Boston George Quotes

There is a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.' - Boston, Mass., Oct. 3, 2000

Boston Mayor James Michael Curley once summarized the philosophy of many politicians as, “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.

A diarist named George Templeton Strong recorded in the winter of 1866 that even with two furnaces alight and all the fireplaces blazing, he couldn’t get the temperature of his Boston home above 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin [and his lightning-rod] ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the 'iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin,' Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God's wrath at the 'iron points.' In a sermon on the subject he said, 'In Boston are more erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.' Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare.

One day when George III was insane he heard that the Americans never had afternoon tea. This mace him very obstinate and he invited them all to a compulsory tea-party at Boston: the Americans, however, started pouring the tea into Boston harbour and went on pouring things into Boston harbour until they were quite Independent, thus causing the United States.

Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): “No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.” George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on. On the other hand, town mechanics, laborers, and seamen, as well as small farmers, were swept into “the people” by the rhetoric of the Revolution, by the camaraderie of military service, by the distribution of some land. Thus was created a substantial body of support, a national consensus, something that, even with the exclusion of ignored and oppressed people, could be called “America.

Within minutes the girls were running barefoot along the sand, playing tag with the breaking wavelets. Nancy was dangling a bathing cap in her hand. “I’m glad it’s calm,” George remarked. “Say, maybe we could use one of those sailboats!” There were a variety of boats tied up—small sailing dinghies, rowboats, Boston Whalers. Larger sailboats were moored offshore. Several Sailfish had been pulled up on the beach.

Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): “No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.” George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on.

New Rule: America must stop bragging it's the greatest country on earth, and start acting like it. I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers. Infant mortality rate: America ranks forty-eighth in the world. Overall health: seventy-second. Freedom of the press: forty-fourth. Literacy: fifty-fifth. Do you realize there are twelve-year old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with? America has done many great things. Making the New World democratic. The Marshall Plan. Curing polio. Beating Hitler. The deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We're not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church and Janet Jackson's nipple is on their flag. And sadly, we're no longer a country that can get things done. Not big things. Like building a tunnel under Boston, or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines; couldn't get that done. The FBI is just now getting e-mail. Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too!" Since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil? We invented the airplane and the lightbulb, they invented the bikini wax, and now they're ahead? In most of the industrialized world, nearly everyone has health care and hardly anyone doubts evolution--and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell cures, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning. Oh, and did I mention we owe China a trillion dollars? We owe everybody money. America is a debtor nation to Mexico. We're not a bridge to the twenty-first century, we're on a bus to Atlantic City with a roll of quarters. And this is why it bugs me that so many people talk like it's 1955 and we're still number one in everything. We're not, and I take no glee in saying that, because I love my country, and I wish we were, but when you're number fifty-five in this category, and ninety-two in that one, you look a little silly waving the big foam "number one" finger. As long as we believe being "the greatest country in the world" is a birthright, we'll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations, and we'll keep losing the moral high ground. Because we may not be the biggest, or the healthiest, or the best educated, but we always did have one thing no other place did: We knew soccer was bullshit. And also we had the Bill of Rights. A great nation doesn't torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorist "hate us for our freedom,"" and he's working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won't be a problem.

The customary blizzard of pigeons wheeled briefly across the walk and settled back around an old lady who fed them from a large, wrinkled, paper bag. “I heard a guy on television the other night,” Dillon said. “He was talking about pigeons. Called them flying rats. I thought that was pretty good. He had something in mind, going to feed them the Pill or something, make them extinct. Trouble is, he was serious, you know? There was a guy that got shit on and probably got shit on again and then he got mad. Ruined his suit or something, going to spend the rest of his life getting even with the pigeons because they wrecked a hundred-dollar suit. Now there isn’t any percentage in that. There must be ten million pigeons in Boston alone, laying eggs every day, which will generally produce more pigeons, and all of them dropping tons of shit, rain or shine. And this guy in New York is going to, well, there just aren’t going to be any of them in this world any more.

We must have a permanent force, not a force that is constantly fluctuating and sliding from under us as a pedestal of ice would do from a statue on a summer's day, involving us in expense that baffles all calculation - an expense which no funds are equal to. -George Washington

Martin had a period of relishing the Boston thug-writer George V. Higgins, author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Higgins’s characters had an infectious way of saying ‘inna’ and ‘onna,’ so Martin would say, for example, ‘I think this lunch should be onna Hitch’ or ‘I heard he wasn’t that useful inna sack.’ Simple pleasures you may say, but linguistic sinew is acquired in this fashion and he would not dump a trope until he had chewed all the flesh and pulp of it and was left only with pith and pips. Thus there arrived a day when Park Lane played host to a fancy new American hotel with the no less fancy name of ‘The Inn on The Park’ and he suggested a high-priced cocktail there for no better reason than that he could instruct the cab driver to ‘park inna Inn onna Park.’ This near-palindrome (as I now think of it) gave us much innocent pleasure.

By the time the war was over, Great Britain also had a new monarch in George III, who had taken the throne in 1760. And in Boston, a feisty American lawyer named James Otis would issue his first political tract and argue that American colonists possessed all the rights of an English citizen.

