Go Any Further and We Shall Fall Off

      . . . .  We are at the end of the world, or at least the end of Europe, in the oldest, continuously inhabited city in Europe, Gadir, established by the Phoenicians, now, finally, Cádiz.  Now we know that we can go further, and we won't fall off.  Cuba, Havana, is just over there.  (Though it is Jerez, la frontera de Jerez, that actually looks a lot like Havana (without the dilapidation -- and when we get to Sevilla, now that recalls Havana in every way, which as the treasure flotas arrived from Havana to Sevilla, la reina católica's city, and which she made the capital of her kingdom, would be expected, right?). The tap water in Jerez was safe to drink, but it tasted funky in the way New Orleans tap water does.  Here in Cadiz, it's still safe to drink, which as it turns out is true throughout Spain. We are so used to being Cuba, where one cannot drink the tap water. Potable water was and always is a problem there, just as it is in St. Augustine, FL.

We are in a 4-star hotel that was a convent.  The church is still consecrated and operating as a church, but the sisters have gone ... where? elsewhere? It is extremely quiet, which is good for sleeping. One feels to be in a fortress (of God?) or a prison (of God?).  But it is still cold, dark and convent-y, though with mod cons.

It's a good thing to be reminded, as one falls in love with Spain, that even when/where it was Muslim, it has always been a prodigiously Catholic country, about which history there is a lot to be said, and not much of it good.  At least as far as the history I know goes, and speaking relatively to most people, at least in the USA, I know whole lot.  It cannot be divorced from the Church's history, and the history of Spain (and Portugal) anywhere.

So much experienced -- cannot do anything except jot notes in Moleskine and take fotos with foney-fone.  In mine mind's eyes, I see endless processions of beautiful horses, Flamenco dancers and, yes, matadors and bulls. Watch certain Flamenco expressions and there is so much there from the arena, or did it flow from the dancers to the arena -- even from dancers much, much before Jesus, perhaps, even likely, from before the Romans? The bulls were in Iberia before the Romans and the arenas.  Africa is just a quick passage across the Mediterranean . . .  there are bull rings and arenas there too, on the southern side. 

[Originally posted on DW on 03/012/23]

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Cádiz Cat Houses and the Atlantic

     . . . . Today was Phoenicians and Romans, mostly. 

After which I took fotos and video of cats, cat houses, and cat towns under the seawall that protects Cádiz from the tormentas of el atlántico as we sunset walked around the island where is situated the oldest, longest continually inhabited city in Europe. We did both Romans and Phoenicians today.... and cats.

Speaking of cats instead of horses, I have a nice foto of one of the cats that live in and around the remnant of the Umayyads' fortress wall on the site that became Madrid -- going back so far, but not yet as far as Charles Martel or Charlemagne -- time, time, time. It is impossible not to time travel in Cádiz.

    . . . Took fotos and video of cats. Cat houses, and cat towns under the seawall that protects Cádiz from the terrors of the Atlantic as we sunset walked around the island where is situated the oldest, longest continually inhabited city in Europe. So of course included are cat houses and communities.

The people of Cádiz care for the feral cats in the same way do those of Istanbul.  Places for them to shelter from the salty humdity and sea spray, to relax and hang out, and to eat.  These are cleverly constructed so the cats can get to the food but the always ravenous gulls and other birds cannot.  Wonder if rats can?  But I've yet to see a rat anywhere, but this is a city, moreover one so ancient as this, with constant grain shipments, surely there are rats.

We did both Romans and Phoenicians today.... and cats. Will have dinner at a Moroccan restaurant with a lovely woman from Finland we met on the train yesterday. Dancing Flamenco is her hobby and passion.  Otherwise she's festival organizer. One of her festivals is a Steampunk festival. 

Perhaps there is a way to transfer the short video I shot of one of the competitors and her horse in Jerez yesterday morning to here. I could do it via a long process of getting it to this wonky laptop's hard drive in Word video files.  But I don't have time for that before I get back to NYC, where I would do the work on my desktop, which is much more powerful and faster.  Trust me: this is equine poetry in motion.  Ever since I've gotten here, i.e. to Spain, my mind's eyes, are filled with horses and dancers as I try to sleep. I've never been in a country, not even England, not even Virginia or Kentucky, where horses are such an integral part of a national identity and history.  No wonder 4th grade Horse Girl me dreamed of coming here.

So little time to write, to transfer, etc.  It's all my notebook, and occasionally trying to put some of it up here via my fone.  Weird experience that.

But I am so afraid of missing, losing something, of these incredible experiences that just never stop, not for a second.

[Originally posted on DW on 03/13/23]

The Woman King

     . . . .  The Woman King (2022) on Netflix. 

The film has been shut out from all the awards and their categories – too womanly. All the criticisms that declared it ignored or distorted Dahomey’s slaving of Africa must be from those who don’t know this history. just heard something somethingv from somebody somewhere. This slave or be slaved history is central to the narrative. That criticism seems to be pushing the relentless attitude that Africans remain ahistorical until white historians inform them of their own history.

The people of Dahomey/Ouida and Oyo knew why this condition was in place, and how it happened, and who was benefiting as well as how much Africans of every group were exploited and plundered as entire peoples. Those who benefited were the  Europeans and USians, as well as the Islamized tribes working in concert, such as the Fulani and the jihad of the time against the Oyo Empire, which too, was all about the riches from supplying the European slavers. 

The Agojie commander, Nanisca, played by Viola Davis, is brilliant, as advisor, general and warrior who is at the prime of her strength, but whose body is scarred and has aches and pains from so many wounds, whose heart and mind carries just as many scars and pains. As right hand to the king Nanisca is expected to have wisdom as well as battle skills. And she does; Nanisca sees the future, not only of her own Dahomey, but all of Africa, being slaved and enslaved by the Europeans.  She has this vision, but how to change matters so they – and other kingdoms – stop slaving themselves and each other, and instead create wealth and prosperity through other means. Ah, that is very difficult, not only to do, but to even envision, much less convince others to do, such as the 'nobles' and queens of the Dohomean king's palace.  Slaving is embedded throughout the continent as economy, offense and defense, and status.

The milieu of this woman army is a fascinating, welcome contrast with both Wonder Woman’s Greek vase and statuary fantasy landscape, superhero comic girlhood training, and with the super hero Afro Futurism of Wakamba. Those superhero comix adaptations are slick, smooth, cheesy and tacky when viewed in company with what we see here, as the film reaches to recreate the dust, mud and natural world of historic reality, including how women are physically, who have been trained from youth to be "Agojie",  warriors who command armies, who fight, kill and are killed – or are captured. Taking a famed Agoji ewarrior is a coup indeed.

