A Cold Thursday

I wish the weather would make up it's mind whether it's spring or winter. It has become cold again and is 31 degrees this morning. I didn't sleep well last night. My feet cramped and I got up periodically to walk off the cramps. And my left arm aches too. So that means both arms feel like someone punched them in the muscle. If it isn't one thing it's another. The erysipelas isn't any better this morning. I guess I expected a miracle. It will probably take several weeks and I will be on the cephalexin for thirty days anyhow.

I hope to just stay in today. It is supposed to be pretty nasty. It may rain. That was in the forecast. And before the week is out, it may snow.

I wonder about my cat, Missy. Yesterday she raced around the house and drove me nuts. I finally told her if she didn't settle down I would put her outside where she could run off some of that energy. She settled right down. This morning she began doing the same thing and once again, I went into the bedroom and got an afghan and put it on the sofa and told her if she didn't settle down I would put her outside. Then I missed her and looked in the living room and she was on the afghan on the sofa lying down. I wonder if she really knows what I am saying.

I attended my PINCH meeting last night. There were 17 there. I got four volunteers to plan the Juneteenth celebration. Many people, especially Caucasians, are not even aware of it's significance.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free.

Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another, is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

All of which, or neither of these version could be true. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln's authority over the rebellious states was in question For whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.

General Order Number 3

One of General Granger’s first orders of business was to read to the people of Texas, General Order Number 3 which began most significantly with:

"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."

Of course that never really happened. In fact, while cleaning up after the meeting I asked one of our PINCH members, who has a phd, last night if things were better for African Americans nowadays then in the past. He replied, "Not really". That's a tragedy, isn't it?