4/26

 Sunday, April 26, 2026

1954 Mass trials of Jonas Salk's anti-polio vaccine began

2019 "No religion" topped a survey of American religious identity for the first time at 23.1%, edging out Catholics 23.0% and evangelicals 22.5%, in the General Social Survey

2023 Joe Biden announced his bid for a second term, saying he has a “job to finish” 

2023 E. Jean Carroll testified in a NY court that Donald Trump raped her

In bed at 9:05, awake at 4:30, up at 4:45; 0500 125/56/30 127 207.2; 41/54/41. cloudy all day

Morning meds at 8:30 a.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at 5:35 a.m.

White House Correspondents Dinner.  This morning, we are waiting for more information about the man arrested just past the perimeter of last night's dinner.  We know his name, Cole Tomas Allen, supposedly a game developer and teacher of some sort, from Torrence, California a suburb of Los Angeles.  I went to bed last night at 9 without waiting for Trump's presser.

JJA's FB post re the Whitney Plantation and my note:

Jan's comment:

On my day to choose an excursion (Larry chose the previous day’s visit to Chalmette Battlefield), we spent an afternoon touring the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana. It is owned and operated by the Whitney Institute, a nonprofit organization, whose mission is the to educate the public about the history and enduring legacies of slavery in the United States.

I’ve always avoided plantation tours. I never wanted to contribute—even indirectly—to the romanticizing of a way of life built on the evil and brutality of slavery. But visiting Whitney Plantation was something entirely different. The Whitney Plantation is a 200 acre former sugar plantation turned historic site dedicated to telling the history of slavery in the United States from the perspective of the enslaved people who built America’s wealth.

Originally established in 1752 by Ambroise Heidel as a small indigo plantation, it relied from the beginning on the forced labor and expertise of enslaved Africans—many taken from regions in West Africa where rice and indigo cultivation were already deeply understood. As the Heidel family became the Haydels and the plantation transitioned to sugar production around 1800, the scale—and cruelty—intensified. Sugar was a notoriously brutal crop; it demanded longer hours, harsher conditions, and a rapidly expanding enslaved population. Families were torn apart. For many, being sold south to Louisiana was considered a death sentence.

By the mid-19th century, under Azelie Haydel, the plantation was at its most profitable—over 100 enslaved people producing hundreds of thousands of pounds of sugar each year. That wealth came at an unimaginable human cost. Enslaved men, women, and children labored in the fields, in the sugar mill, with livestock, and inside the home. They were skilled workers, parents, and individuals with lives and identities far beyond the roles forced upon them.

One story that stays with me is Anna’s. Enslaved and working in the main house, she was sexually assaulted by a member of the Haydel family and gave birth to a son, Victor—who was both enslaved and biologically related to his enslavers. Victor lived most of his life on that plantation. His descendants include civil rights leaders like Sybil Haydel Morial and Marc Morial (current president of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans) - a  powerful reminder that this history is not distant but rather it is living, present, and deeply connected to our world today.

After the Civil War, the plantation was renamed Whitney, and it continued operating well into the 20th century. Whitney doesn’t gloss over any of this. It doesn’t sanitize or soften the truth. It centers the lives, labor, and suffering of the enslaved people who made everything else possible. It tells the story that so many other places have historically chosen not to.

I’m still wary of how history can be presented in these spaces—but this felt like something else entirely: not a celebration, but a reckoning.

And that matters.

 Charles D. Clausen

Thank you so much for posting your reflections and these photos. I had read some years ago of this famous and infamous slave labor camp, for such all so-called "plantations" were, and I wished I could visit it, to see what you and Larry saw and read what you read. I knew from what I had read that sugar was even harder for slaves to toil with than cotton in the Deep South and tobacco elsewhere. You have a much keener understanding and appreciation than most of us of the real horrors that the institution of slavery visited upon its victims. I think that most of us were fooled by the "Gone With the Wind" depiction of it, with Hattie McDaniel as Mammy and Butterfly McQueen as Prissy. Slavery played an essential role in the development of American capitalism and our finance industry, the enslaved serving as the enslavers' capital and collateral supporting the evil institution's financing and expansion. We're still suffering from its effects. Thanks again.

