pépites

The best part is these frogs would be too little for the tiger to see them as food but anything big enough to eat the frogs would probably catch its attention. Smart little froges ride the big kitty boat

It’s the only way to travel.

an iconic moment in art history

Fiona Apple in the Nov ‘97 issue of Spin magazine

WHY DID THIS HAVE TO END

the other night i was walking across old city – the semimuseumized part of philadelphia that is home to independence hall and the liberty bell and other relics of and monuments to the revolution – and it was very cold and snowy and icy and quiet and i was already having a delirious moment about what it felt like to walk through this city that is no longer home and especially this part of this city that i have never lived in but feel attached to in the way you feel attached to things that symbolize where you’re from no matter how fraught those symbols are, this part of this city that is also saturated with history often poorly told and with what america feels like to me, my biggest america feelings (what a beautiful project so horribly unfinished; america is a tragedy is the feeling i have that is a strange kind of patriotism), having this delirious moment and then hanging behind the glass of the west-facing wall of the jewish history museum, lit softly from behind and just barely legible in the dark icy night, was a banner that read, in a combination of italic manuscript-imitation font and bold sharp sans-serif capitals, happily the government of the united states gives to bigotry no sanction and to persecution no assistance. the part i saw first was to persecution no assistance and my heart stuck in my throat; i read the rest and stopped walking for a moment, breath tight and on the point of tears. how beautiful but how false, how false, how false, how false (this strange patriotic sorrow). and then the quotation is ascribed to george washington. george washington, hero of the revolution and owner of slaves, said this about to bigotry no sanction. his specific reference was to freedom of religion; he was writing to a jewish leader of a congregation in rhode island. the words are, in fact, a reprise of the words of that jewish leader, a man named moses seixas of whom i had never heard until this moment, when i googled this quotation. people ask me sometimes what it is like to be american. this is the answer.