The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics By Heather Lende

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics Heather Lende Heatherlende.com The writer whom the Los Angeles Times calls “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott” now brings us her quirky and compassionate account of holding local office. Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines—a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane—isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be: from a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street to the recall campaign that targeted three assembly members, including Lende, we witness the nitty-gritty of passing legislation, the lofty ideals of our republic, and how the polarizing national politics of our era play out in one small town. With an entertaining cast of offbeat but relatable characters, Of Bears and Ballots is an inspirational tale about what living in a community really means, and what we owe one another. The writer whom the Los Angeles Times calls “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott” now brings us her quirky and compassionate account of holding local office. Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines—a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane—isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be: from a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street to the recall campaign that targeted three assembly members, including Lende, we witness the nitty-gritty of passing legislation, the lofty ideals of our republic, and how the polarizing national politics of our era play out in one small town. With an entertaining cast of offbeat but relatable characters, Of Bears and Ballots is an inspirational tale about what living in a community really means, and what we owe one another.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast be sure to go to youtube.com for chris voss and hit that bell notification so you can see all the wonderful videos we do of all the brilliant authors and of course product reviews we do as well

and technology etc etc youtube.com forward slash chris voss and make sure you subscribe share that video out you get to see the wonderful video that we're having today with the brilliant author of multiple books uh the other thing that you should do is go to goodreads.com. Follow me over there. It's goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. We've got a group we're building up there for a book club. Also, we have a Facebook book club as well. If you want to join me over there, you can just go to Facebook forward slash Chris Voss and send me a message and I'll invite you. Also, refer your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, get everyone in on the show, thecvpn.com or chrisfastpodcastnetwork.com. Today, our brilliant author,

because we always have brilliant authors. I can't think of one day that we have not had a brilliant author on. But the brilliant author we have on today is Heather Lendi. She is the author of Bears and Ballots, an Alaskan adventure in small-town politics. And she's written a number of different books from one area. We'll get into that here in a second.

But she's written many essays and stories, mostly about life and sometimes death in Haines, Alaska. They've been widely distributed from the Anchorage Daily News, Christian Science Monitor to NPR and Country Living. She's a former contributing writer at Women's Day Magazine and for over 20 years has written some 500 obituaries for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines. I believe that's the title. She's the author of best-selling memoirs, Find the Good, If You Lived Here, I Know Your Name, and Take Good Care of the Garden and Dogs. Welcome to the show, Heather. How are you?

Oh, I'm great, Chris. This is really fun to be here with you. Thank you. It's fun that you've taken the time to come here. I'm looking at the bio on your website, and you've got some cute golden retrie retrievers is that what those are yeah they're sometimes cute and sometimes they're wet and they roll and fish and they're not so endearing but yes oh boy uh gold retrievers i've never had the fish smell i've had the rolling and poop smell on the with to my two siberians and everything else the wet dog thing but yeah fish wow okay yeah salmon you know they spawn and die and so that can be a challenge i had the skunk once too that's always a fun two weeks well the real the real fun

one is bear poop really wow don't even talk to me about that note to self never get boob uh bear poop anywhere speaking of bears let's talk about your book you've written this wonderful book. Give us your plugs where people can find you on the interwebs first. I'm really easy to find. It's just heatherlendy.com. If you just Google my name, I have a website and I blog and there's pictures and it's kind of chatty about life in Haines.

And the books are found anywhere books are sold and most libraries too. Check out your local bookstores and wherever you want to take them by the bookstores and uh you know wherever you want to take them by the book of course you can get it the big vendors uh heather uh what motivated you want to write this book well um the book is about my my three-year term on the haines borough assembly and um haines is a small town in alaska and and we're we're called a borough i i don't know why it It's like New York City or

whatever, but Alaska has boroughs the way other places have counties. And actually, in very small places like Haines, the borough and the city or whatever is just the same thing. So it's just, think of it as your local city council, but it's the borough government. And I ran in 2016, the same year that Trump was elected and served for three years until 2019. And I didn't at first plan on writing about it at all, but because I just sort of write about what happens in Haines and life here. I found it to be pretty interesting and inspiring and challenging. And I thought that my time in local government here both illuminates, you know, what life is like in a small town and what government actually does and the people like me who are just amateurs doing the best we can. some of the issues that we saw nationally, the divisions and some of that stuff that was going on. And especially when it took sort of a nasty turn and we recovered from it, but it was a boom, boom. I thought, well, maybe there is a story here and maybe it could be helpful for anybody to know a little bit more about both what local government does, what life in a small town is like, but also how we treat each and our elected officials and um what's the better way to do that and is it also a journey of

like uh where someone like uh someone who wants to get into politics just just to help out the local community on a local scale i mean i don't know maybe you had a grand vision of becoming president someday no still time uh but uh you know, I think it kind of shows what that journey is like for some people in, you know, just trying to help other community and then finding maybe the toxicity and stuff like that. Yes, and I think, too, you know, I bumbled into stuff. I went in very idealistically and thought, you know, I was going to save the world and everybody would be very happy about my decisions.

And that quickly went south. And I learned a lot. And so I thought I would share what I learned about about participating in local government, about how to do that, about the importance of it. And so there's you know, the stories are all mixed up with family and community and then some practical things about how to govern, like simply learning Robert's Rules of Order and how to conduct yourself in a public meeting. So I don't know. I think I'm pleased that it actually inspired some people to run for office in our local election. A young woman who's 32, a clerk at the liquor store, she just ran and won a seat on the assembly. There you go.

