{"id":638,"date":"2007-07-29T18:53:13","date_gmt":"2007-07-29T22:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=638"},"modified":"2007-07-30T13:29:06","modified_gmt":"2007-07-30T17:29:06","slug":"but-was-she-shiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2007\/07\/but-was-she-shiny\/","title":{"rendered":"But was she shiny?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking with one of my coworkers the other day about race relations and attitudes and expectations of society.  Somehow, probably because she is black (her preferred term; we discussed it) and I am not, we got on to the issue of reparations for slavery.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not familiar with the concept it goes something like this: white Americans should pay black Americans money because all black people in this country are here because they had an ancestor who was a slave.  Some enterprising law student even <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/archives.cnn.com\/2002\/LAW\/03\/26\/slavery.reparations\/\">filed a suit<\/a> in 2002 when she discovered a link between existing corporations and slavery.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, of course, I felt the need to ask why, exactly, when my family hadn&#8217;t owned slaves should I be expected to pay into such a plan.  How do you know they didn&#8217;t, she replied?<\/p>\n<p>Ah ha!  I&#8217;m one of the lucky ones: I know where my people came from and when.\u00c2\u00a0 They came through Ellis Island on the big boat, two of them really, met up and married later (OK, so my father&#8217;s folks snuck in illegally from Canada (Irish need not apply after all)).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 And the way my brain works somehow all of this conversation popped out today&#8217;s Thought.<\/p>\n<p>The Statue of Liberty is covered in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/stli\/historyculture\/statue-statistics.htm\">31 tons of copper<\/a>, the equivalent to the thickness of two American pennies. Copper gets that lovely green patina as it ages, the look of the statue we know so well, but it doesn&#8217;t start out that way.<\/p>\n<p>So did she look like a shiny new penny when they first put her up in 1886?\u00c2\u00a0 And if she did, if that verdigris that we have now isn&#8217;t her original form, how cool must have that looked?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking with one of my coworkers the other day about race relations and attitudes and expectations of society. Somehow, probably because she is black (her preferred term; we discussed it) and I am not, we got on to the issue of reparations for slavery. If you&#8217;re not familiar with the concept it goes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-thoughts","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}