Sally Go Round the Roses*

      . . . . A third consecutive beautiful May morning!  

    

Yesterday I saw this year's first roses.  The green of the foliage in Washington Square Park and LaGuadia Place was nearly overwhelming, so fresh and vigorous.

Though I continue double-masking, even in the street, unless sitting quietly with a friend outdoors, yesterday was as perfect as a day can be These Days. It began with the third substantial unexpected check this week out of past music-book-movie work.  I had activities all day!

Walked to meet up for a sort of lunch-picnic with librarian friends in the garden of the Jefferson Market branch library, whose garden is famous for its roses. 

Continued on to Best Buy, went inside and purchased a protector-cover-stand for the new Tablet el V got me on Sunday.  Walked up to Union Square, got croissants in the Green Market. For once I ignored nutrition, fiber, fat, sodium, sugar, and gave the mouth what the mouth wants. 

Turned around and entered DSW, rode the escalator to the shoe department, where I tried on quite a few, and purchased a pair of sandals and a pair of sneakers. Enjoyed the later afternoon sunshine, stopped at LaGuardia Place to rest, chatting with amigo K for half an hour about books and the Gwendolyn Midlo Hall event later in the night, organized by Postmambo, CubaNOLA, in company with the American Studies Department at Berkeley, and the Institute of Gulf Studies (which el V's early work on New Orleans and Cuba had quite an influence of awareness of the Gulf itself as a geography and culture that is not the Carribean, despite the flow and currents) at Tulane.  K, with C and MIL attended the Webenair, as did nearly 200 others, among whom were a lot of friends, whom we've not seen yet in person. It was a wonderful event, providing great satisfaction, judging by the emails last night and this morning.

The occasion was the publication, as of May 11th, of Gwen's memoir, Haunted By Slavery: A Memoir of a Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle.

Today is good too -- and even warmer, as tomorrow is supposed to be. The mayor announced that as of today our city has the .lowest rate of Covid-19 positivity in 7 months -- under 2%.  O my.

I haven't had days like this in over two years, since the weather had been wintery already in 2019 mid-late fall.  I was so happy-giddy by bedtime last night it was like the ecstatic inebriation when 20. 

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*

The Jaynettes 1963 "Sally Go Round the Roses" is followed by Grace Slick's version.

Thises & Thatsas Domestika Trivia

     . . . . Been babying the injured sciatic nerve caused by the trip-and-fall that happened 4 Saturdays ago. 

I still have excruciating pain upon getting up if I've sat in the >ergonomic!< desk chair too long and / or not positioned myself exactly right. I still sit far fewer hours than spend stretched on the bed with overbed table -- which is still impossible to perform writing typing upon.  At least the x-rays showed there was no damage to bones, did not break hip or anything. Still haven't heard anything about the MRI I had a week ago.  At least I can still walk the 20 blocks in both directions to the medical complex, and keep working out.  It's sitting to type or do anything for very long I can't do.

Last night my new stupid fone froze up, couldn’t even power it down to reboot, in the middle of a sentence Vaquero was speaking. Such a piece of shyte phone and such a shyte service T-Mobile. We have to get this fixed!

The Horror!  AAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

My God My God My God WNYC just shoved the Shoggoth First Lady's voice into my ears about how much Shoggothinchief* 'Loves this country and people'. Shutting off the radio rushing to to bathroom to vomit up the horror that is her souless pitch perfect nazi who speaks english inspires. Please replace those wonderful creatures, the elephants, as the entirely inappropriate symbol of the rethugs,  with the entirely accurate and appropriate Lovecraftian creature of horror and hatred of immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and women. Thrown up. Better.  

Laura is a Cat 4 hurricane now. Going to slam into LA and TX today.  4 million have been told to evacuate.  To where? Our New Orleans Reconnect on-the-ground Captain was laying in supplies last week already.

