4/27/2026

 Monday, April 27, 2026

1877 Rutherford B. Hayes removed Federal troops from Louisiana, Reconstruction ends

1940 Himmler ordered the establishment of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp

1962 The US performed an atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island

2025 orth Korea confirmed the deployment of its soldiers to Russia a day after Russia confirmed the presence of North Korean soldiers fighting alongside them.

In bed at 8:50, up at 5:45; 6 a.m., 144/74/50 118 205.8; 46/36/59/42, cloudy morning and rainy afternoon and evening.  This April has been Milwaukee's rainiest on record, more than 9 inches, with more coming today and Wednesday.  😰

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  Bisoprolol at 7 a.m.

Notes from Underground.  I finished it this morning, wondering whether it was the strangest novel I had ever read, and thinking, 'yes.'  From this one work, I see more clearer how Dostoevski is seen as the literary father of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness, Freud's psychoanalysis, existentialism, the Beat Movement, Nietzsche, Kafka, and how many and how much else?  That said, this novella was no fun to read.  Indeed, until the final pages dealing with his realtionship with the prostitute Liza, it was a struggle to stay with it.  It was in the final passages dealing with Liza that Dostoevski developed (not the right word) his main philosophical and religious idea of the redeeming, saving power of Love and Compassion, and only Love and Compassion.  Of course, being Dostoevski, he doesn't provide his reader with a happy ending, one where Underground Man and Liza realize that their present and future happiness depends on their acceptance of their mutual Love and Compassion, marry, and live happily ever after.  Noooo, when Underground Man recognizes that downtrodden, exploited Liza offers him Love and Compassion springing from the Love and Compassion he showed to her, he treats her like shit, unspeakably bad, and drives her away, never to be found.  It is thus that he ends up the guy he describes in the opening lines of the story:  "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."  

My next reading challenge is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  I've never read it.  The closest I have gotten is watching Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now almost forty-five years ago, in 1982 or 83.  It was the first Vietnam movie I could get myself to watch since I left RVN in 1966.  It's strongly based of course on Heart of Darkness, Marlon Brando in the role of Kurtz and Capt. Willard, the Marlowe character.  My feelings were still raw about the whole Vietnam lethal fiasco when I watched it, and, though I wtched it on videotape all alone, I remember not being able to watch it all the way through.  I saw it in three sittings.  From the little I know of Heart of Darkness, reading it will also be a rough experience.  I'm reminded of the madness and horror in the mind of Dostoevski's Underground Man and think I'll find it replicated, in spades and in numbers, in Heart of Darkness.

Catheter Abrasion.  I called Dr. Singh's nurse this afternoon to let her and him know that I've decided to go along with the recommended surgery.  I visited with Dr. Ryzka of the Rheumatology Clinic this morning as a follow-up to my poymyalgia rheumatica illiness.  In the course of our discussion of my recent hospitalization, he informed me that he has worked closely with Dr. Singh and commented that Singh is phenomonally knowledgeable and skilled at dealing with arrythmia cardiac problems, and the two of Ruzka's uncle only recently underwent catherter ablations in Poland, and that they felt better afterwards.  I suppose it was in some measure based on Dr. Ryzka's comments that the called Singh's nurse today.  I suppose I am always free to withdraw my consent to the surgery right up to the time I'm in the operating room but I'm unlikely to do so.  I admit nonetheless that I feel some real anxiety about the idea of someone threading a catheter up from my thigh through my torso into my heart, the lower chamber at that, zapping some portion of the inside of my heart, and then pulling the catheter back out through my groin.  I shudder thinking about it.  (I know: Don't think about it. Count your blessings.  A typical catheter ablation in Milwaukee costs about $30,000-$35,000.  I'll not pay anything, because of the VA.)

Last year I wrote, after a reflection on the old scuffed-up shoes in which Pope Francis was buried:

As I read these words, I thought of my mother.  She died 52 years ago, at age 51.  She has been dead now longer than she lived.  After she died, I went into her bedroom for some reason I can no longer remember,  but I remember seeing her work shoes on the floor.  White, clean, but 'broken-in' and well-worn.  I remember seeing them as somehow sacred or perhaps venerable, relics. I was deeply moved just looking at her shoes.  Once she was gone, things that were her's took on a significance they had not had while she was still with us.  Her time was up, shockingly, unbelievably, unimaginably, and so was our time with her. Her shoes, her work uniforms, her clothing, her rosary and prayer book, things that had been so ordinary and unnoteworthy, became imbued with significance and precious.  I think of Emily in Our Town, brought back from the dead, seeing her mother in her kitchen before in earlier times:

Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!... I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another.  I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. . . Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?

