www.quondam.com/81/8103n.htm

Quondam's 28th Year Stephen Lauf

2024.02.13
A copy of Alexander B. Adams's John James Audubon: A Biography (1967) arrived with yesterday's mail. I had thought this was the Audubon biography I partially read in 2007, but now, after having read parts of Adams's book, something tells me it was a different biography that I had already read. In any case, Adams's Audubon biography is nonetheless a formidable work, although I have so far found no reference to Audubon's onwership and selling of slaves, particularly during Audubon's time living at Henderson, Kentucky roughly 1811-1820. However, after my concentrated reading within the near middle of the book, I decided to start reading the book from the beginning, and immediately recieved a shock in doing so. The very first paragraph of Chapter One reads:

"Although he sired two illegitimate children by different mistresses while his wife waited at home [in France], and also engaged in the brutal business of trafficing in slaves, Jean Audubon [father to John James Audubon], merchant and sea captain of the town of Les Cayes, was one of the most moral men in San Domingo [today Haiti]. In his sins, no matter how evil they may appear, he never fell below the accepted standards of the French colony; in his virtues he rose far above them, indeed far above those of most men in any place or at any time."

It is absolutely astonishing that, in just two sentences, Alexander B. Adams managed to committed a sin as evil as the business of trafficing in slaves itself, if not even more so.
To be continued...

2009.02.13
pragmatists turning political?
Is any of what you wrote above closely related to "architecture as delivery of content"?
imaginative
scientific
fictive
Are there architectures that perform assimilatingly? metabolically? osmotically? electro-magnetically? ultra-frequently?
per..........form
re..........present
re..........enact
ars ludi

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