Bony Ganugapanta, GBP Student Last block GBP at the end of the day can be either a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes there is lots of work to be done at the end of the day and people are so tired, they’re already zoned out. Other times, an activity is posted on Google Classroom, people are excited, and everything is fun. On a lazy Thursday afternoon a few weeks ago, as I walked into GBP, I wondered whether GBP that day would be a good thing or bad thing. I didn’t have to think long about the bad because standing alone in the middle of the room, was the celebrity himself: Mr. Starr! Three teachers for 44 kids works pretty well most of the time. Two teachers? Maybe with a little luck. One teacher? Hmm... But this wasn’t just any teacher. This was Mr. Starr, the legend himself. He always something or the other up his sleeve and on that day, it was two documents about Pope’s day. Now some of you may be thinking, “Huh? Pope’s day?? Must be some sort of special day to celebrate the pope…?” Wrong. Those two documents shed some light on one fateful day over the span of two years. The first document (both taken out of a newspaper and accounted for by a man named Rev. James Freedman) focused on the civil war between the colonists while the second focused on a origins of a revolution between the colonists and England. On November 5, 1764, fires blazed across the town of Boston in the wake of yet another burning of a scarecrow looking like the pope of England. People were not happy with the way things were going in England. The requirement of payment in Boston to consent for the Seven Years War was not taken well by the citizens. The Colonists absolutely despised England, and the Pope being the figurehead, was burned in the streets of Boston, to encase their hatred toward the King. An excerpt from the poem shows the strength of the hatred: A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope, A penn'orth of cheese to choke him, A pint of beer to wash it down, And a jolly good fire to burn him. Oh yeah, these people were real friendly. After the two sides were done burning the pope, they came upon agreement to fight each other, splitting themselves up as the North End and the South End. The reason for this brutality? The intense sectionalism present between the North End and South End of Boston. Both sides were very vehement toward each other on the topic of sports, business, fashion, etc. In those fights, many people were bruised, and accumulated broken hands, legs, and heads. These people just came out in the evening and… fought. Weird? Yeah. But it's alright, because that's about as weird as it gets.
The two groups don't fight each other long. By November 5, 1765, the two groups became allies as they turned to a common enemy: England. England had recently passed the Stamp Act in further compensation for the cost of Seven Years War. Their “mother country” had taken away their freedoms and abused them, and the colonists were not going to stand for that. Even now, in the modern day, people in England will come out and burn the scarecrow of the pope, proclaiming the well known phrase around the year of 1765, "Remember, remember the fifth of November!" Leave a Reply. |
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