Now that I'm old and living each day in the death zone (the age when no one will say "Oh, he died so young, before his time" but rather "Well, he had a good life"),  I try always to remember and to live Emily's late-found wisdom. Oh, Mama, look at me . . ."  And to remember my Mom's work shoes.  When I see my beloved wife's gardening shoes collected in the garage, or her shoes on the drying pad by the front door, or her shoes in the TV room, way back in my mind, I remember my mother's venerable work shoes and I count my blessings.  When she occasionally says she can't find her shoes, I smile and count my blessings.  When she speaks to me and shares her thoughts about anything, I count my blessings.  Not always, because I am weak, unwise, and inconstant, but usually.  

The "Emily experience" I described has stayed with me this year, and perhaps increased.  Am I being foolish, or chickenhearted, or dramatizing or catastrophizing, thinking that I am getting closer to Death's Door?  Perhaps, but I don't think so.  I was awake and out of bed again last night, sitting on the bedroom recliner, and experiencing rapid heartbeats again, wondering about them, fibrillation? or imagination?  I mentioned to Geri yesterday that the one thing I never really considered to be risk for me was heart disease since, to my knowledge at least, there was no history of it in my family.  Yet here I am still debating whether to undergo the catheter ablation recommended by Dr. Singh.  Here I am wondering whether, if I consent to the surgery, am I trying artificially to prolong my already diminished life, or am I just trying to avoid the pain and discomfort of degenerating heart failure, being bedridden, hooked up to oxygen, a 'basket case'?

4/26

 Sunday, April 26, 2026

1954 Mass trials of Jonas Salk's anti-polio vaccine began

2019 "No religion" topped a survey of American religious identity for the first time at 23.1%, edging out Catholics 23.0% and evangelicals 22.5%, in the General Social Survey

2023 Joe Biden announced his bid for a second term, saying he has a “job to finish” 

2023 E. Jean Carroll testified in a NY court that Donald Trump raped her

In bed at 9:05, awake at 4:30, up at 4:45; 0500 125/56/30 127 207.2; 41/54/41. cloudy all day

Morning meds at 8:30 a.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at 5:35 a.m.

White House Correspondents Dinner.  This morning, we are waiting for more information about the man arrested just past the perimeter of last night's dinner.  We know his name, Cole Tomas Allen, supposedly a game developer and teacher of some sort, from Torrence, California a suburb of Los Angeles.  I went to bed last night at 9 without waiting for Trump's presser.

JJA's FB post re the Whitney Plantation and my note:

Jan's comment:

On my day to choose an excursion (Larry chose the previous day’s visit to Chalmette Battlefield), we spent an afternoon touring the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana. It is owned and operated by the Whitney Institute, a nonprofit organization, whose mission is the to educate the public about the history and enduring legacies of slavery in the United States.

I’ve always avoided plantation tours. I never wanted to contribute—even indirectly—to the romanticizing of a way of life built on the evil and brutality of slavery. But visiting Whitney Plantation was something entirely different. The Whitney Plantation is a 200 acre former sugar plantation turned historic site dedicated to telling the history of slavery in the United States from the perspective of the enslaved people who built America’s wealth.

Originally established in 1752 by Ambroise Heidel as a small indigo plantation, it relied from the beginning on the forced labor and expertise of enslaved Africans—many taken from regions in West Africa where rice and indigo cultivation were already deeply understood. As the Heidel family became the Haydels and the plantation transitioned to sugar production around 1800, the scale—and cruelty—intensified. Sugar was a notoriously brutal crop; it demanded longer hours, harsher conditions, and a rapidly expanding enslaved population. Families were torn apart. For many, being sold south to Louisiana was considered a death sentence.

By the mid-19th century, under Azelie Haydel, the plantation was at its most profitable—over 100 enslaved people producing hundreds of thousands of pounds of sugar each year. That wealth came at an unimaginable human cost. Enslaved men, women, and children labored in the fields, in the sugar mill, with livestock, and inside the home. They were skilled workers, parents, and individuals with lives and identities far beyond the roles forced upon them.

One story that stays with me is Anna’s. Enslaved and working in the main house, she was sexually assaulted by a member of the Haydel family and gave birth to a son, Victor—who was both enslaved and biologically related to his enslavers. Victor lived most of his life on that plantation. His descendants include civil rights leaders like Sybil Haydel Morial and Marc Morial (current president of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans) - a  powerful reminder that this history is not distant but rather it is living, present, and deeply connected to our world today.

After the Civil War, the plantation was renamed Whitney, and it continued operating well into the 20th century. Whitney doesn’t gloss over any of this. It doesn’t sanitize or soften the truth. It centers the lives, labor, and suffering of the enslaved people who made everything else possible. It tells the story that so many other places have historically chosen not to.

I’m still wary of how history can be presented in these spaces—but this felt like something else entirely: not a celebration, but a reckoning.

And that matters.

