WEBVTT

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I feel like I ought to look a
little different than I do--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--what with the tentacles.

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Is a suggestion.

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I'm way back at beefalo.

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Thank you all so much
for making this day,

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pretty much, the
best I've ever had.

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It's been spectacular
being here.

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It is my first time in Arizona
and I'm thrilled to be here.

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Thanks for coming out.

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I'll read-- I'll
read three essays.

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We'll see how it goes.

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I think, three essays.

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This first one is very new.

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It's called "My Eagles."

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My first eagle.

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South Dakota, Highway
385 out of Deadwood,

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late morning, November.

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I was hoping for it, since
I'd never seen one before.

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My friend slowed the car
and pointed up and said,

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there's your eagle.

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At first, I heard seagull
because he said, you're.

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I grew up on Long Island
and gulls are all over

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but when the gull shape wouldn't
click in I fast reheard, eagle.

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In my pocket was a quarter,
which later that day I'd

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resee as an amulet, a way
to keep a belief near.

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E pluribus unum,
out of many, one.

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Likely a variation on a
fragment by Heraclitus, out

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of all things, one, and
one out of all things.

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As a slogan it predates
the melting pot,

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which in my child's eye
I saw not as concept

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but as a real object.

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A kettle suffering
a too high heat,

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collapsing, forming
a molten puddle.

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Impossible to unimagine
now the vicious flame,

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the ruin with glint
of hope contained,

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which somehow meant my country.

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The bird was so close
it had actual feathers--

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not embossed, not etched--

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and flying low over
the highway and neck it

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turned to better see us.

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Or not us at all but whatever
it might clean up, pick at, side

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of the highway, freshly killed,
or not so fresh but abundant,

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and easily got.

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Either way, as it
angled its head,

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feathers parted and there
was a gap, a tender dark

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spot where a little
chill must have hit,

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as it does for me when walking.

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I turn a corner and the wind
lifts my hair, finds my neck,

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and slips in.

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Ben Franklin didn't
think much of the eagle.

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Bald, by the way is a shortening
of piebald, two colored,

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the white head and tail
against the dark body.

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He wrote, in a well-known
letter to his daughter,

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quote, "For my own part, I
wish the bald eagle had not

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been chosen as the
representative of our country.

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He is a bird of bad
moral character.

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He does not get his
living honestly.

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You may have seen him
perched on some dead tree,

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where, too lazy to
fish for himself,

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he watches the labor
of the fishing hawk.

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And when that diligent bird
has at length taken a fish,

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and is bearing it to his nest
for the support of his mate

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and young ones, the
bald eagle pursues him

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and takes it from him.

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With all this injustice
he is never in good case,

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but like those among men who
live by sharping and robbing,

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he is generally
poor and very lousy.

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Besides, he is a rank coward.

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The little king bird not
bigger than a sparrow

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attacks him boldly and drives
him out of the district."

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My second eagle came
forth as a feather.

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A friend, with reverence,
showed it to me,

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lifting the lid of the box
where she kept it, where

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I wasn't sure it wanted to be.

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It looked pretty cramped.

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If I may describe the feather,
in my own way, as I would

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have long ago when the line
between objects and beings

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had not yet been drawn.

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And all was alive, and
felt, and capable of holding

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a conversation or being hurt.

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But, then again, sacred shards
of bone, teeth, fingernails,

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locks of hair have always been
made to live in such boxes.

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I don't think there were colored
beads or decorative wraps

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on the feather, I
almost said, bird,

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since a relic by any kind of
mitosis regenerates a spirit,

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so there exists between
part and whole, object

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and believer, a very fast
shimmer that blurs and joins

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both.

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What did the
feather do in there?

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Rest?

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Until called upon?

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Doesn't a sacred thing
have a life of its own

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beyond waiting to be
called forth to serve?

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Though, too, I'd like to
think we are necessary

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and that restive powers
need to be touched,

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moved, acknowledged into being.

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And that the act of
enlivening matters.

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Though, I don't
know to whom or why.

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Eagles certainly look
ferocious, confident.

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Full of pride those talons
for seizing and hooked beak

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for tearing, puffed breast,
though most birds puff up

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in the cold, and blazing
ever open eye almost human

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sized though four
times as sharp.

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Our country's symbol very
much isn't the screech owl,

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a creature the size
of a coffee mug,

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whose habits include attentive
waiting, silent diving,

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erratic flight to
confuse its prey,

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and whose call sounds
not at all like a screech

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but a distant whinnying horse.

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Whose eyes are a buttery
yellow, a quieter

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lime, and gently bright.

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I'd be inclined to
choose for an icon

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a bird who won't much reveal
itself, who is shy and alert

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and requires patience to know.

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Such is the way thought comes
to me over time, very slowly.

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Such are the habits of being
I'd seek in a national bird.

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A watchful thing that likes
best the margins, the indistinct

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marshy edges.

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Who leaves behind a neat
collage of all that sustains it.

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A harvest of trimmings,
a scoured bounty,

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a trove of things stripped well
used and returned to the earth.

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Yes, a screech owl, if I had
to go for a singular creature

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though it might be better
to reconsider the fuller

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expression of our motto, and
add back in to the epithetic,

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out of many, one, the phrase,
and one out of all things.

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We might then have a more
capacious illustration

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of how we live together.

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Consider Lewis
Thomas's description

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of aggregating minds, what
makes us most uncomfortable

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is that they,
ants, and the bees,

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and termites, and
social wasps seem

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to live two kinds of lives.

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They are individuals going
about the day's business

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without much evidence
of thought for tomorrow,

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and they are at the
same time component

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parts, cellular elements, in
the huge, writhing, ruminating

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organism of the hill,
the nest, the hive.

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On the coin of my realm, heads,
a screech owl, tails, a hive.

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Except the eagle is a rock
star and I'm not a fan type.

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Presented with the chance to
meet and get autographs signed,

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I run the other way.

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Toward the buzzard,
crow, sparrow.

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The rabble.

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The common.

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Definitely the pigeon.

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Not the brook-voiced mourning
dove with its slow grace

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and musical fluttery lift.

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I mean, exactly the scrappy
city pigeon, its blue gray

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iridescent shine oily
as a gas station puddle

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and not at all bothered
by spiked windowsills,

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or ledges sown with
shards of glass.

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Who never hurries, who dodges
buses at the very last second,

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and after circling
a bit, resettles

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in precisely the same spot.

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