I Almost Forgot…

To start with the good. It’s sometimes far too easy, particularly in this line of work, to get caught up on the bad.

Like this morning, when I came across a historical paper that was so bad, so unbelievable that I rushed to write it up and link to it – and just stopped myself from clicking “publish” at the last-minute. When I remembered about the good; about teaspoons and shovels.

So, what’s the good for today? We are. All of us, of course (unless we are not) but Black folks in particular, for my purposes. (Even to write that – “Black people are good” – feels almost transgressive and bold, in the face of all that society imputes to us. I think I will write it more often.)

We didn’t lay down and die. Have never laid down and died, never given up, no matter what has been thrown at us, no matter how much some may have wanted to.

That’s one reason I want to begin and end each day on a positive note – to honor those survivors and thrivers who came before, those who exist today and those who will come tomorrow.

I need to expand on this thought and refine it when I have a quiet moment. There are important (to me) parts which I am unable to tease out right now, but I will one day.

[Note: the picture at the top is from here. The writing on the picture is too small for me to read on this device, so I don’t know who painted it. But full credit to whoever it is.)

Black History by the Shovel Full

I love this:

Those interested in understanding the daily lives of slaves are likely to learn more by shoveling dirt than reading through the written records of America’s plantations, Joe L. Speight told an audience at the Camden County Historical Society (CCHS) yesterday.

(Well, “yesterday” being in Febuary 2002, but still – when you’re talking centuries a few years here or there don’t matter much.)

“I am always encouraging African-American students to think about getting involved in archaeology because excavated artifacts provide more accurate information about the slave experience,” said Speight, a retired DuPont chemist who has studied art and archaeology at Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania.

“The records that exist about slaves were always written from the point of view of the slave master,” he said. “Those records are biased. Their authors often misunderstood what they were seeing and often misrepresented what they recorded. A large part of the daily reality of slaves was never documented and never even seen by slave owners,” Speight said.

Never even seen…

Read about the pipes, too. I’ll have more to say on that at a later date, but it’s lovely.