3/12/2026

 Thursday, March 12, 2026

1947  President Harry Truman introduced the Truman Doctrine to fight communism

2018 British Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia was "highly likely" to have poisoned a Russian spy and his daughter on March 4 with a nerve agent

2022: Saudi Arabia executed 81 convicted criminals, the country's largest known mass execution in modern times 

2025  Canadian finance minister announced retaliatory tariffs on US$20.7 billion of goods from the United States after Donald Trump announced additional tariffs on Canadian metals. 

2025  Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei rejected negotiations with the U.S. regarding Iran's nuclear program, stating that Iran is "not interested in nuclear weapons."

2025  The Houthis in Yemen announced it would  resume targeting Israeli ships because its deadline for Israel to resume aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip had passed

In bed at 9 after experiencing my second light-headedness of the day, almost falling on way back to a pit stop. Moved to LZB at 2:15, and maybe half-slept till 4, with many thoughts of John McGregor, light-headedness at the VA yesterday on walk to the throat radiology room with the therapist. 30/19/41/30   125/52/30  109  206.6

Morning meds at 6:45 a.m.     

The world we live in:

Trump's Truth (sic) Social post on 3/5/2026:

“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!  After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before,

Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, on the meaning of "unconditional surrender", on 3/6/2026:

 What the President means is that when he, as commander-in-chief of the US armed forces determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and that the goals of Operation Epic Fury have been fully realized,  then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it or not.

Humpty Dumpty chatting with Alice in Wonderland:

           ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’

           ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’

           ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all’

Wondering whether I should be getting myself a "short-timer's chain." I've had three unusual medical occurrences lately: the two instances of lightheadedness/dizziness yesterday and the strange, out-of-nowhere severe nausea and lightheadedness/dizziness the other morning (Friday, March 6th).  Something strange seems to be going on in my brain and CNS.  This morning, I am experiencing more lightheadedness & wooziness.  Not good.  It raises a real concern not only about falls in the house (especially when Geri is not at home), but also about driving.   It's not the fear of falling that would be a concern, but rather an unexpected woozy lightheadedness, especially on the freeway and at speed.  It happened to me once many years ago, driving to Florida to visit my Dad.  I was on Interstate 65 north of Chattanooga, surrounded by big semis, when I had an attack of vertigo and feared losing control of my car.  I handled the scare somehow and told Dr. Baugrud about it later, with her recommending that I use Claritin pills on the road.  Maybe I should use some now.

I finished This is Happiness today.  It's a lovely long story of life and love, of growing up, growing old, getting sick and of dying, of solitude, family, and of community, of the place of music and storytelling in life, of permanence and transience, of unacknowledged Buddhism and ubiquitous Irish Catholicism, of love, lust, and loss, of the desire of a virtuous but sinful human heart for forgiveness.  It's about "progress" and its costs.  And, as the title suggests, it's about what happiness is.  Can the author, Niall Williams, satisfactorily treat all those heavy subjects in a book of only 380 pages?  I think he succeeded.   My heart was touched by the story, especially about the narrator's tale of the illness and loss of his mother, and about the reconnection of Christy McMahon and Annie Mooney.  Having already completed the book on Kindle and Audible, I'll pick up a printed copy at the library today and go over some of the chapters I want to restudy.  The narrator and protagonist in the novel Noah Crowe,  is 78 years old as he tells his story of the town and people among whom he lived in the little village of Naha in western County Clare.  The story he tells occurred sixty years beforehand, when he was a lad of 17, living with his grandparents and sharing his bedroom and a big part of his life with their temporary boarder, Christy McMahon.  Thus, the whole endeavor of the book reminds me of myself writing my memoir about my early years when I was in my 60s and writing my journal/blog in my 80s, with so much of the writing focused on childhood, youth, and early adulthood.  Niall Williams' writing is fiction and mine is non-fiction, but it's clear he does a much better job of re-creating his hero's young life than I've ever been able to re-create my own.

From Chapter 32 of the novel:

When I did think of it,, I was suprised that Christy that Christy was not more downtrodden by the impasse with Annie, and one evening approaching the village of Kilmihi, where Michael the Archangel himself had stopped, and where every man we met was called some version of Michael, I asked him why.  He explained himself in a single sentence, 'Noe,' he said, and took a theatrical breath, 'this, is happiness.' 

