Friday, July 31, 2020

Day 95



Hey, remember that time Trump pulled back American forces in Syria and let Turkey bomb our allies, the Kurds?  That news cycle lasted, what, about four days?  It's almost impossible to keep up the appropriate level of outrage over this "president's" treachery and ineptitude. 

But meanwhile, back in the here and now, Vanity Fair reports this:
'Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.'
The White House shitcanned a national testing plan in order to hurt electoral prospects in Democratic-held states. They allowed the plague to spread and people to die to try and throw the fucking elections. Let that sink in.

Meanwhile, the white house is gas-lighting us with fantastical myths of astral-projecting demons and vaccines made from space-alien DNA (I wish I were making this up).

We need to end this administration immediately.

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Day 96



I rarely found myself in agreement with either gentleman, and one I found to be just flat-out crazytown, but it saddened me to learn today that Herman Cain, who 40 days ago had to sign a covid waiver to attend Trump's undersized rally in Tulsa, has died of coronavirus, and Louis Gohmert, who refuses to wear a face mask, has tested positive for coronavirus.  

Seriously, if there's one thing all this proves, it's that the virus won't spare you just because you're really, really opposed to the science on how to prevent it.

Wear a mask, folks.  Wear one for Herman,

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Day 97


An excellent summary of the high point and the context of yesterday's Bill Barr hearing, which had me so incensed I was borderline illegible in yesterday's post.  

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Day 98


I spent way too much time today watching Attorney General Bill Barr testify to Congress. 

If you're not Antifa, you're pro-fascism.  The behavior of federal troops against peaceful, law-abiding citizens of Portland, Oregon is beyond reprehensible and must stop now.  

Otherwise, no justice, no peace.


Monday, July 27, 2020

Day 99


Looking at the new-case graph of coronavirus in Georgia, one of the striking features, in addition to the heart-breaking upward trend since mid-May, is the presence of multiple "spikes" in the data. Surely, some of this must be due to delayed reporting of cases - many of the spikes occur on Mondays following a weekend of under-reporting.

But there's more than just the sputtering bureaucracy of the health-care system that's causing the spikes.  And even if it were due to under-reporting over the weekend, on July 10 there were 4,904 new cases, 2,259 more than would be expected based on the 7-day average of 2,645 new cases. Since near-average numbers of cases were reported on the previous days, what caused the 2,259 excess cases?


The latest science shows that six days generally pass between exposure to the virus and the onset of symptoms.  So what do you think happened six days before July 10, around about (lets see, 10 minus 6) July 4th?


I don't know about your state but here in Georgia, even though most official, municipal fireworks displays were cancelled, people all across the state, including here in Atlanta and even in my own neighborhood, held parties and get-togethers and put on their own amateur fireworks shows, all in the name of good, clean American patriotism.  Hell, I even had my daughter and her boyfriend come over for some dinner and beers. We didn't blow anything up, though.

I've heard people try to blame the increased number of cases on the Black Lives Matter protests, but those occurred largely in late May and early June.  There are some late May spikes in the data, but nothing of the magnitude of the July 10 spike.

I propose that if you hosted a July 4 social event in Georgia, you may have contributed to the 2,259 excess coronavirus cases in the state.  I like to think that I'm exempt, because neither my daughter, her boyfriend, or I reported a case following our July 4 get-together.  But who knows if, or who, we may have infected asymptomatically after the weeked?

The science also indicates that deaths from the coronavirus among the susceptible population generally occur about 14 days after the onset of symptoms.  Fourteen days after July 10 would be July 24, and on July 22, Georgia saw the second-highest number of covid-related deaths since the pandemic began.  


The depressing thing about science is it's just so damn right so much of the time.  We had a spike of 78 reported deaths in Georgia 18 days after the July 4th holiday, 45 more than would be expected. The obvious reason was the decrease in social distancing on the July 4th holiday, when the good people of Georgia decided to take a risk and blow off a little holiday steam instead of continuing the quarantine.

Forty-five people died as a consequence.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said today that we're likely to have an effective vaccine for this virus by November of this year, way ahead of the previously anticipated schedule.  It may even be available as early as October.  This is good news.  

Georgia, it seems, does not have the discipline or self-control to voluntarily distance ourselves socially, nor do we have the political will to mandate face masks much less a quarantine.  It appears that we've decided that 30 to 45 deaths a day, with the occasional spike of around 70 to 80 deaths a day, is acceptable until a vaccine arrives in October or November  

It appears to be the accepted price for pretending that everything's normal.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Day 100


Worst birthday ever.

Well, maybe not "ever," I'm sure someone somewhere must have once had a worse birthday, but yesterday was the worst birthday ever for me.

Friday, for no apparent reason (no wind or rain), a tree fell over across Collier Road, blocking morning rush hour traffic and taking down power lines.  I was without electricity Friday from 5 a.m. to noon, and without cable or internet until 4 p.m.

The next day, Saturday (yesterday), was my birthday, and I planned on spending the day quietly, watching some Netflix movies, streaming some music, and playing video games.  In other words, no different than most every other day since the pandemic hit these shores.

Mother Nature had other ideas.  A thunderstorm rumbled through a little after 2 p.m. with surprisingly violent wind gusts and downpour, and knocked several branches off trees in my yard. Worse, it knocked over several trees in the area, including one that took out a major transmission line along Northside Drive and one that fell across Evergreen Road a block from me (above).

Power went out at 2:15 and didn't come back again until nearly 7:00.  No Netflix, no television, no electric lights, no cable, no Spotify, no 21st Century civilization.

When you live alone, nothing makes you confront your solitude more than a loss of power.  All you can do is just sit there quietly and wait for someone to do something somewhere so that the power will return. I had to resist the urge to play with my iPhone because the battery was already low and I wasn't sure how for how long I had to preserve the charge.  It was overcast and dark outside, and hard to read a book or magazine in my shady home even when sitting next to a window (but I did strain my eyes reading by dim light for an hour or two anyway).  I went outside for a walk and to survey the storm damage, but the weather was so hot and muggy that walking around quickly got sticky and uncomfortable.  

