3/9/2026

 Monday, March 9, 2026

1945 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attacked Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs

1962 US advisors in South Vietnam joined in a  firefight

1964 Supreme Court issued NY Times vs Sullivan decision: public officials must prove malice to recover damages in libel actions

1974 The last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in the Philippines, surrendered 29 years after World War II ended

1980: Flemish and Walloon battled in Belgium; 40 injured

1989 US Senate rejected President George H. W. Bush's nomination of John Tower as Defense Secretary

In bed at 11, up at 6:15.  47/34/65/44  112/57/31  128  205.8

Morning meds at ? a.m.

 Fox News interview of Trump's press secretary on 3/6/2026:

JOHN ROBERTS: All right, now it’s time for our own private White House briefing with the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Karoline, thanks for being with us this Friday afternoon, appreciate your time.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: Thanks for having me.

ROBERTS: I wanted to start you off this afternoon because we have confirmed reports from U.S. officials that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran to help it target U.S. assets in the region. I’m sure this is something that does not please the president whatsoever. Has he spoken to Putin about it?

LEAVITT: Well, look, I’ll leave that to the president to answer himself. But what I will tell you, John, we don’t comment on intelligence reports that are leaked to the press. Whether or not this happened, frankly, it does not really matter because President Trump and the United States military are absolutely decimating the rogue Iranian terrorist regime. 

It doesn't matter to Karoline Leavitt and it may not matter to Donald Trump, but it matters to the sailors and airmen, the soldiers and Maines within striking range of Iranian lethal weapons.  I ask again, as I have many times, is Donald Trump merely a Russian asset or is he a Russian agent? 

Two years ago, I learned that my brother-in-law Jim Reck died.  From my journal, this date in 2024:

I'm grateful to be alive though I am feeling sad and a bit stunned.  My niece Chrissy texted me last night at 8:59: "Dad passed."  No other information.  Nephew Mike texted me at 9:02: "Hello.  Dad passed away this evening.  I know he is much happier to be back with my Mom in Heaven."  I wasn't aware of either message until I took my phone off its charging cable at 3:30.  Mike posted this on FaceBook:

Dad, you are the man I hope to make the most proud. 

You taught me how to be a gentleman. You taught me how to love fully, with my whole heart. You taught me everything I know about being a man. I know I mastered some of your lessons, and some I have tried and failed to get right yet. But I promise I will keep trying toget them right.

Just know I have finally found a woman that I love the way you love and loved Mom. There was never a time where you could question how much he loved His Kitty. And now he is up in Heaven with her. Truly in his Heaven, taking care of her again. 

If you knew him, you know he was the king of inappropriate humor, you knew he was willing to always do anything and everything for those he loved, he would be there for you at a moments notice. He was never afraid to say I love you. 

His life wasn't always easy. As a child he grew up in a broken home, that wasn't as loving or supportive as it should have been. He spent his teens in a Chicago street gang called the Shy City Scribes. He was a trouble maker, a law breaker and pretty much a runaway, and then he met my Mom. He always said if it wasn't for her he would have died young and stupid.

He went in to the army, did his service to our country, came out and went to technical school, got a job with Xerox, where he stayed for his entire career and he married his love, my Mom.

They started their life together, wanting a family but, they were told they wouldn't be able to have children. They sought to adopt a child and that is were I came in. They were in the process of finalizing the adoption when my Mom found out she was pregnant with the miracle child, my sister, Chrissi. And their dream of having family came true. 

Dad, you were the best Dad ever. Maybe I prejudice here, but that's how I feel. Growing up you sacrificed, you did all you could for us and then some. You were a roadie for me many times, you watched my metal bands play shows, even though you loved country music. You were always there when I needed you. 

I love you Dad. I hope I will make you proud when we met again. Rest in Peace and be with your Angel. Give Mon a hug for us.

I replied:

Mikey, as I've often said, you are a gifted writer but I am so sad to read these words. You are sure right about your Dad's childhood as an abused and neglected child. He often told me of how he was on a bad path until he met your wonderful Mom. I remember talking with her about how he had broken the cycle of abuse and neglect that he endured as a child with his life as a steady, loving, reliable provider for his family and a good citizen. His life was an acheivement to be proud of. He loved your Mom with his entire heart and soul, just as she loved him. My heart's aching as I think of both of them. For some reason, what I am remembering most vividly of your Dad now is the day I was visiting them in Glendale when your Dad found a baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest. He picked it up and protected that bird and then he drove that little bird (and me) for miles out into the desert in the middle of nowhere where there was a wildlife rehab facility where he entrusted that little bird. And you know the story of his keeping watch over an endangered baby burro all night. Your Dad used to go on elk hunting trips with his beloved Bucky, up into the mountains but he couldn't get himself to shoot an elk. Several years ago, your cousin Sarah and I did a driving tour of national parks and one day as we were driving we spotted on a ridge a magnificent bull elk that took our breath away and Sarah said to me "Yep, that's why Jim can't shoot them." There is a very warm place in my heart for your Dad, and of course for your Mom. All our lives were enriched by both of them and are diminished by their passing. I'm feeling sad today but glad that my life has been enriched by your Mom and your Dad, and by you and Chrissie.

