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!

Keepin' the Home Fires Burning

     . . . . Could this actually be a week in which decent people can have some joy?  The retreat from Kherson, inflation seeming to have hit peak, our midterms giving us the "Something not turning as out as bad as it could necer felt so good."

Somehow, the three feel related, along with the outcomes of both Colombia's and Brasil's presidential elections. Even so, I'm probably centering, wrongly, the US here?

OTOH, covid infections are increasing like mad here.  Glad I did the late autumn hair stylist visit early.  Also we are going back to NO next week.  Back in time for Thanksgiving with some friends -- who had covid, but are over it  But we won't have the usual second Thanksgiving we usually have with other friends, as they both have covid presently.  Pax is doing its job, but as one is so run down from years of caregiving and job, and the other is still recovering from emergency brain surgery, it's not so easy.

Another amiga has been subjected to round after round of chemo since June/July. She and I have email discussions about the books and television likes we have in common. The latest was around learning we both had liked The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) by Megan Marshall, is another of those biographies that work beautifully for me as well. I've read it, in fact, three times. 

Sophia Hawthorne was one of the sisters. She spent her life in Boston being sick, unable to walk or do housework.  The only treatment that worked for what ailed her was spending the winter in Cuba on a hacienda.  The further her ship got from the Boston, the better she felt, until, by the time she reached Cuba, she was quite, quite well.  She adored spending her mornings a-gallop on spirited horses of her host, across the river valley fields. Then, returning to Boston, the closer her ship got to US shores, and the closer to Boston, the more unwell she became.

 Reading this in the biography back then, sent me looking for Sophia's journals, and I found some material that el  V was able to use in his Cuba And Its Music. Sophia Hawthorne was as racist and non-condemning of slavery as she could be, without coming right out and saying she believed slavery was a positive institution, but she was observant, so there were bits that were of use. Her remarks on the enslaved form part of the unlovely picture of our nation's history of Black hatred. 

I want to blame her husband, since Sophia's sisters were quite concerned with slavery and abolition.  Nat. Hawthorne, though, was quite a piece of work. All his life he was in bromance with Franklin Pierce, and, even, quite possibly, his lover.  Hawthorne wrote Pierce's presidential campaign political bio for excellent pay, received sinecure government posting from Pierce, was with him on his deathbed -- he asked for him, not Sophia -- was totally in the slaveocracy's pockets.  Hawthorne was vocally anti-abolitionist, and decisively told people discussions of slavery were boring and a waste of time, and he didn't care about slavery one way or the other.  Quite out-of-step with fellow Concordians.  Though Sophia's Cuban trips began before she knew Hawthorne, of course, so it was more like-to-like than caused by Hawthorne. My, this book, and the experience of it, like everything before 2016 and covid feels far, far away in time.  

Coincidence: as I finished Sister Novelists, another biography of sisters appears --a new book about the Grimkés: The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery In An American Family, by Kerri Greenidge.  It seems to be a study intended to debunk their reputations as anti-slaverites -- the review I read suggests they profited immensely from slavery.

So, this morning, receiving the news the library had The Grimkés available, I dashed off to the library to pick it up, because it wasn't raining much, despite we being in Tropical Storm Nicola predicted wind and rain. I knew it was Veterans Day, but didn't stop to think this is a holiday and the libraries are closed.  Duh.  I'm smart that way.  Though I was wearing the rain-snow-storm boots I got last week, so I'm not so dumb that way!  Had on rain coat and carried umbrella too.  Which was good because the storm hit hard as I was returning home, due to the fog and heavy cloudfs, dark came even earlier than the roll back of EDST makes it. We're currently in fog, as well as dark, since the temps are fairly warm -- in the 60's. Well stocked with what we need, and even what we want, we are happily cozy and comfortable.  How lucky can we get?

The week was quite lively, while we ignored the pre-election and pre-results backbenching with all our hearts.  El V did another Postmambo Zoom last night, this time with live guest and his film,  from Lome, in Togo, Africa.    He also went out to several music gigs, and we taught two classes.  

