WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.950 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:00.950 --> 00:00:02.060 align:middle line:90% Thank you all. 00:00:02.060 --> 00:00:03.380 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:03.380 --> 00:00:05.060 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:05.060 --> 00:00:06.928 align:middle line:84% Let me see where we are now with time. 00:00:06.928 --> 00:00:08.720 align:middle line:84% I mean, I know obviously, I have more time, 00:00:08.720 --> 00:00:11.000 align:middle line:84% but I want to make sure I'm mindful of time. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.270 align:middle line:84% So this is the poem that I wrote when I was staying at Aloft-- 00:00:14.270 --> 00:00:16.370 align:middle line:84% the second half of it, I wrote there. 00:00:16.370 --> 00:00:18.050 align:middle line:90% And I nod to a palm tree. 00:00:18.050 --> 00:00:20.000 align:middle line:84% I pretend that I saw it in Los Angeles, 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:21.320 align:middle line:90% but I saw it over there. 00:00:21.320 --> 00:00:23.150 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:23.150 --> 00:00:24.590 align:middle line:90% Fascination. 00:00:24.590 --> 00:00:27.710 align:middle line:84% Raleigh filled his cargo hold with sassafras 00:00:27.710 --> 00:00:30.140 align:middle line:84% to carry it from the New World to England, 00:00:30.140 --> 00:00:33.920 align:middle line:84% hoping it cured syphilis, which it didn't, but its fragrance 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:37.880 align:middle line:84% was just heavenly enough to make you think a miracle wasn't 00:00:37.880 --> 00:00:40.160 align:middle line:90% completely out of the question. 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:43.790 align:middle line:84% Elizabeth herself looked out across the blue hypnosis 00:00:43.790 --> 00:00:49.190 align:middle line:84% of ocean, saw infection in the form of 132 Spanish vessels, 00:00:49.190 --> 00:00:53.720 align:middle line:84% and prohibited the setting sail of any one of England's own, 00:00:53.720 --> 00:00:57.560 align:middle line:84% having awakened to a military need for many hulls, 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:00.810 align:middle line:84% for masts that tower, for wind loud fabrics 00:01:00.810 --> 00:01:04.800 align:middle line:84% but bettered with use, for decks seasoned by the tread 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:09.930 align:middle line:84% of subjects, their finer British aspects, reserve, and so forth. 00:01:09.930 --> 00:01:14.430 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, John White, governor of Roanoke, rich in sassafras 00:01:14.430 --> 00:01:18.150 align:middle line:84% but otherwise an inauspicious choice for the crown's toehold 00:01:18.150 --> 00:01:23.190 align:middle line:84% in the Americas, is back in town for emergency supplies and aid. 00:01:23.190 --> 00:01:25.860 align:middle line:84% But given Elizabeth's stay of shipping, 00:01:25.860 --> 00:01:29.280 align:middle line:84% won't be allowed to return to Roanoke for years. 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:32.130 align:middle line:84% Two long years, White pounds his pewter 00:01:32.130 --> 00:01:36.150 align:middle line:84% tankard down, having abandoned wife and daughter to an end 00:01:36.150 --> 00:01:38.280 align:middle line:90% without an author. 00:01:38.280 --> 00:01:42.150 align:middle line:84% His tankard cylindrical, lidded with an acorn thumb piece 00:01:42.150 --> 00:01:44.730 align:middle line:84% and filled with ale whose froth spatters 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:48.630 align:middle line:84% on the tabletops in meaningful patterns he can't yet discern. 00:01:48.630 --> 00:01:53.100 align:middle line:84% First the arrowhead of Hatteras, then a crescent of the armada, 00:01:53.100 --> 00:01:57.570 align:middle line:84% then at last a mitten or one or three lobed leaf of sassafras. 00:01:57.570 --> 00:02:00.720 align:middle line:84% Frequent thickener of stews for the Choctaw, 00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:04.230 align:middle line:84% who still dry its foliage and grind it into a powder 00:02:04.230 --> 00:02:09.120 align:middle line:84% high in mucilage which is found also in quantity in okra. 00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:12.510 align:middle line:84% Whose seed pods are said to have been taken from Africa 00:02:12.510 --> 00:02:16.050 align:middle line:84% to feed the colonies growing slave population as 00:02:16.050 --> 00:02:18.480 align:middle line:90% cheaply as possible. 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:22.560 align:middle line:84% High on the list of heat and drought resistant crops, okra 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:25.590 align:middle line:84% means to live despite untenable conditions, 00:02:25.590 --> 00:02:28.410 align:middle line:84% and deserves a tribute unique among those 00:02:28.410 --> 00:02:32.370 align:middle line:84% owed to every plant whose leaf, root, flower, berry, 00:02:32.370 --> 00:02:37.230 align:middle line:84% bark, or fruit has gotten us as far as this without complaint. 00:02:37.230 --> 00:02:41.010 align:middle line:84% Aloe, apple, artichoke, and asparagus to start. 