3/31/2026

 Tuesday, March 321, 2026

1889  The Eiffel Tower officially opened, designed by Gustave Eiffel

1968 President  Johnson authorized a troop surge in Vietnam, bringing the total number of US military to a peak of 549,500, and announced  that he would not seek re-election

1971 William Calley was sentenced to life for the My Lai Massacre

1989 Donald Trump purchased Eastern Airline's Northeast Shuttle

2020  British pensioner Robert Weighton became the world's oldest man at 112 years

2021 New York state legalized the recreational use of marijuana

2025 Newly elected Prime Minister of Greenland Jens-Frederik Nielsen rules out Greenland joining the United States while he is in office. 

In bed at 8:45, up at 4:20.  0435 144/69/67 116 205.6  46/51/39 SEVERE WEATHER ALERT: SW winds on the northern edge of rain will gust to 40 to 50 mph early this morning.  these gusts should last only 30 to 60 minutes.

Morning meds at 5:30 a.m.  Ranolazine at 5:15 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Symptoms.  It's hard to believe how tired I am every day, how often I stretch out on a recliner to rest or nap.  On the other hand, the intense lightheadness has significantly improved, making me think it was a temporary side effect of the Ranolazine.  fingers crossed.

A pencil drawing I did several years ago of a Vietnames mother fleeing with her children

Yesterday, I wrote about war crimes, and this morning I read this from my journal/blog three years ago today:

I finished the article/book.  It is a short but devastating read.  In the end, each of the 4 defendants had his sentence for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 19-year-old Phan Thi Mao either reduced or dismissed.  It reminds me of course of Lt. William Calley and the slaughter at My Lai.  We forget the role that racism played in the war, how little we valued the lives of the Vietnamese, how unable to tell friend from foe among them,  how free we felt to force them to leave their homes and rice fields to move to 'strategic hamlets,' how entitled we felt to drop high explosive and incendiary bombs on them, to spray toxic defoliants over their land, to shoot artillery shells and M16/A-15 bullets into their bodies.  Part of Phan Thi Mao's skull was blown off by the M16 rounds shot into her 19-year-old body.  Her body moldered for three weeks on Hill 192 before the Army forensics team picked up the parts of her body as evidence and carried her away in a body bag.  All of this happened in 1966, the year I left Vietnam.  I remember hearing rumors of Marines throwing captured VCs out of helicopters and of other Marines collecting severed ears of Vietnamese KIAs.  How cavalier we were about what we were doing to the Vietnamese, to ourselves.  How indifferent.

A pencil drawing I did from a photograph of

a terrified young Vietnamese woman and her infant

This morning, I can't remember anything of the article or book (Casualties of War) that prompted the longer reflection of which the above was the conclusion.

Playing with fewer marbles.  I went to the library this morning to pick up some state tax forms.  I got there at (:30 to learn that it opened at 10.  I stopped at the BP station on the corner of Port Road and Brown Deer to fill my half-full tank, figuring gas prices were more likely to rise than to fall.  I pulled into southern bank of pumps and realized I had pulled in with my gas tank on the side of the car away from the pumps.  I backed out and moved to the northern bank of pumps and realized I had parked so far away from the pump, the hose could barely reached it.  After filling up at $3.90 a gallon, I drove onto Port Road to go home, when I realized I hadn't screwed my gas cap back on.  The older I grow, the fewer marbles in my sack.

3/30/2026

Monday, March 30, 2026

1965 Vietnam War: A car bomb exploded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, killing 22 and wounding 183 others

1972 North Vietnam launched a major conventional offensive against South Vietnam

1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley

2018 Palestinians began a "Great March of Return", 6 weeks of protests on the Gaza Strip demanding Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israel. 19 Palestinians were killed and 1,416 injured on the first day.

2023 Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan Grand Jury on charges over hush payments paid to porn star Stormy Daniels

2023 Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak signed an open letter warning that the race to develop AI systems is out of control and asking for a suspension of at least six months

2025. Iranian president said that Iran will not have direct negotiations with the U.S. on its nuclear program, but is open for indirect talks to rebuild trust, after Donald Trump threatened bombing if Iran does not agree to a new nuclear deal.

In bed at 8:40, up at 5:25.  0540  163/64/66  0550  141/6566 124 205.4   44/39/62/44. Mostly sunny.

Morning meds at 7 a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Symptoms: Numbness, tingling feet yesterday, this morning.  Lightheadedness and SOB were OK yesterday.  At 6 p.m., A-OK, regular chorese + stripping and making bed. 

