to the door and go strictly to find

a paper or pencil and envelope and a stamp. it was that long ago and immediately sent off to nasa for an application. this is a woman who thought for sure she was going to be a scientist, thought for sure she would be teaching, she would be doing research and now she said i'm going over there. long story short sally was one of more than 25,000 people who wrote for that application. 8000 filled the application of whom more than 1500 were women. in may and after a year-long process of interviews and screenings and recommendations sally was chosen as one of the 35 members of the new class of astronauts for the space shuttle. of them six were women, three african-american men, one hawaiian. nasa was suddenly looking like the poster child for

multiculturalism and sally was over the moon about the choice. understand that sally was an introvert, as very shy woman. genetically if you study psychology there something called the myers-briggs psychology scale. on one side or the i for the introvert. these are the people who are happier in a small group of people and then on the other side or the e's for the extroverts people like me who like to stand and talk to people. sally was a total i. she gets the call that she would become an astronaut candidate and issue told the story she's in her own room at stanford jumping up and down screaming and yelling, picks up the phone and called her best friend from high school and says hi beared this is your friendly local astronaut calling. her parents share the glory of her own idiosyncratic ways great sally said that her father

didn't have a scientific bone in his body. when sally said she was going to be an astrophysicist dale ride did not explain to his friends that sally said now that i'm an astronaut his problems are solved. sally's wonderful mother still with us at the age of 90 spotted in a different way. with sally go into space and her sister studying for the ministry joyce ride said to reporter, well one of them will get to heaven. [laughter] this is the background she came from. sally soon learned that being elevated to the astronaut corps was tougher than bad and she wasn't going to get to heaven immediately because she started out facing the press corps with little imagination. she suffered her first press conference and this is a graduate student now having a press conference and media interviews done by the stupidity of questions like aren't you afraid of being in orbit with all those men?

and do you expect to run into any ufos? sally, answered no to the latter and assured her academic careers in an astrophysicist had made her comfortable around males thank you very much. i met sally ride in 1981 when as a correspondent for abc news i joined the team covering the then upcoming space shuttle program. the first shuttle flew in april of 81 so in january of 81 i joined our group going down to the johnson space center to start preparing the stories that at times. we had a great team. i'm sure you will remember many of them. the anchorman was frank reynol reynolds, abc anchorman who was extremely knowledgeable about space and our space correspondent jules bergman who essentially hath exempted -- it

was brilliant at what he did. i was brought into being now with what i described as the guy to do the feature stories. because a variety of incidents i wound up anchoring and becoming the lead space reporter anchoring the shuttle liftoff some landings for the first five years. it's truly great experience. when i first got to nasa my first assignment was to do a story on this new breed of astronauts to women and minorities and sally was one of the first people that nassau offered me to interview. the two of us hit it off immediately. i liked her direct manner. i liked her determination and i like the fact that she didn't give me paned answers that is to say something she thought i wanted to hear. for instance i asked her in the first interview why do you want to go into space and she said to me i don't know. she said i discovered half the

people would love to go to space and there's no need to explain it to them. the other half can't understand it and i could explain it to them and i was all she had to say about that. in a fraternity of uptight she was a breath of fresh feminism acknowledging unequivocally that the women's movement had made her situation with with nasa doing the right thing. we became friends instantly. as the program developed and i wound up anchoring abcs coverage i continue to spend time with sally. she married a fellow astronaut. their home became my pizza and beer hangout during other people's missions. sally of course got her chance five years later. she was the first of the six women chosen to fly, an amazing story all by itself and she became our newest american hero.

a smart and funny and daring optimist to train endlessly and answered questions tirelessly. the public attention though as i say was both flattering and a little bit frustrating to her. women were viewed as a novelty in this previously men only club. it culminated in the question i would nominate as being the dumbest press question ever asked at a press conference anywhere at any time. i have been to a lot of press conferences. this was may of 1980 3a month before sally flew. sally is up in the front of the round, our room about the size of the space center on the dais with her entire crew. sally in the four guys. a reporter from "time" magazine raises hand and he said dr. ride yet been training for a year and i know it's very intense and i'm just curious when you make a mistake and something goes wrong

how do you respond? do you weep? [laughter] that's the way most of the room treated it. i would have course club the guy's eyes out. this is why sally was for the right person to have been selected. she took it all in stride. she kind of rolls her eyes. she has one of those oh my god is a serious looks on her face and then she smiles and turns to rick howe who was the pilot of the mission sitting next to her and she said pleasantly why doesn't anyone ever asked rick these questions? you know was so brilliant. she defused the bomb instantly. it was absolutely great. within nasa there were some other hurdles to leap. the six women -- back when sally was chosen she had to make a number of very quick decisions about the stuff she was taking

