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3e13dea
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There seems to be no end to the satisfaction one gets in having one's opinions confirmed.
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Sarah Vowell |
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77daed5
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To me, every plaque, no matter what words are inscribed on it, says the same magic informative thing: Something happened! The gum cost a dollar, but the story was free.
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Sarah Vowell |
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96ebc90
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Um," I asked, "isn't the whole point about being a slave that you don't have a choice to be anything else?" Prettying up the word slave with the adjective-noun constructions makes "enslaved African" sound nonchalant. As in "Those were the cabins of the jolly leprechauns."
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Sarah Vowell |
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834e160
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I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting o..
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new-york-city
city
urban-life
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Sarah Vowell |
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99d15f2
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Honestly, the only question most Americans ask about a new building at this point is basically: Is it a soul-sucking eyesore of cheap-ass despair? It's not? Whew.
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humor
architecture
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Sarah Vowell |
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fbee5d7
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it's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, kno..
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Sarah Vowell |
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a408a51
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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....Thus my idea of heaven was that I got to spend eternity sitting at the feet of God, grilling Him. "Let me get this straight," I'd say, by way of introduction. "It's your position that every person born has to suffer because Eve couldn't resist a healthy between-meals snack?"
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religion
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Sarah Vowell |
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14f7e9c
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Cotton says, "If God be the gardener, who shall pluck up what he sets down?" Hear that, Indians? No weeding of the white people allowed. Unless they're Catholic. Or one of those Satan-worshipping Virginians."
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Sarah Vowell |
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e6048d6
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It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights," Washington wrote. "For, happily, the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."
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Sarah Vowell |
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da28df7
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In America, on the ordinate plane of faith versus reason, the x-axis of faith intersects with the y-axis of reason at the zero point of "I don't give a damn what you think"."
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Sarah Vowell |
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8d74410
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I wish that the founders had had the foresight to hang on to and enshrine another one of Independence Hall's chairs, the one that Benjamin Rush mentioned in a letter to John Adams about how Thomas Jefferson objected when his colleagues in the Continental Congress considered a fast day, which Jefferson pooh-poohed as too religious. Rush reminded Adams, Who knows what happened to that particular chair. ... But it might have been a more helpf..
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Sarah Vowell |
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deaee4a
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Protestantism's evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel to political democratization. The king of England, questioning the pope, inspires English subjects to question the king and his Anglican bishops. Such dissent is backed up by a Bible full of handy Scripture arguing for arguing with one's kIng. This is the root of self..
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Sarah Vowell |
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6d18384
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I've encountered my fair share of war reenactors over the years, but I've never seen a reenactment of this banal predicament: a tired woman in a dark house answering a child who is supposed to be asleep that she has no idea when Daddy's coming home.
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Sarah Vowell |
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0bc6566
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The whole thing reminds me of graduate school seminars, except these people are smart and funny and have something interesting to say.
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Sarah Vowell |
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f931c2f
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Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1778 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, an entire generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, 'This is your ..
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frederick-douglass
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Sarah Vowell |
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3b1d59f
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There are freaky talking mannequins in the Salem Witch Museum that recite the Lord's Prayer and while they do resemble shrunken apples they nevertheless help the visitor understand how hard it must have been for the condemned to say the line about forgiving those who trespass against us.
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Sarah Vowell |
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ae0680e
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Devoted to principles of liberty, equality, and religious tolerance -- which, dear internet, is not necessarily the same thing as satanism -- Masonic lodge became the de facto clubhouses of the Age of Reason.
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Sarah Vowell |
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7bebf0a
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I am drawn to Tom Sawyer Island because a tribute to Mark Twain would not be out of place in a theme park of my own design. Should Vowell World ever get enough investors, I'm going to stick my Tom Sawyer Island in Love and Death in the American Novel Land right between the Jay Gatsby Swimming Pool and Tom Joad's Dust Bowl Lanes, a Depression-themed bowling alley renting artfully worn-out shoes.
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humor
as-i-lay-dying
great-gatsby
tom-sawyer
mark-twain
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Sarah Vowell |
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b897bfd
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That Steuben, who needed a translator, what with his English vocabulary consisting almost entirely of swear words, ended up being the perfect hire to upgrade the Continental Army should rattle every search committee, small-business owner, casting director, college admissions officer, headhunter, and voter.
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Sarah Vowell |
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fb04e11
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It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The book phase would bloom and grow into a whole series of seasonal affiliations including our communist phase, our beatnik phase, our vegetarian phase, and the three-year period known as Please Don't..
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phase
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Sarah Vowell |
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9331314
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At a Clinton press conference, I'm given the luxury of daydreaming, of being comfortable enough that he could find Peru on a map, say, that I don't have to hang on his every word, praying he won't fuck up.
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Sarah Vowell |
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741bfaa
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Not that there wasn't still plenty of subduing to do here in North America. "Even within our own limits, the savage still lights his death fires, to appease the wrath of an idol," he points out. What's worse, to the "north, there is an immense region of palpable darkness." (Hi, Canada!)"
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Sarah Vowell |
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d2fa4be
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Since the lunchroom does no significant harm to the caverns' ecology, I'd like to believe that this is one of those lucky places where we don't have to choose between doing the right thing and enjoying a goof. I look up at the ceiling of the lunchroom, which is, of course, the ceiling of the cave. It looks so lunar I can't help but think of a certain astronaut. In 1971, Apollo 14's Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the moon. Gearing up to face..