I gave him back the look you give those a few shillings short of a pound.

"I know,' he said.  'Whenever I said that, it used to drive my wfie mad."      

"\You were married?"

"I was.  She left me for a better man.  God bless her." he said.

It was a condensed explanation, but I came to understand him to mean you could stop at, not all, but most of the moments of your life, stop for one heartbeat and, no matter what the state of your head or heart, say This is happiness, because of the simple truth that you were alive to say it.

I think of that often.  We can all pause right here, raise our heads, take a breath, and accept that This is happiness, and the bulky, blue figure of Christy cycling across the next life would be waving a big slow hand in the air at all of us coming along behind him.

 

 

 

      

     

     

Geri is at her friend Barbara's house, helping her learn how to do cable stitching for an afghan she is making.  She leads a full, enriching life, which she well deserves.

3/11/2026

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

1963  Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara ordered the adoption by the US military of the M16 assault rifle, originally designed as the AR-15 by Eugene Stoner

2020 COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization after 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths

2025  U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would raise tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium imports from 25% to 50%.   Ontario Premier Doug Ford suspendsed the planned surcharges on electricity in the US.  Trump backed off afterwards, though his original plan to impose 25% tariffs will go as planned.   Trump's trade counselor Peter Navarro saed that 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum won't take effect on Wednesday.

In bed at 10, awake at 4, weigh-in at 5.  33/19/36/30.  Snow later & wind   118/65/57  101  207.2 

Morning meds at  a.m.    

Deliver Me From Nowhere is the 2025 biographical film about Bruce Springsteen, starring the remarkable Jeremy Allen White, and directed by Scott Cooper.  It focuses on a dark period in Springsteen's life when he suffered from depression, and he struggled to write, perform, and then to get his album Nebraska produced.  An underlying theme throughout the film was his difficult relationship with his father, who was also a sufferer from depression and alcoholism, as well as being abusive and neglectful throughout Springsteen's childhood.  The movie's depiction of his relationship(s) with his father and his mother reminded me, of course, of my relationships with my own parents, most painfully the scene in which his mother sent young Bruce into a local ginmill to try to get his father to come home.  The scene reminded me of a time when I was home alone and received a telephone call from my Dad's workplace, saying he hadn't shown up for work.  I went out looking for him in our local ginmills and in the cars parked nearby, to see if he might be sleeping in one of them.  It reminded me of taking a CTA bus with my mother to visit him in some medical facility where he was either (a) drying out, or (2) being treated for dangerously high blood pressure, or (3) more likely, both.  The scene in which Springsteen's father was threatening his mother in their kitchen and in which Springsteen hit him with a baseball bat reminded me of the only time I experienced by Dad being physically abusive to my mother in our kitchen at 7307 S. Emerald.  I had locked myself in our bathroom while they engaged in a loud argument, but came out when I could tell he was hurting her, yelling at him to 'cut it out', or 'let her go,' or some such, which he did.  These are painful memories, even a lifetime later, and my sister Kitty had her own, both of us emotionally scarred and dealing with our own cases of childhood or generationally-transmitted PTSD.  I was also emotionally touched by the film's depiction of Springsteen's relationship with his mother, especially the scenes of his mother singing, or the scene in which she danced with Bruce as a child.  It reminded me of my mother teaching me how to 'jitterbug' and do the 'two-step' in our dining room at 7307.  I needed to learn the basics before going to my first "sock hop" at St. Sabina's, our neighboring Catholic parish that provided the first opportunity for physical contact between the Catholic boys and girls whom the Catholic schools kept duly segregated in same-sex high schools.

    I don't know that I can say the movie is particularly good, but I certainly related to its family plot for the aforementioned reasons.  I also related to the struggle of both Springsteen and his father to establish a loving relationship later in life.  If the film version is to be believed, Springsteen was 32 years old when he reconciled with his father; in my case, I was 55 and my Dad 75.  The scene in the movie where the reconciliation occurred seemed pretty hokie to me, with the father making Bruce sit on his lap, but apparently it's based on a real life event.  The father admits to Bruce that he wasn't a very good father and Bruce tells him that he did the best he could, or words to that effect.  I recall it as Bruce telling his father that he was fighting his own battles during Bruce's childhood.  It reminded me of the message on the back of a T-shirt I saw at Sendik's one day: Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.  And it reminded me of the saying that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.