As an army of warriors these women claim physical space in a way one never sees women who are to be good, traditional women do.  They claim physical space in the same matter-of-fact, unconscious way that men do. They walk differently, sit differently, move and are still, differently from traditional women. These women are like men, while – and this is what is so brilliant in the acting, one would never mistake them for men, ever.  They are fully womanly, women like all women, but who have all the masculine space and entitlement – except to have partners and children. 

Dahomey's indigenous religion is depicted in a most matter of fact manner.  This is what we know in the US as Vodun, as it was imported via slavery to San Domingue/Haiti, Bahia in Brasil, and to the US, via French slave owners who refugeed to Cuba. and, when Spain and France went to war, to New Orleans.  The altars where our figures meditate and meet on occasion are as much natural parts of their world, as the lands outside the walled city and palace. 

What follows is me interpolating, because I've not encountered this in any of the books I've read. However, presumably, such effective warriors and commanders must be prevented from having their own children because – in the end – even these women must be ultimately subservient to male power – the king.  A successful, brilliant commander, to whom the army is devoted and loyal, a woman with her own children might well be interested in taking the throne herself, or for her children, instead of merely serving a king's wishes and status.*  Indeed, the film includes the oral tradition that at least once Dahomey was ruled by a Woman King commander of an army of women warriors.

There was not, cannot be a happy ending for the slaving Kingdom of Dahomey, despite winning all the battles ... but happiness is allowed. Around the 2/3 point, the story line includes that of a mother and daughter finding each other, in this time when vision tells them both, the world will not get better. Yet, Viola Davis is recognized by the King again, as his chief advisor, no matter what his wives and courtiers want.  She may end her life free and honored, but we can almost sure thing bet her daughter's life is going to be even more difficult than hers, as the French become determined to take out the Dahomey kingdom, and are horrified by the women who go to war.

This film mesmerized me from start to finish, which I can’t say about hardly any film, television series or novel these day

*  There are many instances in history across the world where a ruler's successful military leader has taken power for himself and his family, so one will speculate!

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.

Got There; Returned Spiritually Energized, To Crash Yet Again

      . . . . Got home about 8 PM mid-last week, later than expected, since the transfer flight back to JFK from Havana, got delayed in Fort Lauderdale, while passengers sat enplaned on the runway for an hour.  But otherwise things were fine.

So interesting: in Cuba nobody among the multitudes with whom interaction was inevitable, had even heard of anyone who had covid in the last year +.  It was quite different in the first year and a half, which also had a strict curfew all that time.  By now everybody has been vaccinated, though supposedly their own vaccine isn't as good as 'ours' -- but Cuba wasn't allowed to get 'our' vaccines.  Shoot, the previous made certain Cuba wasn't even allowed to purchase syringes.  Also all interaction was outdoors.  All of it, except the occasional restaurant meal (with very little available -- forget 'choice' -- and in the room to sleep.

Everyone was more than pleasantly surprised -- and so pleased -- to see Tierra Sagrada -- which they, no more than el Vaquero -- had any idea was going to happen out of those spiritual events of January, 2020.

Though things are tougher than one can even begin to imagine there, it was also energizing, despite the determination of every Cuban to get out of dodge however and whenever they can.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . Something else that happened due to Cuba, is that I finally found it impossible not to retire forever and completely from the flip fone universe and enter that of the smart phone.  El V's had his iphone forever -- but it was second hand -- gifted -- in the first place, so he way, way upgraded, despite his dislike of Apple ... but he's had one long enough he's now comfy with it, at least as iphone ios universe.  At the same time he was doing that he got me a Samsung Android, so we both could communicate via whatsapp from Cooba, which is the only way.  Surprising to me, I liked the phone a lot -- intuitive in a way I never could parse the Tablet, which is still sitting here doing nothing for a year.  Maybe I'll give the Tablet another shot.  But ultimately, if I have now gone so far down the constant surveillance and sale of my personal data to have a smart phone, I see no reason for the Tablet, which is a whole lot more awkward to hold and handle than the phone is.  I dunno.

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     . . . . The 4th we went uptown to mourn the End of Democracy USA and welcome in our SCOTUS 6 Opus Dei  Oligarchy.  It's official.  We are Russia.  Mourning together in company, with delicious food and terrific company, was better than cowering at home.  The young white cadres have made all public life a risk, to put it mildly, whether on the subway, at a theater, in school, a nightclub, a park, in church, a parade, just walking on the sidewalk, sitting on one's stoop.  It's worked so well in tandem with weaponizing covid to keep us all terrified and hiding.  Easy to take over now, right-o.

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Best solo reading this last week: Tom Holland's Persian Empire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (2005).  It's going so well with our recently completed read aloud to each other Landmark edition of Histories of Herodotus, and the embarkation of the Landmark Xenophon Anabasis. Kind of getting a handle on these eras.  This is when Greece, particularly Athens, was embarking on the new thinking for which it has been lauded ever since, from philosophy, to history, to science, to art, poetry and theater. 

Maybe ... it was that of Persia into Greek settlements along Lydia, the islands and even excursion into hinterland, that did this? Along the other hardly to be comprehended Persian conquest of Egypt, seldom occupied by a foreign power, and never held held by one.

Well, in the end, in not many centuries Egypt will be ruled by the Hellenes themselves, in some form, the successors of Alexander -- even if the Athenians considered the Macedonians as much barbarians as the Persians -- and everyone else who wasn't a Hellene. Why yes, in Hellene eyes, the Latins were at least as much barbarians as everyone else. Even if they occupied Greece.

New Year -- Here We Are Back Where We Were

     . . . . Last year at this time we weren’t vaccinated, but this New Year, though many of of us are both vaccinated and boosted, massive numbers continue to refuse to do either, or mask, or distance. The pooba$, political and corporate, finance and real estate, insist on leaving things here, essentially, wide open.

Meanwhile school, from pre-K to unis have had to close to massive Covid. Yet both old mayor and the new in-the-pocket of Big Finance and Real Estate mayor, sworn in last night at the Times Square Ball Drop, insist all the public schools re-open on January 3rd.  This despite so many teachers and staff positive and sick and unable to attend to students and classrooms.

Subway lines, restaurants, Broadway, etc. have stopped, due to so many sick, so staff shortages.  Airlines have canceled thousand and thousands of flights. Fire fighters, police, ambulance drivers and EMS personnel are in short supply, as so many are positive / sick.  (Irony, fire fighters and cops are by-and-large refusniks of both vaccines and mask.) Doctors, dentists, hospitals are already broken in other parts of the country.  The stupid streatery sheds are still there in NYC, becoming ever more  more permanent structures w/o ventilation or shielding, so restaurants, like schools, hotels and health care, are so overwhelmed, stretched beyond limits that even more people quit.