 Charles D. Clausen

Thank you so much for posting your reflections and these photos. I had read some years ago of this famous and infamous slave labor camp, for such all so-called "plantations" were, and I wished I could visit it, to see what you and Larry saw and read what you read. I knew from what I had read that sugar was even harder for slaves to toil with than cotton in the Deep South and tobacco elsewhere. You have a much keener understanding and appreciation than most of us of the real horrors that the institution of slavery visited upon its victims. I think that most of us were fooled by the "Gone With the Wind" depiction of it, with Hattie McDaniel as Mammy and Butterfly McQueen as Prissy. Slavery played an essential role in the development of American capitalism and our finance industry, the enslaved serving as the enslavers' capital and collateral supporting the evil institution's financing and expansion. We're still suffering from its effects. Thanks again.

The leader of the free world 

Notes from Underground.  I'm halfway through this novella and wondering why I'm reading it.  For no reason other than its renowned author, I'm feeling a bit compelled to finish it, but I suspect I will regret it.  I'm not enjoying it.  So far, I'm getting nothing out of the reading, or rather the listening, since I'm listening to more of it than I've read so far.  The "hero" is an anti-hero, a pathetic, self-loathing and other-loathing 40 year old with the darkest outlook on the world on himself and on others.  He reminds me of a story I read once many years ago in a book by Anthony DeMello.  A man is walking along a road looking for a place to settle down.  At a fork in the road, he comes upon an old wise man whom he asks, 'What are the people like in the town where this road to the right leads?'  The wise man asks, 'What were the people like in the town where you used to live?'  The man answers, "Oh, there were a terrible lot.  Nasty, selfish, gossipy, deceitful, just awful.'  The wise man said, 'The people in the town to the right are just the same.  A second man comes along later and asks the same question, which the wise follows with his same question.  This man answers, 'They were lovely people, kind, thoughtful, generous, good neigbors,'  and the wise man said, 'The people in the town to the right are just the same.'  In other words, attitude is everything, or, at least, how we view people and the world depends in great measure on how we look upon the world, with what kind of predisposition, through what kind of lens we view the world.  Dostoevski wrote Notes in 1864.  He wrote The Idiot later.  In the former, the nameless Underground Man sees the world through a very dark lens.  In the latter, Prince Myshkin looked through rose-colored glasses.  It's been many years now, but it seems to me that I enjoyed both Crimes and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov as I was reading them.  Not so much with The Idiot, and not at all (so far at least) with Notes from Underground.😕

In the current The Atlantic on-line:

How Netanyahu Hurt America’s Jews

The Israeli prime minister’s focus is, as always, on himself and his near-term political needs. The plight of American Jews is simply not his concern. By Michael A. Cohen

The relationship between the United States and Israel is in crisis. Six in 10 Americans have a negative view of Israel, and a majority of those under 50 in both major parties view Israel as well as its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, negatively. After the brutal Gaza war, a large percentage of liberal-leaning Generation Z considers Israel a pariah state. Democratic candidates are scrambling to distance themselves from Israel and its controversial leader; earlier this month, 40 of the 47 Democratic senators voted against a military aid package for the country. And hostility toward Israel is spilling over into hostility toward Jews. Liberal influencers, activists, podcasters, and even politicians are invoking age-old anti-Semitic tropes with frightening regularity.

Yet what is for American Jews the worst of times is, from Netanyahu’s perspective, the best of times. His more than a decade of meddling in American politics on behalf of Republican candidates and key GOP constituencies has, over the past few weeks, paid remarkable dividends. In the skies over Iran, Israeli and American pilots flew side by side. For a prime minister who has long viewed Iran as an existential threat, this was a historic achievement.

In putting all his chips on President Trump, though, Netanyahu has exacerbated the deep and growing divide between Israel and the Democratic Party.

This growing distance could create a problem for Israel if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, but it creates a far more immediate problem for American Jews. 

Diaspora Jews have, for much of the past century, found a home within both the Democratic Party and also progressive social, cultural, and institutional spaces. But since October 7, 2023, that sense of belonging has been shattered. American Jews are under attack from liberal and progressive activists who are stridently anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and in some cases anti-Semitic.

In pursuing Israel’s interests at the expense of American Jews, Netanyahu has put the world’s largest community of diaspora Jews in a terrible bind, caught between support for Israel and its liberal allies. 

And, it seems, he couldn’t care less.

. . . 

For much of Israel’s early history, American Jewish leaders were more involved in supporting Israel or weighing in on questions related to Jewish identity than they were in security-related issues. That changed most dramatically in the 1990s with the signing of the Oslo Accords, in 1993. Hawkish American Jews opposed the deal and lobbied Congress to place conditions on aid to the newly created Palestinian Authority. Their efforts were supported by Netanyahu, in what was at the time an unprecedented effort to politicize the American Jewish community.

For me, Israel's best hope for the future died when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a supporter of settlers and settlement, in 1995.

A prime minister who saw American Jews as more than an instrument for furthering Israel’s security but as “partners in building the Jewish future,” as he told American Jews more than a decade ago, would take his responsibilities to the American Jewish community more seriously. He would take into account how Israel’s actions boomerang against diaspora Jews and empower anti-Semites. He would seek to depoliticize the U.S.-Israel relationship and ensure that American Jews are not forced to choose between their Jewish identity and the progressive and political spaces they’ve long called home.

