9/11/2025

 Thursday, September 11, 2025

D+310/235/-1227

1959 Duke Ellington won NAACP's Springarn Medal for his musical achievements

1973  Salvador Allende, the 1st elected Marxist president of a South American country, was deposed in a military coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet and supported by the CIA

In 1998, Independent Counsel Ken Starr sent a report to the U.S. Congress, accusing President Bill Clinton of 11 possible impeachable offenses.

2001 Two passenger planes were hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists and crashed into New York's World Trade Center towers, causing the collapse of both and the deaths of 2,977 people

In bed at 8:45, up at 4:30. 58°, high of 70°, mostly sunny.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 2:40 p.m, after lunch.

Work in the basement.  It's been a bit heartbreaking seeing all the lovely floorboards ripped up from the basement floor.  It's a $3,000 project and seems to be very fairly priced.  

The photo on the left and the one below are of the view from the bottom of the stairs looking east and from the east wall looking toward what was my painting 'studio' with the built-in shelving cabinet removed.  The third photo is of Geri's hobby space.  The fourth photo is the workroom, from the doorway looking toward the east wall.  One of the big challenges will be emptying this room and the storage room of all the "stuff."

Limbo - how low can you go?  How low can I feel, from day to day, week to week, and year to year?  How low can the country go, in terms of political assassinations, political speech, and political policies and practices?  How low can Donald Trump go in what he does and what he says?  How low can we go?  

I got up this morning thinking of the murder of Charlie Kirk, and wondering whether "they caught the guy,'  I turned on Morning Joe and watched it for a while, mostly bloviating, pontificating pieties about violence, hand-wringing, and pearl-clutching about gun violence in America, thoughts of the wife and two small children, etc.  I found the video of Trump's Oval Office statement eulogizing Kirk and fulminating about "the radical left", and about political speech:

It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequences of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. 

So says our Dear Leader who calls his political opponents scum, human scum, animals, disgusting, radical, sick, deranged people, enemies of the people, communists, Marxists, fascists, traitors, thugs, and sleazebags, not to mention all the demeaning nicknames, like "Crooked Hillary" and "Crooked Joe." 

VA: Aging from the inside out.  I attended the weekly meeting this morning with George, Kenyatta, Lee, and JT.  It was a good discussion. AJ was missing because of some surgery, and Marvin was missing for the second week.

I had a memorable experience leaving the VA.  I had a hard time remaining on my feet, staying upright, on the sidewalk leading away from the doors.  I can't think of a much better place to take a header than right outside the VA hospital, but the experience has me wondering whether I ought to bite the bullet and start using a walker or rollator instead of relying only on my cane for stability.  And speaking of falling and fear of falling, there is an article in this morning's New York Times -

Why Are More Older People Dying After Falls?: Some researchers suspect that rising prescription drug use may explain a disturbing trend, by did Sept. 7,, 2025 (7?).  Escerpts:

Public health experts have warned of the perils of falls for older people for decades. In 2023, the most recent year of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 41,000 Americans over 65 died from falls, an opinion article in JAMA Health Forum pointed out last month.

More startling than that figure, though, was another statistic: Fall-related mortality among older adults has been climbing sharply.

The author, Dr. Thomas Farley, an epidemiologist, reported that death rates from fall injuries among Americans over 65 had more than tripled over the past 30 years. Among those over 85, the cohort at highest risk, death rates from falls jumped to 339 per 100,000 in 2023, from 92 per 100,000 in 1990.

The culprit, in his view, is Americans’ reliance on prescription drugs.

Dr. Farley, a former New York City health commissioner who teaches at Tulane University, acknowledged that many factors contribute to falls, including the physical impairments and deteriorating eyesight associated with advancing age; alcohol abuse; and tripping hazards in people’s homes.

But “there’s no reason to think any of them have gotten three times worse in the past 30 years,” he said, pointing to studies showing declines in other high-income countries. 

The difference, he believes, is Americans’ increasing use of medications — like benzodiazepines, opioids, antidepressants and gabapentin — that act on the central nervous system.

“The drugs that increase falls’ mortality are those that make you drowsy or dizzy,” he said.

Problematic drugs are numerous enough to have acquired an acronym: FRIDs, or “fall risk increasing drugs,” a category that also includes various cardiac medications and early antihistamines like Benadryl.

Today’s over-85 cohort may also be frailer and sicker than the oldest-old were 30 years ago, Dr. Gill added, because contemporary medicine can keep people alive for longer.

Their accumulating impairments, more than the drugs they take, could make them more likely to die after a fall.