Jim was born on April 11, 1941, 4 months before I was.  He always treated me like royalty when I visited.  I am kind of stunned to learn of his death with no other information.  I texted Chrissie at 7:41 a.m.:

Hi, Sweetie.   i didn’t see this message until I got up this morning.  I felt almost stunned by it; I didn’t know your Dad had been ill.  I posted some of my thoughts about him in a comment to Mikey’s memorial on Facebook.  Your Dad was ‘a diamond in the rough,’ a person with an incredibly harsh start in life who made much of his life and had much to be proud of, to be admired.  He had an abundance of kindness in his heart, as your Mom did, a trait both you and Mikey have inherited.  I know the past couple of years, and the year before, can’t have been easy for you.  I hope you’re OK and I’m sorry for your loss.❤️

and she replied:

Thank you, he actually was doing just fine, Wednesday he said he had pains in his heart, I had a nurse here within a couple of hours, she really didn’t say much, he had an odd weezing, she wasn’t sure about without testing, my dad and I talked about the nurse and he liked her, he slept a ton Thursday and died in his sleep Friday.

Many years ago, say 11 or 12, Tom St. John called me and asked if I wanted to accompany him to a Milwaukee Repertory Theater performance of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  As I recall, Caela was ill.  I agreed despite misgivings because of my chronic pelvic pain and IC problems.  Before the performance, we met for a drink at some watering hole and in the course of schmoozing Tom said that he wished he could live forever, but only if he were young and healthy.  I said that living forever sounded like a nightmare to me, in a state of never-changing, never-growing, never-ending.  I still feel that way.  I'm reminded of the scene in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore original Bedazzled in which Cook as Beelzebub/George Spiggott describes  to Dudley Moore/Stanley Moon just how boring Heaven is:

[George climbs up on a London postbox.]

George Spiggott:  I'm God. This is my throne, see? All around me are the cherubim, seraphim, continually crying 'Holy, holy, holy'. the angels, archangels, that sort of thing. Now you be me, Lucifer, the loveliest angel of them all.

Stanley Moon:  What do I do?

George Spiggott:  Well, sort of dance around praising me, mainly...

Stanley Moon:  What sort of things do I say?

George Spiggott:  Anything that comes into your head that's nice - how beautiful I am, how wise I am, how handsome...that sort of thing. Come on, start dancing.

Stanley Moon:  You're wise!, You're beautiful! You're handsome!

George Spiggott:  Thank you very much.

Stanley Moon:  The universe! What a wonderful idea - take my hat off to you!

George Spiggott:  Thank you.

Stanley Moon:  Trees - terrific! Water - another good one!

George Spiggott:  That was a good one...

Stanley Moon:  Yes! Sex - top marks!

George Spiggott:  Now make it more personal... a bit more fulsome please. Come on.

Stanley Moon:  Immortal... invisible... you're handsome... you're glorious... you're the most beautiful person in the WORLD!

[Stanley performs a headstand, removes his hat, and wipes his brow.]

Stanley Moon:  Here, I'm getting a bit bored with this. Can't we change places?

George Spiggott:  That's exactly how I felt.

That humorous description of life in Heaven pretty closely matches the conception of the BEATIFIC VISION that I was taught as a young Catholic.  "According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the beatific vision is God opening himself in an inexhaustible way to the saints, so that they can see him face to face, and thereby share in his nature, and therefore enjoy eternal, definitive, supreme, perfect, and ever new happiness."  Now I am an old man growing older every day until the day I don't.  I've outlived my parents and my sister, most of my law firm colleagues and law faculty colleagues, other family members and other friends.  When I underwent the bladder surgery 4 days ago, the anesthesiologist reminded me that I have an Advance Directive on file at the VA including a Do Not Resuscitate instruction.  He explained that sometimes with anesthesia, the patient stops breathing and needs to be resuscitated.  He asked if I wanted the DNR instruction ignored for that surgery.  It was rather a sobering experience to have a doctor in surgical scrubs tell you that what we are about to do to you in the next several minutes may cause you to stop breathing.  Do you want us to let you die or revive you?  What does it say about my readiness to pass from this 'vale of tears' that I asked to be revived?

...............................

 I write this today, two years later:  Not long thereafter, I underwent cataract surgery and again the surgeon asked about the DNR order, but then I replied, without hesitation: 'Let me die."  Indeed, I said it twice.  After the bladder surgery, I had a long conversation about the matter and assured myself that we were on the same page, had a shared understanding and will not to extend our lives artificially in such circumstances.  

 

 

3/8/2026

 Sunday, March 8, 2026

1917 US Senate introduced the Cloture Rule, requiring a two-thirds majority to end debate, at the urging of Woodrow Wilson

1934 An Edwin Hubble photo showed as many galaxies as the Milky Way has stars

2018  President Donald Trump authorized tariffs on steel and aluminium, excluding Canada and Mexico

2025  China announced that it would implement 100% tariffs on several Canadian agricultural exports and 25% tariffs on pork and aquacultural products in retaliation against earlier tariffs instituted by Canada on Chinese electric vehicles and metal exports.