But Netanyahu hasn’t—and he won’t. Bibi’s focus is, as always, on himself and his near-term political needs. The plight of American Jews is simply not his concern. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4/25/2026

 Saturday, April 26, 2026

1953 Francis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was published in "Nature" magazine

1971 About 200,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters marched on Washington, D.C.

2022 Twitter announced a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk for $44 billion

2025 The German government cut its economic growth forecast to zero, with the Deutsche Bundesbank estimating a future recession. Minister of Economic Affairs Robert Habeck accused  Donald Trump's tariffs of being the primary reason for Germany's continued economic crisis. 

2025 Hannah Dugan was arrested by United States on obstruction charges after allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant evade arrest. 

In bed at 9:05, awake at 3:35 for a pit stop, thinking of the catheter ablation, up at 4:35, thinking I was awake all that time but probably not.  0450 140/77/55, 0500 128/76/54. 205.8; 43/38/54/42, cloudy morning, sunny afternoon.

Morning meds at 7 a.m., including the half-dose of Bisoprolol.  I noticed very little lightheadedness yesterday.  Fingers crossed.

I feel a bit sheepish admitting it, but I miss the Morning Joe program on weekend mornings.  I don't particularly like Joe Scarborough or Mika Brzezinski, each of whom seems like a SNL characature to me, but I enjoy learning from most of their guests: David Ignatius, David Rohde, Richard Haas, Jim VandeHei, Katty Kay, Steve Rattner, and even John Heileman.  I don't particularly enjoy Willy Geis, or Mike Baranacle, and confess to a longtime grudge against Al Sharpton for his behavior in the infamous Tawana Brawley case.  Joe Scarborough himself is probably the rudest man on national television,  succeeding  Chris Matthews.  Each of them is notorious for interrupting other speakers, not letting them finish whatever comments they are making, yet insisting, when they are interrupted, "Let me finish."  Nonetheless, I count on checking in with Morning Joe after I awake and finish my morning protocols to help organize my scattershot thinking about what is going on in the world, or at least in the American part of the world with its tentacles reaching wherever they wish in the rest of the world.

I'm a glutton for punishment.  I seem to be driven by some devilish inner force.  All of which is to say that I am reading more Dostoevski, to wit, Notes from Underground, or as Nobokov translates the title, Memoirs from a Mousehole.  In self-defense, I plead that it is a novella, not one of his magna opera, but it is nonetheless depressing which I should have guessed from the opening lines of Part One: "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."  Things can only go up from there, right? Wrong!  The book is about the human mind, consciousnees and its substrata, science and suffering, humman perversity or moral obligquity, as Dostoevski calls it.  The closing lines of Part One are:

 Consciousness is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.  Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or understand.  There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation.  While if you stick to conscousness, even the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at tiesm and that will, at any rate, liven you up.  Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.

With those opening and closing lines from Part One, why would anyone other than a glutton for punishment plow ahead into Part Two? Yet I forge on. 

4/24/2026

 Friday, April 24, 2026

1916 The Easter Rising against British occupation began in Dublin

1961 JFK accepted "sole responsibility" following the Bay of Pigs

1967  General Westmoreland said that the enemy has "gained support in the US that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily."

1980 US military operation to rescue 52 hostages in Iran failed, and 8 died

2025 Israeli settlers in the West Bank shoot 5 Palestinians and set fire to homes and farmland

In bed at 9:15, awake at 4:15 with low glucose alarm, up at 4:30; 0450, 124/72/57 132. 207.4;  63/69/44, partly cloudy.

Morning meds at 9a.m, with half-dose of Bisoproplol.  

Scattered thoughts this morning:  (1) Yesterday I thought I should go ahead with the catheter ablation of my heart, that I should just rely on this Dr. Singh, who is highly experienced, board certified, and on the staff at both Zablocki and Froederdt and on the faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin.  Today, I'm wondering again, largely about undergoing such a procedure at my age and in my condition.  It bothers me that Singh didn't mention any of the risks of the surgery, but rather just gave me a brochure that included them among about pieces of information about the procedure.  I'm aware of the unavoidable conflict of interest with fee-for-service professionals, i.e., that with the greater number the services they recommend, the greater their income.  In my teaching days, I used to explain it to students with the adage about leaving no stone unturned, when you bill by the stone.  The conflict certainly doesn't disqualify the professional from giving the advice, and doesn't mean the advice should be ignored, but it's a factor in deciding whether to follow it.  I'm pretty sure it's accurate to say that Dr. Singh makes most of his lucrative income in operating rooms in hospitals, not in examination rooms in medical offices.