with her on flight. when you fly anything in space every item has to be checked for cross guessing and chemical reactions in the spaceship for what might happen with the weightlessness. every item has to be checked. the man had a pretty sad list of toiletries and cosmetics and stuff in their toiletries kit that will go up with them. now that women were flying they had to change some of that so they said to sally would you want to take? sally wisely brought another women understanding that whatever position she made would devolve for the next woman to fly. so the women got nasa to exchange the old spice aftershave and the british sterling deodorant for more female friendly lotions and potions and they got nasa to add

what only nasa called hair restraints. we call them rubber bands. it wasn't just nasa. when the original launch date was moved back to accommodate a change in the schedule josh carson joked on the tonight show that america's first woman in space, that the shuttle was going to be delayed because sally ride had to find a purse to match her shoes. and that was the funniest of all of his jokes that continued for a solid year before sally flew. i'm happy to report, i've watched all the videotapes of these old shows. i'm happy to report that the audience laughed at the first one and over the years there was less laughter. there was violence and toward the end there were boos. the idea of america's first woman in space had gone from being a punchline to a matter of national pride.

i think a huge amount of that was the way sally ride herself handled herself with such integrity and such wit throughout the situation. they got to the point where when she finally launched the whole world was riding with her. i had my one-on-one. the major commercial networks had one-on-one interviews and at did my one-on-one with sally i said to her do you feel under pressure of america's first woman to fly quick she said i do feel under pressure. i feel under pressure not to mess up. and that's all she said. but i think sally meant and what i know she meant what she didn't want to mess up for her crew because every mission is a team operation. she didn't want to mess up for nasa because she believed in nasa. she didn't want to mess up for the united states because she believed in the preeminence of the u.s. in space technology. she didn't want to mess up for the future of human spaceflight but mostly she didn't want to mess other women because she

understood that when she messed up somebody would say you can't fly a woman astronaut because one woman messed up but if she did well then that would open the doors for many more women after her. that of course is exactly what happened. listen to another shuttle three-time veteran pamela milroy one of two women to have commanded a shuttle flight from a different generation than sally. but she said it wasn't until after i became an astronaut that i discovered the most important gets sally gave me which is that she was tremendously confident. the repetition of everyone who comes than depends on how well you do. sally sally opened those doors and smooth the path for all women because she was very good at what she did. she was really into what she did and she was also very playful. on the morning, the night before sally flew excuse me she flew on a saturday in june of 1983 and

the night before all astronauts go into quarantine which is to say they can't have contact with other people except family members. you don't want any stray germs to jeopardize the mission. sally was in quarantine and off-limits server when including the press and she was the most famous person on the planet. she was on the cover of every magazine. everybody wanted to talk to sally and nobody could get to her. i'm sitting in our abc workspace that afternoon getting my script ready for the night before she flies and by the way we had very glamorous digs in television news. the phone rings and someone said lynn is for you. the little voice at the other end said hi there would be doing five minutes from now? i said i don't know sally what am i doing five minutes from now quick she said about you walk

out of your trailer turn left and go down the gravel path and stopped. i walked outside and there were sally 50 yards away from me and cut off shorts and a t-shirt and flip-flops standing by a car smiling and waving at me. she liked to push the envelope a little bit. sally was a team player who could follow the rules very well but this was one rule she wanted to push a little and she wanted to say to me i'm in great shape. i'm happy and you can tell the world i'm just fine for this flight. she knew i wouldn't get any closer and i wouldn't ask her questions that she wouldn't answer this was typical sally. this is evidently as my vision of sally that i will hold in my mind for a time sally standing there waving and smiling. she was even happier when she got into space. sally loves her flights. they launched a bunch of satellites and they made the

government many millions of dollars. it was a great flight. it lasted a week. i signed off one of my pieces that week saying technologically nasa is pushing towards the 21st century than in human terms it has finally entered the 20th. and i had trouble getting through that my bosses i would like to say. i also brought my mother to launch. my mother was then approaching 80. sally was in many ways very lucky. i'm sure all of you who have watched many of the space shuttle missions remember there were always delays. sally flew twice and no delays whatsoever. got to the pad and boom it went off on time. my mother came to the launch of said afterwards it was perfect. i saw the horse and buggy and i saw the airplane and now i saw this. the fact that there was a woman aboard them a woman that she baked brownies for because she

got to know for made it even better. when they landed the air force base the president said to sally someone said sometimes the best man for the job as a woman. he went there because you are the best person for the job. millions of other women around the world agreed. i think it's a lot of things pretty think is about the mystery of the universe and riding a rocket into space. i think it's about going out into the unknown but mostly i think what women particularly young women did was to translate her bold journey in and say in and to their own success. the thinking went if she could do that i can do anything. this was 1983 and anything with everything from getting out of the typing pool to getting into law school to doing whatever it is you thought you could do with your life. this was the image that she