Juneteenth celebrates Emancipation Day in Texas and other parts of the former Confederacy. On June 18-19, 1865, Union forces landed in Galveston, Texas and declared universal enforcement of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Though Lincoln was dead and the American Civil War officially ended, some Texan salveholders had been recalcitrant enough to require federal boots on the ground to ensure compliance.
Sam France, one of my paternal great great grandfathers, served with the Union 31st Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was mustered out at Victoria, Texas, in December 1865. Up until about June 17, 1865, elements of his regiment were posted at Chalmette, Louisiana, and at other locations around New Orleans, until sent to Texas, presumably by steamship. Whether Sam France arrived in Texas on or after Juneteenth, I'm not sure yet, but do know the regiment helped bring Texas back into line with the laws of the USA, maintained order, and probably worked on infrastructure projects like repairing or building railroad and telegraph lines.
Part of Ralph Ellison's second* novel, edited by John F. Callahan, was published by Random House as Juneteenth in 1999; Three Days Before the Shooting, another version of the same novel, edited by Callahn and Adam Bradley, was released by Random House earlier this year.
*His much-lauded first novel: Invisible Man (1952).
195th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo (1815). If Napoleon had won, it's possible the Benelux countries would still be part of greater France, and the Germans might have been kept at bay in their later uses of the Low Countries as an invasion route. The British Empire may have run basically the same course through the present. But who knows?
In any case, Belgium, Netherlands (Holland) and Luxembourg are strange, interesting little countries, much fought over in the past. Belgium has Flemish and Walloon culture (I'm partly Walloon by way of Sweden) and good ale. I've spent time in all three, happily.
New book (really an old book, newly translated from German into English by Peter Hofschröer) -- Carl von Clausewitz, On Wellington: A Critique of Waterloo (2010). Von Clausewitz's work is full of pithy aphorisms. He was a thinker. From Vom Kriege / On War:"Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results." (Michael Howard/Peter Paret translation). Something still not learned very well by those who indulge in war.
Waterloo keeps inspiring powerful cultural expressions, not only through books and visual art, but through metaphors, movies, monuments and music. In its own way, Waterloo is as evocative as Cleopatra and Helen of Troy. What do you think when you hear the name?
Kleopatra VII was Greek/Macedonian, and Angelina Jolie has already played the Greek Olympia, mother of Alexander the Great, the dude responsible for Greek/Macedonian rule in Egypt via Alexandria (which he founded) and the Ptolemaic dynasty. (Weird to think also that Kleo died only about thirty years before the "Christian Era" or "Common Era" began -- lots of Greek culture at the time. But that's for another post).
The "controversy" over Jolie's selection for the role of Kleopatra seems like much ado about nothing, but if it means people learn even a little more about history in between the squawking, I'm all for it. What's your take?
Kleopatra by Karen Essex (German translation by Bettina Zeller), Marion Von Schröder, 2006. Upcoming -- Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, Little, Brown and Company, November 1, 2010. As with Helen of Troy, the fascination with Kleopatra seems universal and enduring.
Let's not forget Rachel Weisz in the role of Hypatia, another famous woman of Greek lineage who resided in Alexandrian Egypt, in Alejandro Amenábar's film Agora (2009/2010).
I remember May 18, 1980. At the time and after a lengthy stint in Mexico, Catherine J. Currier (my maternal grandmother) lived in Vancouver, Washington, maybe forty miles away from Mount St. Helens as the crow flies. Soon after the sucker blew its top, the volcano began dropping ash on her abode for quite a little while. A couple years later, when my sister Linda and I drove out there to see her, we saw the devastation around Mount St. Helens for ourselves -- I remember Blondie's aptly-named "Atomic" was playing on the tape deck when we got to the observation post. It most definitely looked as if an atomic bomb had razed the area.
Anyone who ever heard the story must surely remember the incorrigible octogenarian Harry R. Truman, who'd refused to leave and perished on May 18; just the day before, he'd said: "I had some people ask me why the hell I stayed, what I be doing up there. That's my life -- Spirit Lake and Mt. St. Helens -- my life, folks, I lived there fifty years -- it's a part of me. That mountain and that lake is a part of Truman. And I'm a part of it." -- And so he was, and so he remains.
Ash cloud from Mount St. Helens. Some of it fell on parts of Oklahoma, and some circled around the entire globe in a matter of two weeks and a day.
Cover of a library book that triggered the memory -- not to mention that it's the thirtieth anniversary this year, 1980-2010.
Have you seen Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire (1987)? Includes the great Bruno Ganz, Peter Falk, Otto Sander, Solveig Dommartin (who died at 45 a couple of years ago), Nick Cave, Curt Bois and Berlin -- the city not the band. Wings come in different shapes and forms, however.
The Nike of Samothrace in the Louvre. An excellent 2007 photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen. Here's a case where Gestalt doesn't deliver -- at least for me. I've seen an imagined Nike complete, "Winged Victory" and all, but what it really needs is the other side of midnight, something from a Man Ray photograph perhaps. It would be nice to see the whole of her.
William S. Burroughs in a Nike, Inc., commercial. "Winged Victory," indeed!
La tour Eiffel? From Guillaume Apollinaire'sCalligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre(1918). How can anyone really tell what's what via pictograms, cartoons, curves, shapes, forms and fields? Gestalt, or compare with Malcolm Gladwell'sBlink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005). What the hell, what the heck! We can complete forms in our heads!
Sometimes, form throws the mind into a pickle jar of confusion. Here, the NUMBER ONE issue ofVVV (that's three Vs, as in the 1963 Thomas Pynchon novelV. , but dating to 1942 and in trio rather than solo form, not quite a triptych). Surrealism in action! Is it a flying M or two mushed overlapping Ws or one inner V crowded by two outers? Is it Gestalt or Gefilte Fisch?
The West Indies/Caribbean region, a microcosm of global rivalry glimpsed through archaeological layers, modern diversity and cultural syncretism, supports a population that barely exceeds Canada's. It is in between, sort of part of North America and sort of not; partly Latin America and partly not. A big thanks to Jim Hampton for suggesting this region. I have been to Puerto Rico and several of the islands, barely skimming the surface but catching some understanding of historical context and global economics. Places to go, see, stay? Of course, I do wish to explore Cuba. And a return to Martinique, home of Angelique Bouchard Collins, is in order. But just about anywhere in the Caribbean holds a certain fascination, including Puerto Rico.
Really interesting stuff relating strongly to the Caribbean: Sidney W. Mintz,Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985, 1986+).