Served her right, really, having sex in a supply closet of the Boston Hyatt. But George had smelled like oranges and leather and he had bent her over one of those carts housekeeping wheeled around with soaps and shower caps and dry-cleaning request forms. That had been fun, and afterward she had pocketed some shampoo and conditioner.

Knox, who possessed a booming voice that could be heard throughout the camp, had never fired a cannon in his life when he became head of artillery in 1775. He was a local bookseller in Boston who was fascinated by weapons. He had read just about every book published on ordnance and convinced Washington to put him in charge of his artillery,

Gen. George S. Patton Jr. fears no one. But now he sleeps flat on his back in a hospital bed. His upper body is encased in plaster, the result of a car accident twelve days ago. Room 110 is a former utility closet, just fourteen feet by sixteen feet. There are no decorations, pictures on the walls, or elaborate furnishings—just the narrow bed, white walls, and a single high window. A chair has been brought in for Patton’s wife, Beatrice, who endured a long, white-knuckle flight over the North Atlantic from the family home in Boston to be at his bedside. She sits there now, crochet hook moving silently back and forth, raising her eyes every few moments to see if her husband has awakened.

William James (1842-1910) was the first philosopher in America to gain universal celebrity. The hardheaded practical wisdom of Benjamin Franklin could hardly be termed a philosophy; from an entirely different perspective, the obfuscatory maunderings of Emerson did not count as such, either. Something with a bit more intellectual rigor of the English or German sort was needed if Americans were not to feel that they were anything but the ruthless money-grubbing barbarians they in fact were and are. James filled the bill. His younger contemporary George Santayana (1863-1952) was considerably more brilliant and scintillating, but for regular, 100 percent Americans he had considerable drawbacks. In the first place, he was a foreigner, born in Spain, even though his Boston upbringing and Harvard professorship would otherwise have given him the stamp of approval. Moreover, he was not merely suspiciously interested in art and poetry (The Sense of Beauty [1896], Three Philosophical Poets [1910]), but he actually wrote poetry himself! No, he would never do. James, on the other hand, was just the sort of philosopher suited to the American bourgeoisie. His chief mission, expressed from one book to the next, was to protect their piety from the hostile forces of science and skepticism-an eminently laudable and American goal.

Among the guests who appeared on Information, Please were Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Gish, Alexander Woollcott, H. V. Kaltenborn, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Carl Sandburg, Albert Spalding, Boris Karloff, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Beatrice Lillie, and Postmaster General James Farley. Prizefighter Gene Tunney surprised the nation with his knowledge of Shakespeare. Moe Berg, Boston Red Sox catcher, had a

I would dance all day in my basement listening to Off the Wall. You young people really don’t understand how magical Michael Jackson was. No one thought he was strange. No one was laughing. We were all sitting in front of our TVs watching the “Thriller” video every hour on the hour. We were all staring, openmouthed, as he moonwalked for the first time on the Motown twenty-fifth anniversary show. When he floated backward like a funky astronaut, I screamed out loud. There was no rewinding or rewatching. No next-day memes or trends on Twitter or Facebook posts. We would call each other on our dial phones and stretch the cord down the hall, lying on our stomachs and discussing Michael Jackson’s moves, George Michael’s facial hair, and that scene in Purple Rain when Prince fingers Apollonia from behind. Moments came and went, and if you missed them, you were shit out of luck. That’s why my parents went to a M*A*S*H party and watched the last episode in real time. There was no next-day M*A*S*H cast Google hangout. That’s why my family all squeezed onto one couch and watched the USA hockey team win the gold against evil Russia! We all wept as my mother pointed out every team member from Boston. (Everyone from Boston likes to point out everyone from Boston. Same with Canadians.) We all chanted “USA!” and screamed “YES!” when Al Michaels asked us if we believed in miracles. Things happened in real time and you watched them together. There was no rewind. HBO arrived in our house that same year. We had

He had to backtrack immediately to account for the most famous and most acclaimed poet in America, Phillis Wheatley, who was, very unfortunately for Jefferson’s argument, unquestionably black. She had been brought to Boston as an enslaved African at the age of about six, learned English and Latin as a child, and began writing poetry as a teenager. Her published works earned accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Among her admirers were Voltaire, who praised Wheatley’s “very good English verse,” George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and even the naval hero John Paul Jones, who addressed her as “the celebrated Phillis the African favorite of the Nine [Muses] and Apollo” when he sent her some of his own verses. Dr. Rush cited her as a proof of black ability, listing her accomplishments when he wrote in 1775, “We have many well attested anecdotes of as sublime and disinterested virtue among them as ever adorned a Roman or a Christian character.”14 Franklin went to see Wheatley when she was in London, a literary celebrity on book tour. The acclaim irked Jefferson: “The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.”15

Almost all our historical teaching was on this level. History was a series of unrelated, unintelligible but—in some way that was never explained to us—important facts with resounding phrases tied to them. Disraeli brought peace with honour. Clive was astonished at his moderation. Pitt called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. And the dates, and the mnemonic devices! (Did you know, for example, that the initial letters of “A black Negress was my aunt: there’s her house behind the barn” are also the initial letters of the battles in the Wars of the Roses?) Bingo, who “took” the higher forms in history, revelled in this kind of thing. I recall positive orgies of dates, with the keener boys leaping up and down in their places in their eagerness to shout out the right answers, and at the same time not feeling the faintest interest in the meaning of the mysterious events they were naming. “1587?” “Massacre of St. Bartholomew!” “1707?” “Death of Aurangzeeb!” “1713?” “Treaty of Utrecht!” “1773?” “The Boston Tea Party!” “1520?” “Oo, Mum, please, Mum—” “Please, Mum, please, Mum! Let me tell him, Mum!” “Well; 1520?” “Field of the Cloth of Gold!” And so on.

