WEBVTT

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I'm very happy to be here.

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I feel very
privileged to be here.

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I thank Lois Shelton
and Rex Veeder

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especially and others who
have confidence in my poems,

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confidence enough to
take a chance on me.

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I'm delighted to read.

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I'm also delighted to
be able to walk around

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for the first time in Arizona.

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I've been ingesting
the air all day.

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I've got my face roughly the
same color as my sweater.

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I'm very proud of that.

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This poem has a prologue,
which is not in print.

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It goes like this.

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I think, I hope--

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(SINGING) Let us tell you.

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Let us tell you about the LTL.

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We are loyal temperance workers,
and we're doing mighty well.

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We are working.

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We are working for a
cause that is just.

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Come and help us fight this
battle for when it we must.

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[APPLAUSE]

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We used to sing
that in fourth grade

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when the loyal
temperance, legion workers

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came into our school
to try in their own way

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to prove to us that we
should not indulge booze.

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The irony was that
the town I grew up in,

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which had about 796 people in
it on a good Saturday night.

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On a bad Saturday night,
it had 796 people in it.

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It was nothing, if not, steady.

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But it was absolutely
dry, and I had never

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heard of beer until a
loyal temperance legion

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workers came in.

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So if I don't owe them,
thanks for anything else.

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And I don't.

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I owe them thanks for that.

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Carry A. Nation, the hatchet
woman of Medicine Lodge who

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spelled her first
name C-A-R-R-Y.

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Her middle initial was A,
And she read her first name

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as a verb.

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She assumed that it
meant that she was

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to carry a nation to sobriety.

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She lived up the road apiece
for my hometown, 22 miles.

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Medicine Lodge, and
she's in this poem.

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We never begrudged
the temperance folk

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that have worked there
because it was something.

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And something at home
was better than nothing.

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And we'd have little parties.

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She would bring in
cookies and Kool-Aid.

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They would carry this picture
of the patron saint, Carrie A.

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Nation and tack
it up on the wall.

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And then when the
party was over,

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they take the picture down
and take it home with them.

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And we enjoyed all that.

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It was a great orgy
as a matter of fact.

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LTL Carrie A. Nation,
came into our house,

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and filled it with
her meagerness.

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She was hung full fledged
against the flowered wallpaper

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of our living room.

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And Mrs. Wilma Hunt
who brought her

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gave each of us a
little wooden hatchet.

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John Barleycorn is the
devil, Mrs. Wilma hunt said.

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And by dropping worms,
headfirst into alcohol,

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she taught us to hate him.

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Now, let me tell you
she said about the LTL.

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She taught us the
loyal temperance legion

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song, all of it, then
killed another worm

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and served refreshments.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Our house had
never been so full.

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There were all of us with Carry
on the wallpaper, Kool-Aid,

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cookies, song,
something new to hate

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and several dead worms
curled in alcohol.

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Thank you.

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