5/16/2026

 Saturday, May 16, 2026

1990 Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creators of the M16 rifle and the AK-47 rifle respectively, meet in Washington, D.C.

2004 Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kyiv, Ukraine where during 1930/ early 1940s, bolsheviks executed over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians

2017 I started using  CPAP; stopped a few years ago b/c frequent pit stops

2025 Moody's Ratings lowered the United States' credit rating from Aaa to Aa1, citing the government's rising debt, widening deficits, and increased interest payments.

 In bed by 9, awake at 3:45, up at 4:15; 0430 108/71/57 113 204.8; 59/77/56, cloudy & overnight & early, mostly sunny day.

Morning meds at 7:50 a.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at 4:45 a.m.

Opening the blinds on the window by my recliner, at 5:50, I see an exceptionally gray, rainy morning.  A nuthatch and a chickadee are busy with their first (?) morning feeding, but otherwise the feeders aren't attracting much attention, at least until the reliable cardinals show up for some safflower seeds to start their day. For some reason, a thought of Robert Schuller and his 'Chrystal Cathedral' television show "The Hour of Power"  flashes through my head, his always smiling face, always confident voice, his academic doctoral robes, and "This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it!" from Psalm 118.  It's hard for me to believe that I ever watched Robert Schuller on any kind of regular basis, but perhaps I did because I remember him so clearly.  I fully suspect that he was primarily a huckster, like the other TV evangelists, good at raising millions of dollars and building huge churches and huge followings.  His first assignment after ordination in the Dutch Reformed Church was in Riverdale, IL, the blue-collar town where a great many people bought their first homes, side-by-side townhouses with their own back yards where they could grow gardens.  My sister Kitty and her husband bought thier first home there, followed by my Mom and Dad doing the same.  Riverdale is where they all lived when my Mom died in 1973.  Schuller.  By that time, Schuller had long-since moved to Garden Grove in northern Orange County, California.  It was either a brilliant idea of how to bring the Gospel to more lost lambs or inspired hucksterism in how to break into an emerging market when Schuller opened his first church in the Orange Drive-In Theater, letting auto-oriented Californians attend church without getting out of their cars.  When he got into televangelism, it was even better: people could 'go to church' with getting into their cars.  All they had to do was turn on their TVs to "The Hour of Power" and Schuller could beg for money from people who never set foot in his church.  When we wonder how it is that so many millions of people fall for the "happy horseshit" put forth by Donald Trump and believe him to be a messenger sent by God, all we have to do is to remember Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jerry Falwell, and Joel Osteen.  They all illustrate the truth of what my former spouse used to say frequently: "People are such dopes."  

The Seven Good Years, by Etgar Keret.  I'm reading this collection of short stories and enjoying it very much.  It's the second collection of his stories that I've read, the first being titled "The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God."  I started it only this morning and I'm quickly through almost 60% of it, a quick read.  I just finished "My Lamented Sister," a story he published 20 years ago in Tablet Magazine about his Orthodox older sister, and how her religious identity complicated her relationship with Keret, who was a secular Jew, very secular..  It reminded me at least a little bit of my relationship with my own sister who was, until the last years of her life, a practicing Catholic, a Eurcharistic minister, active in her parish life, in the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and a regular volunteer at the meal program at Andre House, a ministry to the homeless in downtown Phoenix.  Her Catholicism derived from her upbringing and her inherent goodness, rather than vice versa and it never interfered with her relationships with non-believers, unlike the rigors of Orthodox Judaism.  The story made me wonder again though about what it is that leads or pulls people into religious groups with beliefs and pracrices that separate them so much from those who don't share them, the "infidels" and "unbelievers."  Of course, my own upbringing was something like that, with Catholic schooling rather than public schools, dating only Catholic girls, staying away from non-Catholic religious institutions , including the YMCA, other churches, synagogues, etc. 

The Seven Good Years's title refers to the years between the birth of Kerit's son Lev and the death of his father from cancer.  I wrote in these pages very recently that the years when Sarah and Andy were little were the happiest years of my life so I was drawn pretty strongly to this book simply by its title.  I really enjoy Keret's writing, much of which is very funny and all of which is clear, easy reading, even in translation from Hebrew.  One of the stories is titled "Shit Happens" and relates how older brother read the manuscript of his first short story, praised it highly, asked if he had another copy, and then used the second copy of pick up his pet dog's shit and deposited it in a trash container.  It was very funny to read and reminded me of a self-portrait I painted many years ago, stored in the basement of our home outside of Saukville, retrieved it later and discovered an ineradicable stain from mouse droppings on it, which seemed somehow meaningful to me.

