Happy Evacuation Day (in advance)!
Sarah Vowell appeared on The Daily Show* last night to share the fascinating story of Evacuation Day, the celebration of the day (November 25, 1783) the British finally left Manhattan after seven years of occupation. It was an annual holiday for decades, until Abraham Lincoln called on Americans to set aside the last Thursday of November as a day of national thanksgiving.
According to Wikipedia:
The city suffered two devastating fires of uncertain origin during the British occupation. These resulted in the British forces and prominent Loyalists occupying the remaining undamaged structures, relegating the fire-scarred ruins for the rest of the city’s residents to live in squalor. In addition, over 10,000 Patriot soldiers and sailors died through deliberate neglect on prison ships in New York waters (Wallabout Bay) during the British occupation — more Patriots died on these ships than died in every single battle of the war, combined.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] These men are memorialized, and many of their remains are interred, at the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, overlooking the nearby site of their torment and deaths.
Sarah Vowell makes a sem-serious but still passionate case for celebrating Evacuation Day instead of Thanksgiving:
I want us to celebrate victory! Washington’s triumphant return to the city he lost! Americans are always so excited about the beginning of a war. What if we celebrated how we used to be so good at ending them? … We stopped honoring the 11,000 loyal patriots who perished on those British prison ships. They were offered freedom if they just swore allegiance to the crown, and they refused…. Shouldn’t we thank them instead of some Mayflower-cruising, Jesus-freak corn-rustlers?
As long as I still get turkey and stuffing, I am OK with this plan.
*Sorry for my failure to post the video correctly. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. If you click on that little video bar, you can listen to the video, anyway.
An astrologer once told me, ‘You suffer from what’s called a geographic.’ A geographic is when a person walks around thinking that where he lives will make his life better. The astrologer said, ‘Let me tell you, life is about an emotional connection to people and things and it doesn’t matter where you are on the globe.’
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| — | Sarah Vowell’s friend Matt, “The Strenuous Life”, The Partly Cloudy Patriot (via posthumorously) |
Spotted!
Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes being sold at the gift shop in Iolani Palace, the official residence of Hawaii’s monarchy. Such an honor!
We’re weak, we’re decadent, we’re Americans. Which means:road trip history buffs one minute, amnesiacs the next. We want to remember. Except when we want to forget.
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| — | Sarah Vowell traveling The Trail of Tears from Take the Cannoli (via jennhoney) |
Buffy’s high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn’t?
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| — | Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot (via wordsfrombooks) |
A couple of times he called the second he’d finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.
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| — | Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli (via wordsfrombooks) |
