Never Listen to a CD of your own Book

The CD of my books usually come a couple of weeks after they are published. It is kind of cool to see a miniaturized cover of the book on the case and you put it on the mantle and there it sits. The other day on my way to a speech I grabbed it for a ride up to the North Shore. The woman who read the book was fairly famous and very good. Her voice was melodic and soothing and the first six chapters flew by. But I noticed I was growing tired. My book Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson has a lot going on and my brain was getting fatigued.  By the time I reached the venue I was intellectually exhausted.

So I arrive at the speech and set up the PowerPoint.  My speeches basically consist of me retelling the book but I had that women's symphonic voice still in my head and I wondered vaguely if I might mix her up with my recitation of the high points of the book. I was introduced and I went up and grabbed the microphone confidently and made a few wry comments about the book and I clicked up the first slide. It was a Bull Moose. 

Now when this happens you have a few seconds to find your footing. This slide should have been at the end and here it was at the beginning. So I clicked again. There was an old car. I still have that woman droning on somewhere in the early chapters of my book. I click again and see the sheep Edith Wilson bought for the Red Cross during World War I.  The PowerPoint had lost its mind and the lady was still reciting my book. 

I made my way back to the podium and put the microphone into the holder. Then I explained something about the PowerPoint not working and with the sheep still on the screen I started over and gave the presentation without the PowerPoint. By the time I reached the end people had forgotten about it and the speech was a success. But I didn't . I found out later that by importing the Powerpoint into the computer of the venue it had scrambled the slides. But I knew the real culprit.

When I reached my car I ripped the CD out of the player and put it back in the case. Never to be opened again.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Why Do So Few People Know About Our First Woman President?

That's easy. History is written by the victors. And the victors were men. They wrote the history in 1921 the year the Edith Wilson Presidency ended. And for the next fifty years they held the Woodrow Wilson legacy together. Edith Wilson wrote a memoir in 1939 that claimed she was only a "steward" but never President. She too was committed to Woodrow Wilson's legacy to the point her relatives were never allowed to ask her about the President. That door was shut.

And so our First Woman President skirted the pages of history. It was always that lurking factoid. Something about a President who had a massive stroke and his wife stepped then stepped in. But it never got traction and the books that came out danced around the issue. A later history of Edith and Woodrow went so far as to claim Edith Wilson was power mad and grabbed power but never recognized her for running the White House from 1919 to 1921.

The government finally recognized what she did on a website that summarizes the first ladies. On .gov there is a reference to Edith that simply says she ran the Executive Branch for two years. It isn't much, but it is a beginning.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Grace Under Pressure in Ft Lauderdale

You want to be brave but gunfire gets you running. Hemingway's definition of courage rings in your ears as you run like hell. Fight or flight.  Grace under pressure. It should be a mantra that one can rely on but if you read  The Short Happy Life of Francis McComber or Red Badge of Courage then you know it does not always come the first time. In both of these stories the hero is found wanting in the first engagement with a lion or war. The fear is something you can taste and grace deserts you in that first flash.  

You tell yourself that the next time you will look and see what is going on. That you wont succumb to the numbing rush of adrenaline that gets you running like a star halfback. It is a very powerful drug. That you will somehow fight back and get control of yourself. In the Hemingway's short story and Red Badge of Courage both protagonists assert themselves in the second brush with death. One dies in the process and one makes it through but they have conquered their fear and grace is present under pressure. 

The problem is you don't know when that second challenge will come. It may never come and you want to think that you will be ready. But it is the very randomness of a shooting that is terrifying. You don't know. Nobody does. All you can do his hope that is doesn't and if it does you will be able to grab a little grace under pressure during  the primal fight to stay alive. 

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

On The Book Tour of Madam President in Washington DC

The first thing you are is tired. You have just given everything at a radio interview and there is nothing in the tank but you have more interviews and CSPAN in the afternoon and you are in front of people from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation who might not be crazy about calling Edith Wilson the First Woman President. And it is the first day your book is out.

That alone is a conflict of emotions. Yes the book is a lot like a baby with all that anticipation. But there it is and there is not a lot you can do at a point. Forget that you don't know where you are and everyone knows it you have to focus. So you duck into a Starbucks for cerebral juice and hope you wont be so brain fogged in the next interview. Sleeping in a hotel room puts you behind the eight ball. Who sleeps well in a room that a thousand other people have slept?

But this is it. You either do it or you dont'. When people read your book back to you on the air you wonder who wrote it. They sound so focused, something you are not. No matter. Coffee. Uber. And then a flight back home the next day. Onward.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Crazy Old Uncle Bernie

You know that crazy Uncle. He would get you laughing. Kind of cute in a weird old man way. Liable to go off on a rant and say all those things your mother and father would frown at. Like I'm going to break up the banks. Or you can have free college. Or I will help you with your student loans. Or the woman running against him is unqualified. Or you cant sue gun manufacturers. Or we are going to take all the money from the one percent and give it to the middle class,

And then mom would say, how are you going to do that Uncle Bernie? And just like Uncle Donald he didn't have a clue. We are just going to do it. Mom and dad would exchange glances over their coffee. Crazy Uncle Bernie had been through a series of jobs and always been a little unhinged. He would pop up on MSNBC as that Socialist from Vermont and say all the crazy things everyone wanted to say and then he would disappear.

Lately though Uncle Bernie has been getting drunk and hinting that if he can't have things his way then maybe he will let Uncle Donald start coming to the party. Uncle Donald was thrown out a long time ago after a fist fight broke out at Christmas. Well maybe I'll just ask Uncle Donald to come to the party if you don't like what I'm saying he sneered at the last get together. You have to wonder if Crazy Uncle Bernie might just be nuts.

Read the First Chapter of Madam President

Five Things You Might Not Know About Madam President

She started out as a Republican. She came from a conservative family and it was while she was at Wesley College she began to question the values of Republican candidates. She actually canvased for Republicans when she was thirteen, namely Richard Nixon. She then volunteered to campaign for Barry Goldwater. She was the only person to graduate Wesley College and be asked to give the commencement address. The address was widely reprinted and put her in Life Magazine and on the Irv Kupcinet show. She then went to Alaska and worked her way across the state dish washing and ended up working in a salmon processing factory.

When she went to Yale for her law degrees she bumped into a tall guy with a really bad accent named Bill Clinton. He had big goals and she wasn't sure she shared them. When he asked her to marry him she turned him down. She had her own political career and she didn't want to be in his shadow. Bill being Bill persisted and Hillary went with " her heart over her head"  and married him. But she kept her name and made it clear she wanted to have her own political career outside of the big dog.

After The Clinton Presidency she became the only First Lady to run for an elected office and win when she became Senator of New York. She she ran against  Barack Obama and won more delegates and primaries than any woman in history. And now she is running to be the First Woman President of the United States, All in a days work.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson