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44d5a1c
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Once or twice a day, I am enveloped inside what I like to call the Impenetrable Shield of Melancholy. This shield, it is impenetrable. Hence the name. I cannot speak. And while I can feel myself freeze up, I can't do anything about it.
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Sarah Vowell |
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fdff631
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No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of "Here I come to save the day" versus "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker."
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Sarah Vowell |
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3368e55
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Owen is the most Hitchcockian preschooler I ever met. He's three. He knows maybe ninety word and one of them is 'crypt'?
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macabre
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Sarah Vowell |
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6e74d44
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When one of a culture's guiding credos is that "all men are created equal," any person who, say, becomes an expert on, say, nuclear weapons or, say, ecology, i.e., anyone who distinguishes himself through mental excellence, is a nuisance."
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Sarah Vowell |
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33ee29e
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You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire.
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history
humanitarianism
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Sarah Vowell |
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a2ba098
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But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there--good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you're uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some ..
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humor
quality
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Sarah Vowell |
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1d8149d
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If there is a recurring theme in Garfield's diaries it's this: I'd rather be reading.
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Sarah Vowell |
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e67788c
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But truth be told, I'm not as dour-looking as I would like. I'm stuck with this round, sweetie-pie face, tiny heart-shaped lips, the daintiest dimples, and apple cheeks so rosy I appear in a perpetual blush. At five foot four, I barely squeak by average height. And then there's my voice: straight out of second grade. I come across so young and innocent and harmless that I have been carded for buying maple syrup. Tourists feel more safe appr..
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Sarah Vowell |
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cb6d84f
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Freedom of expression truly exists only when a society's most repugnant nitwits are allowed to spew their nonsense in public.
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Sarah Vowell |
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a0d62ff
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The groundswell of outrage over the invasion of Iraq often cited the preemptive war as a betrayal of American ideals. The subtext of the dissent was: 'This is not who we are.' But not if you were standing where I was. It was hard to see the look in that palace tour guide's eyes when she talked about the American flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898, from time to time, this is exactly who we are.
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history
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Sarah Vowell |
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7ab439b
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She is either male property (Mrs.), wannabe male property (Miss), or man-hating harpy (Ms.).
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Sarah Vowell |
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e61d1a2
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The scene of Washington cussing out Charles Lee was for some reason not included in the series of bronze illustrations of the Battle of Monmouth on the monument at the county courthouse. Even though it was the most New Jersey-like behavior in the battle, if not the entire war.
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Sarah Vowell |
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509096e
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With a century and change between the 1880 convention and now, I'll admit I rolled my eyes at the ideological hairsplitting, wondering how a group of people who more or less agreed with one another about most issues could summon forth such stark animosity. Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who v..
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Sarah Vowell |
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1b8e86c
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That's what we Americans do when we find a place that's really special. We go there and act exactly like ourselves. And we are a bunch of fun-loving dopes.
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Sarah Vowell |
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f44d0bd
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I'm not really the scented envelope kid of girl, preferring instead to send yellow Jiffy-lite mailers packed with whatever song is on my mind.
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Sarah Vowell |
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9ea2145
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If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it'..
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poetry
writing
kerouac
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Sarah Vowell |
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9f1b43e
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To Arendt's point about post-revolution stability deriving from pre-revolutionary experience in self government, it's worth remembering that two of Henry's less chatty fellow burgesses became the first and third presidents of the United States. Andrew O'Shaughnessy, referring to the masterminds of the 2013 government shutdown and no doubt alluding to the freshman senator who was its ringleader, told me, "Experience is terribly important. Yo..
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Sarah Vowell |
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dadd5de
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Radio is the playground of coincidence.
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Sarah Vowell |
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4fa2a68
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Acts 16:9 is the meddler's motto, simultaneously selfless and self-serving, generous but stuck-up. Into every generation of Americans is born a new crop of buttinskys sniffing out the latest Macedonia that may or may not want their help.
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history
the-bible
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Sarah Vowell |
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e2f8106
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I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.
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Sarah Vowell |
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fac3829
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His boss, Isaac (Robert Guillaume), agrees but tells him to do it anyway "because it's television and this is how it's done." Dan replies, "Yeah, well, sitting in the back of the bus was how it was done until a forty-two-year-old lady moved up front." A few minutes later Isaac looks Dan in the eye and tells him, "Because I love you I can say this. No rich young white guy has ever gotten anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks." Fin..
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Sarah Vowell |
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34d745e
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History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
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Sarah Vowell |
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87c88e0
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I do not think that there can ever be enough books about anything; and I say that knowing that some of them are going to be about Pilates.
