WEBVTT

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Thank you, Gail.

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Thank you, Jane.

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It's so wonderful
to read with you.

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You've been such a great
colleague and inspiration

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to me.

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And thank you all
for coming tonight.

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I'm going to start
out with a short essay

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from a series of micro essays.

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And then, I'll read
from the new book.

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These are all essays that
are about three pages long,

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and they will be in a collection
called With Animals in Mind.

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"Dog Tags."

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"Clamp the S-hook to
the collar, and the dog

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has permission to live.

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If he gets lost, the person who
finds him can get your address

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and bring him home to you.

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If he gets hit by a car, someone
will deliver a definition

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for the grief you feel at
the loss of his company.

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Every year or two, you
will renew his license

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using pliers or a vise
grip to detach the old tag

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and attach the new one.

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Then, the dog will prance
around the living room shaking

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his head for a few moments
feeling the collar that he

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had forgotten he wears.

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You will hear him jingle
in the house at night

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as he scratches his fleas.

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His fleas, like he is your dog.

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Though unlike this in
that he takes no pleasure

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in their companionship.

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You will hear him stir,
turn, and resettle

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in the night because
of the metallic jingle.

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A stranger who once
has been attacked

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(such a sweet dog,
he would never)

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will be grateful for
the music of dog tags

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that give warning before the
bark, or growl, or baring

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of teeth that will trigger
your startle reflex.

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The body's memory of a trauma
the mind has suppressed.

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Once a person has known
teeth in her flesh,

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the dog tags will no
longer convince her

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that anyone owns the dog's
wildness, except the dog.

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Domestic only means he has
agreed to live in the house,

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and we have agreed
to welcome him there.

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Men and women wear dog tags
too to identify their bodies.

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In 2001, a 27-year-old man,
traveling in Ho Chi Minh City

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to scout for business
opportunities,

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found the dog tags of
American soldiers hanging

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on a string in a back
alley market not frequented

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by tourists.

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They were for sale
6 or 7 for $1.

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He was disgusted.

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He could not stop
thinking about them.

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Were they real or fake?

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He returned to buy 620 of
them and brought them home.

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Some of the dog tags belonged
to men who are still living.

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30 years after leaving Vietnam,
where every one of them

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must have left a
piece of his soul,

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the soldiers got back their IDs.

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For them too, the dog
tags meant, in retrospect,

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permission to live.

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30 years after their
sons died in Vietnam,

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some parents got
back their dog tags.

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One mother said she
felt joy to hold them.

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For her, they meant identifying
with her son's body,

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and he was real and tangible,
at least in her mind,

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as had been the child whose
back she had stroked as he fell

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into sleep on troubled nights.

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One morning in
Vermont, when I lived

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simple and remote, visitors
rare and reminding me

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that the world extended
beyond my house, and barn,

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and neighborhood, I
picked up a hitchhiker.

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This was near the
Canadian border, so near

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I had gone several times to a
club the size of my living room

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in the Eastern
Townships of Quebec

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to hear Jesse
Winchester perform.

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The Memphis born folk
singer and draft resister

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had become famous for his
love song, "Yankee Lady,"

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but he could not perform
in the United States

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without being arrested for
evading his 1967 draft notice.

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That war was everywhere
in American society.

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And it showed up quietly on
my dirt road that morning.

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The hitchhiker looked about
the age I then was, 24 or 25.

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He was bearded, scruffy, and
carried a dirty backpack.

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The sartorial style signifying,
it seemed to me then,

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his solidarity with resisting
the trim exterior that

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belied America's vicious heart.

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To be messy and grow wild was
to be truthful about the reality

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that our nation was a mess,
and the war had gone wild.

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A ferocity no one's tidy
rhetoric could control.

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But appearances rarely
are what they seem,

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and I realized soon that I
had projected my own ideology

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on the stranger,
instead of learning

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the story that had
brought him to this spot

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on this tattered map.

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I know this is beginning to
sound like one of those tales

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we call a shaggy
dog story, so much

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digression you can't
see where you're going.

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I brought the man to my house
for lunch, gave him homemade

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soup and bread.

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He wanted a lift a few
miles down the road

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and I agreed to take him.

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He pointed to the
green area on his map

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saying it looked
like the biggest

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stretch of uninhabited
forest in the vicinity

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and asking me if that were true.

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I said, yes, and
pointed out the window

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to the cold, hollow
mountains, which

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had been my comfort in the
landscape that had taught me

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I belonged to something
larger, and older, and wiser

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than human life.

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He told me he wanted to see if
he could survive in the wild

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with nothing but his
pocketknife and sleeping bag.

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Did he even have a sleeping bag?

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I remember so
little of this, only

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that I thought he was
crazy, or suicidal,

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or running from
something that must have

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seemed to him worse than death.

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It was late autumn, and in
that region winter brought

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killing cold weeks when the
morning temperature would

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register at 40 below.

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Why didn't I ask the stranger
where he had come from and why?

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Why hadn't I offered
him something

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other than soup and a ride?

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What would it have been?

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I was afraid of him.

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And I wanted to protect
him, and the contradiction

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immobilized my good intentions.

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After lunch I drove him as far
as a car could go on the dirt

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road that dead ends on a saddle
of those forested mountains.

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This looks good, he said.

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The maple trees had
already lost their leaves

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and lay crisp with frost
on the hard packed ground.

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I stopped the car.

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Are you sure?

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I began to see that I might be
helping a man to kill himself.

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Yes, he said, and
his eyes were sure.

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What was unsaid hung
around us like acrid smoke.

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Will you do me a
favor, he asked?

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What?

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He reached in his
pocket and took out

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a set of dog tags
hanging on their chain.

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Put these in the
nearest US mailbox.

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I stared at him.

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It's OK, he said.

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I took the tags.

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I let him out.

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He walked upslope
into the woods.

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I wanted to call out to him,
but what could I have said?

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I drove to town and put the
dog tags in the mail drop

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at the post office.

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I felt as if I were
committing a crime.

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I cannot say what
his intentions were.

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Perhaps he'd gone AWOL and
would hike north to the border

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for amnesty.

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Perhaps he died
in the cold woods

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with not one thing on
his body to identify him,

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wanting to be reduced
to the animal,

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because he felt himself
no longer to be human.

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There were so many men,
mostly men in those years,

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who were lost or could
not find a way out

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of the arguments in their
heads over what they had

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done or not done in the war.

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I felt ugly to myself, as
if by handing in his tags,

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I was treating a man as if he
meant less to me than a dog.

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I regret still that I did
nothing more to help him.

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What would that have been?

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Send a letter to his
family explaining

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his confident resolve?

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Perhaps this account
is that letter.

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Perhaps we, every one of
us who has no faith in war,

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are his family.

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