Combatants, civilians, Geneva conventions, Schrecklichkeit, and war's reality throughout my life.  I was born in August of 1941, before Pearl Harbor and before Hitler's declaration of war against the U.S.  The Second World War had raged in Europe for 2 years already, and in Asia since 1931 with Japan's invasion of Manchuria, and 1937 with its invasion of China.  By the time I was born, massive wars against civilan targets had already become common, with Germany's bombings of London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and Japan's many atrocities in Asia, including but in no way limited to, "the Rape of Nanking" in 1937.  Japan had annexed Korea in 1910 and commited innumerable crimes against the Korean people for decades. Eventally, of course, all of the major participants in World War II - including Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union - would engage in what the German's call Schrecklichkeit, or terror strategies and tactics against their civilian enemies.  For the US and Britain, those crimes consisted principally in saturation and fire bombing of cities. 

The Geneva Conventions were adopted in 1949, with the Fourth Convention codifying the protection of civilians in times of international armed conflict and occupation.  Its rules prohibit violence against civilians, guarantee access to humanitarian relief, and regulate the responsibilities of occupying powers.  The US is a signatory of the 1949 Conventions, but has refused to sign or ratify a number of subsequent components of what is now considered International Humanitarian Law, like the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the two 1977 protocols of the Convention.  We think of war crimes and crimes against humanity as derelictions committed by other countries and thier combatants, and not us, but we have plenty of our own, as is clear from reading the Wikipendia entry under "US War Crimes."  I recall hearing of some when I served in Vietnam, of our guys collecting ears of dead VCs, or of throwing VC out of choppers.  Whether the rumors were true, of course, I couldn't know, but war does bad things to those fighting them, in some cruel brutality, and in most, at least an indifference to the suffering of others, or real schadenfreude.

In any event, I was prompted to write these notes by Donald Trump's Truth Social post this morning threatening again to bomb all of Iran's power stations, and adding "maybe desalination plants."  War crimes, like the Russians', like Hamas' and the IDF's, the Nazis and the Japanese,  and like our long history of inhumane, unChristian conduct when it suits our purposes.  It has hardly been customary, however, for an American president to threaten, in a public writing, to commit war crimes against the civilian population of a nation with whom we are warring.

A prettier photograph of 26 year old Specialist Sabrina Harman, 372nd Military Police Company, a reserve unit from Cresaptown, Maryland, the woman delighting over the corpse of the Iraqi combatant, above.  The New Yorker, "Exposure," March 17, 2008, about her service in the American prison at Abu Ghraib, Iraq.  "No beast is more savage than man when possessed of power answerable to his rage." Plutarch.  Like so many of us, Harman joined the military to help pay for college.  I don't mean to characterize her as a beast or a savage, as is clear from the New Yorker article cited, but as an illustration for the point that war does bad things to people; it's 'not healthy for children and other living things.'

 

3/29/2026

 Sunday, March 29, 2026

1971 1st Lt William L Calley Jr was found guilty in My Lai massacre

1973 The last US troops left Vietnam, 9 yrs after the Gu;f of Tonkin Resolution

2020 Anthony Fauci warned America may see between 100,000 - 200,000 deaths from COVID-19

In bed at 9:45, awake at 2:25, up and onto LZB at 2:40 0300 154/71/32  0310 135/68/32 11 206.6.  37/27/55/37

Morning meds at 5 a.m.  Ranolazine at 6 a.m.  and 6 p.m.

I wrote this on this date in 2023: 

Withdrawal from Vietnam.  50 years ago today, 'peace with honor', what a sick joke.  Nixon, Kissinger, Vietnam, Chile.  The democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup on September 11, 1973, spurred on and supported by the Nixon-Kissinger CIA.  Allende literally blew his brains out with an AK-47 as the Chilean army, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, established a neo-fascist military dictatorship that ruthlessly ruled the country until 1990.  When was it I first learned never to believe what the government tells us, always to suspect the worst in what the government doesn't tell us? 

