WEBVTT

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Now we're back to the other
book, the one called Flood.

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You may not care which book
these things come from,

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but if I open the wrong
one, it's very embarrassing.

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So I say these things to
remind myself of where we are.

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I want to read a poem
called "Too Cold To Snow."

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Everybody has heard
that phrase even

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if you should live in
a climate like this one

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where this is scarcely a threat.

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We know that there's
a folk wisdom which

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holds that at a
certain temperature,

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it's too cold to snow.

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And it does seem, if you
live in a snow climate,

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that there is a range
when it very seldom snows,

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but as a scientific
notion, too cold to snow

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has certain problems.

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It fails to explain
Antarctica, for example.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it therefore passes into the
reasonably large body of things

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that we half believe
without knowing why.

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And maybe we do know
why as we've actually

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stopping to think about it.

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Maybe the problem is that
so much of what is around us

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is difficult for us to
explain and that while we all

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know that reality resists
precise and exact definitions,

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this makes us nervous.

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It makes us tired of dealing
with all that irresolution

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and ambiguity, and
at times we love

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having something to believe.

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And the poem is--

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this poem is about
that notion, I guess.

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"Too Cold To Snow."

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"Probably because
time's so short,

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what poem might not
begin like that.

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We come to recognize
stories so smoothed

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by the currents of belief
they're no longer stories.

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Jazz putts up the
river like a tugboat.

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Abner Doubleday
invents baseball.

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We always hurt the
ones we love, and it's

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too cold to snow tonight in
Terre Haute or Noblesville

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or Beanblossom much less
at either of earth's poles,

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which is why those stark vast
caps are esplanades of sand

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but the camels there are frozen.

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Even when it's too
snowy to be cold,

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I take long, thoughtful walks
with the mysteries for company,

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the space people, the
unbroken gossip of the stars,

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who the first person was to eat
a lobster, how ambition causes

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cancer.

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And I might find a frozen
leaf in the shape of Atlantis

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if I knew for sure what
shape that was, same

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as the birthmark on the
back of my true love's knee

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in the fold.

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If only I'd met my true love
yet or if I have already.

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If only I'd known it then."

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