Windy city

Little to report. There was a weather watch or warning or something today for the high winds, expected to gust to 70 or 80 kph later in the day. The winds have indeed been rattling our windows all day.

I ran in the morning. Fred Douglass finally gets his federal appointment. After the 1876 election in which the Republican candidate, Rutherford Hayes, wins in a squeaker, he offers Douglass the post of Marshall of DC, a partly-ceremonial role in the Justice department, carrying out judicial orders, including routine arraignments.

The appointment was controversial. Racist Democrats and some black rivals decried it. But it was exactly the sort of thing Douglass had been craving, and it made it unnecessary for him to continue his long, grueling  speaking tours. Much discussion about how and if he can continue to be a radical activist on behalf of blacks now that he's a Washington insider. Douglass turns 60 in 1878.

*

I did go out in the afternoon. The wind was wild in places but relatively calm  others. I went out mainly to pick up an order at the LCBO on York St., but meant to ramble a little and take some photographs as well. 

As I was walking to the LCBO along Queens Ave., I watched a man walking towards me - meandering towards me really - stop briefly and lean down and place something on the cement base of a fence in front of the Justice building. He was a dark-skinned man wearing a long middle-eastern tunic over his trousers and a kufi - the little beanie - on his head. 

When I passed him, he was either talking to himself or to somebody on a hands-free phone  I'm inclined to think it the former given his other behaviour. When I got to where he had stopped, I found this.

Oh, yeah, he was talking to himself.

In the end, I cut short my outing. The wind was just too wild. My hat was in constant danger of blowing off, and it was cold.

*

Back at the ranch, I played around from some pictures from our winter in Tucson, Arizona in 2013. We rented a small bungalow in a lower middle-class neighbourhood not far from the university. I was intrigued by the residential architecture. The houses were mostly very small, cement-block bungalows but often with interesting decoration and landscaping. Here's a sampling.

Rained out

A dull day: mist and rain. I didn't get out in the afternoon as it was coming down fairly seriously, but did it in the morning when it was only spitting.

The Douglass story continues. It's the mid-1870s. His career is still in the doldrums. His children are in worse shape, out of work, in debt, in some cases being sued by creditors. Blight speculates that the old man had to bail some or all of them out. Rosetta has split with her ne'er-do-well husband. Ottilie Assing has finally resigned herself to not being able to lure Douglass to Europe with her and goes by herself.

The book is frankly a bit in the doldrums at this point too. When is the important work going to be done that Blight spoke of at the beginning of this chapter. 

His speeches and editorials in this period harp on ideas about self-reliance for blacks, and criticisms of the black community for its failure to produce wealth and great men and create its own cultural products. 

This is misrepresented by Democrats to justify not helping the freedmen. Even some of his allies are confused about what Douglass means and concerned that his ideas are arming their enemies. What he means, Blight says, is that blacks should be self-reliant, and work hard, but that whites should give them a fair chance: let them buy land, let them go to school, let them work in the factories and workshops. Which, of course, they are not - especially in the south.

*

I finished Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times. It's an amusing read. The characters are vivid, the writing very witty. I think people of my age sometimes see the young ones as almost another species. In some ways, of course, they are. But this story, despite its being placed in a very contemporary milieu - Hong Kong 2018 or so - and with very modern themes and attitudes about sex and relationships, proves they're...well, they're only human after all.

It'll be interesting to see what she comes up with next. In the meantime, I'm on to the latest Donna Leon mystery.

*

A down day photographically. I kept working through my 2012 pictures but only found a few I thought worthy of renovation. In August that year, we visited the McCann's new cottage in the Bruce Peninsula. I think it might have been their first year there. One day we went for a walk on a rocky promontory not far from their place. I was taken with the wild flowers, some of which I'd never seen before.

Back home in London, I was always, when at a loss for anything else to photograph, shooting the blooms in Karen's garden. I don't think I really intended what I got in this one. Sometimes the autofocus on my camera has a mind of its own. In this case, instead of focusing on the petals of the blossoms on this plant, it focused on the pistils. Kind of an interesting effect.

