Sarah Vowell: Confluence Sites are “Down to Earth

Sarah Vowell relates how someone can just be themselves at Confluence sites.

Bio:

Sarah Vowell is the New York Times’ bestselling author of seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. By examining the connections between the American past and present, she offers personal, often humorous accounts of American history as well as current events and politics. Her most recent book, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, explores both the ideas and the battles of the American Revolution, especially the patriot founders’ alliance with France as personified by the teenage volunteer in George Washington’s army, the Marquis de Lafayette.

Transcription:

Yeah. And so that the people can go there and use that and participate in something that is both spiritually meaningful, but also, you know, they eat the fish. I assume there’s something so pragmatic and down to earth about that. I mean, that’s what I, I like about your sites is there’s room for all this highfalutin, you know, talk and thoughts and ideas in history or whatever. But, but, um, it’s, it’s, um, it’s so damn literally down to earth, you know, And all of the way that all the natural materials are used to build your, whenever you want to call them. I think I used the word contraption, um, uh, that, and that you, that you could be Chinook and find that I’m sure a hundred times more meaningful than anyone going there, but you could also be, you know, like I was just a tourist passing through Portland when I went to the bird blind and it was meaningful to me as someone from the Missouri river, but it was meaningful me to me as an American, but it was also meaningful to me as someone who I don’t know, loves the earth. There’s, I’m sure there’s a non corny way to put that, you know, I could be, you can be a lot of different people at your sites.

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