I sat on the patio for half an hour or so this evening, gazing on all the pleasing greenery and listening to the birds.  The only bird songs and calls I could recognize were from crows, cardinals, and mourning doves, but I turned on the Merlin app for 5 minutes and it identified: brown-headed cowbirds, rufous-sided towhees, red-bellied woodpeckers, least flycatchers, Swainson thrushes, blue jays, chickadees, goldfinches, and robins.  I have seen a rufous-sided towhee once in my life, serendipitously during a witness interview in New Haven, CN.  I have never seen a Swainson's thrush or least flycatcher.  

     

5/15/2026

 Friday, May 15, 2026

1966 South Vietnamese army battled Buddhists, about 80 died

2018 58 Palestinians were killed by the IDF with 1700  hospitalized on the Gaza border, protesting the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem and 70 year founding of Israel

2019 Jeff Koons "Rabbit" sculpture sold for $91.1 million, setting a new record for work by a living artist at auction; the buyer was later identified as hedge fund manager and MLB NY Mets owner Steve Cohen

2025 Trump said that the U.S. and Iran had"sort of" agreed on the terms of a deal on Iran's nuclear program, which reportedly included Iran agreeing to give up highly enriched uranium while keeping lower-grade uranium in exchange for the lifting of sanctions

In bed at 9, up at 4; 0410 119/70/56 128 205.4; 51/45/71/47, cloudy early but sunny day ahead.

Morning meds at 2 p.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at 5:30 a.m.  Yesterday I had quite a bit of lightheadedness, and shortness of breath, presumably from the more-than-half dose of Bisoprolol I took due to the difficulty of splitting the tiny 5 mg. tabs in half evenly.  

Louisa and Ted, my first house, and my final home  I'm at page 306 of My Friends, where Ted and Louisa have recovered the artist's painting of the sea and the friends, but lost his ashes, and Ted has taught Louisa how to swim in the sea, and Louisa asks Ted

"Do you think he would have been angry?  About us losing him?: she asks.

"No. I think he would have laughed.  He liked hide-and-seek."

Her eyes light up.  "Maybe it isn't such a bad idea to get your ashes scattered on a train, after all?  That way you're always on your way somewhere!"

"Ugh, don't say that.  Can't we even stop having to travel when we're dead?"

Louisa laughs.  "Where do you want your ashes scattered, then?"

Ted thinks for a good while before deciding: "In a library.  You don't have to put up with reality there.  It's as if thousands of strangers have given away their imaginary friends, they're sitting on the shelves and calling to you as you walk past. . . " 

The passage reminded me of my long road to a plot for a 'green burial' at Forest Home Cemetery on Milwaukee's south side.  I don't recall ever thinking about the disposal of my carcass until I bought my first house on Newberry Boulevard at the end of 1972.   The house sat on a lot and a half, facing south on the north side of the boulevard,with great space for a rose garden on the eastern half.  I had floribundas on the south side of our chain link fence separating our front yard from the side and back yards, and hybrid teas on the north side.  I grew other kinds of favorite flowers along our east lot line, and had a little succulent rock garden, mostly hens and chicks, anchoring the garden at its north terminus.  It was in creating and maintaining that garden that I first thought I wished my body could be buried there when I died, so it could nourish the soil and the plants as it returned to its elements.  As it turned out, however, I only lived in that home for less than 10 years, and when I moved from it, I stopped thinking about the disposition of my remains, except for occasional largely academic discussions of which is preferable, burial or cremation.  When I worked on my memoir after I retired, I did make an inquiry at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Worth, Illinois, where my mother and maternal grandparents are buried, whether I could buried in that family plot or very nearby, but never seriously considered it.  When I did get serious about expressing my wish about what to do with my body once it was lifeless and a nuisance, I reverted to my thinking back on Newberry Boulevard in the 1970: I wanted my remains to become part of the earth again, not burned and not chemically preserved as long as possible.  So I purchased the contract right to have my unembalmed carcass returned in a biodegradable box to a small spot on and in the earth at approximately Latitude: 43.0015° N and Longitude: 87.9434° W, in the city and county of Milwaukee, state of Wisconsin, United States of America, North America, on the planet Earth, in 'our' solar system, in the Milky Way galaxy, in the supposedly ever-expanding Universe, and, the Stage Manager in Thorton Wilder's Our Town would add, in the Mind of God.  

