Left High-and-Dry

Finished off the last of about a dozen or so books I’d bought on the Congo.  “Congo Inc.” by In Koli Jean Bofane was certainly one of the more memorable novels amidst the sampling.  Not least because it incorporated a central Chinese character into the story and interestingly offered up the chapter titles in English and in Chinese characters.  Isookanga is a Pygmy trying to make his way in the big city, Kinshasa.  He winds up befriending Zhang Xia who has been left high-and-dry by an unscrupulous business partner, who has fled back to China without him.  They fall in with a group of street urchins in the public market and when an improbable hostage scene unfolds it all gets understandably complicated as they notice the gang has a Chinese advisor who is offering tactical commentary steeped in his understandably Maoist education. 

Teaching my daughters, the American history text, chapter by chapter, these past few months, I’ve taken to noting books I’d like to read into Amazon.  There are too many titles across hundreds of years, so I’ve settled on a theme to organize the initial thrust into this material: slavery and its aftermath.  I don’t know how I go this far and never actually read Fredrick Douglas account of his life, or the work of Booker T. Washington or W. E. B. DuBois.  Shamefacedly in retrospect, I drove by a sign designating the birthplace of W. E. B. DuBois not too long ago, near Great Barrington MA., and only had the vaguest notion of how fit in to the thread of the tradition, or what his specific contributions, (such as starting the NAACP) were. 

I also secured three history texts, which were recommended: “Inhuman Bondage” by David Brion Davis which traces the history of the ‘peculiar institution’ in the New World.  “Reconstruction 1863-1877” by Eric Foner picks up the thread from the Emancipation Proclamation to explore America’s “unfinished revolution.”  “A Nation Under Our Feet” by Steven Hahn won the Pulitzer in 2004 and traces African American history and their remarkable northward migration for the six decades after the Civil War. 

I have a call in ten minutes.  China’s off this week, for the May holiday.  So is Japan and South Korea.  Business is quiet which is always restful and unnerving in equal measure.  I bought a traditional scale that swings to define pounds, settling upon a number shortly after you’ve mounted it.  I don’t like what it said.  It can’t be true.  This isn’t just vanity.  Indeed, the natural resting position of this, my new scale, seems to be just north of five pounds.  But even when I subtract that amount from what I’m seeing I am highly suspicious as to the accuracy.  And, if one scale doesn’t suit you why just go out and find one that tells you a better story. 

I hadn’t heard of Joseph Lamb before.  An American Ragtime composer of Irish decent, known as one of the Big Three classic composers of Ragtime, the other’s being Scott Joplin and James Scott, he's been on the air today.  After listening to nothing by “classical” music for the last few months, it strikes one how revolutionary this must have sounded.  Spotify has a collection of his works and before the song “Contentment” he actually speaks with a wonderful, to my ears New York accent, (Yes!  Born in Montclair, NJ) describing how he came to name the tune. 

Before I go, I’d like to add that, negotiating a proposal on the phone just now, what I assume was a Red-Tailed Hawk, broke off its holding pattern in the sky and dove down into the yard.  I don’t know just what his “hawk eye” vision had spotted.  There wasn’t much besides a blue jay that I could see.   His wing span is enormous, when fully unfurled, only thirty feet before you.  But that was it.  After a brief moment, he returned to the sky and mightily, though perhaps a bit sheepishly as well, flew away.  

Wednesday 05/06/20