Not the Worst of Times: Covid, Slavery, Global Capitalism, Industrialization

      . . . . . Such thunderstorms last night, Thor level storms, as they woke me twice out of my Omicron vax reaction stupor.  Maybe our drought is over?

It took about 7 - 8 hours post the early AM jab more or less, around about 8 - 9 PM that the reaction to the new vax began to manifest, with the usual fatigue.  Even so, as I'd slept badly, and got in only about 5 hours of sleep the night before, I wasn't sure.  But at 10 I gave up resisting, took Tylenol and retired, while el V read me to sleep from Howard French's Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War (2021), a long historical study of what the European extraction economy of resources including population, meant for the

development of capitalism and European industrialization, particularly England's* 

Me had already started feeling a bit achy and chilled.  Woke about 3:30 very achy and chilled, took another Tylenol, drank a gallon of water, and lay there paralyzed for quite some time, mildly hallucinating. More quickly than in the past, the Tylenol did its job, and I only woke because my bladder woke me -- which meant I also drank then, another gallon of water (gallon is rather an exaggeration). About noon I woke feeling more like a person than a disassociated alien in the world.  Now drinking splendid tea and looking forward to breakfast and another Tylonel.  By about 3 PM I'll probably decree the reaction is finished with.

All in all this reaction was several degrees milder than the last two reactions, particularly the one before this. Been jabbed 5 times now for covid.  I suppose will do it again mid-December?  It's clearly worth it, being vaccinated, and I'll keep doing it, and masking.

I have books at the library, which I may attempt to pick up, but I probably won’t work out today, as feeling a little weak, and that electrical shock effect across my back, which has always manifested after the reaction is manifesting at the moment.  Plus have things to organize regarding the trip to New Orleans.  Then must return again to NO almost at once, to do a talk about the contributions of Caribbean slavery to the first globalization and world economy.

In many ways the last weeks have been rough, from the various anxieties around the Colombia trip to Cali and the Buenaventura Pacific Coast, then el V's staph eye infection manifesting in Bogóta, after the Travelers all flew home (nobody got covid -- the protocols were strict, except one, who acquired it, naturally on the plane when returning, but it was very mild).  Everyone had a the most splendid experiences, musical, people-to-people, and even natural -- whales among those -- sounding while on the boat to an island off the coast!  One of the young ladies then continued on alone on her explorations, heading off by bus to Cartegena.

But here at home the whole family in the Midwest got covid, from the baby to the elderly -- from a grandkid's preschool, where a teacher came down with it.  It wasn't  good for everybody.

Before that, our very dear friend, K, had to have sudden, RIGHT THIS MINUTE IF YOU WISH TO LIVE, brain surgery.  Thank all the lordessas the non-cancerous tumor was finally discovered, and discovered just in time -- the tumor was displacing the space in the cranium that the brain occupies.  The surgery was most successful, he's recovering well, but it's a long road, and it's been very painful. So They have him on opiates, which he, characteristically sniffs at, as "a most inelegant drug," and hates it.  But this is also good in a way, because he was determined to stop using the stuff as soon as possible. But the blinding headaches that come and go (the tumor was removed via the nasal passages, which means breaking his nose among other things) kept him from sleeping, so he still needs to resort to them at night sometimes during the week. But he's good, and he sounds wonderful!  The tumor's progress was insidious and going on so gradually that the changes in him he racked up to 'age' and so did we.  But all that aging is gone now, and he's as he's always been -- though in pain, etc. -- and that is WONDERFUL.

Then, our friend, the wonderful Gwendolyn Midlo Hall died, after a long and most important career, that changed how we see and do history (among other things, she created database historiography). 

All the names (107,000) recorded in Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Louisiana Slave Database were engraved on 216 granite slabs, mounted on 18 walls.

Her ashes will be buried at the Whitney Plantation Museum, at the Allées Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, that she contributed so much to bring into existence.

Hmm, it seems I'm still quite out of it, as They Say, meaning a little foggy and weak, and o that electrical shock pain across my back is really not what one wants to be feeling.

* What Dr. Deveraux completely missed in his overview on Unmitigated Pendantry recent entry, as to why England industrialized so quickly -- and WHEN IT DID -- is the African Atlantic slave trade, and slavery itself throughout its imperium from the first days.

French's book is just one of many, including ours, in the last decade, decade and a half -- and even before -- that goes into detail about the African-Atlantic slave trade, New World slavery and how this is the road to industrialization and global capitalism.  Never in the history of the world had so much wealth been produced so rapidly -- and all by extracting it from others, right down to the rights to their own bodies, and appropriating it for themselves.  Yet there are always that multitude of the smartest bros in the room who get very angry when this is pointed out, because industrialization only happened because we are such smart engineers and scientists, and, o ya, we have a superior of way of doing everything.  Never a thought given as to how any of this from the 16th through the 19th centuries was financed -- or even, that it had to be financed.

Lordessa are the Brits in their fairy tale rewriting their Royals' history pretending none of this went on, and went on under her reign too.