8/20/2024

 Thursday, August 20, 2026

1953 General Fazlollah Zahedi arrested the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a CIA-supported coup d'état

1968 During the night, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring

2025  The United States Department of State imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court judges Nicolas Guillou and Kimberly Prost and deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem and Mame Mandiaye Niang over their involvement in cases concerning Israel and the United States. 

In bed at 10:10 after watching 3 consecutive episodes of The Pitt, big mistake, unable to sleep, up at 11 to read more of The Secret History until 11:45, back to bed but unable to sleep, out to TV room, with a cup of hot chocolate and two pieces of buttered toast topped with the cherry jam given to us by LOA and JJA, which is as delicious as I expected, and back to The Secret History; back in bed at 3:30, awake at 6:10, up at 6:30;  o845136/76/62 141 204.0,  0655 122/74/62; 60/76/58, sunny morning, partly cloudy afternoon.

Morning meds at a.m.  Entresto at 7:15 a.m. and p.m.

The Secret History.  As I type these words, I've finished the first 7 of the novel's 8 chapters and am about to start the 8th, which, alas, is more than 100 pages long.  I don't have a clue how the story will end.  Will the miscreant college students get caught by the police or will they get away with their wrongdoing?  If they are found out, will it be because one of them spills the beans, or only through good detective work by law enforcement?  If one of them spills the beans, will it be inadvertently, or intentionally à la Raskolnikov, and who would be the bean spiller?  My guess right now is Charles Macauley, who has turned into quite a drunk, but who knows?  Is Richard, the narrator, writing this book in prison, because he's already been convicted so why not?  Or, it being so damning of himself and his co-conspirators, why would it write it?  The chapter on Bunny's funeral in Connecticut is chilling and almost unbelievable.  The murderers all stay in Bunny's own home, with his parents and siblings.  Henry, the conspirator-in-chief, the group's evil genius, is one of Bunny's pallbearers.  Egads!

Reading the funeral chapter made me wonder again what Donna Tartt thought of her classmates at Bennington College, the school on which Hampden College is based.  Spoiled, rich, pampered, over-privileged, morally bankrupt, yikes!  I compare them to the folks I went to Marquette with in the early 1960s, where I never encountered, or at least never befriended, anyone like these characters.  Most of my pals were in the Navy ROTC, headed for years of active duty in the Navy or Marine Corps after graduation.  They were, so far as I knew, solid citizens and, though not sinless, moral creatures.  The same is true of the Marines I served with in the mid-60s, none of them capable of cold-blooded murder of one of their fellows.  But these characters, holy moly!  I'm glad I stuck with the novel and now am committed to seeing it through to the end. 

Words of wisdom in The Pitt last night.  We watched 3 consecutive episodes of this appropriately-much-awarded television series last night.  It was not a smart thing to do before going to bed, and I suspect doing so contributed to my sleeplessness, though I doubt it as the only cause.  In the dramas, I heard at least 3 bits of wisdom.  The first, which I heard more than once, was "Stop feeling sorry for yourself," said at least once by the attending physician, Dr. Robby, to a young physician serving a residency, and once by the charge nurse to the attending physician himself.  Another was a comment by a patient to an examining physician, "I don't worry.  My mother taught me: worrying won't add a minute to your life."  The third was by a patient in his 80s to his daughter: "We old people know what it is to be young, but no young persons know what it is to be old."  When my Dad lived with us in his mid-80s, and I was sitting in with him during his doctor visits and hospital visits, sharing every day with him, I, in my mid-60s, thought I had some idea what life was like for him, and I surely did, but only some idea.  I now find myself thinking back to those days and trying to imagine what was going through his head and what was happening to his body, and never spoken of.

Bad news.  For the last 8 months, ever since I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, I've started each day taking and recording my weight, blood pressure, heart rate, and glucose count.  Before taking the blood pressure and heart rate/pulse, I have to sit quietly on my bedroom La-Z-Boy, with both feet flat on the floor for at least 5 minutes.  Usually I do so for 10 minutes, during which I listen to the New York Times audio headline stories on my iPhone.  The news, of course, is usually bad, today leading off with the national debt exceeding $40 trillion and inexorably growing.  I thought of this as I read my comments from a year ago today on an Ezra Klein interview in the previous day's Times:

One of my most inconvenient belliefs is about the world is that we know too much about it, and that the human mind is not meant to be stretched over this much threat and danger and tragedy at all times.  I work in the news.  My show is part of this dynamic I'm about to describe, but the news can seometimes be an engine for finding and bringing you whatever is going to most upset you, that is happening literally anywhere on Earth exactly at that moment . . . I think probably the healthy medium was to be able to pick up a newspaper once a day and find out about terrible things happening elsewhere and important things happening elsewhere and sometimes wonderful things, but less often wonderful things happening elsewhere.  As opposed to being with your kids in the park and your phone buzzes and it's just something terrible that you cannot affect.  It's not happening to anyone you know and you definately don't have power over it, but somebody somewhere thought it would grab you to know about it.  It both make you aware of suffering but also, I think it has some other quality, some numbing and exhausing quality that is not healthy. 