 My office, 1965-1966

Watashi-wa in 1965-66

I should have added to that note I wrote 3 years ago some comment on Nixon's and Kissinger's roles in what was happening in Indonesia, not so far south of where we were meddling in Vietnam's affairs.  After the upheaval of 1965–66, Indonesia was ruled by General Suharto, whose government was strongly anti-communist.  Nixon and Kissinger saw Indonesia as a key Cold War ally in Southeast Asia.  By 1973, their administration was committed to strengthening Suharto’s regime politically, economically, and militarily.  This included restoring and expanding military aid and arms sales, which had been restricted earlier.   Portugal began withdrawing from its colony of East Timor in 1974–75, but planning and positioning were already underway earlier.  By 1973, Indonesian leaders were already concerned about instability in East Timor and the possibility of a left-leaning government emerging there.  U.S. policy under Nixon and Kissinger signaled that: Washington would prioritize Indonesia’s stability over self-determination in Timor, and the U.S. was unlikely to oppose Indonesian intervention stronglWhile no explicit 1973 “order” existed,  the policy climate they created made later actions (like the 1975 invasion) more likely.  During this period, the U.S. resumed and expanded weapons transfers to Indonesia includiing aircraft, small arms, and logistical support later used in operations in East Timor.  Kissinger, in particular, was influential in downplaying concerns about human rights abuses.  After Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the occupation that followed (1975–1999) involved widespread and well-documented human rights abuses against the Timorese population. These were carried out primarily by the Indonesian military under the regime of Suharto.  The Indonesian occupation of East Timor involved systematic and widespread human rights abuses, including: mass killings, starvation policies, forced displacement, and torture and sexual violence.

These actions are widely regarded by scholars and human rights organizations as constituting crimes against humanity, and in some interpretations, genocide, and they were "green-lighted" by Nixon and Kissinger, i.e., the American government, our "peace with honor" guys

Three days ago, Lydia Polgreen wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled "It's Not Trump.  It's America," an essay well worth reading, but the gist of it was found in this paragraph:

Is Trump a freak of history or its fulfillment, an aberration or a culmination? The answer, surely, is both. But in the course of his presidency, Trump has revealed a much older malady: America’s unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking, indifferent to what others might want and supremely confident that its plan is the right one. Beyond Trump, it’s this disfiguring mentality we Americans must face.

Vietnam proves her point, as does Chili, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and where else???  We never learn.  And we wonder why so much of the world distrusts us, or hates us. 

 Symptoms:  LOW HEART RATE NOTIFICATION from my Apple Watch at 9:25 a.m.   "Your heart rate fell below 40 beats per minutes for 10 minutes.  Tiredness, no energy.

A Man-Made Disaster, by Joshua Hammer is an excellent review of to recent publications, "Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb," by James M. Scott, and "The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War," by Malcolm Gladwell.   It reminds those of us who need reminding, which is almost all of us Americans and other Westerners, that the purposeful killing of civilians as a strategy of warfare, was not started by radical Muslim Arabs but by Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchhill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the ironically-called "Good War," i.e., the Second World War.  The review is lengthy and well worth reading: 12 columns over three large pages of the New York Review of Books, April9, 2026 issue.  Some excerpts:

The prospect of widespread firebombing obsessed military planners. In 1944 US Air Force officers even consulted Canadian and British insurance adjusters who had worked in Tokyo at the time of the earthquake, including one who had assisted with the redesign of the city. Incendiary bombs, they calculated, “would destroy 70 per cent of the houses in the six major cities and would result in the estimated death of 560,000 persons.” Apocalyptic destruction of city after city, they believed, would break the will of the Japanese to continue the war.

US bombers ended up dropping hundreds of tons of incendiaries on Japanese cities between March and July 1945, killing 333,000 people and injuring 473,000. Today, however, the firebombings remain a footnote to the atomic blasts that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. A full moral reckoning of the horror they inflicted has never taken place.

Scott has, at one level, written a classic war story: a mix of colorful and clashing personalities, tense dogfights, and epic human suffering. But he is aiming at something deeper here: a meticulous examination of how and why the old rules of war were cast aside and men came to embrace a new level of barbarity.

. . . . . 

At 5:36 PM on March 9, 1945, weeks after British bombers incinerated the German city of Dresden, the first of a squadron of 325 B-29 bombers, representing 84 percent of LeMay’s entire arsenal, took off from Saipan, bound for Tokyo. The aircraft had been stripped of their conventional armaments so they could carry more clusters of small incendiary munitions. Scott writes:

An aerial freight train of terror rumbled through the capital’s skies. Nearly ten tons of bombs fell on average each minute of the attack. The clusters blew open a couple of thousand feet above the ground, scattering six-pound canisters of napalm. Those hexagonal cylinders guided by canvas streamers tore through the tile roofs of homes and shops, factories and businesses, spraying flaming jellied gasoline on walls, tatami mats, and mattresses 

Once LeMay got started, his pace accelerated. Over the next weeks, night after night, bombing raids reduced fifty-eight Japanese cities, including Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Kobe, to ruins and caused millions of casualties. Only the dropping of the atomic bombs in August ended LeMay’s incendiary spree.

