|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stumpage Reports
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 26, 2002 :::
Mass Hysteria!
In my Colonial History class we are talking about the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention. It is pretty interesting reading about these dead white guys hammering out some basic questions like, should the president be elected for life? (they seriously debated it) Another question was: who gets to vote? John Adams was not really big on anyone besides white, property-owning, men being able to vote. In the context of the time there were some good reasons for believing that. We were reading a letter he wrote to James Sulllivan, referring to opening up suffrage rights, Adams wrote: "it is dangerous to open So fruitfull a Source of Controversy and Altercation, as would be opened by attempting to alter the Qualifications of Voters. There will be no End of it. New Claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their Rights not enough attended to, and every Man, who has not a Farthing, will demand an equal voice."
We're reading this in class, and my brain immediately segues into my current favorite quote from the movie Ghostbusters as Bill Murray described the coming Apocalypse: "Riots in the streets, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!"
I burst out laughing in class, felt like a fool for a nano-second, but I'm not too worried what those folks think. They just can't appreciate the twists and turns of my brain. My professor didn't even bother to ask what I thought was so funny.
Quote of the Day:
British writer Lyn McDonald, describing the fighting near Ypres, Belgium, in 1917:
It was almost October. The battle had now been in progress for two long months. The casualties amounted to 88,790 killed, missing and wounded. The advance, at the deepest point of penetration, was three and a half miles. In two months of anguished effort, with seemingly every circumstance against them, the troops had managed to get almost exactly half-way to the Passchendaele Ridge. And the nightmare had hardly begun.
The Called It Passchendaele: The Story of the Third Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought It by Lyn McDonald
::: posted by tom at 10:58 PM
|
|
|
|
