Face of Janus: Looking Back, Facing Forward

Fifteen months ago, near when I started jotting down what I noticed or thought noteworthy in the news, I also felt pulled to make notes on the other things I was looking intently at. That initial impulse has changed, as more of the kinds of things I commonly read in history studies gets posted here, while less of the current news gets included.
The last couple months especially I've focused on the chronology of some, early, very tenuous points in the narratives of Spanish expansion in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. Certainly one of the biggest stories in the European Renaissance period. Also a unique and still wide-ranging context has been generated I think for this period over the last year with these jottings in all the pieces I've used from the fantastic translations of Marin Sanudo.  I owe the researchers of that some kind of debt for introducing me to so many levels in the intricacies of the city and of that singular view, from Venice, as an international hub.

But the world around Venice, more and more, was being picked up and set into motion by Spanish interests and concerns throughout the sixteenth century. In Italy, at first with the Borgia popes and later with Charles V and Phillip II, kings of Spain and numerous 'Spanish' Holy Roman Emperors thereafter.  Also, the Spanish Inquisition took root and spread in this same period. The 'crusades' against heretics and rebellions (like that of Hans Behem) and corruption and depravity of so many kinds, the advent and spread of Lutheranism etc., all give various forms of insight into the changing nature of culture itself. Not forgetting to point out how, so often, things stay the same.

So it is that I see less in current news today that seems important enough to write down, than I did a year ago. This is simply because I see less of a willingness among those who might be able to help, to actually help, due to the usual suspects. Congress, their lobbyists and some in the media, mostly. A year ago I spent a great deal of time looking at the ripple effects of the collapse of the housing markets and prior to that, the failures of the credit markets. Last year there was still some possibility of federal, state and local legislature or governing regulations of some sort that may have led to indictments, prosecutions etc. for the persons or bodies who helped set those calamities in motion. The various political stalemates in Washington and state houses across the country has made these mostly, merely, inspirational hopes, however. Without prosecution for malfeasance and fraud, injustice will remain the norm and be tacitly encouraged. Like the story of the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director for the Consumer Finance Protection Board and the subsequent hamstringing of oversight and regulation that it was created to start to work on. But that's just one example.

Many of the statutes of limitations for fraud et al. with regard to the 2008-9 economic collapse will soon be exceeded or in other cases, already have. Stories in the energy sector, like the Keystone XL pipeline, the problems at the San Onofre Nuclear Plant or the storage pools etc. in Hanford, WA (especially after the disaster of the nuke plants in Japan two years ago), are being willfully ignored in Congress (if not always in the media), just as is the issue of the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising of sea levels and, say, the destruction of the coral reefs off Australia are. This is all true, but others talk about these issues, so I feel I don't have to, so much.

Also, with immigration now seen as a positive issue for the Republican party, some sort of forward motion is likely to occur in that area. Similarly, the states have taken on gay marriage and medical marijuana as issues that maybe aren't so bad after all, and which also, incidentally seem to split the 'libertarian demographic'. So there's that.

On the other hand, security, foreign wars, personal freedom, class, the flows or cessations of information. notions of sovereignty and religious concerns all weigh heavily in modern times as well as in the time we call the renaissance.
These will continue to remain my primary focus here ... Until Further Notice.