Thanks, Maureen. I think I recall you making a similar comment when I published this last year... I could write an interesting piece, I think, but I'm not sure the world needs another book on racist history by a white guy. It requires at the very least a stronger journalistic approach than I usually do. The story does need to be properly told. Thank you for the compliment of thinking I'm the guy for the job.
Thanks for this, Jason. What a story. Beautiful and sad. And, yeah, more and more I'm finding that as an ecologist who cares about land and people, it's hard to escape what we've known for so long: the ascendency and amazing versatility of capitalism (what you wrote as "machinery of capitalism and colonialism "). It's just been so damned good at adapting for exploitation of land and labor. I'm working it in to more of my writing (or trying to do so, and not yet succeeding), but I'm learning.
As long as you're an ecologist who cares about land and people, Bryan, I think that what you write about doesn't matter as much as the caring. It can be good to describe the machine, but you have more to say about the butterfly in its path than I ever will.
The Malaga story is a hard one. Or maybe it feels the more stark for being in my back yard, in a place not known for that kind of brutality. Not known, I should say, in this culture of not looking back particularly hard at our treatment of the Wabanaki or our involvement in the slave trade, etc.
Another really great essay. Unknown history for me, but woefully familiar, what with the way minorities have always been treated and the environment despoiled. The exhumations and too few caskets were a low water mark though... With humans it's always bully or be bullied, exploit or be exploited. That's who we've been. Maybe we can do better though...
Lovely history and commentary on Malaga, and with your family connections, you should write the nonfiction book that this history deserves!
Thanks, Maureen. I think I recall you making a similar comment when I published this last year... I could write an interesting piece, I think, but I'm not sure the world needs another book on racist history by a white guy. It requires at the very least a stronger journalistic approach than I usually do. The story does need to be properly told. Thank you for the compliment of thinking I'm the guy for the job.
Thanks for this, Jason. What a story. Beautiful and sad. And, yeah, more and more I'm finding that as an ecologist who cares about land and people, it's hard to escape what we've known for so long: the ascendency and amazing versatility of capitalism (what you wrote as "machinery of capitalism and colonialism "). It's just been so damned good at adapting for exploitation of land and labor. I'm working it in to more of my writing (or trying to do so, and not yet succeeding), but I'm learning.
As long as you're an ecologist who cares about land and people, Bryan, I think that what you write about doesn't matter as much as the caring. It can be good to describe the machine, but you have more to say about the butterfly in its path than I ever will.
The Malaga story is a hard one. Or maybe it feels the more stark for being in my back yard, in a place not known for that kind of brutality. Not known, I should say, in this culture of not looking back particularly hard at our treatment of the Wabanaki or our involvement in the slave trade, etc.
Thanks as always for your thoughts on my work.
Another really great essay. Unknown history for me, but woefully familiar, what with the way minorities have always been treated and the environment despoiled. The exhumations and too few caskets were a low water mark though... With humans it's always bully or be bullied, exploit or be exploited. That's who we've been. Maybe we can do better though...