Right on time for the anniversary, a correction follows: A year ago I mocked an anti-racist protest in San Francisco at this point. A bust of Ulysses S. Grant was overturned from its pedestal, a memorial to, as I put it, the “Union general who defeated the slave-holding army at Gettysburg”.
I had read quite a bit about the American Civil War. No sooner had the text appeared than a breath of this previous knowledge came over me boiling hot: Grant? Huh? In the battle of fate? Mouse clicks later it was clear: Before Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the blue skirts of George Meade won. The future US President Grant, meanwhile, besieged Vicksburg, Mississippi. Oh. If you risk a perky lip, you shouldn’t make mistakes. I suffered for a morning and wanted to commandeer the newspaper circulation. Only, there was no complaint at all. Nobody noticed the lapse. Or want to get bobbled up about kinkerlitz Or read the text.