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Sarah Vowell |
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f504992
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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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288c88b
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While technically Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, it was the border state, a schizophrenic no-man's-land with the North at its door and the South in its heart.
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Sarah Vowell |
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7a0f372
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Whether or not the United States has saved the world, it did save France a time or two. When the American Expeditionary Forces commanded by General John J. Pershing came to the aid of France during World War I, they marched into Paris on July 4, 1917, heading straight for Picpus Cemetery. Colonel Charles E. Stanton, whose uncle had been Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war, addressed the French people while standing before Lafayette's tomb. "..
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Sarah Vowell |
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668380a
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In The Bloudy Tenent, Williams points out that Constantine "did more to hurt Christ Jesus than the raging fury of the most bloody Neroes." at least under the Christian persecutor Nero, who was rumored to have had the Apostle Paul beheaded and Saint Peter crucified upside down, Christianity was a pure (if hazardous) way of life. But when Constantine himself converted to Christianity, that's when the Church was corrupted and perverted by the ..
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histories-mysteries
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Sarah Vowell |
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8afb8ec
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I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Convention is the day a person gives up on the human race.
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Sarah Vowell |
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b262d34
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I like that the Mall serves as our national Tuppaware, reliable and empty, waiting to be filled with potluck whatever.
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Sarah Vowell |
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0d9c061
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After Hiram Bingham built the first church on Oahu the student recalls, "When it was completed some of the natives said among themselves, 'That house of worship built by the haoles is a place in which they will pray us all to death. It is meant to kill us."
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religion
god
humor
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Sarah Vowell |
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9b711fa
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Why is America the last best hope of Earth? What if it's Liechtenstein? Or, worse, Canada?
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Sarah Vowell |
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7108519
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We were breathing sooty air. The soot was composed of incinerated glass and steel but also, we knew, incinerated human flesh. When the local TV news announced that rescue workers sorting through the rubble in search of survivors were in need of toothpaste, half my block, having heard that there was finally something we could actually do besides worry and grieve, had already cleaned out the most popular brands at the corner deli by the time ..
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well-worded
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Sarah Vowell |
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19fbfd4
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Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank Him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.
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Sarah Vowell |
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953f577
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Everyone says that love requires the utmost honesty, but that's not entirely true. Once I knew that my father was suffering for my sake--really suffering--I learned that love, especially the parental kind, requires the heartwarming sacrifice that can only accompany fake enthusiasm.
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Sarah Vowell |
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d530cab
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All those adorable towheaded kids in the promotional film are going to turn thirteen. Once a family member hits puberty, odds are that everybody is not going to have the same ideals. Unless everybody gets together and agrees that the new ideals involve turning the front yard into a skate ramp and officially changing Dad's name to Fuckhead.
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humor
florida
parenting
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Sarah Vowell |
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64201d3
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Luther's point was that, according to Scripture, salvation is not a bake sale:
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Sarah Vowell |
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3956c9c
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This is a sappy way to put it, but the Winthrop who warns Williams is the Winthrop I fell in love with, the Winthrop Cotton Mather celebrates for sharing his firewood with the needy, the Winthrop who scolds Thomas Dudley for overcharging the poor, the Winthrop of 'Christian Charity,' who called for 'enlargement toward others' and 'brotherly affection,' admonishing that 'if thy brother be in want and thou canst help him...if thou lovest God ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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c5fd0d8
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Professor Winthrop delivered an influential lecture at Harvard proposing the earthquake might have been caused by heat and pressure below the surface of the earth. With God's help, of course, but God comes off as an engineer instead of a hothead vigilante.)
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Sarah Vowell |
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4be5bc0
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breathing secondhand smoke, being subject to unfair dairy pricing, and not being able to mime (or lap dance), though they are all tragic, tragic injustices, are not quite as bad as the systematic segregation of public transportation based on skin color. And while fighting for your right to lap dance and mime and breathe just regular pollution is a very fine, very American idea, it is not quite as brave as being middle-aged black woman in Al..
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Sarah Vowell |
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e1cbb95
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The names of the compact's signers, including Anne Hutchinson's husband, Will, are listed below the text. Here lies the deepest reason why the Woman's Healing Garden strikes me as so forlorn - that Hutchinson is remembered here by pink echinacea in bloom instead of on the Portsmouth Compact plaque, where she belongs. All of the signers were there because of her, because she stood up to Massachusetts and they stood with her. But all the sign..
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Sarah Vowell |
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7987d8a
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The doo-wop stalker love song on a Cincinnati oldies station--you broke up with me because I was an obnoxious jerk and now you're dating him, so I drive by your house and stare in your window every night, thereby proving that I'm an even bigger creep than you thought
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Sarah Vowell |
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3481fd6
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The subject of Peter Gallagher's eyebrows, I realize, is a digression away from the Oneida Community, and yet, I do feel compelled, indeed almost conspiracy theoretically bound to mention that one of the reasons the Oneida Community broke up and turned itself into a corporate teapot factory is that a faction within the group, led by a lawyer named James William Towner, was miffed that the community's most esteemed elders were bogarting the ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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b4d6315
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Then, as if getting blown up is not enough to worry about, after I take a seat on the steps, I get a look at the choir. Thirty singers and from where I'm sitting, it looks like only two of them are black. It's not like I'm saying suburban white people shouldn't sing. Because I love Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher."
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Sarah Vowell |
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dd38e11
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The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories.
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storytelling
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Sarah Vowell |