Reasons for hope

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been documenting the evolution of Virginia's Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, who since provoking controversy last year by promoting Confederate History Month (which also provoked a string of brilliant posts by Coates about Civil War history from the perspective of slaves and freedmen), has made a real effort to turn himself around on the issue. TNC wrote a few days ago about the latest sign of this: "Virginia will preserve a Richmond burial ground that holds the graves of slaves and free blacks from the 18th and 19th centuries in time for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War next year." TNC explains why it's a big deal that this is happening in Virginia.

As usual, comments on this post are also worth reading. Two of my favorites:

Plummeting_Sloath: 'I should say though, Gov. McDonnell, if you're going to go fix up some Richmond black landmarks, could you please fix the Arthur Ashe monument so it doesn't look like he's beating a bunch of children to death with a tennis racket?'

sansculottes: 'Wasn't it about ten or twelve years ago they found a centuries-old slave cemetery underneath Wall Street in NY? I remember thinking the headline should be "Historians excavate metaphor."'

QOTD

'There’s something heroic in a woman – Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Marianne Faithfull – who takes great beauty, smokes it down to the filter and grinds it out under her sole.'

-- Farran Smith Nehme (aka Self-Styled Siren), "Ageless Grace: Five Looks at Simone Signoret"

Image of the Day

The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)