Family Stories, Traits, and Heirlooms with Ned Tillman

Rich Bennett 0:00
So I have this young gentleman reached out to me know maybe a month ago. Yes. And said that he's written a book. Actually, I think it started out you wanted to come talk to our Lions Club. 

Ned Tillman 0:13
That's correct. 

Rich Bennett 0:13
About it. 

Ned Tillman 0:14
Somebody mentioned the Lions Club. Might be a great place to talk. 

Rich Bennett 0:17
I was like, Well, you know what? No, I don't want you to talk to life. I want you to come on the podcast because I want you to let 11 people know who's in the club. I want you to let thousands of people to know about it. So I have Ned Tillman on, and we're going to talk about his latest book, but we're also going to talk about the other books he's written and find out a little bit about him that, you know, who is Ned Tillman? So, first of all, welcome, Ned. How are you doing? 

Ned Tillman 0:45
Well, thanks for It's fun to be here. 

Rich Bennett 0:47
I'm glad you had no problem finding the place. Actually, Ned got here early, which is something I love, and that's driving around and chasing people away. You didn't chase the beaver's away, did you? 

Ned Tillman 0:57
I did not see the beavers. 

Rich Bennett 0:58
Okay, good. 

First of all, because you're from Harford County, right? 

Ned Tillman 1:04
That's right. 

Rich Bennett 1:04
Okay. But you don't live here anymore. 

Ned Tillman 1:06
That's correct. 

Rich Bennett 1:07
You moved to Columbia, South south America. 

Ned Tillman 1:10
That sounds pretty good. You've never been. 

Rich Bennett 1:12
There? No. Columbia is Columbia. Howard County. So who is Ned? Tell me. Talk about you know, we back in school. Was it always your plan to be an author or what was it that you aspired? Because I love to talk about this because in school, especially in high school, it seems like everybody they're always being pushed to make their career decisions then, which I still think is too young. But so what was it back in high school? What was it that you wanted to do? 

Ned Tillman 1:43
Well, that's a great question. And I 

assuming I know or remember any of that. No, I was born on a farm. My father had he had a work as a copper works in Baltimore, but he had a 100 acre farm out here in Howard County. Harford County. 

Rich Bennett 2:00
Really? 

Ned Tillman 2:00
Yeah. And so I grew up with all these animals around and mowing. Mowing the lawns and rice fields and collecting corn, all that. So it was a great upbringing to be able to be outside a lot of my life. 

Rich Bennett 2:14
So that's what you wanted to do, is just work on the farm? 

Ned Tillman 2:17
Well, not it wasn't that I was thinking I was going to become a farmer. Well, it was great having a farm. Yeah. But when I wasn't thinking of going to college, I took those tests, and they all came out that I wanted to be outside, you know, some sort of job outside. They said, Oh, you should be a forester. 

Rich Bennett 2:34
Well, Justine, I. 

Ned Tillman 2:35
Didn't really know what that meant at that time. 

Rich Bennett 2:37
Okay? 

Ned Tillman 2:39
But I did go to college, and because of my love of the outdoors, I fell under the geology program. Oh, really? Every week they take you off campus, drive all over the place and talk about what's going on on this planet. You know, from the atmosphere to oil drilling to coal mining to environmental impacts. 

Rich Bennett 2:56
So that would explains the name of your one book then, I guess. Okay. 

Ned Tillman 3:01
Well, my name is Ben Tillman in the tiller of the Earth, you know, So it's kind of connected with the thought about that. I didn't realize it initially, but it's just. 

Rich Bennett 3:09
Now. Right. 

Ned Tillman 3:11
Both my father and grandfather and my great grandfather all had farms to various degrees. Successful or not successful. 

Rich Bennett 3:20
Really? Yeah. So when you say it, was it, what type of farms were they? Was it mainly produce or was it livestock? Was it a combination dairy or what? 

Ned Tillman 3:28
Well, you know, it changes all the time, especially when you look at 300 years of history. 

Rich Bennett 3:32
Oh, yeah, that's true. 

Ned Tillman 3:33
Which is what I did in the book, because you had to change to adjust. Right. You know, and that's kind of the bittersweet ending to, you know, how things have changed in the last hundred years. 

Rich Bennett 3:44
Yeah. Yeah. So what? How old were you? We're not How old, But what year did you actually start writing your first book? 

Ned Tillman 3:54
When I got close to retirement. 

Rich Bennett 3:56
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 3:57
I decided I wanted to try something else. Something more fulfilling for me to do. Not that I was going to retire from working hard, but just from what I was doing. And I decided, let's say, just to start writing. Every morning I get up and run, come back, write for an hour and go work. And so that was my process, not knowing why I was writing, but just remembering all those stories that nobody else probably remembers. 

Rich Bennett 4:25
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 4:25
You know, the stories of my grandparents and great grandparents. And it was so fragmented that I thought maybe it was my job to pull them together. 

Rich Bennett 4:33
Yeah, Especially if nobody else was. 

Ned Tillman 4:35
That's right. 

Rich Bennett 4:36
And what year was that? 

Ned Tillman 4:38
That was around 2000. 

Rich Bennett 4:40
Really. 

Ned Tillman 4:41
I started writing, and my wife one day said to me, Why don't you write about the natural history of the Chesapeake? Because you know a lot about that. 

Rich Bennett 4:51
Mm hmm. 

Ned Tillman 4:52
And that clicked. You know, I had all these stories about encountering, you know, crabbing or encountering bobcats or, you know, all sorts of nature related stories fishing, hunting, fishing. And so I wrote the book. Found a publisher. Oh, he found me. 

F1 S3 5:10
Thank goodness. 

Ned Tillman 5:12
And he said, We want to publish your book, but you have to rewrite it. We want something of you in every chapter. We want this to be a very personal encounter with nature. 

Rich Bennett 5:23
Mm hmm. Which. 

Ned Tillman 5:25
Which was a lot of fun. But I had to really think what were the exceptional moments in my lifetime? Yeah, well, I was amazed at something that happened naturally. Maybe was a big flood and what it did to the rivers. Agnes made me. It was freezing across the bay. I remember I came out on the bay thousands of feet from shore. You know, those things happened. And I told personal stories about each of them. 

Rich Bennett 5:50
I remember that because, I mean, I grew up here in Jupiter, and I remember the gunpowder freezing to where we can actually walk across the water to well, was water's ice to chase to the other side of the train bridge. People would take their cars out there, used to freeze over. Wow. That's pretty wild. 

Ned Tillman 6:09
I remember being out there and hearing these rifle shots, those with the ice breaking up. Oh, and you out there, a thousand people. Sure. And I start to break up. You think you get the hell off? So I remember going as fast as I could try and get back to shore thinking it was going to engulf me while. 

Rich Bennett 6:29
I All of that time, I always thought it was dog owners out there. That was the ice. 

Ned Tillman 6:33
Yes, ice can make lots of neat sounds. 

Rich Bennett 6:36
Good thing is, jig saw a lot of scary sounds too, apparently. Good thing I didn't get swallowed up whole. 