Supermarkets are looking raggedy due to staffing problems, and, evidently, scraping bottom of the barrel hiring, have cashiers who laugh in your face about wearing a mask..  We're inundated with tourists from everywhere, while at the same time they and others seem to have decided across the board that Omicron's no big deal so what the hell.  

We are hoping somehow to get through this month of peaking infections and remaining uninfected.  But this seems less likely every day, as already back before Christmas 1 in 150 people in NYC were positive or sick. They Say we may peak with Omicron by the middle of this month. I dunno -- we also have many cases of Delta Covid, which are still increasing too. 

We're fairly stocked on groceries and other essentials, for getting through about a month, and we, double masked, vaxed and boosted, feel we maybe can chance the dash into Trader Joe's or wherever for milk and apples and tea.   I'm more concerned about whether places like this will be able to stay open and stocked.

We are in some very interesting historical times all right, which I am observing and experiencing up close, in person.

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Biden can’t do anything. The rethuglican shoggoth cultists, the rethuglican plants in the Dems, and the Dem Party Establishment won’t allow it. Nancy Pelosi personally made enormous amounts doing massive buys and trades of the Big Stocks at the end of this year. “Nothing wrong with senators and reps making Big Stock money while in the House and Senate,” she declares.  

No state official has done more for the rethuglican covid death cult than the governor of Texas, with the exceptions of Florida's and South Dakota's.  Yesterday he was demanding federal aid and assistance of supplies and medical personnel to relieve Texas, because its health system, such as it is, has become utterly overwhelmed.  Yet, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) breezily engaged a question about secession at a recent conservative event at Texas A&M University, saying that he was “not there yet” but that if Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country,” then, “I think we take NASA, take the military, take the oil.”

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Last night about 10 PM or so, el V and I met B at our little local park to celebrate B's birthday.  I gave him a a bottle of his favorite Spanish wine, and el V gave him a box of petites fours from our French Bakery, in lieu of birthday cake.  Since both el V and B are on antibiotics due to dentistry, I was the only one who was able to make a toast with alcohol, a martini that el V had made and brought with him as a surprise.  We had a most pleasant time out there in the 54°.  El V and I hadn't had any f2f interaction with anyone except with each other, other than briefly and to the point, let's get out of here as fast as possible, with dentist, doctor, librarian, retail, etc.  B's behavior is the same.  Again we wondered how the three of us would have made this far through pandemic without each other, and how lucky we live so closely together.  made sure other friends knew it was B's birthday, so they could call or email him.

It seemed generally NYC wasn't partying hard last night (though what could I really tell from a park bench?).  It was really quiet down here.  Though all the restaurants were open, they generally looked to be about only half full, if that much.  NYers are wearing masks, but the hordes of tourists here, are not.  We're number one in the USA YAY for Covid cases now, and if not number one in the world, number two or three.  We have more Covid today than we did in April 2020.

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Ironically, when the pandemic hit in March 2020, and NYC shut down, I’d just borrowed from the NYP Sharon Kay Penman’s final novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, published January, 2020. Penman died the same month. The libraries closed 3 days after I took it home, so I wasn’t able to return it until the end of August 2020.  Here, at the beginning of this unmerry New Year, a third year of Covid, as we shut down again, if only personally, not officially mandated, which we should be, I am beginning a re-read her final Plantagenet novel, A King’s Ransom (2014). This wasn’t planned. I began 2022 too, with the library. This past Thursday I brought home an armful of light reading -- mysteries, all -- from my Holds list at my local library, which should 'hold' me for a couple of weeks.  Not to mention all the other books I have. There's some good tv, in the offing, not least the third season of Discovery of Witches, and tomorrow night, a David Tennant Around the World In 80 Days.

El V's continuing to trade and is now doing serious editing-engineering on the audio for Tierra Sagrada, which has come out of the video documentation of our last, perhaps, final, trip to Cuba, in which we attended 14 sacred events in 8 days.  He's gotten some AI apps that allow him to do astonishing things, such as one of the lead vocalist's voice was essentially inaudible via the boom mic.  This AI can go through all the channels and pull out a single strand, which in this case is her voice, isolate it and el V can put it wherever he wants in the mix, at which ever volume he wants it!  "AI came along just in time to save these tracks!"  I heard him say on the phone the other day. He wants to have everything as smoothly produced and engineered as possible before he turns it over to the far more skilled, experienced and technically equipped pros.  This is an if, but at the moment it seems that the [redacted] network wants to look at Tierra Sagrada with the view they might broadcast it. That would be most pleasing.

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This is how 2022 begins. I have no optimism that things will be better this year. The anti-vaxers and the shoggoth death cults will never recover from their chosen insanity. 

Vacation, Friends, Delta, Postmambo, NOLA Reconnect, Books, TV, But In The Beginning We EAT!

      . . . . It's been a long time, so much going on, but in the end, IT'S ALL ABOUT AUGUST, which is all about -- 

CORN ON THE COB & HERITAGE TOMATOES!  Am I right or am I right? Reveling and gorging, with the best pots of beans, salads and sausages.  What a month this has been for eating, which has all been done at home, or even the first week, spent  at our Saratoga's friend's house. Delta made sure of that. We were not then and are not not now though, in the least deprived staying away all together from restaurants again.  So much delight in getting our produce and other foods at the Green Markets (and O! the green markets up Saratoga way!), and then, cooking together, as B and S and I did each day, with much lubrication provided by Host S's wine cellar, B's brought-alongs, local beers from the Saratoga Minogue's Beverage Center, and any and all music anyone could possible desire or have a yen to hear.

     Every second of Saratoga was more than splendid, even while asleep. The nights dropped into the 50's.  We slept with windows open.  The air was fresh and good smelling, any time day or night. The weather was just what one wanted for an August NYC getaway.  Then we came home, to roaring surges of Delta, and fearing yet again They will steal Thanksgiving and the rest of the holidays from us.