Yeah, and a younger guy who also co-owns his family's grocery store. He's now the new mayor. Wow. So I felt like, you know, as much as there was some really harrowing times for me emotionally, I apparently didn't scare off too many people, and people are excited about running for office in Haines and hopefully running for office wherever you live. What's the population of Haines, Alaska?

Officially, it's 2,500, but that makes us sound bigger than we are because of our isolation. We're a ferry ride or a small plane flight from Juneau, Alaska. It's about a four and a half hour ferry trip, 45 minute flight. And we have a road that goes out into the interior of Alaska, but it's, you hit the Canadian border 40 miles out of town. It's British Columbia, then the Yukon and huge wilderness area. Then you end up in Haynes Junction, which has 600 people. And if you keep going for another couple hours, you end up in Whitehorse. It's a bigger city of about 20,000, but the border has been closed now for March and no sign of when it's going to open again. But it's, so the town is, everything's contained.

Like we don't, you can't drive to Target or there's no outside of town. There's no movie theaters. There's no chain stores. Everything is all the grocery, we have three grocery stores. They're local. My family owns a hardware store in a lumber yard. The newspaper is a local paper. The radio station is a local public affiliate of the Alaska Public Broadcasting Network. The school, we have one school, K-12,

and there's about 275 kids that attend school, including four of my grandchildren. It's very active politically. Everybody's involved on committees or organizations or non-profits from you know the library and the swim team to uh sportsman's association and volunteer emts and uh it's also probably i think the most beautiful place in the world. You know, it's big mountains and fjords and, uh, and it's not a, it's a relatively poor community. Um, we, we don't have a whole, you know, there's fishermen, working people, merchants, some people who are for the state, federal government, you know, those are good jobs here. Um, uh, you know, free lunch program for the kids at school, that kind of thing. People, you know, make do here, and the economy is always an issue. And then, like, you know, you said, I think you said you were in Utah or Las Vegas, you know how the West is, it's

many, many of the issues hinge on resource development or protection or, you know, that's our big discussions or our arguments tend to focus right along those lines, logging and mining and, you know, what happens and what's the values of our community and how many jobs do we need? That's a pretty much a perennial argument here. There you go. So you talk in the arc of the book about how you take on this journey, this idealistic sort of thing where I'm going to run for office and give a crap about what's going on in my community and try and improve it. And I think a lot of people do that with good intentions, even if it's like the HOA board, which are a bunch of morons.

I'm sure they're different in your community uh but uh you're very lucky i look i come from vegas where everything is hoa no we don't i don't we don't even have any homeowners associations we don't know what our whole town is basically dated you want to write another great book on uhignant narcissism and all sorts of stuff? Move to Vegas and get into HOA, which is anywhere you live. And then you'll meet some really interesting people, and you'll have volumes. Anyway, so in the book, you talk about the arc of you go through this. You run for office.

You win office. And how long are you in office for? Three years. went office and how long are you in office for three years and then there's actually somewhere in there uh that they try and remove you from office right away pretty much the story was there was i think there was six of us running for two seats and the way our uh local assembly works is that just the top two vote getters get the seats. There's not precincts or anything. So six people threw their hat in the ring, and the two with the most votes won. And that was myself and the editor of the local newspaper, Tom Morford.

And so, you know, right away, we're more liberal. And the people whose candidates lost, and some of the candidates that lost got really angry. And they said, we're going to recall you. We're getting you out of here. The wrong people voted. Big trouble. And it all also, you know, hinged then, of course, on the national election with Trump and Hillary. And how did how did the rest of the country get it right? Haynes got it wrong. We went the wrong way, you know, and people were pretty angry. And there was a bunch of decisions that were made within the first month I was on the assembly. One concerned a harbor vote, another one that was the manager was fired. And all of a sudden

by Christmas, the recall was starting. And so I spent, I barely got on the assembly before three of us were being challenged and called misconduct and all kinds of terrible things that we had done. And that process lasted almost nine months. It kind of dragged out because you had 30 days for this filing and 60 for that. And it was like the whole time we were governing then, every time anybody disagreed with the decision you made, well they could sign the recall petition so it just kind of went like that you just kind of deep adding votes as you go yeah i mean you do that's what's going on there goes another signature there goes another signature um you're sitting at the committee meetings and the people that come into the mic are yelling at you like i don't say that they say okay we're gonna recall you now and i'll be like ah and they say if you don't do that, I'll recall.

Oh, no. And then, you know, and I say it's funny now. It wasn't funny when I was involved. I'm sure. Almost. It really sort of cut me to the quick. Because as you mentioned, I've written a lot of obituaries. I'm involved in the community in a lot of ways.

I have five children that we've raised here. We have business, you know, library board, hospice, those kind of ways. I have five children that we've raised here. We have business, you know, library board, hospice, those kind of things that I do. And I just thought that goodwill would carry the day. And also, you know, I write about life here. And my other books really, in many ways, were all love letters to the community of, you know, this wonderful small town and the perfect, not perfect, but, you know, pretty darn good, you know, and this one really sort of shook me. And, but I came out on the other side. Thankfully, the recall didn't happen and got more votes in the second election than I did in the first. But more importantly, it wasn't just about me. The town rejected that argument.