In bed at 11, after Geri returned from her MSO date with Micaela, up at 6.  34/19/56/32  120/73/59  207.6  

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  

Glassland, which I watched last night, was a 2014 movie directed by Gerard Barrett and set in urban, working-class Dublin.  It tells the story of Jack and his alcoholic mother.  He loves her and tries hard to help her before she kills herself with 'the drink.'  That part is clear enough.  What is much less clear, to me at least, is that Jack supports himself as a nighttime taxi driver who works part-time for a human trafficking, human organ harvesting gangster.  He picks up and delivers mostly young Asian women who are financially needy enough to be willing to sell one or more of their organs, usually a kidney.  The work stresses and distress him because he is not a man without a conscience.  Indeed, he has a pretty sensitive conscience.  He is commendably loyal to his friends, his mother, and his younger brother, who has Down's Syndrome and was rejected by his mother.  As the plot moves along, John himself needs 8,000 euros to get his mother admitted to an alcoholism rehabilitation facility, borrows the money from his gangster employer, and gets more deeply involved in the grisly organ harvesting business until he is so sickened by it that he saves one of the intended victims, delivers her to the rehab facility that is treating his mother, and offers his own kidney to pay off his debt to his boss.

The acting in the movie is excellent, especially by Jack Raynor playing the son, John, and by Toni Collette, playing his mother, Jean.  The writing, directing, and filming, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired.  The subplot about the organ harvesting activities wasn't at all clear to me as I watched the story unfold.  It's a harsh film, much of it filmed at night, inside John's taxi, and in the non-scenic parts of Dublin.  None of the victims of the organ harvesting has a speaking role.  The gangster-boss is only heard on the other end of phone calls with John and it's never very clear what they are talking about.  The story is intended to show the harsh, claustrophobic, constrained lives of poor, working-class, urban Irish, and it succeeds at that, but at the cost of its viewing being quite an unpleasant experience for its audience, at least for this one.

Brutal Schadenfreude could be the headline title for Maureen Dowd's weekend column on the relationship between Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski.  Instead, it is "Wuthering Heights, MAGA Style."  Excerpts: 

Eat your heart out, Emerald Fennell.

You may have the alluring stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi cavorting on the moors in your crimson adaptation of “Wuthering Heights.” But for radioactive romance, you can’t beat Washington.

Emily Brontë’s Cathy and Heathcliff are selfish, manipulative creatures, destroying each other and all around them as they indulge their passions and egos. But their damage was kept to one windswept village.

With MAGA’s version of “Wuthering Heights,” the far less alluring but equally intertwined Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski have been cavorting over the swamp, scandalizing the capital as they’ve spread their cruelty far and wide. (To Lewandowski’s credit, he didn’t try to kill a dog like Heathcliff did. That’s Noem’s department.)

Holiday Barbie, as Robbie’s Cathy has been dubbed for her ostentatious dresses and hairstyles, pales in comparison with the costumes and Rapunzel extensions of ICE Barbie. Imprisoned in her marriage to Edgar Linton, Robbie’s Cathy gleams in elaborate gowns and necklaces. But Noem topped that. When she went to see migrants in prison in El Salvador, she sported a baseball cap with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement logo — and a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona that’s worth $50,000.

Like Heathcliff, Lewandowski is known as a menacing presence who has been accused of having some dark physical exchanges with women. (Now there’s a dog Noem won’t put down.)

President Trump had rejected the plea of Lewandowski — who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign until he got fired after dust-ups with the Trump family and others — to be Noem’s chief of staff, because Trump was disturbed “by the optics of Lewandowski working as chief of staff to someone with whom he had reportedly been romantically involved,” as The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer put it. (Noem and Lewandowski, who are both married with children, have denied the affair.)

Kristi slid Corey into the Department of Homeland Security as a temporary special government employee and made him her powerful aide-de-camp. He has stayed long beyond his allotted 130 days, thanks to scheming workarounds. For a time, Trump let it ride, even though, according to The New York Post, he cringed when he saw them flagrantly taking sips from the same can of soda — an unmistakable tell.

An Atlantic story called Lewandowski and Noem “the First Couple of a Dysfunctional D.H.S.” As Noem’s enforcer and promoter, Lewandowski had a hand in every decision.

An upcoming book by the NBC News reporter Julia Ainsley reveals that senior officials held a secret meeting in 2025 after Trump was sworn in to discuss what they saw as the toxic romance warping — or wuthering — the agency’s plans as it embarked on the barbaric roundup of illegal immigrants. The rough manhunt drained the department of compassion as it attempted to build up Noem and capture headlines. Lewandowski tried to think of ways to redeem Noem after she disgustingly called Renee Good and Alex Pretti, victims of her ICE run amok, domestic terrorists.

I know its uncharitable of me, and petty, to derive pleasure from the misfortune of Noem and Lewandowski, but I do, just as I hope for misfortune for Donald Trump and other members of his fat cat cabinet.  Flip Wilson's character, Geraldine, always blamed the Evil One for her sins: "The Devil made me do it."  I have to take responsibility for my own schadenfreude.  Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  It's been a lifetime since my last confession.  

