WataugaWatch

Been reading a fair amount since Christmas, mainly a stack of good hardbacks that Santa Claus gifted me with. Here's a progress report:

The Hemingses of Monticello: An America Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed. I'm something of a Thomas Jefferson freak, so this massively researched history of the black slave Elizabeth Hemings and her many children, including most especially Jefferson's famous "concubine" Sally Hemings, was the first big thick book I picked up, and I devoured it like a hungry man eats a cold chicken sandwich. It's dense with historical and genealogical evidence but well worth the effort. I had already thought that Thomas Jefferson could not become more complicated, more compromised, more ... perversely human. But this book proved me wrong. The inter-racial shenanigans of slave-owning white Virginians, Jefferson most certainly included, have rarely been laid so bare for modern eyes. Seems certain that Jefferson did not start his decades-long affair with Sally Hemings until his wife Martha Wayles died. But get this: Martha Wayles' own father had originally owned Sally's slave mother Elizabeth Hemings, on whom he begat Sally. So the slave Sally Hemings and Jefferson's own wife Martha were in reality half-sisters. It gets even creepier than that. A man whose vision of democracy so informed the American Revolution also owned, in the most literal sense imaginable, several of his own children.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, by David Hajdu. With every current Hollywood blockbuster seemingly based on a comic book -- or "graphic novel," as they now prefer to be called -- today's teenager could be forgiven for not knowing that five and six decades ago comic books were a major target for government censorship and public extermination by the conservative forces of that day (which weren't in fact much different from the conservative forces of our day; only the primary targets have changed). Since I lived through my own scary purges, when my mother came up out of the depths of my cluttered closet with a fistful of my own precious comic-book contraband -- Weird Tales and Superman and Amazing Mysteries -- and burned them all before my eyes as the works of Satan, I could relate personally to this book's pop culture history. The lesson: public hysteria in America was (and still is) a powerful force to be reckoned with.

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird, by Bruce Barcott. Great introduction to the Central American nation of Belize, its endangered native species, and the bravery of a handful of conservation activists who are willing to stand up against the awful power of government and mega-corporations. Haven't quite finished this book, but so far it doesn't look promising for the little guys.

Labels: Annette Gordon-Reed, Belize, censorship, Sally Hemings, scarlet macaw, Thomas Jefferson

The N&O features a fairly insignificant article -- with a significant sidebar -- today on the howling of Republicans and of property-rights-over-all Constitutionalists that reform is needed for NC's laws allowing cities to involuntarily annex adjacent and overtaken neighborhoods.

Here's the money (from the sidebar):

THE PATHS THE LEGISLATURE MIGHT TAKE

The legislature has a menu of options if members decide to address the controversies over involuntary annexation.

MORATORIUM: Bills have already been filed to delay annexation in specific counties. A statewide moratorium cleared the House but died in the Senate last year.

REFERENDUM: Supporters of this option say that people have a right to determine their own fate and therefore should be allowed to vote on whether they are annexed into a city or town.

REVISE ANNEXATION PROCEDURES: This option has the most support in the legislature. The idea is to change the law to require cities and towns to give property owners more time and ways to react to an annexation proposal. Options include giving property owners more time to challenge an annexation and giving a commission the power to review annexations.

If I were an NC city administrator, and considering the lack of steel currently in the General Assembly, I think I could live with the last option (which, incidentally, "has the most support in the legislature"). But I'd also expect that moratorium while Option 3 gets written as legislation. Wouldn't you?

It would be a bad move to strangle North Carolina's vibrant little (and big) cities. But that's where this anti-annexation movement will arrive eventually. (And by the way, I idolize Thomas Jefferson a good deal MORE, I wager, than the people quoting him right now.)

Labels: North Carolina annexation laws, North Carolina legislature, Thomas Jefferson