Thread before the Gardening Thread, Oct. 24

FRANCE

Have you noticed the statue of Marianne used as a symbol of the protests in France?

Why the Statue of Liberty's real name is (probably) Marianne

Live updates on the protests and riots in France, NY Post

One of my first impressions about these protests was that it was odd to think that some sort of "national consensus" must be reached before action could be taken. Here is Macron addressing the nation before taking off for the Gulf States.

Who thinks that France can recover? Someone who turned around a smaller country.

(translate into English if you want to)

J’ai entendu dire que la France était finie, qu’il était trop tard pour la sauver.

Mais la France est toujours aussi belle, enviable même. Sa grandeur n’a pas disparu, elle ne demande qu’à renaître.

Nous avons surmonté en un an un problème cent fois plus grave, sans avoir les moyens dont dispose la France.

La France pourrait y arriver en une semaine.

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) October 18, 2026

His first name is Palestinian. That's just a coincidence.

The Founding of our Country

A Daily Dose of the American Rev

On this day in 1781, General Washington’s aide de camp Lt. Colonel Tench Tilghman arrived in Philadelphia with news of Cornwallis’s surrender. Here is a description of what followed, from Benson Lossing’s Pictorial Fieldbook of the Revolution (1850):

It was midnight when he entered the city. Thomas M’Kean was then president of the Continental Congress, and resided in High Street, near Second. Tilghman knocked at his door so vehemently, that a watchman was disposed to arrest him as a disturber of the peace. M’Kean arose, and presently the glad tidings were made known. The watchmen throughout the city proclaimed the hour, adding ‘and Cornwallis is taken!’ That annunciation, ringing out upon the frosty night air, aroused thousands from their beds. Lights were seen moving in almost every house; and soon the streets were thronged with men and women all eager to hear the details. It was a night of great joy in Philadelphia, for the people had anxiously awaited intelligence from Yorktown. The old State House hell rang out its notes of gladness, and the first blush of morning was greeted with the booming of cannons.

Congress assembled at an early hour, and the grave orators of that august body could hardly repress huzzas while Secretary Thompson read the letter from Washington announcing the capitulation of Cornwallis. On motion of Edmund Randolph, Congress resolved to go in procession at two o’clock the same day to the Dutch Lutheran Church, ‘and return thanks to Almighty God for crowning the allied armies of the United States and France with success.’

Statues: The People They Salute

The First Continental Congress met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies discussed how to respond to the British Navy blockade of Boston Harbor and the punitive Intolerable Acts passed by Parliament.

Some delegates were more open to trying to work with Parliament, others felt it was futile to think Great Britain was open to addressing the colonies’ grievances.

Patrick Henry, opposed Joseph Galloway's proposal for an American Legislature under the Crown. Henry warned that its members would be bribed "by that nation which avows, in the face of the world, that bribery is a part of her system of government."

Henry also understood that the colonies must unite in joint cause against Great Britain, if they want to be taken seriously.

In the end, the voices of compromise carried the day. Rather than calling for independence, the First Continental Congress passed and signed the Continental Association in its Declaration and Resolves, which called for a boycott of British goods to take effect in December 1774. ON THIS DAY October 20, in 1774, the First Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Association.

Standing before everyone at the beginning of the First Continental Congress, Henry famously declared:

"The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."
In other words, it was Henry who first created the concept of the American identity.

A Daily Dose of the American Rev

A 1722 law prohibited New Hampshire settlers from cutting down any white pine trees more than one foot in diameter. Those trees, the law declared, belonged to the king for potential use in naval construction. For decades the law was honored in the breach and rarely enforced. But after John Wentworth was appointed royal governor of the colony he decided to crack down on violations. In April 1772 royal authorities arrested sawmill owner Ebenezer Mudgett of Weare, New Hampshire, and charged him with breaking the law.

New Englanders had long resented the so-called “pine mast laws” as infringements on their livelihoods and their liberties. The night of his arrest, after being released on bail, Mudgett and about 20 other townsmen disguised themselves and broke into room in the local inn where the sheriff and his deputy were staying. Mudgett and his colleagues seized the two men, beat them, then ran them out of town before a jeering crowd of onlookers. Mudgett and eight others were later arrested and charged with rioting and assault. A sympathetic judge gave them nominal fines as their punishment.

In the aftermath of the affair the pine tree became a symbol of the resistance to royal authority, and the so-called Pine Tree Riot may have helped inspire the Boston Tea Party. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, New England Continental troops flew “pine tree flags”—red battle flags with a pine tree on the upper left.

In October 1775 George Washington commissioned a pine tree flag for the American navy. Washington’s design was a pine tree on a white field, above which appeared the words “An Appeal to Heaven.” The phrase, frequently used by the revolutionaries, appeared in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. “For whenever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice,” Locke wrote, “war is made upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.” The scripture cited by Locke in support of his argument made clear his meaning: an appeal to heaven for victory in war. In other words, when there is no just temporal authority to whom the oppressed can appeal, their final option is to take up arms and appeal to heaven.

The images are the Bunker Hill Pine Tree Flag and Washington’s naval Pine Tree Flag.

Weekend

The Week in Pictures: Not To My Knowledge Edition

Pay attention, class: Everyone remember Bill Clinton’s famous “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”? That came when he was asked about whether he was having (present tense) or had ever had sex with Monica Lewinski. Later, of course, he redefined “sex” to exclude his bizarre cigar-involved acts. Well, I think we’ve seen the next act in these kind of linguistic improvisations with Ilhan Omar saying she did not “knowingly” marry her brother, after which we can expect a new explanation of what “brother” means in Somalian culture. Oh, and Paris is burning.

Music

h/t Don in Kansas, a Strauss polka to keep you on your toes:

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, the Thread before the Gardening Thread, Oct. 17

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:16 AM

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