Thursday, September 25, 2025
D+324/220/-1215
1981 Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first female US Supreme Court Justice
1986 Antonin Scalia was appointed to the US Supreme Court
1988 Pope John Paul II beatified Friar JunÃpero Serra (founder of 1st California missions)
1996 Last of the Magdalene laundry asylums for "fallen women" closed in Dublin, Ireland
2015 Caitlyn Jenner officially changed her name from Bruce and her gender to a woman
2017 Ex-congressman Anthony Weiner sentenced to 21 months in jail for sexting underage girls
2017 First-ever woman graduated from the US Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course
2018 Bill Cosby sentenced to 3-10 years for 2004 sexual assault, the first celebrity jailed in the #MeToo era
2018 President Donald Trump criticized Globalism and Iran, speaking at the UN General Assembly
In bed at 9:30, up at 5:15. 57°, high of 71°, sunny day.
Meds, etc. Morning meds at a.m.
My comment last year about Cosby's sentencing:
Bill Cosby, pervert and rapist. I tend to have mixed feelings about comedians also. I've long thought that many of them are just mean-spirited bullies, often highly intelligent, indeed brilliant insight into human nature and the human condition, but mean and nasty. I started feeling this way with Jerry Lewis and still feel this way about Jimmy Kimmel. Cosby of course was much worse than a mean-spirited bully.
Walking back to the house from the mailbox yesterday afternoon, I was struck by how beautiful our home and the land around it are. I admired the tall spruce tree behind the shortened pine tree on the corner of our lot and then at the row of three crabapple trees along County Line Road. How deep green and lush all these trees are at the end of September, before the crabapple trees start to shed their leaves next month, to protect themselves as they sleep through the ice and snow and wind of our upcoming winter. As I walked to the Volvo on the driveway to put it away for the night, I noticed the beautiful sky overhead, the heavenly blue, and the white, gray, and blue clouds. I filled the bird feeders before I went to the mailbox, and as I sit on my recliner several minutes after relishing all the beauty, I see the tube feeder and the tray feeder teeming with finches and doves. Do they see me when I replenish their feeding places? Do they wait for me? It doesn't seem likely, but they show up mighty fast after I do. Is it old age and ferkrymptitude that have made me so much more aware of beauty all around me? Is this a compensating blessing that accompanies senectitude and ferkrymptitude? Is this Spinoza's third level of knowledge, intuiting or intellectually experiencing the unity of God and Nature, natura naturans and natura naturata? I'm typing this early, on Wednesday evening, feeling like Ivan Ilyich, not for his epiphany on the primacy of love and compassion in life, but on the presence of so much extraordinary beauty in the very ordinary things I see every day.
Donald Trump's vengefulness has always been a matter of pride to him, not shame. I read in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that DJT and the White House are desperate to get a U.S. Attorney in place in the Eastern District of Virginia to get an indictment against James Comey, one of his nemeses. The statute of limitations is about to run out and Trump wants his head on his Oval Office wall, gilded, of course. Trump has long boasted of his vengefulness. In one of my "Life in the Time of Covid" sketchbooks, I included words from an interview he did in which he was asked for his favorite Bible passage and he replied something like, "Oh, I don't know. They're all great. I like all of them. An eye for an eye, I suppose." Also:
In Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life (2007), with Bill Zanker), he said: "When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can.”
In How to Get Rich (2004): “Always get even. When you are wronged, go after those people, because it is a good feeling and because other people will see you doing it. I always get even.”
He repeated the theme in The Art of the Deal (1987) with Tony Schwartz, and in The Art of the Comeback (1997).
This is the Chosen One for Americans devoted to Christian Nationalism.
Attitude of Gratitude. I saw an ad for new windows in this morning's JSOnline and thought of our old windows and of our combination storm windows. That reminded me of life before combination storm windows became available. My first home on Newberry Boulevard had no combination storm windows, so every Fall I had to lug heavy storm windows out of our basement to hand on every window in the house. Every Spring, I had to take them down and replace them with screen windows. It was a real PITA, especially dealing with the windows on the second floor of the house. Actually, as I think back to those days, half a century ago, I can't remember where I kept the storm windows and screens during their off-seasons. Basement, back porch, garage? I do remember, however, trips to Lisbon Storm, Screen, and Door at 56th and Lisbon, where they bought and sold replacement storms and screens. It's still in business, 4th-generation family-owned.
The Indian Wars/Ethnic Cleansing. The Great RR Strike of 1877. The election of 1876, the end of Reconstruction.
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