Ned Tillman 6:41
You look like you weigh a few pounds more than me. So like I would have said to you first, I. 

Rich Bennett 6:45
Think I play Santa Claus. I got a wave. 

F1 S3 6:48
In my house. 

Rich Bennett 6:50
Wow. That's pretty well, your. I can't tell you how many different authors I've talked to to where they haven't started writing their first book till they retired. 

Ned Tillman 6:58
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 6:59
Which to me is an inspiration because I finally started working on my first book, and that's I don't even know why I decided I wanted to write a book. I think it was just to teach people other things. I knew. 

Ned Tillman 7:12
I read a statistic the other day saying that 80% of us would like to tell the story. You know, they did something inconsequential, I guess. And then something happened and they would love to tell you. And I suspect that very few will do that. But that is one of the purposes of my last book, was to inspire people to write their own stories before it's lost, actually. 

Rich Bennett 7:35
Have you thought about teaching that to other people, teaching how to write their own stories or historical fiction? Like like you've done? 

Ned Tillman 7:45
Well, they I'm in this process now of going around, giving them lots of talks. 

Rich Bennett 7:50
Oh, okay. 

Ned Tillman 7:51
And some of those talks or why I chose fiction versus nonfiction. Right. And why you and the benefits of that. You know what it allows you to do, which you can't do if you have to stick straight to the facts because you never have enough facts, right, to make a story. It's always is. And creative nonfiction. 

Rich Bennett 8:11
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 8:11
You know, where you have to put something. In my first book, which had all the stories in me, those were true stories that I remembered. But there were a couple of those, and my sister said, Oh, that never happened because she lived the experience differently. Yeah, yeah. But still, that's creative nonfiction. And you do that. 

Rich Bennett 8:29
I take it your sister's older. 

Ned Tillman 8:30
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 8:31
Yeah. You know, my sister's the same way. And she she remembers a lot of things for some reason. And one of the things that always sticks out to me as she I think she exaggerates. She would tell people because it was her, me and my two brothers. And she tells people how we were out in the court and we were I think we were playing kickball or something. Then she went to play and we told her she could be third base, meaning that she would have to lay on the ground and be the actual bitch. Now that's the way she explained it. I don't remember that, but it makes a hell of a funny story. 

Ned Tillman 9:07
And it had a different impact on her versus you because of what she remembered. 

Rich Bennett 9:12
Well, yeah. Both I Yeah, it would have been better if we did it in the dirt because then we could have slid into her. I mean, not into her because we would have never made you as the base. Robin, I think you're. No, you're on the air right there. The first book you talked about was. Is that Chesapeake Watershed? Yes. Yes. Okay. Tell us a little bit about that, because I when I looked at that, I don't know how many books 

are there any other historical fictions about the Chesapeake watershed? I know there are historical fictions about the Chesapeake. 

Ned Tillman 9:47
Like James Michener certainly did the Chesapeake and the surrounding. 

Rich Bennett 9:51
Okay. And I know the bay runners. 

Ned Tillman 9:53
That's right. And Beautiful Swimmers is a wonderful nonfiction piece. 

Rich Bennett 9:57
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 9:58
That's about crabs. Oh, yeah, You should read that one. That's a classic. 

Rich Bennett 10:03
Wow. Okay. 

Ned Tillman 10:04
But you're right. I mean, I'm trying to think I love John Barth's books. He's a Hopkins professor. Okay? And he won some awards. Those are like Tidewater tales. And it's all stories about the past. And he goes into the ugliness, and you know, depravity of our ancestors who were starving. They were dumped on this land, and they had a scrap around a long time. So there was a real offer side of what we had to live through. And I touch on some of that in my book, but he was great at describing that and also very funny at the same time. But so that's his books I think are great 

fictional pieces, right? Of this area. 

Rich Bennett 10:48
Excuse me, but it was Chesapeake Watershed. So these are things that you remember, but not things that were passed down from your family, right? 

Ned Tillman 10:57
That's correct. In the Chesapeake watershed, it's like here and now. I kind of wrote it thinking there's a lot of people that moved to Maryland who don't know anything about the roots of this area. They don't have roots here. That's true. And they hear about the bay, and they've never seen the bay. Mm hmm. So that book was supposed to engage, delight, inform, you know, people who didn't know this. And so funny to me because I was so sure that was the market. Then I start again all the feedback, not from the women that bought the books, but the husbands who they gave the books to remembering their childhoods like you just did. And then they go, You know, a lot of these stories will bring back things you experience or things you heard about and just hopefully grab you in a way that makes you really love this area even more than you do. 

Rich Bennett 11:44
And when did that book come out? 

Ned Tillman 11:47
2008. 

Rich Bennett 11:48
And that's still available? 

Ned Tillman 11:49
Yes, that's still my best seller. 

Rich Bennett 11:52
Is it really? Does it when you won awards for it, right? 

Ned Tillman 11:55
That's right. 

Rich Bennett 11:55
Okay. What did you get for that? Do you remember? 

Ned Tillman 11:58
Yes. It was the best environmental journalism award of the year. 

Rich Bennett 12:02
Really? Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 12:03
And there was one that was that best public policy book of the year. And I'm thinking. 

Rich Bennett 12:09
Well, it's a historical fiction. 

Ned Tillman 12:12
The first one was historical nonfiction. 

Rich Bennett 12:14
Historical nonfiction. Okay. 

Ned Tillman 12:17
Because it's a lot of good information about everything from fungus up to like the nature and the western part of Maryland, just a lot of things that are thrown in there. 

Rich Bennett 12:29
Wow. So it could be a pharaoh, but with the bay does, isn't it? I know there's something about the shoreline I want to say. Is it the 

most shoreline in the country or something? 

Ned Tillman 12:45
Yeah. Somehow there's more shoreline in Maryland than many other states. And I don't know about California or Alaska. I can't be there. It must be the Continental. Okay, so it's out. 

Rich Bennett 12:55
Well, I know if all the tributaries and everything in the Chesapeake Bay, there's a lot. 

Ned Tillman 12:59
It's amazing to fly over this bay. Small plane and look out and it's all water. Yeah, because it's reflecting water. Just incredible to fly over the top tank or the Chester River or the Miles River. 

Rich Bennett 13:12
It's I mean, you look at what's the Chesapeake Bay, all the states that are connected to it besides, I mean. 

Ned Tillman 13:20
Seven. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 13:21
It seven. 

Ned Tillman 13:22
I think. And see Maryland. Go ahead. 

Rich Bennett 13:25
Maryland. Virginia. West Virginia. 

Ned Tillman 13:29
Pennsylvania. 

Rich Bennett 13:30
Yeah. New York is Delaware. 

Some of Delaware, Delaware. And I guess Washington, D.C., because. 

Ned Tillman 13:37
That's right. That's right. 

Rich Bennett 13:39
Wow. That is seven. Wow. Okay. 

Ned Tillman 13:40
And there's like 57 rivers around the bay. And at one point, I could recite all those, too. 

