Day of the Thigh Whip, 6th of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): This week's elections were about a lot of things, but one thing they weren't about was a wistful nostalgia for Biden-Era politics or a return to milquetoast, laissez-faire, middle-of-the-road governance. To answer my own rhetorical question form two days ago, "How will the Democrats blow it this time?,"  Hakeem Jeffries and Chick Schumer think they may have an answer. Reinstating them as Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader would, IMHO, put this country right back into the position it was in that allowed the Stable Genius to get elected to a second term. 

The public relations campaigns have already begun. New York Magazine is currently running an article headlined, "How Hakeem Jeffries Engineered the Democratic Rout." The talking points and keywords are already spreading - this morning, I saw Al Sharpton on MS NOW saying that Jeffries "engineered" the seismic Democratic landslide by handpicking the best, most electable candidates.

"I'm about to get sick from watching my T.V." - Frank Zappa (1966) 

Let's be perfectly clear here. More credit, exponentially more credit, goes to the grass-roots organizing of Stacy Abrams and others, mostly women and mostly Black, over the past 10 years. The landslide was the result of a long-game, grass-roots, bottom-up effort, not a top-down campaign "engineered" in the last 12 months by the House and Senate Minority Leaders. Their claiming credit is just another patriarchal example of men trying to take credit for the hard work of women. I heard one person on Reddit compare it to that person who contributed nothing to the school project insisting they be the one to present it to the class. 

The DNC was slow to recognize and often failed to endorse several progressive candidates, and even those that did manage to win their primaries despite lack of support were chronically underfunded by the DNC, leaving them to scrape together campaign finances as best they could alone. 

Schumer's age, low energy, and lack of comfort with Democratic Socialist candidates disqualifies him from leadership in these new times. I like Jeffries - he's younger, than Schumer at least, and has more energy - but like old Chuck, his acceptance of large AIPAC campaign contributions and his recent, closed-door meeting with Jared Kushner disqualifies him from leadership.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that there's good reasons to continue to support Israel's military. They're not apparent to me, but the last persons I would trust to make those arguments is someone who is in office and power because of his acceptance of AIPAC campaign contributions and who has secretly met with the pro-Zionist Kushner. 

I also can't trust prosecution of fair and independent investigations of the Stable Genius' administration to someone who just met with a member of the Short-Fingered Vulgarian's family. While I understand the importance of inter-party cooperation and meetings during political transitions, you're kidding yourself if you believe that was what the meeting was about. The Stable Genius famously resisted transition meetings the two times he took office and even fired his transition team before taking office, so excuse me while I scoff at the idea that he suddenly embraced the concept in this mid-term election.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I'm suspicious that the sudden media campaign to present Jeffries as the de facto new Speaker may be part of the backroom deal between him and Kushner. The deal may have been something along the lines of don't investigate my Saudi dealings or the President's business ventures, and in return we'll give up, say, Hegseth and Patel, or don't cut off aid to Israel and we'll get the tech bros to popularize the idea of you being the next Speaker in the media. The word "may" is doing a lot of work in the sentence above, but do you honestly believe the Kushner took time off from the on-going negotiations with Iran and between Ukraine and Russia to merely ask, "how can we best assist Congress in the coming years?" 

The hoary old precedent of congressional leadership being based on seniority is a relic of the politics of the past. The people voted for change, real change, and we need new leadership and fresh voices to bring that change about. Not old Schumer and Jeffries.

Anybody but Schumer and Jeffries.

 

Frozen Reeds, 5th Day of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): A few late thoughts about Tuesday's Blue Wave:

• John Fetterman just became irrelevant. With 54 confirmed Senate seats held by Democrats, and two more still up for grabs, no one has to appease a lone, holdout Senator any longer. Even the old Joe Manchin-Kyrsten Sinema strategy of two hold-out Senators is no longer a threat to passing legislation. It would now take four, maybe six, Senators to impede a piece of Democratic legislation, and if that many object to it, then maybe there are some issues to consider before passage.