Yeah, because they didn't go through with it. No, and the two other guys, Tom and then an artist, of course, a local artist, were also up for recall. And it was basically even, 60-40, the town just said, no, we didn't agree with the way to do that. And then, of course, you had to kind of couldn't just quit. You had to suck it up and go two more years, you know, with these same people in the front row going,

I think we need another recall petition, you know, and you're like, uh, but, um, you know, it's interesting about the book because it, it, it's a microcosm. What's going on nationally is what you write about and and the toxicity in politics was it always this way in that little town or did a lot of this get set off by the divisive man that seems to have won or stolen election in 2016 you know i was um i was in the swimming pool i i swim early in the morning we have a community pool indoors of course it's alaska and there's the early bird swimmers at like six o'clock. And there's one of my favorite

swimmers is Joni Schneider. And she's a retired public health nurse. And she's like, I think she just turned 90, 91. And she's always at the pool in the mornings. And when I told her, you know, after I got on the assembly and we were talking, I said, Joni, I don't know, how did I ever get myself in this situation? She said, Heather, you wrote about it in your first book. You said that, you said way back, and if you lived here, that 50% of the people in Haines are happy 50% of the time, and that's, you're never going to please everybody here. You ought to know better, and I was like, oh, Joni, you're right. She said, this has been like this forever around here. And I guess I hadn't thought about that.

But I do think, I think the way where Haines is, and probably other small towns too, but where there's hope is that even though we might have had these pretty kind of nasty disagreements that happened on Facebook or social media, like you see now, or people saying stuff that isn't true and mean to each other on all sides, you know, it goes, when people get mad, they really get mad. What I, my favorite part of the book is the little breaks in between each, each chapter that list what we've actually done, the manager and the committee, you know, and yeah, like, I love these. Because it, in the midst of all the turmoil, it sort of lets people know, like, what we were, we were actually doing, like, the harbor staff reports that after beaching the Letnikoff Cove

Harbor float, they discovered some damage, but it should be repairable. The finance department reports that tax statements are at the printers and should be distributed next week. The construction at the wastewater treatment plant is ahead of schedule. And, you know, or even one of my favorites is there's an ongoing discussion of an outhouse at Mosquito Lake that takes up, it's probably on every meeting that we had. And even after three years, we never did get that outhouse built over the discussions of maintenance, who was going to maintain the outhouse. So that was, that's what it all hinged on. And we didn't have a plan for who was going to keep it clean. Well, I think what's interesting about your book, and I think you talk about this a little bit, or at least we get the concept of it,

is that people always want stuff from their government. Like they want the roads cleaned. They want the road. They want the schools. They want stuff. But there seems to be more and more. And I talked to people who lived back in the Nixon era. and in the nixon area most everyone knew their senators they knew the names of their senators which is really weird today because i don't think hardly anybody can name their senators unless you're really into politics like i am um and they knew what was going on in their government but it seems like today and politics has become you know i i think a lot of politicians that don't want a lot of people in politics except for people of power, they've tried to discourage people and be toxic as they can to

drive people from the process because they can retain power if they can keep most people involved out. You know, if no one's looking over your shoulder, you can do a lot of fun stuff with yourself and your cronies. But it seems like a lot of people these days, they want all this stuff. Like, you know, I even argue with people about rule of law and why it's important. And they're just like, well, screw it. Let's rule of law, do whatever you want. And you're like, okay, well,

I'll come to your house and just take everything. Is that cool with you? And they're like, no. And you're like, you don't understand how this really works. Did you find that in your experience with government or is that one of the issues? It was even an issue with some of the other people that, you know, served on the assembly where they say things like, you know, they,

they were against, you know, government. And they didn't want the government to be involved in this and that. And then I remember saying to one of the women, I said, well, we are the government. I'm like, you might be, but I'm not. And it's like, no, this is what we are. I mean, the town, the borough assembly is the representative. We're the people who are governing the town. And it's not a bad thing.

Like you say, I mean, government is police. It's water that it's safe to drink. It's, you know, toilets that flush. The library is open on, you know, when you go there, the door is open when you drive into the snowstorm to go, you know, bring your kids to the library. There's not a sign on the door that says, oh, didn't feel like opening today.

That's all government. And there's some people that get that, but I think when you're watching too much national news or listening to it or being on, you know, on social media groups, you start to think it's all no good. And without it, we can't really function. I mean, John Adams, you know, we're a nation of laws. We agree to those laws, and we can change them if they're not working for you. But that's how – that's the structure.

And, yeah, I mean, we have a, it's interesting that you say, people don't know your senators. I mean, Alaska, you know, we, we call our Senator Lisa. I mean, everybody even in Haynes expects that she would know you if you called her up. And I don't know whether she does or not, but she pretends she does. And when she comes to town a couple couple times a year is, you know, greets everybody the same, not just the bigwigs or the monkey mucks. And even Dan Sullivan is a relatively new senator, but even the guy running against him, Al Gross, everybody knows Al too, Dan, you know, we're pretty engaged as a state, but also as a community, and we expect a lot of our...

And you talk about in the book, you kind of get some blowback on social media where you're blocked from a group that's, or I think it's a group or a page that's attacking you, and you can't it was called haynes rant and rave and and the page was managed by one of the people who had lost the the election to me and i and um yeah there was just a lot there and and hard things you know um i and i couldn't see it so i didn't know what they were saying but you know you'd get friends that would send you a screenshot. I think when politics gets personal, it gets personal really fast. And so like on, on, on rant and rave, there was a call to boycott our lumberyard, which, you know, it's, it's a small town. We can't,

not going to the lumberyard because they didn't like the decision that I made on, I don't know, funding the police department or something. And so, you know, there wasn't any way to openly fight that because you didn't know what they were saying. Are you guys the only lumberyard in town? No, there's two. Oh, there's two. Okay. Well, that would be funny if there was just one, and you're like, boycott the lumberyard. And you're like, wait.