Hope the internet stays on -- it's gone out twice now in less than 24 hours.  If no problems I plan to watch more Crown, season 5, 2022. This is the season to turn the mythologies of Di and Charlie inside out. The first two eps dull and dreary.  The actor doing Di is lacking in all that made cameras and screens bewitched by her.  We see her being acidly mocking and mean, o so not quite subtly (due to the bile and acid of bulimia?). It got interesting in the 3rd episode which was generally only about the Al-Fayed family and the man who was the Duke of Windsor’s valet until death – Fayed sr. hires Black Barbadian, Sydney Johnson, whom the Duke had taught everything that makes an English gentleman.  According to the show, Johnson was the one who advised Al-Fayed to buy palace estate, Villa Windsor, decaying on the outskirts of Paris – and Harrods Department Store, then finally buy some position in a most prestigious equine something or other so he can sit next to, and, finally, meet and speak with the Queen. Queenie’s not about to allow this unworthy vulgarian colonial his reward. She and her Equerry send Diana instead. The Princess insults him, and they get along famously.  Di and Elizabeth are equally nasty in this sequence. Later, at E’s court, the members eagerly check with each other as which possessions in the Villa belong to Them/the Crown/ -- and they go over the lists with the same avid attention any grocer would go over his delivery lists and invoices.  The Court looks small and grasping, petty and avaricious. And, always, deadly dull.

The other character is Charles (now Kingwingy Charles III). Played as he is by Dominic West – as Charlie then as now lacks all charisma, electricity and interest, whilst West can’t help splattering it everywhere just standing around -- this doesn’t work. Can you imagine The Wire's Jimmy McNulty having a temper tantrum over a ... pen?  No, we cannot, but Charlie did. Immediately on being king, even not yet crowned. 

If Charlie was in the least like West’s presentation, none of the messes would have happened in the first place.

So, history's revisionism continues apace, even revisionism of what we've 'always known' because we were there.  Ha!

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.

Postmambo Seminars Presents

June 16, 8 pm Eastern, Postmambo Movie Night presents:

Elder's Corner, directed by Adesiji Awoyinka, who will join us on Zoom for conversation afterward. From the press kit:

    From the colorful, celebratory sounds of Juju to the politicized urgency of Afrobeat, Nigerian musicians have spearheaded some of Africa's most prominent musical movements. Oftentimes, their work formed the backdrop against which the nation blossomed. So what happened to the pioneering artists who rose to prominence during the country's halcyon years - and continued to endure when it faltered?

If you haven't been to a Postmambo Movie Night before, here's how we do it. It's easier to do than it is to describe. 

    1) We assemble on Zoom, then migrate as a group to Vimeo to watch the movie.  (I'll give you the Vimeo link in the Zoom chat.)

    2) Once we're on Vimeo, I give the 5-4-3-2-1 countdown, and we all start watching in sync. When it's over, we migrate back to Zoom.

==>Please be on time. (It's hard to sync you in if you don't start with us.) Log in before 8 pm Eastern, please.

This is really easy, but occasionally people who don't have experience with these platforms encounter problems. We don't want anyone excluded! If you don't think you have the tech savvy, or want to do a tech check beforehand, e-mail me and we'll get together privately and talk you through it. 

**************** HOW TO DONATE ***************

You don't have to pay to attend. Don't feel bad if you can't. But we can only continue if we are supported, so we very much appreciate your donation of any size. We're self-funding, so your participation is crucial. I suggest a contribution of $15 for this one event, or $150 to express ongoing support for the series, but we'll happily accept whatever amount you can donate.  Payment options:

1) Zelle. This is our preferred way to receive money, if your bank offers it. Tell them to send it to postmambo@gmail.com.  (It will ask you to confirm by showing you the name PLEAS.)

2) Paypal (be sure to check "sending to a friend" or else they charge a commission): ned@qbadisc.com

3) cashapp $nedsublette

4) Venmo @Postmambo-Studies

4) Paper check via USPS.  E-mail me and I'll send the info. 

Thank you if you have donated, y'all know who you are, and once again -- thank y'all for making our sessions possible.

* * *
July 14: Postmambo Sessions presents a conversation with Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston and author of more than three dozen books, including Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music (Monthly Review Press, 2019). I might also have to ask him about his new one, The Counter Revolution of 1836: Texas slavery & Jim Crow and the roots of U.S. Fascism (International Publishers, 2022).

