Sunday, November 18, 2018

Lincoln

 As I mentioned earlier, there are a few deciduous trees around Sevilla. I was struck by the fall colors along the river path today:


I wonder when they will re-grow their leaves. Sooner than the trees in Walla Walla? We'll see.

The boardwalk along part of the path has now been replaced with asphalt. Definitely a step up:


It remains to paint it green like all the other bike lanes in the city, haha.

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It rained a lot today. My walk was during a 2 hour break. There were some pretty vigorous downpours at times:



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Finally got around to watching the movie Lincoln today. It covers the last few months of the civil war and really focuses on the politics surrounding the passage of the 13th Amendment-the abolition of slavery. It was an interesting view of the politics of the age-certainly seedy and unseemly, but nowhere near the cesspool we see today. Lincoln and the other politicians pushing for the abolition of slavery act almost entirely out of principle with the legacy of the US at the forefront. A far cry from the zero sum game we see today. I thought to myself, it's hard to even imaging someone like Trump being in Lincoln's position during the Civil War. There's no doubt that he would have put the economic interests of the South above the abolition of slavery. Frankly, it's not just Trump, as a nation we've trained ourselves to view every issue through the lens of economics and growth. We've forgotten that if we act on principle, prosperity will follow. We've put the cart before the horse.