Juliette’s Newsletter

Six months ago, in the wake of Christmas Day, I shared my post entitled Let Not Your Heart Be Hypocritical, a post about Christmas and Kwanzaa. I wrote it about 10 years ago and I share it every year. It compares the things that are said about Kwanzaa - which I don’t celebrate - and things that we do when we celebrate Christmas.

Several people got offended by the post, but one of them really got to me.

I’ve been trolled countless times and for the most part, I find trolls entertaining and useful. But this person - a woman - was not a troll but a longtime Facebook follower and an alleged friend.

My post - that is, her misunderstanding of my post - enraged her and she wrote a couple of statuses mocking me not only for her erroneous assumption that I don’t celebrate Christmas, but also for my way of doing things; my way of communicating, my writing, my efforts to promote my work and for my perceived lack of success as a writer.

Not one word, however, refuting my points about Christmas and Kwanzaa.

And I didn’t get it at first. If one doesn’t like me and/or how I communicate, they are free to disconnect on any platform. Unfollow, block, mute - there are many solutions for unwanted connections.

But no, she chose to do something that was really … I don’t have a word for it. Yet.

And she didn’t put the mockery on my page or in my comments. She didn’t send these missives to my direct messages. She put them on her own page without mentioning my name. The cowardice - there; that’s the word I was looking for - of it blew my mind.

And when I responded, she admitted that she was talking about me. I’ve gone to her page since then and she has deleted the mockery, but I had the foresight to take screenshots of it.

This hurt because I liked her as a person and a fellow Christian. Yes you read that last word correctly.

I left her name on one of the screenshots so there will be no doubt as to her identity. I don’t give a shit if she reads this or not. Simply, I’m doing this to change a method of how I handle abuse from people that have claimed to be my friend. I used to be silent about it except for prayer. But after all of the other💩 that fell on my head last year, l have had enough.

Her mockery was intended to discourage me and it was a success. I was unable to read it until this week because - get this - some of what she said was true.

But here’s the thing about mixing falsehood and malice with truth …

The whole mixture becomes tainted. It’s like watering your Cheerios with urine My error: letting it poison me.

What will I do now? Extract the truth from her words and use it to my advantage.

By the way …

Until this week, I hadn’t reread the screenshots because I didn’t want that negativity in my spirit. That was an error on my part because if I had revisited this stuff earlier, I would have noticed something significant: her usage of the word “we.”

We?

Demons tend to operate in pairs or groups. Legion. They abuse, bully, mock, and twist your words. And they can’t help but expose themselves.

Consider yourself exposed, Tereasa.

So that’s where I’ve been, avoiding this but, at the same time, knowing that avoidance would have to end and I would have to go on offense against this pissant and her venom. And be healed.

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Good Smelling

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:18:42 GMT

Product: Body Odor Remove (capsules) at Amazon

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Re-intro

Juliette Ochieng — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:31:59 GMT

Katiana

Juliette Ochieng — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:39:40 GMT

A good neighbor.

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Stripe Issues

Juliette Ochieng — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 19:26:01 GMT

Are any other Substack content providers having trouble with Stripe? Just a few weeks ago, Stripe began asking me for new information about this newsletter. Suddenly, they have problems with my URL even though it has been the same for about two years.

I provided the information that Stripe asked for more than five times now with added information each …

Typing Small

Juliette Ochieng — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:36:37 GMT

Do any of you who also post on Substack have a recommendation for which browser to use when you’re using your phone to edit and publish?

If you see any weird errors in my last few posts, don’t be shy about pointing them out. Since December, I’ve been publishing with my cell phone. Now I don’t know if anyone else is having challenges with this, but all of the browsers I use with Substack have some serious drawbacks.

Safari: the text is entirely too small for me for me to read and I can’t figure out how to enlarge it. The usual methods don’t seem to work.

Chrome and Firefox: both browsers lock up whenever I try to add a photo. And I can’t resize them.