August 11: Postmambo Sessions presents a conversation with T.J. English, historian of organized crime and devoted music fan who co-led our beyond-splendid 2019 Havana Nocturne Postmambo Cuban Music Seminar based on his best-selling book of the same name. We'll talk about his brand-new title (pub date Aug. 2) Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld.

* * *

Come with us!  There's still time to join us, but it's coming up soon.  August 15-22: Postmambo is off to the Pacific region of Colombia for the Postmambo Colombian Music Seminar with co-host Dr. Michael Birenbaum Quintero. It's time to register and book that flight.  Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-Xk-CQGtMA

Feb. 1-6, 2023: For the Funk Of It, live in New Orleans. Registration is open now. Write me . . .

* * *

Oct. 31: Postmambo presents ¡Que Viva la Muerte! Gède / kalunga / Death Metal Angola

      . . . . Tomorrow!  Sunday, Oct. 31!  It begins at 3:30 pm! (Eastern Daylight Time)

We'd love to have you with us. To participate, you need to have the Zoom link, which you get from the [seminar] mailing list (because [nedslist] is too big to send Zoom links to). If you're not already on that list, write me and I'll make sure you get the link.

A special one-day virtual event celebrating All Saints' Eve / Day of the Dead / Fèt Gede / Halloween

¡QUE VIVA LA MUERTE!

Long live death!

=> 3:30 pm: Jean-Daniel Lafontant will talk with us about Gède, the lwa of death whose day is celebrated all over Haiti.

=> 5:00 pm: scholar / educator / photographer C. Daniel Dawson talks with us about kalunga and death in Kongo thought and cosmology.

=> 6:30 pm: dinner break.

=> 8 :00 pm: a special edition of Postmambo Movie Night, presenting Death Metal Angola (2014), with filmmaker Jeremy Xido in conversation.  

* * *

COMING SOON!

November 11, 8 pm Eastern: NOLA Reconnect Sessions: Erol Josué talks with Dr. Elizabeth McAlister.

November 18, 8 pm Eastern: Postmambo Movie Night: Jason Berry presents his new film City of a Million Dreams.

Warm and Woolly September

      . . . . Ay-up, in the 80's, fuerza sunshine.  Of course this is the day to trek to REI and buy serious wool sox, and hit the shops on Broadway for cashmere sweaters. To balance this out, my personal air conditioning unit is arriving tomorrow.  I'll continue to have use for this for at least another three weeks, I suppose.

     . . . . .Other significant news: CNN reports that as of today, 1 in 500 people in the US have died of Covid.

~~~~~~~~~ Books

Some serious reading has arrived in la casa, because people send us books. 

Just today we received Libros Y Grabaos De Artistas Cubanas: 1985-2008, the catalog for the exhibit held in a different world, held at the Museum of Modern Art, and funded by the Grolier Club of Manhattan. It's a beautiful volume, splendidly fabricated, with equally beautiful content.

Illuminating antiquity, somebody I don't even know -- though I do know his name, I've never met the person -- sent me a copy of the massive, annotated, mapped, appendiced and encyclopedic indexed The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (2007), edited by Robert B. Strassler.  It's so big it's too heavy to hold. It has to rest on a lap desk or some other support. A reference resource. I have read Herodotus's Histories -- or at least read widely in them. The Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuściński has read them all, many times.  He annotates Herodotus with his own book, Travels with Herodotus (2004) which focuses on a lifetime of reading Herodotus on the road, studying and reporting. He never traveled without the Histories. Even if one isn't familiar with or care about Herodotus, as with all of Kapuściński's writing it well worth reading, because so goo.

Now for the busy, busy 19th Century.

The title is unfortunate because it make the book sound like a Victorian sensationalist 'true crime' tale, when The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, and the Phoenix Park Murders That Stunned Victorian England (2021) by Julie Kavangh, is a serious work of history. In Serbia it was the Black Hand, the open-secret society that funded and planned the assassination of Duke Ferdinand and his wife in 1914.  Here in 1882, it's the Irish American funded, Invincibles, the militant arm of the Irish Independence Movement. At the moment when talks between the Movement and the British government were making headway, the day after Gladstone's emissary, Lord Frederick Cavendish arrives, he and the Irish undersecretary, Thomas Burke, are assassinated by the Invincible in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politic (2021) by Mae Ngai, traces the anti-Chinese racism in the gold fields around the world 1848-1899. It was remarkably the same in South Africa and Australia as it was in California.

People still buy our books. We just heard a school in New Orleans is purchasing two hundred copies of The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. In the meantime, most of New Orleans's power was restored by the end of last week, but not so out there in Cajun Country.  People we know have organized a truck convoy to take supplies to Thibodeaux and Houma. With our contribution I requested sanitary supplies in various sizes be included. People, even when women are part of the organizing and planning, tend to forget this necessity.

