Monthly Archive

In 1969, student protesters destroyed a 2500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus on display at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montreal.

For the last four decades the pieces of the coffin — eight large fragments and hundreds of smaller shards — have been in storage, but three months ago, conservators began the work of restoring it and the mummy it housed. The sarcophagus will be featured in a museum exhibit that opens in December, and will then be returned to the college, now part of the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Google and scholarly searches have turned up no information about the 1969 protest in which the sarcophagus was damaged, or about how the damage took place.

Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give 5 and 10 and 20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy, who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organised and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

–Barack Obama, November 4, 2008.

The president of the University of Florida’s “Gators for McCain,” one of the nation’s largest pro-McCain student organizations, is voting for Barack Obama.