Speaker 1: I'm pleased to welcome to the fifty five Carscite Morning Show.
Speaker 1: Book you can get on my blog page fifty five
Speaker 1: krs dot com like Swans by our local author, Susie Cohn.
Speaker 2: Susy, welcome to the program. It's great to have you
Speaker 2: on this morning. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm honored to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm honored to have you on.
Speaker 1: And you know, you could be quite an inspiration to
Speaker 1: some other folks in the listening audience. And I would
Speaker 1: like to put a plug in for Peter Bronson because
Speaker 1: his Chili Dog Press is a local publishing outfit and
Speaker 1: he is an extraordinary author in his own right. But
Speaker 1: let me first ask you what part of town are
Speaker 1: you and since you are described as a local author.
Speaker 3: Susie, I live in Sharonville.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, And you got a bit of a Brady
Speaker 1: Bunch situation going over at your place.
Speaker 4: Well, our kids are all grown, so they actually never.
Speaker 3: Grew up together.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, but they get along great. So we have
Speaker 4: I have twin boys and my husband has three daughters,
Speaker 4: so we're one short of the perfect Brady Bunch.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: I saw the description of your in your in the outline,
Speaker 1: and I just was chuckling to myself about that. You're
Speaker 1: also a flight attendant.
Speaker 3: Yes, doing that from Doha last night? Actually, oh wo.
Speaker 4: And I was so nervous because you know, the airport
Speaker 4: in Philadelphia is a mess. There were so many delayed flights,
Speaker 4: and I was like praying that I would get on
Speaker 4: the six o'clock because otherwise it would be a very
Speaker 4: late arrival and with the jet lag and all that,
Speaker 4: I was like, I just want to feel good in
Speaker 4: the morning, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I understand that. And props to you and all
Speaker 1: of the flight attendants I talked to iHeartMedia aviation expert
Speaker 1: Jay Ratliffe every Thursday, and he is always reminding people
Speaker 1: that you're not stewardess is you're highly trained folks who
Speaker 1: are designed to deal with, you know, potentially terrible problems
Speaker 1: that need to be treated with much greater respect. So
Speaker 1: I can put in a word a positive word in
Speaker 1: for you and other flight attendants for the work that
Speaker 1: you do. All right, pivoting over your book like Swans,
Speaker 1: what inspired you to write the book? We can dive
Speaker 1: into the details of it. Tell my listeners all about it.
Speaker 4: Well. My parents always, especially my mom talked about how
Speaker 4: they escaped and life over there, and I wrote a
Speaker 4: short story about it in like nineteen eighty six, and
Speaker 4: my professors like, oh, that, you know, that's pretty good.
Speaker 4: You should expound on that. Well, you know, then I
Speaker 4: had twins and got really busy and I was, you know,
Speaker 4: flying full time.
Speaker 3: And my mother, though, was always like, no, Phisy, what
Speaker 3: aren't going to write that book? And it was a
Speaker 3: lifelong dream.
Speaker 4: And when COVID came about, the silver lining of COVID
Speaker 4: for me was having an eighteen month leave where I
Speaker 4: could sit down. Michael, my husband, said, Okay, you know,
Speaker 4: you can write your book now, and I knew I
Speaker 4: had no more excuses, so I sat down and worked,
Speaker 4: you know, very hard.
Speaker 3: It was really a labor of love.
Speaker 4: It was the hardest thing I've had to ever do
Speaker 4: because when I was writing it, you know, we had
Speaker 4: so much censorship going on, and it just reminded me
Speaker 4: of what my parents talked about.
Speaker 2: Well, you said over there.
Speaker 1: The over there you were talking about is Czechoslovakia with
Speaker 1: post communists when the people in the Communists were in charge.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was like in nineteen sixty six was one
Speaker 4: day escaped.
Speaker 3: So sorry, I forgot that small detail, but that's okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they you know, told me about how everything
Speaker 4: was still controlled, and that's how I felt that everything
Speaker 4: was controlled, you know, information about COVID and then how
Speaker 4: we could live, what we could do, you know, we
Speaker 4: had to wear masks.
Speaker 3: Uh. It was just it was just really weird. I
Speaker 3: can't even but see that's in the sea.
Speaker 1: I've found a whole lot of positive about COVID, and
Speaker 1: you're illustrating one of them. I think the people will
Speaker 1: be less inclined to just sort of prostrate themselves before
Speaker 1: whatever directed from some random governor says about where you
Speaker 1: can be and what you can't do. In spite of
Speaker 1: the fact that we have amendments of the Constitution which
Speaker 1: project protect these liberties and freedoms, it's as if the
Speaker 1: Constitution was eradicated. And it did feel a lot like say,
Speaker 1: Czechoslovakia are under the under the Soviet Union, because I've
Speaker 1: read a lot of Mulan Candera, and I believe that's
Speaker 1: where he is from, and he's written about it one
Speaker 1: of the one of the books of the note he
Speaker 1: made or the joke I think was the name of it.
Speaker 1: He made some sort of random joke about one of
Speaker 1: the Soviet leaders and ended up getting unemployed and ostracized
Speaker 1: just by merely uttering a joke.
Speaker 5: Brian, my mother got called into the local police station
Speaker 5: for wearing a sweater that was bright and colorful.
Speaker 4: Oh my go. They accused her of you know, advertising
Speaker 4: Western propaganda.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And that was really.
Speaker 4: A blessing because my father had spoken for years about
Speaker 4: you know, he'd you know, we need to leave. Things
Speaker 4: are getting worse and they're they're not going to get better.