Returning to Ted and Louisa in My Friends, I'm up to page 341 with our heroes in the elegant sleeping car on the train, and I'm wondering how it is that Frederik Backman knows so much about abused and neglected children.  Joar and Fish are the most abused, physically as well as emotionally, but none of them is lovingly nurtured.  'The artist,' C. Jat, was an accidental birth, and thought of  by his parents as odd, not 'normal', unlike other kids and people.  Ted grew up with death all around him, his father enduring a long illness and finally dying of canceer and his mother, hardened by her experiences in life, trying to harden her two sons, Ted the younger, to be able to endure life's hard knocks.  His older brother became toughened by the upbringing, but Ted just grew up insecure and fearful, afraid of life.  Louisa, like my dear brother-in-law Jim R., moved from one foster home to another and from one elementary school to another when he wasn't permitted to be home with his cruel parents.  Louisa's father was never a presence in her life and her mother committed suicide, leaving Lousia insecure, confused, lonely, much like 'the artist', Ted, and Ali.  All the young people were lonely, look for acceptance, not seeing a place for themselves in the adult world.  Some were angry, notably Joar, Ali, Fish, and to a lesser extent Louisa, but back to the question I started with: how is it that Backman chose to create youngsters with these characteristics?  Was he like one of them himself, and, if so, which one?  Or was he an amalgam of all of them?  Some of them?  None of them?  I wonder what his childhood in Stockholm and Helsingborg, Sweden, was like.  He's described himself as shy and socially awkward as a boy, but never as neglected or abused, but we have to assume he knew a lot of people like his fictional characters as he grew up or in his early adulthood.  He's only 44 years old and My Friends is his latest novel, published only last year. It's the first of his novels that I've read.  I suspect it won't be the last.  I don't include And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer (2016) which he calls a novella but seems to me to be a short story.

So much of what I've read 'resonates' with me. (I keep using that term but I don't like it.  I need to find a better one.)  Most recently, as of 2:53 p.m. this afternoon, it's this:

"Do you think God exists?" Ali asked her friends.

"Yes," Kimkim replied, running his pencil across the drawing . . . 

Joar was breathing hard.

"Damned if I know . . .  I don't even think all the people who go to church every Sunday believe in God. I think they just need company,  To feel that they belong to a group."

Kinkim nodded gently and replied: "But I don't think that means that God doesn't exist, Joar. I think maybe that's what God is."

Another short-hitter that made me pause, thinking especially of my years at St. Francis of Assisi. 

Others:

“Picasso said it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a whole lifetime to learn to paint like a child.” 

 “and most of all angry at death for having such good taste. Always taking the best first.”

“But when someone gets sick and recovers, you always say that it was God who did that, so it’s pretty damn cowardly for Him to escape the blame when someone dies!”

“It is an act of violence when an adult yells at a child”

“Fish telling her what evil among men is like: It’s like water being heated up a little at a time. It gets worse and worse, but so slowly it’s hardly noticeable, so everyone can convince themselves that it’s probably normal, until we’re all boiling.” 

“There’s an author called Donna Tartt who describes why a person falls in love with art: ‘It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you.’ That’s what libraries feel like for me.” 

 “Life doesn’t give us purpose. We give life purpose.”

“Because I want to know what’s happening inside you! Because you happened to me! You happen to me every second I’m alive!’ ”

 

 Only my beautiful daughter, an expert and artistic photographer, knows and truly appreciates the story behind this B&W photo of a crabapple tree that used to be located in Lake Park, on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.  I had admired the tree for some time and had tried many times to capture its elegant beauty on film.  I was always unsuccessful because of heavy brush growth all around it, cluttering the background and obscuring its form.  One early morning about 45 years ago, lying in bed, I heard the foghorn blowing at the old lighthouse in the park.  I scrambled into some clothes, grabbed my camera case, rushed to the park, lay down flat on muddy soil on the edge of the downslope off the bluff, and snapped this photo, ever since my favorite, with the fog masking everything but the tree.