 I think of that Vietnam veteran I chatted with in Sendik's yesterday and his complaint or bewilderment over his nephew who kissed off living in America and moved to New Zealand.  He didn't say where in New Zealand he moved to, whether an urban or a rural area, nor how the nephew was supporting himself there, or what it is about life in America that he found so intolerable, but it wouldn't surprise me if at least part of what he wanted to escapte from was what Klien described, constant exposure to terrible news about which one can do nothing.  There is much more about curent American culture, including politics of course, that can make one feel like the man on the bridge in Edvard Munch's The Scream, but Klein has put his finger on a significant cause of modern misery, the daily awareness of human suffering, of death and destruction, about which we can do nothing.  Klein says it tends to make us numb and exhausted, but I suspect it's even worse.  It coarsens us and makes us indifferent to the suffering of others. After a while, it becomes boring.  We can become like Donald Trump when he says of the Ukraine War or the Gaza War, as he did before professing to be concerned about the slaughter in those places, "it's not my problem."  Or, as J. D. Vance said to Steve Bannon during his campaign for the Senate, "I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another."  The hard question, for Ezra Klein and the rest of us, is what to do about this dystopian situation we live in, especially we relatively highly-educated, highly-informed individuals who religiously follow 'the news.'

 Both in the world and in the U.S., things have only gotten worse over the last year as we suffered through another Trump administration.  I think, for example, of one small segment of one of the episodes on The Pitt last night, in which big, burly masked ICE agents brought in a detainee from a restaurant raid they had conducted.  Their mere presence caused some of the patients in the waiting room, and some of the hospital employees, to flee the building.  I think too of the horrendous danger from the burgeoning national debt.  The atrocities occurring daily in Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank, and Sudan, with most of us like ostriches with our heads in the sand.

8/19/2026

 Wednesday, August 19, 2026

1944 Catherine Monica Clausen, God's gift to her family and so many others, was born

In bed at 9:30, awake at 3:35, tossed and turned till 4:35 when I got up; 0500 202.8 112/69/64 138; 62/74/62, mostly cloudy

Morning meds at 8 a.m.

I Heard Your Voice In The Wind Today

I heard your voice in the wind today

and I turned to see your face; The warmth of the wind caressed me

as I stood silently in place. I felt your touch in the sun today

as its warmth filled the sky; I closed my eyes for your embrace

and my spirit soared high.

 I saw your eyes in the window pane

as I watched the falling rain; It seemed as each raindrop fell

it quietly said your name. I held you close in my heart today

it made me feel complete; You may have died...but you are not gone

you will always be a part of me. As long as the sun shines... the wind blows...

the rain falls... You will live on inside of me forever for that is all my heart knows.

 On this date in 1944, in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, a beautiful,  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 her almost 3-year-old brother would make in his life, but he learned soon enough that that new sister of his would become throughout 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. 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, whom 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.

Who is the most dishonorable, most unadmirable person in American history?  Not surprisingly, I start the thought with Donald Trump at the top of the list, but that is not to say he doesn't have competitors.  But who? Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) and Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) headed generally recognized corrupt administrations, but they were not considered personally corrupt.  Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, the presidents during the 1850s that led to the Civil War, led administrations that were heavily engaged in political patronage and favoritism, but, like Grant and Harding, they weren't considered personally corrupt.  Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) isn't usually classified as financially corrupt, but his presidency involved serious political abuses and patronage. His principal historical disgrace is his resistance to Reconstruction and his extraordinarily hostile relationship with Congress. He was impeached by the House, although the Senate fell one vote short of conviction.  

Richard Nixon (1969–1974) is in a different category. Watergate involved the abuse of presidential power itself, including the cover-up of the Watergate burglary, obstruction of justice, misuse of federal agencies, and attempts to conceal wrongdoing. The White House tapes provided unusually direct evidence of Nixon's participation in the cover-up.  He also is - or perhaps I should say, was - infamous for his "enemies list." His resignation remains the most dramatic example of presidential misconduct in American history, but notably his misconduct did not include corrupt personal enrichment.

Now consider Donald J. Trump.

He and his businesses have continually benefited financially from his public prominence and presidency.  Consider especially his entry into the cryptocurrency business, his actions as president regarding regulation of this business, and the profits he had made  

He was credibly accused of violating the Constitution's Emoluments Clause through payments and benefits involving his businesses, although the relevant litigation largely ended on procedural grounds rather than definitive merits rulings.

His administration was characterized by extensive allegations of conflicts of interest and ethical violations.

He has been impeached twice: first concerning Ukraine and second concerning January 6.  If the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives, it's a fair bet that he will be impeached again.