Well, yeah. There was other funnier. I mean, there's ironic moments all the way through, you know, because. Sure. And that, I think that gives me hope, though. I mean, at the same time, for instance, when one of the rant and rave people were particularly going after another assemblywoman, a friend of mine, on the page, and they were really,

really going head to head. In fact, she quit the assembly over it. It hurt her feelings so much. Well, when her husband was out of town, and there was a blizzard, she had to go down to the harbor to shovel off their commercial fishing boat. That's what they do for a living. And the guy who had been targeting her in all those nasty posts had shoveled the boat off for her because he's a fisherman down there and he saw it. And so he thought, well, gee. And so, you know, to me, that's a good sign that we're not all, we're not really who we are on social media. Like we get all caught up and we say this stuff, but we're still

decent human beings when it comes right down to it. The guy's in the Harbor. He knew John was away. Well, I'm here anyway with the shovel. I'll just do his boat because it's next to mine. And, you know, on the other slip. That's the question that i had for you i mean you're in this small town i mean in washington or national politics the likelihood of you know if ted cruz says some crap about xyz guy or whatever you know pick your name uh you know the likelihood of those two bumping into each other unless maybe they're in the senate and they cross in the hall is pretty far-fetched or like me i'm pretty sure I'm not bumping into Donald Trump for all the ugly things I've said to him on Twitter.

I'm pretty sure him and I aren't going to be like passing each other in the aisle 14 at the local store, but you're, you're in a small town and what was it like maybe to come across people maybe at the store or the post office? At one point, you know, during the height of the recall, uh, stuff, I, I didn't even want to leave my house. I felt ashamed. You know, I, I, you know, you'd go to the grocery store and you're looking at a clerk that you've just

seen something horrible they'd written about you on Facebook or, or, um, you know, had, had written a letter to the editor and signed it, and then they're like, hi, how are you today? I'm like, oh, great. Great. I mean, do you think I don't know what you're saying? But, you know, that is really, like it was really a challenge for me. But it also, you know, this is something for me because I write about life in Haines and real people

and I have for 20 years. And it's like you said at the beginning, things have gone out far and wide. Even though a lot of those places where I've told stories from our community about real people, aren't outlets that anybody here would even read or listen to, or necessarily know, unless, you know, they're in my family and like, Hey mom, or, you know, look, you're in whatever women's day. I always assume always.

And I think maybe this is because of life in a small town that everybody that I write assume, always, and I think maybe this is because of life in a small town, that everybody that I write about or everybody that I talk about will read or hear or see what I say. And that guides my private life and public life. And so I think if we all did that, we might have a much more civil discourse, because assuming that somebody isn't going to see you on the street, or assuming that they don't know who your kids are, or where your spouse works, or whatever, where I just assume that everybody does. And because of that, I don't want to say anything. Not that I – I'll say stuff that has to be said, but I don't want to do it in such a way that is just a rant and a shout and doesn't really contribute to fixing the problem or to calling somebody out in a proper way. Yeah, that's more productive, too. When you really think about it.

I mean, that's the policy that I have. In fact, my policy is I tag whoever's in it that I'm talking crap about cause I want them to know. And I, I'd love to hear the response too. Cause then I get more to crack on. But this is me. You know what I would do if I would have been you, I would have like taken all the nasty posts, especially the people you're going to bump into in public, and I made a shirt or a coat

of all of the copies of the posts. I'd be like, hey, you're right there. They do that at the newspaper office. There's the wall of shame. They have all the little quotes from

different people that have said different things at times that our local officials you know he's fine and they put them all up and sometimes if you walk in they're kind of on the covered doors by where the coffee pot is and all the old cookies and stuff

and so people come into the office they don't necessarily see it but if they turn around and start wandering they might find the name up there saying something really silly. One of the things that really discouraged me about politics and everything else was early on in 2016, I saw a lot of my friends in the deplorables group. I had a lot of friends that I thought were, you know, they're on Kumbaya during Obama. We, we you know we're solving racism and helping out and uh we're fine

with obama and then all of a sudden you know you're like they came out of the racist closet and we're like yeah and their post they were posting just the most heinous things especially about michelle obama uh in different photoshops's and just real ugly stuff. And I remember it. Well, I don't remember. It's still happening. But one of the things that your book displays is how maybe we shouldn't be attacking personally people like what they look like or their race or their gender or you know creating these weird things like this person is an alien and we really should maybe just focus on the

politics of the thing or the argument of what we're trying to do instead of getting in all this fringe crap and attacking each other personally is that that, is that a concept maybe? Oh, completely. You know, in Haines, it comes down to calling people, you know, hippies or rednecks or assuming something about somebody's values just based on, I don't know, the hat they're wearing or the truck they're driving or whatever, where they, you know, what books they like to read. And, and, and that's, it's easy to fall into that kind of anywhere.

But at the same time, if you try to, I mean, it might be kind of Pollyanna to say, but I still believe that, you know, if you try to find what that person is good at, what they're concerned about, I think a lot of times we're all, we're all concerned about the same things, you know, I mean, everyone wants their family to be healthy. We all want enough to eat. We want some security financially and healthcare that we know, like if we go to the emergency room, we're not gonna have to sell our house. You know, it's not, we want clean air.