 “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” (Exodus 20:5).

“Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you. You show love to thousands but bring the punishment for the parents’ sins into the laps of their children after them. Great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord Almighty” (Jeremiah 32:17-18). 

How true that is.  "Dutch" Springsteen's depression was transferred to Bruce, and our father's depression was transferred to Kitty and me. Both happiness and unhappiness are contagious. 

MY FATHER'S HOUSE 

Album version

---

Last night I dreamed that I was a child
Out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home through the forest
Before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees
And ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snapping at my heels

I broke through the trees and there in the night
My father's house stood shining hard and bright
The branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell shaking in his arms

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed and to that house I did ride
From out on the road I could see its windows shining in light

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch
A woman I didn't recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story and who I'd come for
She said "I'm sorry son but no one by that name lives here anymore"

My father's house shines hard and bright
It stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

The drive to the VA today took me from 11th and Kilbourn to 33rd Street, where it dead-ended, and then up to State to 35th and down to National Avenue.  Again, I was delighted by the number of wonderful old mansions and other buildings in that old area of Milwaukee, including the incredible mansion around 31st (?) and Kilbourn.  What has happened to me that I get so blown away by the faded magnificence of these old buildings?  Is this like Rosemary Clooney's old classic "This Old House," analogizing old house to old human carcasses?

This ole house once knew his children

This ole house once knew his wife

This ole house was home and comfort

As they fought the storms of life

This old house once rang with laughter

This old house heard many shouts

Now he trembles in the darkness

When the lightnin' walks about

[Chorus]

Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer

Ain't a-gonna need this house no more

Ain't got time to fix the shingles

Ain't got time to fix the floor

Ain't got time to oil the hinges

Nor to mend the window-pane

Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer

He's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

This ole house is a-gettin' shaky

This ole house is a-gettin' old

This ole house lets in the rain

This ole house lets in the cold

Oh his knees are-a gettin' chilly

But he feel no fear or pain

'Cause he sees an angel peekin'

Through a broken window-pane

[Chorus]

This ole house is afraid of thunder

This ole house is afraid of storms

This ole house just groans and trembles

When the night wind flings its arms

This ole house is a-gettin' feeble

This old house is a-needin' paint

Just like him it's tuckered out

But he's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

The 1954 song was on the flip side of an even bigger hit for her, another song I really enjoy, Hey There, a great song about lost love.  The song was covered by many artists, but no one could croon it like Rosie.

This is Happiness.  I'm up to chapter 36 of 43, and page 311 of 379.  I listened to portions while driving to and from the VA, and read other portions while waiting for my appointments there.  'Twas probably a mistake listening when I couldn't read along with the oral narration, but so it goes.

VA:  I had a great conversation with an old veteran of the "Tin Can" (destroyers) Navy and his wife in the waiting room of the Gold Clinic this afternoon.  His wife was a maternity/obstetrical nurse at Froederdt for many years..

3/10/2026

 March 10, 2026

1971 Senate approved the amendment lowering voting age to 18

2012 At least 130 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza

2014 German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Vladimir Putin that making Crimea part of Russia was illegal and in violation of Ukraine's constitution

2020 Russian lower house of Parliament passed legislation to allow Vladimir Putin to hold the office of President for life

2023 California's Silicon Valley Bank, the main bank for tech start-ups, collapsed after a sudden bank run and credit crisis - largest US bank failure since 2008 

2025  U.S. stocks experienced a relatively steep drop as the Nasdaq Composite fell 4% and the S&P 500 fell 2.7%. Economists attributed the drop to recent all-time highs, recession fears, and concerns about a potential U.S. government shutdown and the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. 

In bed at 9:35, awake and moved to LZB at 2, then out to TV room at 2: 20.  Up again at 5 for my CHF weigh-in, back to bed, up at 8:50.   ?/?/?/?  0500 125/72/58  103  206.4

Morning meds at ? a.m.   

Out of commission most of the day with bad back pain, right side between rib cage and hips.   Called the triage nurse at the VA, got a 1:30 appointment at the Gold Clinic tomorrow.

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.