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9055f0a
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In other words, every cent the French government spent on guns for the Americans was another centime it would not have to spend on butter for the starving peasants who would one day storm Versailles.
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Sarah Vowell |
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69c536a
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Not until Theodore Roosevelt resigned his prestigious position as assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 to fight with the Rough Riders in the Cuban dirt would there be a rich man as weirdly rabid to join American forces in combat as Lafayette was. The two shared a child's ideal of manly military glory. Though in Lafayette's defense, he was an actual teenager, unlike the thirty-nine-year-old TR.
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Sarah Vowell |
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f712772
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I swear on Peter Stuyvesant's peg leg that the country that became the U.S. bears a closer family resemblance to the devil-may-care merchants of New Amsterdam than it does to Boston's communitarian English majors.
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Sarah Vowell |
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1fc3751
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It was made clear to me that I wasn't supposed to trouble the moody Creator with any pesky questions about the eccentricities of His cosmic system. So when I asked about stuff that confused me, like "How come we're praying for the bar to be shut down when Jesus himself turned water into wine?", I was shushed and told to have faith. Thus my idea of heaven was that I got to spend eternity sitting at the feet of God, grilling Him. "Let me get ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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6089c9e
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The internet is the nerd Israel, a place to speak and listen to spectacularly specific concerns.
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Sarah Vowell |
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0b83ef0
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In the United States, there was no simpler, more agreeable time.
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time
history
past
the-united-states
generations
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Sarah Vowell |
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608db1a
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The most meaningful namesake by far is Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. Also known as Lafayette Park, this is the nation's capital of protest, the place where we the people gather together to yell at our presidents. In each corner of this seven-acre park stands a statue of four of the most revered European officers who served in the Revolutionary War: Lafayette, Rochambeau, Steuben, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Poli..
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Sarah Vowell |
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3def913
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There is something aesthetically pleasing about trading one engraving - and old map - for another - American money.
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Sarah Vowell |
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31feff9
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As a Frenchman who represented neither North nor South, East nor West, left nor right, Yankees nor Red Sox, Lafayette has always belonged to all of us.
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Sarah Vowell |
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6862772
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The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew
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Sarah Vowell |
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a89abc1
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Take for example the commencement address he [James Garfield] delivered at his alma mater Hiram College in the summer of 1880. ... The only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word 'dude'.
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garfield
slacker
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Sarah Vowell |
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febdf4f
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In other words, after Winthrop has acquired all his butter firkins, food stirrers, and beer along with six dozen candles, twenty thousand biscuits, and twenty-nine sides of beef, he goes through the Bible and writes down a bunch of verses commanding him to be willing to cheerfully give all that stuff away. My firkin is your firkin being one of Christianity's primary creeds.
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Sarah Vowell |
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d508f12
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it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces.
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Sarah Vowell |
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42a1761
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We all grew up, those of us who took to heart. We came to cringe a little at our old favorite poet, concluding that God was likely never Pooh Bear, that sometimes New York and California could be just as isolated as our provincial hometown, and that grown men didn't run back and forth all the time bleeding soup and sympathy out of sucker women. But those are just details, really. We got what we needed, namely a passion for unlikely words,..
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on-the-road
kerouac
modernism
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Sarah Vowell |
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9afaea5
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Then Cotton quotes Luke 12:48. "To whom much is given, of him God will require the more." Of course there's a catch, Spider-Man. When God is the landlord, Cotton says, "defraud him not of his rent." The price? Obedience."
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Sarah Vowell |
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ef19eba
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That story is proof of the theorem that then as today in Chicago, the mysterious equation of whiskey plus music equals what can only be called happiness.
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Sarah Vowell |
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e268bcc
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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
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Sarah Vowell |
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d956b21
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I ask about the Quakers' silent services. She describes them as "not so much the absence of talking as the presence of god." Interesting. Hers is a more poetic, more profound description than what I call it: room tone. But a synonym for "room tone" is in fact "presence," the sound of a room that audio engineers record for editing purposes. Every place on earth at any given moment has unique acoustics based on who and what is there. So actor..
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Sarah Vowell |
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0c5bb9b
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Vergennes proposed clandestine aid to the rebels to avoid stirring up an overt war with Britain and to shore up the enemy of France's enemy, advising, "The courage of the Americans might be kept up by secret favors and vague hopes." He specifically suggested sending them covert "military stores and money" for the time being but warned against going public and making an official treaty with the insurgents until "the liberty of English Americ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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bd2f80f
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I]deas, when implemented, turn into precedents with unpredictable and potentially disturbing consequences.
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Sarah Vowell |
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46f0d03
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Wainwright prayed to the graven image of Lafayette, since neither the president nor Congress seemed to be listening. "We, the women of the United States," she told the bronze Lafayette, "denied the liberty which you helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years, turn to you to plead for us. Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in the hearts of the American people."
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history
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Sarah Vowell |
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c219d06
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I am pro-plaque.
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plaque
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Sarah Vowell |
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5383192
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With temperatures dropping, how could men without shirts expect to fend off opponents so blatantly well equipped with outerwear that they were nicknamed the redcoats?