Rich Bennett 13:46
Oh, it's amazing how how big it is. But now it's scary. A this is the part that really irritates me is 

and I think a lot of it's got to do with a lot of the new construction is how the bay's becoming damaged. Mm hmm. Yeah, I just. I mean, we came up here. You saw how brown that pond was. 

Ned Tillman 14:10
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 14:11
Looks like chocolate milk. And. And that's. I remember growing up, we used to go fishing and ice skating. There all the time. Now, actually, it still freezes over, but I don't know if I could've should have there and eat anything any more. You know. 

Ned Tillman 14:28
What's intriguing to me is go look at a pond like that after multiple freezes. Yeah. And often you see bubbles coming up from degrading sludge at the bottom and to the surface, and they get frozen into each layer of freezing. And that's methane coming from the degradation of the vegetative. 

Rich Bennett 14:47
Material, just. 

Ned Tillman 14:48
Like you hear about those methane burps up in Alaska, Yukon and in Russia, because the earth is warming and all that methane is being generated. 

Rich Bennett 14:59
I didn't realize that's what that was. 

Ned Tillman 15:00
Same thing. It just is not as extreme as up in the permafrost. 

Rich Bennett 15:04
Wow. I did not knew that. All right. So we have Chesapeake Watershed. You've written correct me three books. 

Ned Tillman 15:13
This is my fourth. 

Rich Bennett 15:15
All right. Your first book came out, what year? 2000. Eight. 

Ned Tillman 15:19
2008, then 2000, 12, 13, and then 

2019. And this one just a couple of months ago. 

Rich Bennett 15:27
Okay, So what was the second book? 

Ned Tillman 15:29
Saving in Places We Love? 

Rich Bennett 15:31
Oh. 

Ned Tillman 15:32
So what my audience suggested to me after they read my first one and it was picked up by a lot of teaching organizations, too, which was neat. Oh, that's why it keeps being solved. 

Rich Bennett 15:43
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 15:45
But the second one, they said, Try to do the same thing that you did in the Chesapeake for the whole country. Now that's a big. 

Rich Bennett 15:51
Tax on the right. 

Ned Tillman 15:53
And how to think about it, because I spent a lot of my time here. But I do I have worked in every state. Okay. So it's like my whole professional career. I was around exploring so I decided I could do it. And it was all of it is just a history of the environmental and preservation movements. This country was all about exploitation. Yeah. The first couple of hundred years. Then after the Civil War, we all went. A lot of us went west because we were mentally and physically damaged before and we discovered this beautiful western part of the country, which was our salvation. I really think it helped a lot of people in the war to recover. Yeah, it was a our destiny was to, you know, enjoy the whole country. So that's when people started preserving that land and wasn't up until Teddy Roosevelt, where he was for a couple of hundred million acres that we really got rolling. And then in the Depression, FDR came and planted a couple more billion trees on some of these wastelands of the country. So we've had over a hundred years of really trying to save and beautify this country and keep it for all of us. 

Rich Bennett 17:06
You know what? I think you just what you just said there about people going out west basically to help with their mental health. Yes. I think that's another book you need to write now. 

Ned Tillman 17:14
Well, it's it's true today. You know, there's all these reasons to be outside and. 

Rich Bennett 17:19
Oh, yeah. 

Ned Tillman 17:20
Most of it thought, well, just for the serenity. Right. But it improves your immune system thematically, your. 

Rich Bennett 17:26
Immune system, your mental health. You go out there and that's why you see a lot of people doing meditation and yoga outside. It helps you become one with nature. Enjoy it. Now, if you see a black bear, get away, but run. Don't look at it in the eyes. But yeah, it's just I mean, I still love going out here, you know, walking along the day, walking up and having degrees, you know, just it's going to Rock State Park and just enjoying everything. It's just it's so relaxing. 

Ned Tillman 18:02
And the next time you go out, go ahead and relax and clear your head and then start thinking of what you're breathing in, out in nature, busy breathing and all these terrapins and pine needles, all of these different gases which are very healthy for you because we evolved in that atmosphere. And if you stay inside all the time, you you don't get those. 

Rich Bennett 18:22
Now you're breathing in what we cycled house air, I guess. 

Ned Tillman 18:26
Carpet, carpets, everything. 

Rich Bennett 18:28
Yes. Yeah, yeah. Don't want that. Okay. So the second or the second book is called What. 

Ned Tillman 18:33
Saving the Places We Love. 

Rich Bennett 18:35
I love that. And that's still available. All your books are available. Yes. Okay. Yes. So how long did it take you to write that one? Because you're going from the Chesapeake to basically the whole country now? 

Ned Tillman 18:46
Well, it's funny. You know, when I finish a book, I always say I'll never do that again. 

It takes a lot of time and you have to have the time. And when my wife ended up retiring, too, she was around all the time. So I you know, it's a lot less convenient for a couple to exist all the time if somebody is locking himself in the room. So anyhow. 

Rich Bennett 19:09
My wife would be happy if I could. 

Ned Tillman 19:12
So the second one. 

Rich Bennett 19:14
Outside the door would. 

F1 S3 19:15
Let me out. 

Rich Bennett 19:17
Of sight. 

Ned Tillman 19:18
It well, it's interesting you just picture that, you know, we downsized and I even made it more of a challenge. 

But anyhow, I was able to include my personal stories and a lot of those. Right. And I was able to talk about who it was and how did it happen that beautiful place was preserved. And so I think it's important today what we even have to do more of that. Yeah, with so many of us. 

Rich Bennett 19:44
Absolutely. And the third book is called What. 

Ned Tillman 19:48
The Big Melt. 

Rich Bennett 19:51
The Turkey. That's got to be the big melt. 

Ned Tillman 19:55
The big melt. 

Rich Bennett 19:56
There could be so many good guess. Glaciers. 

Ned Tillman 20:00
Yes. Pretty. Okay. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 20:01
Okay. Now, did somebody come to you again and say, Oh, you need to write about this? 

Ned Tillman 20:06
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 20:06
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 20:07
What they told me is you've created this love for nature, Right? And the first two books have calls to action. Have a chapter. Oh, so it's inspiring people to take care of their backyards, take care of their communities, and people really appreciated that. 

Rich Bennett 20:22
That's a good idea. I love that. 

Ned Tillman 20:25
So. So that was that one. But the third one, they said, you have to write something for the kids. And I said, I'm not writing for little kids. I know. 

F1 S3 20:33
I. 

Ned Tillman 20:33
Don't know them that well. That's 

But I decided to write something. 

Rich Bennett 20:39
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 20:40
For middle school and high school kids, It turns out colleges have bought it too, and use it. And it's fiction other to be nonfiction. So this is supposed to be humorous and serious at the same time. So it's all about young people, people graduating from high school. They don't know what they're going to do next and the next morning, all hell breaks loose. You know, the winds come up, the fire start burning, the methane starts bubbling out of the lake. The birds and animals start migrating because they can't take it. So all these things are happening, which are all true things, right? But I've used a lot of hyperbole in it to make it a little bit more extreme, to make it kind of, I don't know, make it a science book or something. And but all the lessons I do a true importance of individual action and community and planning, you know, and that it takes us all, you know, deal with climate change issues. 

