Remembrances for October - 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

3 Oct.

Henry Hughes of Port Gibson, Mississippi.  He did a little of everything:  lawyer, sociologist, State senator, soldier.  Some of his ideas are no longer of interest, but his vision of an economy that looks and functions like a family is still worthy of consideration.

https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/henry-hughes/

His book, Treatise on Sociology:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000000449458&view=1up&seq=5

7 Oct.

Edgar Allen Poe of Virginia, one of the South’s finest writers.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/poe-of-virginia/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/822/edgar-allan-poe/photo

8 Oct.

Norbert Rillieux of New Orleans, greatly improved the sugar-refining process.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/norbertrillieux.html

10 Oct.

Lola Lopez, a daring Confederate spy along with her two sisters, Panchita and Eugenia, whose nighttime ride helped the Confederates win a notable victory against the Yankees in Florida at the Battle of Horse Landing.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/confederate-sister-spies/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/253425401/maria_dolores-lopez

12 Oct.

Andrew Bryan, founded the first black Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia, and was a tireless preacher to other Africans in his region of Dixie.

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/andrew-bryan-1737-1812/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p28.html

12 Oct.

Gen Robert Edward Lee, our dear and loving father.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-robert-e-lee/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/the-real-robert-e-lee/

23 Oct.

Chief George Washington Harkins, leader of the Choctaw tribe who led them along the Trail of Tears from Mississippi to Oklahoma.  His memorable farewell to the people of Mississippi may be read here:

https://www.ushistory.org/documents//harkins.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Harkins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal#/media/File:Trails_of_Tears_en.png

His son David Harkins served as a Lt Col in the Confederate Army as part of the Choctaw Mounted Rifles and also served as a statesman in Choctaw politics:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18910347/david-folsom-harkins

25 Oct.

Benjamin Banneker, a former slave from Maryland who became a respected mathematician and astronomer.

https://www.benjaminbanneker.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=261778&type=d

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-mysterious-relationship-between-thomas-jefferson-and-black-mathematician-benjamin-banneker/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/53/benjamin-banneker

29 Oct.

Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest, a fine general and one of Dixie’s folk heroes.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/nathan-bedford-forrest-and-southern-folkways/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/bust-hell-wide-open/

29 Oct.

Clarence Jordan, another recent Southern agrarian, founder of the Koinonia Farm in Georgia.  Also a preacher and a defender of black folks during the turmoil of the Civil Rights era, which made him and his Farm a target of violent attacks.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/clarence-jordan-and-the-southern-tradition/

29 Oct.

Sir Walter Raleigh, helped establish one of the earliest colonies in the South on Roanoke Island; he also found time for writing poetry and prose and for military service.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Raleigh-English-explorer

Some of his poetry is here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sir-walter-ralegh

29 Oct.

Joel Sweeney of Virginia, he popularized the banjo inside and outside of the South.

http://www.cgim.org/sweeneyclan/misc/musical.html

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

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

https://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/11/happy-feast-for-saints-of-october.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!

‘The Suhjen Ginrul’s Warnins’

 

In a surprise move, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham announced his resignation, and Governor Landry appointed Hosshead Jacques to replace him.

***

Surprised at the news, y’all?  Think how it hit me!  Like a dirt clod upside de head!

But Poppa Landry explained it all real good, sez he wants an outsider, like Securtairy Kennedy up ‘ere in DC, to take the reins.  Well, sez I, as I spend most of my days out of doors on bayous and in the woodlands, gatherin’ some meat for my table, I spec I’m as fit for the job as anyone.

My first duty in office is to give the Si Bon Award to Poppa Landry for banning soft drink buys wif ‘em welfare checks.  We come across a pretty sharp feller, name of Dr Mercola, who had some interestin’ things to say about them thar:

‘More than 63% of U.S. adults drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily, rapidly disrupting gut bacteria, weakening immune defenses, and damaging the gut barrier at a genetic level.

‘Researchers found that the sugar in soda flips bacterial DNA “switches” within days, changing immune signals and gut wall strength, but stopping sugar reverses these effects quickly.

