WEBVTT

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You know, today was the
first day I got a chance,

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and it was great.

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I got to meet my
escort, there she is.

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Yes, she's one incredible people
you have, wonderful people.

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But actually, it was such
an extraordinary thing

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that I went hiking after the
first month of not hiking,

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just being so inundated with
all the projects we're doing.

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We're doing some projects
you would not believe, just

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[MIMICKS EXPLOSION].

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We took 41 women--

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by the way, guys,
check this out.

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Who has the biggest
prison in the world

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with the most women in it?

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America.

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Do you believe that?

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It's a city, it's a city.

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And guess how many-- guess what,
80% of that women are white.

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Not Black, not
Hispanic, the system

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has got to a point where
it's locking up its own now.

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Isn't that's amazing?

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It used to be, these prisons
are built for these Black women

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and those Brown women.

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But now, every three
out of five are white.

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And the system is breaking
down because that's not

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what it's supposed to be.

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You know what I'm saying?

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Well, it's supposed to be that.

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And it's creating a problem.

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But we're doing
an amazing project

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in Oklahoma City at the Mabel
Bassett Center in new McLoud,

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and we're doing some other stuff
that just defies imagination.

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I'm going to read this
one, that'll be it,

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then we can talk a little bit.

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"Tire Shop."

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I went down yesterday to
fix the leak in my tire.

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Off Bridge Street, there's
a place $0.90, flat fixed.

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Smeary old paint
on a warped wood

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plank between two
bald tires, and I

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go in there's this old Black
dude with a Jackie Gleason hat,

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grease off for the
years of sweat,

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and a master cigar
stub in his mouth.

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And there's this
old pachuco chicano

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working the other nomadic
hissing tire changer.

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And the walls are Black
with rubber, soot, blown,

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brown dust everywhere, rows
of worn tires on board racks

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for sale, air hoses naked
and looped over the floor,

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and I greet the two old guys:
hola, ¿qué está pasando,

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hombre?

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"How's it going?"

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No response.

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They look up at me as if I
just gave them a week to live.

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"I got a tire that
needs a tube."

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And Rodolfo, a young
Chicano emerges

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from the darkest part of the
room in the back pony-tailed

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and walks me out to my little
trokita and looks at the tire,

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"It's going to cost you $5
bro to take off and change,"

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and I nod.

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And he tells the old
Chicano who pulls

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the roller Jack
with the long steel

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handle, and I wait in the
middle of the grunting

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oval tire changing machines,
while the old guy goes out

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and returns with my tire.

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He looks like a disgruntled
carny handling the Ferris wheel

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for the millionth time and
I'm just another spoiled kid.

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I watched The two old men work
the tire machines, stepped

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on the foot levers that
send the bar around flipping

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the tire from the
rim and I wonder

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what brought these two
old men to work here

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on this gray
evening in February.

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Are they ex-cons, are they
drunks, are they addicts?

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He whips out the
tube--uy, Rufo, mira.

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He kind of yells and I see
a gaping hole in the tube.

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"I can't patch that," Rudy says.

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And then in Spanglish, hombre,
no podemos pachiar esto.

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"Now we got a pile of old
tubes over there," he adds,

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"And we'll do it for 10."

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At first, I think he's taken me
but I hedged from that thought,

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and I watched the machines
work the splits of air

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the final begrudging
of rubber popped loose,

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then the holy clank of
steel bar against steel.

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And gently, the
old pachuco instead

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of throwing the bar on the
floor, he takes the Iron

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and wipes it clean of rubber
bits gently in his waist belt,

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in such a way that
I've only seen mothers

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wife their infants
mouths at the table.

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And I turn, and I watch Mash on
TV suspended from the ceiling,

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it's an old rerun.

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6 o'clock news comes
on, Huntington Beach

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blackened with oil.

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Rodolfo comes out and
says, "Fucking shame,

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isn't it, that they
do that to the ocean?"

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And I realized suddenly how
I love these working men

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in the heft dark,
working with bald tires

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like medieval hunchback
and a dungeon.

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Who eats soup and scrape
along in their lives

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and these little tube for
five rooms on central.