I finished My Friends at 8 this evening.  I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the novel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5/14/2026

 Thursday, May 14, 2026

1948 David Ben-Gurion declared Israel independent from British administration, Golda Meir one of the signatories, and the US granted Israel de facto recognition

1955 Warsaw Pact was signed by the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania

1975  "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles," written and directed by Chantal Ackerman and starring Delphine Seyrig, premiered at Cannes

1995 Dalai Lama proclaimed  6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima the 11th reincarnation of Panchen Lama, Tibet's 2nd most senior spiritual leader

2025 Pakistan said that more than 1 million Afghans have been deported back to Afghanistan since November 2023 as Pakistan  intensified a crackdown on illegal immigration.

2025 Argentine president Javier Milei ordered restrictions on immigration to Argentina, saying that immigrants were  bringing "chaos and abuse" to Argentina.

In bed by 9, not up until 6:20!  0630 128/67/58. 107 203.6; 42/59/38 and mostly sunny.

Morning meds at 9:10 a.m., and (roughly) half-dose of Bisoprolol at 6:45.

Fredrik Backman catches us up short, gobsmacks, surprises, shocks, amazzes, thrills, or distresses us.  For example, this short passage which I read while resting before turning on the BP machine:

"Have many people you've loved died?" she asks out of nowhere.

"Yes."

""I've been lucky, really," she says.

"How do you mean?"

"I haven't loved many people."

That exchange made me pause and think.  And then, Ted said to Louisa:

"What I hate most isn't that people die.  What I hate most is that they're dead.  That I'm alive without them."

Which made me pause again.  Again think again.   It seems like I'm pausing and thinking  on every page or every other page.  I mentioned to CBG in my text that I have the feeling that I should be taking notes as I read since there are so many notable passages as I move through the novel, but then I googled 'notable quotes Fredrik Backman' and found Goodreads lists 6,243 quotes😮!

Here's just a couple of other quick-hitters that gave me pause:

“Adults often think that self-confidence is something a child learns, but little kids are by t

ans

“Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that’s pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.”

He also slips into the casual conversations of his teenagers, questions that philosophers have pondered for ages, like this throwaway piece of a conversation between Louisa and Fish:\

"Isn't it like, totally unbelievable that we even exist?  So it won't be a tragdy when we don't exist anymore!  It's just cool, really cool, that we happened at all."

As much as I enjoy Backman's writing, I have at least some sympathy for the reviewer I read who found that he was annoyed that Backman is 'constantly trying to score. . . . every metaphor has to be grand, every point sharp, every pun as witty as possible.'  I'm half-way through the book now and notice this tendency especially with the 17/18 year old Louisa and the 14 year old Joar, both of whom are incredibly gifted masters of metaphor and aphorisms.  That quibble aside, I love this guy's writing and the characters he creates.  It is interesting that in My Friends he is so focused on abused and neglected children, reminding me of my now-deceased brother-in-law Jim Reck and, in a very different way, of my cousin Doug, about whom I write below.

My old pal LOA called this morning and we chatted about some health and other matters for almost 20 minutes.  It's a treat schmoozing with him.   I wish we weren't separated by so many hundreds of miles, but grateful that we can stay in touch by telephone, text, and email.  

The white-crowned sparrows and red-breasted grosbeaks have become regular visitors, making me wonder if they'll be here for the summer or if this is just a stopover.  I'm advised by the fellow at Wild Birds Unlimited that they are only stopping over here, on their way to Canada. 😥

Memories, memories.  From this morning's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:Excitement grows with 2026 class of lake sturgeon at Riveredge byPaul A. Smith:

The atmosphere this week at Riveredge Nature Center in Saukville is akin to a hospital maternity ward.  Excited. Determined. A little worried and sleep deprived, too.  "We've got babies," Mary Holleback, Riveredge's citizen science manager, said May 13. "A fresh, new start. We're crossing our fingers from here."  These young ones are not swaddled in blankets but the fisheries equivalent: swimming in temperature-controlled tanks and raceways.    They are lake sturgeon, the most recent hatchlings of one of Wisconsin's most ancient and revered species, and the focus of "Return the Sturgeon," an effort to restore the species in the Milwaukee River. 

The work is a partnership between Riveredge, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  At its core, it involves the DNR obtaining sturgeon eggs from spawning fish on the Wolf River in central Wisconsin and transferring them to a hatchery trailer at Riveredge.  Holleback then leads a crew of more than 30 volunteers over the coming months as they clean tanks, feed and monitor the developing sturgeon.  If all goes well, in late September about 1,000 sturgeon will be ready for release into the Milwaukee harbor. 