• If Ted Cruz or Dan Crenshaw or any other Texan politician decides to run for some other office, now their seat will be filled by a Democratic Governor. Jim Jordan up in Ohio and a bunch of others, too. Georgia has already replaced all of its Washington representatives who could conceivably hold higher-office ambitions, so Keisha won't be nominating any Democratic replacements anytime soon.


• Remember Lauren Boebert? She's down by 3,277 votes as Colorado's Fourth Congressional District waits for the last of the mail-in ballots to arrive.       

That's it for now. 

 

Smith Dynasty, 4th Day of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): In the earliest years of the 1920s, Silas Junior, my grandfather, moved into an apartment at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue in New York City, home to the, no, who am I kidding? You don't want to hear about that today and that's not what I want to talk about. The Blue Wave actually did materialize yesterday, and wow. Just, wow, man. The wave, the flood, the tsunami, the blue enema, whatever you want to call it, delivered and flipped both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as numerous states, including Georgia. 

Prior to last night's Blue Wave, the united snakes was perilously close to autocratic, one-party rule. The Presidency, the House, the Senate, and the supposedly non-partisan Supreme Court (wink, wink) were all controlled by Republicans. The Stable Genius, that short-fingered vulgarian, still occupies the White House and it may take a generation to change the Court, but last night both the House and the Senate flipped from red to blue. Some races are still being tallied, but as of noon today, the day after the great general erection, the Democrats control 54 of the 100 Senate seats and 232 House seats, fourteen more than the 218 needed for a majority.

Sweet home Georgia, that former member of the old Confederacy, is now officially a blue state - we have two Democratic Senators, one Jewish and one African-American, and a handful of Democratic representatives, including Nikema Williams (my Rep), and Hank Johnson, one of only three Buddhists in Congress. Talk about diversity, we now have a Black woman, Keisha Lance Bottoms, as our new Governor, the first Black woman to be elected as Governor to any state in the Union; and a Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General. Democrats assumed almost every major office in the state and while the Georgia House and the State Senate are still controlled by the GOP, their majorities are now smaller.

And it didn't stop there. Texas flipped too, and now has a Democratic Senator and a Democratic Governor. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper became the first Democrat elected to the Senate there since 2008, and every single county in North Carolina swung toward the Democrats. South Carolinians rejected the Stable Genius' hand-picked candidate for the Senate, the woefully unqualified sister of the late Lindsey Graham. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan, Susan Collins lost in Maine to a complete political unknown, and the disgusting Vivek Ramaswamy deservedly lost in Ohio.

Democrats won in gerrymandered districts in Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Texas, denying Republicans the advantage they had hoped for by redrawing district lines. Democrats won where Republican megadonors and billionaire tech oligarchs spends hundred of millions trying to persuade voters not to vote Democratic. They failed.

You know all this already and besides, this isn't a news site, but it just feels so good to say it all out loud. Hooray for our side, we won!, and the other side lost. Bigly.

 

So now the big question is, how will the Democrats blow it this time?

If I may, I'd like to make a couple of recommendations. First, Democrats need to remember that the electorate voted for change, not a return to the same old same-old. I doubt few voters were motivated by a nostalgia for the politics of the Biden Era. To be specific, we don't need and I don't want Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader or Hakeem Jefferies as Speaker of the House. Let's let those fresh new voices be heard and it's time for some new leadership for a new day. Its time for Ocasio-Cortez to be new Speaker of the House, and while I wouldn't mind seeing Georgia's Jon Ossoff as the new majority leader in the Senate, I'd rather keep him free to run for President in 2028. Perhaps Raphael Warnock, the Senate's de facto spiritual leader? Or Elizabeth Warren, the intellectual leader? Maybe Chris Murphy, assuming his health allows, or Mark Kelly? Really, there's a lot of good options and all are better than tired, old Chuck Schumer and his middle-of-the-road compromises.

Democrats also have to remember that despite last night's victories, there are literally millions of Americans who despite everything in the past two years, still voted red. The Dems need to deliver on good governance and helpful policies to win over the hearts and minds, s well as wallets and purses, of all voters if they want to hang around past the next election cycle.

