very fetching picture that you selected if i'm not mistaken well i guess my father took the pill father took the picture you know when i was a sophomore at sarah lawrence he loved to photograph and so we were walking around the campus any just said you know i going to take your picture and then i think i sort of chose to hide in the rock the way i am oh i thought there was some deep psychological thing about the left eye is not shown at all that it was just a shot yeah but it was also i felt the way i was then you know sort of hiding and i was shy yeah and the book is sort of about coming out is that it is indeed in any event so welcome so much as really good i've talked to the program with your sister and yes you know sometime back and and she also is an interesting family background you had three of your five sisters all of that family and it's a very interesting story and so welcome very much to met network in conversation thank you maybe you could share your background born and raised a little bit and then we can talk you've got a very interesting story to tell is told very very well in the writing is very good in the book but share your own background born and raised a little of that well i was born into  world at the time yes and my grandfather at one point had the highest salary ever pay and he lived in a wonderful double townhouse and i used to love to go visit when i was a little girl in the plane is that really it was not like versailles you know but it was you know beautiful yeah right it was very big it later became rebecca harkness ballet studio so people could walk in and at one point i was asked if i wanted to buy it for my book store because you get less good for the books or a little later but you did in the later in your life to develop the book throw the book and go oh yeah so it's really about growing up in this amazing family where everyone w accomplished and i was a girl that was incredibly shy and i was much happier staying in my room and reading a book than i was talking to anybody and it always seemed to me that everyone else in the family was much more successful talkative athletic popular and my mother was a great beauty and really would have liked her daughters to all be you and all over and i just and i love to read so yeah so you know we didn't have to really you weren't reclusive were you a youngster yet as a teenager yes actually reclusive yeah i just like to be in my room because i like going into another yes i was i was very depressed and i realized later really only in the last five or ten years that i was i'm now you mean five or ten yeah looking back at that when i went back and i saw going through changes school i did school so but it raises you a nice time at home although my house was just absolutely meltingly warm yeah i mean there were a lot of wonderful things about my home but my father was unpredictable and had he was the one who started the company yeah well i think he spent a lot of time with his family i mean i wasn't there but he was very hard on my father hard yeah and he had a terrible temper so it sort of got passed and father had a terrible temper rea mother was a little more welcoming her was in order she understand what i'm so yeah i kind of on different wavelengths yeah i mean sometimes i thought i should be in another family i think you're probably not the st person who's done that but yeah you know as i got older i grew much more to appreciate both of them and also to understand things in their lives that made them the way they were but as a child growing up you know you're just longing for approval and i guess feeling that you're you know doing well i guess when you're just a little infant in the crib you're really looking through a lot of what the hell is this all about you know i mean sent off the book to them and ruth greenstein the publisher of turtle point press she worked with me before she was going to publish it i just tired or kids when i was a publisher she used to add it all the authors she's a wonderful anything anyway i started sending her stories but they were not connected yeah they were just an interesting little story like alcohol in my family or clothes or just little random thoughts and what age are you talking about now when you're doing that when i started to write yeah oh when i was five years ago i only recent yeah i just started to write but i had you ever get past that that early childhood and all the trauma like when i was young i didn't refuse to know i bad was all the food in my day school was so terrible oh i couldn't eat it just you know potatoes from a mix and greasy meat and soggy broccoli and you know what they were made out to like me no i'm kidding but they would make you stay at your place where you finished it did they really yeah it was ours or no it was strictly it was very strict  very strict but some people loved it i just was not a six i wasn't the right school for me maybe if you were in the wrong environment i think you know you know i think i was in the wrong school it should have been a more  maybe i was born into the wrong world i don't know if you know we didn't get that bad were you at odds with the world or well what i don't mean to be sounding well you know when i was when i was twelve i was so unhappy i used to try to kill myself and my god i now that's really all i know i would sit out on our little balcony off my window with nothing on and my sister came and said well what do you doing it i said i'm sitting out here so i can get pneumonia and then i can die and then viewers will and then i used to try to strangle myself but that hurt too much yeah yeah yeah i didn't do that well that's serious stuff did you see did they get i don't mean to down there kind of is what is worst if you're a man as you're a man you really have to be tough yes you know you find that god is so easy being a woman and so easy to be a woman