Back in the City though, and back in our grooves. Every time we think, "Well, maybe we don't need any more Postmambo Movie Nights, or any more NOLA Reconnect events, because people will be going out now -- well, no.  Our Host S provided such a moving tribute to how important these Postmambo activities and events have been for him in the pandemic.  Postmambo and his dog -- his gf lives in another town, and has a full-time job, so he's alone mostly.  Imagine, being up there, snowed in, blizzards howling round these past two winters.  "Some very dark days," he said, and said nothing else.  It was kind of emotional for me to be watching Summer of Soul from Harlem, 1969 (film July 2021), and Leningrad Cowboys (1993, Helsinki) films in company with him, el V and Ben, people who have attended to many music events together over the years, and now doing it only by screen again, thanx to jerkwaddies who won't wear masks or get vaccinated, and watching in the same place Steve is when doing NOLA Reconnect and Postmambo.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

READING

Non-fiction

El V and I continue bedtime read-aloud of Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000 (2009); I continue for myself with Judith Herrin's Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (2021), 

both of which go so well with the content in the review of The Selected Letters of Cassiodorus: A Sixth-Century Sourcebook (2020) translated and edited by M. Shane Bjornlie, in the latest London Review of Books.  Cassiodorus -- bridge between Late Antiquity Rome and the following eras of murdrous kinglets, want-to-be emperors, etc.  Also the surviving literature, with emphasis on 'surviving', as it seems the 5th century is where everything changes and transmutes, assisted later by whatever literary focus Charlegmagne's scriptors possessed, thus what was lost. Reading this is far more interesting to me probably, than reading the book itself, as I'm not a Latin scholar.

Fiction

The Germans of antebellum New Orleans, how much have we thought about them?  Of course Germans arrived in New Orleans in the 1830's and 1840's as they did in so many cities here, such as St. Louis, progressive labor and political activists, bringing the information, messages and means of Revolution -- and then fleeing from the failure to overset the crowns and oppressions of Old Europe's old Empires and Kingdoms.  They also brought their arts and culture, as we see here in this astonishing work, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein, translated and edited by Steven Rowan (2002).  It was originally serially published in 1854 and 1855, and then unavailable until 'rediscovered' in 1990. Why did it disappear? From the opening paragraph of the "Preface and Acknowledgments":

This edition began as a whim and ended as an obsession.  The memory of Reizenstein and his notorious book was preserved primarily by J. Hanno Delier. [ftn.1] It has long been known that Ludwig von Reizenstein wrote a book about New Orleans which offended the taste of its time and was quickly withdrawn from circulation; more could not be said. It is safe to assume that the book, Die Geheimnisse von New Orleans, remained unread for more than a century until 1990, when I managed to reconstruct almost of it from the microform files of the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung . . . .

We learned of this work via last week's NOLA Reconnect session which focused on the Spanish language newspapers of New Orleans.  However, as the featured scholar of the non-English newspapers of New Orleans's history further informed us, there were others, not just French, which we expect, of course, and Spanish, which still too few people think about, as for some reason the deep Spanish history and roots of New Orleans remains overlooked by American History (particularly by those who have positioned themselves as gatekeepers as what the narrative of US history is supposed to be).  German and Italian were among those publications in other languages.

As this cover art for the 2002 translation informs us, among the culture and traditions the Germans gifted to Victorian USA, is the gothic manner and sensibility.  Not only did that map finely upon New England's (think, Hawthorne), but so obviously, once one's attention is caught, with that of the most 'gothic' city of the nation, New Orleans. Late nineteenth Century New Orleans author, Lafcadio Hearn, with a tessara of backgrounds, wasn't New Orleans's sui generis. 

Three times a week, I am most satisfactorily re-immersed in the first novel of Sharon Kay Penman I had ever read, When Christ and His Saint Slept (1994).  am not re-reading the novel though, I am listening to it.  Be assured, this is a wonderful book to accompany 2 1/2 hour workouts!

This is a lively novel, deeply researched, which makes understandable to a non-scholar how and why the nineteen-year bloody tragedy, known as the Anarchy, descended upon 12th C England and her people after the death of King Henry I. Since I first read When Christ and His Saints Slept, I have learned a very great deal about everything even remotely connected with these years, and not only in England. I confess this has allowed for an even greater pleasure in the narrative, and admiration for Penman.

As is Penman's manner, the women are half of the principal characters, starting with Empress Maud, also named Matilda, daughter of King Henry I, to whom he bequeathed his crown, and Matilda, the queen of the usurping successor, Stephen, Henry’s nephew, and Maud's cousin. In many ways, as Penman shows the succession of back-and-forth battles, the successes and failures on both sides, this is as much a women’s war as it is that of their lords.  As women, they have to fight on multiple fronts, not only battlefields.

The set pieces of terrible violence make the suffering of the average Englander clear, as, per usual, lords and their ladies are spared the worst, except on the battlefield, and even then they can often be ransomed instead of just killed. That this civil war indecisively juttered on for nineteen years, despite so many furious, grim and grisly military encounters, leads the reader to consider, perhaps, most of the protagonists lacked any talent for strategy or for building coalition.  All of the men appear to be more than competent warriors, but as war commanders and statesmen, maybe not?  This includes Empress Maud-Matilda too. We see at each turn that failures emerge out of character defects of all the protagonists. Medieval nobles and royals were the not trustworthy or faithful to anyone, much less their inferiors, despite chivalric pretense, which was viewed as weakness if / when a figure practiced such behavior outside romances.

The blood of William the Bastard runs fast and thick in the veins of all the protagonists, that wild, fierce, cruel, violent and stubborn heritage, that cannot brook any thwarting of their will from any quarter, that will never compromise or negotiate. With Henry II’s coronation, Henry I’s grandson, and an Angevin – Plantagenet as well, this was the blood that would rule England and remained convinced for centuries their divine right to rule France as well. The more I read along in this novel, the more I see the same kinds of arrogant treachery and punishment, such as a willingness to use starvation and destruction as weapons upon one’s own people England that the Normans wreaked upon the English in the years and decades after Hastings – the plundering, and the theft too. The English did the same in France in the 14th Century during the Hundred Years War. Plantagenets Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, are historically (in?)famous for what came to be called chevauchée, but that sort of warfare was not by any means a new addition to tactics and armaments. It took until the 15th century before that Plantagenet blood was replaced in England’s royalty – though the desire to rule France as well continued through the 16th Century, with or without blood heritage of the Bastard and the Angevins.

One inevitably considers: if in 1066, Harold and his army hadn’t been so exhausted at Hastings, having just fought and won a previous hard pressed bloody battle against the Danes hundreds of miles away, from which they force marched immediately back south to take on the Bastard, mayhap England might have remained firmly within the North Sea and Scandinavian sphere of influence, and not have gotten pulled into those of France and Europe. How much blood and treasure England would have been spared, perhaps, if that hadn't happened. Yes, that would be a big alternate history, That Penman did not write alternate history, but did her best to bring us in a readable narrative what we think we know, I am deeply grateful.

We Take Refuge Where And When We Can

     . . . . Not been a good month here despite el V's lovely birthday, two superb Postmambo Events, and, additionally, the ophthalmologist monitoring the eye with the damaged optic nerve -- though what's going on can be signs of incipient glaucoma -- found actual improvement from the last check-up.  Maybe it's the new lenses?  Another positive thing is the spectacular greenery and the variety of greens, due to the heat and the moisture. Related to that positive are the flowers, particularly in the community garden that's been allowed to grow as it wants pretty much, without being cut back or off.  The range of vivid blossoms erupting out of the head tall greens is balm to the soul. That's purely personal though. Beyond the purely personal, things are very far away from good.

