Remembrances for May - 2026

 

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!

‘A Southern Solution to the Plastic Waste Problem’

 

I.  Problems Caused by Plastics Increasing Rapidly

Plastic has brought beneficial improvements to many areas of life, from health care to household appliances.  However, the negative effects of its ubiquitousness around the world are also making themselves known.

The amount of plastic produced each year has grown from 20 million tons (Mt) in 1966 to 460 Mt in 2019.  This amount is forecast to exceed 1 billion tons by 2060.  Much of the plastic produced has a short usable lifespan and is then disposed of; only around 30% of plastic products that have ever been made throughout the world are still being used.  The share of plastic waste belonging to the United States was 42 Mt in 2016.  Only 5% of this waste in the U. S. was recycled; most of it (86%) went to a landfill and another small portion was incinerated.  Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled.  The rest of it is usually either dumped or burned, sometimes responsibly, sometimes not.[1]

The presence of so much plastic is having detrimental effects throughout the environment.  The ocean has become a major catch basin for plastic waste.  Every year 8-10 Mt enter the ocean.  At current rates, by 2050 plastic in the ocean will outweigh all the fish within it.  This is partly due to its slow rate of decomposition:  It normally takes hundreds of years for plastic material to break down.  And yet this process does not leave us with harmless compounds but instead with microplastic particles which also pose dangers to living creatures.  Microplastics are now found in nearly everything, contaminating water, soil, salt, food, and much more.  These small compounds cause major health problems once inside the human body:  cancer, immune disorders, infertility, etc.  Larger plastic pieces also pose threats to wildlife via suffocation, entanglement, and so on.[2]

The production of plastic is also energy intensive.  Nearly all of it, 99%, is produced from hydrocarbons.  The energy required to extract the latter and transform it into the various plastics we use amounts to 8% of worldwide oil and gas consumption.[3]

II.  The Bamboo Alternative to Plastic

The need for a biodegradable and less energy intensive substitute for plastic is clearly needed.  Bamboo, a type of fast-growing grass present around the world, presents a viable option.  Qiu and others write,

“Bamboo is a renewable biomass material that has a high annual output of biomass per area of land. The internode cells of bamboo are arranged strictly in the longitudinal direction, with no radially oriented cells such as ray cells. These unique microstructural features have a significant impact on the durability and strength of bamboo and the manufacture process of bamboo products, such as low density, high strength, and stiffness. The tensile strength of bamboo fiber (650 MPa) is close to that of steel (500 to 1000 MPa) and about twice that of wood. In addition, the flexibility of bamboo fiber is much higher than that of steel. The compressive strength of bamboo is in the range of 40 to 80 N/mm², which is two to four times higher than that of most timber species. In general, bamboo is a lightweight and high-strength biomass material (Scurlock et al. 2000).”[4]

The versatility of bamboo is shown in the number of products that can be made from it:

“Bamboo fibers have been used in many industries, for example the garment/ textile, automotive, pulp and paper industries. Due to its excellent durability, fire safety, environmental impact, user safety, energy efficiency, and so on, bamboo is one of the ideal raw materials for the production of sustainable household/ building products. In fact, the household/ construction sector accounts for 30 to 40% of the annual bamboo consumption in the world.”[5]

Some of the most common disposable plastic items – plates, cups, cutlery, diapers, and straws – can also be made from bamboo.[6]

The market for bamboo products is not niche:  It had risen to $60 billion worldwide in 2015.[7]  Yet growing bamboo is not detrimental to the environment.  Quite the opposite, in fact, as it enhances its well-being in various ways:

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-southern-solution-to-the-plastic-waste-problem/.

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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!

---

[1] Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. 2024. "Plastic Waste Factsheet." Pub. No. CSS22-11.  https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/material-resources/plastic-waste-factsheet.  Accessed 31 May 2025.

[2] Marta Fava.  “Ocean plastic pollution an overview: data and statistics.”  https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/plastic-pollution-ocean/.  Accessed 31 May 2025.

[3] University of Michigan.  Accessed 31 May 2025.

[4] Qiu, H., Xu, J., He, Z., Long, L., and Yue, X. (2019). "Bamboo as an emerging source of raw material for household and building products," BioRes. 14(2), 2465-2467.  https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/bamboo-as-an-emerging-source-of-raw-material-for-household-and-building-products/.  Accessed 31 May 2025.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Rocio Espinoza.  “Bamboo: A Sustainable, Eco-Friendly Plant for All Aspects of Living.”  https://forestnation.com/blog/bamboo-a-sustainable-eco-friendly-plant/.  Accessed 31 May 2025.