you know because you can be just having all those really and i found it was our talk a little bit about well because i just would be a lesson for all the other young ladies who might be going through something whatever you know i never really talked about my depression publicly but later on in my life i ended up  twice in a mental hospital and twice having shock treatment wow yes and so part of the reason for this book is to show young people or people not so young that you can feel like you want to kill yourself one day but just told on you know any year it could be totally different or two years or next month or the day after we're there is a lesson in that so you don't know i don't know what about the people who are was in interior now you were so you can have an appreciation of people who will get to be very very unhappy when they have to live in a material world where they don't have anything to eat yeah or something  order and you develop a sense of camaraderie or appreciation of some of the what's called the least among us and that kind of thing well materialistically or psychologically well it absolutely kill myself and then i was a good thank you and then i went to boarding school where i was much happier you did because it was a more stable environment and no one was screaming or yelling or wait would have been a wonderful father because i did a lot of imaginative things with my children if i hadn't had such a terrible temper so that it's tragic oh because he knew that he had this terrible you know yeah or you know i could go outside and climb a tree or you could do that did you do that yes and then they would be calling me yeah but i pretended i didn't hear yeah so that was very nice a secret escapism but yeah sounds familiar and different ways to a lot of people watching the program yeah yeah but i'm sorry you went through such a you know in a way it's all part of my life sensitive do you think maybe maybe you should be a little more oh yes wife i developed more a lot of m people who were answerable to your dad well they were related and it's thinks it's the stuff of a movie yeah yeah like a movie which would make a movie yeah who could play you i don't know oh ok what do you think no i'm just thinking it would do you understand what i'm saying what a hell of a movie well it was d because in those days at boarding school they were so strict and they didn't let you wouldn't you know you when you we had our dances  i love it i just love it i find so calming i love to go through the metropolitan and yet their collections so beautiful so what happened after you got out of school was vanitie university then i went to sarah lawrence and how how was your intellectual side going then you're interested in things well i was interested at boarding school i had a friend who was very intellectual and she was reading carl young and all sorts so i started reading karl you know you know i was interested in the collective unconscious ten minutes and i know all of that and i started it is all interesting yeah very interesting reality is a really interesting thing i know so much is going on the interpretive he's really got inside the by people yeah or interesting you and i would look at the same thing in a totally different maybe it would be so it's interesting yeah but then i went to sarah lawrence and girls to get into his seminar had to try out and they would go in their most beautiful outfits and their faces all made up and no no yeah i mean it was a competition to get its last yes all large and so i was afraid to even try cause there were so many really glamorous girls going to get it so again i didn't do it but i you know that was one of the things i regret it and then the st two years that sarah lawrence have and then do with what is  jokes but after the st meeting they ran out of jokes and when they next met he developed these silly exercises and there was a little chorus in between would you like to do it with you know try anything ok i'll try most  that where are you being then when you're with the family then you're older you're out of sarah lawrence did you then like got married you got married was that when you were in girls points yes yeah but i was that's where i'm from but detroit yes well it was still you know the old saying a ring by spring or you get your tuition back i mean it was a big option for women in those times i don't understand what you just said it was english but it was just a silly expression and this is the this teenager early twenty year olds right yeah what you're talking about yeah it's a higher so yeah i was looking to find out who the guy is and the hormones and now the girls are getting married so much later and i think it's much i don't know i don't really know the younger actresses that well that the you thing yeah but yeah but i think there has to be a a role for you do you ever think you could do maybe if you thought about doing television or anything like that it just occurred to me out of the blue no i'd love to have a wonderful personality and she got a star quality i think you have star you're also no use being yourself thank you i think that when you look in the mirror i never thought that no but i love the idea was not a bad idea i was got a wonderful way about you fake yeah isn't it true i said if the audience too but i didn't know you when i was you know twelve and that i'm happy little girl probably would have got along because i was a bit of an im you know where you yeah you went didn't you do well i just would be getting a no i wasn't really i was i know i was a gentleman anyway you got it so you got there to school and then you ended up in gross point well then that didn't but there was and i ended up getting married with  joslin then went to paris her junior year so i had no apartment to go to and a hell of a reason to get married i know to me just saying it makes sense if she had