(2) The Idiot, The Grand Inquisitor, The crucifixion, nihilism, existentialism, the paths of glory lead but to the grave, Jesus Christ, and Reinhold Niebuhr.  Now that I've finished The Idiot, I'm wondering what it was about.  What was Dostoevski's point in writing it?  It's a tragedy.  Prince Myshkin, the hero, ends up back in a sanitarium in Switzerland, where he had been when the story began, but he's in much worse shape, arguably better off dead.  Natasia Phillipovna, the other main character (though she appears only relatively rarely in the narrative), ends up dead, murdered by her (would-be?) lover, Rogozhin, who ends up in prison in Siberia.  Aglaya Ivanovna, Myshkin's other lover interest, ends up married to a cad and converts to Roman Catholicism, which. according to Myshkin, is worse than atheism and nihilism.  Ippolyte, the nihilist doomed to die at age 18 of tuberculosis, is dead.  What is the point of the whole story?  Crucially, who is 'the idiot'?  Is it just Prince Myshkin, the 'hero', or is it Jesus of Nazareth, on whose teachings his life is lived? Or is it all the other characters, especially those who profess to be Christians but don't live as Jesus urged?  Or Ippolyte, the nihilist who believed that life is utterly meaningless, a character who could have been created by Camus or Sartre, who reminds us of Sisyphus or Meursault, or is the Meursault character Rogozhin, who commits the senseless murder of Natasia?  Was the murder senseless or was he 'putting her out of her misery?'  Was she an idiot for refusing to marry Myshkin, who loved her more than anyone else in the world did, and infinitely more than she loved herself?  Or was Dostoevski the idiot, writing about himself, he who actually believed in Jesus's teaching despite it's inconsistency with human nature, our 'fallen' human nature?  I don't think these are just academic questions, but rather spring inevitably from the novel itself, especially read with some knowledge of Dostoevski's life.  I'm wondering whether Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about Doestoevski, or thought about him, when he wrote his long, dense An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, which I read so many years ago.  I have misplaced my marked-up, highlighted, old paperback copy of the work, but there is a full-text version on-line.  It includes a chapter entitled "The Relevance of an Impossible Christian Ethic."  Niebuhr makes the point that we human beings are, by nature, i.e., as his God created us, incapable of acting wholly in accordance with Jesus's instructions, of loving our neighbors as ourselves, of loving our enemies, of turning the other cheek when struck, of forgiving 'seven times seventy' when wronged, etc.  He wrote: "Jesus thus made demands upon the human spirit which no finite man can fulfil, , ," It is this fact that makes M."yshkin such an unbelievable character.  Niebuhr also wrote: "The real crux of the issue between essential Christianity and modern culture lies at this point.  The conflict is between those who have a confidence in human virtue which haman nautre cannot support and those who have looked too deeply into life and their own owuls to place their trust in so broken a reed."  A reader wonders whether Dostoevski intended his readers to accept Myshkin as a possible, flesh-and-blood human character, when no one has ever met another person so selfless.  If he didn't so intend him, what did he intend.  Again, what was Dostoevski's point with this story?

(Myshkin kind of reminds me of a precursor of today's Ted Lasso, though I haven't watched enough of the Lasso series to make such a comparison.)

The Idiot was published in 1869 and The Brother Karamozov in 1880.  One wonders whether the former was the basis for the chapter in the latter, "The Grand Inquisitor," in which Christ returns to earth and is forced first to be burned at the stake by the Church, and then simply to go back where he came from, to leave humankind and their religions alone.  There are major non-congruities, of course, but I think of the closing of "The Grand Inquisitor" where Jesus kisses the Inquisitor, and the penultimate chapter of The Idiot, where Myshkin caresses and kisses Rogozhin who has killed Natasia whom Myshkin had intended to marry.

I'm wondering what The Idiot would look like if written from the point of view of Natasia Phillipovna.  She was the victim of childhood sexual abuse by her guardian, Totsky.  She seemed to hate herself as a result, although she had an immense quantum of pride (though of a self-destructive kind.)  She considered herself dirtied and unworthy of marriage to a good man, perhaps even of social relations with 'polite society,' a devalued woman.  She was kind of 'knocked off her rocker' by the sexual abuse and Myshkin realized that and was described as "pitying her" although that seems like the wrong term, "having deep compassion for her" being better.  To know all is to understand all.  Perhaps her sense of bitterness was also because she perceived the unfairness of her parents dying early and her being delivered to the pervert Totski that unbalanced her, much like Ippolyte saw the unfairness in his death sentence from TB as a teenager while most others were spared.  (Why me, Lord? and all that.)  To me, Natasia and Ippolyte were characters that deserved better development in the novel, more than, say, the flippant, selfish Aglaya Ivanovna.  

I'm glad that I read the novel though I don't know that I would recommend it many people.  I've read Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment (more than once) and The Brothers Karmazov, and may read one of them again, or perhaps Notes From the Underground, or perhaps one or more of his short stories.  Or not.  I enjoyed both Crime and Karamzov a lot more than I enjoyed The Idiot.  In fact, "enjoy" is not the right word to describe this reading experience.  I read it on Kindle with audio and it took many hours.  The Penquin edition of the book is 784 pages and I've read that some editions are over 1,000 pages.  'nuf said.