Tim Finnegan’s Wake by Dr. Thom Dedalus When God reeled in good auld Tim Finnegan, And looked into his green Irish peepers, Said He, “Now, what was I thinkin’? Poor lad, he ain’t one of the keepers.” To hell Tim descended without any fear, To the devil, whom not much is lost on, Said he, “I’m sure you’ll be comfortable here, Among all your old friends from South Boston.” Tim’s jokes night and day caused Satan to swear, As migraines crept behind blood red eyelids, “An eternity with you is just too much to bear. You’re going home to your wife and your nine kids.” So up pops Tim at his wake from his casket. “It can’t be,” went a howl from his wife. When he belched the sea from his own breadbasket, Said she, “Someone, hand me a knife.” Now Tim’s fishing off George’s Banks Catching codfish, haddock and hake. The happiest folk in town to give thanks, Is John Hancock for Finnegan’s wake. Finn’s now a legend among life underwriters, In Beantown and all over the States. In him beats the heart of a fighter. Sad to hear how they increased his rates. Finn’s tale is best told with a dram of Jameson. You’re entitled to whatever sense you can make. Just cause you’re dead, it don’t mean you’re gone. You may take comfort in Finnegan’s wake.

On Sunday, November 10, Kaiser Wilhelm II was dethroned, and he fled to Holland for his life. Britain’s King George V, who was his cousin, told his diary that Wilhelm was “the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war,” having “utterly ruined his country and himself.” Keeping vigil at the White House, the President and First Lady learned by telephone, at three o’clock that morning, that the Germans had signed an armistice. As Edith later recalled, “We stood mute—unable to grasp the significance of the words.” From Paris, Colonel House, who had bargained for the armistice as Wilson’s envoy, wired the President, “Autocracy is dead. Long live democracy and its immortal leader. In this great hour my heart goes out to you in pride, admiration and love.” At 1:00 p.m., wearing a cutaway and gray trousers, Wilson faced a Joint Session of Congress, where he read out Germany’s surrender terms. He told the members that “this tragical war, whose consuming flames swept from one nation to another until all the world was on fire, is at an end,” and “it was the privilege of our own people to enter it at its most critical juncture.” He added that the war’s object, “upon which all free men had set their hearts,” had been achieved “with a sweeping completeness which even now we do not realize,” and Germany’s “illicit ambitions engulfed in black disaster.” This time, Senator La Follette clapped. Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Lodge complained that Wilson should have held out for unconditional German surrender. Driven down Capitol Hill, Wilson was cheered by joyous crowds on the streets. Eleanor Roosevelt recorded that Washington “went completely mad” as “bells rang, whistles blew, and people went up and down the streets throwing confetti.” Including those who had perished in theaters of conflict from influenza and other diseases, the nation’s nineteen-month intervention in the world war had levied a military death toll of more than 116,000 Americans, out of a total perhaps exceeding 8 million. There were rumors that Wilson planned to sail for France and horse-trade at the peace conference himself. No previous President had left the Americas during his term of office. The Boston Herald called this tradition “unwritten law.” Senator Key Pittman, Democrat from Nevada, told reporters that Wilson should go to Paris “because there is no man who is qualified to represent him.” The Knickerbocker Press of Albany, New York, was disturbed by the “evident desire of the President’s adulators to make this war his personal property.” The Free Press of Burlington, Vermont, said that Wilson’s presence in Paris would “not be seemly,” especially if the talks degenerated into “bitter controversies.” The Chattanooga Times called on Wilson to stay home, “where he could keep his own hand on the pulse of his own people” and “translate their wishes” into action by wireless and cable to his bargainers in Paris.

Roger snapped on the large, battery-powered radio. He rolled the dial around, but all he got was static. Finally, he heard a signal, and he tuned it in. A badly modulated voice droned through the interference. It sounded as if it were a war correspondent sending a signal from very far away. Steve clicked off the TV set so that they would better be able to hear the announcer: “. . . Reports that communications with Detroit have been knocked out along with Atlanta, Boston and certain sections of Philadelphia and New York City . . .” “Philly . . .” Roger said almost to himself. “I know WGON is out by now,” Steve said with animation. “It was a madhouse back there . . . people are crazy . . . if they’d just organize. It’s total confusion. I don’t believe it’s gotten this bad. I don’t believe they can’t handle it.” He looked around the room proudly. “Look at us. Look at what we were able to do today.” A few feet away, still in a slumped position by the pyramid of cartons, Peter’s eyes blinked open. He had been listening to what he wanted to hear, and now this statement by the kid really made him take notice. His eyes moved slightly to the side so that he could watch Stephen. The young man was gesturing wildly with his hands, going on and on about their exploits as a team. The other two didn’t realize Peter was awake. Roger nodded his head, but it didn’t seem as if he were really listening to Steve’s ramblings. “We knocked the shit out of ’em, and they never touched us,” Steve exclaimed. “Not really,” he said in a quieter tone. The rumbling voice erupted from the other side of the room. “They touched us good, Flyboy. We’re lucky to get out with our asses. You don’t forget that!

