Blog Posts . . .
My First Blog, 4/28/26:
The final part of my home page features “The Portrait of Juan de Pareja,” and offers the history of this significant painting. It’s unique because 1) it’s the first European portrait of an African and 2) the subject (Pareja) was a slave throughout his life, although he was passed among several masters as an “indentured servant.” That term implies a finite period of servitude, but in this case, lasted until Juan’s death in 1670. My book Parallels discusses several such cases where wordplay masks slavery, including child labor; “serfdom”; raw military recruits sent to their deaths in frontal attacks; etc. The book is available at amazon.com/books, in both paperback and ebook forms. On the Amazon Books page, enter Parallels by Paul A. Denk in the Search field. (Don’t worry, there’s plenty of positive stuff in the book to satisfy every optimist!)
Next blog (still in the works)
parallelsversusdictators.org 