talking black and authors of sisters first to discuss their lives in forthcoming book. also, with the help of our comcast cable partner, book tv visits portland oregon to explore the city's history and literary culture. that is just a few of the programs and authors you will see on this four-day weekend of book tv on c-span2. television for serious readers. first up, here is leland melvin. >> all right. good evening everybody.

my name is mark muller. i am the assistant manager of children and teens department at politics and prose. welcome to our event. the official website for our guest says it all. leland is the only person drafted into the national football league to have flown in space. it is a statement that speaks to a career and vast body of experiences that have taken him to the halls of nasa and an engineer and administrator and beyond. i mean 250 miles above the earth beyond. he attended heritage high school before going to the university of virginia on a football scholarship. he earned a degree in chemistry. he was drafted by the lions in 1986 but he had a hamstring injury that forced him into his next career.

during this time he worked at nasa research center in the area of nondestructive testing, creating optical fiber centers. he had publications in numerous journals as well as a job leading vehicle health monitoring team for the nasa launch vehicle program. he was selected to be an astronaut in 1998 and has logged more than 565 hours in space including two missions to the international space station. since then he was appointed the head of nasa education and served as the cochair of the stem education task force, developing the nation's stem education plan. he was the united states representative, the chair of the space station board, a global collaboration of learning about space.

and he is not inspiring the next generation of students he pursues his hobby is a photographer, musician and a writer. in his new book, it came out last week, called chasing space as well as the young readers edition. without further ado it's an honor and privilege for me to introduce mr. leland melvin. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. wow. this is my first book signing and i'm blown away for my friends and family and colleagues and all the people who are here. i've always thought about maybe writing a book one day but i didn't really know the process or the things that really happen in this

process. in 2001 my parents had a 35th wedding anniversary in virginia. i was sitting in the car with my cousin phyllis and a friend of hers named jenness torres. this is all in the book, if you read the book. this is kind of where my life changed in a really dramatic way. phyllis was a cousin from north carolina. her friend was this person who had a message for me and i didn't know her. i just met her. she said something is going to happen to you. no one is going to know why this happened. you will be healed of this thing and then you will fly in space and share the story with the world. i'm like, okay, thank you for

that information. i will take that under advisement. i had just come back from russia. i was in russia for two years working with the first group that went to the international space station. i was there to support astronauts. i was the person who was cooking, doing the laundry, helping them get ready to fly in space. for those of you who don't know this, 99% of the time, astronauts supporting others fly in space about 1% of the time. this piece we do to help others get ready, i was told you are not winter why that often but you will help other people. that was in 2000 that they launched. i came back, i stayed over ther there, we help them with

communication stuff, i came home in january and now it was time for me to train. i was in line to do my first training. i wore the big suit and had to start my training. there is this little pad in the suit. it's about that big and it gets velcro into the helmet so you can push your nose against it. jenness said some things might happen to you. know it's going to know why this happens and you will be healed and you will fly in space. during this training event, i'm going down in this cavernous pool for training and i noticed the pad is not in my helmet. i'm the kind of person that i need to clear my years when i

die so i need to press my nose. i'm frantically moving my jaw when i realized this pad is not in my helmet. we go down about 10 feet and they tell the test director that the pad is not there. he said don't hurt yourself and i said i want to try to keep going because is probably 200 people supporting this training run and my friend who is one of my classmates, he's on the other side and he's already down at the bottom of the pool ready to start his training. i'm not in a hold him up, and i had been waiting for two years, probably three years to do this training because this training is the gateway to getting a flight assignment quickly. the two of us were probably going to get assigned pretty quickly if we demonstrated we could do this training.

at 20 feet, i tell the test director to turn the volume up in the headset. i hear nothing but static and white noise so they rush me out they get me on the death, they pop my helmet off and the doctor walks over to me. how many people have read the book? so you know all the stuff. come on appear. you can probably tell this to everyone. so the doctor, he's talking to me but i don't hear anything coming out of his mouth. he walks over to me and he touches my right ear and he pulls his finger back and shows me the blood coming out of my ear. i thought okay, were nasa, we can figure this out. they rush me to the hospital there's a doctor named bobby l fred who is it your nose and throat doctor, one of the best in houston.

they want to do, they want to try and find out what happened and they operate, they go in and they start pressing on these two windows and they thought there was this fistula where the fluid leaking out of the area and you press on it and everything is attached. i have this picture in the book where all the doctors, it's right after the surgery and all the doctors have their heads down there trying to, i don't know what's going on. my sisters there and all the communication i do after the surgery, they are through these yellow legal pads. that's my way of medicating with people. all my friends are here, hey man, what's up.