Rich Bennett 21:45
Right. 

Ned Tillman 21:46
And everybody has a great role. And he's starting to see a lot of that happening. But that was what that was all about, is reaching out to the younger generation, inspiring them to learn and to develop more expertise to do so and to act. 

Rich Bennett 22:03
So how long did it take you to write that one another? 

Ned Tillman 22:06
Two years now. It took me at least two years to even convince myself that I can never write a book unless I have three things going for me. One is something that I think is meaningful right now. 

Rich Bennett 22:19
Makes sense. Yes. 

Ned Tillman 22:21
And that I have some legitimate experience and knowledge about. You know, I remember climate change in the sixties. Yeah. And I didn't believe it at all. How could I be impacting the whole planet, whether there's 8 million, 8 billion of us now? And so 

so it's interesting. So that's that's the first thing. The second thing, you need to have something that is of national importance, you know, to inspire people. And the third thing you have to know, there's an audience. Yeah, figure out how to write towards an audience and you never really know who your audience is going to be true. But you know, the whole marketing side, as we were talking earlier. 

Rich Bennett 22:59
Well, you mentioned because you wrote for middle school and high school and colleges were figuring it all. Yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of children's authors on here who their children's books have actually taught adults some things. It's yeah, it is hard to predict your audience and. 

Ned Tillman 23:16
It goes both ways. 

Rich Bennett 23:17
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 23:18
You know, I don't want to say it's a young adult book because a lot of people get a lot more out of it. They have some experience, right? 

Rich Bennett 23:25
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a call to action at the end of each chapter for that one to. 

Ned Tillman 23:29
Know because it's fiction. 

Rich Bennett 23:32
Oh, okay. 

Ned Tillman 23:33
But that the protagonist is a young boy and a girl, you know, 17 years old, they stumble into what to do, you know, how do you help other people? 

Rich Bennett 23:44
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 23:44
I mean, I want you to picture this. I'm not going to say anything more than this one sentence, but picture you being on a skateboard, skating down a hillside of melting asphalt. 

So that was some of the humor in there that, you know, how how does he get around? How does he help other people? He's a skateboarder and somehow he's 

it's slowly. 

Rich Bennett 24:11
Melting asphalt. 

Ned Tillman 24:12
Melting asphalt. So we don't have to go into detail. And a lot of people read that part and say, that can't happen. I throw the book down. And I said, I've seen asphalt slow, you know, in Phoenix, and the airport shut down because the asphalt was flowing. What India happens. So it's, you know, it's the sun, it's the black color of the asphalt. Yeah, I've seen roofs with asphalt peel, you know, flowing off them. Wow. So it's just boggles the mind that work can happen. Maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but many of the things I said in that four or five years ago are coming true today. 

Rich Bennett 24:48
Just because you never saw it doesn't mean you can't. 

Ned Tillman 24:50
That's right. I mean, five or six years ago, we didn't have this many forest fires and we have. 

Rich Bennett 24:55
Oh. 

Ned Tillman 24:56
Them. 

Rich Bennett 24:56
Yeah, that's that's true. 

Ned Tillman 24:59
So I think it's a great book for discussion. You know, people may not agree with it all, but I think. 

Rich Bennett 25:04
Here's the thing, too, with with that with the books you talk about global warming and all that, I think that's a big problem, that people don't know how to discuss it. Yes. Right away. They just wanted to not even debate it properly. It's too many of them aren't know it. I'm right. You're wrong. 

Ned Tillman 25:24
And I think part of that is that we have different perspectives. Yeah. And that like oil and gas, I mean, the debate should be how do we incorporate all the technologies we have? You know, it's like what's the best thing? And if you dependent on a gas, you may not feel comfortable that it should be going away, but I don't think it's going away. I think it's going to be maybe less use of it. 

Rich Bennett 25:48
I don't know. How could you tell that gas or oil? 

Ned Tillman 25:51
Well, I'm talking about both. 

Rich Bennett 25:52
Yeah, Well, I mean, because oil is used to make so many things, lots of places control it. Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 25:59
And, you know, people don't like plastics either, But guess what? Everything's made of plastic. 

Rich Bennett 26:03
Yes, that's true. 

Ned Tillman 26:04
Yeah. So, in fact. 

Rich Bennett 26:05
Actually, with steel, you still need to melt mine. Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 26:10
So I think we need a lot of things to actually fight something as big as. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 26:15
But, you know, it's the biggest thing now. I mean, you have the electric cars, but for a couple of years now, you've had, I know of two manufacturers that have the hydrogen cell cars, which is supposed to be safer than the electric vehicles. 

Ned Tillman 26:30
And I think Norway has uses a lot. Who are there. 

Rich Bennett 26:33
I do like yeah, okay. 

Ned Tillman 26:35
So but what you heard the same thing I've heard. Yeah, but what's the technology we need today. Yeah. And what is it going to take to do that. So it's a huge. 

Rich Bennett 26:44
That's the one thing I don't understand because when it comes to cars, well one of the first cars is what the Stanley Steemer. Right. Which was guess I'm No they had, I'm sure they had to have fire too but I'm sure I don't want to say why buy now. Somebody hasn't been able to take that and perfected if you can take 

a car, it runs off strictly electricity or hydrogen cells help put it. I'm waiting for air to come out of the one, you know, because remember, the old commercials of 40 years old had the hamsters. Why not just put a big hamster? Yeah. 

F1 S3 27:23
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 27:24
That's a be a good marketing thing for them. 

Ned Tillman 27:27
So I. 

F1 S3 27:27
Think. 

Ned Tillman 27:29
I think it's a great discussion that we all have to have. Yeah. And I would like to see the discussion of the reality of how are we going to do this. 

Rich Bennett 27:36
What are the other things That is because everybody talks about the cars. Yeah, we have to go, we have to make, you know, Electric World or whatever. All right. What are you going to do as far as the airlines are the boats? I'm sorry. I don't know if I don't think I would want an electric boat in the water because but just water and electricity, something that that scares me. But I mean, it's well. 

Ned Tillman 28:04
It's interesting how you keep using things like biofuels or something, some sort of jet fuel, you know, and they fly and you already. So it's happening. But it's not it's a lot of risk, not investment. Who who's going to you know, what we do with oil and gas is we took the risk away from the oil companies so that they could be more ambitious, more creative. 

Rich Bennett 28:27
The one good thing, I will admit with the least, when it comes to oil companies, I'm sure you remember this years ago, especially in the seventies and eighties, how many oil spills there used to be. It was ridiculous. It seems like they were able to control that better. You didn't see that as often? Oh, I don't know if it's because of pipelines or what, but I mean, that was a a big improvement. I believe it was the time. 