We don't want to be shot in bed. You know, there's not, we want clean air. Clean water. Yeah, we don't want to be shot in bed. You know, there's those things. And so the people that are angry on all sides, it's almost like, well, can we just like stop all this like blame and figure out what is going on that if we call each other names and we do, we say really awful things, it's just so hard to go back then and to sit down at a table with somebody who's posted awful racist things. And I mean, I don't even know where to begin there. But so it seems that the trick is, is to keep relationships if you can and keep trying to make it better. I think of, I didn't, this isn't in the book, but I was thinking the other day there was a woman who was married to an Episcopal priest in well-known in the state of Alaska and Mildred Besser was her name. And her daughter was a, you know, self-identifying lesbian a long time ago,

relatively, and Mildred was, you know, this minister's wife, you know, just darling little woman, super sweet, and she just advocated for those kind of rights, you know, the LGBTQ, all of it, for her whole life. And people said horrible things to her. I mean, sitting in the Alaska legislature, people would say things about her daughter and her daughter's friends that were just ick, you know. But Mildred just never gave up. And this is a true story. Mildred, on her death deathbed is when the Supreme Court

ruled in favor of gay marriage. And they were literally watching the thing, the TV. And they said, Mildred, you know, we can get married now. And, you know, they told their mother that.

And she said, oh, good. And she died. She was like 90. But I think of her, like, because how, I mean, I don't know. And there's lots of people like that, the civil rights movement. How do you just keep banging your head against some of these things

and not just get so angry that you take yourself out of the game? But there's people that can do it, and they're saints. Yeah. And I think that's what's good about your book. It gives a good expose of what this is like, what people can expect when they go into government, and maybe it's a reason why people should change it so that they don't have the same experience you did in the book.

And the conversation to me, you know, even now I I'm bad, you know, I think today I was posting about the fly on Pence's head and, you know, all this stuff and making jokes. Yeah, it is funny. I just wanted Kamala to just, you know, do like what women do kind of be going like this, you know, trying to try to, you know, when someone has food in their teeth and we try to just politely,

I thought that would have been something and have her gesturing. I would have liked to see that from her. I thought it was really funny the Biden campaign is selling fly swatters now. So there you go. But we really need to get back to the topics. I think this is one of the reasons that politicians have really risen to power on dividing everybody. And then, of course, we have these conspiracy theories now. So we've kind of gone from talking about the facts, arguing facts and details,

arguing what the truth is of the matter, to arguing about how, well, you're one of these people, or you're this, or you're an alien from another planet, or lizard people in government, like you see on the rags on newsstands, to where now we've taken it to a whole new level of conspiracy, and social media has helped fuel this, where now it's the QAnon, and you're part of this, whatever. And I mean, we're really off the rails when it comes to back to the facts and arguments. What do you think about that? Am I, am I, am I correct?

Well, I think what happens is, is people dig into their group and then they're in an echo chamber and then it's like loyalty at all costs because the other side has been so demonized. And that's really, it's really hard when you're even in local government, when there's a group of people that you knew were your supporters. And, you know, they all weigh in on something that you actually disagree with. And suddenly they're more furious with you than the other side was mad at you. You know, it's like, I think the art of government

is really one of compromise. And if the electorate doesn't allow the people they vote for to compromise and says, you know, we're going to recall you if you do, or get you the heck out of there, or we're going to be, you know, with're going to recall you if you do, or get you the heck out of there, or we're going to be, you know, with, with friends like that who needs enemies. And we, we, we've done that to ourselves. And I don't know, I, I'm not sure how we can get out of it except with, maybe, you know, maybe there's hope if Biden is elected and he generally is um uh you know nice to to people who who didn't

vote for him or who are republicans or you know because i even know as myself i'm a registered democrat and um when you talk about the facebook stuff i there was a guy i know i like him a lot joseph i mean i see him he rides his bike around town we're all friends we all chat and he posted this horrible thing on like the Hanes chatters the community page about you know what's happening in town today you know that like how you know Democrats are all

evil go F yourself never you know got to get rid of them all and I usually don't respond to those things you know but I just remember one of them all. I usually don't respond to those things, but I just remember one of them said, Joseph, I thought we were friends. He's like, we are!

I'm like, well, I'm a Democrat. He's like, oh, I don't care about you. I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about them. When you say things like that, it just makes people go, like, what? I don't know. I think a lot of it goes towards starting at the smaller problems and not the big national issues and seeing, you know, getting on a committee to, I don't know, to turn a vacant lot into a park or figure out a better way to feed kids after school or, you know, something that doesn't have the left and right politics,

but it's more like a neighborhood thing. I know you were talking about homeowners associations and I'm not all that familiar with them, but it seems like no matter what your politics, you could agree on a Christmas food drive for the poor or something. Then you get to know somebody and you're not vilifying each other. What we have in Haines, one of the things that's nice, like what I like is I'm a volunteer for hospice of Haines and where we, we don't have a lot of people that are dying at home because we don't have a

lot of people, but maybe one or two official hospice clients a year. But mostly we, we take care of elderly people who need help staying at home and they might not have family here or whatever and you know you get their mail for them or go to the grocery store take a walk or go to the pool or whatever whatever it is do the dishes um go to church different things like that and it's it's always a great way to bridge those divides because our you know for lack of a better term, you know, our hippie redneck thing, well, you have a hippie who's taking care of a redneck, and they just love each other. And they learn to, it's not about what their preconceived ideas was, but they're just, you know, the human connection is really strong one.