More on This is Happiness.  I arrived at chapter 20 of the novel this morning, in which Noah's mother suffers what appears to be a stroke, bringing on the loss of her ability to walk and to speak.  It occurs while she is taking Noah to buy him a new pair of long trousers to go along with his new secondary school leather shoes.  The short narration triggered two, really three, significant memories in me.  

    The first was of my mother taking me to the big clothing store on Roosevelt Road, 12th Street, in Chicago, to get me the clothes I needed to head off to college in Milwaukee the Fall of 1959.  The only item I remember purchasing that day was a beautiful green pinwale corduroy sport coat that I wore for years, until it was almost literally falling apart.  I know we purchased other items; I just can't recall what they were.  In any event, the thought that struck me this morning was how my mother must have felt that day, preparing her firstborn and only son to leave home.  I, of course, was excited and a bit daunted by the prospect, but I suspect my mother had some very different feelings.  I'm sensitive to this fact now because of the second memory triggered by the novelist's story: that of my sister telling me, in our old age, that she cried on the way home to Chicago after she and my parents dropped me off at my dormitory at Marquette that Fall.  

    She was broken-hearted that I was leaving home.   With all we had gone through in our young lives, we were important to each other, a mutual admiration society and mutual support for each other.  Once again, I was oblivious to her pain, my attention consumed by the excitement and nervousness of starting my life as a college student, no longer living with my family, putatively independent.   The story of Noah and his mother drove home to me how focused I can be on my own feelings at any moment and oblivious to the feelings of those close to me, sharing in the event and the consequences of that very moment.  Noah was 12 years old when his mother fell, and I was barely 18 when I left home, but the challenge of self-absorption is a lifelong one.  Perhaps it even gets worse as we move through life and our lives get more demanding, complex, and cluttered.  

    The third memory was not of something I was a part of, but rather something of which I was informed, i.e., when my sister called me in 1973 to tell me that our mother had collapsed in her backyard garden, and was in the intensive care unit of the Blue Island Hospital.  An aneurysm in her brain had ruptured, and she would die from it 9 days later.  She was 51 years old.  My Dad would live another 34 years without her, Kitty another 50 years, while I am still living.  None of us ever got over the loss of her, which I've often written about, and more often spoken about to Kitty and my Dad during their lives.  What a cosmos the four of us were, at least for a brief time!  We all lived together only between 1945, when Dad returned from the War, and 1959, when I left for college, less than 15 years,  yet our lives were ever interconnected and 'entangled' so that none of us could be described wholly independently from each of the others, even when we were separated by time and distance.

    What I wonder about as I write these thoughts is whether all, or most old men, go through thoughts like these just from reading a novel set in other lands at other times with other people, re-living experiences from their own lives, from eons ago.  

Another 84 year old has died.  Jesse Jackson and Chuck Mangione recently.  John McGregor yesterday.  Country Joe McDonald today.  Will I join the club, or make it to 85?

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

************

I am a rock
I am an island

[Verse 2]
I've built walls
A fortress, steep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship
Friendship causes pain
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain

[Refrain]
I am a rock
I am an island

[Verse 3]
Don't talk of love
Well, I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I never loved, I never would have cried

[Refrain]
I am a rock
I am an island

[Verse 4]
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room
Safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me

[Refrain]
I am a rock
I am an island

John Donne wrote the first, Paul Simon the second, both beautiful, but Donne was right and Simon wrong.

3/7/2026

 Saturday, March 7, 2026

1965 Alabama state troopers and 600 black protesters clashed in Selma during "Bloody Sunday," protester and future congressman John Lewis was beaten and hospitalized

2025  All trains running through the Gare du Nord railway station in Paris, including Eurostar trains from London and Brussels, were canceled due to the discovery of a World War II unexploded ordnance containing 240 lbs. of explosives near the rail tracks near the station. 

2025  Convicted murderer Brad Sigmon was executed by firing squad in South Carolina 

In bed at 9:45, up at 5:25, but on the LZB from 2:15 to 3:35, sleepless.  36/58/36  117/61/57 125 207.2

Morning meds at  a.m.   

From ch. 14 of This is Happiness:

I knew where Christy's mind was, or thought I did, until he held the second cigarette out from him and said, "The morning I turned sixty I was in a boarding house in Boston.  I wa lying in the bed and was gifted one clear, cold realisation, like a glass of spring water.'

I didn't ask what it was.

'You've still time, Christy.  You've still time to go back and right all the mistakes you've made. That's what it was.'  He looked at me, his face lit as if he had won a prize.

On that morning, he had become possessed by a single idea, simple and fantastical both, and he had set out on a personal crusade to make what amends he could, and this was what had brought him to Faha.

I didn't know what to say.  My first thought was: he is a simpleton. Or, in Doady's vocabulary, a dudaire.  It was absurd, naive, childish, and sentimental.  You can't correct the mistakes of a lifetime.  You are your own past.  These things happen, you did them, you have to accommodate them inside your skin and go forward.  Even if you could - and you couldn't, cant - there was no going back.  Something like this was running through my mind.