(3) Doppelganger nations.  I have long thought and written in this journal over the last almost 4 years that the United States and Israel are doppelgangers, twins, images of each other.  Both think they are "exceptional", i.e., ot subject to the same rules as other, lesser sovereignties.  Each has long been victim to outsized influence from religious leaders, always from the right, rarely from the left.  Each has long had outsized military forces and military budgets.  Each has suffered from some form of racism throughout its history.  Each started as a settler-colonial enterprise with a need to subdue, subordinate, and ultimately expel indigenous people in the interest of nationhood/statehood and national security.  Each has a long history of expansionism.  Each has long thought they God is on their side, that their existence and welfare is an expression of God's will and of God operating in the world throughout history.  Each is a nation of immigrants.  Each is dominated by conservative institutions and forces, with moderates and liberals now feeling feeling as if they are passengers on ships of states captained by fools, mad men, or totally self-interested, wicked men.

Soul brothers

4/23/2026

 Thursday, April 23, 2026

1969 Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for killing RFK (later commuted to life)

1971 Columbia University operations were virtually ended by a student strike

1985 New Coke debuted; Coca-Cola announced it was changing its secret flavor formula

1991 USSR granted the republics the right to secede under certain conditions

2020 President Donald Trump suggested studying whether COVID-19 could be treated by introducing disinfectant or UV lights into a human body, 

In bed at 9:15, up at 4:50. 131/56/32 92 207.0;50/68/43.

Morning meds around 9, with half dose of Bisoprolol.  Both yesterday and today, I'm feeling some lightheadedness, hoping it's a temporary side effect of the Bisoprolol.

Busy morning, reading the papers, cleaning up kitchen, emptying and refilling dishwasher, doing a load of laundry, and trudging my way through the last 100 pages of The Idiot.

Still thinking this morning of Trump's Truth Social post about the Virginia referendum in which he asserted "As everyone knows, I am an extraordinaily brilliant person, . . ." I've been trying to imagine such a statement coming from Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden, or from any of their vice-presidents, or cabinet members, or agency heads, or their butlers, cooks, cleaning ladies (or men), or anyone in the world other than Donald J. Trump, and I can't.

I'm not much into thinking or writing today, mostly reading Dostoevski and doing little chores.  As usual though, I did read my entries on this date last year and in 2024 and 2023, remembering what pain and bad shape I was in two years ago and enjoying this memory written in 2023:

In December 1994, Geri and I went to Paris and decided to visit Ckartres and the Benedictine Abby at Solesmes, in the Pays de Loire district while we were in France.  Correction: I wanted to visit the monastery to listen to the monks chant, which they are famous for.  Geri agreed to come along, though she had no particular interest.  We got out of bed in our cheap hotel, walked in the cold, dark Paris morning to the Montparnasse train station, and caught the early train to Sablé-sur-Sarthe.  After a near 2 hour ride through the dark predawn hours, we arrived at an empty train station in Sablé: no people, no taxis, no buses.  We started walking into town to look for a taxi (no luck) and encountered a man whom I addressed in my college French, asking where the monestery is and how we can get there.  He informed us we were going the wrong way and that there were no taxis at that hour.  We retraced our steps and started walking in the direction of the abby but by this time it was raining.  We walked on the road paralleling the Sarthe River for about an hour without encountering a taxi or a car that would offer us a ride.  It rained the whole time soaking my trenchcoat and Geri's heavy wool winter coat.  By the time we reached the abby, we were worn out, cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable AND we couldn't find the entrance to the chapel where the morning mass and chanting were to be found.  I wanted to forget about it and seek shelter in the hotel across the road from the abby but Geri, having endured so much to get this far, insisted we persist in finding the door to the chapel which we eventually did.  As we entered the chapel, the mass was already in progress with only a few worshippers in the pews.  We were so cold, wet, and stiff from the freezing rain that we were unable to sit, kneel, and stand along with the other folks attending the service.  When the service was completed, we went across the road to the hotel where a very gracious hostess told us that, alas, we were too late for breakfast in the restaurant and too early for lunch, but she brought us some very welcome hot coffee while we waited.  Before lunchtime, I told Geri that the chanting we heard in the morning service was part of the canonical hour known as Prime and that we would soon be able to hear more chanting at the canonical hour known as Terce.  For some reason, this propect did not excite Geri (?!?) so she stayed in the dry, warm, hospitable hotel with more comforting coffee while I trudged across the road again to hear more chanting and to buy a couple of CDs in the abby gift shop.  The CDs have long since disappeared.  I returned to the hotel where we had a delicious lunch, of what dishes I can't recall, called for a taxi to return us to the Sablé train station, and returned to Paris, exhausted.  The remarkable part of this story: Geri never complained to me, much less smote me about the head and shoulders, for leading her on this miserable misadventure.  She never took me to task for my failure to plan and make arrangements for transportation from Sablé to Solesmes so as to avoid the need for an hour long hike through the French countryside in the cold and rain of a bleak December morning.  Sablé-sur-Sarthe is near the 48th parallel; Milwaukee is at about the 43rd parallel, which is to say, lousy weather in December in that region was predictable for a savvy traveler, which I clearly was not.  I knew on that day, and I know today,  that I was and am a fortunate man to have a wife who did not berate me, if not revile and smite me, for devoting a day of our French holidays to seeking out a chorus of Benedictine monks chanting in the middle of nowhere in west central France in December. 

