16 July 20 “We started-off trying to set up a small ‘anarchist community,’ but people just wouldn’t obey the rules!” Alan Bennett Imagine that! Statue-tory Limitations? This is how we deal with our national history, and the bygone era of slavery: (1) We first erect a statue memorializing our slavery era (2) After a short time, we throw that statue in the river! (3) We then erect a statue to the anarchist who threw the original statue in the river, and then arrogantly posed on the empty plinth. (4) Finally, we similarly throw that statue in the river to join the other two, and subsequently find something suitable to put in its place, like an appropriate tribute to Mugabe, Papa Doc, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Gadafi. (5) Of course, that statue won’t stay there for long either, as despots invariably wax in and out of popular fashion, even in Communist countries. Just ask Joe Stalin! We may have to find a deeper river! “It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is carefully choose which set of rules you want to live by, and it’s persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any.” Wallace Stegner /John