Day 8: I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas

Christmas Day it rained. All day. Heavy rain. A few interludes, but mostly drenching, constant rain. The locals say this is the way it usually is in November, but by the end of December, the rainy season should have ended. The locals say the rainy season has been getting longer, extending into January, and they blame it on climate change. I can't say they're wrong.

No big deal, though. Nothing is open on Christmas day, anyway. And you can sit outside, under cover, and it's perfectly pleasant, watch the ocean, down some rum, and scribble scribble scribble.

Christmas dinner we had an open house; for us, our hosts, Reggie (the Sargent's property manager), his fourteen-year old daughter Cassandra, and Caroline. Reggie was shy and seemed a little uncomfortable. Caroline was the first white person I've heard talk with a Tobagan accent; she was born here and has lived here all her life, except for college in Canada. Nice dinner; I peeled the potatoes, as befits an Irishman, but it didn't get me out of paying the bill.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The members of Turning Point USA at UNL.

 Turning Point USA love lists. They have a long-standing list of faculty who have not hewn to the conservative way, either by writing stuff unfavorable to Donald Trump, or teaching things conservatives don't want to hear. So, in the spirit of listing and transparency, these are their current members at UNL.  This group funded some of the terrorists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Alexander Burkhard Andrew Shelburn Benjamin Terry (their faculty advisor, from the College of Engineering) Carson Scott Christian Simmons Christine Stulken Christine Discenza Dan Mathews Dawson Coudriet Dominic Naughtin Eleanor Kenkel Ethan Nelson Faith Santana Garrett Cantrell Grant Carstens Hayley Brakefield Izzy Rosegrant Jack O'Dell Jackson Towne Jacob Benton Jordan Minderman Josie Dostal Kaitlyn Nein Kevin Coffey Kiara Kearney Kirby Hughes Madison Talbert Matthew Berringer Nancy Nguyen Ryan Barragan Sam Gilbert Sarah Pagano Sierra Schroeder Sofia Heggem Taylor Tunnison William Beck
Read more

The Fortenberry slaves: a prelude

Image
Toiling in the mid-morning sun, in a hot, muddy cotton field in Copiah County, in the south of Mississippi, three young African American men, brothers, aged 18, 20 and 22, hoed the rows. It was late June, 1860, and so the men were slaves. The ground was wet from yesterday’s rain, the air heavy, and the men were anxious to finish their work before the clouds gathering on the western horizon flooded the fields with another summer cloudburst. Inside the plantation house, unbeknownst to them, they were being enumerated . James R Fortenberry, the slave-holder, a man of about 35, was listing their important personal details to Elijah Peyton, Assistant Marshall. These details were three; age, gender, and race. The race was officially ‘mulatto’; at that time, and in that place, mulattos were usually the sons or daughters of a black woman raped by a white slave-holder. They had no names, as far as the United States Government was concerned. Instead they would be listed, in Peyton’s elegant,
Read more

Dan Whitney, aka Larry the Cable Guy, a short biography

Image
I have known of Dan Whitney, Larry the Cable Guy , longer than most people have. In the car on the way into work at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, we used to listen to one of the usual mostly-talk rock radio shows. Larry would quite regularly call in. His accent fascinated me. Probably because I’ve lived in so many places, I like to try to place accents. Larry the Cable Git's accent was vaguely southern, or was meant to be southern, but I couldn’t place it anywhere in particular in the South. In any case, he’d distorted it so much you could make out only half of what he was saying.  What he was saying was mumbled, consciously transgressive hate.  Later on, I discovered he was was born and grew up in Pawnee City Nebraska, until his preacher daddy hauled him down to Florida. It’s a long story… (1) Daddy issues Daniel Lawrence Whitney, better known by his stage name and character Larry the Cable Guy, was born on February 17, 1963 in Pawnee City, Nebraska, to the Reverend Thoma
Read more