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?

4/20/2026

 Monday, April 20, 2026

1964 86% of black students boycotted the Cleveland public schools

1965  The People's Republic of China offered North Vietnam military aid

1968 British politician Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech

1980 Fidel Castro openied the Mariel Port, about 125,000 left in the next 5-6 months

1983 President Reagan signed a $165B bailout for Social Security

1999 Columbine High School massacre: 13 killed,  24 injured, shooters committed suicide 

2021 Former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd 

In bed at 9:15, awake and up around 4,  0455 140/50/61. 0505 129/76/32. 205.8; 33/47/33, sunny morning, cloudy/partly cloudy afternoon.

Morning meds at a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:25 a.m. and p.m.   

 I picked Andy up at Ogui's  a little after 8 to start the day and learned the Anh is flying to St. Louis to interview for a national consulting job this weekend while Andy and Lizzie will be in Minneapolis at a volleyball tournament.  Lizzie has a 3.95 academic average at NHS even with all her other activities.  Drew has been an accomplished drummer, but has a sprained or perhaps broken ring finger on his right hand.  Peter is not expected to gain admission to UW Engineering School, and will live at home and commute to and from MSOE next year if he's not in Madison.  Such busy lives they all lead.  When I got home, I fell asleep till about 10:30.  I woke up from the nap to find a note from Geri informing me that she was outside spreading and seeding topsoil along our new sidewalk.  She came inside to open the water valve for the outside faucet so she could water the grass seed.

4/19/2026

Sunday, April 19, 2026

1775  Paul Revere's midnight ride from Lexington to Concord

1989 Central Park Five: Violent rape of jogger Trisha Meili in NYC's Central Park became one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s. Five teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent between 6-12 years in prison.

1993 After a 51-day siege by the FBI, 76 Branch Davidians died in a fire near Waco, Texas (accident, suicide, and tear gas are disputed causes)

1995 Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh triggered a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168. including 19 children, and injuring 500

In bed at 9 and up at 3, read 2 chapters of The Idiot and fell back to sleep until 6:20.  3:10 120/57/33 206.0;  34/26/44

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Ranolozine at 6:40 a.m. and 6:10 p.m.

My normal morning regimen or protocol lately has me waking up between 2 and 3 a.m., switching from the bed to the beroom recliner to try to get back to sleep, engaging in my daily weigh-in and blood pressure measurement, recording the results in my phone, then walking with 'Judy' out to the kitchen to make a caup of decaf coffee, onto the tv room recliner to record the weight and BP data in the VA booklet, and then in my journal, and then my day begins, by opening my laptop and  starting to write in this journal, reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and usually checking out Morning Joe. Tired all morning and much of the afternoon.

Geri's birthday dinner was lovely.  Steve and Nikki came up from Chicago, and David came over with Ellis.  Sharon was home with a very bad cold.  She had David go down to Benjy's earlier to get her some chicken matza ball soup.  Geri and David grilled a wonder piece of beef for the top of the menu, with mashed potatoes, chimichurri, and a Costco luscious chocolate mousse birthday cake.  Steve brought up and gave to us a beautfiul incense holder which he had made in his pottery class and Nikki gave us some incense cones she had made herself.  I told them that I think it is wonderful that they are both engaging in art-making with their hands, an activity all of us humans can benefit from.  I'm feeling the deficit in my life now that I've long since stopped drawing and painting.  They remind me to get on the ball and try to do at least a little patchwork on old paintings to get the juices flowing again.  The photo is of Steve's incense holder below with the residue of some of Nikki's homemade patchouli incense, with another creation of Steve's above it.

 The Idiot.  On Sunday afternoon, I'm 40% through the novel, still reading it, on page 192 of 506 pages. It is said that Dostoevski didn't think it was such a good novel, but it was his favorite.  Like all his novels, it's pretty long, filled with character studies, and explorations of good and evil, man's relationship with God and religion.

 

4/18/2026

Saturday, April 18, 2026

1944 Geraldine Edith Aquavia was born in Oak Park, Illinois

2025  Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration was ready to abandon diplomatic efforts and "move on" if it is not possible to end the war in "a matter of days". 

In bed at 9, awake at 3, up at 3:30.  120/65/62 204.8; 44/31/59/38, cloudy, windy all day.  Pretty wild weather all week.  4 days of storms and tornadoes. 

Ranolazine Morning meds at a.m.  Ranolazine at 4:35 a.m. and 4:45 p.m.  I forgot to take my evening Ranolazine with my attention distracted by incoming storms.  Also forget Trulicity injection.

