Passages records the books I'm reading, the live music I'm hearing, and the movies I'm seeing. Every now and then I'll throw in a passage from a book I read a while back or a trailer from a old favorite movie. Occasionally, there is something that simply caught my eye. But most of it is what I'm reading and hearing and watching in real time.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Longbourn

This, she reflected, as she crossed the rainy yard, and strode out to the necessary house, and slopped the pot's contents down the hole, this was her duty, and she could find no satisfaction in it, and found it strange that anyone might think a person could. She rinsed the pot out at the pump and left it to freshen in the rain. If this was her duty, then she wanted someone else's.

Jo Baker, Longbourn (2013)

Sunday, January 12, 2014

When the white man governs himself that is self-government. But when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government -- that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal;' and that there can be be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

Abraham Lincoln, 1854

Sunday, January 5, 2014

The River Where America Began

By the mid-1670s, a new aristocracy was taking hold in Virginia, especially along the coveted James River waterfront reaches that wedded fertile farmland to a ready stream of ship-laden commerce and communications linking the Old World to the new. Over the next decade alone, a dozen well-placed planters secured royal patents to tracts ranging in size from ten thousand to fifty thousand acres. The rich got richer, moreover, often through insider schemes that manipulated, or outright defrauded the systems of head rights, taxation, custom duties, and land use in the young English foothold in America.

Bob Deans, The River Where America Began: A Journey Along The James

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

L. A. Noir

From the perspective of law enforcement,assaults on police officers were unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. So the police went back to look for the assailants. Most were picked up immediately and taken to Central Division for booking. Police kicked in the door of the last drinker involved in the brawl, Danny Rodela, at about 4 a.m. They dragged him out of bed, away from his screaming, pregnant wife, all while hitting him with a blackjack. Unfortunately, the men who were now in custody weren't the only people who'd been out drinking. So had a great many police officers of the city of Los Angeles.

John Buntin, L. A. Noir (2009)