I’ve been thinking about Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca for years and I’ve also been thinking about him for a week.
It’s crazy out there in the world right now and people are, I think, kinda sick of each other. Racism, sexism, and classism are the muck we walk through to get to our cars while our climate is turning into flying monkeys. And the rich keep getting richer.
The photos are all from Franc Garcia, who took them in Kenosha last week. Thank you, Franc.
Part I.
13th Amendment - ratified in 1865
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
I haven’t slept well in two nights. I pop wide awake about 2:00 and then listen to podcasts, look at boring YouTube videos (so many crafts one can make with concrete, none that include Jimmy Hoffa), practice relaxing my muscles, practice staring at dots behind my eyelids -and finally at 5:00AM I fall asleep.
Hi! Len and I returned home at 1:30AM from our 15-day road trip through eastern Canada and Maine and more.
Sault is a French word that mean topsy-turvy as in the rapids on the St. Mary river that tumbles between the US and Canada. Or summersaults. Isn’t that cute?
I’m reading a new book about the Upper Midwest, late 1500’s - 1750ish. The book is Indian Women and French Men; Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes, by Susan Sleeper-Smith - and I am reading it as avidly as my granddaughter listens to story hour.
I finally finished reading “Empire by Collaboration” by Robert Michael Morrisey. It is a history of the Mississippi River from what is now the general St. Louis area down to its confluence with the Ohio River. This is the area Len and I traveled to see the solar eclipse in August 2017.
Happy All Saints Day.
Today (though it will probably be yesterday by the time I get this written) we are going to discuss Catholic missionary types who proselytized Mississippi watershed country in the mid-to-late 1600’s.
Do you go to museums? I enjoy them, but I think they are more complicated than we give them credit for.