In November, I was invited to a press conference at a newly opened wing of the Royal Ontario Museum with displays of Asian artefacts. I can't remember why I was invited. I don't recall a technology angle, but I was happy to go. I took a few pics in the new exhibit hall, including this one, which I had previously not thought worth spending any time on.

London blossoms

I have little energy for this today after a third night of inadequate sleep.

I did do my run this morning, though, while listening to another half hour of Frederick Douglass's story. It's 1874 and his career has hit the skids a bit. He very naively accepted what amounted to a figurehead position as president of a bank set up by the government to help black freedmen. The bank did well at first, but had been badly managed under a laissez-faire board of trustees, employees had embezzled depositor's funds and Douglass had no choice within a few months but to recommend shutting it down.

As he later said, "I was married to a corpse." That didn't stop him taking some of the blame. That same year, his last newspaper, The New National Era, which he had left largely to sons Louis and Fred Jr. to run, also failed. It was an annus horribilis if ever there was one. Yet, Blight says at the outset of this chapter that some of Douglass's best writing and most influential political action are yet to come.

His editorializing and speechifying in these years mostly took aim at the weakening influence of the radical Republicans, the end of formal reconstruction in the south and the depressing ascendancy of states' rights doctrines that give white racists a free hand in southern states. The Ku Klux Klan and other white vigilante groups carry out campaigns of intimidation, terror and outright murder in the south to push down blacks and stop them voting.

It's astonishing how all the same issues still prevail in U.S. politics 150 years later - except the two parties have switched sides.

*

A short walk to take pictures of blossoms, including a rare yellow magnolia in front of the Service Ontario building that Karen spotted yesterday, tulips and ornamental cherry blossoms at the forks of the Thames and a budding redbud in the parking lot of the Lerner Law building half a block from here.

Summer arrives...temporarily

Another meh day. This pandemic shit is starting to weigh on me

It was a lovely day weather-wise, though. I think it got up to 23, and felt warmer. I stupidly wore tight jeans instead of shorts when I went out for my afternoon walk.

It was nice in the morning too when I got out for my exercise, accompanied, as always, by Mr. Douglass. I noticed, looking at the Libby app on my phone, that I still have 10 hours of listening on this book!

Today, I mostly heard about the man's political maneuvering at the end of the 1860s and early 1870s. He endorsed Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and "radical" - i.e. abolitionist - Republican. Grant was challenged by a new, more conservative wing of the party that was allying itself with the hated (at least by Douglass) Democrats, advocating for reconciliation with the south.

Douglass was still editing The New National Era, which would be a relatively short-lived newspaper that employed his sons and good friend Ottilie Assing. In the paper, he wrote editorials advocating Grant as the Republican nominee, and attacking Grant's challenger, Horace Greeley.

Douglass, in this period, openly coveted a government appointment. The first he received was a minor role in a Senate commission of inquiry into annexing the Dominican Republic and making it a state. The country had been partly settled by black immigrants from the U.S. in the early 1800s. Grant's idea was that some present-day U.S. blacks  might also find a home there. And it would create a new block of voters, virtually all black, that would undoubtedly vote Republican. Democrats and the Greeley Republicans were opposed, as were many radical abolitionists. 

Douglass was appointed one of two assistant secretaries to support the white political big-wigs who were the actual commissioners. They travelled to Hispaniola and interviewed people on the island and in government 

Many of Douglass's former allies and friends criticized him for participating in this project, pointing out that he had always been opposed to the idea of "colonization," the notion that freed blacks could be got rid of by sending them off to some place in the Caribbean or South or Central America. He insisted that the people of the Dominican wanted to be annexed, and there is some evidence this was true. But it never came to fruition.

*

My afternoon walk was perhaps longer than it needed to be. I didn't have a great night of sleep, or at least not a long enough sleep. 

I walked over to the forks, across the foot bridge, down along the west side of the north branch and up by the Children's Museum, then down the hill to the river. Just before the underpass under the railway tracks, I veered off down a little path, unpaved, that stays on this side of the tracks and runs along the river. 