~~~~~~~~~~~ Watching

Tomorrow Postmambo Movie Night presents The Rumba Kings, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Alan Brain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~My Favorite Thing This Week (so far)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at Monday night's Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala (part 1), in a borrowed dress from her designer girlfriend and 'escort':

The meta and the irony of this.  So much reading one can do -- "I don't really care - do you?"  That one has never attended any Met Costume gala!

 

I Say, You Say, They Say, All Say "Abbott (Who Needs Costello)"

 

Why, yes, as we say, say we all, so says AOC

‘He is not familiar with a female body’

Cortez went on to explain the basic biology surrounding pregnancies, and that many pregnancies are often undetected at six weeks. She said: “In case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late on your period. And two weeks late on your period, for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks.”

Cortez added: “He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance, and it’s not just ignorance. It’s ignorance that’s hurting people.”

Recall the New York woman who waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day said, "If men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrament."? That was Gloria Steinem They (the blobmedia) was determined to tell us, but Steinem said it was Floryence Kennedy who said, she had heard it in Boston from an elderly Irish lady taxi cab driver.

And even further back than that in New York there were Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton.  The staging of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson's opera re Anthony, The Mother of Us All in February 2020, was the last time I've been there.  Sigh.

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

     . . . .  Brain's been in a funk the last several days.  I hope I'm coming out of this state in which I just don't wanna bother because why bother?  A weekend without a hurricane, without a hurricane watch, without a hurricane, all of which were disasters to so very many of our near and dear, after three in row, has helped. El V insisted we Go Out to observe our Carnalversary, which is Labor Day Weekend (why yes, that was a date that lasted the entire long weekend!) helped too.  There's just been so much death, delta, destruction, voter suppression, and all around wickedness in the last few weeks that my processing capacitors seemed to have needed to shut down for a while.  All I want to do is watch old Poirets on Acorn tv and read novels.

Books, we have them.  I brought home two from the library this afternoon.

I'm going to re-read Sharon Kay Penman's second Plantagenet novel Time And Change (2002), now I've finished the re-read of When Christ and His Saints Slept (1995) -- well that one I listened to while working out.  This one I'll read with mine own eyes. Henry II and Eleanor have courted and married, he's become king.  In this second novel Henry and Beckett's alliance-friendship fails in murder; Henry and Eleanor's brilliant erotic, romantic, strategic marriage alliance of equals goes to hell yet with love abiding. Can there be anything more dramatic that that?

The second novel I brought home is The Personal Librarian (2021) by Mare  Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. This historical fiction is centered upon the mixed race, passing for white, brilliant woman, who was John Pierpont Morgan’s first librarian, in charge of his magnificent collection in the building that is now the Pierpont Morgan Library.  I've been looking forward to reading this novel since late spring / early summer.

Delivery brought three non-fiction books today too.  

Toby Green's A Fistful of Shells: West Africa From the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019) a history of the African slave trades -- not only the Atlantic slave trade.  I wish we'd had this book back when we were writing the bodies as money sections of The American Slave Coast (2015).  

We received Ada Ferrer's latest book, just released, Cuba: An American History.  We will not be suprised if she gets the Pulitzer for it. She's speaking tomorrow night at a NYPL event, but tomorrow night is Postmambo Movie Night, so we cannot participate.