And finally, there are lessons to be learned from Merrick Garland. The crimes, the corruption, and the unconstitutionality of this Administration are all out there and readily apparent for all to see, and to overlook prosecution under the guise of impartiality is to fall into the trap that got the Stable Genius re-elected in the first place. Release the Epstein files, impeach Hegseth and Kennedy, and of course, the Stable Genius himself. Now that the Dems control both chambers, an impeachment by the House won't automatically lead to an acquittal by the Senate, but they have to act fast before the politics change. Don't be held back by accusations of "Banana Republic" politics and weaponization of Congress.  Hold the fuckers accountable, just like the voters held the Republican incumbents accountable. 

But, wow, what a night!     

 

Day of the Five Riders, 3rd of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Erection Day. Hard as it is to believe, the day of reckoning in the united snakes of amerika is finally here. 

Remember the Kelvin wave? Some sort of El Niño effect that was supposed to flood California? Well, it's finally arrived, and today the ocean is swallowing highways and whole neighborhoods in Huntington Beach and other places on the California coast. There's no storm, the water just rises up and takes the land anyway. 

Seawalls and sandbags are completely useless. The ocean doesn't even bother going over the top anymore. It just comes up from beneath the ground. Seawater pushes up through storm drains and comes out of cracks in the asphalt. The cities mobilize giant pumps to fight it, but the machines fail in minutes.

The beast which once was and no longer is shall rise from the bottomless depths and bring destruction with it. Those still living on earth will be surprised when they see the beast that was and is no longer, and yet appears. (Revelations 17:8)

Thank you for the wave, that great blue enema which will wash away all the garbage and the trash. All the animals on the far right: the Nazis, neocons, MAGAs, proud boys, groypers, oath keepers . . . sick, venal. Someday, a real wave rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. 

Erection Day. Time to save amerika from itself.  

 

Day of the Timekeeper, 2nd of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Walking home from the hospital, I passed a house with yards signs in their front lawn for Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson, MAGA Senate candidate Mike Collins, and the right-wing Greg Dolezal for Lieutenant Governor.

It sickened me. I wanted to pull them up and throw them out somewhere, but I didn't. It did hearten me that the one house was the only one I saw on the entire 0.8 miles between the hospital and my home with Republican yard signs. Most houses had no yard signs, and a few had signs for Democratic candidates. 

As I noted in a previous post, last week I voted early at the High Museum of Art, an extraordinarily pleasant polling location with ample parking and short lines. While it can't compete with the High, I am disappointed that my former polling location, a City of Atlanta tennis facility within easy walking distance of my home, has been closed. While the tennis center is well short of a half-mile from my front door (easy walking distance), the new early-voting location, a public library with extremely limited parking is over three miles away and on a road without sidewalks. My official polling location is now a middle school 1.6 miles away.

Serves me right for living in a blue precinct.

The political attack ads on television are getting nastier and uglier in the last days before the election. They're airing things now they wouldn't have dared released even a week ago, knowing that by the time the blowback occurs, the race will already be over. There's no accountability in the final 48 hours, just blatant race-baiting and fear-mongering. And social media is just going over-the-top bonkers.

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius is already asking the Courts to intervene in state elections before the final votes are even cast. We can count on a repeat of his 2020 shenanigans between the election and the final certification of votes up to and possibly including another January 6th-style mob insurrection.

I hate these fascist times and authoritarian state in which we're living. We need more than a Blue Wave or even a Blue Flood to solve things. I'm looking forward to a Blue Enema to get these Nazis sons of bitches out of my ass for once and for all.

 

Day of the Last Across, 1st of Hagwinter 526 M.E. (Helios): Seasons change. Once it was Autumn, now it's Hagwinter. Right on schedule, a rare, early-season Sudden Stratospheric Warming event and polar-vortex disruption are forecast to bring cold air down to Georgia and the Southern United Snakes. Prepare yourselves - there's a cold wind coming our way.   