It's unnecessary for me to provide the details as to why both Haiti and Cuba are tragedies of political history, and our personal histories, that need not have happened, as surely by now all have heard of them and formed opinions, if there is among all and sundry enough interest to even bother forming an opinion -- or learning facts. Climate change feeds into both Haiti's and Cuba's disasters as well as political forces forcing both nations to go without medical supplies and food -- which forces merge into catastrophe for both the island nations. For Cuba certainly, there is no light at the end of the tunnel that begins and ends in Miami. Haiti too, as we've been told that's from where the conspiracy was hatched.

Weather They Sayers announced today our city has the most dangerous air quality of any city on the planet, due to the western US wildfires' smoke blowing right into us. One wishes to wear a good mask if one needs to go outdoors for this reason now too. Rain fell for a little while, so all that particulate from the West and Northwest can be flushed into our gardens, sewers, into the East and Hudson Rivers, the harbor and the ocean.  Like pandemics, climate catastrophe never stays in one place. No man is an island, what affects thee, affects me, and so on and so forth.

Yet despite the experts of many nations begging governments to impose mask mandates in public spaces and limit gatherings, like our own stupid mayor, the politicians and governments everywhere refuse to mandate masking and distance in public spaces now, because THE ECONOMY -- and future office seeking. So -- here we are again, spiking like crazy, including right here, when barely 2 weeks ago, our own zip code and so many others in the city and state were essentially at zero for positive tests, new infections, hospitalizations and deaths. All those anti-vaxxers, enemies of the people, surely are pleased with themselves all over again, as they bring down what's left of a health system. 

Again, with COVID, extreme weather, bikers, skateboarders, stupid tourists, guns/crime/mad/desperate people, mosquitos showing up infected with the Nile Virus, etc. etc. etc., being outdoors means anything but relaxation and refreshment, even at night. In many ways, particularly at night. But for the out-of-control, whether from racist hatred or years of being homeless or the conviction of utter privilege that no laws or regulations apply to ME shoving my Porsche at 90 MPH through the crowded streets and killing people so what? day and night make no difference.

     . . . . Spouses, Lovers, Friends, one way and another, these purely personal relationships are the greatest refuge from the horrors overwhelming our present cursed "interesting times."   About once a week, el V, B and I dine with, and catch-up with, 2 or 3 friends -- all of us vaccinated.  We've been to visit another historian in his Rhode Island beach shack, making us a mini history conference.  At the beginning of August, we will visit one of our terrific Postmambo friends in his beautiful, large old historic house upstate -- with a pool, massive yard and huge screened in annex, where we will have Thanksgiving in August, the Thanksgiving we'd planned for last November, but prudently called off due to Covid spiking, which it continued to do until the blessed vaccines showed up. But we are vaccinated, so we are keeping to the plan made last year to do our cancelled holiday celebration feast with friends this summer. Still, as originally planned, this will be a small gathering of 4 people, perhaps 5, depending on another's work schedule.

     . . . . History provides refuge and escape. One does speculate others too are looking for refuge in the past, thus so very many time-travel series showing up lately -- none of which I have the least inclination to look at even the first episodes.  How fortunate, one further speculates, that it is not possible to subject the present or the past to the pressures of future colonialism for the sake of the yet unborn's survival. The future would have every right to do so, considering how ours and every preceding generation has abused Earth. But alas, we cannot go back in time and save ourselves, since we didn't already do it. Beside, those who benefit would be, as usual the very rich and protected, not the future sort of thee and me -- while the already mentioned 0.01% make massive profit out of our lack of salvation.  Until, perhaps they too, despite anal dildo shaped escape space craft, are crushed by lack of oxygen and water.

Some of these latter sorts are getting spooked by Delta, getting the idea that the economy can tank from it.  This is the only way of course we will ever get a federal mandate anywhere in the world for masking and vaccination.  One does fear it's way too late now.

We continue our own plundering of the Dark Ages with Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. Wickham's thesis of the real changes and transformations of the West in the 5th century was the changes in the signatures of the wealthy and powerful. Free time, leisure, was the signature of wealth and power. Much of that was spent in the luxury of the country villas, where they cultivated the arts and learning, particularly the literary arts, as well as government and administration.  By the end of the 5th C, the signature of the wealthy and powerful were the manly martial arts.  The ruling class no longer affected togas as sartorial signatures of their status, but dressed like Roman army commanders.  However, even more so, the ruling class needed as much land as they could wheedle, conquer or steal. And steal away they did, which went on for centuries, as we know.

     . . . . Television has provided some good historical escape.

Straight-up historical - period scripted drama created in the present:  El Cid, 11th C, Spain and Andalus, season 2; No Sudden Move, 1950's Detroit, scripted now; The Rising Hawk, 13th C, refugeed tribes in the Carpathians invaded by the Blue Horde, scipted now; Borsalino, which was looked at here last time, is another splendid example, scripted at the end of the 1960's, located in 1930's

Women in the past re-created in the present: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (the 1920s, Melborne, scripted in the second decade of the 21st century); Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries (sequel series scripted in the second decade of the 20th C, set in  1960's Melborne when niece inherits Aunt Fisher's possession and calling) Both of these were eras in which women claimed freedom and rights Horatio had not yet dreamed of. 

The present that is now the past: Bergerac, first season of 9, begins in 1981, on bi-lingual island of Jersey, featuring the young John Nettles who grew up to become Midsomer Murders's Barnaby, scripted then; House of Cards (the original, British version -- forget Kevin Spacey -- scripted then); The Midnight Garden of  Good and Evil, set in the late 1970's, semi-fictional, scripted then, and oops can't forget Spacey coz he's the driver. These three share the commonality of period: late 1970's and the first years of the '80's.

     . . . . Fiction has provided two works of historic escape that eschew cloying froth: Katherine (the Lady Swynford, Duke of Lancaster's mistress, eventually his wife, whose children ultimately ancestored many royal figures, while living in the England of Edward II and Richard and the Bubonic Plagues) by Anya Seton; The Noble Outlaw: Crowner John Mystery Series, Book 11 by Bernard Knight. This is a  series in which it seems to be always cold, always snowing.  "Crowner" in 12th century Essex, is our contemporary "coroner"; author's day job was as coroner.

Books, There Are Many!