Christy watched the smoke, there, and not there.  'I am resolved on a career of reparation,' he said.

'And have you?  Made amends?'

'It is one of the tragedies of life, that life keep getting in the way of good intentions.  I've made some.  I'll make more."

 I looked away and left him eating the purple tulips of memory.

'Annie Mooney,' he said after a time. 

 Annie Mooney was the widow of the Faha pharmacist.  She was also a love interest from his earlier life.  "For her I once ate a dozen purple tulips," he earlier told the book's protagonist and narrator, Noel Crowe.  I don't have a clue how Christy's crusade and quest will turn out; I'm only a third of the way through the novel, but the story of a lost love captures my interest because of my own history with my First True Love, Charlene Wegge of Longwood Academy and St. Thomas More parish on Chicago's South Side.  I never ate even a single tulip for her, but she broke my heart when she dumped me in the summer of 1960 when I returned from two months at sea on active duty in the Navy Reserve.  Is it hyperbole to say that the shock and heartache of that event stayed with me for the rest of my life?  I think not.  It's now more than 65 years later and I still remember it with some pain and hurt.  For decades now, I have wondered what happened to her, how her life played out, whether she married and had a family, and whether she is still alive.  It wasn't until I engaged in the long process of writing my memoir, 20ish years ago, that I fully realized how the wound of that long-ago event in my life had never healed.  It lurked, a hidden but open sore in my heart, ready to pop up unbidden and cause a fresh hurt at any time decades after the one she delivered  when I was 19 in 1960.  Christy had his Annie Mooney, James Gatz had his Daisy Buchanan, Gretta Conway had her Michael Furey, and I had my Charlene Wegge.  

From James Joyce's The Dead:

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. . . . He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. 

 Our good next-door neighbor, John McGregor, died last night.  He and I are/were the same age, born months apart.  He had the misfortune of contracting polio in his youth.  I was spared that and many other misfortunes.  John was spared many of mine.  The lottery of birth.  So it goes.  John was a great neighbor for 15 years and we'll miss him.   I've been blessed with some great neighbors during my life, starting with Ann and Carl Semrau, and their daughters Cathy and Rosemary.  The Semraus owned the three story triplex next door to our basement apartment at 7303 S. Emerald, and let us move into their spacious second floor flat at a time when I'm sure my father's employment history and credit rating would have been off-putting for any other landlord.  They were our friends not only in those terrible years right after the war, but the perhaps even more terrible years after James Hartman's notorious crime against my mother, Kitty and me in 1947.  (Plus, Cathy Semrau introduced me to Charlene Wegge.)   Our downstairs neighbors in Doylestown, PA, during my rough year returning from Vietnam duty were also terrific, though I can't even recall their names today.  Alas.  

Tonight, Geri had dinner with Caela and joined her at the Milwaukee Symphony, for a concert featuring Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto.  I watched a video of Yitzhak Perlman playing it on YouTube, a favorite, both the concerto and Perrlman.  I watched Glassland on MUBI.

 

 

 

 

3/6/2026

 Friday, March 6, 2026

2025 Geri's new knee "manipulation"

2025  Trump announced a pause on some tariffs on both Canada and Mexico until April 2. Mexico's president Sheinbaum stated that Mexico will collaborate with the United States on migration and security issues, including controlling cross-border fentanyl smuggling.

In bed at 9:35, awake and up from the LZB at 3:53, awakened by my low glucose alarm on my phone.  The Libre3Plus sensor & app on my phone tell me I've had 3 low glucose events in the last 7 days, 4 in the last 90, but there have been many more than that, most, though not all, are at night and may be caused by sleeping on the same side as the sensor and are fixed by taking a cough drop.  I have no explanation for the few I get during daytime hours. 37/56/36  118/65/56  105  Another dense fog advisory, through only till 9 a.m.  At about 6:30 a.m., I became seriously nauseous and dizzy.  I returned to the LZB in my bedroom 

Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.  Trulicity injection at12:30 p.m.  

Two years ago, I wrote:

Why keep a journal?  I ask myself this question fairly often and I've come up with some answers over the last 19 months during which I have been doing it.  I wonder about it again this morning, recovering from yesterday's bladder surgery, having survived (of course) the post-anesthesia shakes, the catheter pains, and the indignities of peeing in my pants, then in a nightshirt, and then in a towel.  Now I have successfully managed to pee twice without pre-leaking, or more accurately, pre-gushing, and with less burning and stinging, so I'm feeling temporarily at least on top of the world, almost a bit euphoric..  But why write about it?  My usual answers have been either (1) birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, writers gotta write, or (2) this journal is just a poor substitute for my daily exchange of texts with my sister.  I became interested again in the question while reading a feature story in the NYTimes about Tom Meschery, a former Golden State Warrior All-Star basketball player and, later in life, an accomplished poet and mystery novelist.  He is 85 years old and has done most of his writing after he reached age 60.  I knew it was odd but I kept on writing my morning texts to Kitty even after she died, not pretending that she was still alive, but rather because of the daily habit I had developed of writing down some of the things on my mind.  I sent my last text to her on March 21, 2022, almost 3 weeks after she had died.   I wrote my first journal/blog entry on Saturday, July 30, 2022, 4 months later.  Kitty effect?  Writer's gotta write?  Or Flannery O'Connor's "I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again."  Some of the stuff I write in this journal is pretty incoherent, even inconsistent.  Seeing it in black and white on a page drives the point home, whereas if those thoughts just stay bouncing around in my head, I'm apt to forget how confused or incoherent I am about so many things.