I could hear a bunch of young guys coming up behind me, and finally stepped aside to let them pass. There were three of them, all in fatigues lugging great big packs on their backs. Were they real military, wannabes or survivalists of some kind? No idea. I walked a half kilometer or so down the path, then turned and went back by a slightly different route to the forks.

I didn't take any pictures until I got to the old courthouse, where a still-fresh magnolia - most around downtown are finished - caught my attention. And then I couldn't resist another shot of the Justice building. I'm not sure what it is that is so appealing about this really awful building.

*

I also continued working on pics from 2012 trip to New York. On one of our first days after Caitlin joined us, she and Aaron went off on their own and Karen and I poked around Brooklyn, ending up at the small but pleasant Botanical Gardens.

Another day, we trained into Manhattan. I took some shots underground. This last shows why I keep going back to my raw picture files. It's one that was pretty badly under-exposed. It looked like there was nothing there. But digital photography is very forgiving and Photoshop has some marvelous tools for making silk purses out of photographic sows' ears. When I started playing around with it today, I found this, which I think is kind of interesting. 

Another day

Little to report, a meh day. Weather cool in the morning with some sun, milder (11C) in the afternoon but cloudy with rain reportedly coming. I'm not going out this aft - although rain has yet to materialize.

I ran in the morning. My man Fred Douglass's career has taken a bit of a backseat in recent passages of David Blight's biography. His personal life has been front and centre. 

We're in the immediate post-war years. His kids are a constant headache. None of the grown sons - Louis, Charles and Fred Jr. - has managed to become economically independent. This is possibly because even educated, intelligent blacks - or perhaps especially they - are thwarted by the deep-dyed systemic racism of the day. Or possibly that they have been both spoiled by their relative affluence and stunted by living in the shadow of the great man. It's hard for Douglass given that he has been preaching self-reliance to blacks in his writings and speechifying.

Meanwhile, the sons are at war with their sister, Rosetta, and her husband, the former slave-turned-gardener-turned- son-in-law. The boys think their brother-in-law is no good and that he and their sister are hogging the hand-outs from papa, and angling to get more. It's an ugly business.

Douglass's long-lost brother, sold from Maryland to an estate owner in Texas, now freed, arrives on his doorstep, with family. They are strangers to Douglass, but he takes them in. The man, not surprisingly, has been scarred by slavery and cannot adapt to freedom and the north. He and his family are installed in a small house, specially built for them on the grounds of the Douglass's Rochester home. They eventually up-sticks and head back south.

And then there's Ottilie Assing, the emigré German journalist and activist who has been his "intellectual confidante" and career help-meet for many years. She is infatuated with Douglass and deludes herself he will eventually leave his wife, Anna, and go to Europe with her. She still spends summers at the Douglass's Rochester home. Blight cannot fathom how the two women could have co-existed in the same home. 

And then catastrophe strikes the family. The buildings on the Rochester estate burn to the ground, along with the extensive gardens and orchards Anna has spent 20 years cultivating. The family in residence - not Douglass himself who now lives part-time in Washington - escape unharmed, but much else is lost.

Douglass has been angling for some kind of government position with the Republicans while maintaining his indefatigable  public speaking schedule - needed to earn money to support his extended family. He also takes on another black newspaper, based in Washington, employing his sons, and Assing, to help.

I confess that if I were reading this book instead of listening to it, I would have given up long ago. It's so-o-o long. I still have almost a third to go. But the writing and story-telling are masterful and the research exhaustive and interesting. And listening, especially while exercising, when my mind is otherwise unengaged, is a lot easier than reading. So I'll keep on with it.

*

I finished mining the winter 2012 pictures. We certainly saw a lot. Here are Caitlin and Karen at the Spanish Steps - which I think I read recently you were no longer allowed to sit on.

We saw lots of museums, including the Vatican museum, which has so much Roman and Rennaissance-era statuary that they can line empty hallways with them. It also has the Bramante spiral staircase. The original was built in 1505. This one - fairly impressive in its own right - is a modern version, built in the 1930s.

We also went to churches. Can't remember which this is, but the frescoes are pretty spectacular.

After Rome, we went home. My nephew Mike's wedding was in June. I snapped this picture of a pensive Caitlin in the cottage we rented in Grand Bend for the event. I know I shouldn't brag, but she really is a lovely-looking young woman.