Hagwinter is the last of the six seasons in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. Following old Angus MacLise's original USC, the winter is split into Childwinter at the start of the year and Hagwinter at the end. However, unlike MacLise's calendar, the two winter seasons are each shorter (61 days) than the original 73 days each.

The other seasons start and end with theme-named days. For example, Autumn started with First Day of Quest and ended with Last Day of Quest. That convention is discarded in this final season and instead it follows the surrealist poetry of MacLise's original names. Hagwinter starts with Day of the Last Across, which seems fitting as we embark on the journey across the last season of the year, and ends with Into the Whirring Yards, which doesn't make any literal sense but still sounds apt as we head into the great uncertainty of the year 527. 

The 43rd day of Hagwinter is the 348th day of the year, the 29th dozen, so it is the twelfth Ocean day in the New Revised USC. I would have made Twelfth Ocean fall on the more auspicious 30th and final dozenth day of the year, the 55th day of Hagwinter, but that day is the Christmas holiday, and I couldn't resist moving the name Day of the Magic Child to that holiday. 

The winter solstice falls on the 44th day of Hagwinter and is aptly called Humming of the Distances of the Planet.  Also, each season has a five-day sequence of names, and in Hagwinter the 44th through the 48th days are First Day of Quandary through Fifth Day of Quandary. So overall, the calendar for Hagwinter looks like this:              

Each season, this blog adopts a new avatar for the daily images. It was the blind albino for Childwinter, the Earth Mother for Spring, the Sun Girl for Midsommar, the anthropomorphic Weimaraner hound for the Dog Days, and the Retired Old Man for Autumn. The obvious choice for Hagwinter is an old hag, but when I did that in Hagwinters past, the severe appearance of the avatar limited its utility in images after the first week or two. So this year, I'm softening up the winter's hag appearance to be, instead of some witch or wraith, simply a woman "of a certain age," as they say. It also probably won't be the same woman each and every day. It's Hagwinter season, but not season of the Winter Hag.   

To be honest, I don't know why I do this, why I've developed my own version of a fantasy calendar for this blog. But now that I have, I'm trapped in this prison of my own device and don't see an easy way out, at least until the start of the new year. So please bear with me and tolerate this eccentricity, and rest assured that I haven't (completely) lost my mind.

 

Last Day of Quest, 61st of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Electra): Happy Halloween. Today is the 61st and last day of Autumn in the New Revised Universal Calendar. Autumn began with the First Day of Quest and ends with the Last Day of Quest; I hope that you found what you were seeking in your quest this season, or at least enjoyed the journey.

It was a season of loss for me. My little sister passed away on Descent of the Host, the 48th Day of Autumn; losing a year-long battle to cancer. Impermanence is swift It was during this Autumn that I was diagnosed with myocardial ischemia, bringing me undeniably face-to-face with my own impermanence. 

Gloria Steinem, Peter Max, and Cassandra Wilson died this Autumn. So did actors RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad), Tom Skerritt (Alien), and Patrick Stewart (Star Trek), and football player and coach Mike Ditka ("da Bears"). Impermanence is swift. 

They say the incoming Super Colossal El Nino is going to make this coming Hagwinter particularly cold and snowy here in the North American South, so we've got that to look forward to. I'm also envisioning a period of extended civil unrest, repression and possible martial law following next week's midterm general election and the Stable Genius' cognitive inability to accept reality. Fun times.  

OTOH, Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled to be released this coming season. 

 

Day of Hummingbird Night, 60th of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Deneb): "He married a Black woman" - the enigmatic admission from my parents about why they wouldn't talk about my grandfather. It didn't tell me much about my Grandpa. It told me even less about that Black woman, who I much later learned had a somewhat extraordinary background.