The sturgeon trailer at Riveredge and the outdoor filters and other equipment used to keep their tanks clean and properly aerated.  The water in the tank was pumped up from the nearby Milwaukee River.  The protocol for nurturing the young sturgeon and keeping their tanks clean was detailed and rigorously followed.

I was one of the volunteers on this project in its early years, when Geri and I lived in the Town of Saukville where Riveredge Nature Cemter is located.  Once a week, from Spring until the release day in September, I and my two other volunteer partners would arrive bright and early at the trailer in the woods on a little rise nest to the Milwaukee River just east of Newburgh where we busied ourselves feeding the young sturgeon and cleaning the tanks in which they lived and grew.  Mary Holleback, who runs the project today was our boss back then, too.  She and the other staff at Riveredge are terrific people and it waw a privilege working with them.  I volunteered not only on the sturgeon project, but also in classroom activities with school kids from around SE Wisconsin, and on never-ending projects in the prairies around the main building, like removing invasive species, harvesting seeds of native species of plants.  Riveredge and its staff and volunteers are a wonderful resource here in SE Wisconsin.  

In those early days of retirement, I also did regular volunteering in "hippotherapy" venues. From Wikipedia: "Hippotherapy is a physical, occupational, and speech therapy that utilizes the natural gait and movement of a horse to provide motor, and sensory input. It is based on improvement of neurologic functions, and sensory processes, and used for patients with physical, and mental disorders."  I worked exclusively with kids, ssome of whom had quite severe disabilities.  I enjoyed both the kids and therapists I worked with, and working with the horses.  It took me back to my early teenage years when my cousin Doug and I would take CTA buses as far as we could  out to the rural area outside southside Chicago to where there was a horse stable where we would rent horses to ride, or work in the stables cleaning stalls, etc., to earn riding time.  I never lost I love of horses that I developed then, 70-some years ago.  Those were the years before Doug attended De La Salle Catholic high school in Chicago, got into trouble, dropped out of school, joined the Navy, where he also got into trouble including brig time, got out of the Navy and got into trouble in civilian life, including time in incarceration in a California prison and an unknown number of jails..  Doug and I were each other's best friend for years before our high school years when he went his way with a lot of bad fortune, and I went mine, with a lot of good fortune.  He had an absent father but a good mother, my Aunt Monica, and his maternal grandparents living right upstairs, yet he was troubled from the time he was a very little kid.  He was a bed wetter and used to throw tantrums, lying on the floor, screaming.  His brother and sister were 'well adjusted,' neither one of them troubled, at least in any way that was visible to my sister and me, or our parents.  Each of them made a good adult life for themselves, their spouses, and their children, yet Doug's life was a train wreck from the beginning.  "Every morn and every night/ Some are born to sweet delieght./ Every night and every morn / Some to misery are born./. Some are born to sweet delight / and some are born to endless night." William Blake.   I pause as I think back on those days and all the days that followed for us five first cousins: Jim, Chris, me, Doug, and Kitty.  Now Kitty and then Christine have died, we three 'boys' hang on in our mid-80s.  We grew up together,  but are no longer close.   A lot to think about.

Kitty, Doug, Aunt Monica, me, Christine, and Jim on my  Dad's 80th birthday, September 2000, at The Family Table restaurant in North Port, Florida, at a happy moment.  Just a few minutes after my Dad took this snapshot, Doug and Jim were at each other's throats  (not literally) over some comment that Doug made, and their mother distraught.  Later that evening, Doug ended up in the Sarasota County jail, and Jim and I bailed him out the next day.  He had gotten obstreperous at his girfriend's house, she called the police, and Doug refused to cooperate with the responding police, who arrested him.  The story of his life.  

5/13/2026

 Wednesday, May 13, 2026

1958, French settlers rioted against the French army in Algeria

1958 The motorcade carrying Vice President Richard Nixon was attacked in Caracas, Venezuela; several of Nixon's staff were injured

1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by a Turkish gunman  in St Peter's Square

In bed at 9 and up just before 5; 124/77/59 121 203.8; 46/35/55/45, cloudy and windy (again) day ahead.    

Morning meds at a.m, half dose of Bisoprolol at 6:15 a.m., bitching to myself about the difficulty of splitting those tiny 5 mg. tablets. Mumble grumble.