And then in July, we drove to New York to meet Caitlin. She was back over on a one-week fellowship at a Yale University facility in Connecticut devoted to the study of British Art - but would stay with us in New York for a week before she went there. We rented a flat in Brooklyn. On one of the first days, we walked across the Brooklyn bridge and back.

Routines broken

Yesterday was the first day in three months I didn't write something in this blog. I also didn't go out for a walk yesterday afternoon.

The reason for this dereliction? 

I did go for a run in the morning, but almost as soon as I got back, I went downstairs and spent over an hour re-organizing our locker to try and make room for some of the stuff that clutters up our apartment - with limited success. I managed to tweak my back a little in the process which has slowed me a little.

The rest of the day was spent completing a re-organization of the apartment that has been in the works for some time. Karen and I have been sleeping separately since we got back from England in January. We both often sleep badly. We realized, from sleeping apart when one of us was sick, that part of the problem is we disturb each other. Our sleep is also disturbed by worrying about disturbing the other. 

So we're making it a permanent switch. Karen is taking over the master bedroom, and moving all her art-craft stuff in there. I'm now in the small second bedroom. Our occasional overnight visitors need not be concerned, however. Karen and I will bunk in together when we have company.

*

All that effort having being taken to help improve our sleep, we both  slept very badly last night. Karen was up before 6. I woke at a little after 3:30 and was awake most of the rest of the night - or so it seemed. So we've been taking it easy today, making a few final adjustments to our new personal spaces. I didn't go out in the morning for my usual exercise, but did - still breaking routine - get out in the afternoon for a power walk.

That was after I had made, and we had eaten, a very nice curry of my own devising. Don't believe me that it was good? Try it yourself...

Gerry's Barley Chicken Curry

Serves: 2 (maybe with leftovers)

2 tbps olive oil

1/2 large yellow onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 inch thumb of ginger, minced

2 sides of yellow, orange or red pepper, sliced

1 large carrot, chopped

3 large cauliflower florets, chopped

1/2 cup frozen peas

4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1/2 cup barley

1 cup canned tomatoes

1/2 cup chicken stock

4 tsps mild curry powder

2 tsps cumin

2 tsps turmeric

Granulated garlic

Salt

Pepper

1/2 tbsp Mister Patak mild curry paste or to taste

1-1/2 tsps lime juice

Instructions:

1. Mince garlic and ginger and soak in olive oil

2. Rinse barley in cold water, cook for 30 minutes (bring to rolling boil, turn down to simmer), rinse in sieve with boiling water and let sit

3. Season chicken thighs with 1/2 curry powder, salt, pepper, granulated garlic to taste

4. Par-cook carrots and cauliflower: steam carrots 8 min, cauliflower 4 (put in fridge to stop cooking)

5. In a large frying pan, heat 1 tbps olive oil over medium-high heat; brown chicken thighs on both sides; set aside

6. Reduce heat to medium and add remaining olive oil to pan; sautée onion and pepper for a few minutes; sprinkle with remaining mild curry powder, cumin and turmeric and salt and pepper to taste; add garlic and ginger and cook for one minute

7. Add par-cooked vegetables, stir to cover with oil and spices

8. Add barley, stir to cover with oil and spices

9. Cut chicken into chunks and add to pan, stir to mix thoroughly

10. Add tomatoes and chicken stock; cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat to simmer for 10-20 minutes

11. Add frozen peas and curry paste, stir to thoroughly mix; simmer for another 5-7 minutes; sprinkle with lime juice, stir to thoroughly mix, serve

*

The rest of the day was taken up with winter 2012 photographs. 

We're still in Rome with Caitlin, sightseeing hard. The first four were taken at the same unidentified church as the pictures I posted the day before yesterday. I used one of them to do a Google image search today to try identify the church, but with no luck. (I was initially impressed by image search, but it's pretty much useless in my more recent experience.)

In any case, it's a beautifully designed and decorated church, whichever it is.