His efforts to overturn the 2020 election produced the most serious allegations of presidential abuse of power since Watergate.

He illegally retained highly classified government documents when he was voted out of office.

In his second term, he has outdone Richard Nixon in terms of using government resources to punish his enemies.

He has betrayed the country he has sworn to protect and defend by deferring to its enemies and weakening its alliances.

What am I missing?  Undoubtedly, a plethora of wrongdoing in the White House, federal departments, and federal agencies that have yet to be discovered, but will eventually come to light after he leaves office.  The damage that this one man has done to this country is literally incalculable. 

My latest exchange with ChatGPT re the Veterans Honor Flight:

Today 4:41 PM - I've received text messages from a number in area code 815 from a person purporting to be from the Honor Flight organization telling me that I have a spot on a flight in October.  I've deleted them as spam.  Today my wife answered a call on her cell phone from the person, again with the area code 815, the Rockford, IL area, saying she hadn't received a response to her text messages and that, although the number carries a Rockford ILL area code, actually she's calling from a suburb of Milwaukee, Waukesha.  Can you help?

Yes. And in light of what I found, I would not assume that this is a scam. There is a very plausible legitimate explanation—but I would verify it before responding to the caller.

The important fact is that Southeastern Wisconsin has its own Honor Flight hub, Stars and Stripes Honor Flight, based in the Milwaukee area. It specifically serves Milwaukee and Waukesha counties and flies veterans out of Milwaukee's Mitchell Airport.

Even more interestingly, Stars and Stripes says that veterans are contacted approximately six weeks before they are assigned to a flight. So receiving a call in August about an October flight is entirely plausible.

The 815 number is not necessarily suspicious.

The caller's explanation—that she has an 815 Rockford-area telephone number but is actually calling from the Waukesha area—is perfectly possible. Cell-phone numbers don't necessarily correspond to where the person lives or works. Someone who moved from northern Illinois could easily retain an 815 number.

More importantly, the organization itself is based in Menomonee Falls and lists a local telephone number: 262-238-7740

That's the number published on the official Stars and Stripes Honor Flight website.  There's another very encouraging detail.

The official site says:  "Now that we've called and given you the good news..."  and describes the process in which the veteran is called when assigned to a flight, followed by email communications concerning required waivers.

So the fact that someone called your wife because she hadn't responded to the text is not inherently inconsistent with how Stars and Stripes operates.  Here's what I would do

Don't call the 815 number back and don't respond to the old text.  Instead, call Stars and Stripes Honor Flight directly at 262-238-7740, using the number published on their official website.

Tell them something like:  "I'm a Milwaukee-area veteran, and I've received several text messages and now a phone call from someone saying that I've been assigned to an Honor Flight in October. The messages came from an 815 number. I deleted the texts as spam. Could you tell me whether I actually have a place on an October flight?"  Give them your name and whatever information you supplied when you originally applied. Don't give them your Social Security number, banking information, passwords, or anything like that.  I would actually be quite interested to hear what they say.

And there is a striking coincidence:  Stars and Stripes' website confirms that it currently flies Vietnam veterans and that the flights are out of Milwaukee.  So if you previously applied for an Honor Flight, the story you're being told is quite plausible.

And you can verify the whole thing through the national Honor Flight Network as well. Its official contact number is 937-521-2400, and it maintains the list of local Honor Flight hubs.

  My advice: call 262-238-7740 tomorrow and ask them to check your name. That's much safer than continuing to communicate with the 815 number, and it should settle the question immediately.

  If you tell me whether you remember applying for an Honor Flight and, if so, approximately when, I can also look into the October 2026 Stars and Stripes flight schedule and see whether the timing fits.

#########################

I don't remember when I applied for an Honor Flight, but it was a long time ago.  In any event, I will call the recommended number tomorrow and follow the advice provided.  This response from ChatGPT came within 2 seconds of my inquiry, almost instantaneously, yet another mind-blowing encounter with AI.

818/2026

 Tuesday, August 18, 2026

1963 James Meredith became the 1st Black graduate from the University of Mississippi

2025 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several other European leaders meet with U.S. president Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C. to discuss pathways to peace negotiations for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

In bed at 9 with a swig of NyQuil PM for back pain, awakened by alarm at 6:20;  0635 112/71/60 105 202.0; 65/80/63, cloudy.

Morning meds at 6:30 a.m.  Eliquis at 6:20 a.m. and no more.

