Accidental Haiku

I was picking off
the caterpillars when I
was stung by a bee.

Yippee

We are just back from Indianapolis, where our daughter and three of her teammates swam a fine 400 free relay and became Division III all Americans.

I didn't do quite so well, but at odd moments during the meet, I worked on the "Jim Crow in Columbia" piece of the present essay under construction. You'll see it posted as a separate page on this blog site. It runs about 4000 words, and to my mind, it is pleasingly self-contained.

To my mind today, that is. I may unravel it all tomorrow. Again, all opinions and suggestions welcome.

Jim Crow

After a long haitus during which my attention was fixed on my wife's health problems, I'm attempting to crank up the part of my brain that used to be engaged with Columbia's history. Over the last few days, I've pulled together the first section of a sixties chapter that I had been nibbling at last spring. The section gives a ground-level view of segregation as it was practiced in Columbia between 1927 and 1948. I'll post the current draft (about 2000 words) as a separate page on this blog, using the title "Jim Crow in Columbia." All comments and suggestions are welcome. Nothing motivates the writer of obscure history more surely than dicovering that somewhere he has an actual reader.