LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Carlos Saura - *Flamanco Hoy*-Barcelona Jazz Orquestra-"The Abolitionists"

We have to make a press screening for Flamanco Hoy at 11 AM tomorrow, at an upper East side theater.

Doesn't that sound decadent? Going to a Spanish movie about contemporary dance on a Monday morning? in January? I admit this makes me a bit uncomfortable: Young lady, you cannot watch a film on a winter Monday morning! Only worthless people and girls who shall end badly do this, and they earn their bad ending by watching movies on a Monday morning!" I won't eat any popcorn, so that will prove I'm working, not indulging. Right?

It's sort of Spanish here right now. Well, maybe I shouldn'y say "Spain" for the Barcelona Jazz Orquestra, which we're hearing Tuesday night at the Jazz Standard.

In the meantime el V spent all afternoon working his way through my drafts and notes about the French Revolution and Napoleon and Tallyrand and the Louisiana Purchase, from Henry Adams's histories, and the works I'd read around it, as well as from Napoleon's own papers and so on -- you always have to look up the citations included in the passages you want to quote. Now he's having a little feast of left overs, that includes yellow organic corn tortillas and a perfect avocado, plus some great green chili-corn-cabbage, and rice.

In the meantime, let me highly recommend watching PBS-The American Experience's "The Abolitionists". The first episode was last week.


It is as clean and all the rest as predicted.


But it is well-paced, interesting, and it seems to me there is a lot of information worth receiving in it. This said from a background of reading extensively in the 90's about the individuals spotlighted in this three part series: Angela Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. I haven't been working with these great historical figures in the last 15 years, but when I was they educated me in so much of what, then, I didn't know about U.S. culture of the period, U.S. history of the period, slavery and abolition.

These are true heroes. Not that travesty and blasphemy displayed by the exploitation movie whose title I won't even type.

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