. . . .  

In the late 1930s the US National Defense Research Committee enlisted some of the country’s preeminent chemists, including Louis Fieser of Harvard and Hoyt Hottel of MIT, to develop conventional weapons as a counterpart to its Manhattan Project. Fieser traveled to Delaware to investigate a DuPont hydrocarbon known as divinylacetylene, which made paint burst into flames. That led to experiments with incendiary gels and the development of a sticky goo made of gasoline and aluminum palmitate that clung to bodies and kept burning—napalm. A delivery system was invented by an organic chemist, E.B. Hershberg.

. . . . .

Was the firebombing justified? . . .  Though smaller in scale than the firebombings of World War II, Russia’s actions [in Ukraine] raise the question of what defines a war crime and how perpetrators should be held to account. Neither Gladwell nor Scott addresses this head on, but according to the definitions established by international accords, the firebombings of Japan and Germany certainly fit the definition of war crimes. 

 . . . . . 

 (LeMay later became notorious for remarking in a 1968 memoir that the US should bomb North Vietnam “back to the stone age” and for being George Wallace’s running mate during his presidential campaign that year.)

. . . . .

. . . US and Japanese historians who agree that the relentless incendiary attacks followed by the atomic bombs did force Japan’s surrender in August 1945, thus avoiding an even more prolonged conflict. 

I've written before in this journal/blog about my moral doubts about the bombing of Hiroshima and especially of Nagasaki.  I've written too about the firebombing employed by the British and American air forces in WW II.  I wish I could find those reflections in the couple of thousand pages of the journal, but alas, I can't do a word search and don't have an index of the more than 1,100 days on which I have written entries.  I note, however, that after the horrendous slaughter of Iwo Jima, the 4th Marine Division, of which my father a member, was slated to participate in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, the need for which was obviated by the firebombings of Japanese cities and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I add, however, that there is some doubt in my mind as to whether he personally was slated for the homeland invasion, but his condition after Iwo Jima, about which I wrote extensively in my memoir, was sufficiently troubled that the Marines resisted discharging him in November of 1945 when he finally came home, almost three months after the conclusion of the Pacific war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3/28/2026

 Saturday, March 28, 2026

1935 Influential Nazi Propaganda film "Triumph of the Will" was eleased showing Nuremberg rallies, commissioned by Adolf Hitler and directed by Leni Riefenstahl

1939 Spanish Civil War ended as Madrid fell to the Nationalists headed by Francisco Franco

1960 Pope John appointed the first Japanese, African & Filipino cardinals

1967 UN Secretary General U Thant made public proposals for peace in Vietnam

1979 A partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the US resulted in the release of radioactive gas and iodine into the atmosphere, but no deaths

2017 Donald Trump signed Energy Independence executive order undoing Obama climate-control measures

2022 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the so called "Don't Say Gay" bill limiting LGBTQ classroom instruction

In bed at 9:30, awake and on to LZB around 5, 0605 142/65/63 120 206.4; 25,45,25

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Ranolazine at 7:40 a.m. and  8:05 p.m. 

Symptoms: lightheadedness, OK; feet numb at night. Able to shop at Sendik's'. sleepy during the day

My hero, preparing for No Kings demonstration in Grafton

Trump's and Hegseth's war of choice:

One lie after another.  “We've got no shortage of munitions,” Hegseth said during a Thursday press briefing at U.S. Central Command’s Tampa, Fla., headquarters. “Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to.”

Trump: If the Iranians don't respond favorably to our demands "We'll just keep bombing our little hearts out."   

The U.S. has fired hundreds of precision cruise missiles (e.g., Tomahawks) in just weeks—over 850 by some counts.  Production lines for these weapons are relatively slow, so usage is outpacing manufacturing.  This is a classic problem: modern wars burn through precision weapons much faster than peacetime industry can replenish. 

Air and missile defense systems are under the most strainSystems like THAAD, Patriot, and similar interceptors are being heavily used to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones.  At current rates, some key interceptor stockpiles could be exhausted within weeks.  These weapons are especially expensive and slow to produce—and often multiple interceptors are needed per incoming missile. 

The war is stressing critical materials supply (not just finished weapons). The conflict is rapidly consuming tungsten, a key material used in advanced munitions.  Global supply is tight (China dominates production), and prices have surged.  This highlights a deeper issue: industrial capacity and raw materials, not just stockpiles, limit how long the U.S. can sustain high-intensity war. 