The leader of the free world 

Notes from Underground.  I'm halfway through this novella and wondering why I'm reading it.  For no reason other than its renowned author, I'm feeling a bit compelled to finish it, but I suspect I will regret it.  I'm not enjoying it.  So far, I'm getting nothing out of the reading, or rather the listening, since I'm listening to more of it than I've read so far.  The "hero" is an anti-hero, a pathetic, self-loathing and other-loathing 40 year old with the darkest outlook on the world on himself and on others.  He reminds me of a story I read once many years ago in a book by Anthony DeMello.  A man is walking along a road looking for a place to settle down.  At a fork in the road, he comes upon an old wise man whom he asks, 'What are the people like in the town where this road to the right leads?'  The wise man asks, 'What were the people like in the town where you used to live?'  The man answers, "Oh, there were a terrible lot.  Nasty, selfish, gossipy, deceitful, just awful.'  The wise man said, 'The people in the town to the right are just the same.  A second man comes along later and asks the same question, which the wise follows with his same question.  This man answers, 'They were lovely people, kind, thoughtful, generous, good neigbors,'  and the wise man said, 'The people in the town to the right are just the same.'  In other words, attitude is everything, or, at least, how we view people and the world depends in great measure on how we look upon the world, with what kind of predisposition, through what kind of lens we view the world.  Dostoevski wrote Notes in 1864.  He wrote The Idiot later.  In the former, the nameless Underground Man sees the world through a very dark lens.  In the latter, Prince Myshkin looked through rose-colored glasses.  It's been many years now, but it seems to me that I enjoyed both Crimes and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov as I was reading them.  Not so much with The Idiot, and not at all (so far at least) with Notes from Underground.😕

In the current The Atlantic on-line:

How Netanyahu Hurt America’s Jews

The Israeli prime minister’s focus is, as always, on himself and his near-term political needs. The plight of American Jews is simply not his concern. By Michael A. Cohen

The relationship between the United States and Israel is in crisis. Six in 10 Americans have a negative view of Israel, and a majority of those under 50 in both major parties view Israel as well as its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, negatively. After the brutal Gaza war, a large percentage of liberal-leaning Generation Z considers Israel a pariah state. Democratic candidates are scrambling to distance themselves from Israel and its controversial leader; earlier this month, 40 of the 47 Democratic senators voted against a military aid package for the country. And hostility toward Israel is spilling over into hostility toward Jews. Liberal influencers, activists, podcasters, and even politicians are invoking age-old anti-Semitic tropes with frightening regularity.

Yet what is for American Jews the worst of times is, from Netanyahu’s perspective, the best of times. His more than a decade of meddling in American politics on behalf of Republican candidates and key GOP constituencies has, over the past few weeks, paid remarkable dividends. In the skies over Iran, Israeli and American pilots flew side by side. For a prime minister who has long viewed Iran as an existential threat, this was a historic achievement.

In putting all his chips on President Trump, though, Netanyahu has exacerbated the deep and growing divide between Israel and the Democratic Party.

This growing distance could create a problem for Israel if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, but it creates a far more immediate problem for American Jews. 

Diaspora Jews have, for much of the past century, found a home within both the Democratic Party and also progressive social, cultural, and institutional spaces. But since October 7, 2023, that sense of belonging has been shattered. American Jews are under attack from liberal and progressive activists who are stridently anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and in some cases anti-Semitic.

In pursuing Israel’s interests at the expense of American Jews, Netanyahu has put the world’s largest community of diaspora Jews in a terrible bind, caught between support for Israel and its liberal allies. 

And, it seems, he couldn’t care less.

. . . 

For much of Israel’s early history, American Jewish leaders were more involved in supporting Israel or weighing in on questions related to Jewish identity than they were in security-related issues. That changed most dramatically in the 1990s with the signing of the Oslo Accords, in 1993. Hawkish American Jews opposed the deal and lobbied Congress to place conditions on aid to the newly created Palestinian Authority. Their efforts were supported by Netanyahu, in what was at the time an unprecedented effort to politicize the American Jewish community.

For me, Israel's best hope for the future died when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a supporter of settlers and settlement, in 1995.

A prime minister who saw American Jews as more than an instrument for furthering Israel’s security but as “partners in building the Jewish future,” as he told American Jews more than a decade ago, would take his responsibilities to the American Jewish community more seriously. He would take into account how Israel’s actions boomerang against diaspora Jews and empower anti-Semites. He would seek to depoliticize the U.S.-Israel relationship and ensure that American Jews are not forced to choose between their Jewish identity and the progressive and political spaces they’ve long called home.

But Netanyahu hasn’t—and he won’t. Bibi’s focus is, as always, on himself and his near-term political needs. The plight of American Jews is simply not his concern.