stayed i knew i wouldn't have gotten married your whole world would've been isn't there for isn't like at sarah lawrence where excruciating because everyone went home or everyone went into the city yeah and you know there wasn't anything really going on plus i didn't have that many kind of bored yes with talk about well they'd more on doing things if i get a normal talk well i felt that the conversations were sort of boring were all about material things material things like how much people's houses cars or then their their pedigree was someone a ford for or a chemical for it now i couldn't have cared less and that wasn't the type of conversation that i dreamed of having and i used to read the new york social columns used to read susie and read about all these wonderful parties i invented a whole alternative life for myself in your own head yeah where i was living in new adored me and here there are pictures of me he's giving a speech at an i b m something that he's holding me and he took me on a business trip to poughkeepsie when i was a little girl and when my father retired this ancient secretary came up and said i can remember when your grandfather took you to kip c and they said your grandfather asked me to give you a bath can you imagine and c e o asking his to well i only spent one night there where you could only do it once and you  sure and i said i think i think i swallowed a pin oh my mother said then with another straight pin they attached a note to me and said this child all made it may have swallowed a pin but anyway he wrote me the sweetest letter but there was no bad effect from but it just makes them cringe i know that i was going in but he called me good god his precious promise all precious from this book and that's where you could have called it the well for a hotel ok for a while and not really but sometimes i would drink more than i should know really maybe take a few drugs i shouldn't really well what remember you used to be able to weigh yourself on mars at the old planetarium remember having been there at the time oh i don't remember what i left i love the planetarium but anyway then i found out i had to have major hip surgery because my mother noticed that i was limping and i said i just pulled a muscle nothing wrong and then i went to the doctor and then he said a picture is worth a one thousand words and he showed me an x ray and i had severe hip dysplasia he went that the doctor said i needed to have surgery but it was going to be a very long surgery and long recovery they had to take out a piece of the bone so it would mean i be in bed for six weeks then i'd be on a walker for six weeks and then on crutches and then i became they would take me about a year and i was so i was pretty upset i would wonder about that but then i started thinking about the book store it having a bug the bookstore everybody of idea of starting a bookstore through a dream i had while i was going through this terrible time and then i woke up i thought maybe i could do that you know if you were interested in literature and i love literature and you're new and i like to talk to people  supporting books she was into work kind of spiritual books near the end so she was showing me this book but she was telling me something that i always did after she said it she said i would never let my clerks say we don't have a book they'll say i walk you to the section because then they might see another book clever d d very clever so i tried that or you could say i don't think we do but come over and take a look maybe there's something else on that subject we don't got it you could say that but that's not such a good salesman bridge you know you know i get very upset when i walk into bookstores as i always ask them what they're reading yes because i think maybe i'll discover a new wri we know it's multimedia world's going multimedia but there are a lot of people still reading i mean there's been a resurgence of the independent bookstore is that right where the independent bookstores around new york now well we street and they do a lot of it i think the bookstores are becoming more interesting people are putting cafes in their books they're trying to make it more of a hub they're doing lots and lots of events and book clubs and things like that could you really want to make it a hangout for people you know what it was interesting anyway it's forcing them to be better business people business yeah well that's interesting in the books and go was you were really devoted yourself to a great deal of attention to see and it was became a focus of a group doing what you were doing yes i loved it yeah i loved it i met a lot of interesting people come in so many it's had everything i liked yeah tons of books you like to meet with people yes but but to meet with them over a purpose so i didn't have to ask them where they were from or you know what i was about whether they were afford for it or a chemical for it or you know i could just say well how did you like middlemarch answer yeah you know something like that or they'd bring that select books i mean bread made one of a good friend that way she was buying a lot of edith wharton related books so we just started discussing e people i work with they were all young really interesting some of them were poets or you know did other bro get we're getting philosophy degree heads is a good music we had a music loved it i would have loved it when it left yes i'm sorry i wasn't there but anyway i've seen great concerts with you know jerry lee lewis and elvis presley and the rolling stones at bruce springsteen major thing for you for twenty years yeah and what happened to to go out of business and well for the st two years it did really well and then we started getting that discounted books and words and noble with oh well ok this is when customers came in and said oh i just bought that at discount for eighty