12/6/23

 Wednesday, December 6, 2023

In bed at 9, up at 4:11.  Let Lilly out.  32°, high of 38°, mostly cloudy, wind WNW at 9 mph, 7=16/32, WC is 24°.  Sunrise at 7:08. sunset at 4:16, 9+7.

Treadmill; pain.  I've been off the treadmill for the better part of a week now; is this really due ust to pain or also laziness or lassitude? Today as of 4:30 p.m., I've been w/o pain, probably because of the appointment with the VA Pain Clinic.  Spoke too fast: on my way downstairs to treadmill, PFP hit.  00:00 & 0.00  Breakfast: GrapeNuts w/ banana, berries; Lunch: salami & cheese sandwich; Dinner: chicken noodle casserole

I'm grateful for YouTube.  I know it's social media and is among the bad guys criticized for its use of addictive algorithms, but for me it's terrific.  Yesterday I watched and paid attention to a 2 hour lecture by Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness and pain/stress/healing, the MBSR or Mindfulness-based Stress Relief program used in many hospitals and other settings now.  I'm not sure that I can reliably 'get into' a mindfulness habit or practice, whether I have the necessary discipline, but I'm pretty sure I may have my pelvic pain problem for the rest of my life.  Is it my long-diseased bladder, PF dysfuntion, rectal problems, pudendal nerve entrapment, some of them, or all of them, perhaps someting else?  I have no clear idea, but it may be that the only relief will come from outside a doctor's office, perhaps mindfulness/meditation, maybe even gummies.😎  In any event, I'm grateful for YouTube for the access it provides me to so so much that is of interest me, lectures, demonstrations, entertainment including ballets and symphonies.  it is mostly YouTube that let me get off my butt and  on the treadmill again.  Sometimes I'll watch a news show, like Dana Bash's at 11 a.m., but that depends on whether I am largely pain-free at 11.  If not, I will usually find something of interest on YouTube.  I watched a couple interesting lectures on Meister Eckhart last week and want to watch another on Nietzsche's Geneology of Morals.  And there are coutless "how to's" on painting.  Not all of the programs are high quality, but many of them are.  There are also many interesting documentary films on OVID and other interesting films on the Criterion Channel.  Sustained reading is a problem for me because of presbyopia so I'm dependent on my laptop with its ability to magnify print and image sizes, and on whatever is available through a television screen, like materials on YouTube.  I'm grateful for it.

No pain at the Pain Clinic.  I visited for about an hour and a half with nurse-practitioner Kate and Dr. Shankar.  As I expected, the doc did not find nerve-blocking injections to be called for.  He suggested perhaps acupuncture might be helpful and I'l get a call from the VA acupuncturist at sometime.  I had acupuncture many years ago at a facility on Mayfair Road during my suicide-ideation, Hunner's ulcer days and it didn't help.  The acupuncturist was a Chinese immigrant who took up acupuncture because heChinese medical licensure wasn't accepted in the U.S.  She had a significant hesitation about applying the needles in my groin because of her sense of modesty.  She finally did it with another therapist present, but it didn't help.

Another mass killing in Las Vegas where Sarah just finished working the LDI - Live Design Internatioal show and expo.

12/5/23

 Tuesday, December 5, 2023

In bed at 9:30 and up aat 5:30.  Let Lilly out.  33°, cloudy, high of 38°, wind NE  at 3 mph,  2-12/17. Sunrise at 7:07, sunset at 4:16, 9+8.   

Treadmill; pain  Starting the day w/ PF tightness, pain, continuing all morning.  Breakfast: CBH & eggs. Lunch: salami & havarti sandwich, Pringles; Dinner: mac & cheese, sliced peaches,  6 pm.  00:00 & 0.00.

