Remembrances for May - 2025

 

Dear friends, if you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

May 1^st

Harry Hosier and George Liele. (The exact dates of their deaths are not recorded, so the approximation of 1 May is used instead.)

Harry Hosier was a slave, born in North Carolina, folks reckon, and after gaining his freedom he became a very talented preacher who rode with Bishop Francis Asbury on his circuits.

http://gcah.org/history/harry-hosier

George Liele was a slave from Georgia who became a fruitful missionary in Jamaica upon gaining his freedom.

https://nlj.gov.jm/project/george-lisle-liele-1750-1826/

May 2^nd

William Dawson

The head of the School of Music at the Tuskegee Institute.  A noted composer and conductor of choral/orchestral music.

https://www.tuskegee.edu/student-life/join-a-student-organization/choir/william-l-dawson-tribute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhDb3XnXHs

May 4^th

William Henry Trescot

‘Writer, diplomat, historian.’  A native of South Carolina who wrote an important short essay titled ‘The Position and Course of the South’.

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/trescot-william-henry/

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=ABT5714

May 6^th

Judah P. Benjamin

A Louisiana lawyer and senator, and later Secretary of State for the Confederacy.  He went through hard times with the grace characteristic of the South. 

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-neo-confederate-scotus-justice/

He may have had a hand in planting States’ Rights ideas into the Canadian constitution from his time as a lawyer in England.

https://cbr.cba.org/index.php/cbr/article/download/2641/2641

May 9^th

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

‘Augusta Jane Evans Wilson (1835-1909) was one of the most popular American novelists of the nineteenth century and certainly the most successful Alabama writer of her time. Her literary fame made her a prominent citizen of Mobile, where she spent most of her life.  . . .  She published nine novels, of which Beulah and St. Elmo are the best-known.’

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1072

May 10^th

Gen Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

One of the South’s finest men.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/thomas-j-stonewall-jackson/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/stonewall-jackson/

May 10^th

John Gould Fletcher

A Pulitzer Prize winning writer.  A craftsman of both poetry and prose.

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/john-gould-fletcher-1646/

May 10th

Confederate Memorial Day for North and South Carolina

https://www.southernagrarian.com/holidays/

May 11^th

Roger Busbice (2019)

A man from our own time, but a man nevertheless dedicated to Dixie’s well-being.  He was a kind mentor to those who asked him for help in learning about Southern ways.

https://attakapasgazette.org/attakapas-gazette-volume-1-2014/leonidas-polk-fighting-bishop-louisiana/

http://www.youngsanders.org/guerrilla.html

May 12^th

Gen J. E. B. Stuart

One of the South’s best cavalry commanders.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/j-e-b-stuart

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/986/james-ewell_brown-stuart

May 17^th

Gen John C. Breckinridge

A talented orator who became the youngest VP in uS history.  He served well in the War as a general and as Sec. of War for the Confederate States.  He died young, only 54, nine years after the War.

https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/john-c-breckinridge

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/132/john-cabell-breckinridge

May 25^th

Sarah Breedlove (Madam C. J. Walker).  ‘This child of sharecroppers transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into one of the twentieth century’s most successful, self-made women entrepreneurs.’

https://madamcjwalker.com/about/

https://www.biography.com/inventor/madam-cj-walker

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/madame-c-j-walker

May 25^th

Rev Benjamin Morgan Palmer

An influential pastor in New Orleans both behind and away from the pulpit.

https://banneroftruth.org/us/about/banner-authors/b-m-palmer/

http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/palmer-benjamin-morgan/

May 25^th

George Garrett

Virginia’s Poet Laureate from 2004-6, amongst many other literary achievements.

https://evblog.virginiahumanities.org/2008/05/george-garrett-1929-2008/

https://www.poetrysocietyofvirginia.org/content/poets-laureate-virginia

May 26^th

Eliza Lucas Pinckney

An enterprising matron in the worlds of business and art.

https://www.nps.gov/chpi/learn/historyculture/eliza-lucas-pinckney.htm

https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/1997/3186.html

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/peoples/text5/elizapinckney.pdf

May 30^th

Confederate Memorial Day for Virginia

https://www.southernagrarian.com/holidays/

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of May from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, visit these pages:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-may/

https://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/06/happy-feast-for-saints-of-may.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

‘What Is Driving Climate Change?’

 

For many – including the MSM, academia, the ‘scientific community’, etc. – the answer to that question is of course human activities like burning hydrocarbons, growing crops, and raising livestock.  All of this releases dangerous levels, in their view, of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere, which in turn trap heat from the sun, causing catastrophic global warming/climate change.

But a dispassionate analysis of the data shows that greenhouse gases are not supercharging a rapid, dangerous change of the world’s climate.  A new report illustrates this yet again:

Popular claims that CO2 changes drive temperature changes currently or throughout the distant past “are based on imagination and climate models full of assumptions.”

 

A comprehensive new study details a stochastic assessment determination of the sequencing of CO2 variations versus temperature variations since the 1950s, over the last 2,000 years (the Common Era), and throughout the last 541 million years.

