2/19/2026

 Thursday, February 19, 2026

1942 FDR ordered the detention and internment of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast

1945  The invasion of Iwo Jima

2025  Amid deteriorating relations between both countries, President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator" and said he has done a "terrible job" while warning "he is not going to have a country left" soon.

In bed at 9, awake at 5:45, up at 6.  34/44/33.

Morning meds at 11 a.m. 

Text to CBG:

I have to beg your forgiveness for making you my interlocutor for a running commentary on THEO OF GOLDEN, but it’s become clear to me that I’m kind of a lonely old man who has outlived the rest of his family and most of his friends, like the old man John Prine wrote and sang about in “Hello In There.”  You turned me on to Levi’s great novel and the novel has turned me into a Grand Rememberer, needing someone to share some thoughts with, and you’re “It.”  Forgive me.  I just finished chapter 31 in which Tony the bookkeeper shared thoughts and memories over a bottle of brandy and Tony shared his memories of Vietnam.  His were particularly gruesome and certainly worse than mine, but I was struck by some of his judgments, like the thought that, in a sense he never left Vietnam, or Vietnam never left him.  On a handful of the cars I see at the VA Medical Center on my many visits, I see a bumper sticker that reads: “Lest We Forget...Not Everyone Who Lost His Life In Vietnam Died There... Not Everyone Who Came Home From Vietnam Ever Left There."  To this day I experience guilt and shame over participating in that evil American enterprise.  I still wear my dog tags that I wore over there, but mostly like the  albatross in  the Ancient Mariner.  Another thought he voiced was about common guilt for our world in which so much evil and suffering is tolerated.  He didn’t quote Solzhenitsyn,  but could have: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.”  And of Hannah Arendt who, more than once, professed shame at being human, a member of a species capable of doing what our species has done and keeps doing.  Thoughts like these still haunt me as a ferkrimpter old man, and this novel seems to trigger all of them, but I’ll keep reading, and learning from them.   Thanks again. 

Caren Goldberg:

I love hearing your thoughts about it. And while you may feel lonely I think your strong ability to relate to many of the characters in the book means that you are not alone in your feelings. Although the characters may be fictional the feelings are real.

Charles Clausen:

You’re right , of course, and i do find myself wondering how Allen Levi acquired such insight in human beings, into human nature.  I think he’s lived in Georgia all his life, except for a couple years studying literature in Scotland.  He’s never married, nor raised a family, which he had in common with his younger brother and whom he venerated much as I venerate Kitty.  I believe he never served in the military, especially not in a war zone.  I have to wonder where he acquired such insight and wisdom, but wherever it came from, I am glad he shared it in this novel (which I was surprised to learn was self-published!) 

    

2/18/2026

 Wednesday, February 18, 2026

1970 Chicago 7 defendants were found not guilty of inciting to riot

2001 FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died

2014 Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 began as protesters, riot police and unknown shooters took part in violent events in the capital, Kiev, culminating after five days in the 

2025  Senate confirmed businessman Howard Lutnick as the Secretary of Commerce in a 51–45 vote.

In bed at 9, up at 6 with a bloody nose, right nostril.  46/37/54/37.  

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Kevzara injection at 10:30 a.m.  One more to go, on March 18th.  That will, hopefully, end the more-than-a-year on Prednisone starting on May 14, 2024, and more than a year on Kevzara injections, which I started bi-weekly on January 25, 2025.  Kevzara lists a retail price of $2,238 per injection pen, with various special deals offered.  I have no idea what this bi-weekly medication would have cost me if I had not received it through the VA.  Ditto Trulicity, which I inject every week and which retails at about $500 per injection, or $26,000 per year.  How fortunate Geri and I have been that my significant medical expenses over the last almost 10 have been covered by the VA, for which I thank Abraham Lincoln ('to care for him who shall have borne the battle') and Ed Felsenthal, my lifelong good friend, now gone since June, 2024.

Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi.  Bits and snatches:

Chapter 21:  "But I guess if a work of art makes us see something familiar in a new way or makes us feel something we to have felt all along or shows us our place in the world more clearly, maybe then it qualifies as 'good [art]'.  If it makes us better somehow, maybe that's what gives it value." 

Text to CBG:

I’m on chapter 26 of the book and am enjoying it quite a bit.  I don’t know whether “enjoying” is the right word.  It’s accurate enough, but the various passages are stirring up so many thoughts and muted emotions that “enjoying” doesn’t capture all the feelings I experience reading it.  I closed the last message to you with the concluding line from “The Great Gatsby,’” and sure enough, as the plot continues I find myself beset with self-referential thoughts, remembrances, reminded of myself in Tony the bookseller, a Vietnam vet, and Asher the artist, with his interest mainly in faces, in people rather than places, and in Theo himself, with his recognition that every individual we encounter in life has a history, a story, including losses, sorrows, and regrets.  yet we pass by one another like ships in the night.  I’m reminded of the man I saw at Sendik’s a few months ago, with a T shirt that read “Everyone you encounter is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”  We try to protect ourselves by keeping those battles secret, our own and others.  I used to joke with my sister, though with a little bitterness, that our family motto should have been “The less said, the better,” one of my Dad’s frequent sayings.  I was surprised to read that Allen Levi was a lawyer before he turned to writing, and song writing.  Surprised too that he never married and apparently has no children, and that he lives with his father “family acreage” not far from Fort Benning, GA.  Three years of legal education and years of practicing law appear not to have wrung the humanity, sensitivity, and insight out of him.  I’m so thankful that you led me his novel.  When I’m done, I want to read his memoir about his brother.

2/17/2026

 Tuesday, February 17, 2026

1964 US Supreme Court ruled- 1 man 1 vote (Westberry v Sanders)

1972 British Parliament voted to join the European Economic Community

2025   Demonstrations took place at state capitols around the United States, including at Union Square in Washington, D.C., as part of the 50501 movement to protest against the second administration of President Donald Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, and Project 2025.

In bed at 9, up at 5.  34/28/42/34.

Morning meds at 7:15 a.m.

Text exchange with CBG:

I saw him this morning.  He put to rest one concern, my slow heart rate.  He said the readings were false because of my other problem, an extra heart beat every 3 or 4 beats, for which he prescribed bisoprolol daily for 4 weeks followed by another EKG.  It seems not too serious to me, but thank you for your kindness in asking about it.♥️ 

Caren Goldberg:

I’m happy to hear it’s not too serious and sounds like it can be controlled with medication. Good news.

We listened to Theo of Golden on the way to Cleveland. We’re halfway through and we really like it. I think you should give it a try! I think it’s right up your alley.

Charles Clausen:

Thanks, I just bought it on Kinkdle w/Audible.  I guess I need an uplifting something.  I confess I was kind of disappointed in the cardiologist’s visit this morning.   I’m at an age and a physical condition where what I fear most is not dying, but not dying, living as long as your Mom, Enid Powell, Geri’s brother Jimmy (91), or my grandmother (95).  A nice quick heart attack orcardiac arrest seems much preferable to me.  I find myself having some envy for TSJ and even for RHF whose heart attack relieved him at least of longer suffering with the cancer.  I feel some guilt over the grimness, but it doesn’t make it go away.  Perhaps Alan Levi’s book will.  Thanks, again.❤️

 Charles Clausen:

I'm writing to thank you again.  I listened carefully and without distractions or interruptions to the first seven chapters of the book, the ones about "St. Minnette" Prentice.  It reminded me of so much, including my sister, whom I often referred to as "St. Kitty of Englewood" or "St. Kitty of Emerald Avenue.  Minnette's description of her father reminded me a bit of my troubled relationship with my own, of course, but also of how my father differed from hers, how there was a deep-down sadness and despair in him, but also goodness and friendliness that he, for some reason, had trouble showing to Kitty and me.  And Theo's lost love of his youth brought back memories of Charlene Wegge, my first love, who dumped me when I returned from a summer of active duty in the Navy the summer of 1960.  Sometimes I say it took me a lifetime to get over it, but deep down I wonder whether I ever got over it.  All those memories, all those emotions welled up from just the first chapters of the book, the first portrait purchased by Theo.  And of course, Asher Glisson reminded me a little of myself and my pencil drawings and paintings, though I never pretend to be the kind of artist he was.  So much in life now sends my thoughts traveling back to years past.  "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  ❤️

