Not a lot to report

Monday and Tuesday were pretty routine. Monday the cleaners came - not as early as we thought, but Emma was home with Betsey and Ellen and I went into Boulder. I went to the Library as usual, this time my focus was John Hope Franklin, an African-American historian. He figures into the whole Knopf story I've been working on. I read an essay by him on Thomas Dixon's novel The Klansmen, which was the basis for W. D. Griffith's epic silent film, Birth of a Nation. Franklin's essay was titled Propaganda as History, which tells you his take on both the novel and the film. Both are filled with inaccuracies, misinterpretations and outright lies. I also read an essay by him which was an overview of the historiography of the Reconstruction era, which I guess remains to this day one of the most controversial periods of U.S.  history, and what happened in the South in that era is still playing out today in Charleston, Ferguson, etc. It is not a period of history I feel I know very well. I'd like to do more reading in it.

John Hope Franklin

Reading Franklin inspired me to look up Birth of a Nation on YouTube, and sure enough, it's there, in its entirety. I don't think I've ever watched it. We started to watch it Monday night, but Ellen went to sleep almost immediately and I only lasted 30 minutes or so.

Tuesday, I stayed home to edit and Ellen went into town. Emma took Betsey to work and then Ellen and I picked her up and brought her home. Betsey meditated after she got home, Ellen fixed supper, and we watched episodes of "Chopped" - the Grill Master series - in the evening. Very entertaining! Then after we retired, we watched a documentary on the history of the Black Community in Elgin, IL that Carol Plagge sent us. It tells the story of the original "contrabanders"  -  a group of about 100 slaves freed by the military during the Civil War - who were sent from Corinth, MS to Cairo, IL in boxcars, and then sent to Elgin for resettlement. They formed a community in Elgin that came to be called "The Settlement," almost a ghetto, but not entirely. They had a tough time of it initially, despite some help from sympathetic whites, but their descendents overcame many barriers, thrived, went on to hold important positions in the commercial, educational and governmental life of Elgin. It was quite a story and well-told. And it sort of played into what I had been reading.

In the midst of everything I've also read The Handome Man's Deluxe Cafe, Alexander McCall Smith's latest in the Mma Romatswe series. Fun. 

Today, Emma took Betsey to Physical Therapy this morning and then on to work.We'll be picking her up at 2pm this afternoon. 

Well, maybe there was more to report than I initially thought!