The abbey reflected in the river Sarthe

4/22/2026

 Wednesday, April 22, 2026

1954 Senate Army-McCarthy televised hearings began

2021 President Joe Biden pledged to cut US carbon emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030 at a virtual climate summit

2025  Marco Rubio said that the State Department would cut 15% of its staff and that the office of the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights will be abolished.

In bed at 9:35, awake and up at 1:43, read a little of The Idiot until 3 when I moved to the tv room, ate two pieces of bread with preserves, hoping to fall asleep on the recliner.   I fell back to sleep around 4 (?) and woke up at 7:15.  

Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.  including 1/2 dose of Bisoprolol.

Middle of night insomnia from thinking about the catheter ablation.

The Idiot.  I'm 80% through the novel with mixed feelings about it.  A good deal of it seems contrived, partly the result of its initial serialization for magazine publication, but much of it reminds me of a soap opera, the way the characters interact and the pivotal roles of two women, Natasia Phillipovna and and Aglaya Ivanovna.  One of the themes in the book is the heightened awareness of and appreciation of life when one knows death is at hand or near.  It's found early on when Dostoevski relates a tale of a prisoner condemend to death at a date and time certain who receives a reprieve shortly before his scheduled execution.  It appears again later in the character of Ippolyte (or Hippolyte) who is slowly dying of consumption, or TB.  It's reflected also in the character of Prine Myshkin himself, the hero or protagonist, who is an epileptic.  Ippolyte and Myshkins are opposites; Myshkin seeing all around him the beauty in life. its splendor and glory, Ippolyte seeing only meaninglessness, futility all around him.

Myshkin sees the robin and ever-renewing life; Ippolyte sees the tombstone atop a rotting corpse

Afternoon errands had me at the Saukville WalMart for oranges, grapes, scallions, cantaloupe, seed cakes for the birds, Blink dry eye supplement, 3-way light bulbs, waterproof outdoor tape, and outdoor silicone caulk.

Depleted US stockpiles.  Center for Strategic and International Studies:  45% of precision strike missiles, 50% of THAAD missiles, and 50% of Patriot Air Defense Interceptor missiles.   This is a major problem.  Hegseth and Trump have been lying about the US having no problem in terms of running out of weapons, especially high-tech, high-cost weapons that take years to produce.  These leader have seriously diminished our national security in pursuit of a bellicose pipe dream.

From the current issue of Harper's Magazine, The Old Guard, by Samuel Moyn:

In Greek myth, Eos falls in love with Tithonus. She is the goddess of the dawn. He is a Trojan prince, yet still a mere mortal. Eos asks Zeus to give her mate the gift of eternal life—­but, foolishly, she forgets to ask for eternal youth too.

Tithonus never dies; he just grows older and older. “Ruthless age,” goes the Homeric hymn recounting his story, is “dreaded even by the gods.” Tithonus becomes more decrepit and wizened with each passing year. Eventually, when he can no longer move, Eos has to shut him away, in a place where “he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all.” Eternal life amid the decline of one’s faculties is not a blessing but a curse. “Me only cruel immortality / Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,” Tithonus complains in Alfred Tennyson’s rendition of the myth (published in these pages in 1860), in a rare moment of lucidity that emerges from his everlasting gibberish.

The story of Tithonus no longer feels so outlandish, because our society postpones death to an unprecedented degree. Unlike immortals, we still pass. But the great majority of us, and not only the bad, now die old. In whatever nursing home he was parked in, Tithonus must have looked much like we increasingly do, as doctors continuously defer our mortality. We are approaching a time when a legion of Tithonuses will live in our midst.

From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “As I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
“I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “And your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”

 

4/21/2026

 Tuesday, April 21, 2026

1954 The USAF flew a French battalion to Vietnam

1956 Elvis Presley's first hit record, "Heartbreak Hotel," reaches #1

1975 Last South Vietnam President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned after 10 years in power

1989 Thousands of Chinese crowded into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, cheering for students demanding greater political freedom

2025 Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, announced that Pope Francis had died early on Easter Monday, at the age of 88.

In bed around 9, up at 4.  0445 148/58/32, 0500 131/62/62, 0515 136/65/64 207.8; 45/38/68/43, sunny, partly cloudy.

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:30 a.m. and X p.m.  I was told by Dr. Singh this morning that the Ranolazine didn't work and to stop taking it and start taking a half dose of the med that put me in the hospital for 5 days.  