2 years ago today:

Polymyalgia rheumatica

    HOPE

Rafal Ryzka, M.D.

Froedert/MCOW/ZABLOCKI

Jagiellonian University, M.D., 1999

May 13, 2024 marked the day my polymyalgia rheumatica self-diagnosis was confirmed by Dr. Ryzka, I received a prescription and supply of prednisone that evenually provided relief from the severe and disabling pain I had been experiencing since the end of December, 2023.  It also marked the first day of resuming my daily journal since the preceding April 26th.

Today, I opened the blinds on the window next to my recliner to see a male red=breasted grosbeak and what appeared to be a young white-breasted nuthatch on our feeders.  Life is good.  I'm enjoying watching a lot of activity at and under the feeders after sun-up.  I see a beautiful red-breasted nuthatch first pleasure himself with a seed from the suet cake and then immediately snatch some nesting material from the cotton ball just above it, and fly away home.

I started the morning reading My Friends, and being astounded and emotionally moved by Fredrik Backman's writing, thinking again I should be and have been taking notes, wondering whether I should read it again with pen and notebook at hand.  Passages like "Death has good taste.  It always takes the best first" (or something near that) reminding me of my mother's death at 51, and David Branch, Kitty's dying before me, Christine dying before Jimmy, Dougie, and me.  What a writer, what a writing!  I'll lay off writing my thoughts about it to Caren for fear that I'll become (and maybe already am) a pest in her life already quite full with her children, grandchildren, husband, and a zillion friends.  She and LOA seem like my last ones, the only ones who will make contact just 'to see how you're doing' and make arrangements to share a meal.  Of course, it's my own fault.  Like Ted in the novel, having been afraid to take responsibility for living a full life.

Dear Lord, protect us from your followers!😱  In this morning's Washington Post, White House aims to link U.S. history and Christianity in 9-hour prayer festival, by Michelle Boorstein, Laura Meckler and Natalie Allison:

The Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday that organizers say will reflect the country’s Christian origins and, they hope, spark “a movement of renewal” in America.

“Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” is partly funded by millions in public dollars earmarked for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration, organizers said. It will feature mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, many of whom have embraced the message that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian. . . . . 

While U.S. presidents through history have typically marked major commemorations with generic prayers of thanks to God, scholars of American religious history say the national jubilee is unprecedented in the modern era.

They say that’s because of its scope — nine hours and dozens of Christian speakers, including top U.S. officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) — and its focus on American identity as aligned with a specific slice of conservative Protestantism. 

 

Words of wisdom from Tom Friedman in this morning's NYTimes:

Dear NATO Members: I get it. You despise President Trump for all the right reasons. He has walked away from Ukraine. He has threatened to seize Greenland and annex Canada. He has coddled Vladimir Putin. He is eroding America’s democratic institutions and norms. He insulted each of you so much that the German chancellor recently barked back that Trump’s America was being “humiliated” by Iran. I get it.

Now get over it.

Get all your navies together and proceed to the Persian Gulf immediately to join the American armada to make clear that Iran will never, ever be allowed to decide who shall pass and who shall not through the Strait of Hormuz. And, if it insists on trying to do so, it won’t just be taking on the United States and Israel, it will be taking on the entire Western alliance.

For you to sit on the sidelines and let Iran’s malign regime, with its poisonous ideology, take hostage the Strait of Hormuz — as well as the modernizing Arab Gulf states lining it — would keep the world’s most critical oil lifeline in a state of permanent instability. This is not a small matter for Europe, which is highly dependent on gas from the Gulf to heat and power its economies, unless it wants to return to dependency on Russia.

I know this is a big ask, and it would be a lot easier if either Trump or the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would ever summon the integrity to apologize for launching this war without NATO consultation, without any strategy for the morning after if things did not go as planned and without even a fig’s leaf of international legitimation from the United Nations.

Alas, these two reckless egomaniacs, who are nowhere near as smart as they think they are, have now boxed themselves in. Unfortunately, we are all in the box with them.

. . . 

Trump and Bibi have done nothing to earn such high-minded NATO support even though the future of Hormuz so directly impacts every member of the alliance. This leads to my sad conclusion: Our NATO allies will almost surely reject this appeal.