I'm grateful today for hired help.  When we moved into our current home on 9/15/2011, I was 70 years old and Geri was 67.  Youngsters!  Now I am in the middle of my 83rd year and Geri is halfway through her 80th.  When we moved from our 3.75 acre Saukville home, we brought our John Deere lawn tractor.  Then I wasn't able to tolerate the bumpy ride because of my delicate nether region, but Geri, ever the willing worker, took over mowing our new 0.62 acre lot, as well as all the gardening, maintaining the gardens that were already here and adding to and improving them each year.  Eventually the lawn maintenance became too time-taxing and we resorted to hired help, a lawn service.  Our current lawn service guys just finished the final Fall leafage cleanup and I'm grateful for their service.  They are professional, reliable, diligent, and thorough and we are no longer able to do the kind of work they do, though Geri is never daunted by any job, large or small.  Without a clean and tidy lawn, we would be unable to live here unless perhaps we had the extensive lawn ripped out and had Astroturf laid in, or perhaps had Japanese rock gardens installed all around the house.  I'm only too aware of the environmental and financial costs for suburban lawn maintenance so our lovely lawns provide me with yet another cause for feelings of complicity and reckless privilege.  I think back to my childhood years living in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue, and looking out windows to the crappy lawn at eye level mowed, I suppose, by Sam, the janitor who serviced our three-story, 12 unit apartment building plus our basement digs.  I suppose I should feel good about ending up where I am, and indeed I do; this is a grand home to live in, both upstairs and in my basement 'sanctuary.'  But I think back, and . . .

    We increasingly must rely on hired help to continue living in our house.  I have never been a reliable DIY guy; I shy away from even trying, fearing that I'll make the problem worse.  My son puts me to shame with his home improvement jobs and  the repair/replace work he has accomplished.  Also, I'm not able safely to climb a ladder above the second rung without losing my balance and risking a fall.  Thus, I can't even replace light bulbs in our ceiling fixtures in the kitchen, tv room, and 2 bathrooms.  I'm also not able to do anything that requires me to get down on the floor.  I'm able to get down, but I can't count of being able to get up.  Geri is still strong,  agile, and (as always) ever ready to take on any task that needs to be done, but as she approaches that 80th birthday and copes with increasing chronic aches and pains, she talks more often of eventual condo or apartment living, with maintenance help available.

The view of my 'studio' space from the treadmill, our total basement space probably 5 times more spacious than our entire basement apartment at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue.

WaPo series on Ukraine counteroffensive & US planning & training.  If the information reported in this 2 part series is accurate, and it rings true, this is yet one more massive SNAFU and FUBAR on the part of the U.S.'s political and millitary establishments.  Without air supreriority - caused by U.S. refusal to provide F-16s - the Ukrainians were fighting with one arm tied behind their backs.  Biden will be blamed for this.   Also, Biden's decision to ship cluster bombs to the Ukrainians was a desperation move brought on by the shortage of 155mm artillery shells.  Also, re: all the hoopla about providing the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Germany's Leopard tanks - these sophisticated million dollar lethal gadgets were destroyed by simple Russian drones costing about $1,000.  Bottom line: the Ukrainian counteroffensive is a failure, full stop.

    The battle field around Zaporizhzhia is a horor story, like all battle fields, like Gaza since early Octobeer.  Biden will get most of the blame.   Homo hominis lupus.

USA! USA!  USA sets new mass killing record!!!  From WaPo:

In less than 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon, two 911 calls led police in Texas and Washington to two mass shootings that pushed the nation to a gruesome milestone.

They were the 37th and 38th shootings this year in which four or more victims were killed, the highest number of mass killings in any year since at least 2006. Last year’s 36 was the previous record.

The latest deaths brought the 2023 total to 197, not counting the shooters — yet another record. Ninety-one people were wounded in those events but survived. 

More than 48,000 people died of gunshot wounds in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which averages out to about 132 deaths per day. More than half of those were suicides.

 Joh Kabat-Zinn.  I watched a 2 hour lecture on mindfulness (and medicine) by him on YouTube.  Very interesting.