Cardiology.  I saw the cardiologist this morning at the VA, or more accurately, I saw the electrohysiologist, the arrythmia specialist.  He told me that the medication I've been taking isn't working to fix my ventricular tachycardia and that he recommends that I undergo a catheter ablation, for which the first available date is June 1.  I told him I needed to think about it.  I spent about 10 minutes with him and didn't learn much other than what I reported above, plus the risks of not having the surgery are increasing heart failure and cardiac arrest.  My first instinctive response to the recommendation of heart catheterization was to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."  I am ever mindful of Ezekiel Emanuel's article in the October 2014 Atlantic,  Why I Hope to Die at 75 and the tension between wanting to live forever and not wanting to grow ever older and ever more decrepit.  With every passing year, I am physically weaker, with decreased executive function, more frail/feeble, and less mentally focussed than I was the year before.  If it weren't for Geri, I would probably be in an assisted living facility now.  I can't take care of ordinary maintenance requirements at home, anything that requires climbing a ladder or getting down on the floor (I can get down, but I can't get up unassisted.)  Climbing and descending stairs is a challenge for me.  So is climbing or stepping down from one step.   A one step stoop without a railing, like ours was and Andy's is, is a real impJediment for me.  Just a few weeks ago, I fell onto our driveway taking our garbage cart from the garage to the street and my Apple Watch Fall Detector called the North Shore Fire Department to come get me up from the driveway's 20℉ surface.  The same watch regularly reminds me of my "very unsteady gait" and "high risk of falling."  I'm closer to age 90 now than I am to my 80th birthday and I'm mindful of my brother-in-law and friend Jimmy at age 91 and addled.  Researchers opine that Americans have a 42% lifetime risk of dementia with the majority of the risk occurring at age 85 and after.  Zeke Emanuel's article reports that one in three Americans 85 and older has Alzheimer's.  How many others have disabilities from strokes, on top of the many disabilities resulting simply from age, from body parts breaking down and/or failing, or from late-onset cancer of the bladder, lungs, pancreas, or other organ?  

Cardiac catheterization is considered a relatively safe procedure, but it is not risk free.  It can lead to bleeding, blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, stroke, injury to heart muscles, blood vessels, or a heart valve, and lesser problems.  But it's not surgical risks that give me pause, though I don't minimize or ignore them; it's what I want to do to avoid  a 'natural death' from cardiac arrest, or heart failure.  I started to write 'to avoid early death' but what is "early" about death in the mid or late 80s?  I am going to die from something someday and I've been in the "dying zone" for several years now, where when I die no one would call the death 'tragic' or 'untimely' or think, 'but he was so young, with so much to look forward to."  My Health Care Power of Attorney on file with the VA contains a DNR instruction, Do Not Resuscitate in the case of my heart stopping.  Before my last outpatient surgery I was asked if I wanted to waive that instruction if my heart stopped during the surgery.  When I was hospitalized on March 19th with a serious heart and blood pressure condition, I was asked the same question.  In each case, I said NO.  I didn't want extraordinary medical means to be employed to keep me alive if I died.  Those situations concerned the use of extraordinary means to restore life after tmy heart quit.  My current situation concerns an extraordinary measure to prevent a natural death from occurring.  The situations are very different. of course.  If I were faced with the choice I'm facing at age 65, I daresay I wouldn't hesitate very long before saying 'yes' to the surgery, but doesn't may age and poor health make this and poor prospects make this a difficult choice?  Or am I being foolish?  

Here's what Zeke wrote.  

Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either. Today, when the doctor recommends a test or treatment, especially one that will extend our lives, it becomes incumbent upon us to give a good reason why we don’t want it. The momentum of medicine and family means we will almost invariably get it.

My attitude flips this default on its head. 

At 75 and beyond, I will need a good reason to even visit the doctor and take any medical test or treatment, no matter how routine and painless. And that good reason is not “It will prolong your life.” I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings, or interventions. I will accept only palliative—not curative—treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability. . . Similarly, no cardiac stress test. No pacemaker and certainly no implantable defibrillator. No heart-valve replacement or bypass surgery. If I develop emphysema or some similar disease that involves frequent exacerbations that would, normally, land me in the hospital, I will accept treatment to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the feeling of suffocation, but will refuse to be hauled off.

. . . . Obviously, a do-not-resuscitate order and a complete advance directive indicating no ventilators, dialysis, surgery, antibiotics, or any other medication—nothing except palliative care even if I am conscious but not mentally competent—have been written and recorded. In short, no life-sustaining interventions. I will die when whatever comes first takes me.

As I told Dr. Singh this morning, I need to think about this. 

As I've written about before, Zeke's thoughts are the thoughts of a single man.  He's long divorced and never remarried.  Everything is more complicated for those of us who are married and care about our spouses.  What does Geri think I should do?  Why?  How do I - and we - go about analysing the factors that should go into decision-making on these life and death issues?  Another factor: would undergoing this catheterization not be primarily extending my life by avoiding a natural death, but rather be palliative, in the sense for protecting against the many disabilities and burdens of heart failure?