Ned Tillman 28:55
Yes. And I think it slowed down this desire to push on riskier and riskier sites. Going deeper and deeper is risky. 

Rich Bennett 29:05
Yeah. Oh, yeah. 

Ned Tillman 29:06
And the regulations of having to make sure they check it, right? Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 29:10
So, like before we get into the fourth book with all four books, as have been the same publisher. 

Ned Tillman 29:17
No. 

Rich Bennett 29:18
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 29:18
Interesting. You know, the publishing industry has changed dramatically. Yeah. And we don't really know where it's going to be even a year from. Right. The first year. A regional publisher based in Baltimore. 

Rich Bennett 29:30
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 29:30
And so he was great. You know, he I thought the people I worked with were wonderful and I thought they did a nice job. 

Rich Bennett 29:36
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 29:38
The third one, I bought it and sent it to him and says, no, we don't. We don't do fiction. We just do nonfiction. I'm thinking, is it really that different? 

F1 S3 29:48
Right. 

Ned Tillman 29:49
Well, he claims it is, yeah. 

Rich Bennett 29:52
For a publishing company. 

Ned Tillman 29:53
Yeah. And so then, you know, so I have a book and I don't have. So I ended up hiring some editors to help me, you know, clean it up. And then I found a group to help me get it published. Okay, so it's published basically under my name. 

Rich Bennett 30:07
So self-published. Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 30:08
Yeah, that's exactly right. 

Rich Bennett 30:10
And the fourth one, you went through a publishing? 

Ned Tillman 30:11
No, no, the same thing on the fourth one. You know, in both cases, what it came down to, which is I didn't want to wait 18 months to get my book out. 

Rich Bennett 30:20
I don't blame you. 

Ned Tillman 30:21
You know, that's what I was told, you know? Yeah, You have to find an agent. They work on it. You have to find a publisher. They send you questions, then you have to get it. You know, all those steps. And I'm an old man. They. 

And so I don't. One I chose. 

Rich Bennett 30:38
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 30:38
Because today you can do very nice work on self-publishing. 

Rich Bennett 30:42
That's amazing because. Yeah, you're right. It's publishers want you to have an agent. An agent want you to have publishers. And I was shocked. I just had a young lady on who I think she said her first book and she got an agent. How? I don't know. And got it published or vice versa or whatever. I can't remember. But I was just shocked because that's something you don't hear of. 

Ned Tillman 31:07
Yeah, I think there's like a million books go in on a regular basis in the New York for getting, you know, for review. 

Rich Bennett 31:13
Oh yeah. 

Ned Tillman 31:13
And I know you know, I think it'd be great if I had a regular publisher, but part I like the most is what we're doing today. Yeah. You know, when I can sit down with an individual, you know, have a lot of talks coming up, you know, some are panels with other authors, some are, as we talked earlier, discussions about fiction and nonfiction. So it is. It is. And it's also some history. It's a lot of history involved here in the last book. 

Rich Bennett 31:42
So how did you get into that with the speaking part. 

Ned Tillman 31:46
With the first book being more of a natural science book? Yeah, a natural history. 

I knew a lot of that stuff in that book because I served on a lot of boards. 

Rich Bennett 31:59
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 32:01
There's a national board or the Isaac Wharton League. It's a bunch of fishermen and hunters. Oh, and I've been on the national board, the Maryland Science Center. You know that for the last eight years. I was chosen to be the head of the Environmental Sustainability Board in Howard County, which directs the county into things about energy and climate. I've been on the Horizon board. I've been on all these different types of boards, so I've been exposed to what we do on a county and state basis. 

Rich Bennett 32:34
Okay? 

Ned Tillman 32:35
And so that's really where my knowledge base came from. Okay. It was your question. How did I go. 

Rich Bennett 32:41
About going out and speaking? Oh, because of all these boards you've been on, they're inviting you to come speak. 

Ned Tillman 32:46
That's correct. And Sierra Club to have me come in. Hopkins has me come in and I do keynote lectures. 

Rich Bennett 32:53
Wow. 

Ned Tillman 32:54
So it's. Yeah, I do 30 or 40 talks a year normally. 

Rich Bennett 32:59
So I hope you're charging these people. 

Ned Tillman 33:02
Where it's a question right? I mean, my concern is getting the book out. 

Rich Bennett 33:07
Right? 

Ned Tillman 33:09
Yes. I've charged a number of folks, especially if I had. 

Rich Bennett 33:12
Good. 

Ned Tillman 33:12
Go very far. But like with this book, you know, I've sent out a lot of them just to get them out there. 

Rich Bennett 33:20
Right. And this new book, it's a historical novel, Good Endeavor, A maryland Family's Turbulent History from 

1695. 

Ned Tillman 33:32
That's the year I was born. 

Rich Bennett 33:35
To see my God. Due to look, my goal was to make it to 100. I can't even do the math real quick. The figures out for 6095 to 2002. So tell everybody a little bit history about this book and why you I want to see why you finally decided to write this book. 

Ned Tillman 33:59
Well, I hope it doesn't come across too strongly, but I love this book. I could have written it for another five years. I bet. 

Rich Bennett 34:08
It. 

Ned Tillman 34:08
Was the longest book I you know, it took me the longest amount of time to make it. It's kind of curious, which is like when my parents both passed away, I got all these boxes and I put them in the attic or, you know, in the back of the closet. And I said, When I retire, I'm going to read this stuff. And then the whole story about losing the farm that I grew up on came up about 2002, and I found it extremely emotional to give up the family homestead. 

Rich Bennett 34:42
Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. 

Ned Tillman 34:44
I mean, I don't know how many people have had that experience, but they often have a grandparents house or something that they relate to. And I'm thinking, I want to say this for my kids sort of thing, right? But it just didn't work out that way. And so it's about a man coming to terms with that. By then, I. 

Rich Bennett 35:01
Mean being you. 

Ned Tillman 35:02
Well, I think his name is Edward in the book. 

Rich Bennett 35:04
But we. No close. 

Ned Tillman 35:05
To that. Yeah. Yeah, 

man. The man in the book wanting to know more and wanting to take the time to find out more, demanding to be there when they destroy the house and what he discovers. 

So that's the whole element of the book. And that what you discover in the house. What's that? Well, your ancestors passing down to you. What are the memories you hear in your mind when you see the house burned? You know all these things about what happened to this place. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. 

Rich Bennett 35:42
Okay, a minute. Because a lot of this has facts, right? 

Ned Tillman 35:46
I like to say it's a work of fiction, but all the stories are true. 

Rich Bennett 35:51
Please tell me you did not watch them burned in the house. 

Ned Tillman 35:56
You have to read the book. 

Rich Bennett 35:57
Okay. I don't know. I don't know if I could do that. Wow. 

Ned Tillman 36:02
So, yeah, so the conceit of the book is it's a history of this period of time. Yeah. I started out thinking it was going to be nonfiction, You know, So mean as much stuff in these boxes, right? 

Rich Bennett 36:13
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 36:14
I got to the point where I didn't think I could do a service to my ancestors or my descendants if all I talked about was just the facts. Okay? Because you look at a family tree, do you know How many grandparents you have If you go back ten generations. 