so anyway, i have this big legal pad and they said they couldn't find anything, we don't know what happened to you. at that moment when everyone leaves, i'm trying to figure out what's going on. i start watching the movie good will hunting. any of you seen the movie? show of hands. when matt damon, he's the janitor and he sweeping up and he sought sees this problem on the board and what is coming back on the subway there's this music that's playing. it's his moment of satisfaction of him solving this problem that no one can solve. whenever i used to hear that music it would inspire me and motivate me and i realized that i couldn't hear when i watched the video of him sitting in the car, kind of

feeling this euphoria and me not being able to hear the music. that's when i slammed the laptop shut and started crying. a friend of mine came in, hold heard me crying and she wrote remember what jenness said. something will happen to you, you will be healed, you will fly in space and this will be the testimony you share with the world at that moment i had that sense of this is going to be okay, i will get through this. people are helping me, they're looking after me and my family and everyone's trying to help, but i can't hear a bomb dropped. slowly my hearing starts coming back. i'm still hearing impaired my

left ear. when i'm in an environment like this and all of your talking up probably look at your lips and focus more so i can really understand what's going on, but the flight surgeons said i would never fly in space because they didn't know what happened, we don't have the smoking gun. if we did send you to space, with this happen again and jeopardize the mission. they said very emphatically, you will never ever fly in space. i said okay. i then tried to figure out what my next step was at nasa. that's when i met some of my education friends. i came up to washington d.c. to work in the educator as not program. we were going to hire. [inaudible]

we were going to nominate teachers to be astronauts. that was in 2003. i started in january 2003. i've been here for maybe six months or so, getting the team together, starting this program and we went on the road february 1, 2003. you know what happened. we lost patient at columbia. i was driving from d.c. back to lynchburg. i was driving home to see them and the head of nasa called me on my cell phone and she said the shuttle is late. the orbiter is late. when we land we have those fuel episodes, a glider coming in and the countdown clock gets to zero and the birds should be on the ground.

i said how late is it. she said it's late. i turned around and came back and everyone at nasa headquarters was assembling this team of people trying to figure out what happened, with astronauts, the first thing we do is take care of our families. at that point i was told to drive to washington virginia where david brown, the michigan specialist on the flight, that's where his parents lived. i drove out there, it was nighttime, there were satellite trucks on the side of the road. a state trooper was blocking entrance to the mountain because a reporter had acted as a florist to get the story.

they let me through. i walked in. i will never forget this moment. i go there to consult parents who will lost their son in a horrific way and i hugged his mom. we were both crying. his father was in a wheelchair. i bent over to hug him and he said something to me that galvanized my spirit to make a difference. again, i'm not flying, i'm medically disabled. he said my son is gone, there is nothing you can do to bring him back, but the biggest tragedy would be if we don't continue to fly in space to honor them by carrying on their legacy. do you know anything about the legacy of a son. then we start crying. i stay there overnight were trying to figure this out.

honor the legacy by flying, by continuing to fly. the doctors have told me you're never going to fly. i'm trying to figure out how i'm going to on a legacy. his father just told me this thing that really impacted me. over the next few months with live in the nasa airplane to the different memorial services over the country. we take off and land. the doctors sitting beside me on every flight. i didn't even think about that. he's just sitting there, taking notes, we take off, we land, i squeeze my nose and clear my ears and now it's the middle of may and the educator astronaut program is wrapping up at headquarters and were about to send all of the applicants down to houston to go through the abstract

selection profit the doctor calls me in his office and he says leland, i've been watching what you been doing. i've been watching you for your ears said i believe in any signs me a waiver to fly in space. the moral of that story is that you never know what's.happen, but you always have to keep going and believing in yourself. sometimes when you don't believe in yourself, there's others to do believe in you. i've always, throughout this book, throughout my life, i've had people that have believed to me when i didn't believe in myself. it started out at a very early age. some of the people in this room are part of that community that filled my curiosities and helped me get through different things in this moment is kind of like a crossroads in my life as an

astronaut. without this piece of paper written by the chief flight surgeon, i would've never flown in space. since this prophecy from this woman jenness who i had never met, she said those words to me and i gave me that hope. that's what this book is about. it's about a little engine that could, curious george. do you like curious george. >> sort of. >> okay, will he was my guy. having the spirit of curiosity and exploration and having that of the very early age was something that was given to me my community and my parents will never forget the day that my father was a

schoolteacher -- my dad did all these different job. he was a schoolteacher and played at the plan and did all these different things to make money. the day that he drove a doritos brand truck into my driveway was the day said what's the deal you to be a deliveryman now. the bread truck drove in, we got in it and it smelled like bread and he said this is our camper. i said no it's not, this is a bread truck.