Geri's 82nd  Birthday.  My toast to her at her 80th birthday:

A few years back, I started keeping a list on my iPhone of 'what I love about Geri and it started with her laugh.  I was listening to her chatting on her phone with one of her friends and she was really enjoying whatever it was they were talking about and she was laughing, a wonderful, deep, exuberant laughter that was a pleasure to listen to, infectious inasmuch as just hearing it made me smile.  

Later I added "sharing her thoughts" and "sharing time" with me to the list, realizing how she has privileged me by that sharing.  I'm the only person in the world she shares so much of her life with.  I have often thanked her for agreeing to marry me.  It's a great and unique privilege married people confer on their partners, a privilege we too often lose sight of as we cope with the daily necessities and distractions of life.

Then I added her devotion to duty.  It sounds as if I were thinking of a soldier or a 'first responder' but in all of the roles she plays in her life, Geri has an innate sense of duty. 'Sense of duty' doesn't capture what I'm referring to.  As a child to her parents, as a parent to her children, as a life partner to me, as a sister to her brother Jim, and as a friend to her many friends, she is true, caring, trustworthy, attentive, solicitous.  The people in her life can count on her for help, for advice, for an open ear and a ready hand, to respect confidences, to pitch in when some pitching in is needed and to butt out when some butting out is needed.  When my twice-widowed father came to live with us, Geri became his best friend at a time in his life when he so badly needed a real friend.  When her older brother lost his wife and his children were spread out across the country, Geri encouraged him to move near us and she personally cared for him for several years.  We should all have these qualities but not all of us do and few have them as innately, as suffusely as Geri does.  This sense of duty carries into all her undertakings, e.g., as an employee, as a volunteer (ombudsman at a nursing home, child welfare investigator, poll worker) and even to our pets.  When our beloved cat Blanche needed to be hydrated by transfusion every day, Geri turned her ironing board into a gurney for her, hung the hydrating solution from a closet door, and served as her nurse.  And Lilly, . . . words fail me.

She is courageous.  She has faced some difficult challenges in her life and addressed all of them head on.  Where many, including me, would have faltered, backed off from a difficult challenge, she has put her shoulder to the wheel and addressed them.  She has guts, tough-mindedness, patience, and an admirable sense of self-respect and determination that lets her succeed at challenges that would defeat many of us.

My iPhone list is lot longer and includes stuff like leading the way when there is tought, unpleasant, nasty work to be done.  She is first to pick up the mop or shovel, not waiting for others, including me, to get at it. But my list is inevitably incomplete.  She is who she is in all her uniqueness.  She is special in large part because she doesn't treat herself as special, as better than or not as good as anyone around her.  But she is very special to me, and she's very special to her family and to her many friends who count themselves privileged to have her in our lives..    

Deborah Kerr in an Actor's Studio interview: “I don't like getting old. I hate it, in fact. I don't know an honest person who likes it. You just thin out and all your energies go toward surviving or moving safely from one room to another. But the mind thrives, thank God. Or mine does. I used to try very hard not to regret it. I thought that regrets were a waste of time, a sign of weakness. I think only the most insensitive of people have no regrets, because in this time, this slower time, your mind goes back to so many instances when there should have been more kindness, more attention paid to others. I missed so many opportunities to be a better friend, a better mother, a better actress. Of course, I can't remember now what I was in such a hurry to get to that I grew so bad at the important things. So I regret and I think. Old age is the big index to the foolish young people we were.

Tornadoes all over the state, from western counties to Lake Michigan, northern counties to Illinois state line.  Flood warnings in Waukesha and Milwaukee counties; flood watches elsewhere.  The ground has been saturted most of the week, nowhere for all the rain to go.  As of April 15, the National Weather Service had issued 154 weather warnings in Wisconsin for severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and flash floods, according to the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. That's more than six times the historical average and well above the previous April record of 123 warnings in 2002.  Wisconsin had also already seen 31 tornado warnings as of April 15, compared to the previous record of 28 warnings in April 2011.  As of April 15, the Milwaukee area had seen 8.03 inches of rain for the month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  According to data since 2000, the last time Milwaukee approached that much rain was in April 2013 with 7.38 inches logged for the month.  This month's weather is not just a one-off anomaly: The severe weather season has been getting steadily longer in Wisconsin for years, according to the State Climatology Office.  Before 1990, Wisconsin's severe weather season spiked in July. In recent years, that spike has spread out from March to September with some peaking between May and July.