Rich Bennett 36:33
Oh, good Lord, no. 

Ned Tillman 36:34
A thousand. 24. 

Rich Bennett 36:35
Huh? 

Ned Tillman 36:36
You have over a thousand people who had to get married, have a kid and pass it down. And that's just that many. Now just just do the job, you know, do the geometry right? Yeah. You have two parents for grandparents. 

Rich Bennett 36:51
All right, Ned, I sucked at an. 

F1 S3 36:52
Eight. 

Ned Tillman 36:55
I And this is James at Edgewood High School. I was. 

Rich Bennett 36:58
Were you in Edgewood? Yeah. Really? Okay. 

Ned Tillman 37:00
This was an open at that time. 

Rich Bennett 37:02
Job at ten. Yeah, yeah. 

Ned Tillman 37:04
Yeah. I graduated 67. 

Rich Bennett 37:06
Okay. I was one of the first classes that started going to job at ten. 

Ned Tillman 37:11
So your question was. 

Rich Bennett 37:14
A lot of it was like, Oh, about how I. 

Ned Tillman 37:19
Was fiction. Fiction? 

Rich Bennett 37:20
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 37:21
So I pulled out. 

Rich Bennett 37:22
I still I'm still stuck on the fire thing. I'm like, God, I would shoot, man. 

Ned Tillman 37:29
So I went back five generations, seven generations, ten generations. And had some names. So I had names on a tree. 

Rich Bennett 37:37
Right? 

Ned Tillman 37:38
Okay. John died at sea. Peter went west. Somebody asked who was a merchant of mine Coal. And that's about all I knew about these people. You know, I knew specific facts. I knew an area I knew historically what happened in all the right areas. And I said, well, you know, I don't really care. It's it have it's not just have to be my story. I want a story that which relates to. 

Rich Bennett 38:04
To write that. 

Ned Tillman 38:05
The reader relates to. So if we went back in your family tree, you could find out where this guy was a judge or this guy was a thief, you know? But if it was the same error, I could pull those different stories together and make composite characters that appear more realistic when you try to tell the story of a whole generation. Wow. 

Rich Bennett 38:28
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 38:29
It's not just Ned the first, right? 

Rich Bennett 38:31
Right. 

Ned Tillman 38:32
Because we don't know much about Ned the first back then. But we do know he had a sister who liked horses or something. Yeah. So that's how I created my characters. And so, yeah, I think those stories reflect very accurately people of that time. 

Basically, they not the wealthy plantation owners. And basically they not the enslaved people. 

Rich Bennett 38:54
Right. 

Ned Tillman 38:55
There's a lot of us who brushed up against all of that. But what did we do, you know. 

Rich Bennett 39:00
Yeah. So are we because you're starting in 1695. Yes. So and I know there's not a chapter for each year because otherwise the book it wouldn't be a book. It would be a book. 

But how did you break it down? Is it like decades for each chapter or has it broken down there? 

Ned Tillman 39:22
I basically looked at five different generations. 

Rich Bennett 39:26
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 39:27
Selected out of that group, spoke a little bit about what happened before and after, but really developed those five generations. Okay. And then their descendants. And so you start seeing personality traits repeated, Oh, some of the personality traits are ones I've seen in my generation or my father's generation or my grandfather's generation, you know, like tapping the table. Yeah, just something like that. You know, how they fought, you know, were they people that had to win at any expense was a people that were to a very quiet were they good at botany, you know, all these different types of personalities and traits I wanted to bring down to the ages, to my kids and my grandkids. Yeah. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 40:13
So with this, because you had a box of stuff you were going through, right? Yes, right. Let me rephrase it. Boxes. 

Ned Tillman 40:20
That's correct. A lot of dust. 

Rich Bennett 40:22
Did you ever finish going through all the boxes? 

Ned Tillman 40:25
I went through all that I could find. 

Rich Bennett 40:28
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 40:28
My piece. I'm sure there's other ancestors or other pieces of right, Right. But I went through all mine and I came up with some interesting things that I had not really thought about before. Yeah. So early on it was settling in this nation and, you know, building latrines and catching fish and, you know, clearing all the trees down and mining, you know, the iron ore and planting tobacco. But then one of the instances I just give you one here is I had a grandmother who was an actress, and I started thinking about that because there was no TV, no radio. So before that, how did we entertain ourselves? You know, how do we entertain? We we did vaudeville, we did lots of national. 

Rich Bennett 41:18
Saloons or burlesque. 

Ned Tillman 41:20
Burlesque? 

Rich Bennett 41:21
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 41:22
Or dramatic touring companies. 

Rich Bennett 41:24
Or. 

Ned Tillman 41:25
Dramatic companies. 

Rich Bennett 41:26
Oh, yeah. 

Ned Tillman 41:27
So my grandmother, whose mother died in childbirth, her aunt picked her up 

and brought her into her family. And they were actors, and they took my grandmother along as as a group of eight or ten and travel the whole United States. They went all through the Rockies, up in the coal mining places. We lived in Butte. And so she wrote this book about a little girl goes barnstorming. 

Rich Bennett 41:57
With your grandmother. 

Ned Tillman 41:58
My grandmother wrote a book because when she was in the 1880s, her whole life was memorizing. You know, 

speaking monologues, Right. Acting as whoever the kid was in a play. And so she writes this story about the 1880s and 1890s about acting. And it just to me was fascinating. You know, some of that is in there. And that was my father grew up memorizing all sorts of stuff, and he did this to his last days. He could just starts spelling out these songs. Are these this verse about, you know, Julius Caesar, Pygmalion. So so she had quite a life. And so I use her as an example, write a story about how she educated her kids. You know, what was education like back in those days? Your first magazines, when the first national dailies was Harper's Bazaar? MM We had 150 of those in our attic at the end, and it was like, Wow. From the day it started out, some woman ordered this magazine and lived her life published by it. These are dealt with cultural things of that time. 

Rich Bennett 43:16
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 43:16
You know, so those are bits and pieces. I didn't know that about Harper's Bazaar. I knew we had a stack of magazines. We also had National Geographic going back to the 1890. 

Rich Bennett 43:26
To the 1890. 

Ned Tillman 43:27
Yeah, Yeah. And each year was actually bound together, so. 

Rich Bennett 43:32
Holy cow. 

Ned Tillman 43:34
So those little discoveries to me make a story. 

Rich Bennett 43:37
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 43:38
And I didn't have to pick that one, but I did. And I picked other ones about going off to war, a surgeon in the war who got hooked on morphine because how bad it was to be a surgeon in the war. 

Rich Bennett 43:52
How. 

Ned Tillman 43:53
You know, those are kind of stories which, to me give you a visual sense. Yeah. Of what life might have been like in each of those areas. 

Rich Bennett 44:03
Okay, I have to say, she's with your grandmother's book. 

Ned Tillman 44:06
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 44:07
Do you actually have the book? Yes, you. 