i didn't have a vision, but he did. he was always doing things on the cheap to take care of his family. this bread truck cost $500. over the summer i became an engineer. i helped rewire the truck electrically. i built bunkbeds on the side of the truck that my sister and i slept in. over the summer, i learned what engineering and science was about and i also learned what it meant to have a vision for something, to have this thing be converted and repurposed for something else. it wasn't until we painted the bread and rolls off the truck that i realized we had a camper and we spent countless summers driving across the country in this bread truck that was now a camper. these lessons, the book is she thanks eac the book is chasing space. i was always seeing that through my mom and dad.

the other beautiful thing is that they were both schoolteachers in virginia for over 30 plus years and i retired from nasa in 2014 to move back home to be with my father. he wasn't doing well. i got home on a sunday and my dad and i had this incredible conversation. it was one of those conversations where we flipped the script. it was used to be take a bath, daddy i don't need a bath and this night it was when you take it back and said i don't need a bath. did your mom tell me i need a bath. we had this conversation and it was beautiful. the next day he was gone. i'm just trying to figure out my life as an astronaut and an

administrator for education, all these 24 years working with nas nasa, that identity was gone because i had retired. i moved back home and the reason i moved home was to be with my dad and he is now gone that was a moment of really trying to dig deep and understand the purpose and why am here. i've been told mark twain always said the two most important days of your life for the day you were born and the day you figure out why. then my editor told me mark twain didn't really say that. if you look in the book there's no mark twain reference there but i still use mark twain because i think it's kind of cool. figuring out why, and as a society with all of the stuff going on, trying to figure out

why were here and trying to change our planet for the positive. that's why i wrote this book. it's the family community not giving up, believing in me when i didn't believe in myself, it's a journey of stem education. i grew up not even knowing what stem was but i was living it every day with piano lessons and building bicycles and bread trucks and all these different things. one of the things that will help us as a civilization is when we realize that were on this little marble together, technically working together as one civilization. we don't always see this happening everyday but from

the vantage point of the international space station, when i look out over virginia and i see my hometown from spac space, it's only 240 miles the distance from d.c. to virginia, going around the planet every 4 45 -- 90 minutes, seeing a sunset and sunrise every 45 minutes. i was there with the russians and i'm having these moments where i'm flying over virginia and five minutes later i'm flying over paris. then russia within a couple minutes. it shows you how connected we are as a people. and then flying over afghanistan and looking down and seeing how beautiful it is but knowing what's happening down there.

aleppo and all these places of unrest in fighting and these things going on. from that vantage point it's just simply stunning. i'm going to try to get you all signed up for spacex missions. i've got some coupons appear, i'm signing books, you might be the lucky one to get a spacex ride, but if you get an opportunity and whether it's through vr or whatever experience you have to get to see this, it's fundamentally, cognitively changes you as a person to make you want to do better when you see our planet from that vantage point. on my first mission in 2008, i was up there with peggy whitson who was the first commander of the space station. for the young ladies in here, i just want to tell you that

experiencing peggy running the show, large and in charge with all of these men was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen. to have that respect and that excellence was just remarkable. she's up there now, i talked to her maybe three months ago. she will be the longest u.s. running astronaut in space. 650 days. another thing that's in the boo book, i think i call it the space smorgasbord where we have finished installing the columbus laboratory, that was my job.

there was maybe 20 german flight controllers in houston and they were there working together with the flight director and people to make sure that everything was in play to install this space agency. they found out i was now assigned to be the robotic farm operator. they had been waiting ten years to install this and all their job security depended on me installing it properly. so i walk into this room and there's 20 guys in there like high-fiving me and chest bumping me, your our installer , i've been waiting for you all this time. as i walk out of the room, this one guy looks at me and he said mr. melvin, i've been

waiting ten years. don't screw it up. and so in space my hand is on the rotational hand controller and i'm now grappled and i'm on birthing it from the bay of the space shuttle. now were starting to turn it and position it to install it to the side of the space station. it's getting closer and closer and closer. the motion stops and i'm still pulling the hand controller. in the back my mind i hear this don't screwed up. what had happened, there are these four indicators that are spring-loaded loaded and they tell you, if you're like this you will see on the commuter monitor that these two are