The Pier: an Irish movie we watched on Acorn at night.

12/4/23

 Monday, December 4, 2023

In bed at 9, onto lzb from 2:00 to 2:50, back to bed, and up at 3:20 with BP, RP, and a very sore left shoulder.  Let Lilly out.  31°, mostly clear, high of 37°, wind NW at 8 mph, 4-8/1, 0.25" of rain in last 24h,   Sunrise at 7:06, sunset at 4:16, 9+10.       

Treadmill; pain.  Worsening left shoulder pain the last few days.  It gets better during the day.  Arthritis? PFP sent me back to bed after 6, after completing kitchen chores from last night, and up again at 8. PFP again later.  PITA in the afternoon, plus PFP. Breakfast: leftover spaghetti w/ marinara😨; Lunch, watermelon, salami sandwich; Dinner: salmon, potato crisps,  00:00 & 0.00

I'm grateful for the early morning hours in retirement. It's time to spend with Lilly with her old age sleeplessness and occasional restlessness, to light a log in the fireplace and to sit quietly, to listen to my tinnitus, to read the morning newspapers, to start the daily journal, and try to collect my minnows-in-a- bait-bucket thoughts.  Geri is thankfully still asleep, still resting and recovering from covid which has knocked her for a loop for 2 weeks now though she is improving with the steroids and cough medication prescribed by Dr. B.  I am so grateful that she was and is up-to-date on her vaccinations and didn't land in a hospital, like so many patients her age.  We each need our solo quiet times in addition to our normal quiet mornings reading the papers, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc.  How very different life is from our working days, up each morning to shower, dress for work, maybe eat, maybe not, get in the car and drive off to work in heavy traffic until dinner time, back in the car to drive home in traffic for dinner, sometimes stressed, sometimes not.   For a time, Geri's work had her living away from me in a different city or town so she and I lived alone during the week (except in my case when A, A,&P or my Dad were living with us.)  We've had quite a bit of solo time during our marriage, more than most married couples, and we continue to have it in old age and retirement.  I think of our friend Janine telling me of her parents in retirement who were always together and did everything together.  Different strokes for different folks.  Geri and I each need our solo times, for reading, for hobbies, for projects, for napping, or just for solitude.  I've wondered at times whether this is because we were in our mid-40s when we married, each of us having lived independently and with plenty of solo time for some years between marriages.  In any case, we are settled into our modus vivendi and it is good.  That said, given my druthers, I would prefer not to be up this early for solo time.

The first 50 pages of double-page, color ads in yesterday's NYT Style Magazine: Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent, Prada, Celine, Chanel, Rolex (2), Cartier, Fendi, Bulgari, Burberry, Van Cleef & Arpels, Loewe, Dolce & Gabbana, Graff, Saks, Movado, Prada Paradoxe, David Webb, Regent Cruises, Conrad Hotels, Bennett Winch, Suprima Cottons, CrystalCruises, before we come to a Table of Contents and single page ads for Tiffany & Co., De Beers et al.   A reminder of Christmas in America.  For unto you today is born in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

More and more articles appearing about Trump and the likelihood of dictatorship; the fragility of American democracy.  Was I moaning about this in 2015 and 2016 before his election?  I certainly was ringing alarm bells about his fascistic personality after he was in office.  Kitty must have wearied of me moaning about our nation's electorate being so ready to choose fascism over our woebegone democracy and our Constitution designed to empower conservative minorities and disempower majority rule.  Robert Kagin's article is the most nerve-shattering.  He outlines step-by-step just how it will occur and everything he says seems likely to occur.  God help us, if only he could or would😟  The entire next issue of The Atlantic is devoted to "If Trump Wins."  How many people read The Atlantic?  One sure bet is that none of the MAGA voters do, but kudos to The Atlantic for doing what needs to be done.  On the other hand, . . .

