WEBVTT

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So to begin, to
introduce Rodney--

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Rodney Phillips recently
moved to Tucson from New York

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where he retired very
early from his position

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as the director of the
Humanities and Social Science

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Library, the main
library that's there

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in midtown, the one
with an entrance flanked

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by lions, the famous, the
famous New York library.

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Before taking the position
of director of the library,

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Rodney held the position of
curator of the Berg Literary

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Collection, one of the
greatest collections

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of literary manuscripts and
other rare materials pertaining

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to literature and other
related areas in the world.

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Rodney was in
charge of acquiring

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new items for the collection,
such as the last letters

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of Dylan Thomas to his wife,
and Thomas Wolfe's notebooks

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containing draft texts
of Look Homeward, Angel.

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Rodney was also a chief curator
of exhibits using a collection

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in the library's halls.

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Such exhibits
featured luminaries

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such as Nabokov and Yeats.

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Yeats?

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Yeats.

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It's always confusing.

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Anyway, so Yeats-- along
with more contemporary parts

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and such less canonical topics
such as mimeographed literary

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magazines.

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Rodney was once interviewed
for a PBS special

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about New York where he
talked about some of the items

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under his care kept in
the mysterious underground

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stacks such as Melville's
trunk, containing

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some of the manuscript of
Typee, and one of the four

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handwritten copies of the
Declaration of Independence,

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soon to be featured in
a major motion picture,

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if you haven't been
watching previews.

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Because on the back
of the Declaration of Independence,

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there is a map to the treasure.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Coming in the fall.

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Rodney also once carried the
scroll typewritten manuscript

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of On The Road by Jack
Kerouac from New York

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to Minneapolis to Los Angeles
in a very special satchel custom

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made just for that
continuous roll of paper.

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Rodney was born in Valley
City, North Dakota,

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which is also the birthplace
of Penny Lee and Lawrence Welk.

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He then grew up in Tucson and
attended Rincon High School

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with Linda Ronstadt,
although he never

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met her, before
venturing northwards

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to the University of Oregon.

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It is nice to have
him in Tucson.

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Tucson just got much better,
and the first concrete evidence

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of that is the exhibit
here that Rodney curated.

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To discuss it with
you, here he is.

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