September 9 and 16, 2021

NOLA Reconnect Sessions and Postmambo Movie Night present

 

Cuba and Africa: Ivor Miller and The Rumba Kings [Some serious Congo Guitar Godding going on' here! ]

The bidirectional flow of music between Cuba and Africa, with Abakuá and Congo perspective

And, a book that can't be more New York if it tried, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destablized America and Produced Trump (2021) by Spencer Ackerman. OK, so it's not just about New York, but it is stuffed with what we experienced up close and personal.

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

      . . . . As for watching, I'm continuing with King of Boys (2021), Season 1, Netflix Original and the re-watch of The Last Kingdom, 4 seasons, the best 'period' television going. 

Brain, heart, soul in funk though, so bad has it been, that I missed working out one day last week, I keep wanting My Life Is Murder, season 2 (2021), in sunny, colorful Sydney, featuring Lucy Lawless as police consultant, Alexa Crowe.  In the latest episode we here learn that even if successful enough for Las Vegas, Sydney? New Zealand? drag queens cannot compare to the stunning, talented, spectacular drag beauties we are used to. Also, by time the drag duet was to go to Las Vegas, Las Vegas was closed, but they evidently didn't know that, even though Alexa's assistant, Madison called Vegas to learn for who rooms were booked. 

Thus -- I'm most confused.  Supposedly they are now somewhere in New Zealand ... for ... reasons? Family?  But it still looks like Sydney.

We  learn Alexa has a brother in prison and her father was something of a crook and con man -- just like Miss Fischer's dad!  The bro is played by the dude who plays Sam on Netflix's northern California soap opera, Virgin River. He isn't convincing as an Aussie, New Zealander, whatever.  

Alexa and Madison

They Say that Renee O'Conner will show up in one of the episodes, so Xena fan service, I guess? Alas, only a single episode released per week, just as with Vera's season 11. So I began re-watching the earlier BBC Suchet Poirots too. 

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

     . . . . This afternoon I officially began preparing for the long cold winter ahead.  I have discovered REI Co-op, an outdoor activities store.  This means they carry some serious cold temperature kit.  I started with the over the calf heavy duty merino sox, with extra layers on the soles.  I'll pick up more items like caps and more sox, particularly for el V in the next few weeks, as it couldn't be more convenient to do so, located between here and one of the library branches where I pick up ordered materials.

Keep on truckin' all we all!  

Daily Depressions, Reading, Watching

      . . . . Our tiny but sublime vacation was followed immediately by non-stop crises of all kinds, all of them made by those over whom we have no control.  Death was bookended by Hurricane Henri and Hurricane Ida. Ida's hollowed out New Orleans's professional class. With no prospect for the return of power for perhaps months, they left the city.  They have the resources to do so -- Tulane shuts down for 6 weeks, but keeps remote learning going, so the faculty get paid.  You see what I mean?  So in crazy heat and humidity, no power, no a/c, no home, no money, no food, no water -- what do you think will happen to those in New Orleans left behind?  Not a scrap of a FEMA person on the ground has yet been seen.

Though we personally have been spared hurricane crises -- so far, as tonight and tomorrow we get a month's worth of rain wrung from Ida's tattered, passing skirts into our already overflowing reservoirs and saturated earth* -- there are the western wildfires, whose toxin-laden smoke we are not spared. The mid-west is dying of drought, while the Gulf is drowning in flood. The blob that calls itself the responsible media is determined to crucify our President in the name of ... what???? A man in a no-win situation had the guts to let go the wolf's ears (which T Jefferson, referring to slavery, said could not be done -- but then, TJ become quite famous in the South, in Virginia, for his cowardice ....) does so, and some how this is reprehensible, but the Jan 1 insurrectionists are merely mis-understood, and must be forgiven.

Then ... there is covid's Delta variant which relentlessly tsunami's across the country.  In Illinois, Bro says he and his cohorts are calling it the "Unvaccinated Pandemic."  They are not saying this good-naturedly. They are as furious abut this as I am  Then comes more death, not from covid, but from people who can't get treatment due to the Unvaccinated Pandemic taking all the medical resources.  This is not of any personal making on our part, or that of anyone we know.  In the meantime, more voter repression, more war on women's reproductive rights and health. In the meantime too, the non-stop crisis that is Haiti, and now also that of Cuba, keep rolling.