I receive benefits from journaling.  For one thing, I've followed the recommendations of others to remind myself at least once each day of what I am grateful for and who I am grateful to, even when I'm feeling crappy or blah, everything and everyone from my wife, my mother, my sister to the feeling of wearing shoes on pavement instead of boots on sand and dirt, from my liberal arts education to the Veterans Administration.  Also, I get to blow off steam, which I suspect relieves some stress when I am so often disgusted by what happens (and doesn't happen) in our capitalist, imperialist, intrinsically corrupt government, in our economy, and in our culture.  It provides occasions to recall and reflect on my personal history. events, people, and conditions that influenced the course of my life and the shaping of my character.  It probably helps me to understand myself better than I would without journaling, to process negative thoughts and emotions, like sadness and anger.  It helps me to keep an eye on my cognitive and physical declines, and my 'executive functioning.'  Am I still able to type on my laptop's keyboard?  With the fingers of both hands or hunting and pecking?  Am I misplacing things?  Forgetting stuff?  It is not as if this journal is a complete record of everything that happens in my life, quite the opposite.  But it provides a place to record whether there is anything troubling that is bothering me, or making me wonder.  Additionally, just doing the typing, choosing the words and composing the sentences provides some evidence that I am still compos mentis to some significant extent.

Journaling also provides a benefit of which I too seldom take advantage: trying to understand things from the point of view of 'the other guy,' to 'walk a mile in his shoes.'  I do some of this mentally but too seldom try to write it up.  I'll try to do this more often.

Lastly (for now at least), journaling provides a record of how bad my memory is.  So often I describe a movie we have watched or something that I have read and when I look at it months later, I have no memory of it whatsoever.  Maybe it's more a record of how little attention I pay to what's on the TV or what I'm reading.  In any case, my long-term memory is often pretty good while the short and medium-term memory leaves a lot to be desired.😰

Nineteen months of daily journaling, 66 entries in 2024, 365 in 2023, 165 in 2022 = 596 days

I've stopped making gratitude notes each day, which is a mistake. 

We watched The Last Train Station last night, about the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, and his conflict with his wife over his plan togive away the copyright to his literary works.  Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, both superb.  Paul Giammatti his usual excellent professional as a nasty religious zealot.  

3/5/2026

 Thursday, March 5, 2026

1927 1,000 US marines landed in China to protect American property

1933 Nazis won 43.9% of the vote in the Reichstag elections

1963  Patsy Cllne died in a plane crash with 

2025  Trummp's CIA Director John Ratcliffe announced that the United States had suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

2025  The Department of Veteran Affairs announced it wiould lay off over 80,000 jobs to comply with the Trump administration's plans under the Department of Government Efficiency

In bed at 9:30, on LZB in the middle of the night with back & hip pain, up at 6:40.  37/29/41/36  125/71/57  103  206.6

Morning meds at  noon.   

Two years ago today, I underwent my last fulguration of the lesions in my bladder.  My procedure was successful, though unpleasant.  After the general anesthesia, I regained consciousness in recovery with a painful nostril from whatever it was the doctor put in it or through it and a bad case of shivering.  It reminds me a bit of the last fulguration I  underwent at the Rawson Avenue Surgical Center with Dr. Silbar and some anesthesiologist several years before this one.  I arrived on a Monday morning for that procedure in intense, actually excruciating pain nd had to wait quite a while because the facility's oxygen tanks had leaked over the weekend, and the anesthesiologist wasn't willing to proceed without oxygen being available if needed.  He and Silbar gave me nothing for the pain I was experiencing pre-op, and when I 'came to' in the recovery room, I was on a morphine drip with a nurse sitting next to my gurney, monitoring my blood pressure and controlling the drip.  I was in considerable pain for a while and had no control over my left arm, which was flailing in the air.  A thoroughly awful experience, after which I saw Silbar for one post-op appointment and then stopped seeing him.  When I asked him why I was in such pain after the procedure and required the morphine, he said he didn't know.  It could have been insufficient anesthesia, he said, or the anesthesiologist would probably say he, Silbar, burned too deeply into the bladder lining.  Unbelievable.  When the young urologist at Zablocki asked me before the cystoscopy that revealed the lesions whether I wanted him to fulgurate them - without anesthesia - I was almost stunned. I said no because of my last experience with Dr. Silbar.  I still can't understand what happened then or why, if anesthesia isn't necessary for a fulguration, I had had anesthesia for my 3 prior procedures and the docs at Zablocki were willing to provide it to me simply on my request.  My medical mystery. 😳

Afternoon shopping.  I took a ride up to Walmart in Saukville to buy some safflower seeds, ink jet cartridges, and other stuff, and then to Costco in Grafton to fill up with gas ($2.79/gallon vs. national average of $3.26, look at iPads, and buy some eggs, CoQ10 (?), and something else.