     . . . .  Spending the holiday weekend trying to catch up. It only took until 1 AM from arriving at the Miami airport when They Said get there for the 2:35 PM flight, until into the next day to get home.  At one point the plane even turned around on the runway and went back to the gate and all the passengers deplaned again, and sat in the terminal for hours.  A long, masked day.  But at least Miami Airport had food places and good coffee.   So now we're trying to get ready for Thursday's Zoom Postmambo Meet-up, which is, el V's birthday, and the following Thursday's Postmambo Movie Night, as well as other things.

~~~~~~~~ In the Meantime -- About Money and a Librarian!

     . . . . By chance this spring I've been listening to several books of financial history. which inevitably becomes the history of political and mercantile corruption and crime, financial busts, bubbles, panics and depressions, corruption, wars. Among these histories is Ron Chernow's (1990) The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance.  Needless to say, a great deal has changed in the perspectives of the history of banking and the finance and 'investment' industries that devoured the banking business since the passing of another 30+ decades. This is equally true for the much later books such Liaquat Ahamed (2009) Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.

But even in Ahamad's book, the reader learns, if only peripherally, about Bella da Costa Greene, the Pierpont Morgans's private librarian for their great collections here at the library and museum Pierpont built at Madison Avenue.  

Learning of Bella da Costa Greene, who was born into a black activist family as Jim Crow tighened its noose of the US, and to have her career -- as woman yet! -- had to pass for white, of course this signaled an excellent entry point for an historical fiction for somebody to write (not me).  Evidently others thought a fiction featuring this fascinating figure was something to do too, and did it.

Here in The Washington Post (paywalled) we have an interview with the co-authors of The Personal Librarian, Heather Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray.

~~~~~~~~  Reading Histories:

    . . . . Chris Wickham's (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. This book’s first section covers the same ground, though with a different perspective in some areas, as the also read-aloud, Peter Brown's (1971) The World of Late Antiquity. The perspectives are very different generally, since Wickham’s work is firmly within contemporary data based, statistical, demographic, archaeological, linguistic, etc. work that has changed historiography so much in the last half century. I also relatively recently, i.e. this year, learned a great deal of the late Roman Empire in Douglas Boin's (2020) Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of the Roman Empire. 

These histories fit well into June's discussion on Bret Devereaux's blog "Collection" -- The Queen's Latin: Or Who Were the Romans Part I, and so far, Part II.  Though he does seem (so far) to ignore that Alaric, despite how Romanized in all ways that he was, was refused citizenship, and even advancement beyond a certain level, in the army -- quite like what George Washington with the Brits in the French and Indian Wars. 

What is clear, past, and present, is the two opposing arguments continue about the Roman West vs. East.  Continuity / transition vs. Sharp change / fall? 

Both of these depend on one's perspective as to Western vs. Eastern Empire, Latin Empire vs. Greek Empire -- the same fiber, weave and cloth, or different from the beginning?

I've been reading continuously the newer "Roman" histories for the 'general' reader over the the last few years, such as Adrian Galsworthy's (2016) Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World, and James O'Donnell's (2009) The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History.*

However, my reading in Roman history is fertile preparation ground for my real recreational historical interest,**  the transition from late antiquity to the middle ages -- Goths! Vandals! Visigoths! Ostrogoths! and mine real favorite, the Merovingians (along with, later, past the scope of this book, the Mongols and Turks)! Franks! Norse! --  which Wickham's book determines to cover in detail. One does have to consider this is 600 years, and the book's less than 700 pages, which might mean a page per year? It doesn't really work out that way, thank goodness, but still, this is Big History, of which, ah-hem,  I'm in favor. And certainly anything Wickham misses here, he's covered in his other works.

The one thing we know certainly is the 6th century was a terrible time into which to be born. One signal that informs us of this: we have less written documentary evidence for the 6th than just about any other century of "Europe" except the 4th. This would explain then, too. why the Western Church possessed more land in "Europe" in the 6th C than it has ever since. But in the last decades we've fortunately been able to learn some of what is not in the tiny written record of documentary history, from historical archaeology.

I'm still waiting for the history of Merovingian Gaul, and Visigothic Spain.

~~~~~~~~~ Reading Fiction

     . . . . It took a long time this year for a novel I wanted to read to show up one way and another.  Fortunately for me I have acquired the final three novels in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series set in the regional of the fictional Sicilian city of Vigatta -- The Sicilian Method (2020) – third to final Montalbano.  The Cook of the Halcyon, and Riccardino are the last two titles, both published in the US in 2021. the Author died in 2019.

Mr. Camilleri prepared years ago for the end of the Montalbano series.

“I finished him off five years ago,” he said in 2012. “That’s to say, the final novel in the series of Montalbano is already written and deposited at the publishing house. When I get fed up with him or am not able to write any more, I’ll tell the publisher: Publish that book.”

Also, the latest Martin Walker’s  a Bruno Chief of Police series set in past and present Provence, The Coldest Case. I've been looking forward to this since finishing up all the previous Bruno novels by the end of last summer.

~~~~~~~~~~Ranking First Half 2021 Reading

     . . . . Now that half of 2021 has passed, I can speak definitely as to which books were my most enjoyable, most informative reading, for the first half of this year:

Robert Irwin's (2018) Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography;

James Grant's (2019) Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian;

Marie Favereau's (2021) The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World;

