ThePlagueYears

Spring in southern Ontario, it's so fickle. When I went out on an errand this morning, it was sunny and still. It felt wonderful. 

So when it was time for my run a little later, I dressed, I thought, accordingly: shorts, t-shirt, sweatshirt. It was freezing! The sun had gone in, a wind had sprung up. It was supposed to be 13C but felt at least five degrees colder. I was warm enough after five or ten minutes of exercise, but as soon as I slowed for my cool-down, the wind cut through me again.

It's 1864, and the cruel war is grinding toward its conclusion, though the outcome still remains uncertain. Plans, nevertheless, are already afoot in the north for post-bellum reconstruction of the south. Abolitionists rightly fear back-sliding on emancipation. Indeed, one proposal calls for freed slaves in Louisiana to be forced to stay on their current masters' estate and kept under slave-like discipline, albeit to work for a modest wage. 

Abolitionists, Douglass included, cry foul, accusing the Republicans of replacing slavery with serfdom. Lincoln is also balking at full suffrage for blacks that abolitionists are demanding, fearing it will turn away large racist elements among the Republican voter base. 

Another election is approaching. Lincoln is being challenged for the Republican nomination by a more radical anti-slavery candidate, and the Democrats are calling for a negotiated peace to end the war, playing on widespread war-weariness in the north as casualties mount. Douglass initially joins the anti-Lincoln critics, but then everything changes when the president invites him to the White House in April. 

In their meeting, Lincoln impresses and surprises Douglass with his commitment to full emancipation and his respect for Douglass. The president too, it turns out, is concerned about the fate of emancipation if the Democrats win and negotiate a peace. He proposes that Douglass help build a militarized underground railroad to spirit as many free slaves out of the south to Union lines and ultimately to the north before the election.

Douglass is in the process of planning how he will do this when news comes that Atlanta has fallen. It's the beginning of the end for the south. That's where I left off.

It's amazing how post-bellum southern romanticism - right up into our generation - has distorted the meaning of the fall of Atlanta and the other great military losses suffered by the Confederacy that ended the war. 

Those losses undercut the anti-war presidential campaign of the then pro-slavery Democrats, ensuring Lincoln would win. They also ensured the Confederacy would decisively lose, rather than be able to negotiate from a position of strength. The bottom line: it ensured millions of slaves would in fact be freed. 

But consider pop-culture representations of those events. They're always or often painted as tragedy - for the south. Think of Gone With The Wind in 1939. The fall of Atlanta no doubt was a tragedy - but the tragedy was that such destruction was ever necessary. Or think of one of the great anthems of the supposedly liberal 1960s, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." A great song, but it expresses regret for the passing of an old-south culture that condoned enslaving black people. 

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I did go out for a walk in the afternoon. A big loop through downtown and then to the Forks. I don't go far from home, and my photographic subjects don't vary much. Today's haul.

Alleyway between King and York streets

Downtown buildings reflected in mirrored glass of Lerner Law HQ

Fabulous blossoming trees at Forks of the Thames

At the Forks

Federal building off Queens Ave.

Provincial building off Talbot St.

Queens Ave. federal building - again

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Plus, I'm still working on pictures from winter 2012. Here's one more from the Mardi Gras-like parade in Ruzafa that we watched when Ralph was with us in February. This guy looks pretty happy in his bright yellow sequined coat.

I'm not sure where these two were taken, possibly at the old convent in  Carmen, near the main square, which has since been renovated and turned into an art display space.

And this is one I snapped in City Hall Square as we were wandering home one early evening. The square is ringed with florist stands. I didn't notice the woman's goofy grin until after I got the picture up on my computer.

That year, the place we rented in Valencia, was already booked for one week in the middle - for the big week of Fallas. It was a regular booking from Amstel Brewery, which is a sponsor of the event. Among other things, it sponsors one of the biggest Fallas displays at a street corner about a block from where we were staying. 

So for that week, we arranged to meet Shelley in Girona, north of Barcelona. Shelly Rowe also joined us. One evening, when the ladies were at our shared flat imbibing and nattering, I ambled out on my own in the gloaming and chanced upon the church of Santa Susana. It's not on any list of top five attractions of Girona, but it's a gem of modern Catholic church decor.