♪ It’s only human to want to inherit every feeling you’ve got
And like it or not, let’s take it to the Nth degree
Here we go
Give us ten bucks and a head start
Here’s where we go
The puzzle’s pulling apart
And here’s the scene:
Your horse is going the wrong way up the street,
Are we family?
Or what? ♪
— So Tragic. So Hip. A True Gift From Canada to America.

Four centuries and two years ago, the first Africans arrived in a freshly fouded English colony t the confluence of th Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. Antony and her compatriots did not alight at Point Comfort as settlers or tourists.1Insert 10,000-word screaming screed on the evils of opposing mischaracterized “critical race theory” in school curricula.

“Comfort” only commences the discussion of the cruel ironies shooting through the tale of enslaved peoples residing in the conquered land later to become the United States. Spend an August in Tidewater Virginia as your very Weekend Politics Thread host has done for all but a handful of his annual trips around the sun, and check your premises on applying any descriptor redolent of ease and enjoyment to the area.2Lovely falls and springs, though.

But no one came to talk about the weather. Rather, remarkably and improbably, a family still living near that long-ago landing spot credibly traces their roots to Antony. Read all about it. Or just drink in this quote, “Because of our ancestors, we exist because they survived. We have, because they sacrificed. We strive because they dreamed.”

♪  From happy-go-lucky to surly-go-crazy, the lot
And more often than not, admission to the battles is free ♪

Imagine the struggles. Picture the hard-won moments of grace. Weep to imagine the even rarer victories against an entire nation and system of laws whose existence depended on making you and yours accept a status as less than. Uvular, as your factory-issue, bog-standard mediocre white man, could pretend to by engaging in nonsense such as sharing pictures of placards reading “No dogs. No Irish.” Thereby accomplishing nothing beyond denying the miracle3Only in the colloquial sense. No gods need apply. of the Tucker family.

♪ Are we family when it’s only if not when?
Taking care of each other one bullet to another
When it’s all, “If a song can’t save us, then nothing can.”
Are we family?
Or what? ♪

It goes without saying—but bears typing—nothing but the generations of individual Tuckers pulled the collective Tuckers through. Surely, not everyone always loved or even liked one another. But enough folks hung together long and tightly enough to carry on the fight day after day and eventually feature in a WPT header.

Which invites the possibly trite observation that more than blood makes family. Spare you? Gladly, after sharing these links:

• Afghanistan Relief
• Haiti Earthquake and Tropical Storm Relief
• Your Local Foodbank

And, yeah, Uvular didn’t not sing “Kumbaya” as he clicked the publish button on this post.4He definitely did Google the spelling of “Kumbaya.”

Pictured: Sally Hemmings Family Reunion