{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1515",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1515,
    "subject": "Rosa Abo, Please Move to the Back of the Bus",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-10T23:23:01+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-10T23:23:01+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0025-0047@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mitchell A. Bailey",
        "address": "mab at lindau.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-10T23:23:01+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Rosa Abo, Please Move to the Back of the Bus",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In his essay \"Roy Trenchard, Homeboy\", Robert Borski posits an influx of\nAnnese abos attempting to 'pass' as Terran humans into the cities. The\nmotivation might be to escape genocide by the Terran colonists,\nparticularly the defeated French afraid the English-speaking\n'carpetbaggers' would love an excuse to dispossess the French\naltogether. \nHe quotes Roy's words on this topic:\n\"A farmer thinks: 'Suppose they are men like me after all? That Dupont,\nhe is a clever lawyer. What if they engage him, eh? What if he spoke to\nthe judge--the judge who has no French and hates us--and said, This man\nyou call abo has nothing, but Augier's farm was his family's--you make\nAugier show us the bill of sale?'\" \n\nHere's the rub: Robert goes on to speculate\n\"...perhaps some uppity Rosa Parks type abo decided to take such a case\nas Roy outlines to court? Perhaps Rosa Abo even wins.\"\n\nIt just occured to me that something is a little wrong with that\nscenario, in spite of its appeal. The problem I have has an \"artistic\"\ncomponent, if you will, and also a (negative) textual foundation.\n\nThe most central source of tension in the entire book is this question\nof whether the Annese abos do or ever did exist at all. It is my\nsuspicion that Wolfe did not intend there to be an objective correct\nanswer to this question at all.\n\nFor a \"Rosa Abo\" type case ever to have been tried, particularly after\nthe war, would have resulted in the existence of abos (or perhaps\nnonexistence, as the case may be) being established as legal fact in\ncase law.\n\nFurthermore, presumably one or the other of the Dr. Marsches would have\ndiscovered this case record fairly quickly in research, if it wasn't\nindeed common knowlege on St. Anne."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}