The problem is compounded by earlier commitments (especially Ukraine). U.S. stockpiles were already drawn down by aid to Ukraine and ongoing global deployments.  Now the Iran war is competing for the same weapons—especially air defense interceptors.   This creates a “zero-sum” allocation problem across theaters (Middle East, Europe, Pacific). 

Official messaging vs. outside analysis. There’s a noticeable gap:  Officials’ line: stockpiles are sufficient for current operations.  ndependent analysts’ view: Serious strain already visible.  A longer or larger war could create real shortages.  Replenishment could take years and tens of billions of dollars 

Bottom line:  The U.S. is not “out of weapons” and can sustain the current campaign.  But the war is:  Rapidly depleting high-end munitions, Exposing limits of the defense industrial base, and Creating trade-offs between global commitments.  The biggest vulnerability is missile defense and interceptor inventories, not bombs or basic munitions. 

Who does this advantage?  Russia, China, North Korea.  Who does it disadvantage and render more vulnerable?  America.  So I ask again: Is Trump merely a Russian asset or is he a Russian agent? 

From New York Review of Books, April 9, 2026:  Signifying Absolutely Nothing, by Fintan O'Toole.

Among the reasons that only a fool would believe in American promises: 

The most cynical of Trump’s retreads of the neoimperial past is his incitement of the Iranian people to rise up against the Islamic Republic. In echoing Bush’s call to the Iraqis in 1991, Trump was recycling a moment of great betrayal. Those Iraqis who believed America’s implied promise of support against Saddam paid for their naiveté with their blood. The US refused to give the rebels arms captured from the Iraqi regime’s forces, instead opting to destroy the weapons, return them to the regime, or (in a grotesque irony) give them to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Americans had total dominance over Iraqi airspace but stood back as Saddam unleashed helicopter gunships on the rebels. Somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 Shias were killed, along with some 20,000 Kurds.

Even if young Iranians don’t remember what happened in Iraq thirty-five years ago, they certainly remember what happened in their own country earlier this year. On January 13 Trump posted a message to those engaged in mass protests against the regime in Tehran: “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” He warned that there would be “very strong action” if the regime executed protesters. There was no action, and help was not on its way. The government massacred an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 protesters. This is the most gaping vacancy of all—Trump gestures toward two American incitements, one historic, one extremely recent. Both deployed words that were fatally empty of meaning.

These vacuities are part of a greater absence: there is no story. America’s wars beyond the Western Hemisphere have always been underpinned by grand narratives: making the world safe for democracy (World War I), defeating fascism (World War II), saving civilization from communism (Korea and Vietnam), upholding international law and the sovereignty of nations (Kuwait), responding to the atrocities of September 11 through the “war on terror” (Afghanistan and Iraq). Each of these stories had sufficient purchase on reality to command widespread initial (if by no means universal) consent. There seemed to be a cause large enough in its historic import to be worth killing and dying for. Even when, as with the invasion of Iraq, the stated rationale was quickly exposed as fraudulent, the drama of retaliation for September 11 and the reassertion of American power after the exposure of terrible vulnerability held their grip.

Insofar as Trump’s imperial posturing has a story line, it is supposed to be written in the National Security Strategy published in November. The tale it wants to tell is one of hemispheric hegemony: the US must control all of the Americas. Where does Iran fit into that script? Nowhere. Its significance is, in fact, dismissed in a few lines:

Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe. Iran—the region’s chief destabilizing force—has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since October 7, 2023, and President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer, which significantly degraded Iran’s  nuclear program.

And, a reminder of whose war this really is:

This is, in a sense, a proxy war, but one in which America is the proxy. It manifests overwhelming military strength but also stark political weakness. Marco Rubio’s admission that the US attacked Iran because it knew that Israel was about to do so—and thus feared that America would be a target of Iranian retaliation—depicts Trump not as a mighty leader but as a helpless follower. Instead of leaning on a rival boss, he is being led by Netanyahu into a generational conflict to remake the entire Middle East

Netanyahu and Israel win; America loses.  Trump will, too. 

 

3/27/2026

 Friday, March 26, 2026

1863 Confederate President Jefferson Davis called for a day of fasting & prayer

2019 US Special Council Robert S. Mueller wrote a letter to US Attorney William Barr regarding Barr's summary of the Mueller Report stating Barr's letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the findings. "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."

2025.  Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said a 25% tariff on automotive imports to the United States was a "direct attack" on his country by the Trump administration and vowed to respond.   Japan confirmed it had asked the U.S. for an exemption from the new automotive tariffs, saying the 25% tariff on vehicle imports would have a massive negative impact on its automotive industry. Japan is one of the largest exporters of cars to the United States.   The United States suspended financial contributions to the World Trade Organization. 

