Actually, Showed Great Restraint

Vigilance receded of course, during the winter.  They always warn you that the ticks are still out there in the winter, there just sluggish.  But there isn’t much of any grass for them to leap from as you’d imagine.  There are lots of dear.  But before the lawn started to grow again, I didn’t think much of ticks.  Now it’s up into your calves in places and one assumes, teeming with deer ticks. 

For the last month I’ve been throwing my pants and socks into the dryer and running it for a half an hour as a precaution.  I also look over my legs, my groin and my arm pits looking for any of the beasts.  Today I noticed something.  It was almost certainly, a hair follicle bump there in my arm pit.  I began to pick at it.  Then I got my razer and decided it was important to remove it.  This did not work.  I pulled and irritated this piece of skin tremendously.  I’m now “convinced” that it is not a tick.  There is, however, that one percent chance that remains: something’s up in there.

“Inhuman Bondage” by David Brion Davis traces the history of the slave from trade in the Americas, focusing on slavery in the United States.  Slavery in the ancient world through till the age of exploration had no particular racial prejudice.  Red-haired Thracians were the stock imagery to depict slaves in ancient Rome.  To be conquered was to confront the prospect of slavery.  The confrontation between Iberian Europe emerging from Muslim rule with the West African trade of gold and ivory and of men brought the first systemic effort by Europeans to cultivate crops in conquered lands with African slave labor. 

And it is remarkable to consider the awful duration of this terror wherein over twelve million people were brought to the New World, and centuries of trauma and to marvel at the nuances of how this dread was carried out in different jurisdictions.  Glad to spend time back in the Haitian revolution, thinking about the remarkable effort of Toussaint L’Ouverture and to learn about slave uprisings in Jamaica in Demerara, Guyana where the slave armies actually showed great restraint.   But, as noted by Fredrick Douglas there was the dull conclusion that all with the exception of Haiti, were ultimately crushed. 

Friday, 5/16/20