Visit with Dr. Singh this morning.  He reported no PVCs, premature ventricular contractions, from the EKG that was done before our meeting and none after the ablation.  He took me off the Eliquis blood thinner, put in an order for an echocardiogram to make sure no damage was done to my heart valves during the ablation, and said we were finished, i.e., no follow-up visit necessary.  Good news all around. Fingers crossed the echocardiogram will also be OK.  The photo is of a golden Sikh turban, one of which Dr. Singh wears every day, including in the electrophysiology labs in which he performs catheter ablations.  During the procedures, however, the turban is covered by a sterile headpiece

The Secret History.  I am a little more than halfway through this 500+ page novel and the more I read it, the less I'm enjoying it.  First, there's the problem of improbabilities.  These 20-year-old college students talk to one another like seasoned adults, indeed very erudite, sophisticated adults, especially Henry, their ringleader.  The conversations are often just unrealistic and unbelievable.  Second, and not unrelated to the first, psychopathy.  This Greek Gang, Julian's acolytes, all participate in the most cold-blooded conspiracy to murder one of their own, with malice aforethought.  Having spent more than 250 pages learning about them as weird, idiosyncratic, but by no means criminal college kids, seeing them turn into the coldest-blooded murderers just doesn't work for me.  Perhaps it's just my naïvité, but I don't think I've led that sheltered a life.  Believing this plot line would be like believing that Adam orAron in East of Eden could be a cold-blooded, premeditated murderer of a friend who was himself obnoxious, but not evil.  In an earlier journal entry about this book, I stated that Henry, the chief conspirator and brains of the scheme, was the most likeable character in the story.  That may show what a bad judge of character I am, or how unlikely it was that he would become the main villain in the story, or maybe both.

It's impossible not to believe that Hampden College is, in some measure, based on Donna Tartt's experiences as a student at Bennington College. Tartt doesn't paint a flattering picture of this college, or of its students.  Tartt started college at Ole Miss, but transferred to Bennington after one year, much as Richard Papen, the narrator of The Secret Garden, did.  Her father owned a gas station, as did Richard's.  Was she intending Richard to be some sort of alter ego for herself?  If so, she sure created an unlikeable, dishonest, morally weak alter ego.  The book makes me wonder about Donna Tartt's own personality.  She's famously private, putting out one novel every 10 years or so, living on a farm in Virginia, and doing few public appearances.  She's barely 5 feet tall and dresses in a suit and tie in her public appearances. I've seen a few videos of her on YouTube interviews, and she's very personable, but of course we know that psychopaths can be extremely personable.  On the other hand, she is a convert to Catholicism and has written that "faith is vital in the process of making my work and in the reasons I am driven to make it".  Perhaps this will become clearer to me if I manage to finish the novel, but it hasn't been in the first 300 pages, and I'm struggling to move on through it.  

From this afternoon's NYTimes, the beginning of a long-anticipated crash???

Investor angst over stubborn inflation, unsustainable government deficits and rampant spending on artificial intelligence helped send borrowing costs to multiyear highs across the world this week.  The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond rose on Tuesday to 5.3 percent, its highest level since 2007. Similar bonds in Canada, Japan, Germany and elsewhere also traded at their highest yields in at least a decade.

The yields help determine interest rates for corporate debt and consumer loans, like mortgages, and their rise is adding to everyday citizens’ concerns about affordability that have taken hold both domestically and abroad. That is a problem for government leaders, including President Trump, whose administration has vowed to stop rising costs across the American economy.

Investors have worried for some time that increasing government spending could lead to a serious predicament, in which the government still needs to borrow money but investors are unwilling or unable to lend it.  Matt Eagan, a portfolio manager at Loomis Sayles, said that “everyone knows” that fiscal spending is unsustainable. The government’s total debt is approaching $40 trillion, up roughly $5 trillion in two years.  “You are on a bus called the 30-year bond and there is a cliff coming, but you don’t know if it is 100 meters away or 100 miles away,” he said. “You are hoping you can get off the bus before it crashes. That is the conundrum we face.”

Everything Trump has done, but especially his tariff policies and the war in Iran, has made the impending crisis worse and more imminent. 

 From this afternoon's Wall Street Journal:

Bonds Are Getting Hammered, and Wall Street Says the Rout Won’t End Anytime Soon

With yields on 30-year U.S. Treasurys at 19-year highs, investors predict a new era in the bond market. And it looks a lot like 2007.

Publicly held U.S. debt is now at about 100% of GDP, nearing records set after World War II. That debt load makes the country more sensitive to rate moves. A mere 0.1 percentage-point rate move above forecasts in all rates would add $379 billion in net interest expenses, according to the CBO.

“The issue is not so much the rising interest rates,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “The issue is the deficit. If we can only be concerned about one thing, that one thing should be the 10-year deficit outlook.” 

I see a bad moon rising.

I see trouble on the way.

I see earthquakes and lightning.

I see bad times today.

8/17/2026

 Monday, August 17, 2026

1946 George Orwell published "Animal Farm" in the United Kingdom

1998 Bill Clinton admitted he had an "improper physical relationship" with Monica Lewinsky and that he "misled people" about the relationship

2005 The first forced evacuation of settlers from Gaza began as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan

2023 US 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose above 7% for the first time in 21 years

2025 A general strike and mass protests calling for a hostage deal and ceasefire to end the Gaza war occurred across Israel, involving approximately 2.5 million protesters across the country and 300,000 at the protest held in Hostages Square, Tel Aviv. At least 32 protesters were arrested.

