WEBVTT

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Well, I'll read one
more in this vein

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and make a little
turn on the process.

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Several autumns ago,
students, where I teach,

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came up to my
office and said, we

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have a project
for the weekend we

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think you should take part in.

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I'm a veteran teacher.

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I didn't flee,
nor did I say yes.

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I said, what is it?

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They said, it's a peace
walk downtown Portland.

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I saw immediately that's right.

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So I went down and I wrote
this as a kind of documentary.

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At that time, there was a strike
at The Oregonian newspaper.

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Everyone in the world seemed was
testing atomic weapons, weapons

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that are very much
including the United States.

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This is the account,
"Peace Walk".

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"We wondered what
our walk should mean,

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taking that on march quietly.

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The sun stared at our signs--

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'Thou shalt not kill.'

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Men by a tavern said,
those foreigners

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to a woman with a fur but turned
away, like an elevator going

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down, there look at us.

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Along a curb, their signs
lined across a picket line

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stopped and stared the whole
route to the street at ours--

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unfair.

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Above our heads, the sound
truck blared by the park

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under the autumn trees.

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It said that love could
fill the atmosphere.

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Occurred, slow,
the other fallout.

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Unseen on islands everywhere,
fall out falling unheard.

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We held our poster
up to shade our eyes.

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At the end, we just
walked away; no one

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was there to tell us
where to leave the signs."

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[APPLAUSE]

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A point I wanted
to make about this

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was, once the most
impressive person

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I ever heard talk about
writing was J. Frank Dobie.

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And he said, I remember,
is making this point.

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It seems from outside
as if the problem

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is to get things to put in.

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But the problem after you've
been added for a long time,

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if you really go
at it for a while.

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The problem is
what to leave out.

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And in this peace
walk, of course,

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millions of possibilities are
present in any documentary

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like this.

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But I remember one,
especially enticing element,

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just for an illustration.

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The person, a student,
apparently standing ahead

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of me, probably a Portland
State College student,

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had in his hip pocket.

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While we were listening
to the soundtrack,

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he had a paperback edition
- the works of Aristotle.

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And I thought it would be very
good to get that in my poem,

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somehow, but I couldn't
figure out how;

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or I just use that
as an example.

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I didn't know how to do it.

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