Silas Junior's second wife, the mysterious woman spoken of only in whispers in my childhood home, was the former Dorothea E.S. Francis, the youngest child and only daughter of Dr. John R. Francis, a prominent physician and educator during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr. Francis belonged to the upper crust of African-American society and was a close associate of Booker T. Washington (he is mentioned in Washington's book, A New Negro for a New Century). Dr. Francis was an advocated for Black self-reliance, and agreed with Washington in the proposal that African-Americans should develop the skills necessary to become self-sufficient.

A resident of Washington, D.C., he also maintained a summer home in Uniontown, Maryland. Toni Morison's Song of Solomon mentions how unusual it was back then for African-American families to be able to afford separate summer homes - her hero (or anti-hero), Milkman, is teased by his streetwise friends about his family's summer home. Nevertheless, Dr Francis' neighbor in Uniontown was Frederick Douglass. Close friends, Dr. Francis was one of the pallbearers at Douglass's funeral.

John R. Francis was born in 1856 as a free man in Washington, D.C. His father, Richard “Uncle Dick” Francis, was one of the wealthiest African Americans in D.C. John Francis was Uncle Dick’s only son, and was encouraged along with his sister, Lulu, to do well in all areas of life and to always be conscious of the needs of others. Uncle Dick owned various properties and in 1885, long after his son had left home, purchased the famous Hancock's Restaurant near the Capitol, where Uncle Dick became a well-known bartender and caterer. The Washington Post reported that Hancock’s "was noted particularly for two things -- its cocktails and its fried chicken." 

His family's wealth and high social status afforded John Frances the opportunity for a good education. Like Silas Jr., his family was able to afford him a private-school education. He graduated from Wesleyan Academy, a Methodist prep school in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and then  graduated (Class of 1878) in medicine with high honors from the University of Michigan.

In 1881, at the age of 25, Dr. Francis married his wife, Bettie. The Francis family resided at 2112 Pennsylvania Avenue, mere blocks from the White House, although in later years the family moved to 1102 Ninth Street, NW, D.C. The couple had five children - four boys and one girl, Dorothea. Their two eldest sons followed in their father's footsteps and became medical doctors. The third son attended Harvard, where he studied law. 

Dorothea was the youngest child, born on May 29, 1897, and Dr. Francis’ only daughter. I’ve found little information about her, other than that in 1920, at the age of 23 and two years before marrying my grandfather, she and her mother, Bettie, apparently sailed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, arriving on October 2. 

Dr. Francis was a professor of clinical obstetrics at Howard University and served as a member of the committee of the board of trustees and the permanent committee on the construction of the Carnegie Library. In 1886, he was appointed a trustee of the D.C. school board, but he ultimately resigned over the board's lack of support for the education of African Americans. 

He was also an obstetrician in the Freedmen's Hospital, where he tended to the sick in the streets and appealed for guardianship for abandoned babies who were born in his care. In time, he became acting surgeon-in-chief of the hospital. In this position, he instituted reforms in working standards, mainly in his chosen field of obstetrics. He also implemented a nursing program at the hospital where African American nurses were trained. 

Although he was known primarily as an obstetrician, Francis worked as a general practitioner in the Black community, providing free care for those who were unable to pay for medical services. Many African Americans at the time were prone to high mortality rates and shorter life spans because of their social conditions. The Francis-Stevens Educational Complex served families who lived in a swampy area of D.C. known as Foggy Bottom, as well as Black students from Georgetown. 

Upon leaving public health-care services, Dr. Francis established a private practice called the Francis Sanatorium at his former home on Pennsylvania Avenue. The first of its kind in the United States, the institution offered services to poor African Americans who lived in deplorable, unhealthy conditions. Trained nurses and private-care doctors rendered services, including emergency services. Patients were treated in a comfortable medical institution that didn’t resemble an institution.

Dr. Francis died at his home on May 23, 1913, and his funeral service was held at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. 

On November 29, 1922, Dorothea Francis married my grandfather, Silas Junior. They were divorced by 1929 and Dorothea moved back to the family home in D.C. She never remarried and passed away of unknown causes on June 25, 1939, at the age of 42. Impermanence is swift.  