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How can they live on $0.95 of
tire change in today's world?

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But I'm pleased to
be with these guys

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and feel how these Barrio
Chicanos and his old Black men

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have given up some nice
jobs somewhere else

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to live by friends
working in these places.

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And the old Chicanos grumbling
at me as I'm thinking that's

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how cheap I am.

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When he learns that all three
of my tires outside a ball, even

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the spare's flat,
shaking his head

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as he works the tube
in the tire well,

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I notice his heels true to the
nails, his fingernails black,

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his face a weary, room
and board stairwell,

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given over to drunks
and derelicts.

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He had that kind of face
that was hand worn by people

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leaning on it all their lives.

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Wooden step grooves
beneath his eyes

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by heart soul men and
women just out of prison.

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He had a face condemned
by life to live out

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more days in futility.

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And I bid goodbye to the
beautiful Black man chomping

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his ancient cigar,
and I bid goodbye

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to the beautiful chicano
with his head down,

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and somehow I felt ashamed that
I couldn't live their lives

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with just a minute for them.

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Grateful they were
here, I respect

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such men who have stories
that'll never be told.

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Who bring back to me
my simple boys days,

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when men and oily
pants and grubby hands

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talked in rough tongues and
worked at the simple work,

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getting three meals a day
on the table the hard way.

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"They live in an imperfect
world," I thought driving away.

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Unlike men with money who have
places to hide their shame,

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these men had none.

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They had no place to put their
shame but on their own mothers,

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their kids, themselves.

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Unlike men who had places to
put their shame so they never

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have to face it, these men
had become more human with it,

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more vulnerable.

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And I thought of the time
that my brother betrayed me.

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Leaving at 14 when we vowed
we'd stay together forever,

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he left to live
with some folks who

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adopted him and I was taken
to the detention center

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with no place to live.

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And I became a juvenile
filled with rage

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at my brother who left me.

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"These tire shop men
made choices never

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to leave their
brothers," I thought,

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"And that's why they
were suffering poverty."

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And in them, I saw no shame, I
saw shame with no place to go,

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but in a man's face and back to
his hands and back to his work

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and back to his silence.

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And as I drove away
nearing in my farm,

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I saw water sprinklers
shooting an arc of water

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over the grass and fence
it was intended to water.

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I looked at that
water and it was

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a fountain hidden
a weed stickered

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spot that grew a single flower.

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And I looked around, it
was the only flower around

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and it was in the
midst of winter,

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and in the midst of the rubble
and the brush and the stones

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that water hit for some reason.

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And it touched the dormancy
that blossomed itself

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and to what it was.

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Despite the surroundings
and the weather,

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something made sense to me in
that flower and those old men.

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Now I'm not quite sure what.

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An unconditional love of
being or accepting your life

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or taking what comes one's way.

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Whatever it was, that
night in my dream,

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I cried for the first time
as my brother was leaving me.

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And all the words I used
to use against myself

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like, you're no good, you're
rotten, you're shitty,

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you're a failure, all of
that dissolved in my tears,

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and my tears poured out of me.

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And in my dream I wept, because
my brother turned and left me.

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And when I reached out
for him, he was gone.

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And I wept in my dream
because he was not available

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when I needed him.

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And all my tears
flowed and how I wept.

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And my feeling, my pain for
the first time of abandonment,

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all my tears became
suddenly that arc of water.

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I became the flower
by sheer accident,

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in the middle of Tucson
blossoming today.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

00:08:27.075 --> 00:08:31.019 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

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You're out of time.

00:08:31.998 --> 00:08:32.498 align:middle line:90%
Huh?

00:08:32.498 --> 00:08:33.980 align:middle line:90%
You're out of time.

00:08:33.980 --> 00:08:36.200 align:middle line:90%
Yeah, yeah.

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Talk about perfect timing.

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Thank you all.

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We're going to sign
books down there.

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So get down there
so we don't have

00:08:40.610 --> 00:08:41.818 align:middle line:90%
to carry our books back home.

00:08:41.818 --> 00:08:42.409 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:08:42.409 --> 00:08:45.759 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

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