The necessary may now be impossible. Trump has so regularly denigrated NATO, undermining the alliance’s deterrence against Russia, launched the Iran war without an iota of consultation and been utterly indifferent to the devastating inflationary impacts and energy shortages the war has inflicted on NATO members that the people in these countries may simply not allow their leaders to help us.

That is especially likely at a time when Trump sounds more and more unhinged every day. Who wants to stand with him, other than the sycophants in his cabinet and party 

. . . 

So, I end where I began. I understand why our NATO allies want to watch Trump and Netanyahu reap what they sowed. But these two awful leaders have sowed the wind — and we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger. 

Text to SCC:

I think I’m a day early, but would you wish Christian a Happy Birthday from me.  I hope you’re all doing well.  We’re emerging from a rough Spring (cold, rain, wind) into something resembling Summer.  I can’t remember whether I’ve already told you I have some heart surgery coming up on June 15th, a catheter ablation for some ventricular tachycardia.  I’m a bit anxious about it, though I understand it’s quite safe, even for an old timer.  My doctor/surgeon is s Sikh and I’m wondering how he deals with his turban in the OR.  I’m told he is very competent (on the staff at Froederdt and faculty at MCOW), but not exactly Dr. Warmth. I hope all is well with my Geretsried family.❤️ 

I later remembered that I did tell Sarah about the catheter ablation, when we corresponded about her visit in June. 

 I see Dr. Cheng in the PM&R Clinic this afternoon.  Plus ça change, . . .  I saw him a year ago tomorrow too, and wrote this in this journal:

Visit to PM&R Clinic, where I saw Dr. Cheng, one of my favorite docs.  Nothing came of the visit except for a prescription for menthol patches for my shoulders, some exercises to try with resistance bands, and an examination of my shoulder, but it was nice seeing him.  On the way in from the parking lot, I chatted with an old Marine who served at NAS Atsugi during the Korean Era.  We shared as many experiences as we could in the distance between the garage and the hospital check-in booths.  On the way up the elevator to PM&R, I chatted a bit with another vet and with yet another in the PM&R waiting room.  As is often the case, I felt better leaving the VA than I did going in, though, as Jane Kenyon wrote, 'someday it will be otherwise.'  By the time I left, the outpatient clinics were largely shut down; there was no one to schmooze with.

Today, I'll inquire about the recurrent pain under my right rib cage which is particularly nasty today, and hope for some more brief but good encounters at the VA. . . . .  As it turned out I had no conversations at the VA today, other than a very pleasant one with Dr. Cheng, whom I like very much.  I did hear from one stranger who noticed my 1st Marine Air Wing baseball cap, and gave me the fraternal greeting, "Semper Fi, Marine!"  The younger ones more usually say, "Semper Fi, ooh rah!", which this old Corps Marine never heard during his years as a Jarhead.  . . . .  Dr. Cheng ordered a CT scan of my spine to see if it looks like I have arthritis in my thoracic spine to account for my recurrent pain.

Geri did the kitchen clean-up for me tonight.  She could see I was in bad shape because of my back, which I was.  I was in bed by 9, hoping for relief.

 

 

 

5/12/2026

 Tuesday, May 12, 2026

2024 I was out of commission from the pain and immobility from polymyalgia rheumatica which would finally be diagnosed by Dr. Ryzka the next day.

2025 I was out of sorts this day.  I woke up with my right eye sore and puffy.  I entered a lot of text this morning, but managed to erase most of it by failing to update.  I was waiting to leave for Urgent Care appointments at the Eye Clinic to check on the cataract replacement and with the Gold Clinic for possible cellulitis on my left leg.

2025 The first group of Afrikaners arrived in the United States after Donald Trump granted refugee status to the white minority group, who Trump said faced a "genocide" in the South African farm attacks. The government of South Africa rejected the claims. 

In bed at 9, awake at 3:30, up at 4; 0415 109/66/56 120 205.6 - 0430 120/69/59; 40/69/35.; cloudy, windy afternoon, again.

Morning meds at 7:20 a.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at 5:15 a.m.   

Looking south from our driveway, down Wakefield Court.  A photo can never capture the great beauty of the trees throughout the neighborhood, in all directions.  In the past couple of years, we have lost two aged Spruce trees, a mature service berry tree, a tree of unknown species in the back yard, and sustained damage to other trees.  We also see Hoppe and other tree service companies' truck in the neighborhood.