In bed at 9:30, awake at 2:30 and on to the LZB after the weigh-in.  At 3:05, 157/63/32, largely the same 5 mintes later, and at 7:25, 160 71/32.  High systolic, low heart beat.  Are these the sort of readings I should report, and, if so, to whom?  Dr. Singh?  Michelle?  Maggie?  Kali?

Morning meds at 11 a.m.  Ranolazine at 8:10 a.m. and 9:55 p..m.  Trulicity injection at noon..

On this date last year, I wrote:

MLB's Opening Day and a telling comment by Mike Barnacle on Morning Joe: "The point about major league baseball and opening day is is the word 'hope,' 'hopeful.'  We've never needed baseball more than we need baseball today because baseball is an everyday proposition.  It gives you someplace to vent - your anger, your hopes, your dreams,  It gives you a chance to realize that failure is an option because you don't win every game.  And it takes your mind off the things that we talk about here every day which is so deeply depressing."

The program's first 10 minutes were devoted to blather and banter about the upcoming season and I paid little attention, but just before they turned to the news of the day, they guessed who would win the World Series and David Ignatius said he had to pick the Red Sox because his mother was a true blue Red Sox fan till the day she died at age 94.  It reminded me of my mother and her devotion to the White Sox.  I remember her listening on the radio to Jack Brickhouse announcing the games while she irioned her uniform for her work as a waitress.  Are these tears welling up in my eyes as I remember her , or is it the eye drops I put in earlier?  My memories are of her in that dingy, roachy, 3 room, basement apartment, with Kitty and me and my miserable, war-wrecked  Dad, the worse living quarters in the neighborhood, and our family the most notorious because of Hartman's crime against us, but Mama's delighting in the successes of Billy Pierce, and Sherm Lollar and Chico Carasquel and Luis Aparicio and Minnie Minoso and lamenting their failures.  I hope and wish that there really is a Mormon Heaven and that Mom and Dad, and Kitty and Jim and Uncle Jim and Aunt Monica are all up there, happy together, waiting for me.  

The faded, B&W photo is of my mother wearing the Italian peasant outfit she was required to wear when she worked at Louis George Restaurant.  It was that blouse with the puffy sleeves that I recall her ironing in our little kitchen while listening to White Sox games.

Yesterday was Opening Day for the Brewers and, as usual, the stadium was full, as were the parking lots with lots and lots of tail-gaters despite the lousy weather: cold, windy, with rain beginning before the first pitch by young Brewer phenom Jacob Misiorowski, who got the win in the Brewers' 14-2 victory.  My abdominal CT scan at the VA was completed by the middle of the 6th inning, so I was able to get on the freeway before the huge crowd let out from American Family Stadium, but the traffic on I-94E was still bumper to bumper because of construction reducing the normal 3 lanes to 2 lanes.

 Symptoms today.  As of noon, lightheadedness has not been a problem.  On the other hand, I've taken my BP and HR readings 45times since my 3 a.m. weigh-in, and, although the systolic BP readings have tended high (up to 160), my heart rate has registered as steady at 32, way low.  It occured at 3 a.m. and at 11 a.m.  

Secure message to Melissa/Maggie at CHF clinic and reply:

I'm wondering what, if anything, I should be calling about other than weight gain.  The reason I'm asking if that I've taken my BP readings 4 times today, and each time the systolic reading was high (150s to 160), but the heart rate has been consistent at 32.  Dr. Singh told me that that reading from the blood pressure device is inaccurtate because of my arrythmia, so I'm wondering whether I should consider it a matter of no concern, or, in any event, nothing to contact you or another about.  Sorry to bother you but I'm not sure what I should be contacting you about, other than weight gain, or whether I should contact Dr. Singh, or my PCP.   I'd appreciate your advice.  Thanks.

Date: March 27, 2026 at 2:42 p.m. CDT

From: WESBEY, INGRA A (MK Cardiology Team@)

Hello Mr. Clausen, 

I am covering for Michelle today, she will be back next week. For heart failure concerns - monitoring weight gain of 3 lbs overnight or 5 lbs in one week, new cough, swelling in feet, ankles, legs, or stomach, feeling fatigued or decreased energy, short of breath (more than normal if you already have shortness of breath), lightheaded or dizzy, or irregular heart beats (more than normal) are some of the main concerns regarding heart failure symptoms that we monitor. 