In years past, when I lost power, I'd just pack up my laptop and head to Starbucks for an hour or two, or else get dinner and a few beers while killing time at a sports bar.  But in these socially distant pandemic times, that's no longer an option.  I was wondering how and what I was going to do about dinner when the light and power suddenly returned. 

Two lessons here.  The first is how we use electronics and the distractions of modernity to avoid facing the existential emptiness at the center of our lives.

Second lesson is how, once the lights did come back on, along with cable television and the internet, all that existential dread suddenly vanished.  Nothing lasts forever, even though some things feel that way at times.  

I've experienced the same thing during some long meditation retreats.  While you're sitting there, the mind rebelling against the quiet and stillness, the legs and knees sore from sitting cross-legged for so many hours, and the butt feeling compressed beneath the awful gravity of the weight of the body, it seems like the agony is lasting forever.  But then the bell rings and you get up, and the mind is suddenly relieved, the blood flows back to the legs, and the weight is off your ass, and you realize  in that moment that the past, even the agonizing past of just a minute ago, is just a memory in the mind, no more real than pictures in a book.  Everything is impermanent and nothing lasts forever. Why be upset sitting home alone in the gloom of a stormy afternoon, when inevitably the lights will eventually come back on and the misery you're experiencing will vanish?

Two lessons yesterday, but frankly, I didn't really want to spend my birthday getting schooled on the addictions of distraction and the impermanence of suffering.  

I had wanted to wallow in those distracting addictions and the delusion of permanence.

Worst birthday ever and now it's over.

Friday, July 24, 2020

Day 102


Another day, another tree down . . . 

Last night, I woke up at around 3:30 a.m., and for some reason could not get back to sleep.  I tossed and turned for about an hour, and finally at about 4:30, got up out of bed and went to another room to read for a while.  I figured if I could just re-set my mental timer by reading until I was tired again, I'd be able to  get back to sleep.

I had just finished with my reading, a profile of climate scientist James Hanson by Elizabeth Kolbert,  when I heard a crashing noise outdoors and suddenly the whole house plunged into darkness. Having been through this numerous times before, I knew instantly what it was - a tree had fallen somewhere in the neighborhood.  It was 5:00 a.m.

I got dressed in the dark, grabbed a flashlight (I've learned by now to always keep one with fresh batteries in a spot I knew I'd be able to find in the dark) and went outside to investigate.  No trees were down in front of my house, and the power lines on my road were still up.  I then noticed two cars heading my way from a side road, unusual for this neighborhood, especially at this time of the early morning, and realized that they must have detoured from the main road - the tree had apparently fallen across that street.  

I walked up that way and saw that I was correct - a very large tree had fallen across Collier Road, taking down power lines and entirely blocking the street.  Several cars, the earliest of early morning commuters, tentatively approached the fallen tree, saw the predicament, and turned around to seek another route toward whatever destination they were headed. 

I went back home and sat outside for a while.  I meditated as dawn lit the sky and the sounds of bullfrogs in the creek gave way to the sounds of songbirds.  I haven't experienced a sunrise like that in quite a while.  I went back inside at around 7:00 and was finally able to sleep. In fact, I slept until 11:15, and the power was still out.

I was just settling into my day without electricity when the lights suddenly came back on at just about noon.  The power had been out for 7 hours.

No idea why the tree decided to fall when it did.  It wasn't raining (it hadn't rained for at least 36 hours) and there was no wind to speak of.  But for some reason, the trunk of that tree had suddenly just snapped.  A neighbor posted a doorbell video on Next Door showing a car passing the tree not two seconds before it fell.  It's fortunate that no one was hurt, and that the tree hadn't hit  house.

Internet and cable were restored by 4:00 a.m.

Impermanence is swift; life-and-death is the great matter.  This world of appearances seems to be stable and fixed, but in fact is in constant flux and change.  Things fall apart.  Flowers, while cherished, fade and weeds, although despised, flourish.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

From the Gaming Desk


At the worst possible moment, right in the middle of my self-isolating lock-down during this global covid pandemic, I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for video games.

Back at the end of April, I shared that I was splitting my playing time between Hitman 2 and Far Cry Primal.  I haven't finished either yet.  I'm still dabbling in both, although I'm enjoying Hitman, with its almost limitless number of ways to complete missions, a lot more than Primal, which has come to feel like drudgery, the endless repetition of the same pointless quests over and over again with no real plot or meaning.  I won't quit on it, though, because I just don't want to admit that I gave up on it.  

Then in May, Epic Games released Grand Theft Auto 5 for free and I downloaded a copy.  It was a refreshing change of pace at first and a much-needed alternative to the prehistoric world of Primal and the tactical challenges of Hitman.  But one thing I'm not good at in video games - actually there's a lot of things I'm not good at (I kind of suck at games) but play along with me for the sake of the point I'm making here - one thing I'm not good at is driving cars with PC keyboard controls. 

The letter W drives the car forward just like it does for walking, and the letter A turns the car to the left and D towards the right, but I don't seem to be able to get the right touch.  I tap the A key and nothing happens, and then I tap it a few times more and nothing still.   So I hold the key down and for a second the car starts to turn but before my reflexes can release the key, the car spins a full 180 degrees and crashes into whatever's around it.  Nothing happens and then nothing still happens, and then suddenly way too much happens.  Crashing is kind of the point of GTA anyway - you don't take much real damage and it's fun watching everyone scramble out of your way as you're out of control - but it's frustrating if you're trying to actually get anywhere, which is the whole reason that you got in the car in the first place, isn't it?  You jumped onto the freeway to rendezvous with whoever the game has you meeting, not to spin around in circles for a half hour at the end of the entrance ramp.

I've had this problem with several other games before - they all seem to work off about the same mechanism - and in other games I got around it by just walking everywhere I needed to go.  You can walk in GTA, too, but virtually very story line seems to require you to drive somewhere for some reason - to outrun and escape the cops, or to repo some car, or to outrace some loudmouth boor.  After all, the game 's called Grand Theft Auto, not Grand Theft Pedestrian.  

The game's still on my desktop, though, and "officially" I'm still playing it between Hitman missions and Primal grinds, but to be honest I haven't opened it in  weeks.  Once I either finish or just give up on Primal, I'll turn my attention back to GTA.

