Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader announced his candidacy for President this morning. I agree with Nader on almost everything, except for nuclear power. Nuclear power, along with wind and solar, needs to be the future of our energy use. What needs to be off the table is biofuels which will lead to deforestation, use of land needed for food production, and further soil depletion. This is not to say that a few people cannot heat their homes with woodstoves, but on a large scale this is a very bad idea. What needs to be stopped completely is the use of fossil fuels. They will continue to worsen the state of our atmosphere more and more the longer we use them.

Birth of Black America II

The people brought to Jamestown in 1619 from Angola, having been taken off a slave ship by a pirate ship, apparently all ended up free one way or another, although some of their descendants remained enslaved. The English settlers over the next eight or nine decades gradually made it harder for black people to gain freedom, although slavery did not reach its full legal status until 1705.

I do not fully understand this whole process, even after finishing the book. The authour writes only what can be documented, and sometimes people's motives are not clear from the written records. I can only say that the book is well worth reading, even if, like a lot of history, it is often depressing. The hope that the Angolan people in Virginia might have developed was gradually taken away by changes in laws and customs during the course of the 1600's.