WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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As Lois mentioned, I
became a pilot recently.

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It seems like it took forever.

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And although I wrote
a prose book about it,

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there was a certain amount
of creative overspill.

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And I thought I would read you
one of the poems about flying.

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This is about Lindbergh.

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And if you know
about the man's life,

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this is about the
young Lindbergh.

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This is not about the
fascist that he became later

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in his life.

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This is about the man, just
rhapsodic and full of wonder,

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who could fly across
the ocean looking

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at most of his
controls reflected

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in a lady's compact mirror.

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He was one of the first
people to fly the mails

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across country.

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And as a result, he
flew in poor weather

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and also in very poor aircraft.

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And I think actually abandoned
planes 10 or 12 or 15 times.

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Let them go on and crash while
he parachuted to the ground.

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He was one of the first
people to fully explore

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the use of parachutes.

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"Lindbergh."

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"Half his life, he
parachuted from open cockpits

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in swamp fog, and the
other, madly scouted

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for where forced
landings might work.

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It was a tic.

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His mind painting
crashes as he flew,

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knowing pilots lived only
an average 900 hours aloft,

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while at the same time eagerly
eyeing the stagnant autumn

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of the fields.

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The village life which, as a
farm boy, he knew from the soil

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up, to invisible rivers
and culverts of air.

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Lost, he'd buzz a country to
see what language the store

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signs spoke, then reclimb
the stairs of flight

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to where he loved being a
hermit in a wooden cabin

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in the clouds.

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He always carried a
Minnesota boyhood with him.

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That frozen winter quiet, so
raw, he felt a trespasser.

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The ocean glaring white
and inhuman far below

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with enormous
cakes of jammed ice

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as he steered alone by a compass
reflected in a lady's compact.

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He figured plane and
heart would never quit.

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How can a whirlwind stall?

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Never feared the wind
streaming at tornado speed

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over fuselage and wing.

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Nor the silk he would blossom
to the ground in so often

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as if rehearsing a final cocoon.

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Above all, there was no mystery
to life's deepest thrill.

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The stick vibrant in his hand, a
quart of stagger in the engine,

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death stowed away in every
bolt and copper wire.

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All existence reaching from
one horizon to the next.

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Spangled, perilous,
interflowing, dumb.

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In the same instant, supreme
and completely without value.

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Hung on nothing, a few
valves and a strut."

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