https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/negros-in-the-wild/id1527449560
Support this Podcast: https://anchor.fm/westaywild/support
19 September 2020
Drew John Ladd's "Negroes in the Wild" - on Apple and Spotify Podcasts
Life in a Juvie Facility
EASTERN
When I was a kid
the place where I lived
was a squat cinder block building
they called “the Cottage”.
Inside there was a rubber room
with thickly lined walls
one could slam ones’ self into
without really doing much harm.
I got to spend a bit of time there
when I was bad.
This was nothing like the room they used
the next door over
for the really bad kids.
When a really bad kid went into that room
the Counselors would call the rest of us together
in the hallway, outside the room
where we could look through the window in the door.
Through that window
we could see, four feet above the floor
the brown tinged blocks
as we would watch
a fresh application get added
to the otherwise white walls.
“If you are really bad
You’ll get to go in there too!”
lesson learned.
If you were only partly bad
You get the rubber room.
At least, there, you get to be left alone.
18 September 2020
Hiding History at Independence Hall
from Politico Magazine, an article penned by Ben Woffard
"Too often, Americans choose to venerate our Founding Fathers rather than remember the men, women and children they owned - Slaves. And it’s the absence of physical reminders of this ugly history that makes the forgetting of it that much easier.
 |
| Photo c. 2005 Will Brady |
"There are countless memorials and museums dedicated to our slave-owning founders, but 150 years after the Civil War, there still exists no federally funded museum dedicated solely to the memory of African-American slaves and the system under which they toiled. The mystery of the missing museums, while noted for years, has been revived again by the recent Confederate flag debate.
" There may, however, be a close contender, if only a meager one, for the first federally funded slave memorial: Tucked in a corner of Independence Mall in Philadelphia—home to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and nearby Constitution Center—lies what its creators say is the country’s only congressionally funded memorial on federal property to explicitly honor some of America’s early slaves.
" The history of the house itself is a microcosm of American origins. Historian, Edward Lawler, Jr. unearthed the forgotten history of the house.
"Lawler’s discovery sparked a fierce debate and public battle—over whether to memorialize the house and the slaves who lived there. The National Park Service, which oversaw the Independence National Historic Park, balked.
"A letter from park superintendent Martha Aikens explained that creating a memorial would inappropriately append the narrative of slavery to an exhibition, the nearby Liberty Bell Center, that was intended to convey the memory of freedom; this, in turn, would cause a “dissonance between the two features, potentially causing confusion for visitors,” Aikens wrote.
Roadmap
As a kid I was fascinated by maps, so much so cartography, after typesetting and lettering, became an avocation for me. And they did not have to be real places, they could be sites that exist purely within the mind. Here's one such site
Highway Series: How we view the wilderness
 |
| c. 2020 / will brady |
 |
| c. 2020 / will brady |
These are real sites, but shall go unidentified for they could be anywhere
For all too many of us, this is how we view the wilderness ~ as we fleetingly pass through it driving from one place to another, rarely seeing the true wilds that exists out there.
The Goodspeed Opera House
Most think of the Opera House as this dramatic white edifice on the edge of the Connecticut River next to the East Haddam/Goodspeed Swing Bridge. But at night, with artificial lighting and the shadows, the structure acquires an entirely different imagery
15 September 2020
Second Trail of Tears
The First "Trail of Tears" began during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, around 1831 and was the beginning of a genocidal forced migration of tens of thousands of people native to the North American continent before the Europeans. an era well documented, but conveniently ignored or forgotten by American historians
The second "Trail of Tears" occurred during the 20th Century "Great Depression"
The Tennessee Valley Authority appropriated lands in the river valleys that had been settled by some of the Cherokee nation during and after the first trail of tears.
This land grab did not get even a fraction of recognition.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)