Another not-so-felicitous excerpt from This is Happiness:

. . . in my thinking, hardship had been part of history for so long it had become a condition of life.  There was no expectation things could, or would, be otherwise.  You got on with it, and through faith, family and character accommodated as best you could whatever suffering and misfortunre was yours.

It reminds me of my family, we 4 Clausens, Grampa Dewey and Grandma Charlotte, Aunt Monica and the 3 Cummings kids.  It reminds me too of my 'Boppa' Denny and Uncle Jim and Uncle Bud and Aunt Mary.  Living through the Depression, World War II, and a lot of PTSD.

 

3/4/2026

 Wednesday, March 4, 2026

1865 Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for his 2nd term as US President. The man who would assassinate him weeks later, John Wilkes Booth, was photographed attending the inauguration.

1911 Victor Berger (Wisc) became the 1st socialist congressman in the US

In bed at 9, up at 5:15.  28/43/27      DENSE FOG ADVISORY  118/60/60  106  207.6  

Morning meds at 7:15 a.m.

St. Leo the Great parish chuch on the SW corner of 78th St. and Emerald Ave. in Chicago, pastor Rt. Rev. Patrick J. Malloy, where I first wrestled with angels and God.

I've started reading This is Happiness by Niall Williams.  Geri recommended it to me.  She had read it, having learned of it as a reading on Charles Colbert's National Book Club.  It's a bildungsroman set in County Clare in the West of Ireland in the last century and reminds of another coming-of-age novel by Sean O'Faolain, Bird Alone, which I read and enjoyed.  Both stories reminded me of myself growing up in the American version of the terrible Irish Catholic Church, O'Faolain's set in Cork on the south side of Ireland, and mine in Englewood on the south side of Chicago.  Some early excerpts from Williams's book, from Chapter 3:

If it is true that each of us is born with a natural love of the world, then the actions of my childhood and schooling had been to vanquish it.  I was too afraid of the world to love it.

I lived in a profound loneliness at the time.

Your father is a mystery it takes your whole life to unravel. . .  I did not try to reach him until . . . the year he was dying.  I’m older now than he was when he died and appreciate something of what it must have taken for him to stay living.  It’s a thing you can’t quite grasp, I think, until you wake up an old man or woman and have to negotiate the way..

I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you’ve been given. . . I can now say that another version of that happens in old age, when it occurs to you that since you’ve lived this long, you must have learned something, so you open your eyes before dawn and think: What is it that I’ve learned, what is it I want to say? 

Last year on this date, I wrote:  I'm grateful for candles. I blew out Kitty's Yahrzeit candle at 4:10 this morning but I have her in mind today, with thankfulness.  A few years ago, when Kitty's insomnia seemed worse than usual, I sent her a red votive candle holder and a box of votive candles.  I asked her to light a candle when she was up all alone in the middle of the night, sitting in their spare bedroom she called my bedroom, and let the candle remind you that your brother is with you.  Later I bought a red holder for myself and my own box of candles and I would light my candle before daybreak when I was up alone, usually texting with her.  I think of that as my "Kitty candle" and I always think of her when I see it or light it.  Candles are big in Catholic culture, including the Irish Catholic culture in which we grew up.  Catholic churches always had at least one wrought iron rack of votive lights in red holders somewhere in the church along with waxed wicks for lighting them and a depository for offerings.  "I'll light a candle for you" was a way of saying I'll be praying for you.  Lighting a candle was also a traditional way of praying for the 'dearly departed' or for praying for God's intercession in a time of danger or need.  I suppose those little candles burning in the sanctified space of the church long after the offering churchgoer was gone was a way of symbolizing the continuation of the precatory prayer after the offeror had left the church.

Whatever the symbolism, I always liked those rows of votive lights in the church and liked to light them for whatever reason.  When I was an altar boy in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade at St. Leo Grammar School one of my duties was to light the candles on the main altar before mass, one candle on each side of the tabernacle for a 'low mass,' 3 on either side for a 'high mass.'  There is, or perhaps now I should say 'was', a large body of regulatory church law on the number of candles to be used for low masses, high masses, solemn high masses, pontifical masses, 40-hour devotions, benedictions, and eucharistic adorations.  Those regulations are, or were, just a small part of the legalistic, spirit-killing, formalism that led and still leads so many people to reject traditional Catholicism.  They are part and parcel with customs and regulations that have priests wearing chasubles, albs, cinctures, and stoles, that have bishops wearing silly-looking miters and carrying croziers or shepherd's crooks, and wearing very expensive, different colored vestments for different liturgical seasons. Many religionists eat that stuff up; others are repelled by it.  But as it is often said, you can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy.  I still 'light a candle' for my dear sister.

I lit Kitty's yahrzeit candle first thing yesterday morning and blew it out when I went to bed, eschewing the Jewish custom of letting the candle burn from sundown to sundown.  She lives on in my heart, as she does in the hearts of her children, other family members, and many, many friends, though my heart has a deep hole in it since she died. 