But as you may have gathered, this dabbling in different games isn't very satisfying.  In the past, when I had a new game, I couldn't wait to play it, and once immersed in a game's virtual world, would find myself playing for hours and hours on end, way into the late night/early morning hours.  I'll admit to seeing the sun come up on more than one occasion.

But splitting my time between Primal, Hitman, and occasionally GTA, my playing time fell in half.  And then half of that.

That's when I downloaded Borderlands 2, The Pre-Sequel, a game every bit as fun and silly as its name implies.  I played - and enjoyed - Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel has the exact same level of irreverence and goofiness as the original.  I found my enthusiasm for game playing reawakened and suddenly it was up until dawn once again

At least for a while.  The problem - my problem - is that the game's almost non-stop action (you're almost constantly fighting wave after wave of psychotic goons) doesn't have many obvious quit-for-now points, no lulls in the action, and the game play gets your adrenaline pumping which is not really what you want when you're planning to finally get some sleep at 3 a.m.  So I've found myself not playing the game not because it's boring like Primal or not because I'm frustrated like with GTA, but because I know that once I get on the roller coaster ride, I'm going to be manic for the next untold number of hours, and who's got time for that?

Actually, I do, even though I don't want to admit it.

I still haven't given up on gaming, though.  I've downloaded a copy of the game, Ark: Survival Evolved, from a free Epic giveaway, and I purchased the games Detroit: Becoming Human and Disco Elysium during a Steam sale. There's also updates to No Man's Sky and Fallout 76 I mean to try out. Not to mention the upcoming DLC for The Outer Worlds called Peril on Gorgon.  

There's a lot of gaming ahead for me.  I just need to figure out a way to clear Primal and GTA off my desktop so I can get my groove back and return to game-play.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Day 104



During the Civil War, soldiers on both sides of the conflict slept outdoors in makeshift camps, suffered dysentery, flu and other maladies, and suffered grievous bodily wounds.

During the Second World War, soldiers slept in foxholes, lost limbs to land mines, and were butchered in fields of combat by brutal machines designed for killing.

To fight covid, you need to wear a mask.  If you can't do that, just admit you're spineless and unpatriotic and shut the fuck up.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

From the Politics Desk


Kelly Loeffler, the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate (which, remember, still includes Mitt Romney), can't catch a break.

Loeffler was appointed by laughing-stock governor Brian Kemp to fill the Senate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson until November's general election.  Since there will be no primary, multiple candidates from each party, Democrat and Republican, will be on the ballot opposing her.  Candidates from the Libertarian and Green parties as well.  And since she's now the incumbent due to Kemp's appointment, they're all aiming their guns and taking shots at her. 

The Democrats are campaigning hard against her mainly on the basis of allegations of insider trading, as well as her down-the-line record of taking the Trump/Republican position in every Senate vote.  

Her Republican opponents aren't missing the opportunity to criticize her for insider trading either, but they're also using her past support of Planned Parenthood and previous donations to Democratic candidates against her too.  

Just about every pundit and pollster is predicting a Republican victory, but under Georgia's rules, if no candidate in the election gets over 50% of the vote, a runoff election will be held before January 1 between the top two finishers.  With at least three candidates splitting the Democratic vote, it would not be surprising if the two leading candidates aren't Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins, her Republican rival and Donald Trump's preferred candidate.  Picking between those two candidates in the run-off would be a hard choice for a Democratic voter ("the evil of two lessers").

Loeffler's a part owner of the Atlanta Dream WNBA team, and they're protesting her efforts to silence the League's support of the Black Lives Matter movement.   So on top of all her electoral rivals, she's got former players and members of the WNBA Players Association calling for her removal from the league.  Loeffler's anagement of the team has been compared to plantation ownership, or as Laura Ingraham would have it, "Shut up and dribble."

So our richer-than-Romney, Buckhead-Barbie white girl is facing adversity on all fronts.  We at the WDW politics desk couldn't be happier

Monday, July 20, 2020

Day 106


Unmarked federal troops are patrolling the streets of Portland, Oregon.  At least we think they're federal troops -they're not wearing any identifying badges or other insignia, so we just have to take their word for it.  They're rounding up random persons on the streets, whether they're participating in protests or not (remember, even if they are protesting - protesting is a First Amendment right every bit as legal as the Second Amendment right to bear arms).  They're throwing the protesters into unmarked vans without telling them the charges against them, and then taking them to the federal courthouse, where some are released and some have formal charges brought against them.

I wish I were making this up (I'm not).

The mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon both say they don't want these troops here and have asked the federal government to remove them.  The federal government (well, Donald Trump) refuses.  In fact, now he's threatening to mobilize more troops to Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.  Maybe other cities, too.

How are unwanted troops using force to remain where they are not wanted not an occupation?  How is mobilizing unwanted troops not an invasion?

This is it - the beginning of the last stage of the fascist takeover of America.  The end of this last stage will be rejecting the results of November's election and using the troops in place to quell any protest or discontent that we now have a supreme leader in chief.

These are the dark and final days of a free America.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Day 107


The State of Georgia has a long history of electing Republican governors who, once in office, turn out to have some common sense and not govern as badly as we thought.

Say what you want about Sonny Purdue (2003-2011), but even though he ran on a platform that included restoring the confederate emblem to the state flag, once in office, he didn't, much to the dismay of racists that voted for him and the relief of the state's business interests.

Many of us thought that Nathan Deal (2011-2019) was going to turn the state over to his business cronies and spend his entire term(s) mired in corruption and controversy, but to everyone's surprise, he didn't, and he even changed the laws to allow Sunday liquor and beer sales.

Hell, even old Lester Maddox (1967-1971), a segregationist Democrat, appointed more African Americans to government positions than all of his predecessors combined.  

But then comes Brian Kemp.  He ran a racist anti-immigrant campaign, and cheated his way into office through voter  suppression.  Over the objections of his party and even the president himself, he appointed Kelly Loeffler to take Johnny Isakson's vacant Senate seat so she can grift and enrich herself further through insider trading   And now, as the covid-19 pandemic is reaching epic proportions in the state, he is mimicking the worst of the White House's empty rhetoric and refusing to lead in protecting the people in the state.

