Roger WIlliams, a curious fellow who started a funny little town back in 1636.
Almost four centuries ago, a fellow named Roger stopped getting along with his Puritan buddies in Massachusetts because of his “diverse, new and dangerous opinions” and had to find a new place to live. He settled on a spot somewhere between the statue and the tall buildings in the photo above (after a failed attempt a couple of miles away).
It was here that Roger mentioned something locally famous about “divine providence”. Less famously, he also spoke of the need for “A group to promote IRL camaraderie and help organize local political action in Providence, RI”. More kooks followed Roger to Providence, which meant that Roger was no longer talking to himself, and pretty soon there was a town But, there was still no Providence Kos group. Roger described a world with “strange glowing machines for near telepathic correspondence, requiring neither quill nor horse to send a message, nor even a shared tongue, thanks to google translate”. Roger admitted that he had no idea what phrases like “goggle translate”, “website”, “dailykos”, and “more and better democrats” meant, but that they came to him as visions. Even contemporaries of Roger who did not dismiss Roger as possessed or mad questioned the need of having to go into a strange parallel dimension to gather townsfolk together, because there were only a few dozen people in the whole town. Roger mused on this conundrum and decided that Providence must grow large enough to need such a group. He understood that he might not ever see the realization of a Providence Kos group, but that he must work towards it anyway. And securing a royal charter to keep Massachusetts out of Providence was the first step. So he went to London to do just that, in hopes that by providing secure and fertile ground, a seed for his vision might take root.
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