 

2/16/2026

Monday, February 16, 2026

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In bed at 9, awake at 4:10, up at 4:30.  35/27/56/33.

Morning meds at 10 a.m.    

On this day

4 years ago

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Each time one of the networks shows videos from the Russian ‘Defense’ Ministry I sense my stomach churning and my spirit sinking.  The videos are propaganda, like similar videos produced by the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department.  They remind viewers of the mission of all military forces, i.e., killing people and destroying stuff.  The soldiers with their rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, mortars, and flame throwers, the tanks, artillery pieces, ships, and aircraft loaded with high explosive weapons – all are intended to kill people and destroy stuff.  The plain message is ‘cross me and risk death and destruction.’  This is true of the Russian military.  This is true of the American military.  We’re all in the Death and Destruction business.  For smaller nations, their military forces may accurately be said to be defensive, at least in terms of perceived external threats.  For imperial nations, i.e., Russia, China, and the U.S., their military forces are ‘defense forces’ only in the sense that they are maintained to ‘defend’ whatever the national leaders want to accomplish with them, which may include aggression against weaker adversaries.  Nothing has changed since Thucydides observed the “the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”  In all of this, we wonder how much it matters what any of us thinks about the pendency of yet another European war that one way or another inevitably involves the U.S.  

 On May 9, 1939, a few months before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, H. L. Mencken wrote a piece in the Baltimore Sun, that seems a bit prescient:

    "The fact that all the polls run heavily against American participation in the threatening European war is not to be taken seriously.  A secret poll taken in any of the counties principally concerned would show the same result precisely.  The overwhelming majority of Englishmen don’t want war, and hope that it will never come again, and the same thing is true of the majority of Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Poles, Russians, Romanians and Serbs.  It was true of the same people down to August 2, 1914 and of Americans down to April 6, 1917.

    But wars are not made by common folk, scratching for livings in the heat of the day; they are made by demagogues infesting palaces. . .

    A few weeks of razzle-dazzle will suffice to convert most people to the war and to intimidate and silence the stray recalcitrants who hold out . . . Thus the job of demagogy is completed and a brave and united people confronts a craven and ignominious foe.  It is not until long afterward that anyone ventures to inquire into the matter more particularly, and it is then too late to do anything about it.  The dead are still dead, the fellows who lost legs still lack them, war widows go on suffering the orneriness of their second husbands, and taxpayers continue to pay, pay, pay.  In the schools children are taught that the war was fought for freedom, the home, and God."

    Right now Vladimir Putin is the demogogue in the driver’s seat and there is no telling whether the coalition of opponents threatening sanctions will deter him from crossing the Ukrainian border meting out Death and Destruction.  What we can be sure of is the ubiquity of his government’s razzle-dazzle justifying the Death and Destruction, the innocent suffering what they must, and the whole sordid exercise being justified on all sides as a defense of “freedom, the home, and God.”

      

2/15/2026

Sunday, February 15, 2026

1936 Adolf Hitler announced the construction of the Volkswagen Beetle 

1968 John Lennon and George Harrison, plus their wives Cynthia and Pattie, and Pattie’s sister Jenny, traveled to India to study Transcendental Meditation for two months with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram; Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr joined them a few days later, Ringo only stays for 2 weeks

1975 Linda Ronstadt topped the US singles chart with 'You're No Good', and the US album chart with Heart Like A Wheel

1989 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ended as the last Soviet troops crossed the Soviet-Afghan border

1992 Jeffrey Dahmer was found sane and guilty of killing 15 boys

2025  French President Emmanuel Macron announces an emergency summit in Paris, France, between European leaders following a controversial speech given by U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in which he criticized European leadership as the worst threat to Europe, particularly for imposing too much censorship and too little control over migration. 