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  An entry from this journal on this date last year:

Countering Happy Horseshit with Happy Horseshit From Heather Cox Richardson's most recent post: "Today, one of former president Trump’s messages on the struggling right-wing social media platform Truth Social went viral. In the message, Trump again insisted that the 2020 presidential election had been characterized by “MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,” and suggested the country should “throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or…have a NEW ELECTION.” Then he added: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone False & Fraudulent Elections!” In other words, Trump is calling for the overthrow of the Constitution that established this nation. He advocates the establishment of a dictator."  This is, as we used to say in RVN, pure happy horseshit.  No surprise from Trump

New Haflingers.  I bit the bullet and finally bought a new pair of slippers at Stan's, the soft-sole indoor variety.  My 3 old outdoor ones are all old and stretched out of shape by years of wearing them with compression socks.  When I wear them without the socks, they are so loose I'm in danger of slipping out of them, tripping, and falling.  I also found a perfect Christmas gift for Geri.

Thoughts on Trump's criminal trials.  I can't believe he'll ever be convicted.  I expect a hung jury in Washington, an acquittal (or dismissal) in New York, and a constant finger on the scale in Florida by Judge Aileen Cannon.

Is it Israel's 'war in Gaza' or Israel's 'war on Gaza?'  It is hard for me to believe that the members of Israel's government give a flying f___ about all the civilian deaths in Gaza, including thousands of children.  I'm certainly no authority on urban warfare or on how to combat militarily an enemy like Hamas in a densely occupied, extensively tunneled environment like Gaza, so I don't know what Israel should and should not be doing in Gaza to eradicate Hamas.  But I have to believe that Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and their allies in the government, the settlers, and at least some members of the IDF have been experiencing some schadenfreude over all the death and destruction in Gaza.  The wholesale slaughter of Isralis by Hamas on October 7th and the wholesale slaughter of civilian Palestinians over the last month brutalizes the slaughterers.  

Our annual Usinger's care package arrived today.  Thanks to Sarah and Christian.

Thank you to Andy.  My text: "Hi, Son.  Are you home this afternoon?  I finally got to Total Wine and picked up a bottle of what I hope is a good  German Mosel for you as an inadequate Thank You for tending to me in my distress last week.  I can bring it over or you can pick it up here.   I wanted to get you some Weißwurst too but I haven’t been able to get to Usinger’s."  His reply: "I’m in the office but Anh is home with the kids, who have no school today. You don’t have to get me anything, but I’ll take the wine because you know what I like. Are you and Geri somewhat back to “normal?”  My reply: "Geri’s cough is still with her but is a lot better with the steroids and another medication Dr. Baugrud prescribed.  C still has a big fatigue problem, pretty wiped out.   My extreme pain hasn’t returned, thankfully, so I only have my  normal daily pain which I am seeing a pelvic pain therapist for on Thursday and the VA pain clinic on Wednesday."  I dropped the wine off to Anh this afternoon.

12/3/23

 Sunday, December 3, 2023

In bed at 9, awake at 6;30, up at 6:40.  Let Lilly out into drizzly 38°, high of39,  wind off the lake at 10 mph, 5-11/18, 0.25" of rain in the last 6 hours, 0.1" expected today.  Sunrise at 7:05 at 120°SE, sunset at 4:17 at 240°SW, 9+11.  Solar noon at 11:41, altitude 25° 

Treadmill; pain.  Woke up w/o noticeable pelvic or back pain.  A year ago last night, I had some very nasty CPP which I wrote about in that day's journal.  This current problem has been vexing me since last November. In that time, I've changed from being a man who is old into an old man.  Breakfast: Sleepytime herbal tea, GrapeNuts w/ fruit; Lunch: Cotto salami w/ havarti sandwich; Dinner: meatloaf, potato, corn.  CPP/IC seems to be better today, spasms less intense, less painfu, less frequent.  Dietary changes?  No coffee, carbonated beverages, zinfandel?  or no relationship?  00:00 & 0.00

I'm grateful for central heating and indoor plumbing.  The last time I used an outhouse was at Tom Olson's cottage outside of Waupaca.  Correction: it was in the Dominican Republic on our lawyers' retreat with Andy Alexander.  It's not a great experience at any time, but especially in a cold winter.  At Tom's cottage, we also had no running water, but rather a hand pump located nest to the sink in the kitchen.  As winter sets in in earnest here at the 42nd parallel, I'm very grateful for my indoor bathroom and for our gas furnace in the basement.     