Another felicitous excerpt from This is Happiness:  p. 45-46

Time has unpeeled a history of infamy for the country's institution, and failures of compassion, tolerance, and what was once called common decency were not hard to come upon.  Faha was no different; cruelty, meanness, and ignorance all had a place then, but as I've grown older, the instances and stories of them seem less compelling, as if God has inbuilt in me a spirit of clemency I wasn't aware of when younger.  It may be, of course, that I'm just grateful to be above ground, and what seems more significant to note is human goodness.  I'm at an age now when, in the early mornings, I'm often revisited by all my own mistakes, stupidities, and unintended cruelties.  They sit around the edge of the bed and look at me and say nothing.  But I see them well enough.

John McGregor, our good next-door neighbor, is dying and enrolled in a home hospice program.  He has been a wonderful neighbor, recently diagnosed with leukemia, but Debbie tells me that it's not the leukemia that has him close to death, but rather the medication he's been on.   Geri taped a note to their front door this morning, offering help 24/7, and got a call from Debbie thanking her.  

3/3/2026

 Tuesday, March 3, 2026

2020 Super Tuesday revived Joe Biden's campaign as he won nine states, while Bernie Sanders won four, including California

2022 Catherine Monica Clausen Reck, 8/19/1944 - 3/3/2022

In bed at 9, up at 5.  31/39/28  114/72/58   90  207.8

Morning meds at 8 a.m.    

Yahrzeit, 4 years.

What I wrote and read to Kitty on her last birthday, August 19, 2021,  during my last visit:

On this date in 1944, in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, a beautiful and courageous and saintly 21 year old mother, who was one of God’s gifts to this world, gave birth to a daughter who was destined to become an image of her mother, beautiful, courageous, and saintly, another of God’s gifts to the world. When Mother Mary brought the precious daughter home to her little basement apartment, her waiting brother, about to turn 3 years old, is reported to have said, “Take her back. She doesn’t play.” That was just the first of many mistakes that almost 3-year-old brother would make in his life, but he learned soon enough that his new sister would become over the course of 2 long lifetimes, his best friend, his confidante, his soul-sister as well as his biological sister. He would come to love and admire her as she grew into a woman like their mother: beautiful in so many ways, courageous in so many ways, and saintly in so many ways. As they grew older and older, with lifetimes of living behind them, the brother would share his belief in the saintliness of his sister with their father, who would chuckle because he sometimes saw her when she was impatient, or ‘bossy’ or angry at one thing or another, and the now-old brother would suggest to the even older father that he just didn’t know what real saints looked like. The saintly sister herself would join in dismissing the idea that she was St. Kitty of Emerald Avenue and the brother would have to remind her and their father that real saints aren’t God and they are not angels - they are all human beings who get impatient, ‘bossy’, and even angry at times. What makes them saints was described by Jesus in Chapter 25 of the Gospel of St. Matthew: I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me water. I was sick, and you cared for me. I needed a home, and you took me into your home. So, of course, the brother, who had made many mistakes in his own life over many years, was not mistaken in describing his sister, who he loved so much, as a Saint. Nor is he mistaken in thanking God for giving him the blessing of his beautiful, courageous, and saintly sister, so very much like their dear mother.🙏❤️  

Trump's World War III.  Financial impact, so far.  U.S. stocks are set to open sharply lower today, with futures for the S&P 500 down 1.8 percent.  Bonds around the world sold off, as investors assessed the prospect of a potentially prolonged war worsening inflation and spurring higher interest rates. Rising oil and gas prices could result in increased prices at the pump for consumers and add costs to a wide range of component parts for businesses. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which moves inversely to prices, rose by 0.4 percentage points, to 4.1 percent. Yields on government bonds in Britain, Germany and Japan jumped even more.  Since the attack on Iran was launched, our main retirement account has decreased by 0.6%, and a secondary account by 0.84%, but I'm holding on to my seat.

    If the markets continue to tumble, if inflation in food prices, gasoline, natural gas, and oil soars, if the Fed raises the borrowing costs.  Trump and his buttboy Hegseth say the U.S. is prepared to continue the war for a month "or longer," "as long as it takes" to accomplish the (very unclear) goals of the war, but Trump's nickname of Taco, for 'Trump always chickens out,' is based on his history.  When the markets tumble, especially the bond markets, he shakes in his boots, and the November mid-term elections grow ever closer.

    On the other hand, he's been laying the groundwork for interfering in those elections, probably through declaring a 'National Emergency.'  Will he try to cancel them?  or enact the SAVE Act measures (outlawing machine voting, mail-in ballots, proof of citizenship, etc.) by Executive Order?  All bets are off with this despot in office.  Hold on to your seats.

    Another unknown: will the Iranian supply of missiles and drones overwhelm the supply of expensive Patriot and other defensive weapons held by Israel and the Arab Gulf States targeted by Iran?  The war in Ukraine has consumed an enormous supply of US-supplied defensive weapons over the last 4 years.  How long can Trump maintain a war once our own stockpiles run low?