And I think if you keep making those, that's the way to do it. It's not policy. It's not a big proclamation. It's not even one person. It's on an individual basis, make sure you're cross-pollinating. And this is what I think is great about your book. It shows the arc of all this. And it's just a microcosm, what goes on nationally. But you can really kind of see this story on a very relative level of seeing, okay, well, wow, okay, this is really an issue. Let me ask you this.

Does it come out of laziness? I meet a lot of people, and they say a lot of stuff, and I'll be like, where did you read that? And they're like, oh, there's some guy spouting it. So I decide on social media, so I said, Trump is spouting it. So I'm going to just repeat it. And you're like, well, have you ever checked the facts on that? You ever looked it up on soaps? You ever look whatever? And I've got some friends now that I've trained to do this so well that if I give them some sort of data or information, they go, where'd you get that, Chris?

And I go, okay, from WAPO. And you're like, well, where's the link? We got to read it. And that's good, though. I want them to challenge me. But it almost seems like it's laziness. And I didn't live in the 70s, so I can't validate that people knew their centers. I hear that a lot, and I hear a lot about how people were just more involved, and they understood some of the concepts you talk about in the book. Do you think it's more about laziness,

and then also maybe people people just become so programmed to not care about politics because they think it's mostly toxic and their leaders are just pushing them around like chess pieces i think a lot of it i don't know if it's i wouldn't say it's laziness it's almost the opposite people are so busy and they're just trying to get by you know everybody's working or they've got kids or they've got parents or they've got siblings or they've got, you know, there's just stuff to do. And, and we're more and more alienated or in our car or devices. We're not one-on-one with people. And when we do, we're busy, like, oh, I can't talk right now. I got to do this. And, and I think that's, that's a part of it. And then part of it is the way government hasn't really responded to that busyness.

I mean, if you even look at, when they say, why do 50% only, you know, 50% of people voting would be huge, right? And yet we don't even have that, and why will, you know, election day is Tuesday. Okay, I mean, even all this stuff about how to get an absentee ballot and do that, it's complicated, and you got to go online, and what if your internet's down or your kids are calling or it's and i'm not excusing

that so much but i think it's i just don't think government has made itself accessible and even you look at you look at the national government i mean those people don't look like us they don't look like america they're all they're in lim They're all, they're in limousines, I mean, they're in limousines and they're ties and dresses and face work. And they all have AIDS and people carrying their bags around and shopping for them.

And it's like, it's almost like the royal family or something. We're not like that. And so to even to get through to them, you know, you try to email and there's, you know, how many, how many people do you have to get through to, to just get to your representative and what do you get when you're all done with it? You get this email that just says what you could have read in the paper anyway. Dear, dear constituent, thank you for reaching out to me.

This is my position on this, and there's 10 pages, and, you know, so what? You know, I think you nailed it on the head because I've been watching the de-evolution of the middle class moving it into the lower class since the 80s, and there's a lot of documentation on and books on a lot of this stuff some of we talked around the show but i think people are just pushed to the point where they can only handle so much they've got so much on their plate i always remember that that if you remember the movie network i think it was in the 70s i'm not gonna take it anymore

yeah and and he there's this uh thing that that just always rings in my head whenever we discuss stuff like this, where he goes, look, man, at the end of the day, I come home tired. I just want my radial tires. I want my TV. I want you to leave me alone and just let me have some peace for five freaking minutes, man. And I think you nailed it on the head. I think that's the way a lot of people feel. But sadly, things aren't going to get think that's, I think, you know, on the head, I think that's the way a lot of people feel, but sadly things aren't going to get better that way.

And certainly they haven't gotten better by us, you know, going, I'm not going to be involved in politics. I'm not going to pay attention. I'm not going to vote. I'm sure it'll work out. And, and I think, I think the more that we've disconnected from staying as informed public Republic, and then, and then not voted and not care and more people you know i see this on facebook all the time people be like i don't talk about politics politics is bad people talk about politics is stupid i'm like dude don't shame people who want to get involved who want to get educated and care um that's actually the

problem the people who don't care like if we actually had that voting block, the other 50% of America that voted and cared, we would be able to come to a majority of probably reason or unreasonability. I mean, it could go either way really when you think about it. But at least we'd have like everybody in, you know. I'm all for like, I wish like i think it's iceland or greenland like it's against the law if you don't vote like you have to vote my son lives in australia and and they they actually um uh fine you if you don't vote they take it off your uh you take it off your

um you know tax returns or whatever they add it to your your tax if you don't vote good because because you know the thing the thing that i hate is people who don't vote and then complain i just want to punch them in the face because i'm like seriously like if you didn't if you didn't vote i don't want to hear from you complaining because and in in so anyway uh what are some things that surprised you when you went through the book uh maybe that stuck out or maybe will stick out to readers what surprised me um i think what surprised me was how how hard the work is um that that's one thing you know the even in a tiny town like haynes with the assembly meeting supposedly every two weeks but then there was always committee meetings in between i mean mean, it was a, for volunteers, it was probably 20 hours a week,

sometimes of time spent in meetings in the evenings at lunchtime. And, and then just our packets for the, each assembly meeting would be sometimes 150 pages and there'd be all this stuff. Like you'd look at sewer and water, you know, they give you all the information to make the decisions, but I, you know, I'd sit there pouring over engineering drawings of a roll on roll off freight dock, and it's like, I don't know, I mean, I hope this is okay, you know, it's like millions of dollars, does it, is it gonna work? Well, this guy says it is, and that guy does, but then someone will come to the meeting and say, uh-uh, that's a bet,

and you're like, is it? Oh, wait, is he right? Because we need to know, and you know, there's things like that, it's a tremendous amount of time commitment that people who are um uh you know in at least at the local level and i can only imagine how how that is multiplied as you as you you move up in in county or state or you know federal government. So there's that. I think the other thing that, that, that surprised me, I mean, I guess I knew it, but it was really reinforced when I was on the assembly is that, you know, the towns, our town really runs on our public employees.

