[This term derives from the evening before May Day, believed during medieval times to be the night that witches celebrate Sabbath. The German word “Walpurgisnacht” is sometimes used instead.] ❚ I love New York … but I have thoroughly lost patience with the self-congratulatory myth, trumpeted ad nauseam since the recent blackout, that New York is a changed city since 9/11. … The latest piece of “evidence” offered on behalf of the city’s transformation is the near-absence of looting in comparison to the 1977 blackout — a Walpurgis Night that produced more than 3,700 arrests, 1,600 ransacked stores and 1,000 fires. (Susan Jacoby, I Want to Wake Up in the City That Can Get Over Itself, The Washington Post, 08/24/2003, p. B5.)
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