When having PVC's (premature ventricular contractions) it is hard to get an accurate reading on your heart rate from a blood pressure monitor depending on how often you are having PVC's. 

I will alert Maggie Angeli NP and Dr. Singh to the message that you have provided. It is  important that you keep a log of your blood pressure readings, so that we can see the trends that you are having at home on your current dose of medications. Please bring your blood pressure logs with you to your appointments with Dr. Singh, Maggie, and your Primary Care team, so that they are all on the same page. 

If I have any additional recommendations from your providers we will reach out. If you have any additional questions please feel free to reach out via secure messaging or HF nurse line 414-384-2000 ext. 45984 or the EP (electrophysiology) nurse line at 46916.

Thank you for your service, 

Ingra Wesbey RN

I'm not sure what this means, but I guess the consistent readings in the 30s is not a problem.  Now it's 36 at 5:10 p.m. 

 

3/26/2026

 Thursday, March 26, 2026

1945 Marines secured Iwo Jima

1953 Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully tested a vaccine to prevent polio, 

1967 Pope Paul VI published encyclical Populorum progressio

1997 39 bodies were found in the Heaven's Gate cult suicides in California

1999 A jury in Michigan found Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man

2016 US primary elections: Bernie Sanders won Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska

2025. Donald Trump announced a 25% tariff on all car imports to the U.S. effective April 2. 

In bed at 9:30, awake at 2;30 for a pit stop, still awake at 3:20 so I did my weigh-in & BP, up.  0330  155/77/66, 5 minutes later 140/70/66  85  207.8.  49/54/30  Rain expected this afternoon.

Morning meds at 10:20 a.m.  Ranolazine at 7 a.m. and 7:35 p.m.

Our big spruce tree was taken care of this morning. $500, a very fair price and well worth it.  We hired them to handle the stump grinding also (later).  Cheri Bubrick's recommendation.

Symptoms:  I thought I sensed some heart fluttering or racing as I lay in bed after waking at 2:30, but I'm not sure.  It was the same sensation I had one night in the hospital, which I reported to a nurse, but forgot to mention to Dr. Tsemo, who I had some difficulty communicating with because of her rather thick accent (and perhaps my hearing).  Before hospitalization on 3/19, BP had rather consistently been in the 120s and 1teens; since then it has been higher.  Today's 155/77 led me to take a second reading after several more minutes of rest, with a reading of 140/70.  I also had some light pain and tingling in the fingertips of my right hand.  GOOD NEWS; the lightheadedness I experienced yesterday is much better today, morning and afternoon.  I was able to walk in the house without cane, walker, or rollater and I had no trouble driving to and from the VA for an abdominal CT scan at 3 this afternoon.  On the other hand, I was so tired from walking from the street level parking lot to the medical center, I had to sit down on one of the chairs by the VA Police window in the entry area, just as I did last Thursday morning before being taken to the ER and being admitted as an inpatient.  I was also able to climb the basement stair twice after I got home, first to check water seepage  near the filtration and softening equipment and secondly, to apply some titanium white acrylic paint as "white out" to a portion of Geri's protest sign that she will carry Saturday at the No Kings demonstration.  She wanted to redo one of the words on her sign: "Dictators Fall When the People Rise."  Overal, a good day with fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Words of Wisdom.  “I’m old, you know, and I see things repeated, and something that is very common is the change people feel toward someone when they meet them. At one time they ridiculed and hated them, and then they confess that they now like them, because they saw them as they were. Or a friend told them how kind or funny they were, and conversions keep happening. I think we need to imagine people as loved and kind and funny, and any dislike is based on our limited knowledge and kindness. What I’m saying is that most of the time, we are the problem, and we need to constantly adjust our vision.”—Marian Seldes

The Pitt.  We watched series 1, episode 8 tonight, with a story line that included an ER patient serviced for bradycardia, low blood pressure, low heart rate (30), etc.  Like me in the VA ER last Thursday, except the fictional patient's problem was caused by the wires of his pacemaker getting separated from the pacemaker.  A bit eerie, though, hearing his 'vitals' and other data being treated as life-threatening.  A reminder, I suppose.

3/25/2026

 Wednesday, March 25, 2026

1954 Pope Pius XII's encyclical "Sacra virginitas" (On consecrated virginity)

2024 UN Special Rapporteur said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a report "Anatomy of a Genocide."

In bed around 8:30, half awake from 5:15 till 5:40, when I got up for the weigh-in,     140/71/33 100 207.2. 36/30/63/35

Morning meds at. 7:00 a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:00 a.m. and 5:45. p.m.  

