Transcript at bottom of this post

I got this via Gwen, at Sociological Images, who says that:

Peter N. sent in an image that illustrates the social construction of race. He visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, and took a photo of a plaque on the wall that reprinted information published in the Johannesburg-based newspaper The Star on March 21, 1986. The article reported on changes in the official racial classification of over 1,000 South Africans in 1985.

For some reason the whole thing puts me in mind of Phila’s flea’s waltz:

Now, let’s put aside all this foolishness, and consider the delicate science of flea-training, as set forth by a nineteenth-century adept:

They are placed in a reversed position to each other – one looking one way, the other another way. Thus tied, they are placed in a sort of arena on the top of the musical box; at one end of the box sits an orchestra composed of fleas, each tied to its seat, and having the resemblance of some musical instrument tied on the foremost of their legs.

The box is made to play, the exhibitor touches each of the musicians with a bit of stick, and they all begin waving their hands about, as performing an elaborate piece of music. The fleas tied to the gold paper feel the jarring of the box below them, and begin to run round and round as fast as their little legs will carry them.

This is called the Flea’s Waltz.

You see why, don’t you?

Transcript of image below:

1985 had at least 1000 ”chameleons”

Political staff

PARLIAMENT – More than 1000 people officially changed colour last year.

They were reclassified from one race group to another by the stroke of a Government pen.

Details of what is dubbed “the chameleon dance” were given in reply to Opposition questions in Parliament.

The Minister of Horne Affairs, Mr Sluffel Bolha, disclosed that during 1985:

- 702 coloured people turned white.

- I9 whites became coloured

- One Indian became white,

- Three Chinese became white.

- 50 Indians became coloured.

- 43 coloureds became Indians.

- 21 Indians became Malay.

- 30 Malays went Indlan.

- 249 blacks became coloured.

- 20 coloureds became black

Two blacks became ‘other Asians’

One black was classified Griqua

I I coloureds became Chinese,

Three coloureds went Malay.

One Chinese became coloured

Eight Malays became coloured.

Three blacks were classed as Malay.

No blacks became white and no whites became black

The Star, 21 March, 1986

Some of the stories are amazing. The people are amazing. I’ll be writing about them in one way or another this month and probably beyond. There is a lot of material and my hope is that writing it out will help to settle it in my mind, particularly since there are other books to get through. I still don’t have the sense that I need of  knowing, of being able to walk the paths that my ancestors walked, or to even envision what the paths looked like. So, more to go. More to read.

Actually, I think maybe I am going about this all wrong. Well, not *all* wrong, but wrong enough. I have a few books on slavery and such checked out at the moment, some of them I’ve even renewed – after three weeks already of not reading them. One, Blassingame’s “The Slave Community” I rushed through this weekend – interrupting my reading of Bound for Canaan -because someone had it on request so I couldn’t renew it, but reading at that speed doesn’t allow for reflection and greater absorbsion. I do recall most of it, but it feels incomplete so I may have to check it out again in a few weeks.

Anyway, instead of just reading one right after another, probably it would be best to just read one, absorb it, write about it, look up related things and get to know *that* topic well, before moving on to the next. It might help me also imagine and write out or plot out scenes or chapters and such, too, so that I keep the book writing goal in mind.

“Sufficient unto the day… ”

I think, although I am not going to look it up, that the entire phrase is from the Christian and/or Jewish religious writings and it goes something like “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”, but my mind has not been supplying the fullness of the quote because “the evil thereof” is not material to whatever idea is trying to make its way out of my head. I don’t think.

I am not Christian or Jewish, for the record.

So what is the meaning it holds for me, if any? I am not sure, so why not talk it out and see what comes up?

Did you know the NYTimes had bloggers? I mean, other than the political and cultural/arts ones? I didn’t. Until yesterday. This may seem like a digression (from what, you ask, since you’ve not said anything yet?), but it’s not, exactly. See, I clicked on a link to a blogger who was headed off to a Zen Buddhist retreat and from there to another blogger who was a Zen Buddhist priest who’d recently returned from a Buddhist retreat, where he officiated (if that is the right word). The title of his post caught my eye. “For the time being”.

I am not Buddhist, for the record.

One of the ideas I have in draft – or, actually, a few because it’s a series – is about the life lessons learned from playing Spider Solitaire. Does that sound silly? It sort of does to me, even, though the desire to write them probably has more to do with making the wasted time mean something than that I have any great insights.

Others have to do with opening doors into the past – into ancestors, forbears, those that came before – that had, by me, been previously kept closed and jealously guarded because, well… the life of now was sufficient unto the day, for the time being.  Don’t look back. That’s always been fairly easy for me, because of my upbringing – moving a lot, new schools, new friends, new neighborhoods all the time – to move forward and not look back, although not without regret. This continued in a way as I got older and began my own somewhat unsettled existence. That’s changing now, because of the internet, which is another idea for a post I have, not even quite in draft form yet. I now have People In My Life. Consistently. The same ones, for years and years. It’s a very strange, though welcome, feeling.

I find I have little else to say and if there is any sort of meaning or sense in what I’ve said already, it’s escaped my notice. Still, I’ve never had a problem with randomly blathering on, so…

I’m think I’m just thinking that, perhaps, the day may not really be sufficient. For the time being.

Well, anyway, as I said – some birds are extremely clever. Some are, well, dodos. I’m not sure which category the bird that’s taken up residence in the courtyard outside my apartment fits in.

bird and cat

I first heard its raucous scolding a couple of days ago when one of the cats was padding up the stairs to hang out on a neighbors sunny balcony. The bird, far from seeking safety somewhere, was instead following it, hopping from step to banister, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, other times above – but always almost within reach. Strangely, the cat acted as if it wasn’t even there.

My first thought – the bird has a nest nearby and was attempting to distract the cat. I was all ready to grab my broom and shoo the dastardly feline away from any baby birds but she did nothing more strenuous than plop down in the sun and roll over.

I don’t know how much napping she got in because that bird continued to squawk nonstop.

This afternoon, much the same thing. Squawks and scolds and a cat lolling about on the grass in the courtyard outside my sliding glass door, completely ignoring the noisy little beast even when it hopped down right beside him, or perched on the bush above him in order to screech down invectives upon his head.

Or whatever it was doing. I’ve become convinced that there is no nest of baby tweeters that needs protecting – just one small, very noisy feathered creature with a Napolean complex.

I welcome now the setting of the sun because, with it, the thing finally shuts up.