LTMW at chickadees arriving at the short tube feeder a few minutes before sunrise and wondering again how their little bodies produce enough force to cause the heavy feeder to rock like a pendulum in the wet, heavy air.  Newton's Second Law is F=ma, or force equals mass times acceleration.  What is the mass of a chickadee's body?  Most chickadees weigh half an ounce or less, 9 to 14 grams and the internet tells me they fly at 20 to 30 miles per hour and faster during mating season,   With the limited perspective afforded by my window, they seem to be almost supersonic as they speed toward the feeders and then WHAM stop on a dime.  Isn't this extraordinary, how all these birds fly fast enough to provide lift and forward propulsion and yet can stop on a dime?  I take it that this is because, at least in large part, their body masses are so slight, but it still seems extraordinary to me.  Maybe I'm just easy to astonish.

    Yesterday was a very, very busy day at the feeders with what appeared to be competing flocks of red finches, goldfinches, and English sparrows, and maybe some song sparrows or pine siskins.  Today is starting to look like another busy day.

Scandal at St. Monica and St. Eugene.  I had thoughts of my dear, dear sister as I read in this morning's JSOnline about the suspension and investigation into the pastor at these two North Shore parishes.  It seems Fr. Mark Payne has co-owned a condo with another man since 2003 and that the man has described them as 'a couple' on social media.  Payne says he hasn't broken his priestly vow of chastity but he has been relieved of his duties, including as 'judicial vicar' of the archdiocese, pending the outcome of the investigation.  Kitty has a freind in Phoenix, a priest who shared an apartment with another man who was indeed his partner.  They were both in their 60s.  The archbishop there stripped the priest of his priestly faculties and withdrew all diocesan support from him, leaving him without any substantial resources to support him in his old age.  Kitty told me that he was a wonderful priest, a good man, very caring and 'pastoral' as they say.  But once there was a hint of scandal, he was on his own.

    So many thoughts came to mind as I read the story.  Among them was that the parishioners were informed of the shocking news by the archbishop's "vicar for clergy," reminding me of Fr. Al Veik who lived at the House of Peace and served as the archbishop's "vicar for religious."  It took me a while to understand that the main job of these "vicars" was to deal with priests, deacons, friars, and nuns with sex and mental health problems, some with criminal liability implications and all with financial implications of some sort.  My ignorance and naivité about such matters ended up costing me my position at the HOP.  I was much too candid with Al about my disgust over the pedophilia and other sex scandals exploding throughout Holy Mother Church after the Boston Globe series in 2002.   I remember sending him an email for some reason in which I lamented the street signs hanging from lamposts around the Cousins Center urging viewers to 'Celebrate the Church as Teacher."  How foolish and impolitic I was.  Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.   He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.  I was 'on the outs,' not 'a member of the club.'  Little did I know of how commonplace sexual behavior problems were and are within the professionally-religious.  It's no surprise now, but how profoundly naive so many of us Catholics were before the news broke.  How naive most Catholics still are about the inner workings of the Church, a naivité fostered by the Church's zealous secrecy about much of its business, especially internal disciplinary stuff.  My successor at the HOP, Br. Mark Carrico, ended up leaving the position as executive director to concentrate full-time on counseling fellow Capuchins (and probably others) with sex problems.