In bed at 9:10, awake at 4:10, up at 4:50.  34/27/50/32.

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  

The last paragraph of James Joyce's "The Dead"

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

2/14/2026

 Saturday, February 14, 2026

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In be at 9:15, up at 5:45.  30/42/29, mostly clear skies.

Morning meds at 10 a.m.  

Two years ago today, I wrote:        

Rules for the Ruling Class is a long essay in the January 29 print edition of The New Yorker by staff writer Even Osnos.  He discusses social class in America, elitism, status, and wealth inequality.  It reminds me of so many things, but primarily the lottery of birth and my favorite little poem of William Blake: ' Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night. . . . 

Excerpts from the essay:

The class divide was widening once more, and the greatest gap was the one separating Americans who could protect themselves with money from those who could not. Fussell quoted the working-class father of a man killed in Vietnam: “You bet your goddam dollar I’m bitter. It’s people like us who give up our sons for the country."

The crux of [Peter Turchin's] findings: a nation that funnels too much money and opportunity upward gets so top-heavy that it can tip over. In the dispassionate tone of a scientist assessing an ant colony, Turchin writes, “In one-sixth of the cases, elite groups were targeted for extermination. The probability of ruler assassination was 40 percent.” 

Under Franklin D. Roosevelt (Groton, Harvard), the U.S. raised taxes, took steps to protect unions, and established a minimum wage. The costs, Turchin writes, “were borne by the American ruling class.” Between 1925 and 1950, the number of American millionaires fell—from sixteen hundred to fewer than nine hundred. Between the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-seventies, a period that scholars call the Great Compression, economic inequality narrowed, except among Black Americans, who were largely excluded from those gains. 

But by the nineteen-eighties the Great Compression was over. As the rich grew richer than ever, they sought to turn their money into political power; spending on politics soared. The 2016 Republican Presidential primary involved seventeen contestants, the largest field in modern history.

Turchin ends his book [“End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration.”] with a sobering vision. Using data to model scenarios for the future, he concludes, “At some point during the 2020s, the model predicts, instability becomes so high that it starts cutting down the elite numbers.” He likens the present time to the run-up to the Civil War. America could still relearn the lessons of the Great Compression—“one of the exceptional, hopeful cases”—and act to prevent a top-heavy society from toppling. When that has happened in history, “elites eventually became alarmed by incessant violence and disorder,” he writes. “And we are not there—yet.” 

Left undisturbed, the most powerful among us will take steps to stay in place, a pattern that sociologists call the “iron law of oligarchy.”  . . . Democracy is meant to insure that the élite continue to circulate. But no democracy can function well if people are unwilling to lose power—if a generation of leaders, on both the right and the left, becomes so entrenched that it ages into gerontocracy; if one of two major parties denies the arithmetic of elections; if a cohort of the ruling class loses status that it once enjoyed and sets out to salvage it.  

2/13/2026

Friday, Febrauary 13, 2026

1943 The women's US Marine Corps was created

1945 Allied planes began bombing Dresden, resulting in a devastating firestorm that destroyed the city and killed over 22,000 people

2018 Israeli Police report recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be prosecuted on bribery, fraud and breach-of-trust charges

2021 Donald Trump was acquitted in the second impeachment trial on charge of incitement of insurrection after senators voted 57 to 43 in favor of conviction, less than the 2/3 majority required for impeachment

2025 Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dingbat or /other fearmonger, was confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary by the US Senate

In bed at 9:30, up at 7.  25/20/46/22.

Morning meds at  a.m.  Trulicity injection at  a.m.