Dorothea and Junior had no children. However, I found a transcript online of the proceedings of a separate divorce case, which contained a financial discussion of fees paid to Silas Junior for the custody of the couple's child. They may not have had children, but at some point and for some duration they provided a home for someone's child. 

The marriage of Junior to Dorothea is an interesting development in Junior's biography. In 1919, back from the War and with discharge papers identifying him as "White," one could easily image the light-complexioned young attorney with an Ivy League, prep-school education might have chosen to avoid the racial animosity being directed toward Black WWI veterans at the time and adopt a White identity. It was right there for his taking if he had chosen that route. 

But that's not what he did, and I respect him so much for his decision to be true to himself and his background. Instead of "going White," he embraced his identity by marrying a Back woman, and a daughter of Black History royalty at that, and took an apartment at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue in New York, which became the very epicenter, the intellectual and artistic heart, of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

 

Acts of the Counter World, 59th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Castor):  The Stable Genius is going to suspend the regulations on methane emissions in petroleum production. Methane, the greenhouse gas that's sixteen times more powerful that carbon dioxide at keeping heat from escaping. The move will save the oil company billions, and not a cent of those savings will be realized by consumers at the pump.

The accumulation of greenhouse gases is occurring faster than natural systems can absorb them. The rising levels are trapping more heat, increasing long-term global warming, and raising the risk of extreme weather. According to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization, concentrations of CO₂, methane, and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere reached record highs in 2025. Although the annual increase in CO₂ was smaller than the exceptional jump in 2024, concentrations still reached a new record last year. 

The famous glacier on Mount Triglav in Slovenia has disappeared completely, losing its final remaining ice following an exceptionally hot summer in October 2026. The small Debeli namet glacier in Durmitor National Park in Montenegro has also melted away. 

It takes centuries, sometimes a millennium, for a glacier to form. A good snowfall and a cold winter next year won't restore these lost glaciers. You'll never see them again in your lifetime.

Impermanence is swift.

 

Day of Arcane Light, 58th of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I still feel like this country is less than a week away from socio-political collapse.

The 2026 mid-term elections are next Tuesday, or Betelgeuse, Third Day of Hagwinter, in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. The Blue Wave will finally arrive, flipping many state governments from Republican to Democratic. But more significantly, control of at least one, if not both, chambers of Congress will also flip from red to blue. 

This will not please the Stable Genius. A Democratic Congress and a Democratic Senate will hold him accountable for his actions, something both chambers have failed to do for the past two years. There will be hearings and investigations into his corrupt business ventures, and he and several members of his cabinet will probably be impeached. The Epstein Files will be released, identifying the Stable Genius as a pedophile rapist. Hrll, Putin might even release the pee tape 

I think all of those developments would be great and welcome. Long past due. But the Stable Genius will not allow it to happen, Not only is he a malignant narcissist, unable to concede any failures, shortcomings or even criticism, but it would pose an existential threat to his psyche if not his wealth. There is no length he would not go to prevent a Democratic House and Senate from convening. November 2026 will make January 6, 2021 look like a walk in the park. 

He has the military locked down and his black-out drunk secretary of defense has already purged the military ranks of anyone who would even potentially object to or resist orders to turn guns against the American people. He also has ICE, his own private secret police/militia, and the FBI. If you think he wouldn't use any or all of these weapons, and more, against the American people, you haven't been paying attention. 

A fascist military crackdown would effectively end our society and economy as functioning entities. Thousands, tens of thousands, will die, and the Stable Genius will blame it on "radical, far-left lunatics," the "deep state," "radical Islam/Sharia law," and, of course, immigrants. Somehow, Biden and Obama will be behind it all, according to the Stable Genius revisionist versions. 

I could be wrong. God, I hope I'm wrong. I like his country, I love this country, even though I don't like its current administration. I hate to see it fall, I hate to bear witness to its collapse. But here we are, and I feel in my bones that this isn't going to end well for anybody.

The Long Sleep, 57th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): On February 24, 1919, Silas Junior, my grandfather, arrived back in the United States from his service in the First World War. Although he identified himself as “Black” on his draft registration form, his discharge papers listed him as “White.”