More specifically, he has refused to pass a state-wide requirement to wear face masks, even though it's been a proven deterrent to spread of the virus, calling any such requirement "a bridge too far" politically.  Okay, bad enough, but when Athens, Savannah and Atlanta all passed local ordinances that mandate the wearing of face masks, Kemp singles Atlanta out and sues that city to overturn the requirement, but not the others.

He doesn't sue Athens or Savannah, he just picks Atlanta, because dividing the state against its largest city is the oldest demagogue trick in the political playbook.  There's no political benefit of playing the state against Athens, because "Go Dogs!," and there's no benefit of turning the state against Savannah because "Run, Forrest, run!"  

He doesn't care about hygiene or policy.  He's just playing politics with his constituents, just when they need sound governance and common-sense  policy the most.

Now on top of all that, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reveals that "In addition to being sued over a mask mandate and voluntary advisory guidelines on COVID-19, Gov. Kemp has asked for an emergency injunction to 'restrain' me from issuing press statements and speaking to the press."

Kemp is trying to put a restraining order on Atlanta's elected mayor to keep her from even talking about the shenanigans he's pulling to prevent her from doing her job!

A friend of mine, a constitutional lawyer, says that on First Amendment grounds alone, there's no way any judge is going to rule in favor of the gag order.  So that's a relief.  But it shows how authoritarian and desperate Kemp is to prevent the people of Atlanta from choosing the policies they want to protect themselves during this coronavirus crisis. 

Despite some well-publicized incidents of people protesting otherwise, polling has shown the vast majority of people support a face mask requirement, and the people of Atlanta elected Mayor Bottoms for exactly the kind of leadership and common sense she's showing right now.

But Brian Kemp doesn't care about democracy.  Brain Kemp doesn't care about the health of those living inside of the perimeter.  Brain Kemp cares about his own political career.

To put it another way, Bottoms was elected without having to cheat, without having to suppress the vote, and without having to play on racist fears.  And that's probably what Brian Kemp is most threatened by - the will of the people.

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Dreaming of the Masters


No, I'm not confused, but the passing yesterday of the great John Lewis (D-Georgia), the Conscience of the House, got me thinking of the other late, great John Lewis, the pianist (1920-2001). Here he is in Germany in a televised performance from 1965.

RIP, both John Lewises.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Day 110


Genealogy is easy - all I have to do is find "Johann Weber" in this 1,254-page Book of Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1985, from Württemberg, Germany, and I'll know the place and date of birth of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.  For real - twelve generations back.  Now I guess my next pandemic, self-quarantine, fill-up-my-time project is to teach myself Middle Low German and how to interpret Sixteenth-Century clerical handwriting.

At least doing that will keep me from getting mad about Georgia's governor Brian Kemp and his latest affront to common sense, namely deliberately striking down Atlanta and other municipalities' face-mask and stay-at-home orders.  If you're not from around these parts, or if you've been living under a rock (and if so, can I join you?), Georgia is currently experiencing a dramatic increase in new covid-19 cases.  Even at the mid-April peak of the pandemic, we were averaging less than 1,000 new cases per day.  But since July 2, the average hasn't been below 2,000 new cases and in the past week, we've experienced 1,816 to a jaw-dropping 4,904 new cases a day (source: NY Times Georgia Coronavirus Map and Case Count).  

In response, several mayors across the state, including Atlanta's Mayor Bottoms, have issued orders that face masks are to be worn when in public and that people should stay indoors except for essential services.  That approach has been proven to reduce infection rates earlier this year (e.g., New York, Boston, Paris, Milan, etc.) - it even slowed the virus down here in Atlanta last spring.  

But the governor insists that he agrees mask-wearing is important - he even went on a a little wear-a-mask education tour across the state (read: campaign events).  But he insists that issuing an order for  masks is a "bridge too far" for him politically.  

Okay, two things here .  First, no one's asking you to issue any such order -we'll take care of it ourselves.  People in rural agricultural counties don't feel they need masks?  Fine.  We'll set aside the science for a minute and not point out those rural communities are actually where the rate of infection is increasing the fastest.  You folks do what you want, but here in the densely populated city, where social distancing can be a real challenge, we'll issue our own local orders requiring face masks, thank you.  You do your thing, we'll do ours.  But, no, Brian Kemp can't allow a common-sense, local-wisdom approach like that to exist.  No, he has to go and issue an Executive Order specifically overturning any local ordinance more restrictive that his incredibly permissive, virtually non-existent regulations  ("Look, if you're at risk and have the AIDS or sumpin', stay home.  Seriously, stay  home if you got the AIDS - we don't want to see you").      

The other thing - think about what he's literally saying.  "Masks are good and I support the idea and will even lead a tour promoting face masks.  But politically, if I order it across the state, some rural voters will get upset and I'll lose their votes."  He is LITERALLY putting his political ambitions ahead of the health and the lives of the fellow Georgians he was elected to protect.  

A politician in Georgia will always succeed at pitting the large rural areas of the state against the urban citizens.  It's the oldest trick in the book.  Tell the farmers and woodsmen, "Look at them.. Big, dirty city.  Living too close together, air full of smog, and all full of colored and queers.  Their interests ain't ours.  They ain't us."  

And when we coloreds and queers elect a mayor to help protect us and require what's necessary to be done, he overturns it to win political points with his rural supporters and that ass-clown with a red hat up in D.C.

Damn, it makes me so mad!

Okay, mugen is the Middle Low German equivalent of 'mögen',:meaning can, or may; müeȥen is the equivalent of 'müssen', meaning  must, or have to; and wëllen is the equivalent of 'wollen', meaning to want, as in "I wëllen Brain Kemp recalled from office pronto."

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

A Note on Skin Color


The African American slave trade began in 1619 and continued until 1865.  The enslavement of persons of color for more than 250 years built wealth, opportunity, and prosperity for millions of white Americans. At the same time, American slavery assigned to black people a lifelong status of bondage and servitude based on race, and created a myth of racial inferiority to justify the racial hierarchy. Under this racist belief system, whites were hard-working, smart, and morally advanced, while black people were dumb, lazy, childlike, and uncivilized.

The idea that black people were naturally and permanently inferior to white people became a powerful idea deeply rooted in individuals’ minds, state and federal laws, and national institutions. This ideology grew so strong that it survived the abolition of slavery and evolved into new systems of racial inequality and abuse.