Symptoms:  Yesterday, a lot of lightheadedness, using the rollator a lot.

Today, Very tired this morning, even after a decent night's sleep last night. Also, slight lightheadedness in the morning, not as bad as yesterday afternoon.  The dizzies got more significant later in the morning, only when standing, not when sitting.  Still with me in the afternoon.

The botched discharge process at the hospital and change of medications, on top of the 5 days of hospitalization, has shaken my heretofore confidence in the VA's medical care.  I've done more research about congestive heart failure, arrythmias, PVCs, bradycardia, and treatment options and think my conditions with all of those condtions is more serious than I had thought.  The problem of lightheadedness is my major concern.  It sounds like not much of a problem, but it invovles a substantially greater risk of falling down, which means risk of breaking a hip, e.g., or of hitting my head and experiencing a brain bleed.  These are potential life-altering events.  The lightheadedness is a common side effect of the Ranolazine medication I'm on and I'm surprised I've received no counseling about this, either at the hospital or otherwise.  On a relateed manner, I note that I am increasingly aware of the fact that, were it not for Geri being here with me, I'd be in an assisted living faciltiy, or at least a congregate "independent living" facility for the aged.  My major accomplishment today was taking two trips to the bird feeders to refill the tube feeder and the tray feeders.  I want to add another one or two seedcakes to that feeder as well, but all I could handle this afternoon was the two short walks from the garage where I keep my stock of birdseed to the front of the house where the feeders are.  I thought I had "lost a step" after the week of hospitalization last September/October, but I'm worse after the latest hospitalization.  I'm increasingly useless.  It would be prudent to sell our house and move into an apartment or condo (or some 'facility'), but Geri's not ready for that and I hate the thought.  Just dealing with the process of prepping the place for a move would be daunting.  Geri would have to handle almost everything, and she's just a few weeks away from her 82nd birthday (and her new knee has been giving her problems lately.).  Much to consider.

From 3 years ago today:

Finished reading Gilead: "While I am thinking about it - when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing.  In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one's sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some way."  John Ames' frequent description of himself as old and tired, the metaphor being "ember," dull and gray but with an internal heat and fire, ready to be refulgent again when the Lord breathes life on it.  I was struck by "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain," how true that seems of old age, the age with little new except daily diminishment, little to look forward to but more diminishment, but filled with so many old memories, 80+ years of memories.  The good ones fade away, the regretful ones linger and haunt.  The good ones are almost all of the goodness of others - mother, sister, Uncle Jim, Aunt Monica, Brother Coogan, Wally Halperin, Johnny Flynn, Troy Major, Father Matthew, so many nurse-nuns - while the regretful ones are of my own failings, ingratitude, cowardice,  selfishness, vanity, pettiness, indifference.  It's curious that Marilynne Robinson named her fictional town "Gilead."  I suppose  she intended her novel to be healing, affirming.  "There is a balm in Gilead / To make the wounded whole / There is a balm in Gilea / .To heal the sin-sick soul. / Sometimes I feel discouraged / And deep I feel the pain / In prayers the holy spirit / Revives my soul again"  For those without the faith of a John Ames or Marilynne Robinson, hope comes harder.

From 2 years ago today, when I was in really bad shape with undiagnosed and untreated polymyalgia rheumatica and kvetching about it:

I'm losing the physical and mental energy to write.   I suspect I may abandon this journalling project one of these days.⁺⁺ I've never been entirely sure why I do it in the first place except perhaps that I have no attractive alternative, certainly not watching television.  Reading is increasingly difficult for me except on a Kindle or on my laptop with its ability to enlarge fonts.  There's certainly enough wretchedly bad news to read about, to think about, and to write about but I haven't much energy.  I am bowled over by how seemingly fast I have gone downhill with these chronic pain problems, with the interstitial cystitis assortment of pains lasting about a year and a half (?) only to be resolved by surgery and replaced by rotator cuff and various arthritis pains, all debilitating and at least semi-crippling.  At least as distressing as the physical pain is the cognitive decline that has accompanied it.  It's very noticeable to me, both in terms of executive function and in terms of increasing short-term memory problems and confusion.

About one month later, I stopped writing in these notes for about 16 days.  With the PMR, it was too painful to hold my laptop and type.   On April 26th, I stopped writing until May 13th, when I was finally diagnosed with PMR and put on prednisone.  Daily and nightly thoughts of suicide, similar period to when I was beset with ulcers in my bladder years before.