In bed at 9, awake at 3:30, up at 4; 0420203.4  105/62/71  106; 66/79/66, sunny day ahead.

Morning meds at 1:30 p.m. Eliquis at 6:25 a.m. and p.m.

Russian asset or Russian agent?  I've wondered this often in these pages over the last four years.  That his political acts are profoundly beneficial to Russia (and to China), there can be little doubt.  Now I can add North Korea and Iran to that list of American enemies benefitted by President Donald J. Trump, like no former American president.  In the last day, he has threatened to "bomb the shit out of" Oman, the other nation bordering the Strait of Hormuz and has abruptly cancelled a joint military exercise between U. S. and South Korean militaries, to the undeniable benefit of both Iran and North Korean and of no benefit whatsoever to the United States.  I remember the words of wisdom of his second chief of staff, General John F. Kelly, USMC (Ret.): 

“He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.”

and, the best:

“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,”  

Another trip to the VA for health concersn.  First, a visit with NP Kali Kisro about my intestinal challenges over the last couple (or few) weeks, which get worse  yesterday and persist today.  Then a visit with the urologist over my persistent bladder pain.  I suspect  I could also use another meatotomy, too, as recomended by the last urologist, but I'm taking a 'wait and see' approach to both the intestinal problem and the UT problem.  Lab tests tomorrow for my heart failure NP, my PHP, the urologist, and the cardiac arrythmia doc, who I also visit with tomorrow.  Wedensday, a phone conerence with NP Maggie Angeli re heart failure, electrolytes, and effect of Eliquis.

The Secret History.  I'm at page 230 of 560 of Donna Tartt's first novel, in the 5th, the longest, and last chapter of Part I, which I know will end up with the murder of "Bunny" Corcoran.  Part II deals with the aftermath of the murder.  I've been meaning to read one of Tartt's novels for a few years now because I developed a little crush on her, but  I've got mixed feelings about the book. It's a story about 6 students at a mythical elite Hampden College in northern Vermont, paralleling Tartt's alma mater, Bennington College.  The narrator comes from a middle class family in California and his parents, especially his father, don't like him very much; he returns the feeling.  The other students, like most students at Hampden come from well-off families, some very wealthy.  They're all wierd in their own ways and not all that likeable.  The least likeable is the victim, Bunny.  I generally don't enjoy reading or watching movies or TV shows about the "swells," like British royals, and rich capitalists, especially those living off inherited wealth.  So the elitism of most of the characters in the novel is a strike against against it.  On the other hand, I do enjoy murder mysteries and this is kind of an inverse murder mystery.  We know from the get-go who gets murdered and who did it, but we don't know why or with what consequences for the perpetrators; that's what the novel is about.  In any event, Tartt is an excellent writer and story teller and she has held my interest through Part I.  I'm not sure whether it will hold throughout Part II.  I'm not particularly interested in academic campus novels, despite my own background and the fact that I loved Lucky Jim, a hilarious novel by Kingsley Amis, set in a post-WWII English new college established to service returning veterans.  I recently read John Williams' Stoner, but didn't enjoy it very much,  I do tend to enjoy writing that pokes fun at the pretentiousness of academic life precisely becasue I spent much of my post-Marine Corps life on a univeristy faculty, though I was always something of a misfit.  The professor at the center of The Secret History, Julian Morrow, a scholar of Greek language, literatue, and culture, is full of himself, a know-it-all, a guy about whom Geri's mother would say, "He thinks who he is."  He and his 6 students (that's all he has) consdier themselves elites among the colleges hoi polloi, who themselves are elites compared to the rest of us plebs.  It's hard to identify with any the novel's characters except perhaps the narrator in his discomfort as a relatively poor kid among his much wealthier friends.

One of the many pretty little flowers Geri has on and around our patio.

 

 

8/16/2026

 Sunday, August 17, 2026

1953 Shah of Persia Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Princess Soraya fled to Baghdad and Rome

1971 Over 8,000 workers went on strike in Derry, Northern Ireland, in protest against the introduction of internment, which allowed suspected terrorists to be indefinitely detained without trial

In bed at 9, up at 4:30 but very tired; 0445 203.2 108/68/67. 132; 73/85/71, cloudy, possible thunderstorms this morning

Morning meds at 4 p.m.  Eliquis at 6:25 a.m. and p.m. 

New reads.

I started two new novels today.  The first is The Secret History by Donna Tartt and the second is a satire by Anatole France, The Revolt of the Angels.

