Coal Shed

It probably was never painted. A rough, vertical plank structure, five feet square and eight feet high, including the foot of clearance it had from the ground, it probably was golden at one time but now was weathered to the shade that, had you been driving by would have appeared to be gray. Standing next to it, though, you could see that each plank was rich walnut brown highlighted with deep shadowed grooves between every swollen fiber of its grain. The upper ridges of those fibers were lit by the afternoon sun but still provided enough contrast to show off the motes of dust stirred into the sunlight by her approach. The afternoon warmth radiated from its surface to her outstretched palm. It had the kind of texture you could not refuse to touch but, if you dared brush your hand across it, it would lift large fat slivers away in the grooves of your own skin. It was so softened with age it would dent with the pressure of a fingernail. The open spaces between the planks and next to the floorboards were coated with coal dust. Coal grit and coal fragments lay around the foundation like a sort of mulch for weeds. It was a great place to stop in the middle of a meandering walk.

Sheet In The Breeze

It is passed by,
passed over,
passed under,
its cool dampness caressed by the wind.
It is pushed
and filled by the wind
but, unlike a sail, does not contain it. It billows,
dragging its corners through the air
until they overrun the body
and, in an instant,
reverse its concavity with a snap and a “thwop”.
In the briefest of moments the sheet
passes from resistance to acceptance,
in a flip, from distance to embrace.
It vainly attempts to hold the wind but
at the next turn
learns
not to care.

Historical "Facts"

I think historical truth is kind of like our economic system: both are very much based on confidence and consensus. Once a slide in confidence or a loss of consensus occurs in the underpinnings of our economy, we enter economic deflation. When the same happens on historical facts, discussions devolve into exchanged salvoes of lies, conspiracies and mistakes.

Wikipedia, in it's discussion of holocaust deniers, says: “According to researchers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, there is a "convergence of evidence" that proves that the Holocaust happened. This evidence includes:[22]
1. Written documents—hundreds of thousands of letters, memos, blueprints, orders, bills, speeches, articles, memoirs, and confessions.
2. Eyewitness testimony—accounts from survivors, Jewish Sonderkommandos (who were forced to help load bodies from the gas chambers into the crematoria in exchange for the promise of survival), SS guards, commandants, local townspeople, and even high-ranking Nazis who spoke openly about the mass murder of the Jews
3. Photographs—including official military and press photographs, civilian photographs, secret photographs taken by survivors, aerial photographs, German and Allied film footage, unofficial photographs taken by the German military.
4. The camps themselves—concentration camps, work camps, and extermination camps that still exist in varying degrees of originality and reconstruction
5. Inferential evidence—population demographics, reconstructed from the pre-World War II era; if six million Jews were not killed, what happened to them all? “

This is enough to convince me and most people but we are convinced because we have confidence that when we see such statements numerous times over many years without credible refutation they are true and because there is a huge consensus on that view. There are no first-hand empirical tests we can perform to demonstrate the truth of our convictions. When confidence in historical facts is eroded by one’s bigotries and biases and when the consensus of those with whom you associate supports different conclusions, unfortunately there are no objective facts or empirical tests that will override the lack of confidence or alternate consensus. We all should be careful to consider how convictions on historical truth are shaped by our sentiments, temperaments and biases - - - and by those with whom we associate.

Evolved Emancipation

April 14, 1832. “I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavoring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, with a frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been trained to degradation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal. “

This is not a quote from Abraham Lincoln or from an observer in America’s antebellum South. It is from Charles Darwin. He was in Brazil when he had this experience. The quote is only one of many expressing Darwin’s life-long outrage at slavery. When I came across it as I was reading The Voyage of the Beagle, it struck me by its personal and vulnerable perspective.

Upon reading it, maybe I should not have been surprised to learn that he and Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, were born on the same day 200 years ago. However, beyond shared views on slavery (and their preference to go unshaven), the similarities between Lincoln and Darwin would seem to be few. Lincoln was melancholy, ambitious, focused and fiercely protective of the American experiment in democracy. Darwin was curious, observant, adventuresome and often euphoric in his love of nature and its wonders; he had circled the globe before he was thirty. And, yet, they each had an incalculable influence on our world and I wonder what they would think of it today.

I often imagine bringing some historical figure forward in time to experience our world with all of its technology. In the case of Lincoln and Darwin I think I would forego bedazzling them with technology and would choose to bring them instead to Yosemite Park, a place I hold in reverence. Standing in grassy meadows surrounded by granite domes that were cut by water and glaciers over millions of years, I think Darwin would be enraptured by the immensity of time and its effects while Lincoln would see a metaphor of the strength of the Union that stretched from where he stood in California to the eastern seaboard. Both would see a country free of the degradation of slavery but I don’t imagine either would be satisfied with the status quo. They would both expect us to evolve.