Fighting with courage and pride in the face of virulent racism and hostility, Black servicemen had challenged racial stereotypes during the First World War. Returning home from battle, were eager to continue the fight for equal treatment they had started abroad. Their loyalty and patriotism proved by their War effort, they wanted respect and their worthiness for equal rights recognized by their White countrymen. 

W.E.B. DuBois, who had previously advised the Black community to forget their grievances and close ranks with their White fellow citizens to fight for democracy abroad, declared, “By the God of heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.” 

But White America, especially in the South, didn’t see things the way the Black soldiers had hoped. The returning Black veterans encountered a tenacious and violent White supremacy, and their status as veterans actually made them particular targets for White aggression. Some White Americans feared that meeting the veterans’ demands for respect would lead to demands for better working conditions and higher wages, and would encourage other African Americans to resist Jim Crow segregation and racially oppressive social customs. 

On August 16, 1917, Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman, who had been opposed to drafting Black men into the Army in the first place, warned on the Senate floor that the reintroduction of Black servicemen to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” In his racist screed, he said, “Impress the Negro with the fact that he is defending the flag, inflate his untutored soul with military airs, teach him that it is his duty to keep the emblem of the Nation flying triumphantly in the air” and, he cautioned, “it is but a short step to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.” 

The veterans’ experience with firearms and combat renewed old concerns about a violent Black rebellion. In addition, the prevalent stereotype of Black men as chronic rapists of White woman – which frequently was used to justify lynchings – was amplified by accounts of wartime liaisons between Black troops and White French women. Acceptance by the French women, it was claimed, gave Black veterans the idea that they could have sexual access to White Southern women, too. To put it bluntly, they thought that the returning Black soldiers had gotten a taste for “White man's blood" and "White woman's pussy,” and weren’t to be greeted as heroes but as threats. Racial violence targeting African American veterans soon followed. 

In the summer of 1919, a series of “anti-Black riots” erupted throughout major American cities, including Houston, East St. Louis, Chicago, Washington D.C., Omaha, Tulsa, and Charleston. Collectively, the incidents were called the “Red Summer,” and countless African American veterans were assaulted and beaten. During the violent racial clashes of Red Summer, it was risky for a Black serviceman to wear his uniform, which many Whites interpreted as an act of defiance.

For example, on March 12, 1919, Army veteran Bud Johnson had returned home to Florida to bury his father and was waiting to board a steamboat to take him back home to Alabama when the local county sheriff arrested Johnson on the grounds that he allegedly matched the description of a Black man accused of assaulting a White woman in Pace, Florida. 

While the police were taking Johnson to Jacksonville, a mob overtook the car, seized Johnson and took him to Pace. The mob tortured him, distributed $66 they found in his pockets  amongst themselves, chained him to a stake, and burned him alive. They crushed his skull with a hatchet and his discarded his corpse in a nearby swamp.  

His loved ones had to battle alligators to recover his remains for burial, while the mob sold pieces of his shattered skull to onlookers as souvenirs. 

Spalding Gray once spoke of “an invisible cloud of evil that circles the Earth and lands at random in places like Iran, Beirut, Germany, Cambodia, America.” If you don’t believe in evil, or that it could touch down in America, I defy you to describe what happened in Jacksonville that March day of 1919 as anything else.

Silas Junior returned home to Jacksonville from the War mere weeks before Johnson's lynching. There can be little doubt that he read about the lynching and that he was aware of Red Summer and the danger of wearing his uniform in public. 

Despite the open hostility in southern states like Florida, the 1920 census still found Junior living in Jacksonville along with his wealthy parents, Silas Sr. and Emma, and his son, Silas III. Although Junior’s 1919 discharge papers from the Army had declared him “White,” the 1920 census identified the entire family as “Black.” 