    But, as the Irish say, you can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy.  For a few days now, I've had an earworm of "genitori genitoque laus et iubilatio" from the Latin hymn Tantum Ergo we regularly sang at benediction services at St. Leo church in my youth.  I have a vision of all of us kids in our Catholic school uniforms, seated by class, boys and girls separated, watched over by our Sister of Providence teachers, chanting words we didn't understand, even as translated:

Tantum ergo Sacramentum

Veneremur cernui:

Et antiquum documentum

Novo cedat ritui:

Praestet fides supplementum

Sensuum defectui.

Genitori, Genitoque

Laus et jubilatio,

Salus, honor, virtus quoque

Sit et benedictio:

Procedenti ab utroque

Compar sit laudatio.

Amen.

I still remember the entire melody and almost all the lyrics.  Pathetic.  Lord, what fools these mortals be. A Midsummer Night's Dream.

12/2/23

 Saturday, December 2, 2023

In bed at 9 and up from lzb at 4:30, but awake much of the night with GERD and some BP, though nothing to drink yesterday but water and 1 cup of chamomile tea. Let Lilly out, 37° and high of 40°, cloudy all day, wind NE at 12 mph, 7-12/17.  O.25 rain in the last 24 hours, another 0.15 rain/snow in the next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 7:04, sunset at 4:17, 9+12.

Treadmill; pain  Very rough night behind me.  No apparent cause fo the GERD. Yeserday's food & drink: water + 1 cup of chamomile tea, CBH & basted eggs early, cotto salami & cheese sandwich midday, Kopps cheeseburger & vanilla malt at 5:30.  Today: water, leftover linguini & marinara for breakfast, stuffed chicken breast, baked potato, veggie for dinner. 00:00 & 0.00

I'm grateful today for being alive, still surrounded by many blessings.  I'm not always so grateful but I accept that as a part of being alive and having a conscience instilled in me mostly by my mother who stays atop my gratitude list.  I am grateful for recognizing when I am not grateful for being alive, the days when I assess life as not worth it, days of pain, days of despair for the country and the world, 'pity party' and "Mickey the Mope" days when Kitty would tell me to 'snap out of it,' and the days when I  recall the pain and suffering my mother endured to bring me into existence and to protect and nurture and educate me through difficult days, too delicate a description for what she endured in her short life, days when I am almost overcome with shame and guilt for not returning her love more fully.

Kristof on Kissinger in this morning's NYT:

“I can’t believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point,” Kissinger once said, so he amplified the bombing at a horrific human cost. He saw the world through a great-power prism and didn’t appreciate that Vietnam and Cambodia weren’t just dominoes and that the Vietcong were motivated not by orders from Moscow but by a deep yearning to take control of their own nation.

Kissinger made a similar mistake in Bangladesh during the 1971 war there, siding with Pakistan as it massacred Hindus and Bengalis alike. It was unsuccessful as well as unforgivable. Many hundreds of thousands died but Bangladesh still triumphed — humiliating the United States and weakening its position in South Asia.

Something similar happened in East Timor. And in the streets of East Timor or Bangladesh or Vietnam, Kissinger doesn’t look like a foreign policy genius, but like a bumbling American who never understood the lives of people he shrugged at slaughtering.

One of the greatest mistakes America has made in the post-World War II period has been the repeated failure to appreciate the force of nationalism — and Kissinger exemplified that. Our disasters in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and so many other places reflected in part our obliviousness to nationalist grievances. It’s an odd blind spot for a country like our own that emerged because Britain disregarded our own nascent nationalism.

For millenniums, military strength was virtually the only currency in international affairs. As Thucydides put it in describing a massacre by Athenians at Melos: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” That was Kissinger’s ecosystem, and he mastered it. . . . 

Kissinger’s indifference to human rights and democracy sometimes strengthened our hard power temporarily while compromising our soft power. 