À celle qui s'en va Tu crois que ce fut un amour vrai… Moi je crois que ce fut une brève folie… Mais ce qu'au juste ce fut, Ce que nous voulions que ce fût, Nous ne le saurons peut-être jamais… Ce fut un rêve vécu au rivage d'une mer, Un chant triste amené d'autres terres Par de blancs oiseaux voyageurs, Sur l'azur insurgé d'autres mers au loin, Un chant triste amené par les marins Arrivés de Boston Norfolk Et New York, Un chant triste que souvent chantent les pêcheurs Quand ils prennent le large et ne reviennent plus. Et se fut le refrain de triolets qu'un poète Jadis imagina en les pays du Nord Sur les bords de quelque blanc fjord, Mendiant l'amour des blondes coquettes... Ce fut un rêve Un vers Une mélodie Que nous n'avons chantée peut-être jamais... ...................... Tu crois que ce fut un amour vrai ? Moi je crois que ce fut une brève folie ! * Tu crezi c-a fost iubire-adevărată... Eu cred c-a fost o scurtă nebunie... Dar ce anume-a fost, Ce-am vrut să fie Noi nu vom şti-o poate niciodată... A fost un vis trăit pe-un ţărm de mare. Un cântec trist, adus din alte ţări De nişte pasări albe - călătoare Pe-albastrul răzvrătit al altor mări Un cântec trist, adus de marinarii Sosiţi din Boston, Norfolk Şi New York, Un cântec trist, ce-l cântă-ades pescarii Când pleacă-n larg şi nu se mai întorc. Şi-a fost refrenul unor triolete Cu care-alt'dată un poet din Nord, Pe marginile albului fiord, Cerşea iubirea blondelor cochete... A fost un vis, Un vers, O melodie, Ce n-am cântat-o, poate, niciodată... ...................... Tu crezi c-a fost iubire-adevărată?... Eu cred c-a fost o scurtă nebunie! [Celei care pleacă, traduction en français d’Aurel George Boeșteanu]

Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who’d been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons. The Crown saw no point in feeding them year after year, and they were far too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets of London—so, rather than overload the public hanging schedule, the King’s Minister of Gaol decided to put this scum to work on the other side of the Atlantic, in The Colonies, where cheap labor was much in demand. Most of these poor bastards wound up in what is now the Deep South because of the wretched climate. No settler with good sense and a few dollars in his pocket would venture south of Richmond. There was plenty of opportunity around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and by British standards the climate in places like South Carolina and Georgia was close to Hell on Earth: swamps, alligators, mosquitoes, tropical disease... all this plus a boiling sun all day long and no way to make money unless you had a land grant from the King... So the South was sparsely settled at first, and the shortage of skilled labor was a serious problem to the scattered aristocracy of would-be cotton barons who’d been granted huge tracts of good land that would make them all rich if they could only get people to work it. The slave-trade was one answer, but Africa in 1699 was not a fertile breeding ground for middle-management types... and the planters said it was damn near impossible for one white man to establish any kind of control over a boatload of black primitives. The bastards couldn’t even speak English. How could a man get the crop in, with brutes like that for help? There would have to be managers, keepers, overseers: white men who spoke the language, and had a sense of purpose in life. But where would they come from? There was no middle class in the South: only masters and slaves... and all that rich land lying fallow. The King was quick to grasp the financial implications of the problem: The crops must be planted and harvested, in order to sell them for gold—and if all those lazy bastards needed was a few thousand half-bright English-speaking lackeys in order to bring the crops in... hell, that was easy: Clean out the jails, cut back on the Crown’s grocery bill, jolt the liberals off balance by announcing a new “Progressive Amnesty” program for hardened criminals.... Wonderful. Dispatch royal messengers to spread the good word in every corner of the kingdom; and after that send out professional pollsters to record an amazing 66 percent jump in the King’s popularity... then wait a few weeks before announcing the new 10 percent sales tax on ale. That’s how the South got settled. Not the whole story, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is the Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out. With a bit of imagination you can almost hear the cranky little bastard haranguing his fellow prisoners in London jail, urging them on to revolt: “Lissen here, you poor fools! There’s not much time! Even now—up there in the tower—they’re cookin up some kind of cruel new punishment for us! How much longer will we stand for it? And now they want to ship us across the ocean to work like slaves in a swamp with a bunch of goddamn Hottentots! “We won’t go! It’s asinine! We’ll tear this place apart before we’ll let that thieving old faggot of a king send us off to work next to Africans! “How much more of this misery can we stand, boys? I know you’re fed right up to here with it. I can see it in your eyes— pure misery! And I’m tellin’ you, we don’t have to stand for it!...