 

The robust conclusion is that the causality direction – with the understanding that causes lead and effects lag – clearly shows the temperature changes lead and CO2 changes lag on yearly, decadal, and centennial/millennial scales. In other words, “the reverse causality direction [CO2]→T should be excluded.”

 

The claim that CO2 increases drive temperature changes is thus a “narrative” only, as the claim that “humans, through their emissions by fossil fuel burning, are responsible for the changes we see in climate” can be regarded as a “non-scientific issue.”

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/07/garlington-what-is-driving-climate-change/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

‘Epicurean Philosophy and a Broken Political System’

 

Politics across the West is hampered by clashes, discord, and deadlocks:

From the intractable special interests in Louisiana that scuttle efforts to bring necessary economic growth to the State;

To the Irish people’s protests against their government for its insane immigration policy;

To the Leftists of both France and Germany who are trying with all their might to keep the Right from having any influence in government;

To the tyrannical oligarchs who run the EU who likewise never miss an opportunity to abuse the European Right.

There is a particular philosophy at work behind this turmoil; the Metropolitan Bishop of Nafpaktos, Greece, Hierotheos, puts his finger on it – Epicureanism, which has four main principles:

 

1. Don’t fear God (divine power does not threaten man by nature because he does not concern himself with human things);

 

2. Don't worry about death (death does not cause anxiety, for there is no afterlife, since the soul is material);

 

3. What is good is easy to get (good is easily acquired through pleasures); and

 

4. What is terrible is easy to endure (we can easily endure evil).

This pagan spirit wars against virtue.  The compiler of saints’ lives, Reverend Alban Butler of England, shows several examples of this at the end of his life of St Apollinaris of Ravenna (+1^st century):

 

The virtue of the saints was true and heroic, because humble, and proof against all trials. That of the heathen philosophers was lame, and generally false and counterfeit, whence Tertullian calls the latter, Traders in fame. “Where is now the similitude,” says he, “between a philosopher and a Christian? a disciple of Greece and of heaven? a trader in fame, and a saver of souls? between a man of words and a man of works?” And St. Jerom writes: “A philosopher is an animal of fame, one who basely drudges for the breath of the people.” Lactantius severely rallies Cicero, because, though he was very sensible of the vanity of the worship then established, yet he would not have that truth told the people for fear of unhinging the religion of the state.  . . .  The philosophers did not love truth well enough to suffer for it. Plato dissembled for fear of Socrates’ hemlock; but the Christian religion raised its professors above all considerations present, for the joy that was set before them.

It is no wonder, then, that we have so much trouble in our politics, when the spirit of paganism pervades the West so deeply and widely.  Returning to Bishop Hierotheos:

 

These Epicurean principles that were highlighted above prevail in many people in our days, which instead of medicine it is a great disease, and we cannot characterize this as progress of society, but as regression and life before Christ, especially for Christians!

 

Philosophy professor Haralambos Theodoridis in his classic work titled "Epicurus" and subtitled "The True View of the Ancient World", analyzes both the depth of Epicurean philosophy and the influence it had on the ancient world, but also on the modern world. He characteristically writes that "epicurean teaching became a unique leaven for later Antiquity, over five hundred years, starting from the early Hellenistic times of Rome, and the swallow of summer for modern years after the theological and idealistic flood that covered the world"!

 

He further writes that Epicurus reigns in Europe: "It was only natural for the reborn bourgeois intelligentsia of Europe to discover its affinity with the great enlightener of Antiquity. The whole, one might say, of modern science and the most genuine humanism follow the positive, unmythologized and immortal direction that he had mapped out."

 

Of course, we see this in the entire cultural, social and urban life of our country, where the Epicurean principles that center on man, pleasure, the rejection of the fear of death, the questioning of the existence of the soul after death, dominate everywhere.

The way out of our present miseries lies where it always has, in the Church.  Daniil, the new Patriarch of the Orthodox Christians of Bulgaria, explains how this healing comes about:

 

“The role of the Church is precisely to show people that there’s a way. If a political crisis reaches a dead end and no understanding can be reached, the Church always points to this path, which is towards the Kingdom of God. The Lord has told us: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,” the Patriarch said.

 

“Our mission can be nothing other than testifying to our entrusted spiritual flock that the Lord Jesus Christ is with us. How will this happen? If we have love among us. This is also the main message we have for our spiritual flock: to love God. If we fulfill this, gradually all other problems will begin to be solved,” His Holiness said.

 

State power can’t solve the basic problems of man, which are related to the meaning of human life, to the salvation of the human soul, and the Church has shown that in this respect there is no alternative, Pat. Daniil said.

 

“Where there is alienation and pessimism, this is a consequence of sin. Sin acts in this way to turn us away from God, to discourage us, to stop us on this path. When there are relationships between us of human brotherhood, responsibility, care for each other, this will inevitably bring God’s paradise into our souls and it will become visible around us,” the Bulgarian primate emphasized.

Without the Grace and Love of God permeating a community, big or small, the result is the conflict, increasingly violent, that we all see and experience in government and outside of it.  Whether it is the promotion of false gods or no gods (atheism), that is the result, says conservative writer John Horvat:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/07/garlington-epicurean-philosophy-and-a-broken-political-system/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!