Speaker 4: But she didn't want to leave her family. You know,
Speaker 4: they waited two years to get an apartment, she had
Speaker 4: to get an extra part time job to you know,
Speaker 4: furnish it. Everything was difficult. I mean there was just
Speaker 4: no easy path for food, for furniture. And so she's like,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't want to leave. But that showed
Speaker 4: her that someone in the neighborhood. There was every neighborhood like.
Speaker 3: A had a watch person. Yeah, so you never knew
Speaker 3: who it was.
Speaker 4: And so she got called in because of this sweater
Speaker 4: and that's the turn that was the turning point for her.
Speaker 3: You know, she knew that they had to get out.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's just frightening. Stuff is the book about
Speaker 1: their story, in other words, a work of nonfiction about
Speaker 1: their trials and tribulations and experiencing life under communist Czechoslovakian
Speaker 1: then ultimately leaving.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's it's I really wanted people to see why
Speaker 4: you would want to leave a place like that. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, waiting in line for food. People would get
Speaker 4: in line if there was a line. They didn't even
Speaker 4: know why, oh wow, but they got in it because
Speaker 4: it might be something good that they could sell. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was just like a weird sci fi they were
Speaker 4: living in almost but it was if the book is
Speaker 4: a love story and a thriller because of you know,
Speaker 4: their escape. I mean, of course, you know they did
Speaker 4: make it, but just the way it all happened, it
Speaker 4: was really God's intervention, I believe, because just the way
Speaker 4: everything I don't want to give too much away, no, no,
Speaker 4: you know how it.
Speaker 3: All came about. That they were actually able to to
Speaker 3: get out well.
Speaker 4: Really amazing because many people weren't able to well in
Speaker 4: an oppressive regime like Czechoslovakia during the Soviet days.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the emotional struggle of deciding to leave because
Speaker 1: in spite of how bad things are you have all
Speaker 1: these emotional ties not just to the land, but also
Speaker 1: to your community and your friends. But once they made
Speaker 1: the decision to leave, was it was it difficult? Did
Speaker 1: they have to you know, steal out of the country
Speaker 1: under cover of darkness or be snuck out or could
Speaker 1: they Did they work through some approval process.
Speaker 3: No, they tried to get approval.
Speaker 4: I mean my dad had approval you know, put in
Speaker 4: for years, but they never got it because my father,
Speaker 4: my mom's dad, was a capitalist. He had a trucking
Speaker 4: company and so he was on their like blacklist, and
Speaker 4: so my mother wasn't allowed to go to college. She
Speaker 4: was she actually wanted to be the flight attendant. That
Speaker 4: was her lifelong dream, which is so ironic because I
Speaker 4: never that wasn't in my I, you know, a view
Speaker 4: at all. And I got it by just sheer chance.
Speaker 4: And so my I don't know where was I They
Speaker 4: escaped because my mom got permission to take me out
Speaker 4: of the country to Yugoslavia because I had a lot
Speaker 4: of ear issues and the doctor was like, oh, you
Speaker 4: need to go by the sea because the air is
Speaker 4: much better. And then my dad, last like a last
Speaker 4: minute thing, got the trip to Milan. He was an engineer,
Speaker 4: and so he had a business trip to Milan because
Speaker 4: one of the boss's sons was ill. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: usually only the people in the party were allowed to travel,
Speaker 4: but this was some big job and my dad was
Speaker 4: given permission to go normally because he would not sign
Speaker 4: on the communist party line. He refused, and so he
Speaker 4: knew that, you know, something was going to get I mean,
Speaker 4: they weren't going to let him just get away with
Speaker 4: that forever, and that's why he knew he had you know,
Speaker 4: they had to get out of there.
Speaker 3: Wow, So they were.
Speaker 4: They took the same train out of Prague, got to
Speaker 4: Austria Vienna, and did not go on their separate trains
Speaker 4: to their final destinations. They stayed there and my dad
Speaker 4: had had family there that they actually didn't even know
Speaker 4: if they were still alive, because they never got the letter,
Speaker 4: a letter, you know, in response to their letter. But
Speaker 4: you know, it just worked out for them that they were.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you wrote this because this may give
Speaker 1: people something they truly need, is to pause and consider
Speaker 1: the freedoms that we enjoy in the face of a
Speaker 1: country that won't let you leave. I just can't imagine
Speaker 1: being in that environment. And I've heard a lot of
Speaker 1: stories like this over the years. Think of the people
Speaker 1: who tried to get out of Berlin and had to,
Speaker 1: you know, go through the wall or under the law
Speaker 1: or or law I'm at risk getting machine gunned down
Speaker 1: for even endeavoring to leave.
Speaker 2: This is a great story.
Speaker 3: And I guess you're communism was so great? Why would
Speaker 3: people go right?
Speaker 1: I know I was gonna say earlier in your in
Speaker 1: your breadline comments like whatever happened to from each according's ability,
Speaker 1: each according to his need? How come it's so hard
Speaker 1: to get an apartment in a communist country? This is
Speaker 1: all summed up like Swan's my local author guest today, Sussy,
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure talking with is Susie Khan likes
Speaker 1: Swann you. You can get it on my blog page
Speaker 1: fifty five carose dot com. I encourage people to do
Speaker 1: that and then pause and reflect on what we've got
Speaker 1: here that so few countries in the world have. Susie,
Speaker 1: thanks for doing this for everybody.