Texas did not long mourn John Kennedy. In a piece in The Nation magazine, an influential South Texan was reported to have remarked, “I don’t hold with murder. But I can’t say I’m not glad to see us rid of that bushy-haired bastard from Boston.

Cantor began a practice, long associated with Vallee, of introducing new talent via radio. Gracie Allen made her first radio appearance with Cantor: Burns and Allen would occasionally be mentioned, only half-jokingly, as a Cantor “discovery,” but George Burns had his own grim version of that affair (see BURNS AND ALLEN). A more legitimate discovery was Harry Einstein. Cantor was in Boston in 1934 when he happened to hear, on a local radio station, a man doing a funny Greek dialect. Einstein was then the advertising director of Boston’s Kane Furniture Company. He had been dabbling radio for years and had created a character named Nick Parkyakakas, a comedy candidate for mayor who could be heard on WNAC Mondays and Fridays at 10:30. Cantor thought it the funniest Greek impersonation he had ever heard: by wire, he offered Einstein a slot on NBC, and the following Sunday Parkyakakas played to the nation for the first time.

Like it or not, the factories of New Haven, Hartford, Boston, Beverly, and Haverhill were the country’s future, and Washington was all for it. —

then it was on to Boston and a big parade. “Finding this ceremony was not to be avoided though I had made every effort to do it,” Washington recorded in his diary,

achieved an outcome that he could call a victory by capturing fifty-three women and children. But in the process, he failed to support his detachment of scouts led by Major Joel Elliott. The detachment was killed and butchered by an army of warriors that Custer didn’t know was there. Benteen, for one, never forgave Custer for failing to make a stronger effort to save Elliott and the scouts. Now, Custer faced a similar problem. He believed the noncombatants were running north from the village. But to his south, Reno’s battalion was in danger of being destroyed. He couldn’t capture the noncombatants and save Reno at the same time. As Custer deliberated, his youngest brother, Boston, rode up. Boston had ridden back to the pack train to exchange his horse for a fresh mount. Along the way, he passed Benteen’s battalion, and now he told his brother that Benteen’s men were on the trail to the battlefield and the pack train was only a mile behind them. Custer decided he needed a better view of the landscape. He led his column farther north, across a wide ravine and up onto a high ridge. From there, he saw even more of the village and realized it was even larger than he’d previously believed. He also saw a dust cloud to the south that he thought was a sign of Benteen’s battalion. If Benteen hurried as ordered, he could reunite with Custer in less than half an hour. That thought solidified the decision in Custer’s mind, and Custer explained his plan to his senior officers. Custer split his command into two wings. He told his old friend Captain George Yates to lead the smaller wing, with two of the five companies, over the hills and down a ravine toward the river. Yates would make a big show of acting like he was going to charge across the river and into the village, but in reality, he would secure a place to cross for the rest of the column. Custer would stay with the larger wing—the three companies commanded by Captain Myles Keogh—and wait for Benteen. If Benteen arrived soon, his three companies would join with Keogh’s three companies and rush down to Yates’s position. Then all eight companies would cross the river together and storm the village. If Benteen was delayed, then Keogh’s companies would fire

The "Indians" knew the destruction of the tea had to be finished by midnight--not one minute later. Destroying the tea was against the law. The men were defying King George III of Great Britain. They could be tried for a crime against the government, thrown into jail, and hanged. Why would they risk their lives just to destroy a cargo of tea?

January 26: Journalist George Carpozi Jr. interviews Marilyn at the Gladstone Hotel. He is accompanied by photographer George Miller, who accompanies Marilyn, dressed in a dark fur coat, on a walk through Central Park. She drives with DiMaggio to Cooperstown, New York, to see his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. They also visit his brother Dominic and Dominic’s wife Emily, who are living near Boston.

The student with whom Hal shared a bedroom, Englishman John Abel Smith, bore educational credentials that Hal could only dimly conceive. John was the namesake of a renowned merchant banker and British Member of Parliament. He had attended Eton, one of the world’s most famous preparatory schools, before entering Cambridge, where he had “read” under the personal tutelage of English scholars. Hal began to understand the difference between his public-school education and the background of his roommates when he surveyed them relative to a reading list he came across. It was titled, “One Hundred Books Every Educated Person Ought to Have Read.” George Montgomery and Powell Cabot had read approximately seventy and eighty, respectively. John Abel Smith had read all but four. Hal had read (though not necessarily finished) six. Hal also felt his social inferiority. He had long known that his parents weren’t fashionable. His mother never had her hair done in a beauty parlor. His father owned only one pair of dress shoes at a time and frequently took long trips abroad with nothing but his briefcase and a single change of underwear, washing his clothes—including a “wash-and-wear” suit—in hotel sinks at night. That was part of the reason why Hal took an expensive tailored suit—a broad-shouldered pinstripe—and a new fedora hat to Boston. He knew that he needed to rise to a new level, fashion-wise. But he realized that his fashion statement had failed when Powell Cabot asked, late in October, to borrow his suit and hat. Hal’s swell of pride turned to chagrin when Powell explained his purpose—he had been invited to a Halloween costume party, and he wanted to go as a gangster.