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writing
books
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Sarah Vowell |
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e2879b2
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My lips are chapped from the winds of change.
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Sarah Vowell |
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0af9221
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The newly dubbed General Lafayette was only nineteen years old. Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.
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Sarah Vowell |
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1cf9063
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quoting Kipling, "I never got over the wonder of a people who, having extirpated the aboriginals of their continent more completely than any modern race had ever done, honestly believed they were a godly little New England community, setting examples to mankind."
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Sarah Vowell |
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f6e611a
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There are people who look forward to spending their sunset years in the sunshine; it is my own retirement dream to await my death indoors, dragging strangers up dusty staircases while coughing up one of the most thrilling phrases in the English language: "It was on this spot..." My fantasy is to one day become a docent."
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history
retirement-dream
tourism
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Sarah Vowell |
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90b335c
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After Dickinson and Adams had it out over the Olive Branch Petition, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he and Dickinson "are not to be on speaking terms." 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?"
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Sarah Vowell |
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547112a
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So I say to you read! Read! Something will stick in the mind, be diligent and good will come of it.
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Sarah Vowell |
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782a94a
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I revere the Bill of Rights, but at the same time I believe that anyone who's using three or more of them at a time is hogging them too much. (152)
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Sarah Vowell |
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e4da39c
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For years they've grumbled that England is a cesspool governed by an immoral king under the spell of the Whore of Babylon, which is their cute nickname for the pope.
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Sarah Vowell |
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88cf18e
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The most important reason I am concentrating on Winthrop and his shipmates in the 1630s is that the country I live in is haunted by the Puritans' vision of themselves as God's chosen people, as a beacon of righteousness that all others are to admire.
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Sarah Vowell |
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567e4e9
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A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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0c0d265
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He spent part of last year working in Canada, and I think it rubbed off on him, diminishing his innate American ability to celebrate the civic virtue of idiocy.
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Sarah Vowell |
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c34eb52
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It goes without saying that in order for me to buy a teapot at the Oneida, Ltd., outlet store at the Sherrill Shopping Plaza, the second coming of Jesus Christ had to have taken place in the year 70 A.D. To the Oneida Community, 70 A.D., the year the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, marks the beginning of the New Jerusalem. Which means we've all been living in heaven on earth for nearly two thousand years. Everyone knows there is no marri..
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Sarah Vowell |
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8170a26
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I don't know how to describe the magnificence of Carlsbad Caverns without making it sound like a cartoon or a drug trip or a cartoon of a drug trip. The only thing I can say is that it is one of those dear places that make you love the world.
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Sarah Vowell |
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af4a3c8
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I told her that my happy yellow teapot has a kinky backstory involving a nineteenth-century vegetarian sex cult in upstate New York whose members lived for three decades as self-proclaimed "Bible communists" before incorporating into the biggest supplier of dinnerware to the American food-service industry, not to mention harboring their most infamous resident, an irritating young maniac who, years after he moved away, was hanged for assassi..
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yay-history
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Sarah Vowell |
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aa11ce0
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there's nothing more depressing than bad capitalism.
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capitalism
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Sarah Vowell |
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cc9c52e
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Technically, it's a family restaurant, but it will only remind you of your family if your mom chain-smoked menthols.
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Sarah Vowell |
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9f9e5dc
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While history might be full of exemplary fathers, recorded history is not where to find them.
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Sarah Vowell |
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9c38790
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Steuben explained to his friend, "You say to your soldier, 'Do this,' and he does it; but I am obliged to say, 'This is the reason why you ought to do that,' and then he does it."
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Sarah Vowell |
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d0e3ed4
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The same wakefulness the individual Calvinist was to use to keep watch over his own sins Winthrop and Cotton called for also in the group at large. This humility, this fear, was what kept their delusions of grandeur in check. That's what subsequent generations lost. From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution.
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Sarah Vowell |
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b3bf805
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When Lafayette met him in 1775, the first volume of Raynal's 1770 History of the Two Indies had already been banned, which is to say it was a popular success, the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books being the unofficial bestseller list of the day.
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Sarah Vowell |
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c1bd0e2
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But the Grateful Dead, as the fanatic fans point out, are a way of life: someone else's. Twentieth-century teenagers, especially American ones, have been brilliant at creating their own culture, their own music, clothes, and point(s) of view. It's sad and fraudulent that the kind of wholesale worship of some historical way of life has settled over so many young people, infecting them like a noxious gas... I love the dead--grew up in the thr..
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Sarah Vowell |