With all the browsers, there’s a great lag in time from when I tap my digit on the screen to when it responds. I’m using voice text to “type” this, but you gotta use your thumb sometimes. I end up tap tap tapping on my screen, then switching to the next browser to see if that one will behave. It takes up a lot of time.

Suggestions?

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What’s Growing in Your Garden?

Juliette Ochieng — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:39:17 GMT

Originally posted at Da Tech Guy Blog on January 28, 2014. I may have posted it here already, but I can’t find it so here you go again!

*****

Over at Ace of Spades HQ [dead link], my friend Monty expounds on a concept which I coined a number of years ago and that I often mention: The Coconut Treatment.

There is a price to be paid for divorcing actions and concepts from the words that describe them. Government, and the law that undergirds it, is made up of words. Devalue the words, strip them of meaning, and you do the same thing to the concepts those words describe. Action follows Thought, and for Thought to exist there must be the Word.

The sundering of meaning from the words to which they are assigned is merely a foundation for the hollowing out of the Old Order of things great and small. It is a demonic seed which mirrors the mustard seed concept of the Kingdom of Heaven as illustrated by Jesus the Christ.

Where God is the author of Order, he who wishes to be His counterpart sows the Tree of Chaos. Meet the New Boss.

Seeds require nourishment in order to flourish. And just as the seed of Faith will flourish with specific items - prayer, reading God’s Word, fasting, giving, and obedience to God - so it is with the seed of Lies.

In his short, excellent post, Monty references Orwell’s Newspeak coinage, but the concept is much older than 1984; it’s one which started very simply in the Garden when the Enemy planted doubt about the truth of God’s Word. Since then, the war has been ongoing and the enemy has always been able to find foot-soldiers -individuals, groups and nations - who will water and most definitely fertilize his tree of Lies.

That tree has a fancy name now: postmodernism. But postmodernism is merely one of the many tools used to deceive mankind and, ultimately, to separate as many of us as possible from our Creator.

Primary Example: Love

God defines three types of love - agapao phileo and storge. (Other types exist, but these are in the Bible.)

The new Love has a two-pronged definition: 1) giving a person whatever he/she wants, and 2) approving anything another wants to do. Its basis leads back to the disobedience in the Garden.

And from the seed planted by the new definition of love we get the conceptual fruit: new definitions for rights, racism, oppression…the list is endless.

The fruit and the branches are manifold. From the new “love” seed we get conceptual trees such as communism/progressivism/Marxism/socialism, “settled” science, and the Common Core(d) method of education—concepts with evil foundations and self-contradictory foundations or those in which foundations are unnecessary.

What to do? I’ve mentioned the solution in almost every one of my posts here [sic] at Da Tech Guy blog. But the first thing to do is recognize the faulty seeds which have been planted in oneself and to root them out. The usual evil seed which needs weeding is that same one which got the Enemy thrown out of Heaven: pride.

According to God, pride is always a sin. This includes pride of race, pride of ethnicity, pride of gender, pride of accomplishment, pride of relation, pride of nationality (yes)—many types of pride which we erroneously view as harmless or even good. That view is a seed for the larger tree: the “bad” types of pride; they all supersede the hand of the Dispenser of all good things. (To turn another concept on its head, you didn’t build that. God did.)

So, I suggest that we each start with letting God remove the weeds from our individual souls—rebuilding the foundation of Truth in our individual thinking. In turn follows the larger removal of weeds from our families, and, after that, from our nation.

The weeding and watering have to start somewhere.

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Liberty and Death - Revisited

Juliette Ochieng — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:36:56 GMT

I haven’t read anything about Kanye West in a while - not since he apologized to the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews for going “death con 3” (very much SIC) on them. The boy is still not wrapped too tightly, knows it, and obviously knows very little about actual war.

But Kanye is not the only one with a huge dearth in that area of knowledge. This morning I was thinking about when he asserted that slavery was a choice and how some of my acquaintances who are also black agreed with him based on some of the dumbest premises imaginable.

