"This is snow, it's not going to kill us. What they're doing to us will kill us. What they're doing to our world."

Winter comes early to Zuccotti Park, where — as the apparently editorless New York Magazine puts it — tents "are explicitly forgiven." 

While the occupation's ranks have thinned, the hard-core activists are sticking around, huddling in a large central tent and distributing donated sleeping bags. "It's like Valley Forge out there now," a beaming middle-aged finance facilitator named Mercury John told me. "But it's a beautiful day ... We'll keep splashing in the puddles."

Valley Forge. Except you have the option to go inside whenever you want, and you're getting something to eat besides "fire cake,' a tasteless mixture of flour and water." And you don't have typhoid and dysentery. And no one is expecting you to fight a war. But yeah, it's like Valley Forge.

That beaming middle-aged finance facilitator isn't the first one to liken the plight of the occupiers to Valley Forge. Here's an AP bit from 3 days ago:

“Everyone’s been calling it our Valley Forge moment,” said Michael McCarthy, a former Navy medic in Providence. “Everybody thought that George Washington couldn’t possibly survive in the Northeast.”

Actually, it was easier for the Valley Forge folks to put up with the harsh conditions. There weren't buildings all around that they could duck into if they lost heart.