Free Republic

ritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ fuzzy, orange mascot, is under investigation for an alleged physical assault of a 13-year-old boy during a photo shoot at the team’s stadium back in November, multiple outlets reported Wednesday. Chris Greenwell, the boy’s father and a longtime season ticket holder, wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday that his son, Brandon, was “punched and injured” by Gritty, and that the organization “tried to bribe me not to speak about it.”

Gritty, the bright orange, furry, 7-foot creature of Philadelphian origin, is no longer a simple mascot for a hockey team: Antifa activists have co-opted him as their own. In fact, they so effectively claimed Gritty as a working-class, leftist icon that the Wall Street Journal was forced to publish an anguished op-ed Monday demanding that these people keep their “Marxist hands off Gritty.” “The same leftists who want statues of Thomas Jefferson removed are now petitioning for Gritty to replace Mayor Frank Rizzo on a downtown mural,” Jillian Kay Melchior said in the Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Gritty belongs to...

Gritty CluesHow soil can tell stories of the past Aimee Cunningham At the base of Monticello Mountain, just below Thomas Jefferson's historic estate in Charlottesville, Va., sits a 90-meter-long greenstone wall. The Rivanna River runs on one side. On the other, earth has piled up to the wall's top. Built up from sediments washing down the mountain for centuries, this soil holds clues to history. But rather than bits of tools or pottery, the clues are chemical elements in the soil. The soil at Monticello Mountain in Charlottesville, Va., contains clues about Thomas Jefferson's agricultural practices on those slopes. Archaeologists...