Under the weather today with intestinal problems.  Actually, I've had intestinal problems for the past two weeks, perhaps more.  I called the 24/7 triage nurse at the VA, and she advised me to drink Gatorade and she made an appointment for me with my primary care provider tomorrow at 8:30 a.m.  I see the urologist at the VA tomorrow at 11:15, so I'll have two hours to read more of Donna Tartt's novel on my iPhone between appointments.  I am so thankful for the VA's medical service and its availability 24/7.  Today is not the 1st time (nor the 2nd or 3rd) I have taken advantage of it, and it's always been helpful.  I'm feeling pretty crappy about another unwanted health problem, but grateful for the VA.  

The Secret History. I've read 25% of the 50+ book.  I'm surprised by it.  It's quite a mystery story, almost spooky.  Tartt is very good at creating atmosphere, especially an atmosphere of danger, of hidden threat, and of misery.  We are told in the very opening pages that the main characters are somehow guilty of having murdered one of their classmates, named  Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran(a guy, not a woman). Bunny is a chiseler of sorts, a mooch, but we get the feeling early on that his classmates all like him, a feeling that now we are being told isn't really the case.  So far, Henry Winter seems to be the only really likeable character, although the twins Charles and Camilla Macauley and Francis Abernathy are OK enough.  Even the narrator, Richard Papen, is unadmirable and unlikeable in many ways.   Their teacher, mentor, and counselor is Julian Morrow, a know-it-all, controlling pedagogue of classical Greek history, language, art, and philosophy.

What I wrote on this date 3 years ago, still my belief: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, . . .

Still thinking about delusions.  I started thinking about the famous 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Wells' adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which reportedly caused thousands of Americans to believe the Earth was being invaded by extraterrestrial aliens, 'men from Mars.'  The program was written by Wells in the form of realistic-sounding news broadcasts so it is easy to see how listeners could be mistaken in believing it was a real emergency newscast.  That bizarre and scary occurrence wasn't a case of "mass delusion" because it quickly became known that the program wasn't real, just an early example of Donald Trump's favorite terms, "fake news" and "hoax."  When the truth became known to people, the belief and fear went away.  Wikipedia describes delusion thusly: "A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence."  (my emphasis added.)  Isn't that what we see with the MAGA crowd's belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen?  That Trump won 'in a landslide'?  But isn't it also true of some, indeed much, religious belief, notably the Catholic dogma of 'transubstantiation' of the 'eucharist'?  That which at one moment all our senses tell us is bread and wine becomes at the next moment flesh and blood of one who died two millennia ago even though all the sensory evidence is that bread and wine have remained bread and wine.  Isn't that delusional? Ditto the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Assumption, etc.  [Though with these dogmas I am reminded of the turkies who believed that the farmer who fed them every day was their friend until the days before Thanksgiving, i.e., the limits of Inductive Reasoning.)  BUT, we are told that delusions are to be distinguished from dogmas, or religious beliefs.  "As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs can change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:  "The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity."  Huh???  And later in the Wikipedia entry: "Another difficulty with the diagnosis of delusions is that almost all of these features can be found in "normal" beliefs. Many religious beliefs hold exactly the same features, yet are not universally considered delusional. For instance, if a person was holding a true belief then they will of course persist with it. This can cause the disorder to be misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. These factors have led the psychiatrist Anthony David to note that "there is no acceptable (rather than accepted) definition of a delusion." In practice, psychiatrists tend to diagnose a belief as delusional if it is either patently bizarre, causing significant distress, or excessively preoccupying the patient, especially if the person is subsequently unswayed in belief by counter-evidence or reasonable arguments." (My emphasis)  In other words, excluding religious beliefs is essentially a political judgment or decision at least so long as the religious belief does not significantly interfere with the believer's ability to function effectively in his or her world.  The shrinks who are responsible for the DSM aren't looking for a fight with all the Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, et al., so religious delusions are, literally by definition, not delusions unless they interfere with effective living, e.g., earn a living, get along in society, obey civil and criminal laws, etc.  But still, with regard to 'transubstantiation', a rose is a rose is a rose, and bread and wine are bread and wine, notwithstanding the certainty and incorrigibility and impossibility of the True Believers' belief to the contrary.  For those of us 'born in the bosom of the Church', it is all explained by the reassurance that "it's a Mystery."

But I'm left wondering about the MAGA folks and their constellations of beliefs and thinking about DJT's demonic insight into pushing the right buttons, yanking the right chains, in his True Believers.  How prescient he was in January 2916 when he said "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, ok?  It's like, incredible."  What did he understand about 'his' sector of the American electorate that the rest of us did not?  What if he were to say, "I could summon, assemble, and turn loose a mob to attack the Capitol building with the senators and representatives inside, to threaten to kill my vice-president and stalk the Speaker of the House, and lead another gang to attempt to overturn a fair, legitimate election using lies, threats, and intimidation, so I could stay in power despite the results of an election ousting me, and I wouldn't lose any voters, ok?  In fact, I would gain voters."  Would we believe it?  Do we now believe it?