Eve LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, pp. 238–39. Hutchinson’s many generations of descendants include Thomas Hutchinson, who later became governor of Massachusetts during the pre-Revolutionary days and whose policies incited the Boston Tea Party (see Chapter 4 ). In the twentieth century, her descendants included Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, making this rather extraordinary woman the ancestor of three American presidents.

Pentagon.Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, people began to line up for a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George W. Bush went for an early morning run. For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey.Among the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine. 1.1 INSIDE THE FOUR FLIGHTS Boarding the Flights Boston:American 11 and United 175. Atta and Omari boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight from Portland to Boston’s Logan International Airport.1 When he checked in for his flight to Boston,Atta was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta’s selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft. This did not hinder Atta’s plans.2 Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45. Seven minutes later,Atta apparently took a call from Marwan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan Airport.They spoke for three minutes.3 It would be their final conversation. 1 2 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Between 6:45 and 7:40,Atta and Omari, along with Satam al Suqami,Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri, checked in and boarded American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles.The flight was scheduled to depart at 7:45.4 In another Logan terminal, Shehhi, joined by Fayez Banihammad, Mohand al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi, and Hamza al Ghamdi, checked in for United Airlines Flight 175,also bound for Los Angeles.A couple of Shehhi’s colleagues were obviously unused to travel;according to the United ticket agent,they had trouble understanding the standard security questions, and she had to go over them slowly until they gave the routine, reassuring answers.5 Their flight was scheduled to depart at 8:00. The security checkpoints through which passengers, including Atta and his colleagues, gained access to the American 11 gate were operated by Globe Security under a contract with American Airlines. In a different terminal, the single checkpoint through which passengers for United 175 passed was controlled by United Airlines, which had contracted with Huntleigh USA to perform the screening.6 In passing through these checkpoints,each of the hijackers would have been screened by a walk-through metal detector calibrated to detect items with at least the metal content of a .22-caliber handgun.Anyone who might have set off that detector would have been screened with a hand wand—a procedure requiring the screener to identify

The protest has won the backing of prominent economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University academic, and Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England. Its supporters believe that the exposure to a wider range of approaches is necessary if the next generation of policy makers is to avoid the mistakes made in the run-up to the crisis. Faculties in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Budapest, Sydney and Bangalore will aim to address these complaints this academic year by road-testing a new syllabus from the CORE project, led by Wendy Carlin, a professor at University College London. The Institute for New Economic Thinking, a research group bankrolled by billionaire George Soros, has spent around $300,000 on the programme so far.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. — George Orwell, 1984

One of the more useful things I learned as a midshipman at Maine Maritime Academy were the names of the seven masts of a seven masted schooner. When I mentioned to the 600 people in attendance at a Homecoming event that my degree was a BS in Marlinspike Seamanship no one laughed, leaving me in the embarrassing position of having to explain that actually I had a Bachelor of Marine Science degree. Later looking into a mirror I convinced myself that I really didn’t look old enough to have lived in an era when wooden ships were sailed by iron men. What I remembered was that we were wooden men sailing on iron ships that were actually made of steel, however I can remember schooners sailing along the coast of New England and I do remember the seven names of a seven masted schooner. In actual fact only one seven masted schooner was ever built and she was the she a 475 foot, steel hulled wind driven collier/tanker named the Thomas W. Lawson, named after a Boston millionaire, stock-broker, book author, and President of the Boston Bay State Gas Co. Launched in 1902 she held the distinction of being the largest pure sail ship ever built. Originally the names of the masts were the foremast, mainmast, mizzenmast, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher. Later the spanker became the kicker and the spanker moved to next to last place, with the pusher becoming the after mast. Depending on whom you talked to, the names and their order drifted around and a lot of different naming systems were formed. Some systems used numbers and others the days of the week, however there are very few, if any of the iron men left to dispute what the masts were called. The Thomas W. Lawson had two steam winches and smaller electrically driven winches, to raise and lower her huge sails. The electricity was provided by a generator, driven by what was termed a donkey engine. On November 20, 1907 the large 475 foot schooner sailed for England. Experiencing stormy weather she passed inside of the Bishop Rock lighthouse and attempted to anchor. That night both anchor chains broke, causing the ship to smash against Shag Rock near Annet. The schooner, pounded by heavy seas capsized and sank. Of the 19 souls aboard Captain George W. Dow and the ships engineer Edward L. Rowe were the only survivors. Everyone else, including the pilot, drown and were buried in a mass grave in St Agnes cemetery.

Money has always been at the heart of the American idea, since the Boston Tea Party and George Washington’s land claims, and it has always been both a powerful force for national unity among a polyglot of ethnicities and religions and a challenge to it. Wister’s lament — that the rise of cultural diversity and corporate power led to a tragic national decline that betrayed our founding identity and ideals — is bunk. But it is enduring in part because we are always mistaking it as a new phenomenon. The problems of capitalism faced by places like Sinclair and Hanna are often tragic, but recognizing that they are not new, and that the most common political response to them — lashing out at immigrants and faceless enemies, whether corporations or countries — is not effective, can help us see that other approaches are required, whether renewable energy, place-based economics, or even a more politically fraught idea: helping people move.

