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Medium AlternateDHughes2016-12-10T00:40:36-05:00

2003, 2025

“Houston, we’ve got another problem”

By DHughes|2025-03-20T16:54:19-04:00March 20th, 2025|Categories: business, community, politics, social, trumpwatch|Tags: Apollo 13, Brandy Lee, Canada, chainsaw, corruption, democracy, Edward Deming, Eliott Jaques, Jim Collins, Jim Lovell, John Gardner, Michael Lewis, Musk, tariffs, The Fifth Risk, Trump, Ukraine|0 Comments

The near-catastrophe aboard Apollo 13 was nothing compared to what Captain Space-X and his orange crew chief are now launching in America (11 min read) "Houston, we've had a problem." Read more...

605, 2022

This is us …

By DHughes|2022-05-06T10:21:55-04:00May 6th, 2022|Categories: business, community, politics, social|Tags: abortion rights, Alito's leaked memo, Allegory of the Caves, Community, David Sloan Wilson, democracy, E.O. Wilson, equality, Fox News, Fox Ntion, Plato, Putin, Socrates, Tucker Carlson, US Supreme Court, war in Ukraine|1 Comment

still trapped in Plato's cave! "The prisoners would mistake the shadows for reality." – Socrates, The Republic, Book VII (20 min) About 2,376 years before Fox News was founded Read more...

1404, 2022

This is us …

By DHughes|2022-04-19T11:03:52-04:00April 14th, 2022|Categories: politics, social|Tags: Charles Darwin, Derek Chauvin, Hitler, Jonathan Haidt, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Plato, Putin, Russian invasion, Socrates, Steven Pinker, The Atlantic, Trump, Ukraine war|0 Comments

Are Will Smith, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Derek Chauvin, Ginni Thomas, Irma Grese, Marjorie Taylor Greene, angry truckers and KKK members just high profile primates in the lab of Read more...

2311, 2020

The contrasts are black and white and stark …

By DHughes|2020-11-23T14:54:28-05:00November 23rd, 2020|Categories: business, community, politics, social, trumpwatch|Tags: America, Bob Woodward, Columbia University, Jared Kushner, obama, Rage, Simon & Schuster, The Promise Land, The Situation Room, Trump, White House|0 Comments

in everything from hope and anger to failure, character, leadership and friendship (4 min read) Two men. Two Presidents. Two stories. Two books. Two Americas. Two visions (well, at Read more...

1711, 2020

Three of the most dangerous words in history …

By DHughes|2020-11-17T14:50:59-05:00November 17th, 2020|Categories: business, politics, social, trumpwatch|Tags: Adolf Hitler, Alois Hitler, Fred Trump, Graham, McConnell, Nazi, Romney, The Elephant Journal, Trump|0 Comments

"Going along with" (4 min read) "We were just going along with ..." has been the shameful, crying confession of millions of good people across a history of war, Read more...

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My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."

"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama

This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.

It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.

My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.

It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.

As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.

Never in our wildest fantasies …

“Houston, we’ve got another problem”

This is us …

This is us …

The contrasts are black and white and stark …

Three of the most dangerous words in history …