As it happens I agreed with him, too, but my premises - and my conclusions - are not the same as yours.

The following was originally published in 2018 and I also shared it this morning on Facebook.

Yeah I realize that I may be starting new skirmishes with new/old obliviots who refuse to understand what context is. I’ll risk it.

*****

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

On this, both Edwin Starr and Quark were wrong.

Just a random thought. Okay, what it really is: an excuse to quote a 70s R&B star and a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character at the same time.

Kanye West’s public support of Donald Trump is far from new, but people began to take notice when West tweeted in agreement with Candace Owens.

So, now the online public is paying close attention to everything West says, including this line, spoken during a TMZ interview:

400 years [of slavery] sounds like a choice.

I haven’t listened to the interview, so I don’t know the context but, guess what: he’s correct.

The choice was enslavement or death.

Now, before you decide that you already know where I’m going with this, keep in mind that I am often not going where you’re going and that I have a load of personal commentary to draw from to make my points.

On my Facebook feed, I have several people who are agreeing with West for all the wrong reasons. “The slaves should have gotten together and fought back. Look at Nat Turner,” I swear, these people think slaves could have sent out mass text messages to surrounding plantations and bought their equipment on Amazon.

And Nat Turner? There were close to 2 million slaves - obviously including women and children - in the United States of 1831, the year of the Nat Turner Rebellion. That rebellion lasted for two days and consisted of a force that grew to 75 people before it was stopped dead in its tracks. And I do mean dead.

I’m retired from the USAF, so I haven’t experienced war up close and personal. But I have read a book or 20 about wars and violence. Off the top of my head, I know that, for a war to have any chance of success - especially a war of rebellion - requires:

Clear chain of command
Training
Planning
Weapons
Ammunition
Food
Water
Shelter
Secure communication
Supply lines
Allies

These are the bare bones, but the bottom line is that a combat force seeking to free itself and its related non-combatants against a better-trained and better-armed foe needs to know WTF it’s doing in the short-term and have long-term goals – like what to do and where to go if victory is achieved.

Think about what slavery was back then. Most slaves could not read, much less read a map, and, of course, the whole reason for keep slaves illiterate was to reduce the likelihood of this very thing.

War against the master-class and other whites? Please.

So, it is that most slaves chose to live. Good thing, too, because dead people cannot procreate. Don’t believe me?Ask the descendants of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade - if you can find any.

A comparison of the Islamic Slave Trade to the American Slave Trade reveals some extremely interesting contrasts.

While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic Slave Trade: two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.

While the mortality rate of slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as ten percent, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans-Sahara[n] and East African Slave market was a staggering eighty to ninety percent. (...)
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas--the millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the United States of today--very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survived.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.

– John Alembillah Azumah

Most of those slaves had no choices.

Personally, I’m glad that those on my mother’s side of the woodpile chose to live. Their descendants received liberty anyway - and those descendants include those who are still mad at Kanye West for being freer than they are and for taking advantage of it.

*****

ADDED: … and paying the price for it.

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Not Trying to Get Rich

Juliette Ochieng — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 15:29:30 GMT

A content creator other than me

I just want to pay my rent and catch a Lyft to church this morning rather than catching the bus. I don’t grift you; I ask up front.

Thanks.

UPDATE: $25. I have almost enough to ride.

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Some Personal Black History

Juliette Ochieng — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 21:27:51 GMT

From the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum

Most of you know that I am descended from two men on both sides who were famous in certain circles: my father, Kenyan journalist Philip Ochieng, and my maternal grandfather, entertainer John E. Thomas (scroll down for photo). However, there’s another man in my family who is less known, but achieved a milestone of his own.

His name was James W. Kirk. This was fun to know after Star Trek became a thing in the 60s, but everyone called him Walter. He was my mom‘s stepfather.