Among the many unfortunate aspects of slavery was the adoption of the “one-drop rule.”  The rule asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of black blood) is considered black (Negro or colored in historical terms), and led to racist classifications by the outdated terms mulatto, quadroon and octaroon for people, half, one-quarter and one-eighth black.

In 1865, Florida passed an act that both outlawed miscegenation and defined the amount of black ancestry needed to be legally defined as a "person of color." The act stated that "every person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color" (this was the equivalent of one great-grandparent).  Additionally, the act outlawed fornication, as well as the intermarrying, of white females with men of color. 

But as Ibram F. Xendi describes, while ethnic ancestry does exist, there is no such thing as racial ancestry.  People are born with an ethnic ancestry that comes from their parents, but are assigned to a race by societal conventions.   

People from the same ethnic groups that are native to certain geographic regions typically share the same genetic profile.  Geneticists call them “populations.”  When geneticists compare these ethnic populations, they find there is more genetic diversity between populations within Africa than between Africa and the rest of the world.  Ethnic groups in Western Africa are more genetically similar to ethnic groups in Western Europe than to ethnic groups in Eastern Africa.  Race is a cultural invention.

In 1725, Carl Linnaeus color-coded the ethnic hierarchy of humankind as white, yellow, red, and black. He attached each race to one of the four regions of the world and described their characteristics.  But in reality, ethnicity is defined by other factors in addition to just skin color.  

Dividing humankind into races based solely on the color of skin is an 18th Century invention, a kind of agreed-upon convention that became useful to justify the slave trade and the eradication of native North Americans.

I have personally been out in public and could not tell the race of someone walking ahead of me, even though I could clearly see the color of the skin on their arms and legs.  This is not true for people whose skin is exceptionally dark or exceptionally light, but for many it’s not until I pass them or they turn around so I can see their faces that their racial identity suddenly snaps into place in my mind.   Being “black” or “white” is as much the nature of hair, the broadness of the nose, the fullness of the lips, and the shape of the body as it is about the color of skin.  It’s a convention for grouping ethnicities that we’ve all subconsciously learned from society but has no real genetic basis. I sincerely doubt that extraterrestrials or persons from a remote civilization untouched by the modern world would group human ethnicities together the same way society does now, post-Linnaeus.

Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The Covid-19 Film Festival


Now that we're over three months into this pandemic and just now realizing the size and the scope of the first wave of infection, I've found yet another diversion to keep my mind occupied, and to keep my ass on the sofa in this pile of bricks on a hill instead of going out.

I've seen lots of lists of the "100 Best Movies on Netflix" or the "75 Must-See Science Fiction Films of the 2010s," but lists that large aren't actually helpful.  No one's going to watch 100 movies straight, and the list just becomes another random data dump.  It doesn't compel you to "watch this first, then that."  

Between Xfinity, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and other outlets, I have such an immense menu of options from which to choose, that I can't select anything, other than the occasional mini-series and OCD re-watching of all four seasons of Mr. Robot.  Paralysis by analysis.  And as noted above, playlist suggestions are usually so massive (or so banal) that they're not actually helpful.

Until late last month.  The always reliable NY Times ran a list of recommended movies that would be leaving Netflix during the month of July, including the weekly dates they are last available.  Watch these now, or lose your chance to see them again any time soon.  Most of the films are indie or art flicks, too, so that's a double bonus.  I've been enjoying the series   It's the best list I've sen in a long time.

Now that we're almost halfway through July, here's what I've seen so far, along with the shortest of thumbnail reviews:

Blue Valentine - Possibly the saddest film I've ever seen.  The dissolution of a marriage shown in a series of out-of-sequence vignettes.  The most depressing part is there's no dramatic betrayal and no one cheats on the other, they just get bored and disillusioned with their partners.  In other words, too much like real life, but brilliantly acted and scripted. I recommend it, but don't watch with a romantic partner that you want to keep around

Under The Skin - Possibly the strangest film I've ever seen, and I've seen lots of David Lynch movies.  Scarlet Johansson as an alien in disguise luring random Scotsmen to their deaths.  I think. She might be luring them to some sort of spa, it's hard to tell.  The movie is so alienating and bizarre and unafraid of being boring, and even after an hour I still couldn't understand most of the Scottish accents.  I'll put it this way - it's got to be some sort of artistic achievement to make a movie so off-putting and weird that Scarlet Johansson doing a full-frontal nude scene is not only not sexy, it's soporific. I bet it's great watching this one on morphine.

Locke - Tom Hardy in a one-man movie, consisting entirely of him driving in a car and talking on his cell-phone as his life unravels.  Very theatrical (it could probably be made into a play) and very cerebral, and rewarding if you're willing to put the effort in  and willing to go without a car chase scene.

The Spectacular Now - "Not your typical young-adult/high-school film" the critics say, but it sure seemed like one for the first 30 minutes or so.  But these waters run a little deeper and soon it deals with issues like the troubling alcoholism of the party-boy lead character, the way this girlfriend hides her self-loathing by pretending not to care, and the long-term effects of a failed fatherhood.  By the time the movie's done, you feel like you really know some real persons, not mere young-adult archetypes.

Enemy - Jake Gyllenhaal has an identical double, even down to his voice and surgical scar, and bad things can only result from that.  The movie's directed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner) so you know it's going to take some interesting turns.  Most of those are in the form of outrageous symbolism, including the most WTF final shot in any movie I'm likely to see this year.  

Room - Sad, uplifting, disturbing, and life affirming all at the same time.  An abducted women is kept in single-room captivity, giving birth to and raising her abductor's son.  The movie hits it stride in the second half, though, after they escape, and the five-year-old boy marvels at the spectacular and complex outside world he only barely imagined and the mother begins to unravel from the psychological trauma she endured.  

So as you can tell, these aren't your typical Marvel super-hero or car-chase films, but if you're looking for something more involving and more cerebral, these might be the films for you.  Here's the rest of July's playlist, sorted by the dates the movies will leave Netflix:

July 18

Obvious Child (no idea, never heard of it - probably watch it tonight)

Laggies (no idea, never heard of it)

A Most Violent Year (heard of it, think it got good reviews?)