The last two were taken on the first Sunday we were there: one in front of St. Peter's Basilica, the other on a side street where we came upon tourists and locals watching a papal mass on a mobile big-screen TV. The Pope channel.

 

Spring returns

For the first time in weeks, I went out to exercise this morning without Fred Douglass - not because my audiobook has expired, although it will soon, but because I've had a migraine since late last night and couldn't bear the earbuds in my ears.

As a result, I've got very little to write about. I could point out that if the Democratic bill seeking to turn the District of Columbia into a state makes it, by some miracle, through the Senate, the 52nd state would be called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth. It's a bit of a mouthful but pays fitting tribute to the great orator, who lived the last years of his life in Washington.

*

I worked on more of my winter 2012 pictures. The day we took Shelly Rowe to see the City of Arts and Sciences, I took more pictures of Santiago Calatrava's and Félix Candela's crazy buildings. I think we read somewhere that the project - it was built between 1996 and 2009 - went over budget by €70 million.

I was still hot on taking pictures of street art right up until the end of our time in the city. This one was taken in Carmen.

This last shot of Valencia is a bit of a mystery. The women are wearing the traditional embroidered gowns worn at the Fallas festival. It appears they're involved in a photo shoot. The mystery is, why were they taking pictures of Fallas costumes when that year's festival was well and truly over. I took the picture on March 31 in the square behind the cathedral. Fallas ends March 19.

Not long after Shelly went home, Karen and I left Valencia and flew to Rome, where we met Caitlin and spent a week sightseeing. Not sure which church this is. It ain't the Sistine Chapel, but it does have its fair share of frescoes.

*

I went out for a walk in the late afternoon. The sun was in and out, temperature up to about 17 - reportedly. A meagre haul of pictures.

Spring still on hold

Our little winter interlude is about to end...we're told. Today it was much nicer than forecast. It was cold but none of the threatened snow materialized. This afternoon, it was off-and-on sunny, and very nice when it was on. Tomorrow, it's supposed to go up to 17.

I did my run this morning, with Fred Douglass, as usual. I might not have his company for long, though. The copy I'm listening to is due in three days or so, and somebody else has it on hold. Drat! I've reserved it at two libraries, but who knows when I'll get it again.

Douglass continues his battles with conservative Republicans and Democrats over issues of help for freedmen and black suffrage. He is worming his way into the party's favour, more and more its unofficial spokesperson on black issues. He goes after President Andrew Johnson and his Democrat allies in speeches at every opportunity - often quite scurrilously.

Meanwhile, the vengeance of the white south is being visited on freedmen, as Douglass warned it would be. In Memphis and in New Orleans armed combat breaks out and gangs of ex-Confederate soldiers kill scores of blacks. 

While Douglass has always been a supporter of women's rights groups, he falls out with two of the strongest and most radical feminist activists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, over his advocacy of black suffrage before enfranchisement for women. He argues that blacks need the vote to protect themselves, where women can afford to be patient, as he says they should be. Anthony and Stanton turn on Douglass and blacks in general and Anthony in particular uses ugly racist arguments to advocate for women's suffrage before black male suffrage.

The power of the "radical" Congressional Republicans continues to grow, though, and thwart president Johnson's opposition to black suffrage. In 1869, Congress passes the 15th Amendment granting the vote to blacks and it's ratified the next year. Women will wait 50 years for the 19th Amendment that gives them the vote nationally. 

*

I almost didn't go out this afternoon, but in the end did - just over to the river and along the west bank and back up Queens Ave. I took pictures, of course.

I doubt any will win me prizes, but at least I'm clicking the shutter.

*

I also continue to work on winter 2012 pictures. The river and the old town at the twilight hour continued to attract my lens in Girona as our week there wound down.

Back in Valencia, we were joined by Shelly Rowe after she'd spent a week in Barcelona with Shelley B. She had been sick with a cold in Barcelona. She suffered from some kind of stomach bug when she got to Valencia, but soldiered on with sightseeing like the trouper she is. These pictures were taken at the City of Arts & Sciences on the Umbracle, a raised promenade that is a venue for regular outdoor sculpture exhibits. Shelly seemed to fit right in with the colourful works on display that winter.