WEBVTT

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So I think I might do
about two more poems.

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Are you all doing all right?

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Nice.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thanks.

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So one of the things that
happened during the yellow rain

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investigation was
that there was--

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like I said, there
was testing done.

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And there was a scientist out
at the University of Minnesota

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who did--

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after testing some
of the samples

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did find traces of
a toxin, and that

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was the one leaf
that would then be

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used to build the government's
case on yellow rain.

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But then while that's
happening, there

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was a whole group
of other people

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with other political
interests who

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offered an alternative
theory about what

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this yellow rain was.

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And their theory was
that it was just--

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it wasn't a biological
weapon, is what they said.

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But that, in fact,
it was just honeybees

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defecating on the refugees as
they ran through the jungle.

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And that was the other
theory about yellow rain.

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It was just bee
poop was the idea.

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And so that is the theory
that actually stands today.

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And so having spent time here
in Tucson these last few weeks

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and adapting to these
figeater beetles that

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have been flying
around everywhere

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and all the bugs and
crickets and everything,

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I have a special relationship
now with these critters.

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And this next poem I want to
read is an ode to the bees,

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is a defense of the bees.

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And it has an
epigraph too that is

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a letter to the editor,
which I will also read.

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Allied With the Bees.

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These people have been living in
these areas for all their life,

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but they have never heard or
experienced something like this

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before.

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Bees and honey are
part of their life.

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They and their
ancestors have traded

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honey for salt,
clothes, and other goods

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for hundreds of years.

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A Letter to The Editor
by S Yang, Long Beach,

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April 6th, 1984.

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Tell them, child, we
have hiked these hills

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without shoes long enough
to hunt alongside the bees,

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memorizing the bend,
pulse of their voices

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when they go dream
inside the trees.

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We have been crowned
with syrup of their toils

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so that our syntax
might awaken to know

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its full range,
compassed to the North,

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pristine as a nomadic butterfly.

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Tell them, daughter, we watched
as they buried their queen,

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folding her into
cashmere of her wings

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before swarming the body
toward a fire of stars.

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And for days, the forest
keened to shadow lullaby.

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And for nights, we
listened for the bees, only

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to uncover the hurried hush of
our own stranded feet, falling,

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forgotten as collateral beings.

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Tell them, me ntxhais, we are
not misled in our anguish.

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What happened to the
bees happened to us.

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