She turned her efforts instead to a piece of needlepoint that she intended to present to one of her accusers. She was studying grammar, arithmetic, and geography as well, but it was for her decorative sewing—the symbol of refinement for women of leisure—that she had received the sharpest criticism from the mothers of her students. She resented spending her time on such frivolous work, but she poured into this needlepoint project all the energy she had previously given to pressing her suit with Nathaniel. She visited schools all over Boston to compare her piece with others, and at last felt satisfied that hers, a portrait of George Washington—whose death in 1799 had made him a popular subject for memorials in thread—was as well done as any she saw. She could return to teaching with full confidence in her abilities, if not in her clean reputation

Welch became more confident that the press was reporting his words more accurately, but that worked against him because his discourses on the rise of the Illuminati or the Insiders made him sound strange to some, or worse. In September 1973, he sat for the Boston Globe and just purged. He told the reporter that it all began in Bavaria on May 1, 1776, when Baron Adam Weishaupt founded the Order of the Illuminati. It's all in a book by John Robinson, Welch explained. But the Illuminati were forced underground when Bavarian authorities raided their headquarters. The reporter's eyes probably widened. But by 1840, the Illuminati was strong and produced the Great Revolution of 1848 and the League of the Just Men, which hired Karl Marx to draft Das Kapital. The conspiracy was on the doorsteps of Russia by 1905, Welch continued, and in 1917, the agents of the Illuminati, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, threw over the czars, with funding from the Rotschilds. Welch was on fire now. The Insiders, he continued, went to Yale and Harvard, grew up with all the advantages, controlled American politics and international banking, and wanted to enslave everyone else. In 1912, the Insiders brought in Woodrow Wilson to drag the country into World War I. They convinced America to fight World War II with assistance from Insiders like President Roosevelt and George Marshall. They master-planned the civil rights revolution, and they work through the UN, the Council on Foreign Relations, and tax-free foundations. Perhaps the reporter nodded now and then, encouraging him on.

The perpetrators of the Crown's repressive measures were referred to as the "imperial Divan" and as "his most exalted Highness, the most potent, the most omnipotent Bashaw Thomas [Gage], lately appointed by the illustrious Sultan Selim [George] III to the subduction of the military province of B [Boston].

Tabby. Named for a quarter of Bagdad where the stuff was woven. A general term for a silk taffeta, applied originally to the striped patterns, but afterwards applied also to silks of uniform color waved or watered. The bride and bridegroom were both clothed in white tabby (1654). A child's mantle of a sky-colored tabby (1696). A pale blue watered tabby (1760). Rich Morrello Tabbies. (Boston Gazette, March 25, 1734).

Why Consider Fasting? Dom has discussed the idea of a therapeutic “purge fast” with his colleague Dr. Thomas Seyfried of Boston College. Per Dom: “If you don’t have cancer and you do a therapeutic fast 1 to 3 times per year, you could purge any precancerous cells that may be living in your body.” If you’re over the age of 40, cancer is one of the four types of diseases (see Dr. Peter Attia on page 59) that will kill you with 80% certainty, so this seems like smart insurance. There is also evidence to suggest—skipping the scientific detail—that fasts of 3 days or longer can effectively “reboot” your immune system via stem cell–based regeneration. Dom suggests a 5-day fast 2 to 3 times per year. Dom has done 7-day fasts before, while lecturing at the University of South Florida. On day 7, he went into class with his glucose between 35 and 45 mg/dL, and his ketones around 5 mmol. Then, before breaking the fast, he went to the gym and deadlifted 500 pounds for 10 reps, followed by 1 rep of 585 pounds. Dom was inspired to do his first 7-day fast by George Cahill, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, who’d conducted a fascinating study published in 1970* wherein he fasted people for 40 days.

Eric Wartmaugh described his experience seeking employment at Walworth, a valve-manufacturing company in South Boston, in the 1890s: They used to call that the madhouse. They had iron gates. The whistle blew at 7 o’clock and you’re crossing the street and those gates closed, so you went into the hall and you stood there and the man telephoned upstairs. I called him my Uncle George.… If the boss liked you he’d say, “Well, send him up.” If he didn’t he’d say, “Tell him to come back at noontime.” So you could lose a half day’s pay. I’ve seen men go in Monday and they didn’t have many orders from the main office so they say, “Well, come in Wednesday.” You could lose two or three days a week.

In the early 1790s, when African American émigrés were offered a chance to emigrate once again—to Sierra Leone this time, in Africa—many former slaves, including Boston King and David George, seized the opportunity. The Revolutionary War, through a most circuitous route, led almost 1,200 people who had been reared in bondage on American plantations not exactly back to their homelands (few, if any, had ancestors from Sierra Leone) but at least to a place where they hoped to assume some command over their lives.