Perhaps seeking greater financial opportunities, or perhaps to escape the rampant racism and open hostility toward Black veterans in the South, Junior eventually quit the family banking business. Leaving his son in the care of his parents, he moved to New York City and took an apartment at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, and on November 29, 1922, married Dorothea E.S. Francis of Washington, D.C.  

But in 1929, he married again, this time to the widow Mary Reilly, his third wife and the woman who became my grandmother.  What happened to Junior and Dorothea’s marriage is a mystery. They had no children, and Dorothea never remarried. She passed away in D.C. on June 25, 1939, at the age of 42. Impermanence is swift.  

Silas Junior died twenty years later, in 1959, when I was only five years old. Impermanence is swift. I don't have any memories of him and my Dad refused to talk about his father, merely saying he had "an unhappy childhood." The only information I ever got about my grandfather was that "he married a Black woman." 

I always assumed that meant that my father's unhappiness was because Junior had abandoned his family to go and marry some other woman, a Black woman, but nether Dad nor Mom would talk further about it or embellish the story. "He married a Black woman," was the full and complete oral history I got from my parents. It wasn't until I started doing some on-line genealogical research during the covid shutdown that I discovered that the infamous marriage was before, not after, his marriage to my grandmother, and that the woman was Dorothea. 

It was also that moment when I first realized that the marriage wasn't all that unusual because Silas himself was a Black man. My White parents had lied to me all my life about my heritage and background.

 

Eleventh Ocean, 56th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Helios): The 56th Day of Autumn is the 300th day of the year. Three hundred is 15 dozens, making today the fifteenth dozen of the year. Significant dozens in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar are designated as Ocean days, and today is the 11th such Ocean. 

I voted today. This is the third and final week of early voting in Georgia and I cast my ballot early in this late week so that I don't forget and before the lines of last-minute procrastinators gets too long. I voted at the High Museum of Art, a first for me, and was in and out within ten minutes. Parking was free and unlike my usual early-voting polling place, the Northside Library, plentiful. 

I had been planning to vote for Democratic candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor, but my cardiologist told me that he had personally talked to the loathsome Republican candidate Rick Jackson, and he assured me that Georgia will be just fine under Jackson. I connected the dots and figured that my cardiologist was a jack-ass for discussing politics with me during my heart examination, so his political views were suspect to say the very least, so I voted the straight Democratic ticket right down the line, even down to dog-catcher if such an office was actually up for election. 

Jon Ossoff for the Senate, Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor. The Democratic ads here in Georgia urger voters to "vote your Bottoms and Ossoff." I also voted for Democratic incumbent Nikema Williams, who holds John Lewis' old seat, for Congress.  

According to the news, Anthropic's AI, Claude, went rogue again and this time accessed Georgia's voting records. First, the Stable Genius sends Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard to Atlanta to seize Fulton County's 2020 ballots, including mine, and now our tech overlords are using their AI bots to "access" the 2026 records. In  a press release, Anthropic said Claude had not been told to access the voting records, hence "rogue," and besides, the only records it looked at were publicly available metadata anyway, not individual ballots. But why should I believe that? Because some corporate mouthpiece said so? It's not like they would have any reason to lie in the days immediately prior to their IPO, right? Right?

In other election news, I was overjoyed to see Brazil re-elected incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, rejecting his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro, former president and ally of the Stable Genius, who refused to concede after losing the 2022 election and was later convicted of plotting a coup.  

Still more good news comes from Serbia, of all places, where the longtime nationalist strongman, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat in a general election after nearly two years of student-led street protests. Serbia’s vote for a new Parliament comes just six months after voters in neighboring Hungary rejected their own populist-nationalist leader, Viktor Orban, a darling and role model of the American far right.

Are the global far-right forces of authoritarianism and despotism finally abating? Will this shift come to the United States and finally free us from the grip of MAGA Republicans and the Stable Genius? Is that a fresh breeze I feel blowing in from left?

Probably not, at least not quite yet. But one step at a time. First Hungary, then Serbia, then Brazil, and then Georgia, the state not the country, although the country is welcome to joint the ranks as well. Welcomes, comrades!