windy weekend, with wedding

N left for the airport this morning and I felt lonely. Momentarily. Then I got caught up in the royal wedding -- watched some video, read some "analysis," got teary eyed. I grow increasingly sentimental with age. Even though I know there's a big dose of delusion underpinning any relationship, I hope those two crazy kids spend a lifetime feeling good about doing good works -- symbolically, at least -- together.

I am getting myself ready to go to the farmers market, or rather, getting my phone ready (I forgot that the battery was very low). I can hardly ever leave the house without it these days. I also have to return a book to the library because somebody put a hold on it. I only just got through the first section, which takes you to the end of the Civil War. I'll have to put my own hold on it so I can get to the part where the Africans build their own community during reconstruction. But that last bit is haunting:

Elbert Head, who had been enslaved in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, had mixed feelings: "I felt great joy that we were free, but it made me feel sad to think that there was a whole nation of us set free and none with homes." 

And then these freed people mostly just got on with it as best they could, in a vastly inequitable and hostile society.