WBGO is alternating the old timey Blues with New Orleans old timey music, leaning heavily upon the catalogs of Louis Armstrong and Mack Rebbenack (Dr. John).  Huh.  They're going to do a Howlin' Wolf set.

I now get up to find my Howlin' Wolf t-shirt acquired at the Blues Museum in Clarkesdale, Mississippi back in 2012, and which I've never worn.

The St. Cyr novels have never had a blank cover before.

Today's perfect weather was perfect for the library run -- both titles I'd requested when Grab 'n Go started here earlier this month arrived to pick-up at my neighborhood Grab 'n Go branch.  One of them is the latest Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery -- I enjoy certain aspects of this series very much, though it has sagged at times.  Other problems: in the first books the protag, Vicount Devlin, is hinted to have some special sort of powers, including being able to see in the dark, but that never went anywhere.  The previous two brought it back to form; hope that continues with this latest installment, #16, What the Devil Knows.The author is a New Orleanian, which somehow provides an extra bit of flava to the content, though I'd be baffled as to say how.  It's not as though New Orleans or North America is ever even mentioned in her novels, which are within the era of the French Wars, generally, and which does provide plot points in more than one of the titles. This latest is set in 1814, the "French War" is finally over, and Europe is being divvied up at the Congress of Vienna ....  They think, the wars are over, anyway (1815 is Waterloo).

El V and B drove to 5th pod member S's huge rambling house, in which he lives along, with screened in annex, big yard and swimming pool up in Saratoga. We'd been planning this little vacation get-away for months already.  Due to the fall though, I sadly had to relinquish going myself this year, for I couldn't sit on drive, get up and walk again -- and that drive isn't even really long. But one will avoid that excruciating pain if one can! They are bringing local fresh produce such as sweet corn on the cob (which they been gorging on, grilled, already), blueberries and so on. They will hook up with P on the way back down here to exchange of this for the local Connecticut pork he picked up for us earlier this summer. So, we continue to eat, and eat well.

I am trying to figure out how we can do some kind of Thanksgiving this year, for we'll still be isolating as much as possible.  The schools are reopening in few days, from pre-school, through the universities.  We know what happens then will be what has happened everywhere in this country and other ones when students are brought back in physical space with each other -- and they can't stay away from each other either, nor do they want to.

War of 1812 -- Andrew Jackson's Intelligence Network

Jackson had a highly effective intelligence network, particularly considering how little he had to work with, in terms of funds and man-power, and how far away he was from even small towns from 1813 until going to New Orleans at the end of 1815. He must have had a lot of messengers, and very effective ones.  I'm sitting here with the volumes of his correspondence from these years, so I can see Jackson wrote  constantly, despite being so ill for so much of the time. He also seems to have had access to large numbers of newspapers from the Caribbean.  When he gets to Mobile and the Gulf in 1814, there is that route of information, which he combs assiduously to his and the nation's profit.

But his letters don't give clues as to who is sending him info.  It has nothing to do with the mission of The American Slave Coast, but my curiosity as to his spy network has been growing.  Finally, appears a book that carries some information on this subject, Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and The Battle of  New Orleans 1812 - 1815 (1981), by Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr. University of Florida, Gainesville. The info comes from the papers of two of Jackson's correspondents, who, as even in this little book of scholarship, are ignored by history other than as cites and footnotes.

With this warning constantly being brought to the general's attention, he moved his headquarters to Mobile, closer to the source of his espionage reports.  The names and addresses of most of Jackson's informants indicate that they were located either in Pensacola or New Orleans .... Since Pensacola was a neutral Spanish port, it was not under the regular British blockade and received a constant supply of letters and newspapers from the islands of the Gulf and the Caribbean.

One of the best sources were the papers out of Havana, and out of Jamaica.

This is how Jackson, his governor and all the other interested parties came to the consensus that the target was going to be either Mobile or New Orleans.  Jackson decided it would be New Orleans with just barely enough time to leave Mobile and get to New Orleans and organize the defense.