In the middle of the night I saw God.

But often I admired the mirror-work, tried to glimpse myself in the miniature glass circles

My costume clung to me

My aunts chose an apple-green sari, silver-bordered for my teens.

salwar kameez

In my English grandmother's dining-room

and I was there - of no fixed nationality, staring through fretwork at the Shalimar Gardens.

fretwork

Shalimar Gardens.

unlike Aunt Jamila

Alvi’s themes of division and identity are evident in her fascination with otherness, and a predilection for the surreal. Her imagery can render the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.

this poet's third country

“cultural difference” rather than “cultural diversity.”

The “cultures” of multiculturalism are usually marked as distinct or “other” from the white Europeans, thus perpetuating systems of inequality and subordination.

Thus, it presupposes the “making or remaking” of the world

To aim at preserving or protecting a culture runs the risk of privileging one allegedly pure version of that culture, thereby crippling its ability to adapt to changes in circumstances

multiculturalism offers the strongest form of group-differentiated rights—self-government rights—to indigenous peoples and national minorities because their minority status is unchosen; they were coercively incorporated into the larger state.

they cannot avoid establishing one language for public schooling and other state services

Luck egalitarians argue that individuals should be held responsible for inequalities resulting from their own choices, but not for inequalities deriving from unchosen circumstances.

Examples of cultural accommodations or “group-differentiated rights” include exemptions from generally applicable law

an English girl of twenty-two, named Portia Langham, whom I fell in love with in two minutes, and she with me – I could see it without glasses.

You see there was just that element of impending disaster to give a serious side, a sober side, yes, a tragic side, to a state of things which would otherwise have been purely ridiculous.

ducally nobby

He received it with a smile, one of those large smiles which goes all around over, and has folds in it, and wrinkles, and spirals, and looks like the place where you have thrown a brick in a pond; and then in the act of his taking a glimpse of the bill this smile froze solid, and turned yellow, and looked like those wavy, wormy spreads of lava which you find hardened on little levels on the side of Vesuvius. I never before saw a smile caught like that, and perpetuated.

manful struggle

No; I had nothing in the world but a million pounds.

There’s a bet on me; no way to find out what it is – let it go

He said he hoped he wasn’t afraid to trust as rich a gentleman as I was

“Dr.”

it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. 

General buzz and hum of astonishment and delight.

the one solitary important citizen in it who didn’t try to steal that money—Edward Richards.”

Both left out the crucial fifteen words.

The bulk of the house gazed at it with a burning interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and pathetic interest

Aren’t we always acting lies?

and the town made a plan to ride him on a rail

Now I have no idea who that man was, but I want him found, and I want him to have this money, to give away, throw away, or keep, as he pleases.

“That is the thing to do—I will corrupt the town.”

for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared not a rap for strangers or their opinions

natal

Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?

Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!”

the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts,

know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.

and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity.

“Your words are a mystery, too,” returned the young lady. “Take away the veil from them, at least.”

“There is an hour to come,” said he, “when all of us shall cast aside our veils. Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece of crape till then.”

The people trembled, though they but darkly understood him when he prayed that they, and himself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.

“Truly do I,” replied the lady; “and I would not be alone with him for the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself!”

and showed himself in the pulpit, face to face with his congregation, except for the black veil.

Phillis Wheatley

We all know its value, and that diligence and dexterity in all its processes are inestimable treasures.

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

The present winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious and useful.

And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are COUNTRYMEN; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones; distinctions too limited for continental minds. Not one third of the inhabitants, even of this province, are of English descent. Wherefore I reprobate the phrase of parent or mother country applied to England only, as being false, selfish, narrow and ungenerous.

This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monste

You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but don’t see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it.

My wickedness

majesty and meekness joined together

The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of soul, that I know not how to express.

The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, I Tim. 1:17.

.

The grand suc­cess of the Witch Museum depends upon both the edu­ca­tional pack­ag­ing and the deliv­ery of the thrilling goods.

Though it is a com­mon say­ing to “learn from the past,” this phe­nom­e­non really works to elide the past, absorb­ing it into a cyclic story that has less to do with time gone by than it does with the cur­rent moment.

When it is over, vis­i­tors are asked to “exit through the gift shop.

The haunt­ings, the ances­tral tour­guide, the plaque, the impo­tent and threat­en­ing beam, all pro­duce a new kind of “orig­i­nal­ity” that co-opts and ulti­mately replaces the actual, orig­i­nal Salem jail and the pris­on­ers it held.

In this case, the orig­i­nal doc­u­ments begin to get coded as deriv­a­tive, as part of a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the past         rather than as the past itself. Salem’s “edu­ca­tional” sites tend to make pri­mary sources into sec­ondary rep­re­sen­ta­tions, and as a result, Salem’s witch his­tory is left with­out an orig­i­nal story.