And now, I am staring at the approaching mouth of winter's tunnel, a third cold, dreary winter, pretty much enclosed in this tiny space with one other person.  All we're seeing at the end of this tunnel is more vaccinations, more masks and even more dangerous covid variants. Because of Those Ilks.  Well, even people in my family now believe that is how it is with the rethugs: if They don't get Their way one way, They'll get it by something even crazier, such as killing Their own.  Whatever it takes, They get 'er done. **

So I've not been of much use to anyone outside of what is, again,  a tiny circle of close friends who happen to be physically close by, close enough we can meet informally in one of the neighborhood's small parks.  And I'm good for cooking. We continue to eat very well.  I have a big pot roast in the slow cooker right now, with wine, beef stock, herbs, onion, potatoes, carrots and 'shrooms.  It was a home delivery error on the part of MW's interpretation of what I'd ordered back in the spring. On such a wet day, with night temps for the next 2 - 3 nights going into the 60's and even 60's, it made sense to get it out of the freezer.

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     . . . . Fortunately there is a great deal of good reading, and good watching. Never in my past life could I possibly have imagined there would be an extended period of my in which television would be of the greatest importance! This is the state of reading and watching as of today.

FICTION

Continuing:

Penman, Sharon Kay (1995) When Christ and His Saints Slept.  The workout audio book.  I’m going to re-work my way through the Penman Plantagent series.

~ ~ ~ ~

New:

Walker, Martin (2021) The Coldest Case: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel. The latest, for which I've been waiting since last September.

Walker just won a French literary prize for representation of Southern France and culture to the world.  I have an additional affection for Walker’s series now too.  I introduced these books to Mary F. back in the summer of 2020, and she loved them too.

NON FICTION

Continuing:

Herrin, Judith (2021) Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe. This one I read alone.

Sampson, Fiona (2021) Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I have only a few pages left. I'd have finished it by now but the author is so irritating as she insists on being in the book, and she is not interesting.

Wickham, Chris (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. El V and I continue this aloud every night before lights out. 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

New:

Beran, Michael Knox (2010) Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life.

Clark, Christopher (2013) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.

Raven, Catherine (2021) Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship. 

WATCH

Watch for: Vera, season 11, 1st, every Tuesday – BritBox;  Frankie Drake Mysteries, season 4, 3rd – PBS; Midsomer Murders, season 22, part 2, ? – Acorn; Crooked House (2017 film fr, an Agatha Christie novel), NF – 1st; Lucifer, season 6/final, 10th – NF; Dear White People, season 4/final, 22nd - NF; 

Continuing:

My Life Is Murder, season 2, 3rd through the 10th eps, 1st – Acorn -- sundrenched Sydney, Lucy Lawless.  Nuff Said.

~  ~ ~ ~ ~

New:

King of Boys  (2018) season 1, "The Return of the King"; Netflix Original.  I started this 7 episode series last night.

Made in Nigeria, by Nigerians, located in Lagos. Even in the first episode the show is ‘showing up’ the endless traditional internal conflicts, such as Yoruba vs Igbo.  Complicating things further we have a Nigerian version of protestant evangelical Christianity (a prosperity church, you betcha, with all the prosperity going to the head minister, natch), and so much more.

It opens media res within a prolonged party, dancing to live music. Money is being ‘sprayed’ i.e. the guests are “making it rain” – they are shoving, pouring, sticking, thousands of dollars upon the giver of the party and the musicians, a tradition in the Afro Caribbean as well as West Africa. So right away there’s a lot going on with which I have a certain level of long-time familiarity.

It’s as multi-lingual as Lagos is. The show is mostly English, but Nigerian English as well as the traditional languages of Yoruba and Igbo. Subtitles are provided then. Plus there is the local pidgin, for which the viewer might like to take advantage of closed captioning. The characters who know each other long and respect and like each frequently lapse into pidgin, a Nigerian variant of code switching done among friends, in the same way African Americans do this among each other.  There is this too -- 'King' is a woman.  She's addressed as "Oba" which is a male gendered title in Yoruba.  If one knows this right at the start, a whole lot of information is provided just by that.

Vivid, intense and not the USA at all.

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*   Even as I type now, the rain begins. I hear it spraying against the window panes.

** See "The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America: The Old North/South Split Lives on in the Urban/Rural Divide"  by Will Wilkinson. Thanks to Lawyers, Guns & Money for tipping me to it.

