WEBVTT

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Four.

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"There is, of course, no story,
no broken law back in Louisiana,

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no warrant, no ferry logs.

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I am no fugitive other
than from myself.

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Here, the story falls away.

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It, storytelling, has gotten
so damn weak and safe.

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I say this not to
attack from within,

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only to call a spade a spade,
a leftover lesson from art.

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I read such shit and
see such shit paintings

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that I want to gag.

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One could spray one's
vomit across the canvas

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and more deeply affect
or touch the senses, what

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remains of them, than the
things that are spewing out

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into the culture now.

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The left has vanished, has
been consumed by the right.

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On one day, the
Sierra Club announces

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it is against all logging on
national forests, zero cut.

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And the next day,
it turns around

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and endorses President Clinton
for re-election, who has just

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endorsed the industrial
liquidation of $5

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billion board-feet of
timber in one year alone.

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Hell, yes, employment
is up this year.

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What about after the
re-election, when the $5 billion

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drops back to zero
because it's all

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been cut or washed
away by erosion?

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Clinton tosses in the Tongass
National Forest in Alaska,

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old-growth coastal rainforest,
gives the timber company

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a 100-year lease on it.

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And the Sierra Club, bastion
of radicalism, endorses him.

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Trying to shore up his base
among the environmentalists,

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a long nasty word for which
we should start substituting

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human fucking beings, Clinton
designated a couple million

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acres of Utah desert
as a national monument.

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The year before, he
signed a Senate bill

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protecting California desert.

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He's made some moves
in the direction

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of protecting some Pacific
Northwest old growth, too,

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but nothing for the Yaak.

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Whether planned or not, he's
making a political trade of rock

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for timber, trading the
currency of Yaak's wildness

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for votes in Red Rock.

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And this is an alteration,
a transformation,

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which will not bear scrutiny.

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It is not grounded in reality.

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It cannot be done.

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It is surficial, flimsy.

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It is theft.

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He is not the
environmental president.

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He is trading rock for timber.

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Each has its inherent values,
but each is different.

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The Yaak, perched up
on the Canadian line

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like some hunch-shouldered
griffin high

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in a snag looking down on the
rest of the American West,

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can act as a genetic pipeline
to funnel its wild creatures

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and their strange magical
blood down into Yellowstone,

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in the bitterroot country, and
back out toward the prairies,

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too.

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It can still resurrect wildness.

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There is still a
different thrumming

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in the blood of the
Yaak's inhabitants.

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The damn Nature Conservancy
won't even get involved up here.

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The timber companies own the
land along the river bottoms

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in the Yaak.

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And they clear cut those
lands and left town

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rather than waiting
for the trees

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to grow back as they're
always bragging they'll do.

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But before leaving
town, shutting down

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the mill behind
them so that now we

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have to export our
wood and jobs to Idaho,

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the timber company
subdivided the hell out

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of those clear-cut lands, turned
them into ranchettes like cow

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turds all up and down the river.

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And still I couldn't
get the damn Conservancy

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to become active up here.

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When I wrote to
them, they wrote back

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and told me the valley
wasn't important enough.

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They hadn't even ever
seen the damn place.

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Now the vice president of the
timber company, Plum Creek,

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that's selling off those
lands in such tiny fragments,

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sits on the board of directors
of The Nature Conservancy.

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I don't mean to
speak ill of anyone,

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and certainly not of
a man I've never met,

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but Plum Creek's
got several tens

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of thousands of acres in
the south end of the Yaak

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in the Fisher River
country, which

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is the only route by which a
wandering grizzly can pass down

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out of the Yaak and into
the rest of the West.

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Plum Creek owns the plug,
the cork to the bottleneck.

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These lands were given to them
by Congress over 100 years ago.

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And so, now, the situation
is that one man, one human,

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more heroic than any artist or
group of artists ever dreamed

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of being, will do
either the right thing

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and protect that land, or
will do the wrong thing

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and strangle the last wildness.

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If you think I'm
going to say please

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after what they've already
done to this landscape,

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you can think again.

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It is not about being
nice or courteous.

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It is not even
about being radical.

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It is simply about right versus
wrong, and about history,

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that which has already
passed, and that which is now

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being written and recorded.

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I can hear my echo.

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I recognize the tinny
sound of my voice.

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I know when an edge is crossed
in art, when a story floats

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or drifts backward or forward
beyond its natural confines.

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And I understand I am a snarling
wolverine snapping illogically

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at everything in
my pain, snapping

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at everyone, at fellow artists,
and at fellow environmentalists.

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I'm going to ask
for help after all.

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I have to ask for help.

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This valley gives
and gives and gives.

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It has been giving more timber
to the country for the last 50

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years than any other
valley in the lower 48.

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And still, not one acre of it
is protected as wilderness.

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I load the logs slowly into
the back of my ragged truck,

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and drive them slowly
to the mill in protest.

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The valley cannot
ask for anything.

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It can only give.

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And so like a shell
or husk of the valley,

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I am doing the asking.

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And I'm the one saying
please at the same time

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that I'm also saying in
my human way, fuck you.

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Somebody help,
please help the Yaak.

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Put this story in the
president's or vice president's

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hands or read it aloud to
one of them by firelight

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on a snowy evening with a cup
of cider within reach resting

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on an old wooden table,
the firelight on the spines

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of books on the shelf flickering
as if across the bones

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or skeletons of
things, and outside

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on that snowy night,
the valley holding tight

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to the eloquence of a silence
I can no longer hear over

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the roar of my own saw.

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Somebody, please do this.

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Somebody, please help."

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Thanks.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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