And already, the history noted above, Chris Wickham's (2009) Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 - 1000 qualifies.

~~~~~~~~~

* Oddly, as much as I respect and appreciate Mary Beard's work, I find reading her books a chore. Not her fault, but mine.

** Just in case: my professional specialization is the history of the colonial Americans, and the history of the United States, via the lenses of the African Slave Trade and slavery in the Americas, and specifically the slave system of the United States.

Let's Read Again Like We Did Last Year ~~

      . . . . Frequently my mind fails to make sense to me. 

 How did I manage to choose Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian (2019) by James Grant as the audio book to follow Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (2016) by Laura Spinney, and The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom (2020) by H. W. Brands for my workouts?

So far my great take-away is that Bagehot was not only a prototype of what we in later times tend to call a libertarian / neo liberal.  He formalized the concept, and described in detail  the necessity of a Central Bank and its functions for a stable government.  He did the same for Constitutional Monarchy. This while, though they benefit from both, the 'lower orders,' the poor, the uneducated, are incapable of understanding either economics or constitutions, and certainly lack the capacity for making political and governing decisions. Needless to say that women as a class aren't even that much of a consideration, despite his respect for the intellects of many of the women of his acquaintance, including his own mother, who also suffered serious mental illness.

This brilliant fellow, a prodigy already as a very young child, could not add or subtract. Yet his family put him in charge the family banking business, when he hated everything else including the law for which he qualified among his many other professional credentials, realizing he wouldn't be able to pull a Disraeli and move from writing to holding office and becoming Prime Minister. The family business's great fortune is that he seems to have spent more time doing anything but banking, while remaining a writing demon as to output, and a polymath in terms of what he wrote about. Naturally, due to his writing about how to run a country's finances, he got sent to India to put its finances on solid footing.  How more British and Victorian than this may we get?

Bagehot was praised for cool wit and epigrammatic style, which author Grant does his best to exhibit in his own economic writing. Nor did Bagehot stint in praise for himself in his own writing, knowing he knew what others did not, and taking knowingly contrary political positions such as favoring Louis-Philippe's coup against the election and naming himself France's ruler for life. Bagehot inevitably reminds this reader of that thoroughly self-satisfied, thoroughly knowledgeable of his own superiority, that fellow likely only Tories today recall, William F. Buckley.

On the other hand, George Eliot quite adored Bagehot as a thinker and his friend.  But no one has suggested George Eliot didn't have a strong conservative bent herself -- except for herself, of course.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Things do roll on, don't they. The period's royalties arrived, and so did spring, while winter, hopefully, is now departed for months.  El V got his second dose of Pfizer this afternoon.  He's currently lying down, but he generally feels sleepy before dinner so it probably means nothing.  I am making dinner, looking forward to my second dose of Moderna late Friday afternoon, and after dinner, I'm particularly looking forward to the HBO Max premiere of  the 4-part Exterminate All the Brutes.

In ‘Exterminate All the Brutes,’ Raoul Peck Takes Aim at White Supremacy

After the success of “I Am Not Your Negro,” HBO gave Peck carte blanche for his next big project. What resulted is a sweeping meditation on colonialism and the nature of truth itself. ... New York Times

Raoul Peck’s four-hour documentary for HBO is a dizzying retelling of the course of colonialism, slavery and genocide. ... New York Times

"....a Radical Masterpiece About White Supremacy, Violence and the History of the West" ... Time

This exploration of the "origin story of white supremacy" features two Revelators who have had deep effect on both el V's and my historical researches and formation of our historical perspective:  

" .... It takes its title from Swedish historian Sven Lindqvist’s ruminative 1992 book about his travels through postcolonial Africa, which in turn wrestles with the source of the quote “exterminate all the brutes”: Joseph Conrad’s immortal novella Heart of Darkness. Peck also draws heavily on historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: The Power and Production of History. In each episode, he credits himself as having made the series “together with” all three scholars, even though Trouillot died in 2012 and Lindqvist in 2019."

Seeing Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz involved in this already highly praised non-dramatic, history series, feels particularly personal since she accepted on our behalf and read our "Thank you very much for this honor" for the 2016 American Book Award for The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry, as we weren't able to make it out to California for the event.  But it's particularly satisfying because Dunbar-Ortiz is a true pioneer of this kind of work.  When she began, it didn't exist, within or without academia.  Now, because of hers and others devoting their lives to inventing a methodology to study and recover history that has been both disappeared and denied, to see her, at her age, receiving this kind of recognition is truly exciting.

A quote from Michel-Rolph Trouillot is at the top of this Fox Home blog, as it has since the beginning.

On January 20th, 2021 The United States Inaugurates A President

     . . . . From: me; To: me;  for my personal archive, so nothing brilliant, particularly insightful or original: Notes From Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2021, watched via the live stream from The Washington Post. 

The U.S. Marine Band just concluded an extraordinarily spirited rendition of "Hit the Road, Jack!" The piece is spirited and jaunty, and more than a bit sneering in its composition, of course, but my goodness, how it came out just now!

The greetings among Harris, Emhoff, Obama and Michelle was moving.  We can only imagine what these four people are feeling.  Harris is so good smiling. Even masked, her eyes tell you she's smiling, and how broadly.

Here, even more strongly than ever, we feel, with all that's happened, and then the pandemic and insurrection, we are seeing history live in real time. Today's speakers and the organization of this centuries' old ceremony and ritual, are communicating to us clearly.

High winds in D.C.  Snow flurries.

It's happened! We have a President of the United States again, after these years of  war waged by the weapons of mass destruction, anarchy, hate, cruelty, greed.

Pence did not applaud Harris when she was sworn in.  Didn't see if he did applaud Biden or not..

Saw many were double-masked.  E V observed, "If I had to be in the presence of those republicans I'd wear three masks!"

The participating women chose beautiful colors in their coats, projecting joy and confidence. No fur!

Though all security tried to convince the President not to perform the transition on the Capitol steps, he insisted.  It was the right call. It wouldn't have been the same if they'd chosen some other place, not public.

The President quoting the verse from “American Anthem” brought tears to my eyes.  How is this even possible?  All the words of his speech carried meaning I felt in my bones.  How is this even possible?  All the words, even those of "Amazing Grace," all these platitudes of national unity, equality, democracy, faith carry meaning.  That's how bad things have been for these last years. Joe Biden and the inauguration inspire this cynical historian, in our emergence from, what the poet spoke, "this terrifying hour." Amanda Gorman hit her inaugural poem, "The Hill We Climb," right out of the park, her delivery perfect.

The 1776 Project is now gone from the gov. website.

The stock market is soaring, as it has pretty much ever since Biden-Harris were elected.

All over the nation we are reading the omens: A birder friend  in Arizona says, “the second Biden started speaking, a pair of mourning doves flew to my balcony and began cooing. (The door is open.)” Here, after the inauguration address, Ned dashed out for a minute.  Above the Towers, huge white clouds, scudding with today’s strong winds of today; beyond them, clear open blue, through which the sun is hitting the Towers with such intensity, we are all illuminated – and a little blinded by the glare.

Question: What Is Imagination?

     . . . .  Arturo Pérez-Reverte believes  a novel is made of three parts: documentation, imagination and personal experience.

He defines imagination as narrative talent.

Some readers have objected to where this author's own narrative talent and his experience, plus the Muslim and Christian documents he's studied, took him with the great national hero -- who, when the Cid lived, there wasn't even an idea of a 'reconquista', much less a nation called "Spain." After all, even Charlemagne's forays into al-Andulus were mercenary jobs, fighting some Muslim states on the behalf, for pay and booty, other Muslim states.

"El Cid was a guy who, in a turbulent, bloody and uncertain territory, was looking for his life. El Cid was a mercenary!"

Then there is the place of landscape in novel creation.  Though  Pérez-Reverte didn't include landscape in his definition of the parts that make a novel, he puts landscape in the title, "Sidi Un relato de frontera."  He sees Sidi moving in a world that is a John Ford Western, which makes so much sense in so many ways.

Which further explains why there are readers who feel offended by this portrait of Sidi -- they are are rejecting what this novel is, which above all is a novelist's vision. Additionally it appears that many readers were expecting something more along the lines of the Charelton Heston-Sophia Loren 1961 film, El Cid. Sometimes readers adore a novelist's vision of a notable historical figure, as readers adore Mantel's Thomas Cromwell.  Sometimes, as with many Spanish, and Sidi, they do not.  Think of how infuriated so many people in the US were / are. when shown, in a novel, in history, and on screen, that Thomas Jefferson kept an enslaved woman as his concubine for decades, until he died, and fathered several children on her.  It's like that, among a lot of Spanish readers. Reverte tried to create a Sidi who was a real man, not the glorious myth, who has been used as a convenient channel for whichever current political mythology was in fashion at the time.

