How did we lose that?
Waiter!
It is reported that our medieval European ancestors were far more adventuresome eaters than are we, feasting as they did on delicacies like Living Eels in Roasted Pig.
New New Dealer Same As The Old New Dealer
"Sanders is reminding people that he's part of not only important political tradition in American history, but a winning one. Remember, F.D.R. won four times as essentially a democratic socialist." -- Historian Douglas Brinkley
Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie
Is there anyone on these shores who is not an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants or slaves? Even so-called Native Americans migrated -- from Polynesia or Siberia, the jury's out, but, in any case, did not originate here. And so many of us came to escape religious intolerance, authoritarianism, political chaos, hunger, or just to live a better, freer life. To now lock our doors to people who want the same things we wanted or our forbears sought seems to offer a new measure of ingratitude and callousness.
When the Statue of Liberty (originally, Liberty Enlightening the World: La Liberté éclairant le monde) dedicated on October 28, 1886, it was a gift to the United States from the people of France to celebrate the outcome of the Civil War and the end of slavery. On the tablet cradled in Liberty's left arm is inscribed "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" to honor the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Ironically, given the current parlous state of liberty in this country, one of sculptor Frédéric Auguste Barthold's inspirations was in the sketches and models he made for a plan, never executed, to build a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. Female figures often served as cultural symbols of a nation, as Britannia is identified with the UK and Marianne is with France. One symbol, the personified Columbia, was often used by early artists and illustrators to embody the United States. In a further irony, as the model for the Statue of Liberty, Columbia supplanted an earlier figure of an Indian princess that had come to be regarded as uncivilized and thus derogatory toward Americans.
This is a good time to pause over the words by Emma Lazarus, a New York-born Sephardic Jew whose family had emigrated from Portugal before the American Revolution, that appear on the statue's pedestal. The last words -- "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" -- are the most frequently quoted, but the entire text, titled "The New Colossus," written by Lazarus in 1883, should be remembered:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
If we're not careful, the French may ask for the lady back. There are probably plenty of Americans these days who'd be glad to let them have her.
When the Statue of Liberty (originally, Liberty Enlightening the World: La Liberté éclairant le monde) dedicated on October 28, 1886, it was a gift to the United States from the people of France to celebrate the outcome of the Civil War and the end of slavery. On the tablet cradled in Liberty's left arm is inscribed "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" to honor the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Ironically, given the current parlous state of liberty in this country, one of sculptor Frédéric Auguste Barthold's inspirations was in the sketches and models he made for a plan, never executed, to build a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. Female figures often served as cultural symbols of a nation, as Britannia is identified with the UK and Marianne is with France. One symbol, the personified Columbia, was often used by early artists and illustrators to embody the United States. In a further irony, as the model for the Statue of Liberty, Columbia supplanted an earlier figure of an Indian princess that had come to be regarded as uncivilized and thus derogatory toward Americans.
This is a good time to pause over the words by Emma Lazarus, a New York-born Sephardic Jew whose family had emigrated from Portugal before the American Revolution, that appear on the statue's pedestal. The last words -- "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" -- are the most frequently quoted, but the entire text, titled "The New Colossus," written by Lazarus in 1883, should be remembered:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
If we're not careful, the French may ask for the lady back. There are probably plenty of Americans these days who'd be glad to let them have her.
War here, war there, pretty soon it's war everywhere all the time
Does John Kerry ever wake up in the darkest hours before the dawn and wonder, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
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