2 Years ago on this date,  my journal entries remind me of how much chronic, often severe pain from polymyalgia rheumatica I was experiencing and had been experiencing for a couple of months.  I wasn't in the daily suicidal ideation stage yet, but that was on the way.  I was enrolled in the VA's 'Whole Health' program, trying everything from Healing Touch therapy, to acupuncture, to hypnosis, all unsuccessful.  From the journal this date:

Treadmill: pain.  Woke up with considerable shoulder and wrist pain, and not enough sleep.  I will see the hypnotherapist this morning, with my fingers crossed.  I believe I have been experiencing some incipient pain in my right shoulder for the last few days.  I hope it's not a sign of things to come.  I took a slow, short walk on the treadmill at 5 p.m., 20:02 & 0.38.  The painful wrist & shoulder situation has kept me off because I hold on to the side bars while I'm on it and tend to lean on my arms; not good but better than losing balance and falling off. . . 

Hypnotism!  I attended my hypnotherapy session with Erica this morning.  She's originally an occupational therapist by profession but also a certified hypnotherapist.  It was an interesting experience and one I will repeat.  Nothing spooky, nothing exotic,  very much like a guided imagery process with some personalization.  I took a ride on some of the 'back roads' of the VA campus, roads I haven't driven on before, and was again impressed by what a huge operation it is.  When I got home, I played the recorded copy of the session for Geri, Tom & Sue, who wanted to hear it.  I'll listen to it again, hopefully, several times.

Long nap this afternoon - almost 2 hours.  Two nights in a row waking up at 3:30 a.m.  My head has been at least semi-shut down since this shoulder/wrist arthritis or whatever pains.  Not many thoughts, even with much national and international news happening.

Brave New World: Three newspaper pieces caught my attention this morning.  The first was a New York Times prominently positioned article titled "The Epstein Files and the Hidden World of an Unaccountable Elite," by Robert Draper.  The second is an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof, "What Trump Is the Best at, Hands Down."  The third is Peggy Noonan's weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, titled "Brace Yourself for the AI Tsunami."  I should add one more related to Peggy Noonan's essay, Ross Douthat's New York Times interview of Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, "Anthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious.’  All the articles about a common subject: the relatively few people who control unimaginable wealth and power and who operate outside of the behavioral, legal, and moral standards and controls that apply to the vast rest of mankind, Tom Wolfe's 'masters of the universe,' and those now referred to as the super-elites.  At the top of the heap is Donald J. Trump, a psychopathic, malignant narcissist with power over the entire world, not just what we think of as 'ours,' the U. S.  But the heap is a large one, including thousands with ownership of or access to great wealth, those like the UAE sheiks who gave him $500,000,000 a few days before his second inauguration so he could and would authorize the sale of hundreds of thousands of advanced microchips that they would predictably get to the Chinese.  It includes the Silicon Valley oligarchs who were seated near him at his second inauguration: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Sergey Brin.  It includes Wall Street hedge fund managers and the guys who control the burgeoning Artificial Intelligence world that threatens the world.  I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that.  These people are running the world.  It's the world of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the suicide Robert Maxwell, of his longtime 'best friend,' Donald Trump, of Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Palm Springs, of plush private yachts and airplanes.  Jeffrey Epstein and his network of friends and social acquaintances right now symbolize this world, especially with Donald Trump right in the middle of it, according to The New York Times’ review of the DOJ releases, more than 5,300 of the released files contain a total of over 38,000 references to Donald Trump (including his wife and Mar‑a‑Lago). This count is from the January 2026 tranche of documents the DOJ posted.  The world of these masters of the universe is an immoral and amoral one.  Its denizens are not churchgoers.  They live by the Golden Rule, not the traditional Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but the American, Western, Capitalist one: He who has the gold makes the rules.  These are the people who select our political/governmental leaders.  They do it to a large extent in our general elections by their outsized campaign donations, but they do it mostly in our hidden elections, the pre-primaries that determine which potential candidates will have enough money to compete in a primary.  Emma Goldman was right when she told us that, if elections made a difference, they would make them illegal.