engaged with these two are not so you know you need to pitch down or if it's like this you need to pitch up. whatever orientation you need to get all for the same time. so peggy whitson, she's watching all of this, kind of floating behind us and i was moving the hand controller so slowly that these four indicators to stalled. kb sai --dash peggy said paul. all indicators lighted up. all of the people in germany and europe are now celebrating and they weren't saying my name in vain. i'll never forget that. that was my major tasks to do on this mission. that was my primary task. i'll never forget the night

that we installed europe's baby. i have this cognitive shift to my had. peggy invited us for dinner and she said you guys float over with the rehydrated vegetables and will have the meat. all my team has heard this story. so we flowed over with this food and they are playing music, i think smooth operator is playing to the speaker. and peggy is floating up singing smooth operator. so there's these people over here at the table and they been heating up these different russian meets and we swooped in with our vegetables and we go to the table and there's some hot sauce and were about to have this

incredible meal. that's when i look out the window and i think were coming over virginia. i can kind of see the virginia area and i just look around me and i see one breaking bread with. that's when i have this shift of we got to take care of this place, we've got to work together and do better. after that moment i came back home and it did fundamentally change me. i wanted to help make us a better civilization. i hope when you read the book to see that piece in there because that's what everyone of us needs to do to make sure were doing our part to keep us thriving as a civilization. these are all little points and pieces that i want to hear from my heart as to why i put those things in the book and

the ending of the book is kind of like the future of our little guys and girls to make sure that they have the tools they need to take our places and to be effective. a lot of that is having access and be able to utilize the internet. if they don't have something in school, lots of time in school they don't get the hands-on, exponential things that i had when i was a kid. we've created this website called demography. they celebrated the launch of this book but also the story through images and video and the journey starting with a little skinny kid in lync lynchburg virgini virginia.

i didn't identify with neil armstrong even though everybody wanted to be neil armstrong back in 1969. my journey to becoming an astronaut was never one of i want to be an astronaut. it was people that said you would be a good astronaut and i said really? me? i don't see that. but, it meandered on that. how is our time? should we do some questions now. does anyone have any questions? >> leland, can i come hug you. >> definitely. >> my question is, in the current political and economic environment it's almost reactionary that we don't want

to fail and most of america, we want to win and do the very best that we can to support our country and the earth. how do we rekindle that to the youth so there not saying that we want to be fearful but that we embrace it and we carry forward in the future so we have another hundred years of abundance instead of being fearful about what we may not have. thank you for being here. >> i heard you on the radio the other day. very much nice job. >> he was one of my heroes so when i went on the shel. [inaudible] >> so not fearing. a lot of this, we are looking to our government to fix

things, and i know when i grew up, i was not even thinking about government. i was thinking about the opportunities that the parents gave me and instilled in me. how we can get back home, and i know a lot of kids don't have what i had but as a community we have to instill this sense of can-do spirit. the curiosity that we are going to explore and continue to do things, and whatever administration is in office at the time, they have their agendas and their policies, but i think it's more grassroots were things get done and hopefully you can engender this type of spirit in the youth and in the groups that need to get these things done to carry those messages forward. we have to work with our government and our policies,

but if enough people are shouting loud enough to say we need to do these things and they vote in a particular way, that's where the change happened. we can't be apathetic at home and throw our hands up. we have to lift up her kids and inspire our communities and come together to make the change and make a difference good question. thank you. what grade are you in. >> i am in third grade. two questions. well, one is a questio. and the common. i have a friend who wants to be an engineer at nasa if there's one thing you want to

say to him, what would you say. >> he wants to be an engineer at nasa? >> yes. >> tell him the first thing he needs to do is believe in himself. you've got to believe in yourself if you're going to do anything. the other thing is to work very hard and be very disciplined. science and engineering are very exact subjects and the more that you study it the more that you learned from the better you will be at executing it. work hard, tell him to eat his green beans. you've got to be healthy while you're making those decisions, and to have fun and be curious. you got that. >> yes. and another question is how did you feel being up in space.

>> good question. when i first got to space, after the eight and half minutes that it takes to get to space, i got there, i was strapped into my seat and i started seeing things floating around me. like the pen that i drop is now floating, dust particles and pieces of paper are coming up by me but i'm still strapped in. when the engine is cut off, you have this in her ear that tells you what orientation you're in, that no longer works once you get to space so i felt like i was doing a somersault even though i was strapped into my seat. i undid my seatbelt, i pushed off and floated toward the front seat and i bounced into that