‘Artificial sweeteners in diet sodas alter gut microbe balance, lower diversity, and promote inflammatory bacteria, harming immunity and metabolism even without sugar or calories.

‘Inorganic phosphate in soda absorbs into the bloodstream nearly 100%, spiking hormones that deplete calcium, suppress vitamin D, stress the kidneys, and harden the arteries.

‘Sugar and phosphate together create a rapid, sustained metabolic storm, undermining gut health, hormone balance, and cardiovascular function from multiple angles at once.’

Phew!  That’s a mouthful!  But we’d rather have a mouthful of fresh buttery biscuit drizzled with some natrul honey than guzzle – what’d he call it? – inorganic phosphate, and them other sorry things.

The other award we gots to hand out goes to Siniter Cassidy.  That knothaid gets the Golden Dunce Award for claimin’ there’s nary a bit ov evidence linkin’ autism to Tylenol.  But how’s he explainin’ all this?  

 

• ‘A 2025 review by scientists from Harvard, Mount Sinai and other major institutions published in BMC Environmental Health that examined 46 previous studies and found that most studies — especially the high-quality studies – showed an association between prenatal acetaminophen use and ADHD, autism and other neurological disorders.
• ‘A 2019 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study published in JAMA Psychiatry that analyzed data from the Boston Birth Cohort, a 20-year study of early life factors influencing pregnancy and child development. The researchers found that exposure to acetaminophen in the womb may increase a child’s risk for ADHD or autism. They concluded, “Appropriate and immediate steps should be taken to advise pregnant women to limit acetaminophen consumption to protect their offspring’s neurodevelopment.”
• ‘A 2019 observational study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology that analyzed data on nearly 9,000 children born between 1993-2005 to women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II cohort. The researchers found a link between prenatal acetaminophen use and ADHD.
• ‘A 2021 consensus statement that was based on a comprehensive review of experimental and epidemiological literature published between 1995-2020 in the PubMed scientific database. The authors noted that acetaminophen is an endocrine disruptor that can cross the blood-brain barrier and that they found evidence that it may alter neurodevelopment.’

Maybe ol’ Cassidy been spendin’ too much time with the AI chatterboxes; maybe he startin’ to halloosinate like ‘em.

Which reminds me, we got some labelin’ to do for those ‘uns.  New Suhjen Ginrul’s warnins and all that.  The AI chatdoodles are causin’ people to crack their gourds and go plum crazy:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/09/garlington-the-suhjen-ginruls-warnins/.

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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!

‘The True Spirit of Francis of Assisi’

 

As the West drifted further and further away from the Orthodox Church after the Great Schism, it was natural that the old models of sanctity would be rejected and new ones would take their place.  Francis of Assisi retains his hold on the Western soul largely because he is the archetype of post-Orthodox Western saintliness.

Roman Catholic Italy provides an illustration of this, as her government has introduced a proposal to reinstate a national holiday in his honor.

That is to be expected.  What is not expected is to see a prominent Orthodox writer from the US promoting the cult of Francis:

I went into the crypt and prayed at Francis’s tomb. Yes, I know he’s a Catholic saint, not one of our Orthodox ones. I don’t care. That man knew the Lord.

This is how heresies are born, folks, when someone puts his personal opinion above the consensus of the Orthodox Church.

But what does the Orthodox Church have to say about Francis of Assisi?  Fr Seraphim Rose, who diligently strove to acquire the mind of the Holy Fathers of the Church, gives a good indication in his Orthodox Survival Course.

The first thing to note, says Fr Seraphim, is the discontinuity of Francis with Orthodox Tradition:

So we’ve seen in the Middle Ages the rationalism, logicalness, replacing faith or taking over and shaping now faith, becoming the criteria, romantic elements entering in. And now we come to a very important one which is maybe even more important than Scholasticism, because in the end this will do more to bring about Antichrist than Scholasticism. This is the concept of sanctity which becomes now different from the Orthodox concept of sanctity. And the best example of this is the life of Francis of Assisi.