This story was told to me by my aunt, Cheryl Kirk Jackson who passed away back in 2023, so I am passing this lore along via memory.

Grandpa Walter was born in Alabama and had a college degree in finance probably from Grambling University. Later, he moved to Chicago, which is where he and my grandmother met.

Back in the days following his graduation, there were few if any places in which a black person could use such a degree to make a living. So Grandpa Walter became a Pullman Porter.

Here’s a bit of Pullman Porter history from Wikipedia.

Pullman porters were men hired to work for the railroads as porters on sleeping cars.Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars. Their job was to carry passengers’ baggage, shine shoes, set up and maintain the sleeping berths, and serve passengers. Pullman porters served American railroads from the late 1860s until the Pullman Company ceased its United States operations on December 31, 1968, though some sleeping-car porters continued working on cars operated by the railroads themselves and, beginning in 1971, Amtrak. The Pullman Company also operated sleeping cars in Mexico from the 1880s until November 13, 1970. The term “porter” has been superseded in modern American usage by “sleeping car attendant”, with the former term being considered “somewhat derogatory”.
Until the 1960s, Pullman porters in the United States were almost exclusively black, and have been widely credited with contributing to the development of the black middle class in the United States. Under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph, Pullman porters formed the first all-black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, in 1925. The union was instrumental in the advancement of the Civil Rights Movement.

Pullman Porters were chosen for being tall, good-looking and well-spoken; Grandpa was all of those things. His Alabama cadence was mixed with proper pronunciation which I bet meshed together over time.

According to Aunt Cheryl, Grandpa Walter worked a regular route and, therefore, became familiar with his charges - mostly white men commuting to and from work in Chicago. One of them was a man who was an executive with Schlitz Brewing Company’s location in Chicago. The two men often discussed financial issues and the news of the day. Apparently, the man realized that my grandfather was well-educated and smart. And that’s how James W. Kirk became one of the first black executives in the Schlitz organization. I think this happened in the late 50s or the early 60s.

My grandparents lived on Chicago’s South Side which, back then, was a primarily black middle- to upper-class neighborhood. (Side note: I grew up in Los Angeles and was shocked at how strictly segregated Chicago still was even into the 80s. On one side of ~~a freeway~~ an expressway overpass, all the pedestrians were black. Then, on the other side, all the pedestrians were white.)

It is certain that Grandpa had a good salary from Schlitz. But it was well-known that Pullman Porters could become financially stable and successful through generous benefactors, so that job was highly sought after by black American men of the day. In short, my grandparents had a few bucks.

I like stories like these and I’m grateful to have been related to a person who used his personal gifts to advance himself and his family while being in the right place at the right time.

By the way, Don Surber‘s excellent piece on hidden black history jogged my memory. You should read it.

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Great Black Patriots of the United States Congress - Revisited

Juliette Ochieng — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:28:48 GMT

Originally published many years ago at both my old baldilocks sites. A significant feature of American history.

****

In honor of Black History Month; spoiler alert: it’s not about these HoRs.

Several links in the original post - from NYU and from YouTube - are dead. I will look for others, but in the meantime, here you go.

UPDATED: NYU’s new URL on the topic.

*****

In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War and during what is known as the Reconstruction period, sixteen black American men - several of them former slaves - served in the US House of Representatives with most being from states of the former Confederacy. All were quite literate and some were self-educated. What is certain is that these men saw hardship and racism that most of us 21st century brats of all colors cannot begin to conjure.

What is also certain is that each of these men were Republicans and for a very good reason: the Democrat Party of that time was the self-described Party of Slavery and remained the Party of Black Oppression long after. (Arguably, this legacy continues.)

Linked above are the fascinating biographies of each congressman and some of the speeches the men gave during the debates for the Civil Rights Act of 1871 - also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act - and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

The site linked is called Neglected Voices and the voices of these men have indeed been neglected but the title is so … weak. These men were anything but weak, hence the title of this post. I’m sure, however, that they’ve been spinning in their graves of late at the words and deeds of those for whom they set precedent.