dollars i don't know they didn't have internet that they there but i i she did find a place to buy it  you know and i had i smiled but i was thinking boy you're really putting me out of business by doing that because by selling that big book and it would help me pay for all the small press books the literature and translation all the magazines we carried a lot of things that they didn't have any place really and it would cost us a lot to import them and everything so we couldn't make much money on that but it added to the prestige was did you take a play do you take a business man's or business woman's pleasure in meeting the budget and answering the demands of the marketplace well practical for ten years i did if you could just make everything available to everybody for free to everybody get everything free you're good with though thought about the money you know would you prefer that that's like john lennon imagine all  way but you know i see other children reading i see i saw these two cute little girls on the subway and they didn't have to hold on they were balancing perfectly and they each had a book open and they were reading th orders of my husband because he takes pictures of everyone and he doesn't have any of himself take pictures here it's still pictures yeah mike you have i got you haven't gotten into because everybody's got their web cams now and yeah you haven't gotten you haven't thought about the cinema you haven't thought about film or now like that now i love to go to film no but don't you think you make them sometimes i think or not or do you appreciate the art of filmmaking yes why now it's true and i think it's going that way the world i think the huge yeah yeah i think so i think it's going to go it's going to become  think they're going to develop a way to get all the languages of the world or seven thousand languages fewer and fewer every day we're losing a lot and it's a shame it's really a shame and they're going to be all this all tied this incredible capability machines oh major scholar and he had written another book ten years before called the age of intelligent machines and what he was doing he raised tracing he's a leading guy i think and understands the implications of cybernetics oh i d m would have been part of that yeah you know because you were part of the i b m family in every but all of what was that the implication of all of that and he predicted from  ten years out when the when the yeah when the computer would defeat the world chess champion by reading the algorithm he had all it was in about m was a major developer of that whole impetus that is developing now at a major thing sites so helpful in hospitals yet you get so much data being printed out all the time yeah they can put it all together and then d recognition yes yeah pattern recognition is another very interesting thing absolutely but i lose my with study i was reading a book about a ballet dancer making up a dance and if you just had the ballet dancer in lights and looked at it then the person would be able to predict what the next move would really just by watching the pattern yeah the pattern and then they go figure out the next i think you're i wouldn't want to we're right in my grandmother right she she used to what was it that i was thinking of that oh henry ford used to henry ford before he w there's detroit and before you became famous and a big major change yes he used to tinker in my grandmother's garage real money years old how he fully went on to build the forward motor company how incredible yeah so these changes are coming up figure out how big a change has been since the automobile and now this information or you know just since i've grown up so much as i am and it's going faster and faster  and all that was it just yourself you were thinking about were you think about the human condition i was or was that be i would just thinking so much about myself out right and i think as i've gotten older you know i learned to try to turn my depression like say i'm upset about somebody stat there or something then the buddhist way would be let's pray for all women who have experienced this and then if you turn it into a universal yeah yeah i did yeah right away for and it's not so hard going off the deep end and he's saying we're going to bomb and the bins are as i understand from modeling on or i could be doing if they're on a list in a war like we did is or second world war or something if they're on leave it's apparently it would mean the end of our species my father you know my next distance or world you deserve to be does press about the existential dangers of the world in which we go meant to with a lack of vision worth the vision coming from  know that that is not a good thing but what i what i could do is i'd try to concentrate on on the moment ok yeah that's a good thing that's good you know now i'm having a nice time talking to you yeah  get into quantum stuff yeah and they can leap over all these walls and boundaries well it's interesting times these are interesting times and one of the problems is your two dogs on interesting but we've run on on now for time i haven't read i really do i think you could become a great person on television well thank you would be brady suited for television just being your own sweet self i was so nice thank you and i got forty years experience well do you think already i think she could be a great host i'm sorry we've run on time thank you alan i really enjoyed it had to jeanette watson a lovely lady is so good thank you for coming in the book is revealing we're coming back again tomorrow please tune in then and thanks a lot really nice thank talking to you and congratulations on the book and such a varied of well led life had a little rough spots at times but a life that is continuing and i appreciate that you're a really good member of the human society and welcome aboard thank you