Liberty Arrives!

Liberty Arrives!

Juvenile nonfiction
Most of us probably can't imagine our nation's East Coast
without the Statue of Liberty raising her torch to welcome the
homeless and tempest tossed to our shore. I bet you'll be as amazed
as I was to learn that her installation almost didn't happen. That's
the sobering message of Robert Byrd's Liberty Arrives!
In 1876 America was about to turn one hundred. A wealthy French
man wanted to send a lavish friendship gift from his country.
Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi had a vision for an enormous
copper statue. It was agreed that France would pay for the sculpture
and America the pedestal on which she'd stand. France kept her part
of the bargain. Lady Liberty was packed and shipped in 1885...
...to a United States that hadn't raised the money for her
pedestal. Just like now, the very rich were being very stingy.
Fortunately Joseph Pulitzer was disgusted with their greed. As owner
of the New York World, he had a bully pulpit for carrying out some
really old style crowd sourcing.
Read the book to see how he got the poor and lowly to achieve
what the rich and haughty refused to do.
On a purrrsonal note, I got more pawsitive feedback on Tobago's
contribution to my most recent post than to anything else I've tried
since I started this blog nearly nine years ago. So my kitty girl
will get her chances to produce content on a semiregular basis. Here's
my baby!
Well the hoomans have been acting even more strangely than normal this
week--walking around talking about losing an hour of sleep? How does
this even make sense? Sleep is always there. You just close your
eyes and it finds you. And what's with these things that go beep beep
beep and scare them out of bed? If they got rid of those things I bet
they could find all the sleep they claim to have lost.
A great big shout out goes out to those hoomans who have the sense to
feed their animal companions when their beep beep boxes get them out
of bed.
Don't forget: you can't buy love, but you can rescue it.
Tobago Anna Hathaway
And Jules Hathaway


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