Ned Tillman 44:09
Do. I do. 

Rich Bennett 44:11
Now. So now something like that, Would that have been published or would that have been something that she just wrote for? How I mean, and if it was published, this is sort of helpful. 

Ned Tillman 44:23
It blew me away. I thought I probably had the only copy available. And somebody said, well, have you checked Amazon? Don't tell from Amazon. Why would it be on that? You never type it in there. It was. 

Rich Bennett 44:35
Get out of here. 

Ned Tillman 44:36
Some organization, some company goes around, collects all those old well well of personal books and has them available print on demand. 

Rich Bennett 44:47
No way. What's the name of the book? 

Ned Tillman 44:50
A little girl goes barnstorming. I'm barnstorming as means acting. Yeah. Every night, a different town sort of thing. And. Oh, I hate to go any further, but she also retyped and published a book that her great aunt wrote about her great aunt leaving Ireland to come. Oh, so you have So what do you do with that? You know, it's like it's a neat story. You incorporate some of it and you give the reference, you know, and other people can. 

Rich Bennett 45:21
Researcher It'd be nice if you had the rights to them though, because I'm thinking Christmas time, if you could get those, have them published with good endeavor as a like a box and. 

Ned Tillman 45:33
Oh yeah. 

Rich Bennett 45:33
That I think that's a. 

Ned Tillman 45:34
Great idea. 

Rich Bennett 45:35
Oh man because I am dying to read your book. Well, I'm dying to read your book, but what did you read your grandmother. Yeah, because it each, it, it's, it's ongoing history. 

Ned Tillman 45:48
It's primary source. Yes. You know, it's as close as you can get to. Wow. 

Rich Bennett 45:53
It is amazing. 

Ned Tillman 45:55
Yeah, it's really fun. 

Rich Bennett 45:56
This book had to be and correct me if I'm wrong. But I would think out of the four books you've written, this one probably had to be the most fun. Most fun. 

Ned Tillman 46:06
And took the most time. 

Rich Bennett 46:08
To it. How long did this one take? 

Ned Tillman 46:10
Oh, because. 

Rich Bennett 46:10
Of all the research. 

Ned Tillman 46:12
All the research. It also was my savior during the pandemic. 

Rich Bennett 46:16
Oh, okay. 

Ned Tillman 46:17
You know, I even though we could do I had COVID, I could still sit in my office and write. Wow. So, yeah, that was the emotion from the farmhouse losing that the opportunity to take a look at all this material and then the fun of trying to make it a story where you would turn the page next page Yeah. And I've heard people say that it's not like a thriller, but it's engaging where you turn the next page that which. 

Rich Bennett 46:52
Yeah yeah something something that you I, I noticed in this book that you have because I've never seen this in other books. You have the reviews from your other books in this book. That's a great idea. I've never seen that. 

Ned Tillman 47:12
I've started to see that in the last three or four years, really. And, you know, top ranked books. 

Rich Bennett 47:17
Okay. 

Ned Tillman 47:18
And I thought it was a way to get the book out with recommendations. 

Rich Bennett 47:22
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 47:23
Instead of waiting to, you know, take six months of year to get reviews. I mean, now I have a bunch of reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads and on Barnes and Noble. You know, people can check those, but I thought it'd be important to put these. 

Rich Bennett 47:39
Okay, you have good So and you also have in the back of the book the a couple other books listed including your grandmother's book. 

Ned Tillman 47:48
Yes. Mm hmm. 

Rich Bennett 47:50
All right. So these other books you have listed, like Sunrise, Sunset, A True Tale, are these also family members of Sunrise? 

Ned Tillman 47:57
Sunset is a true tale. And as a family member. 

Rich Bennett 47:59
Okay, wait a minute. So I take it that you didn't find out until you started going through those boxes that you had other authors, your family? 

Ned Tillman 48:08
Well, I knew about my grandmother's book. 

Rich Bennett 48:10
Okay? 

Ned Tillman 48:11
And I had a typewritten version of the other book, Sunset Time about Sunrise, Sunset. Okay. But I never saw that. I had never seen that book in book form yet. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 48:26
Which if you could find it. 

Ned Tillman 48:29
Well, you know, it's what's always interesting to me is some people say, well, is this going to be a bestseller? And I said, you know, we'll wait and see, you know, who knows something like that. But I know and it's engaging from the feedback I've gotten. And so I'm hoping it will inspire people to do two things. One is to look at their own history and write down what nobody else probably can write down. 

Rich Bennett 48:57
You know, I do. 

Ned Tillman 48:58
The nonfiction part as best as you can. 

And then the second part of that is I hope people will pick up on the themes of this book to help them address the challenges we have today. 

I mean, one of the major, you know, every every generation has the same problems that we have, you know, with a fragile democracy, with vigilante justice, with 

inequalities, you know, And so every chapter that and that's what I learned from it is like, you know, I'm glad I learned that, too, because I have given talks for people to stand up at the end of the talk and say, Ned, your generation destroyed the planet for us. 

And that just takes your breath. 

Rich Bennett 49:49
Wow. 

Ned Tillman 49:51
Especially since I've spent my entire career trying to clean up the planet. 

Rich Bennett 49:55
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 49:57
So there's a lot we have done, but we do have more to do. Yeah, clearly. 

Rich Bennett 50:02
I can tell you right away, once I start reading this, I'm going to be hooked because, you know, as you go through it, you're talking about heading out west, you're talking about the twenties, the thirties, which that brings me to the big band here, which is my favorite type of music. Yes. Still is. Then the fifties it all. So it's like your vote was there was a movie and I can't remember what it was. But anyways, it's like you're going along with it's not just that one time period. It's kind of a saga. 

Ned Tillman 50:34
Of a microcosm of America. 

Rich Bennett 50:35
Huh? Yeah, I just. I, I love it. I love it. And I think what you're I think what this is going to do and I think you mention I think this is going to have other people and I hope I'm going to do this with my sister. I got to get I got to get my sister copy this, because I think when she writes and she's the one that knows the family history better than anybody, I think this is going to help other people. If they haven't written a book yet, it's going to inspire them to write a book. It's going to inspire them to, you know, to go dig in, to find out, to find those boxes of stuff. Because a lot of us will if we see those boxes, what happens? A lot of people just get rid of them. You know, I guarantee you there there's probably thousands of people that came across a banker's box filled with Harper's Bazaar. Look at these old magazines and probably tossed them, you know, or old letters. That's why I don't like throwing away letters. And I'll never one of the books I I've gotten I got two books, one because I love going to like Gettysburg and T and stuff like that. And there is a book on two books one for the North, one of the South. And it was just letters. That's a soldier's fought and that just that's the story there. Yeah right there. 

Ned Tillman 52:05
And some of it might be, you know, what I did today, but some of it gets really personal. 

Rich Bennett 52:09
Oh, yeah. 

Ned Tillman 52:10
And it's different than what you did today. 

Rich Bennett 52:12
Yeah, but I love the way you did this with the characters because it's What's a novel? It's a story. 

