Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

  As part of my ongoing attempt to learn the American history I should have been taught I continue to read histories of Blacks, Indians, women, workers, and immigrants. Among the eras I have heard about, but knew comparatively little is Reconstruction, the period immediately following the end of the Civil War. The simple description is the North won the war. Foner's encyclopedic description of the decades that followed strongly suggest that though the America was reassembled, it was not reunified, and that the battle over emancipation and the rights of Blacks to vote freely and fully participate in the economy of the nation has still not been won. In many ways, the South lost the Civil War, but won its battle for White Supremacy. Witness the 2021 southern legislatures forbidding the teaching of Black History in schools (derogatorily called Critical Race Theory when in reality it should be called American History) and ongoing attempts to limit access for Black voters. I digress, tho...

  A yarn as wide as the Texas landscape. It is 1864 and Simon the Fiddler makes a living the best he can by playing jigs, reels, waltzes and hornpipes. It's not quite as disreputable a profession as being an actor, but a lot of venues include the kinds of saloons and dance halls that the upper classes tend not to frequent. Until the Union Army conscripts him, that is, and he has to play fiddle and soldier for a year. At the war's so-called conclusion - it doesn't so much end as degenerate into a kind of barely controlled chaos as Union forces occupy the state of Texas and barely maintain order - Simon teams up with three additional veterans and together they escape their army duties to play music, barely make ends meet, and have adventures along the Gulf Coast and the Mexican border. Paulette Jiles evokes of the landscape and era of post Civil War Texas with such acuity you can hear individual birds sing, grasshoppers hum, and feel the heat of an unrelenting sun. The ...

Back in November 2017, John Kelly, President Trump's Chief of Staff, said “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.”   Ta-Nehisi posted an article in the Atlantic shortly thereafter, " Five Books to Make you Less Stupid About the Civil War ."  Battle Cry of Freedom  was top of the list.  With good reason. Until the casualties of the Vietnam War were fully counted, the number killed by the Civil War, more than 600,000, was greater than all of America's wars combined.  Kelly's wish that such a calamity could have been avoided is not unreasonable, but as the first third of McPherson's book makes unavoidably clear, the Civil War was fought over the South's insistence that enslaved blacks were property.  Southern owners of other human beings made clear that their property could only be taken by theft and even in such cases, southern owners had as much right to search for and regain their human property as they did when searching f...

bar·do ˈbärdō/ noun (in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death. Abraham Lincoln's son Willie died of typhoid fever during the midst of a party at the White House.  While guests were sipping imported wines, poor William expired leaving his mother inconsolably depressed and his father, the President of the United States without hope or happiness.  The party, the mindsets of Abe and Mary Todd, and descriptions of William's illness are detailed with exquisite clarity with extracts of historical texts.  In the meanwhile, in a nearby bardo a huge cast of characters, not unlike those in Thornton Wilder's Our Town , grapple with the arrival of Willie to their cemetery where the large cast is neither dead, nor alive, nor fully aware of their own condition.  They bicker and prod, mingle and show off, apparently ad nauseam.  And...