Spring is back

Another day with no blog post yesterday. I'm trying not to be quite so OCD about it. 

I did have a fairly productive day photographically, though. In the morning, I worked on pictures from winter 2013 in Arizona. I found the shots I'd taken at a pop-up butterfly exhibition sponsored by the University of Arizona. Ralph Lutes was staying with us then. 

I can't remember where it was, not at the university - somewhere west of our house, I seem to remember. They had elaborate security in place to ensure none of the butterflies and moths escaped when visitors came in. Some of them were fairly rare. The space was very warm and humid. The bugs were fluttering around free. At the time, I think we learned the names of some, but I've forgotten them now.

Then in the afternoon, I went for a walk: down the east side of the north branch to St. James St., and across to Helmuth Ave., possibly one of the prettiest streets in the old north. Some of the spring gardens - and of course, the flowering trees - I spotted were spectacular. 

Finally, in the evening, bored, I idly scrolled through some very old pictures, from back at the dawn of the digital era. I came across some I'd taken in 2000 of Caitlin in our back yard on West Mile. My editor at The Toronto Star had asked me to provide a picture he could run with the column Caitlin was to begin writing for The Star's "Fast Forward" section - a kid's take on the technology revolution. 

I'm not sure which camera I used to take the pictures, or whether they were eventually used in the paper. I think one was. They are so Caitlin-at-15: bored, skeptical, impatient - or affecting those attitudes. And of course, absolutely gorgeous, without having any clue that was the case.

*

I did get out earlier in the morning yesterday for a run with Fred Douglass. Most of the day's passage was taken up with the European tour Douglass took with his new bride in 1886(?). This was after he had been replaced as Recorder of Deeds by the new Democratic president, Grover Cleveland. It ended up being an eleven-months trip. It took them first to England - where he visited old abolitionist pals, including Julia Griffiths - then to France, Italy, Egypt and Greece, before retracing their steps, taking in different cities in Italy.

Douglass didn't write much about it while travelling, but when he came home, he delivered many travelogue speeches. That was what today's passage was partly about  when I went out for my morning exercise. It also treated Douglass's continuing bitter resistance to the idea of reconciliation with the South, and the notion that blacks should split their vote between the two parties to increase their leverage. The Democrats were still the devil's spawn, the Republicans the only party for blacks. (How things have changed!)

Then came the 1888 election. Douglass stumped for the Republican presidential candidate, Benjamin Harrison, a choice about which he had deep misgivings. He also bitterly feuded with some black leaders, especially John Mercer Langston whose nomination as a Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia Douglass opposed, mainly, it seems, on grounds of personal animosity. The man was not perfect. He had an ego on him.

Harrison won by Electoral College vote, even though he lost the popular vote.