A father of somesort

I'm taking my big vacation of the year now in Maryland, visiting old friends and seeing some relatives.  I think I forget how relaxing vacations can be.  We've done a little sightseeing and a lot just chilling.  I've plunged into reading Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee and have been savoring the joys of chopping through a book pieces by pieces.  Especially one as good as this one, an Asian American thriller of sorts.

The other day my friend and I went to Mount Vernon, the plantation of our first president.  His home is a bit like a cross between museum and tourist villa.  At least there is no animatronic George and Martha, but there were mini theaters throughout playing mini videos like a short film narrated by Glen Close about George and Martha's relationship.  As much as the place tried to sanctify Washington, it still felt to me like they were grasping at straws to create somekind of American royalty.  Unfortunately, I think American royalty is vested still with the super weathly, not necessarily those with lucky birthrights.  That was hightlighted clearly enough to me that just two generations or so after Washington, his family was selling the property because they could not afford to upkeep it and it was in horrible disrepair.  So much for sacred ground.

I came away with a big dissapointment in Washington though.  The writers of this George Washington story tried to give respectful concession to the fact that Washington was a slave owner, and though he freed his slaves he didn't want to rock the boat by pressing slavery as an issue in the founding of the nation, nor did he try to free his slaves before his death or do anything to free the slaves under his wife's estate.  He thought it was an evil practice, but not evil enough to sacrifice the butt-loads of money he was making off the free labor.  As much as they'd like us to think he was hopefully a kind master, even his very skilled chef who cooked for him in the White House eventually escaped.  Owning people is bad news.  Their ain't no respect to be had in it.

Tomorrow we head out to spend 3 days in NYC.  I'm excited as this will be the first time I really get to experience the city.  Albeit as a tourist.  But that is something I expect to live up for my three days.  I planned for us to see a simulcast of Carmen in Lincoln Center Plaza.  Aw, now there is so good music to be had.  Entertaining anyway.

I leave you, my like two faithful readers, with a passageabout Flushing, Queens from Native Son:

"The people were thin, even when they looked almost fat they were thin, drawn as they were about their necks and faces.  Even this early they were smoking cigarettes and cigars.  The steam of fumes, other fires.  Breathing it in.  They were always loading and unloading the light trucks and cube vans of strapled wooden crates and burlap sacks, the bulging bags of produce like turnips or jicama as heavy on their sloping shoulders as the bodies of their children still sleeping at home.  They were of all kinds, these streaming and working and dealing, these various platoons of Koreans, Indians, Vietnamese, Haitians, Columbians, Nigerians, these hrown and yellow whatevers, whoevers, countless unheard nobodies, each offering to the marketplace their gross of kimchee, lichee, plantain, black bean, soy milk, coconut milk, ginger, grouper, ahi, yellow curry, cuchifrito, jalapeno, their everytyhing, selling anything to each other and to themselves, every day of the year, and every minute."