July 21

Inglorious Basterds (Tarantino's WWII flick - fun!  Seen it a few times already but it will be comforting to watch it again after all the other unfamiliar movies)

July 25

Mississippi Grind (no idea, never heard of it)

Ex Machina (seen it once before, and agree it fits with the rest of this list)

July 28 

Her (see blurb above)

July 29

The Incredibles 2 (Pixar animation - I enjoyed 1, expect 2 will be fun as well)

July 31

The Edge of Seventeen (never seen it, but apparently another "atypical" high-school film)

Searching for Sugar Man (never seen it, but a music documentary about a "lost" performer.  Read a lot about him and this film and have been meaning to see it)

So anyway, that's what I'm doing with my quarantine evenings while I ride this first wave out.  I hope you find something on the list to spark your interest or even make you decide to watch the whole remaining series with me (while socially distanced, of course).

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Day 110


Back in April, during what we thought was the peak of the pandemic, Georgia was experiencing nearly a thousand new coronavirus cases a day, with a maximum 1,598 new cases on April 7 alone. Even though cases numbers weren't significantly declining in late April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp decided it was time to "re-open" the economy and lift restrictive stay-at-home and face-mask orders.

Nothing bad seemed to have happened at first, largely because many Georgians used common sense and continued to voluntarily isolate themselves despite the lack of restrictions.  But starting about mid-June, "quarantine fatigue" began to set in, and new case numbers started to rise. Since June 28, we've only had two days with less than 2,000 new cases, and both of those days were still at levels similar to or greater than the April 7 peak.

Friday, July 10, Georgia set a new record, with 4,904 new cases in one day alone.

In response, several municipalities sensibly issued face-mask requirements for people outside of their homes, and Atlanta basically went back to shelter-in-place rules.  But Brian Kemp insists his state-wide order to re-open the economy supersedes any local regulations (his order explicitly states that no city or county can issue more restrictive orders).  Atlanta's new stay-at-home rule, he insists, is unenforceable and illegal.  Atlantans, Kemp insists,  are to continue to congregate in churches and stores, to dine at indoor restaurants, and to not wear a mask if they don't want to.  

The questions then becomes, why does Brain Kemp want us sick?

I'm not going to get dragged into an argument about the government's right to require masks - the government already requires seat belts, removal of shoes at the airport, and speed limits in residential neighborhoods, and few claim that's an infringement on their rights.  It's the government's job to help protect its people. Masks and masks alone won't stop the pandemic but they are an additional layer of protection, and not wearing masks most certainly helps the virus to spread.

Just look at the numbers.

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Dreaming of the Masters


Cream of Jazz Funk was a 1974 anthology of out-takes and left-overs from four different Mainstream Records recording sessions.  The track Miscegenation was from the 1972 sessions for Buddy Terry's album Pure Dynamite.  The solos are by Joanne Brackeen on piano, either Woody Shaw or Eddie Henderson on trumpet (both were present at the session),  Terry on tenor sax,  Stanley Clarke on bass; and Billy Hart on drums.  Percussionists Airto Moreira and Mtume were also present at the session, but I can't tell if they're on this track or not.

Despite the album title, the tracks are more in the hard bop genre than jazz funk. The anthology album was also released under the simple title Jazz.  

Friday, July 10, 2020

Genealogy, Part VII (Miscegenation)


Miscegenation is such an ugly word.  It sounds ugly, and it looks ugly on the screen or page. Appropriate, as it includes ugly presumptions.  The on-line Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as "a mixture of races, especially: marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race."  My grandfather's three-volume Webster's dictionary, published in the less politically correct year of 1942, is even more specific:
mis'ce-ge-na'-tion, n., [L., mi'scere to mix + genus race] 1. An interbreeding of races. 2. Law Intermarriage or interbreeding of whites and other races; - used chiefly, in the U.S. of marriage with Negroes, but in some States including Orientals or Indians, and frequently made unlawful and criminal by statute. 
Just the mere fact that Webster's definition portrays it as an issue between whites and "other races," as if "whiteness" was the natural and assumed state of existence, is offensive.  Reducing the acts of falling in love and conceiving children to mere "breeding," when done between races, is offensive.  To be clear, there's nothing inherently ugly about "marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse" between two races; the ugliness is that there's a specific word for it, one that typically is used to express contempt for the action, a contempt often enforced with the power of law.   As I said at the top, it's an ugly word, one thankfully being left to the dust bins of history, along with the other words in the racial-purity vocabulary, such as "mulatto," "quadroon," "octaroon," and so on.

One more note before we proceed further.  I recognize that I am a 65-, almost 66-, year-old white man, and the beneficiary of generations of white privilege.  Generally speaking, nothing good usually comes of an old white man in 2020 trying to describe race and the African-American experience.  I am quite confident that I'm going to get parts of this wrong, or not express it correctly, or otherwise fuck this up somehow.  It's inevitable.   Please feel free to correct me (teach me, please!), and if you find error in what I say here or if its not expressed with the right amount of sensitivity, please accept that I'm writing this honestly and openly and with the best of anti-racist intentions. 

When he received his discharge from the Army in 1919, the paperwork for my grandfather, the second-generation son of emancipated slaves, identified him as "white," even though his entry papers identified him as "colored," and he had served in the segregated 92nd Division.  This was not just a clerical error. 

Based on several lines of evidence, we can assume that he was quite light-skinned in complexion. Despite the lack of a corroborating photograph (I'm still searching!), there is ample evidence based on his life story to support that assumption.  The 1940 census lists him as "white" - apparently the census-taker completing the form did not question his stated ethnicity.  Although he entered the word "Negro" for race on his First World War draft registration form, when the draft rolled around again for the Second World War, the Registrar checked "White" for his race and "Ruddy" for complexion on his Draft Registration Form.

If my grandfather, Sylvanus Henry Hart, Jr., was light-skinned, it's a reasonable assumption that at least one of his parents, if not both, was also light-skinned, although as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. noted in The New Yorker in 1996, "The inheritance of melanin is an uneven business." His father, Sylvanus Henry Hart (my great-grandfather), was known as "Jacksonville's first black banker" and so was obviously a gentleman of color.  We know little about his mother, Emma Louise Trowbridge of Georgia, other than census forms identified her as "black" and that she led a nationwide effort in early 1899 to fund a monument to the memory of African-American heroes of the Spanish-American War.