~~~~~~~~~~

     .... Going back to 'narrative talent' ... would this explain why very young children's lies so often charm and amuse adults? 

Though little children's imagination is lively and vigorous, their experience, like their documentation, is sharply limited.  Since their lies  are transparent, without documentation and experience, "innocent", we tend to enjoy them rather than judge them. Maybe this is part of what Blake was pursuing, in his Songs of Innocence and Experience?

History vs. Eucatastrophe vs. Catastrophe

     . . . .Day began with ... snow. Polar Vortex, evidently we here haz one goin' on. Until, sometime, like, the start of May? It sure is a cold day, by golly. A good night for meat loaf, brussels sprouts (if they are edible; they arrived in yesterday's grocery order, but if I'd done this in person, I'd never have bought them), and mashed potatoes.

~~~~~~~~~~

"… always looking backwards in an attitude of sadness, its place in the world always in decline, like [Walter] Benjamin’s Angel of History.”

In the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History” the German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who purchased the print in 1921, interprets artist Paul Klee's Angelus Novus this way:

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Note the date this essay was written/published; 1940 was when Benjamin committed suicide in his attempt to escape the nazis.

For thinkers such as Benjamin, in his time of need, history provided no Tolkienist eucatastrophe’, the ‘Consolation of the Happy Ending’, ‘the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn’. Fairy tales are with which Tolkien was concerned -- not  catastrophe specifically. This is one of the elements that it seems to me, to create the everlasting appeal of Tolkien. There is disaster and catastrophe, but it is transcended, lived through, by some, even some for whom the wounds of catastrophe cannot ever be healed. But for actual millions and billions of human beings, past, present and future, there is no eucatastrophe -- no Fortunate Fall, no Christ risen from the tomb and the world's sins redeemed.

For so many in such times as Benjamin's, contemplating history is to perceive a relentless range of despair for almost all, Most particularly for those who are attempting to live through, escape from current catastrophe, it is anything but a 'cozy disaster.'

See: Benjamin's suicide in the face of nazi capture. He knew too much. When one knows in detail what happens to most people inside a disaster – particularly disasters that are as familiar to Jews as the arrival of nazism – isn’t it sometimes the only sensible thing to do is what Benjamin did? Would it have served him or anyone better for him to stay alive to enter the gas chambers, and endure all that would be between capture and those killing minutes? It’s not as though staying alive to the gas chambers would be saving others, would it? Or -- is this playing into the hands of the death cultists who think anyone who isn't Them should ... just die for their sake.

I am not sure what I'm trying to articulate here.

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Today the governor informed us that, having just begun these tests many months since the virus hit, random testing throughout the NYC boroughs indicates that 21% of NYers have? had? the virus. What does this mean? They have recovered? are currently infected but asymptomatic? Show presence of antibodies? What? *

Upstate showed something like a 3.1 rate of whatever that means. Which again, whatever it means, seems odd since it is the nursing homes upstate that have contributed such a large number to the c19 fatalities in New York State -- of course, NYC, being the most dense, with the largest extremities of inequality, has the most deaths. More deaths than anywhere, I think, including maybe Italy? But then the US has the most deaths in the world from this thing, and the highest rate of infections, while the lowest rate of testing and medical care. Ay-up the US has turned into a 3rd world country in everything except nuclear weapons I guess. And number of billionaires? for whom, of course the rules to contain the rate of infection simply don't apply or matter.

By fall and flu season, They Say, this is all to do all over again, certainly here, and probably many otherwheres. The toll from c-19 likely, They Say, will be worse, just as the second European wave of 1361** two years later of the Bubonic Plague in the mid-1300's waves, was worse than the first. I have seen mentioned in passing that not only domestic animals died of the illness in the second roll, as did wild animals, but have failed so far to find any real work dealing with this.*** As an example of what I mean here, the Bubonic Plague arrived in Constantinople in 1347; it lasted a whole year. It returned 10 times, between then and 1400. That was just Constantinople; this happened all through Europe and elsewhere in those 50 years, and after.

I'm not suggesting that this virus creates the same disease as Bubonic Plague, rather that it manifests in at least three different manners as did the Black Death, including pneumonia. All of them can be fatal.

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In the meantime Moscow Mitch says drop dead. In order for the federal budget to save money no federal assistance to blue states and particularly NYC. Give it all to the corporate big ag biz!

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In the meantime climate crash catastrophes continue everywhere.

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In the meantime the world is being ever more overrun by those whose only reason to exist seem to be hate and wreak as much harm, destruction and death and cruelty to as many as possible -- not only for the sake of power and greed, but just for the lulz.

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One feels one understands Walter Benjamin better all the time.

Yet, I still do my facial routines, pedicures and manicures every day. Every day I put in my earrings so the holes don't close up, even though I've given up rings and bracelets due to the constant hand washing. Every morning I get out of out my pajamas and slippers, and into clothes and boots, or workout clothes. I still do work outs regularly. I still wash my hair regularly, I still change the sheets on our bed regularly, still do laundry regularly. Every day, still plan and cook meals, and clean up carefully, keep an eye out for the neighbors. I still have moments of pleasure, and even laugh now and again, still remain in love with my life partner, who is The Best!  I'm still vastly, deeply interested in the past. I continue to study, I continue writing about what I study. I keep actin, despite the promises of hurricanes, famine and death by many means as society crashes ever more widely, as if there is going to be an After, and I shall be participating in it, some way, even though, even if this were the best of times, due to natural causes, my time here is running down. Am I insane? What am I doing, fer pete's sake? But this is how I've lived all my life, so is it that I just can't stop?

- #-#-# -

* Clarification of those numbers, sort of, here.

** This is a subject in which the failures of Wikipedia hanging on to incorrect information and facts show up in bold to someone who knows a fair amount about the subject, even though no expert.

*** The reason may be that in that period a pestilence of unknown origin, sometimes identified as anthrax, affected the animals of Europe, notably sheep and cattle, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry. So it wouldn't have been Bubonic Plague, merely another deadly disease that proliferated during a plague wave.