Ned Tillman 52:21
And I hope it gives other people license to not have to do fiction. I mean, nonfiction. I mean, it's certainly great to do both. But see, people say, Oh, we don't know anything about Uncle Joe, and some cases we don't want to know something about Uncle Joe. You know, I mean, you let sleeping dogs lie, right? 

Rich Bennett 52:42
Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 52:43
But to me, I don't think I brush those aside. I talk about those things. But in this saga, I'm talking about how the average person I've have had to struggle with those things. Yeah, You know, and I think that's part of the story, too. 

Rich Bennett 52:58
Well, I know I got to read it now because I got to find out about the house. 

I'm not the type. I can write it down or say how people do this. I can't just jump to like the last chapter or age. I got to start. It's like a TV series. You can't watch it. My wife was watching one the other night and I sat down with her like, season two. I said, I guess I got to watch this from the beginning, huh? She's No, not really. I said, Well, then why is this person doing it? Oh, they explain that in the first episode. Yeah, well, that's why I need to watch it from the beginning. Then I cannot start something in the middle. And I know there are people when it comes to books, they can do that. They can jump from chapter to chapter. I can't. 

Ned Tillman 53:43
Well, there's five parts in this book. Oh, seven parts. But and they each kind of self contained. Right. Right. But you lose that the beauty of how this guy looks acts like his grandfather did. You know how they act, how they pass the wisdom on. 

Rich Bennett 54:01
Right. 

Ned Tillman 54:01
And so all the way down through there, there are people that talk about the first woman who comes into the book because she her memory is in that house. 

And I think I'm some of that, too. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 54:16
I cannot wait to read this. So for those of you listening, a couple of things. When you buy books and all of them the Chesapeake watershed, saving the places we love, the big melt, and his latest one, Good endeavor, a maryland family's Turbulent history, 1695 to 2002. When you purchase them, make sure you leave a full review about it on whether it be Amazon. Now I was going to say good pods, not good odds. Good, good reads. 

You got it. 

Ned Tillman 54:50
Barnes Noble. 

Rich Bennett 54:51
Barnes Noble. Do you have a place on your website where people can leave? Although yes, leave it on the other ones, but still you can. Yeah. 

Ned Tillman 54:58
I love to see the reviews and sometimes it's a longer one they send to me. Okay, then they send them. But it's very hard for me then to be able to communicate. 

Rich Bennett 55:06
Vi. 

Ned Tillman 55:06
Better to people. 

Rich Bennett 55:07
Who knows? Your review maybe in his next book, Speaking of which, are you working on another book yet? 

F1 S3 55:13
I. 

Ned Tillman 55:15
I'm not even thinking about it. 

Rich Bennett 55:17
I'm sorry. Did you say that before to publishers till. 

Ned Tillman 55:22
Well, you know, it's my job to now market this book. It's not my job to write a new one, right? You know, it's. I have to give this book my best, you know, because I think it does. I mean, I think it's engaging, but I think it also does deal with these big issues that we face with a lot of younger people who don't have a historical perspective. 

Rich Bennett 55:43
Now. 

Ned Tillman 55:44
You know, I grew up, you know, during the nuclear scare and my parents grew up during the Depression and my grandparents were in the First World War. I mean, we've always had, you know, dramatic things going on. And we've always gotten most of us have gone through it. And so, yeah, I think we can get through. But it's a we have some global issues. 

Rich Bennett 56:04
There's young people that are listening because I don't know if Nic covers this in his book or not, but something he just mentioned there of the nuclear stuff. And I'll never forget this in elementary school, you know, if there is a nuclear attack, what we were told to do, get under our desks, don't. 

Ned Tillman 56:20
Look out the. 

Rich Bennett 56:20
Window, duck and cover. Yeah, we would have been toast. But these are two things that we were taught and everything changes through throughout. Did we learn to live with it? Yes. 

Ned Tillman 56:33
Made me. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 56:34
Yeah. We were lucky. Knock on wood. Yeah, but yeah, I, me just. It's funny you mentioned that we were all that the other day with the nuclear stuff growing up. They'd tell everybody the website. 

Ned Tillman 56:49
My website is WW w saving the places dot com. 

Rich Bennett 56:55
Easy to remember. 

Ned Tillman 56:56
Yeah I think that title covers all the books. 

Rich Bennett 56:59
Yeah. Oh, it absolutely does. Absolutely. Without a doubt. And then when I'm going to do everything I told you about, I'm going to send you the links for great so you can get set up, get out there, market your book even more if there's anybody and Harrison, a guy that's always coming to mind right now, she'd be a great one to come get on a marshall Po. It's a. 

Ned Tillman 57:26
Good podcast. 

Rich Bennett 57:27
Yeah Other podcast you have to getting it on because this all his books but this latest one. Yeah without a doubt this something we need to push. 

Ned Tillman 57:39
And you either the web page or the book lists upcoming events too. Oh okay. So there are talks coming up which are public events, Harford County's annual History lecture. I'm doing that in November. 

Rich Bennett 57:54
Actually. Are you going to be at Arthur's? An artist show in November? 

Ned Tillman 57:58
I will be there. 

Rich Bennett 57:59
I will see you there. Oh, good. 

Ned Tillman 58:00
Good place to come by a book. 

Rich Bennett 58:02
Yes. I love going there, meeting authors and artist. 

Ned Tillman 58:08
That's up in the Bel-Air armory. Yes. And the copy event here. And they have a historical event at the CO Perry Parish Parish. 

Rich Bennett 58:14
Yeah, that's in October. 

Ned Tillman 58:18
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 58:19
I can't remember. I don't know. I haven't seen anything advertised for that yet. 

Ned Tillman 58:23
Well, I'm signed up to be there, so. 

Rich Bennett 58:25
Oh, look. 

Ned Tillman 58:27
It might just be me. 

Rich Bennett 58:28
It might be good. Usually they'll call the club and say, Hey, would you guys like to come grill? We do game. Interesting. I guess they didn't like my turkey like last time. Now you have anything you like to add? 

Ned Tillman 58:42
No, except I just, you know, my. I'm driven by a passion, right? Yeah, my passion. 

Rich Bennett 58:47
Yes. 

Ned Tillman 58:48
Really is driven by my grandkids, my kids and my grandkids. I mean, I don't if I can do anything today to make their life better, I'm going to do it. And this is my effort to do that is to inform, engage, inspire people with my books. 

Rich Bennett 59:03
And I could see that definitely happening. And I know this is going to teach a lot of people a lot of things, and I think it's like I said, it's going to encourage other people to start writing, you know, about their family history as well. So, Ned, I want to thank you so much. It's it's been a pleasure and. 

Ned Tillman 59:21
It's been fun. 

Rich Bennett 59:23
The doors open after you market. Well, we do another author's roundtable. I'd like you to come on for that. And then when you're done marketing this one and you start on the in the fifth book, you got to let me know as well. 

Ned Tillman 59:34
Great. Thank you. Good. Thank you all.