Let's assume that his father was also of a light complexion and proceed to investigate how that might have come to be.  As explained in a previous post, my great-grandfather Sylvanus Henry Hart, rose from the ranks of Jacksonville, Florida's brick layers to become first a foreman, than a City clerk, and then "Jacksonville's first black banker."  He managed to accrue a sizable fortune, enough to send his son to the finest boarding schools in America, and I find it amusing that the 1920 Census notes that he had two live-in servants in his home.  Salaried workers, I'm sure, and not slaves, but it amuses me that a man born into slavery in 1860's South Carolina was able to rise to a level of success that he could afford servants (not slaves) of his own.  

Because of slavery, it is very difficult to trace African-American genealogy to before the Civil War and, specifically, to before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865.  The 1870 census was the first to include African-Americans among the general population; those people first identified in 1870 did not appear in the 1860 census on the racist and deplorable assumption that they were "property," not "persons." 

Sylvanus the Senior appears in the 1870 census as a 10-year-old boy living in Darlington, South Carolina.  His parents were Eli Hart, age 35, a brick mason (brickwork was apparently the family trade), and Henrietta Hart, 28, who could neither read not write. Henrietta would have been 18 years old when Sylvanus was born, and possibly as young as 17 when he was conceived.  Eli and Henrietta also had three daughters, Julia, 8, Sarah, 6, and Josephine, 4.  All were listed in the census as "Black," although as discussed above, we can assume that at least Sylvanus was light-skinned. None appear in the 1860 census, indicating they had been slaves but by 1870 were now emancipated.

Despite the absence of Eli and Henrietta, there are other Harts listed in the 1860 census.  Dr. Robert Lide Hart was born in Darlington and raised a large family there, and was listed in the 1860 census as a “physician and planter.”  “Planter” here means he owned a plantation, and his properties were valued at a couple million dollars by today’s cost-of-living standards.  Dr. Hart's parents were Captain Thomas Edward Hart (1796-1842) and Hannah Lide (1796-1875), who had a separate plantation of their own. Prior to them, I have not yet found any records.

Slaves were often given the surnames of their owners or the plantations on which they worked.  Among other things, it helped the owners track their "property" when labor was shared among plantations.  It's not unreasonable, then, to assume that Eli Hart of Darlington had once been owned by Darlington plantation owners Dr. R.L. or Capt. T.E. Hart.

Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Freedman's Bureau was established to help the newly-freed slaves by establishing contracts for the labor formerly performed under slavery.  An on-line list of 1865 Labor Contracts for Darlington indicates Dr. R.L. Hart employed 44 freed slaves at the Jeffries Creek Plantation and six freed slaves at the Village Plantation.  Most of the freed slaves listed did not have surnames, but neither an "Eli" nor a "Henrietta" were listed at either of the two plantations. However, an Eli  was employed by Hannah Hart (nee Lide), Capt. T.E. Hart's widow, as a field laborer at her plantation at Cashua Ferry.  

Although none were contracted to any of the Hart plantations, there were four Henriettas listed among the Labor Contracts at other plantations. There were Henriettas employed by an A.F. Edwards, a Mrs. A.D. Gibson, a Matilda Fraser, and a Samuel Gibson, any of whom may have been Henrietta Hart.

The Freedman's Bureau attempted to force freed women to work by insisting that their husbands sign contracts making the whole family available as field labor in the cotton industry, and by declaring that unemployed freed women would be treated as vagrants just as black men were. However, the Bureau did allow some exceptions, such as married women with employed husbands.  

By 1865, Henrietta was only 23 but already had three children.  I do not know when Eli and Henrietta were married, other than it was prior to 1870.  If it were before 1865, Henrietta may not have been required to have a Labor Contract and would not have been among the listings.  

Light-skinned blacks in the South during this time are evidence that slave owners, their sons, or their white employees raped their slaves.  For the record, there can be no such thing as "consensual sex" between a master and a slave, even in the absence of physical struggle, due to the gross, disproportionate power difference between the two. 

Sylvanus' light complexion may be due to his real father being not Eli, but any of the many white men who had ownership or other power over Henrietta.  It's also possible that either Eli or Henrietta , or both, were themselves the product of slave rape, and were light-skinned "Children of the Plantation," as one term put it.  

Unfortunately, we may never know who Sylvanus' biological father was.  Slave-raping plantation owners neither acknowledged nor denied whether they had fathered Children of the Plantation. People who kept records of such things for white society back then didn't care who fathered whom in the black community, and such things generally went unrecorded.  

If I'm to track my ancestry, I can come to a full stop at the freed slave Eli Hart (1835-date unknown) and go no further. Even if he were Sylvanus' biological father, it may not be possible to learn who Eli's father was, so I've come to a dead end.  However, with an assumption or two about the actions of the Hart family, I can possibly trace Sylvanus back two more generations to Captain Thomas Edward Hart.

I only discovered Eli and Henrietta's records this week.  Obviously, this removes Isaiah Hart, owner of the plantation "Paradise" in Jacksonville, as well as his father, the treacherous William Hart, from my lineage.  You can ignore the previous posts on those two - whatever else they were doing on their Paradise back then, they weren't raping my great-great-grandmother.

Miscegenation (ugh, that word!) resulted in a white bloodstream merging with an African-American bloodstream in Darlington, South Carolina.  The reason for discussing all this is that it apparently resulted in Sylvanus, Jr., my grandfather, being of light enough complexion that he could "pass" for white.

Thursday, July 09, 2020

Day 108


It's getting ugly out there. 




I bought gasoline today for I believe the first time this year, certainly the first time since the quarantine began 108 days ago.  

"108" is an auspicious number in Buddhism - 108 barriers of delusion, 108 gates to realization, etc.

Today was the 108th day of quarantine.  I've encountered more barriers of delusion than gates to enlightenment since Friday the 13th of March, and as a nation we haven't some to seem significantly awakened.  

