Can you imagine buying someone?
Not buying their labour - we do that all the time - but buying the person?
I can't.
But for all of the problems I have with conceiving purchasing another human being, can you imagine selling someone?
Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land
Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...
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If only our pets could tell us what they are thinking.
For example, to a bill of sale which featured a 21 year woman accompanied by the word "breeder", the museum directors added that this did not necessarily mean she would be used for breeding purposes. No alternative "explanation" was offered.
But the most ludicrous bit of all was a statement by the museum that went something like (and I paraphrase from memory here): "Africans were not the only people to endure great hardship on their way to America. The Irish, for example, suffered enormously and even had to pay their own ship fare".
I kid you not. This was really there. I assume it has long since disappeared. But can you imagine the workings of a mind that so many years later tries to assuage our horror over the barbarity and cruelty of slavery by reminding us that the slaves, at least, got a free ride?