These men didn’t have to invent tales of racial epithets hurled or of racial violence; such were their constant companions throughout their lives. Yet they did more than muddle through life, they soared. These were real men, not victims; our current crop of representatives looks microscopic next to them

At any rate, here are excerpts of a speech from Rep. Richard H. Cain (R, SC), in which he contradicts overt assertions by his white colleagues regarding the black race’s alleged inferiority:

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman states that during the struggle for freedom four millions of negroes lifted no hand to liberate themselves; that no stroke was made by them to deliver themselves from their thralldom; yet a few moments afterward he makes the statement that their kind-heartedness prevented them from rising up and destroying the wives and children of the rebel soldiers who were at the front. I accept the admission. Sir, there dwells in the black man’s heart too much nobleness and too much charity to strike down helpless women and children when he has a chance to do so. No; though the liberty of our race was dear to us, we would not purchase it at such a dastard price as the slaying of helpless women and children, while their husbands and fathers were away. I would scorn the men of my race forever if they had lifted their hands at such a period as that against helpless women and children, who were waiting in silent anxiety the return of their natural and lawful protectors. Our strong black arms might have destroyed every vestige of their homes; our torches might have kindled a fire that would have lighted up the whole South, so that every southern man fighting in the army would have hastened back to find his home in ashes. But our race had such nobleness of heart as to forbear in an hour [of] such extremity, and leave those men their wives and children.
Sir, I mean no disrespect to the gentleman, but I think the facts will bear me out in the statement that on every occasion on the battlefield where the black man met the white man of the South there was no flinching, no turning back, on the part of the black man. He bravely accepted his part in the struggle for liberty or death.
The gentleman says he still looks upon the whites as the superior race. That may be the case in some respects; but, sir, if they educated us they certainly should not find fault with us if we follow out what they have taught, and show ourselves obedient servants.
But, Mr. Speaker, there is another point. The gentleman states that we would make no movement to achieve our liberty. Why, sir, the education which those gentlemen gave the southern slaves was of a peculiar kind. What schoolhouse in all the South was open to the colored race? Point to one. Name the academy where you educated black men and black women as lawyers or doctors, or in any other department of science or art. Point out the county. Give us the name of the district. Tell the name of the school commissioner. Name the teacher. I will name one. Her name was Missa Douglas. And for the attempt to educate those of our race she was incarcerated in prison, and remained there for five years. That is the only instance, so far as I remember, of the education of the colored people of the South.
Examine the laws of the south, and you will find that it was a penal offense for any one to educate the colored people there. Yet these gentlemen come here and upbraid us with our ignorance and our stupidity. Yet you robbed us for two hundred years. During all that time we toiled for you. We have raised your cotton, your rice, your corn. We have attended your wives and your children. We have made wealth for your support and your education, while we were slaves, toiling without pay, without the means of education, and hardly of sustenance. And yet you upbraid us for being ignorant; call us a horde of barbarians!
(...)
Tell us of our ignorance - the ignorance of the colored race! Why, Mr. Speaker, it appears to me to be presumption on the part of the gentleman to state that we - we whom they have wronged, whom they have outraged, whom they have robbed, whose sweat and toil they have had the benefit of for two hundred years; whose labor, whose wives, whose children, have been at their beck and call - I say it ill-becomes them to taunt us now with our barbarism and our ignorance. Sir, if he will open to us the schoolhouse, give us some chance, we would not have to measure arms with him now. But even now, Mr. Speaker, although there is such disparity between us and him so far as relates to education and resources, even now we fear not a comparison in the condition of education in the last eight years between the whites and the blacks of North Carolina.
The gentleman, moreover, states that the reason why they did not educate the colored race was that the colored man was not ready. Not ready, Mr. Speaker; if I had that gentleman upon the floor, with my foot upon his neck, and holding a lash over him, with his hands tied, with him bound hand and foot, would he expect that I should boast over him and tell him “You are a coward, you are a traitor, because you do not resist me?” Would he expect me to tell him that when I had him down under my foot, with his hands tied and the lash in my hand lashing his back? Would he tell me that, in conscience, I would be doing justice to him? On, no, no! And yet such was the condition in which he had my race. Why, sir, the whipping-post, the thumb-screw, and the lash, were the great means of education in the South. These were the schoolhouses, these were the academies, these were the great instruments of education, of which the gentleman boasts, for the purpose of bringing these barbarians into civilization. [Applause.] When men boast, they ought to have something to boast of. When I boast, Mr. Speaker, I shall boast of some noble deed. I will boast not of the wrongs inflicted upon the weak; I will boast not of the outrages inflicted upon the indigent; I will not boast, Mr. Speaker, of lashing the weak and trampling under foot any class of people who ought to have my sympathy, nor will I reproach them for being ignorant, when they have been kept away from every means to educate them.

