I have achieved virtually nothing today, other than making dinner.
I didn't read a page of any book, couldn't complete my cryptic crossword (one word to go), didn't get out for an afternoon walk (snowing and cold - it wasn't an excuse all through the winter so why is it now?) and didn't take a single photograph.
I did get out for a chilly power walk this morning, accompanied as always (and forever, it begins to seem) by the great Frederick Douglass. With Lincoln gone and the conservative - and racist - former VP Andrew Johnson in the White House, reconstruction in the south has been left largely in the hands of the states. (Johnson was an ardent states-righter.)
Vengeful whites in the south are blocking progress of former slaves and viciously attacking them. Former Confederates have begun to make their way into Washington power circles. Douglass realizes there is still much work to be done to ensure that freedmen don't fall into poverty and despair. It's a political battle royal fought between conservative Republicans like Johnson, supported by Democrats, and progressive Republicans, for whom Douglass becomes an unofficial, but influential, spokesperson.
He sees his new mission is to prevent the dilution of the benefits of emancipation, and hits the speaking circuit with a punishing schedule through 1866. At one point, he and other black leaders force an audience with Johnson. Douglass and Johnson spar, but no minds are changed. Johnson is livid that Douglass and the other black leaders are insisting on full suffrage for blacks. After the meeting, he spews racist invective against Douglass, all of it recorded by his secretary and later reported.
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I did work on a few more pictures from winter 2012, all taken near the river in Girona at dusk.
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