Wednesday, July 08, 2020

Genealogy, Part VI (Buffalo Soldier)


Sylvanus Henry Hart, Jr. was born on Sept. 3, 1889 in Saint Augustine, St. Johns County, Florida to Emma Louise Trowbridge and Sylvanus Henry Hart, Jacksonville's "first black banker."  

His parents clearly loved their child and, unique among African-Americans in the late 19th Century South, they were in a financial position to provide him an elite education.  They sent Sylvanus Jr. to the Worcester Academy, a private school in Massachusetts and one of the country's oldest boarding schools.   In 1906, he graduated from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Both elite schools, as well as the Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, had accepted African-Americans students as far back as the Civil War.

On Christmas 1906, Emma Louise gave her son a book of poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled Joggin' Erlong.  The poems are written in a cringe-inducing black dialect that would generally be considered racist today ("De da'kest hour, they allus say, is des' befo' de dawn," etc.), and the book is illustrated with photographs by Leigh Richmond Miner depicting the lives of plantation slaves   I know this because the book was handed down by Junior to his son, my Dad, and I have the book now. A hand-written inscription on the first page reads "Gift of Mama, Xmas, 1906."  Sylvanus Jr. was an inveterate scrap-booker his whole life, and the books of his that I own today are full of odd little mementos from his life.  For example, inside of a three-volume Webster's Encyclopedia, I found an undated postcard inviting him to a Class of '06 Exeter reunion. 

After graduating from Exeter, Junior entered Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta U.).  Among other classes, he took Economics from the distinguished faculty member teaching there, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Ultimately, he maintained a long friendship with Dr. DuBois.

By 1911, he transferred to the University of Michigan, taking classes in the Department of Law. Details are few, but while there he apparently met Mary E. Grayson of Canada and on September 19, 1913, two weeks after his 24th birthday, they married in Detroit.

It's unlikely that the marriage was part of anyone's long-term life plan, coming as it did while Junior was still in school, and the marriage appears to have lasted no more than about three years.  They had a son, Sylvanus Henry Hart III, born on February 12, 1914, five months after the wedding.  But despite the distractions of a marriage and  fatherhood, Junior managed to graduate from the  Detroit College of Law (now Michigan State University), Class of 1914. 

Of course, on June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, initiating the First World War.  The United States initially remained neutral, but on April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany.  American troops ultimately reached some two million men.

Many African Americans saw enlistment in the Army as an opportunity to win the respect of their white countrymen and to prove their loyalty, patriotism, and worthiness for equal treatment in the United States. America was still a segregated society at the time and blacks were turned away from military service. However, War Department planners quickly realized that the standing Army of 126,000 men would not be enough to ensure victory overseas. The standard volunteer system proved to be inadequate in raising an Army, so on May 18, 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act requiring all male citizens between the ages of 21 and 31 to register for the draft. 

The draft boards, however, were composed entirely of white men. It was a fairly common practice for southern postal workers to deliberately withhold the registration cards of eligible black men and then have them arrested for being draft dodgers. Although there were no specific segregation provisions outlined in the draft legislation, blacks were told to tear off one corner of their registration cards so they could easily be identified and inducted separately.  Here's Junior's 1917 Draft Registration Card:

 
Note the lower left corner, with the letter "c" for "colored."  

It  appears that despite the enthusiasm among some other African Americans to join the war effort, Junior had other plans for his life.  A 1912 Polk City Directory for Florida includes a Jacksonville listing for "Hart S H Son & Co (S H and S H Hart jr), bankers," so it appears that the banker, Sylvanus Sr., was trying to get his son into the family business even before Junior had graduated from Detroit Law.  Perhaps formation of the business was an attempt by his parents to get Junior to leave Michigan and the company of Mary Grayson and return to Jacksonville.  But on the 1917 Draft Registration Form, Junior listed his occupation not as "banking" but as "farming" (men who owned their own farms and had families were considered a lower priority for the draft).  I've not seen any evidence that Sylvanus, father or son, ever got dirt beneath their fingernails since Senior had left the brick-laying trade.

Junior lies about his age on the form, listing his year of birth as 1887, two years earlier than his actual birth in 1889.  

On lines 9 and 10, Junior claims to be single and the sole provider for his son (Sylvanus III).  At this time, I don't know what ultimately happened to his marriage to Mary Grayson, whether it ended in divorce or if he became a widower, but apparently by 1917 the marriage had ended (unless that was another draft-dodging lie as well).

It was a nice try, but it failed,  Junior got inducted into the U.S. Army on April 20, 1918, initially assigned to the 151st Depot Brigade.  The role of depot brigades during the First World War was to receive and organize recruits, provide them with uniforms, equipment and initial military training, and then send them to France to fight on the front lines. The 151st Depot Brigade was located on Camp Devens in Ayers, Massachusetts.

Junior left Fort Devens on May 16, 1918 for Officers' Training School at Camp Meade, Maryland, and then to Commissioned Officer Training School (COTS) with the 22nd Training Battery, Field Artillery, at Camp Taylor, Kentucky on June 27, 1918.  

Private Hart was honorably discharged from COTS to accept a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant.  He was assigned to the 167th Field Artillery Brigade, 350th Field Artillery Regiment, of the 92nd Infantry Division.  The 92nd was a segregated division of the Army organized in October 1917.  In 1918, before leaving for France, the troops selected the American buffalo for their insignia due to the "Buffalo Soldier" nickname given to African American cavalrymen by Native Americans in the 19th century. In between the pages of a copy of Karl Marx' Das Kapital, another one of Junior's books handed down to my father and then to me, I found this cloth patch, the insignia for the Buffalo Soldiers:


The 92nd Division saw combat in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive during November 1918.  Junior served overseas from September 22, 1918 until February 24, 1919.  Following his return to the states, Junior was honorably discharged on April 9, 1919.

The April 9, 1919 Honorable Discharge Form included the erroneous birth year of 1887 - correcting the date would have been tantamount to admitting he lied to avoid the draft.   But Junior may have received an unexpected benefit for serving overseas with the segregated 92nd Division.  The August 30, 1918 Discharge Form from COTS identified him as "colored." On his  April 9, 1919 Honorable Discharge Form, he was listed as "white."  

Six months of overseas fighting apparently transformed him from a black soldier to a white civilian.