It's not really the, the assembly. I mean, you know, we go in and out every three years or six years. Nobody's even served. No. I mean, I think maybe someone might serve 10 years, but then we have every year, you know, we're giving little pins and prizes for employees that have been there 20 years, 30 years, you know, at the library, at the sewer plant, at the fire department, public works, you know, that stuff happens even when there's no manager or even when the assembly is all fighting with each other. Like you say, I mean, the roads still get plowed, the lights still go on. Everything is rolling because people get up in the morning and go to work and they work for the public, but they're often criticized or made fun of, you know,

they're just lazier, they're not doing this or that, but they're running the town, and the decisions that they make are the ones that maybe ultimately might have a greater impact on people's lives than the politicians do. Oh, yeah. I mean, if the roads aren't, you know, up here in Utah, I spent about 20 years here years ago. Man, if those roads aren't snowplow, you're an unhappy camper. And it's even amazing to me sometimes on social media,

people will be like, we shouldn't pay the government taxes or something like that. And you're like, do you understand how the whole thing works? Like the system of the roads and the highways and the freeways. And maybe people are more entitled today or something. I don't know. Social media seems to be, you know, before social media, people used to do angry stuff in their car. And there's this concept of psychology where when people are in their car,

they kind of think they're in a special bubble, that they're not really in the world and they're masters of their own car. And I don't know, they can do whatever they want and scream at people and run people off the road. But then when they hang out with each other, they're fine. And that concept of psychology seems to be extended into social media, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's such an interesting thing because, you know, I'm a grandma. And so I like Facebook to see my family, you know, grandkids, old friends from college, you know, I'm a grandma. And so I like Facebook to see my family, you know, grandkids, old friends from college, you know, that you reconnect with it seemed it all seems so wonderful when it first started, especially living in Alaska, and having been born and raised on the East Coast. It was like a miracle, you know, all of a sudden, I'm seeing all this. And, and then it just all kind of went. So and now my kids aren't even on there anymore. Like, stay away from that, you know, when they do Instagram or whatever. So now we're just all kind of went so and now my kids aren't even on there anymore like mom stay away from that you know when they do instagram or whatever so now we're just all on a family thread on the phone we

send our pictures just to each other you know it's not out public anymore and that's the same with a lot of my old friends we're just communicating not on social media but um through texts and pictures and stuff like that calling talking to talking to them. It's like, there's been a, and now with the, with all this election stuff coming, I mean, you go on social media and it's just, wow. It's just, there seems to be either screaming this way, screaming that way. Or then there's always the people in the middle that are either, either saying everybody be happy. And here's a picture,

funny picture of a dog or you you know i'm promoting this so buy this or buy that and you're like what am i doing here um but then for me as a as a writer uh i have a i mean that's the way i connect with a lot of readers and so i can, I don't want to disconnect them because I see that people are lonely. And I wouldn't say, I don't mean lonely, but they yearn for, for that communication. And there's a lot of, especially I think grandparents who that's how they, they see each other and that's how they communicate with people like me. And so I want to be aware that there's some kindnesses that can happen there. But I wish in many ways it was never invented. It's gotten pretty dark.

We may wish it never was invented. I'm not sure what Twitter is going to do if Biden wins because no one's going to go on Twitter for anything. I was almost dead before, before the election. I haven't done that tweet thing. I have this account, but I don't do it. I, um, I, I think, you know, I, obviously I live in Alaska and a small town, so I like kind of being isolated. I'm a old school. I listened to the radio. I, um, but at the same time, all of my work,

everything I do completely depends on, on, you know, electronics. I mean, my editors are far away. Everything's emailed. Like you say, we make videos. We send them out. I mean, so there's this real dependency on it, especially for people like me who live in rural places in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn't have a career without being connected. I'm not, you know, so important that I can write a longhand and mail it to somebody and they'll just publish it.

But it's definitely a double-edged sword. And I'd like to see it used better for, I don't know, it seems to bring out the worst in people, like you say, instead of the best. And that's too bad. And I think that's what readers can learn from your book um and hopefully they'll learn is is that given this this microcosm that this microcosm that uh microcosm is a microcosm that uh of really what's happening at a national level and how maybe we should be nicer to each other maybe we should focus on the facts not attack each other personally and um and and and really get back to basics maybe as a as a populist as as a governance of people being involved in politics people that want to go into politics giving exposure that

a lot of stuff people can learn from uh your book etc etc and maybe take it to heart uh one last question i have for you i noticed there's two typewriters in your office there you normally write on the typewriter oh i wish no these are this is these are really cool i actually have i think i have five or six there's some under the desk too um uh i i actually started using a typewriter when i was on the assembly because i was online so much because a lot of the assembly packets are you know electronic and there was all this stuff and and there was a temptation then to fire off an email or a blog or something and say something that I might regret later so when I get home from meetings I just type away here and then I have these notebooks and I put in a lot of the

book a lot of the book came out of those little journal entries. Wow. Never went anywhere, but I'd have notes, you know. And then the other thing I did, too, just to, again, to get my brain different, my creative brain and my assembly brain different. Like when I took notes on assembly packets and everything, I did it on the typewriter. And then I could bring the hard copies in, you know, with the things that I wanted to say about different items on the agenda. I can't actually type. I'm a two-finger.