His funeral will be a private one, probably in keeping with Jewish tradition, with a public memorial gathering TBA.   Again I wonder who will speak at his memorial and what will s/he say?  De mortuis nil nisi bonum?  Who will speak on behalf of the dead in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, & East Timor?  The dead,  'disappeared" and imprisoned in Chile? The problem is that Kissinger is  America.  His policies are America's policies.  He represented America's capitalist powerhouses, the big transnational corporations and smaller corporations who rely on foreign supply sources and friendly foreign markets.  His lauded "opening to China" was a prelude to American capitalist corporations shutting down plants in Milwaukee and across the nation and shipping their manufacturing jobs to China.  Cheap Chinese labor in Shenzhen or Guangzhou or Foshan or Shantou permits American manufacturers to maximize profits by closing plants in Milwaukee or Cincinnati or Birmingham with higher labor costs.  The bathrobe and underwear I am wearing are made in China.  When Kissinger left government he formed his own company and worked directly for those same companies on whose behalf he had exercised government power under Nixon and Ford.  Was he a psychopath?  Did he have any empathy or pangs of conscience for the millions of lives he permitted to be destroyed in America's "national interest"?  Did he think of the Bangladeshis as he wooed Candice Bergen, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas, and Jill St. John?  Did he lose any sleep over the 'lefties' in Chile the night before his dates with Diane Sawyer?  Did he take delight in his nickname as "the Playboy of the Western Wing?  Perhaps we should ask Hillary Clinton, who called him "her friend" and is a good bet to be one of those speaking at his memorial.

This is not who we are.  This is who we are.  The old and the new, ever the same.  Pares cum paribus congregantur.

 

12/1/23

 Friday, December 1, 2023

In bed at 10, awakened by alarm (antibiotic reminder) at 6, let Lilly out as neighboring physician drove by to do hospital rounds (?), 38° and windy, high of 40°, wind NE at 15 mph, 10-18/28, 0.25" of wintry mix in next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 7:03, sunset at 4:17, 9+14.

Treadmill;pain.  Woke up with some high back pain; CPP started shortly after in sat on recliner.

I'm grateful for leaves.  How many leaves are there in the world?  A centillion?  a googol or a googolplex?  How many in our neighborhood, on our lot?  A million, a billion?  Every Spring the trees produce new ones to replace the ones they had shed in the Fall. each one a wonder, its own miracle, well-formed, strong, beautiful, alive and taking in carbon dioxide and converting it into oxygen to help sustain us and other breathing creatures.  When its tour of duty as a photosynthesizer is up, the leaf  signals it by turning from green to some hue of red or purple or orange or yellow or brown before leaving (no pun intended) its host trees and and dropping to the earth intending to become a fertilizing part of the earth, nourishing the tree that gave it birth, but where it often lies unappreciated, unwanted, considered a nuisance by homeowners and municipalities.  ". . . and I think of each life as a flower, as common / as a field daisy, and as singular,"  Mary Oliver, When Death Comes.

I drove Geri to her visit with Dr. B.  No help available for the covid fatigue, but a prescription to lessen the cough symptom.  Two weeks of coughing, very sore rib cage, pain with every cough.  X-ray taken of he lungs.  Left at 8, home at 11:30.

Mindful breakfast.  A very interesting experience, very different.

11/30/23

Thursday, November 30, 2023

In bed at 9, awake at 4:30 with a bad dream of trying to settle a case for Mrs. Grant, one of my St. Francis church bus friends and my companion at the funeral of Terry Pitts, up at 4;55.  Let Lilly out, 35°, high of 43°, cloudy but Venus is high in the SE sky. AQI=54(PM).  Wind is SW at 13 mph, 6-15/31, SC of 26°.  Sunrise at 7:02, sunset at 4:18, 9+15.

Treadmill; pain.    Woke up with some BP. soon had CPP.  21:42 & 0.50 at 11 a.m. watching Dana Bash.

Geri's on day 11 of Covid with the most notable symptoms being coughing and fatigue.