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Sarah Vowell |
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f7a1489
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Lafayette, on the other hand, was more of a make-your-own-destiny type of fellow, disobeying orders from the king and abandoning a pregnant girl for an entirely optional adventure.
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Sarah Vowell |
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5ef4ff5
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The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian que..
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Sarah Vowell |
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63e9015
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In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.
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Sarah Vowell |
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719f8bc
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One night, he left Stephen and me in the arcade and rushed off to a - this hurt my feelings - "real" game. That night, he missed a foul shot by two feet and made the mistake of admitting to the other players that his arms were tired from throwing miniature balls at a shortened hoop all afternoon. They laughed and laughed. 'In the second overtime,' Joel told me, 'when the opposing team fouled me with four seconds left and gave me the opportu..
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Sarah Vowell |
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6337130
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Standing there at Powell's grave, telling my nephew about a buried skull, I realize how much of our relationship revolves around body parts and severed heads. Once Owen learned to walk, we started playing a game I call Frankenstein, in which I am Frankenstein's monster and I chase him around trying to harvest his organs and appendages because my master is building another boy. "Frankenstein needs your spleen," I yell, aping the voice of an ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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4ce9398
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Abraham Lincoln had a soft spot for deserters, whom he called his "legs cases." Though many of his military commanders grumbled about Lincoln's leniency -- traditionally, runaways were shot -- the president preferred incarceration to execution, asking, "If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?"
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Sarah Vowell |
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daf63ba
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it requires all my philosophy, and all my piety' to make peace...
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Sarah Vowell |
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78859bd
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that August an ominous and unprecedented British armada of 450 ships and boats carrying forty-five thousand British soldiers and sailors, as well as the rented Germanic troops known as the Hessians (of Headless Horseman fame), assembled in New York Harbor
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Sarah Vowell |
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f13603f
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If we fail in our negotiation," Greene told Lafayette en route to d'Estaing's ship, "we shall at least get a good dinner." Washington should have chosen Greene, not Sullivan, to steer this mission. Besides his cool head and personal interest in helping his home state, Greene understood that whatever their shortcomings, the French could always be counted on to roast the hell out of a chicken. Greene"
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Sarah Vowell |
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833b633
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Still, as a kid, History Repeats Itself terrified me, mostly because I was a God-fearing child. And I mean that literally. God scared me stiff, what with the turning human beings into salt and getting them swallowed up by whales, plus the locusts and famines and, not least, making sure his own kid gets nailed to death onto wood. Every time someone would die -- a cousin or grandparent or Elvis -- some relative preacher would there-there it a..
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Sarah Vowell |
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e1bc187
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By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling "the void" with a husband like Hiram, a "treasure rich and undeserved." Having read his insufferable memoir, "A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands", all I can say is: I'm happy for her?"
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marriage
humor
love
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Sarah Vowell |
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8eb4167
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Lafayette lifted his glass at one reception to toast 'the perpetual union of the United States,' adding, 'it has always saved us in time of storm; one day it will save the world.'" Whether" --
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Sarah Vowell |
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404f5e6
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Married to a naval commander who happened to be Benjamin Franklin's great-great-grandson, Wainwright prayed to the graven image of Lafayette, since neither the president nor Congress seemed to be listening. "We, the women of the United States," she told the bronze Lafayette, "denied the liberty which you helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years, turn to you to plead for us. Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred yea..
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Sarah Vowell |
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22adf1c
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How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along? While
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Sarah Vowell |
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4a6e986
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The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." More important, all of Jefferson's specific digs at the king were preceded by one self-evident fact that obliterated any and all justifications for monarchy, aristocracy, and colonialism until the end of time, even though neither its author nor his comrad..
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Sarah Vowell |
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e42f7ed
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I have a policy about that word "soul." It is strictly prohibited except in cases of converstations having to do with okra recipes or Marvin Gaye."
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Sarah Vowell |
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c8e8502
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Turgot turned out to be correct regarding this chilling prophecy: "War we ought to shun as the greatest of evils, since it will render impossible for a very long time, and perhaps forever, the reform which is absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the State and for the relief of the people." In other words, every cent the French government spent on guns for the Americans was another centime it would not have to spend on butter for the s..
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Sarah Vowell |
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c1251a5
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Picpus Cemetery, where Lafayette is buried under dirt from Bunker Hill.
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Sarah Vowell |
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106cb83
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A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts.
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Sarah Vowell |
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c15cfd4
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When Lafayette visited Monticello in 1824, his old friend Thomas Jefferson toasted him: "When I was stationed in his country for the purpose of cementing its friendship with ours, and of advancing our mutual interests, this friend of both, was my most powerful auxiliary and advocate. He made our cause his own . . . His influence and connections there were great. All doors of all departments were open to him at all times. In truth, I only he..
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Sarah Vowell |
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beddd3d
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The fact that a child that age was allowed to go out looking for the four-legged serial killer that the king has dispatched his personal gun-bearer to track down speaks of an older, hands-off parenting style.
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Sarah Vowell |