. . . . One of the puzzles of the 2016 election, and the catastrophe of the Trump presidency, is how populist white nationalism finally prevailed at a time when Americans, taken altogether, were less racist than ever. This is one of the questions I take up in the “Density Divide.” But I left out one of my favorite answers to this question largely because it’s too speculative and I didn’t have the data to prove it. My hunch is that rural white culture, which was once regionally varied and distinctive, became more uniform by becoming increasingly Southern. I call this the Southernification thesis.

In the "Density Divide", I argued that the key to answering “Why did white ethnonationalism finally work to win the GOP nomination and then the White House when it didn’t even get close to working for Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul?” was that residential self-selection on ethnicity, personality, and education had made lower density parts of the country progressively more homogenously ethnocentric and socially conservative, which finally made it possible to unify and organize rural and exurban whites as a single constituency.

I’m confident that this is correct, as far as it goes. However, I think it’s an incomplete explanation without something like the Southernification thesis. Before it could be successfully organized politically, America’s increasingly ethnocentric non-urban white population needed to be consolidated first through the adoption of a relatively uniform ethnocentric white culture.

What I’m still groping for is solid empirical confirmation that the Southernification of white rural America did happen and, if so, how it happened. Now, I have few doubts that it did happen and is still happening. Indeed, it’s hard to think of better impressionistic evidence than the spread of Confederate flags far from the South into all parts of white rural America. But that doesn’t seem like quite enough.

But let’s suppose that it is enough. How did Southernification happen? I’m going to take this up at length in another, even more speculative, post. But here’s where I would start: When I was a kid, the Atlanta Braves somehow became “America’s Team.” Could it be that the media mogul who married Hanoi Jane took the critical first step in bringing non-urban white America together by beaming sanitized Southern culture into living rooms everywhere? . . . .

This is the most cogent explanation for what has happened that I've seen.  Of course, one doesn't see it in the Blob, which is what Lawyers, Guns & Money have taken to calling the so-called media, made up of people who have gotten whatever it is wrong almost every time, but still keep getting paid big money to keep getting it wrong.

Bridgerton: Netflx's Scrumptuously Dressed, Sexy, Romantic Holiday Greetings

     . . . Bridgerton (2020) Season 1,  Netflix Original.

 Shonda Rhimes adaptation of a print Regency Romance series, but with black characters as nobility and other aristocratic figures of agency for themselves and their world.

Julie Andrews is the unseen character, Lady Whistledown. Her character pens a gossip-scandal sheet distributed among the 'ton' -- a term never used by those people historically, invented out of French something or other by Georgette Heyer.  This narrator inexorably has one reminded of Sex and The City. Most SATC episodes begin with the voice over of Carrie Bradshaw's character musing on white women's dilemmas -- she's also a columnist for readers of a rag read by the rich politically, financially, socially powerful Ladies Who Gossip, and their aspiring wannabes back in 1990's NYC.

After dinner last night, I watched three episodes out of eight, of the first season of Bridgerton.  So far so good, though I remain on the critical wall regarding black Dukes, a black queen Charlotte with a set of black ladies in waiting, etc., being made nothing of by the white characters. Thus, definitely, Alternative History. Shoot, even the most wealthy Indian raja was still seen as not quite, by the Brits, both in India and at home during the Regency and certainly after.  But these are purely white characters in black costume out of Romance Regency fiction, without any cultural signatures either, and that bothers me.  Only in the third episode at some point the scored music of scene most faintly included congas – which only somebody steeped in Afro-latin music w/could notice -- if only because she was listening for any hint that certainly in music at least, there would be some black influence?

Supposedly somewhere in the middle of the season we wo;; learn why there’s diversity, not racism, in Bridgerton's world. If I have this correctly, this diversity wasn't in the books from which the series is adapted, though supposedly Alternative Universe (AU) is now a major aspect of Regency Romance.  

The NY Times has informed me that Bridgerton makes the historical Queen Charlotte, rumored [Fox here: rumored by her enemies] to have been a descendant of a Black branch of the Portuguese royal house Britain's regent. Thus Bridgerton's inclusive society.