I was amused, by the way, at one bit of native nomenclature in connection with the Goanese. Many of the Goanese are now as dark as most of the other Indians; but they are descended in the male line from the early Portuguese adventurers and conquerors, who were the first white men ever seen by the natives of this coast. Accordingly to this day some of the natives speak even of the dark-skinned descendants of the subjects of King Henry the Navigator as “the whites,” designating the Europeans specifically as English, Germans, or the like; just as in out-of-the-way nooks in the far Northwest one of our own red men will occasionally be found who still speaks of Americans and Englishmen as “Boston men” and “King George’s men.

Shiloh’s Recommended Listening Tears for Fears. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” By Olzabal, Roland, Stanley, Ian and Hughes, Chris. Somerset, UK: Fontana/Mercury/Phonogram. Songs from the Big Chair. 1985. Joey Ramone. “What a Wonderful World.” By Thiele, Bob and Weiss, George David. Sanctuary Records Group. Don’t Worry About Me. 2002. The Moody Blues. “Question.” By Hayward, Justin. London, UK: Threshold Records. A Question of Balance. 1970. The Church. “Under the Milky Way.” By Kilbey, Steve and Jansson, Karin. Australia: Arista. Starfish. 1988. The Pixies. “Where is My Mind?” By Francis, Black. Boston, MA: 4AD. Surfer Rosa. 1988. The Beatles. “All You Need Is Love.” By Lennon-McCartney. London, UK: Parlophone Capitol. Magical Mystery Tour. 1967. Styx. “The Grand Illusion.” By Dennis DeYoung. Chicago, IL: A&M Records. The Grand Illusion. 1977. The Flaming Lips. “Do You Realize??” By Coyne, Wayne, Drozd, Steven, Ivins, Michael and Fridmann, Dave. New York, NY: Warner Brothers Records. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. 2002. The Beatles. “Across the Universe.” By Lennon-McCartney, London, UK: Regal Starline. No One’s Gonna Change Our World. 1969.

American breweries preexisted American government; some of the breweries’ staunchest supporters were also the leaders of the new nation. In colonial America, the alehouse was second only to the church in importance. (As Martin Luther once said, “’Tis better to think of church in the alehouse than to think of the alehouse in church.”) Aside from being where the brewer plied his trade, the tavern also served as the unofficial town hall and the social and political focal point of every town. It was here that the townsfolk gathered to deliberate and debate, to socialize and share news and information with the community. To the colonists, the alehouses were cradles of liberty; while to the British, the alehouses were hotbeds of sedition. As early as 1768, the Sons of Liberty were holding meetings at the Liberty Tree Tavern in Providence; the Green Dragon Inn in Boston was called the headquarters for the revolution. George Washington made his headquarters at Fraunces Tavern in New York, where it still stands and serves beer, now in the heart of the financial district.

So Alex was counting the days until he would step on the holy soil of Boston, ready to breathe the cold Atlantic air and sense the spirits of those remarkable people about whom he had read so much with nearly religious admiration, walk the streets in their footsteps, and pray in the churches where they had found peace and solace in times of fateful junction.

Male Name-Pictures JAMES (Jim)—a Slim Jim JOHN—a toilet (my apologies to anyone named John) ROBERT (Bob)—a buoy bobbing on the water’s surface MICHAEL (Mike)—a microphone WILLIAM (Bill)—a dollar bill DAVID—a statue RICHARD—I’m sure you can think of something for this one CHARLES—a river (I’m from Boston) JOSEPH (Joe)—a cup of coffee THOMAS (Tom)—a drum CHRISTOPHER (Chris)—an “X” (like a crisscross) DANIEL (Dan)—a lion (lion’s den) PAUL—a bouncing ball MARK—a bruise (as in, “That’s gonna leave a mark!”) DONALD—a duck GEORGE—a gorge KENNETH (Ken)—a hen STEVEN (Steve)—a stove EDWARD (Ed)—a bed BRIAN—a brain RONALD (Ron)—a man running ANTHONY (Tony)—a skeleton (Bony Tony) KEVIN—the number seven JASON—a man being chased (chasin’) MATTHEW (Matt)—a welcome mat Female Name-Pictures MARY—the Virgin Mary PATRICIA (Pat)—a baseball bat LINDA—beauty crown (linda means “pretty” in Spanish) BARBARA—barbed-wire fence ELIZABETH—an ax (Lizzie Borden) JENNIFER—a heart (Jennifer Love Hewitt) MARIA—a wedding dress (as in, “I’m gonna marry ya”) SUSAN—a pair of socks (Susan sounds like “shoes and . . .”) MARGARET (Peg)—a pirate’s peg leg DOROTHY (Dot)—Dots candy LISA—the Mona Lisa NANCY—pants KAREN—a carrot BETTY—a poker chip HELEN—a demon SANDRA (Sandy)—the beach DONNA—a duck (as in, Donald) CAROL—bells (“Carol of the Bells”) RUTH—a roof SHARON—a toddler throwing a fit because she doesn’t want to share MICHELLE—a missile LAURA—an “aura” SARAH—cheerleader’s pom-poms (rah-rah!) KIMBERLY—a very burly woman named Kim DEBORAH—a bra A great way to practice this technique is to jump on Facebook and just start browsing profiles. You’ll have an endless supply of names and faces from which to try creating name-pictures and associations.