Presidents Day. One of the most conflicted holidays in America. Today we celebrate one man who fought hard to maintain his right to maintain slaves and another man who stood up to the nation and freed the slaves. Or we could look at it as a celebration of the man who fought for our nation and the man who made it worth having fought for in the first place. Too bad they did it in the wrong order. Had Lincoln been alive in 1770 for the Boston Massacre (and the right age, involved in politics, in the right place at the right time, etc.) maybe he would have made abolishing slavery a primary tenant for the war against England. But we just had the Virginians fighting a silly war over taxes and tariffs. We could have had one great war fighting for ethics and the good of mankind. But instead we had a war over money and then, many years later, a massive internal war to fix the problems from the first one. How sad.
Even if we disregard the cost to human life the economic impact of inefficient slave labour and the vacuum of the workforce created by forcing a significant portion of the population to work in the world’s least efficient system while needing a large number of slave drivers doing a completely economically worthless job to force the first group to work inefficiently while industry all over the country was hungry for labourers had a likely devastating effect on the financial power of our nation. Had we not needed the Civil War imagine what five extra years of non-war would have done for our young nation! And imagine what ninety years of a larger and more efficient work force would have done for us! And imagine how much more powerful we would have been in the War of 1812! As it was we almost lost. We took a pretty big risk on that one.
Dominica and I hung around in Frankfort with Min’s mom until just after five in the afternoon. She is still in a lot of pain and isn’t scheduled to have the surgery to have her left wrist reconstructed until Thursday of this week. She is going to need multiple pins and a titanium plate to keep her wrist together. Until then she just has her wrist in a wrap and in a sling to keep it as immobile as possible. It is really hard for her to do anything including just watching television as nothing is comfortable.
Oreo and Dexter had a good time hanging out and playing together. Boston Terriers are just so cute in groups!
The drive home went quickly and easily. We hit almost no slowed traffic and were back into Newark around nine in the evening. Dominica and I took it easy and just watched a little Are You Being Served? before going to bed. Oreo was very glad to be home.