And so I found it really fun. It was almost like playing the piano going up and down. And this typewriter, I got this junkie one on eBay and it didn't work. And I was frustrated with it, but I really liked it after I started looking it up. And so then I i called i googled around and i found a guy named mr typewriter who's in missouri and he reconditions typewriters and so he talked me into getting this is a olivetti latera and it was made in 1962 and it's a really nice little typewriter and then he talked me into getting that one on the back which is a 1941 um uh royal quiet deluxe that's the same kind of typewriter that Hemingway used. And this is the same one that Cormac McCarthy used.

Not the one he used, but the same type. So it makes me feel like I'm part of some sort of tradition. And it's really, really fun if you have, when my grandchildren come over, I can put them, that's why I have a bunch of them, I put them on the dining room table. And those kids, they'll spend hours writing little stories they love typing and seeing it and these are kids you know that grew up in school with the ipads and everything like sonic and everything flashing

and bells and whistles but get out the typewriters and we make a little book i mean they love it and so um that's fun i like it it's and i like i don't mind if they play with them it's not like they're some that's what they're for so So it's kind of, it's neat. And Christmas, you know, I write cards on them. I'd like to send people notes that I've typed on a typewriter. I don't know. I play with them, but I like it. I like them too.

I mean, I grew up in that era. There's something about that typing a line in the zing of the return, you know, smacking it and the zing and it goes back and um i don't know there's something there's there's like a it's like a reward at the end of the line um and uh downhill i mean that's what i like too like yeah you see these flat little keyboards or just you're scrolling and it's it's definitely uphill and downhill to type so that's cool that's very cool uh so as we go out heather anything more we need to know about you and your book before we leave no i i i really appreciate

um having the time to talk with you i appreciate people reading what i write and sharing it and and really you know taking with all of my books it's kind of for those of you that are just meeting me it might be kind of fun to start at the beginning and go through and see me go, read all the books. My first books, you know, are like, I'm in Hanes and I'm in my 20s and 30s. And now I'm the kids that were in my earlier books are now parents of grandchildren that are older than my children were when I first started writing. So it's, there's a progression. And you can kind of get a feel, I think, for the town and the people here and politics and life, which is all really mixed up. There you go. There you go. And I suppose that's the metaphor of life, politics and life. What's the old saying? What's the guarantee in life, death and taxes. So politics are definitely

in there. So thanks for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate having you on. And give us your plugs one more time where people will find you on the interwebs. Oh, HeatherLindy.com really easy Instagram. I don't know what it's called. I think just Heather Lindy. I'm on Facebook, Heather Lindy. If you Google me, you can find out more than you'd ever want to know. And I'm also very easy to reach. If you ever get to Hanes, you just ask someone and they can find me. But also the contact, I answer emails.

And I'm happy to talk to any book clubs or whatever. I'm here, and Zoom makes it really easy nowadays. I don't have to go home to talk to you. There you go. One final question, if you don't mind me throwing this in. Did anyone ever come to you after you left the office and apologize to all the hateful things they said about you in your office on social media? No.

Really? That's interesting. But, you know, that's also something I learned, you know, in the book that I have to, you know, and this is politics in life, you know, you just have to learn to forgive the people who never asked for it and that's that's that's the way to be walking in the world for me anyway and i will say i don't i don't mean to apply you know they they were mean and didn't apologize but there there are some things and small towns in some ways least ours, is sort of like a family, a little dysfunctional. They might not come up and say they're sorry.

But, you know, I had one guy that I knew sign the petition. It was particularly not nice to me. And then when my husband and I were moose hunting, we got our skiff stuck in the river. And he went out of his way to be, I mean, so nice. It was beyond nice, you know, helping us and pulling the boat out and his way to be as i mean so nice it was beyond nice you know helping us and pulling the boat out and getting us to town and calling the next day did everything work out and you know he never said he was sorry about the way he treated me but i guess i take those little moments i'll take it if that's as close as an apology, you know, as I'm going to get. And so I think there's been moments like that.

People have purposely said nice things to me without mentioning any of the recall. And I'll take that apology. Maybe that's the analogy for America. We're just a big dysfunctional family that, you know, Canada sits around and goes, Jesus Christ, these people. We're like the drunken brother of Canada. That's why I told my Canadian friends, I'm like, we're like the drunken brother of canada that's why i told my canadian friends i'm like we're like your drunken problem brother we're like the bobby carters and bobby clinton's or whatever i don't know we're the problem child and you guys just have to put up with us you're just like oh my what a war have they started again now um and we're

just like we're good anyway thanks for being on the show, guys. You can check out Heather on, well, you can get her books at any sort of bookstore. Her book is Of Bears and Ballots. Of is in the title, Of Bears and Ballots, an Alaskan adventure in small-town politics. And you can check out some of her other books she has. Of course, you can get them on Amazon or other different places. Find the Good. If You Live Here, I Know Your Name.

That's kind of an interesting book. It's got a big old moose on the front. Take Good Care of the Garden and Dogs. It's probably something I need to read. And check out her books and all that good stuff. And I think this is a good thing for us to give some insight, some reflection on politics. Thanks, my guys, for tuning in.

And we'll see you guys next time.