What is the connection between religious delusion and MAGA delusions?  How is it that so many Evangelical Protestants are so loyal to DJT?  I see that Jenna Ellis, one of the "crackpot attorneys" representing Trump after the 2020 election and an indicted co-conspirator in the Fulton County RICO case tweeted yesterday: "“The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord and I will simply continue to honor, praise, and serve Him. . . Even so it is well with my soul."  Praise the Lord!

8/15/2026

 Saturday, August 15, 2026

1549 Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier came ashore at Kagoshima, Japan

1876 US law removed Indians from Black Hills after gold find

1917 Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh

2025 Vladimir Putin traveled to Alaska to meet with Donald Trump to discuss pathways to bring an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the summit. 

In bed at 9, up at 4:15; 0430 111/70/63 125 202.8; 70/78/70, pop up showers

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m.  Eliquis at 7:15 a.m. and p.m.

Does AI think and reason?  How omniscient is it?  How much can it know and understand of its interlocutors?  I wonder.  Here is my most recent exchange with ChatGPT:

Me:  I've decided I don't want to reread the entirety of Crime and Punishment. I'm mainly interested in the interactions between Raskolnikov and Sonya, and RAskolnikov and his sister. Do you have any suggestions for a few chapters I may wish to reread before closing the book?     

ChatGPT: Yes. If your principal interest is Raskolnikov's relationships with Sonya and Dunya, I would not try to push yourself through the whole novel again. There is a fairly compact sequence near the end that gives you most of what you are looking for—and, I think, makes a satisfying way to close the book.

For Sonya: three chapters

1. Part IV, Chapter 4 — Raskolnikov visits Sonya.  This is the essential Sonya chapter. Raskolnikov goes to her room and, for the first time, they have something approaching an intimate conversation. She tells him about her family, her faith, and her relationship with Lizaveta. Most importantly, he asks her to read the story of Lazarus from the Gospel.

I'd especially recommend rereading this slowly. The Lazarus episode is really the theological and psychological key to their relationship: Raskolnikov is spiritually dead, and Sonya is the person who believes he can be brought back to life.

2. Part V, Chapter 4 — Raskolnikov confesses to Sonya. This is probably the single most important chapter for your purposes. He finally tells Sonya that he killed the pawnbroker—and Lizaveta. He tries to explain the crime intellectually: his theory of the extraordinary man, his desire to prove that he was capable of transgressing ordinary morality. Sonya sees through that explanation much more clearly than he does himself.

Her response is extraordinarily important. She doesn't recoil from him. She tells him that he must confess and accept suffering, and that she will follow him wherever he goes.

If you read only one chapter before putting the book down, I'd choose this one.

3. Part VI, Chapter 8 — the final meeting with Sonya. This is very short and provides the emotional payoff. Raskolnikov goes to Sonya before turning himself in. She gives him the cross, and he goes to the police to confess.  The symbolism is quite heavy-handed—but I think it's worth seeing again, particularly after the Lazarus scene.

For Dunya: two chapters

The Dunya material is somewhat different. She isn't primarily the person who understands Raskolnikov's spiritual condition; she represents familial love, moral integrity, and the possibility that he can still belong to other human beings.

4. Part VI, Chapter 5 — Dunya and Svidrigailov. This isn't principally a Raskolnikov-Dunya scene, but I would read it because of what it reveals about Dunya. Svidrigailov has learned Raskolnikov's secret and uses it to put Dunya in an almost unbearable position. She refuses to sacrifice herself even to save her brother.

It makes clear how remarkable Dostoevsky's contrast between the two siblings is: Raskolnikov believes that morality can be transcended by an extraordinary person; Dunya, under extreme pressure, refuses to transcend it.

5. Part VI, Chapter 6 — Raskolnikov and Dunya. This is the one I'd definitely read. Dunya comes to see him. He tells her that he intends to confess, and she urges him to do it. He still tries to defend the underlying idea of his crime—he killed only a "louse," and if his plan had succeeded, he could have used the money for good. But looking at Dunya, he begins to confront the suffering he has caused his family.

That scene is particularly valuable because Dunya doesn't persuade him intellectually. She can't refute his theory in philosophical terms. Instead, her very presence confronts him with the human consequences of what he has done.

And then I'd stop.

If you want the minimum possible rereading, I'd make it:

Part IV, Ch. 4 → Part V, Ch. 4 → Part VI, Ch. 6 → Part VI, Ch. 8

That's only four chapters, but together they give you what I think you are really interested in: Raskolnikov's movement from intellectual isolation toward human attachment.

And there is an interesting symmetry:

Sonya says, in effect: You are not beyond redemption.

Dunya says: You are still my brother.

Raskolnikov initially responds to both with arguments.