[7] Qiu.  Accessed 1 June 2025.

‘A Smashingly Successful Legislative Session in Louisiana!’

 

Louisiana’s finest swamp-scented commentator Hosshead Jacques is back with a review of the 2025 Session of the Louisiana Legislature:

***

Folks, I’m a-tremblin’ all over.  Only a born fool would be disappointed in what we’ve gotten from our august lawmakers this season.

Firstly, I’m as proud as a possum that I can personally contribute to the strengthening of Looziana’s economy just by breathing.  The carbon dioxide that I exhale will help fuel the rising industry of carbon capture and sequestration that the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee made sure would face no hurdles a’tall.  In fact, as I reenact the killing of the bills against our lovely carbon capture scam, I mean scheme (pardon me, folks, slip o’ the tongue!), by those Committee members, I can almost see the dollar bills floatin’ down from the heavens above like manna and coverin’ our beloved Bayou State:

HB 4 to allow parishes to vote to allow carbon capture and storage:  NO!

HB 353 to require safety measures are followed for carbon capture projects:  NO!

HB 522 to impose a temporary moratorium on carbon capture projects:  NO!

What a thrill y’all!  And that’s just a fraction of what I can recount whenever I want to pump some more money-makin’ CO2 into the atmosphere.  The best part of it is that you all can join me in this ritual, too!  So get to breathin’ folks, and do it with a smile, knowin’ that it makes a ginormous difference for the income of our State.

But folks, but folks!  We got to be real careful, now.  With all this new money flowin’ into the State like the Mighty Mississipp, we got to watch how we spend it.  We can’t afford to waste it on any unproven programs.  That’s why we’re so proud of Senate President Cameron Henry for slashing the funding for Looziana’s school choice program:

‘While the House kept Landry’s originally proposed $93 million budget for the program intact, Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, has said that he plans only to fund $50 million. Even with a budget of $93 million, only one-third of voucher applicants would secure a scholarship.

‘Critics point out that by not funding those students through LA GATOR, they will have to be funded by their public schools.

‘Further, “dropping down to $50 million means only current voucher students will qualify,” Daniel Erspamer of the Pelican Institute told The Center Square. “Some voucher students are about to graduate, and this would mean no new students entering kindergarten, which would have happened” in the Louisiana Scholarship Program.’

Pfff!  Erspamer, what’s he know?  He runs one of them think tanks, like those big metal contraptions driving around on their treads can think a thought.

Who knows how bad things would go in this State if parents had more control over their chilren’s larnin’ than those pretty little bureaucrats settin’ in Baton Rouge?

We seen how well our intrepid desk-riders have managed the insurance problems we’ve all been facin’.  Let’s count them blessins:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/06/garlington-a-smashingly-successful-legislative-session-in-louisiana/.

***

Hosshead would like to thank the following web sites for providing material for his review:

https://mailchi.mp/3d87bcd48b3f/concarryraffle-16940631

https://thehayride.com/2025/05/dozens-of-advocates-urge-senators-to-maintain-la-gator-funding/

https://make-la-insurance-affordable.com/cost-of-claims/

https://www.nola.com/opinions/quin_hillyer/louisiana-tort-lawsuit-insurance-landry-tim-temple-pelican/article_a1f2165e-34f5-4cb0-a407-a4f40160cf90.html

https://1033thegoat.com/louisiana-window-tint-laws-2025/

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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!

‘Post-Christian’

 

Dymphna, the pretty royal maiden,

Born of Christian queen and pagan king,

Forced to flee her native Ireland.

Mother dying, father grieving,

An unnatural lust for his daughter bore.

Carnal burning, Dymphna flying,

Unto Gheel in Belgium with a priest,

Gerebern, true father and protector

For the virgin princess, bride of Christ.

The raving king searched, and found them,

Commanded Father Gerebern be slain

For daring to rebuke him,

And severed his own daughter’s head

When she refused his incestuous advances. 

 

* * *

The life of these saints – an image of the West!

Pagan Europe was married to Christ

Near two thousand years ago,

But her faith grew weak and died,

And the West in her widowhood

Conceived again the desire for old, abandoned evils.

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/post-christian/.

***

For further reading on Sts Dymphna and Gerebern:

https://oodegr.com/english/biographies/arxaioi/Dymphna_martyr.htm

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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!