What is intrigu­ing to me about the Phillips Library is its par­tic­i­pa­tion in a process by which “orig­i­nal” his­tory is erased or obscured because it has been iden­ti­fied as touris­tic.

But like Uso­vicz, the film can­not resist the lure of the spooky side of Salem. For the mayor, Salem’s past was “bewitch­ing.” For the film, it is “haunt­ingly” famil­iar

As you explore our places, attend the voices of our past. You may find them haunt­ingly famil­iar. Our his­tory may be an echo of your own story being told

“Our story is about much more than the infa­mous witch tri­als,” a “local” voice nar­rates at the begin­ning of the film, “It’s about cul­tural evo­lu­tion and change.”

The tourist becomes, in this the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence and in most Salem tourism, both pas­sive audi­ence mem­ber and active shaper of the expe­ri­ence, and per­form­ers are both rein­car­na­tions of Puri­tans past and cre­ators of a con­stantly evolv­ing truth.

Tourists snap pho­tos of the “early Amer­i­cans,” inevitably cap­tur­ing in their shots images not only of the per­form­ers, but also of other tourists tak­ing pic­tures

The thoughts of these things in the particulars of them, and of the love and goodness of God towards us

the squaw was boiling horses feet; then she cut me off a little piece, and gave one of the English children a piece also. Being very hungry I had quickly eat up mine, but the child could not bite it, it was so tough and sinewy

My spirit was, upon this, I confess, very impatient, and almost outrageous.

I could hardly bear to think of the many weary steps I had taken, to come to this place.

to which they answered me they would break my face.

28th chapter of Deuteronomy

to see King Philip

The Third Remove

yet so it must be, that I must sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour would be the last of its life

At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms till my strength failed, and I fell down with it.

The First Remove

Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell.

Hippeus pinetree horfe

Much rejoycing was made that they had gotten their cap- pitall enemy, (as they concluded him ; ) whome they purpofed to hamper in fuch fort that hee mould not be able to uphold his plantation at Ma-re Mount.

No IrifJi fluff

for in Truth, it is the absence and presence of God that makes Heaven or Hell.

Another.

Eliza shall rule Albian once again.

Terra incognitæ

Minerva

Rex

thou now in silence lie

Proem

Earth hath enough of what you will. Then let not go what thou maist find For things unknown only in mind.

Industry hath its recompence

Notion

Lacrim

Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain

The Author to Her Book

bays

ore

precenency

For such despite they cast on female wits, If what I do prove well, it won't advance-- They'll say it was stolen, or else it was by chance.

And ye next day they gott into ye Cape-harbor wher they ridd in [94]saftie.

Of their vioage, & how they passed ye sea, and of their safe arrivall at Cape Codd

we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us.

It was strange to see these men, wild and untaught, howling like brutes over our misfortunes. It caused in me as in others, an increase of feeling and a livelier sense of our calamity.

Chapter X: The Assault from the Indians (Excerpt)

[G]oing with us, [the Indians] feared neither Christians nor lances.

As they did not plant, they appeased their keen hunger by eating roots, and the bark of trees. We bore a share in the famine along the whole way ; for poorly could these unfortunates provide for us, themselves being so reduced they looked as though they would willingly die. They brought shawls of those they had concealed because of the Christians, present- ing them to us ; and they related how the Christians, at other times had come through the land destroying and burning the towns, carrying away half the men, and all the women and the boys, while those who had been able to escape were wandering about fugitives. We found them so alarmed they dared not remain any- where. They would not, nor could they till the earth ; but preferred to die rather than live in dread of such cruel usage as they received.

They are all warlike, and have as much strategy for protecting themselves against enemies as they could have were they reared in Italy in continual feuds.

The children are suckled until the age of twelve years, when they are old enough to get sup- port for themselves.

g

The Character of the Country

but of the diverse customs of the many and very barbarous people with whom I talked and dwelt

the rising of the sea was very favorable to me, as it happened formerly to Moses when he led the Jews from Egypt

The sea was like a river, the air soft and mild.

He was in much anxiety at not being able to afford any assistance in this case, but says that it somewhat quieted his apprehensions to know that Martin Alonzo Pinzon, Captain of the Pinta, was a man of courage and capacity. Made a progress, day and night, of twenty-nine leagues

Don

Don

For the Spirit of the Mountain had taken her to himself

Little wonder that tourists visiting reservations, upon viewing a person clad in other than a blanket, riding in something other than a dog-pulled travois, bemoan the "obvious" loss of culture