00:02:41.010 --> 00:02:44.610 align:middle line:84% Then aubergine, a favorite of Alexander the Great, who 00:02:44.610 --> 00:02:48.390 align:middle line:84% carried it from India and into Babylon despite his astronomers 00:02:48.390 --> 00:02:52.200 align:middle line:84% warning that the thunderous local deity, Marduk, had enough 00:02:52.200 --> 00:02:52.770 align:middle line:90% already. 00:02:52.770 --> 00:02:55.680 align:middle line:84% But the Macedonian was pretty sure a promise 00:02:55.680 --> 00:02:59.820 align:middle line:84% to repair Marduk's temple, its ruins since Sennacherib toppled 00:02:59.820 --> 00:03:03.780 align:middle line:84% it and fell-- in ruins since Sennacherib toppled it and felt 00:03:03.780 --> 00:03:07.740 align:middle line:84% by fringe historians to have been the true Tower of Babel, 00:03:07.740 --> 00:03:10.200 align:middle line:84% might serve to soften the god's heart. 00:03:10.200 --> 00:03:12.510 align:middle line:90% But apparently not. 00:03:12.510 --> 00:03:16.350 align:middle line:84% Alexander's coffin, all gold, filled with rumored honey 00:03:16.350 --> 00:03:19.050 align:middle line:84% and carried west far from his deathbed 00:03:19.050 --> 00:03:22.230 align:middle line:84% in the palace built by Nebuchadnezzar centuries 00:03:22.230 --> 00:03:25.590 align:middle line:84% earlier, came to rest in Alexandria, founded 00:03:25.590 --> 00:03:27.810 align:middle line:90% by and named for himself. 00:03:27.810 --> 00:03:30.660 align:middle line:84% Site where his successor, Ptolemy, eventually 00:03:30.660 --> 00:03:34.230 align:middle line:84% built the celebrated library that Callimachus worked at. 00:03:34.230 --> 00:03:38.370 align:middle line:84% And whose fiery destruction was traumatic as a blunt force 00:03:38.370 --> 00:03:40.530 align:middle line:90% to the head of humanity. 00:03:40.530 --> 00:03:42.660 align:middle line:90% You can still feel it today. 00:03:42.660 --> 00:03:45.270 align:middle line:84% Cherokee drank a tea of sassafras 00:03:45.270 --> 00:03:48.150 align:middle line:84% root to dispollute the blood in Raleigh's day, 00:03:48.150 --> 00:03:51.840 align:middle line:84% but knew never to drink it more than a week at a time. 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:56.670 align:middle line:84% English colonists came, saw, and concocted a copycat tonic that 00:03:56.670 --> 00:03:59.820 align:middle line:84% mutated into the diet root beer I have here, 00:03:59.820 --> 00:04:03.990 align:middle line:84% its frothy head no longer an intricate play of sassafras 00:04:03.990 --> 00:04:06.660 align:middle line:84% mucilage because the FDA determined 00:04:06.660 --> 00:04:10.380 align:middle line:84% a principal in the root was hepatocarcinogenic to rodent 00:04:10.380 --> 00:04:12.660 align:middle line:90% life in 1960. 00:04:12.660 --> 00:04:16.260 align:middle line:84% Now most manufacturers add extract of soap bark 00:04:16.260 --> 00:04:17.760 align:middle line:90% to parrot the effect. 00:04:17.760 --> 00:04:20.399 align:middle line:84% In his life of Alexander, Plutarch 00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:24.510 align:middle line:84% recalls that the hero was born on the same day Herostratus 00:04:24.510 --> 00:04:27.210 align:middle line:84% set the temple of Diana and Ephesus 00:04:27.210 --> 00:04:30.420 align:middle line:84% ablaze so that his name would live forever. 00:04:30.420 --> 00:04:33.240 align:middle line:84% Soap bark acts as a foaming agent 00:04:33.240 --> 00:04:36.450 align:middle line:90% in many fire extinguishers. 00:04:36.450 --> 00:04:39.120 align:middle line:84% Without his imprisonment and brace of assistants, 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:41.370 align:middle line:84% Raleigh wouldn't have produced the history 00:04:41.370 --> 00:04:43.380 align:middle line:84% of the world whose first book states 00:04:43.380 --> 00:04:47.460 align:middle line:84% that the greatest wonder of the earth is the palm tree. 00:04:47.460 --> 00:04:50.250 align:middle line:84% I have stood beneath a tall one in LA 00:04:50.250 --> 00:04:54.690 align:middle line:84% and watched its full fronds seethe like the mane of a lion. 00:04:54.690 --> 00:04:58.080 align:middle line:84% Diana's temple, the way the Ephesian workforce fixed it, 00:04:58.080 --> 00:05:01.610 align:middle line:84% is remembered as one of the seven wonders of antiquity, 00:05:01.610 --> 00:05:06.110 align:middle line:84% its chalk white blinding under chicory blue Turkish skies. 00:05:06.110 --> 00:05:10.760 align:middle line:84% I hear the fingertips of history thrum on tabletops in Roanoke 00:05:10.760 --> 00:05:14.840 align:middle line:84% and when popcorn bursts as it spins in my microwave. 00:05:14.840 --> 00:05:18.080 align:middle line:84% When I open the bag opposite my kitchen window, 00:05:18.080 --> 00:05:21.200 align:middle line:84% the night reflects my face back in at me 00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:23.750 align:middle line:84% through the steam expressed from kernels 00:05:23.750 --> 00:05:27.140 align:middle line:84% to fascinate its way back into the water cycle 00:05:27.140 --> 00:05:31.280 align:middle line:84% in order to be the rain that fed the sassafras we hid in 00:05:31.280 --> 00:05:34.720 align:middle line:90% before I had to be human. 00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:37.000 align:middle line:90%