So, there's another reason I’m on the critical fence on this matter. Portugal and her monarchs were major players and suppliers in the Atlantic African slave trade. They were there first and they were last to stop, either on the continent or in the “New World.”  Portuguese and Brasilians (and Usians, particularly New Yorkers) remained trading, bringing captured Africans to Cuba and Brasil, under the safety of US flag from the anti-slaving British navy, until the African slave trade was finally put an end to in 1862, by the US War of the Rebellion.

An excellent source, highly recommended that explains exactly how it all worked in every aspect, is John Price’s The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (2020).

I do comprehend no Romance genre, Regency or otherwise, deals in historical reality, and thus AU, nor is it required to, but it’s another element that leaves me sitting on the critical wall, unsure, so far, whether this color neutral AU adaptation is a good thing or a wrong thing -- or even if it is a color neutral thing.

I haven’t stumbled (yet) upon any Regency Romance black critics' opinions -- British or USian -- whose point of view is essential here.  But there are also more episodes for me to watch, so who knows how this will play out ultimately.

Nevertheless some poking of the innernetz informed me whether or not all the characters in the books were white or not, at least the first novel, The Duke and I, out of which most of this first season is adapted, is controversial in a very large way among the fandom due to a very particularly scene in the novel, which too, evidently is a plot driver.  Will not speak of why, due to spoilers, but it is evidently -- of course it is! This is Shonda Rhimes! -- in the netflix version too. The Netflix version is controversial among fandom too.

This is soap opera, based as it is on a series of Regency Romance novels by a Julia Quinn, which have the sorts of covers that broadcast to my kind of historical fiction reader, "Nope."  But such novels can make entertaining tv. 

Nevertheless, my sort tires of soap operas at some point. Shonda Rhimes's Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, left me yawning as the seasons rolled on, so quit watching after  3 – 4 seasons. The point of soap opera is -- no point. There’s no  momentum, no end point, just ... more … of everything.  Downton Abbey was the same. I hope Bridgerton doesn't turn out to be like -- well that utterly vile production of Jane Austen's fragments of Sanditon from last year.

Poldark is the the sort of successive seasons’; screen dream that can carry my sort all the way through, and leave me sad when there is No More.

This is to say that the Poldark series, books and television, at least the first BBC version from the 1970’s, are accurate portrayals of their world, as much as the author was able to make them, not Romances, though love, sex and marriage play huge roles, as historically they do in every culture in every era. Winston Graham’s Poldark novels and television series was in the period/historical tradition of Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, not Georgette Heyer’s fabricated, imaginary Regency Romance. So, like Dumas’s historical fiction and much else, that has lots of sex, love and romance, Poldark works for my kind, whereas Heyer does not and never has.

Another question that immediately reared was, why / how did our primary marriage market figure, Daphne, go from in one scene as the season's 'perfect diamond' due to the Queen declaring her so, whom all suitors wish to suit, to having lost the favor of the Queen in the next big scene and nobody comes to call. There's a suggestion that her protective brother scared them all away, but that makes no sense either, since he tries to -- well spoiler, so will say no more. No matter how important her fall from Queen's grace is to making a plot, it shouldn't, you know, force me to wrinkle my already non-smooth forehead trying to figure it out. And then Daphne’s back in the Queen’s grace, or at least her mother is. Confused.

And --why did they make Polly Walker merely replay HBO Rome’s Atia of the Julii in a different period’s clothes as Lady Featherington?  Walker could do so much more.

However, that Duke Simon Basset Hastings, played by Regé-Jean Page, is the most dishalicious dish!  And his velvet tail coats -- there is one in particular, a deep, but soft purple, with the perfect collar and lapels -- ooo la la! His wardrobe is by far and way the most scrumptious character in the series.  Well ... maybe.  He doesn't actually need clothes you know, to be scrumptious.  As this is at least partially a genre of female gaze, there's lots of male to gaze upon.

Dayem, but it is cold out there.  But at least after the Christmas storm, we were so fortunate as to keep power, lights, heat, innernezzes. So many around us have not been.  So we see I'm also fortunate to have lots of watching on hand, as it's too cold to even go out.  I know.  I did it, and skeedaddled right back in, whimpering like little short-coated dog without her sweater.