But gradually, the arguments become less important than the relationships.

I suspect that may be a more rewarding way for you to finish Crime and Punishment than forcing yourself through another 300 pages. The novel's philosophical machinery is important, but these four chapters contain much of what makes the novel emotionally memorable.

That ChatGPT response to my inquiry arrived in 2 or 3 seconds after I submitted it.  I've had other interactions with ChatGPT very much like this, even spookier, involving reasoning and value and literary judgments, the sorts of things we expect from a human being, not from a mass of interconnected computers operating on the basis of coded 1s and 0s and algorithms.   I'm sure my interactions are nothing compared to the kinds of stuff more sophisticated, more technical, and some probably nasty-minded.  It's not just that AI is smart and capable of reasoning; it's that it is amazingly smart and quick-witted about virtually everything!   That said, it also makes mistakes about simple things, or seems to get confused.  In one exchange I had with it, it confused the authorship of some books by Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, matters of simple historical fact.

I've stopped reading the novel because it's too heavy an emotional load.  Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is a tortured, suffering soul.  Everyone in the novel is suffering or pathetic.  It is, in a sense, both tragic and comic since, at the end, Raskolnikov suffers Siberian imprisonment but is redeemed by Sonya's love and hope for a religious and emotional redemption; but the novel is just relentless suffering, page after page, chapter after chapter, from beginning to end.  It is a terrific explication of Solzhenitsyn's and Steinbeck's belief that each of us is a source of both good and evil, that even the worst of us has some good in him, and the best of us some evil, but reading it is a long, hard slog.  I did it willingly when I was much younger, but I'm not up to it at my very old age.  I read both The Idiot and Notes From Underground earlier this year, but there's only so much Dostoevsky that this old guy can take.  Perhaps this is due to age.  I turn 85 in 9 days.  How many days do I have left?  How many books can I read before my eyes, or my brain, fail me?  How many hours and minutes of reading do I have in front of me?  I don't want to spend any of my precious remaining reading time in the 'Slough of Despond'  with Dostoevsky.

An exchange with Derry Keenan about my FB post yesterday:

Derry Keenan

 

Like Janine, I thank you for your descriptions and insight into the current conditions for crew members serving on those destroyers, where morale is low and basic needs aren’t available (today’s NPR reported shortages of soap, toothpaste, and access to washers to clean their t-shirts), as well as inadequate food.

My dad was in the navy in WWII but attached to the Marines as a medic. Like so many from that war he almost never talked about his experiences and the conditions of the war in then pacific, but I found a large bunch of sealed letters returned to mom because they could not be delivered—and this while she was pregnant and birthed their first child alone.

I’m so sorry, Chuck, that you had to endure that war, and my father his, and the soldiers now who must endure this administration’s senseless and immoral foreign policy. And, personally, I think Hegseth is evil and despicably dishonest.

Charles D. Clausen

 

Wow, I didn't know your Dad was a hospital corpsman serving with the Marines in WWII. I wonder if he was attached to the 4th Marine Division, in which my Dad served, including in the Battle of Iwo Jima. To my regret, I never met your Dad but I've been fortunate to meet some of your siblings and have only the warmest memories of your Mom, Mary. I even had a fantasy my Dad and your Mom getting together in their old age. As I write this, I'm looking at the wall opposite me and the fireplace poker you gave us, the one made by your brother (Kevin???). I'd love to visit with you again, but don't know how to contact you. 😥❤❤❤

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, Francis Xavier.  I'm not a big fan of missionaries, especially missionaries directly tied to colonial, mercantile imperialism, as Xavier was to the Portuguese Empire in Asia.

And speaking of empires, in the westward expansion of the American White Empire, once it was discovered that "there's gold in them thar hills", the Indigenous tribes were screwed.  Another treaty broken by our government, another violation of the so-called Rule of Law in obedience to the REAL rules of law:  He who has the gold makes the rules, and the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.  USA, USA, USA!!! 

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are two favorite poets.  Sassoon's The Hero reminds me, painfully, of my days as CACO for north Philadelphia in 1966-67.

'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read.

'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke

In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.

She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt

For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Owen's Dulce et Decorum is bitter and true:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Owen was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice was signed, ending the war.  His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day.  Sassoon lived until age 80, dying in 1967.  He converted to Catholicism at age 70 for some uncertain reason. 

American poets produced some moving World War II  poetry.   A favorite is Randall Jarrell's The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Ball turrets were features on the underbellies of B-17s and B-24s.  The gunners crammed in the fetal position in them, manning their 50-caliber machine guns against enemy fighter aircraft.  

But the best of all of them (to me) is still Walt Whitman:

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn,

Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,

Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,

Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,   

(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?

Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,   

Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,

But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call,

And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,

She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,   

O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!

All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only,

Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,

Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,

By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,

The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,)

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,

She with thin form presently drest in black,

By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,   

O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.