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. 

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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.

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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.