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

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Virginia Smells Good

Virginia's air is perfumed.

Often overcast, humid and since Sunday afternoon, warm, often raining, the air is oxygen rich.

Since C'town, we've visited significant sites on the Historic Bancroft Slave Breeding and Trading Industry Tour in Alexandria, Richmond, on the James River plantations and Monticello. Bancroft's Slave Breeding and the Slave Trade in the Old South  (1931), the classic work of stats breaking out year-by-year, decade-by-decade, state-by-state, the natural increase and the de-population of the upper south and the un-natural increase of African Americans then in the lower and western south, has been serving as guidebook.  It still works ....

Today is our last in Virginia. We spent the night in a non-chain lovely old place called the English Inn in Charlottesville.  We had a ridiculous dinner with our historian friend who lives here.  Due the controversy around his Master of the Mountain, he was surprised to learn it's in the Monticello gift shop bookstore after all.  We are being taken on a tour of UVA in a short time.  Then we will hit the road, going along the James river to the founding site of Jamestown (where there isn't anything really, just the sight, then  Williamsburg -  William and Mary.

As another friend says, who builds the amplifiers for telescopes such as the Very Large Array, who grew up here too, "If it wasn't for the knucklehead, this would be paradise on earth."


O, and yes.  The cicadas are out at Monticello.

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