A tree on Fairy Chasm Road

I'm grateful for the countless trees that surround us.  They are beautiful in shape, consume carbon dioxide and breathe oxygen. They ask little of us and give much.  They change with the seasons, more than we do.  They shed their leaves when the days grow short and produce new ones as they lengthen. They provide shade in the heat and protection from strong winds.  They live long lives and then they weaken and die, as we do.

The ornamental pear tree near the patio; a crabapple tree in Lake Park on a foggy morning years ago.

Henry Kissinger has died at 100, reminding me of the old adage and Billy Joel song, "Only the good die young."  From Rolling Stone:

"The Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow, estimates that Kissinger’s actions from 1969 through 1976, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon’s and then Gerald Ford’s foreign policy as national security adviser and secretary of state, meant the end of between three and four million people. That includes “crimes of commission,” he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission, like greenlighting Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor; Pakistan’s bloodshed in Bangladesh; and the inauguration of an American tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds."  . . . .

Nixon ran for president claiming to have a secret plan to end the war. His advisers told [Seymour] Hersh they were deeply afraid that Johnson and Hanoi would reach an accord before the election. It would save lives in Vietnam, American and Vietnamese, but it would undermine Nixon’s hopes of exploiting the explosion in domestic antiwar sentiment. Nixon gratefully took what Kissinger gave him to make the U.S.’ proxy regime in Saigon, whose regime peace would destabilize, more intransigent. No agreement was reached until 1973, and the war ended in American humiliation with Hanoi’s 1975 victory. 

From The Intercept:

Kissinger helped to prolong the Vietnam War and expand that conflict into neutral Cambodia; facilitated genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America. He had the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands, according to his biographer Greg Grandin. 

There were “few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger,” said veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody.

AS NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER, Kissinger played a key role in prolonging the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese. During his tenure, the United States dropped 9 billion pounds of munitions on Indochina.

Kissinger also supported genocidal militaries in Pakistan and Indonesia. In the former, Nixon and his national security adviser backed a dictator who — according to CIA estimates — slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians; in the latter, Ford and Kissinger gave President Suharto the go-ahead for an invasion of East Timor that resulted in about 200,000 deaths — around a quarter of the entire population. 

“A big part of Henry Kissinger’s legacy is the corruption of American foreign policymaking,” Matt Duss, a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, told Vox in 2023. “It is blurring the line, if not outright erasing the line, between the making of foreign policy and corporate interests.”

In his 2001 book-length indictment, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” Christopher Hitchens called for Kissinger’s prosecution “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture” from Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile and East Timor to Cambodia, Laos, Uruguay, and Vietnam. 

Kissinger’s legacy extends beyond the corpses, trauma, and suffering of the victims he left behind. His policies, Grandin told The Intercept, set the stage for the civilian carnage of the U.S. war on terror from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria to Somalia, and beyond. “You can trace a line from the bombing of Cambodia to the present,” said Grandin, author of “Kissinger’s Shadow.” “The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war. It’s a perfect expression of American militarism’s unbroken circle.”

From this morning's The Atlantic:

Yet for all the praise of Kissinger’s insights into global affairs and his role in establishing relations with Communist China, his policies are noteworthy for his callousness toward the most helpless people in the world. How many of his eulogists will grapple with his full record in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, Argentina, East Timor, Cyprus, and elsewhere? 

Kissinger, his dead hands dripping with the blood of innocents, will be lauded by many.  It will interesting to see who attends his funeral, where it will be held, who will deliver eulogies, and what they will say, all of it reminding me of  Oriana Fallaci:  "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."  Or will the funeral be private, out of, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

Robert Kagan's "The Trump Dictatorship"  in this morning's WaPo is terrifying, and very probably accurate.  It's the scariest thing I have read since Trump followed Melania down the escalator in 2015.  I couldn't finish it.

Mindfulness & Meditation chat led by Lou and Mary in Green Bay every Thursday at 10 a.m. .  My second participation.  It's not instructional but encouraging, supportive, and probably helpful, with 5 or 6 veterans on the call in addition to Lou and Mary.