 

The fact that this man became so popular, in fact, tremendously popular wherever he went, people went around, acted like Christ Himself coming to them; and they sang and accompanied him. He aroused great enthusiasm, which shows that he was very much in the spirit of his times.8 But if we look at his life, we see that it is so strange from the Orthodox point of view; and we can say that it’s not at all an Orthodox Life of a Saint.

 

For one thing, he founded a new manner of life. He invented the rule of poverty because in church one day the Gospel was being preached about poverty, about the Apostles not taking anything with them when they preached, although later on, of course, the Apostles did take with them money and so forth. The first time they went out they went by two’s to the cities preaching to the Jews and took nothing with them. And he heard this in church and became inspired to invent a new rule, a new way of life, a rule of poverty based on the Gospel, as though there was no monastic tradition before him, which there was. And there were many great Saints at this time.

 

Of course, he could look around, perhaps the monasteries were corrupt and so forth, and he wanted something different. But there’s something already suspicious to think he’s going to do something new, a whole new rule of life, based not on Holy Fathers. And if he didn’t like the recent Latin Fathers, he could have gone back to St. John Cassian, the Egyptian Fathers and so forth, but he didn’t. He went instead to the Gospel, like the Protestants. He went and invented himself a rule of poverty. Nothing special, of course -- monks are poor-- but he made something special out of it, just as later we’ll see that the Catholics are making something special about the Mother of God as though she’s some kind of unearthly being and so forth.

 

And he gave it and himself and his followers new names. They were not now to be called just monks, they were the “Penitents of Assisi,” or the ‘Lord’s Minstrels,’ they called themselves, going about singing. So already we see that they think they’re not like previous monks and ascetics, but something new, a new spirit which is very much in accord with the spirit of the times.

 

There was a time, on Christmas in the year 1223, he decided to celebrate the Nativity in a new manner. And so he reproduced in the church were he was in Italy the stable of Bethlehem. And thus began the so-called devotion to the crib in the Latin Church and around this he had some kind of a play which is beginning of the mystery plays in Italy -- and helping thus the rise of the drama. And the drama of course is something which, although it arose from this very same thing, we’re not going to talk about that. The mystery play, which comes from the Liturgy actually, was centered around the Mass and religious themes, and are an adaptation to the new spirit of the times to make religion more interesting, more in accordance with everyday life, more close to the believers, as though Orthodoxy is not enough.

Next, he reveals Francis’s false humility:

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-true-spirit-of-francis-of-assisi/.

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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!

‘Charlie Kirk’s Murder and the Limits of Freedom’

Moon Griffon had an interesting monologue on Thursday morning (18 Sept. 2025).  He was making the case for the kind of Enlightenment/classical liberal society that has existed in the States since they became free countries following their War for Independence with Great Britain, where individual liberties are the summum bonum, the highest good, of the society in question.

In this kind of society, he said, if one wants to mutilate his sex organs and transition to another gender, he is free to do so.  If one wants to not believe in God, he may do so.  And so on like that.

But, he conditioned all of this with one moral absolute:  One does not have the right to use violence against those who disagree with him.

There is a tremendous contradiction in this moral universe.  If one is free not to believe in and worship the Christian God, then one is also necessarily free not to obey the commands that the Holy Trinity has given mankind to follow.  And if that is so, then one is free from the command not to harm or murder his fellow man.

Thus, Christian morality is overthrown in the Enlightenment/classical liberal society for the sake of individual liberties.

Many, many people on the Right in the US are proclaiming that the murder of Charlie Kirk is a tipping point:  The States cannot go on like they have been; something has got to change; Christianity must be given more prominence in our public life – not merely in our private, individual lives.

They are right.  But for that to happen we must reorder our hierarchy of values.  Individual rights disconnected from Christianity can no longer be at the top of the ladder.  Union of all our people with Christ in His Church must occupy that spot.  There are models of this kind of ‘illiberal democracy’ in recent years – Hungary, Greece, Ireland, and some others – whose fundamental laws make explicit reference to Christ, the All-Holy Trinity, and Christianity.

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/09/garlington-charlie-kirks-murder-and-the-limits-of-freedom/.

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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!