Richard Harvey Cain

Ironic how so many so-called proud black persons disdain education today. It is easy to see why the stories of such men are left out of the NEA-approved lesson plans--and easy to see why they should be re-remembered.

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Saul’s Downfall

Juliette Ochieng — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:28:20 GMT

Depiction of King Saul

When I read the Bible, I do it in an unusual fashion. Many years ago, I committed to reading the Bible all the way through starting at the beginning of the year and I did that maybe seven or eight times. Now I do it differently. I have four Bible apps and what I do now is note the verse of the day and then read the entire chapter. And sometimes I will embark on a project for many days. I will take one of the narratives and read it all the way through until the end, a chapter or two a day.

At present, I am in the midst of the saga regarding the prophet Samuel, King Saul, and King David. This is in the Old Testament, of course. I finished the first book of Samuel last week and I’m on chapter 8 in the second book.

From the minute Saul, king of Israel, disobeyed Samuel regarding the fate of the Amalekites and with the offering to the Lord - he tried to gaslight Samuel about both! – his descent was just crazy. And after Samuel told him that he would no longer be king, Saul just kept screwing up and screwing up over a period of many years.

The narrative says the spirit of the Lord left him and that an evil spirit had begun to torment him. From that point, stupidity was the defining quality of Saul’s life.

When Samuel anointed David to be the next king, Saul tried to kill David. David fled and Saul hunted him for the next 10 years to the exclusion of all other matters.
After Samuel died, Saul consulted with a witch to bring up the spirit of Samuel – an action which Saul himself had forbidden throughout his kingdom under the pain of death.
Saul murdered a tribe of priests. These priests had helped David during David’s escape, but they did not know that Saul was after him. Saul killed them anyway, leaving only one alive. That one moved faster than the others.
While Saul was laser-focused on David, the Philistines – Israel’s sworn enemies – grew stronger and by the time Saul noticed, they were too strong for Saul’s forces to defeat. He and three of his sons died in battle.

Saul had moments of clarity in between, but the crazy was too strong for him to hold back. He had passed the point of no return.

I wonder how things would have gone had Saul simply stepped down as king when Samuel told him that the Lord had picked someone else. But humility wasn’t part of Saul’s personality.

I think I like doing recaps of Bible stories! Might we call this a review?

Some who think they will spontaneously combust if they touch a Bible think it’s full of rules and regulations. But there are a lot of wild and very human narratives in it and this one is as good as any.

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Auto Pilot

Juliette Ochieng — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 18:27:11 GMT

This morning, I had decided not to walk today. I was about half an hour into my walk when I remembered that decision. 🙂

I have a bit of a new routine. The previous one was six days per week. Now it’s seven days straight with a break of one day in between.

More new: I used to do my 3 miles, then get in my car and drive over to Planet Fitness to do extra things and to lie on the massage bed there for 10 minutes. Due to circumstances, I now walk straight over to PF, do my things, then walk home. This has increased my distance to 4.16 miles. I like it!

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