Text to CBG: 

Was it because you have known me for so many years, or because of our conversation yesterday morning about DNR instructions, old age choices, and Zeke Emanuel’s article in the Atlantic?  I’m wondering how it was that you knew so well two books that fit so perfectly with where I am in life now, as I would guess was clear from the excerpt from my journal/blog that I burdened you with last night.  I’ve gotten far enough into “My Friends” that the artist C. Jat has died, leaving his friend Ted forlorn.  I’m reading it, and partially listening to it, on Kindle and on almost every page there is some phrase or passage that makes me think “I should make a note of that”, and wondering whether there may be an internet site of notable quotes of Fredrik Backman.  (And it turns out there are many.)  I love his writing.  I love his characters.  I love his understanding of life’s complexities and its simplicities, and the same of death.  I love too his appreciation of the importance of friendship in life and I am most appreciative of yours.  Thanks again.

I’m thrilled you’re enjoying it — I thought you would appreciate the story, his language and his working to make sense of this life as we all work our way through. I too am most appreciative of you and of our friendship. 

Reading My Friends by Fredrik Backman.  Is it 'normal' that so much of what I read lately 'resonates' with me personally, which is to say that it's not just a story, but rather something that reminds me so much of myself or others close to me?  Yesterday, reading "And in the morning the way home gets longer and longer", and I was reminded of all thre principal characters: the grandpa, the son, and the grandson.  In My Frends, the character of the artist as a boy reminds me so vividly of myself as a kid, with a father who didn't love me, who led me to wonder whether I was really his son (just as my sister wondered whether she was really his daughter.)  The character of Joar, the artist's dear friend coverered in bruises from beatings from his father, reminded me so much of Jim R., my brother-in-law who is moved from one foster home to another throughout his childhood until he joined the Army to finally find a home of sorts, and then marrying my sister who provided him with a real home for the rest of his adult life..  In Theo of Golden, I identified of course with the bookshop owner, a Vietnam veteran.   

Christian parables and Jewish humor.  Last year on this date, I cited a passage from the Gospel of Luke 18: 9-14:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:  “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

It reminds me of a favorite and classic bit of Jewish humor: 

 On Yom Kippur, the rabbi stops in the middle of the service, prostrates himself beside the bema, and cries out, "Oh, God. Before You, I am nothing!"  Saul Rosenberg, president of the temple is so moved by this demonstration of piety that he immediately throws himself to the floor beside the rabbi and cries, "Oh, God!  Before you, I am nothing!"

Then Moishe Pipuk, a tailor, jumps from his seat, prostrates himself in the aisle and cries, "Oh God! Before You, I am nothing!"

Rosenberg nudges the rabbi and whispers, "So look who thinks he's nothing."

I love the joke in part because it's such a fine example of one of the hallmarks of Jewish humor, i.e., its self-deprecating. 

5/11/2026

 Monday, May 11, 2026

1949 By a vote of 37-12, Israel became the UN's 59th member

1955 Israel attacked Gaza

1963 Racial bomb attacks in Birmingham, Alabama

1965 Ellis Island was added to the Statue of Liberty National Monument

1968 Students & police battled in Paris, 100s injured

1973 Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg had the charges for his involvement in releasing the "Pentagon Papers" to The New York Times dismissed

1989 US President George H. W. Bush ordered 1,900 additional troops to Panama, which we had invaded in 1989

2022 The first-ever US government report into Indian boarding school deaths was released (not complete), documents more than 500 deaths across 400 schools and 50 gravesites over 150 years 

2025 Five people were killed and dozens injured including three critically, and hundreds are displaced in a fire at a four-story apartment building in Milwaukee

In bed at 9, up at 3:50, 2 low glucose alarms: 0410 124/73/59 105 204.0; 39/31/48/39, Brrrr! Sunny and cold.

Morning meds at a.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at 6 a.m.  

Glucose behving wildly yesterday and last night.  Multiple low glucose warnings, rapid dips in glucose readings.  Bad sensor or something somatic???

Breakfast with CBG at Maxfield's from 9: 25 till 11:10. Much conversation about families, life, books, friends, old age, upcoming surgery, and other stuff.  A blessing.

I read "And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer" by Fredrik Backman, recommended by CBG.  Very enjoyable, touching.

x

5/10/2026

 Sunday, May 10, 2026

1960 John F. Kennedy won presidential primary in West Virginia

1968 Vietnam peace talks began in Paris between the US and North Vietnam

1969 US troops began the attack on Hill 937 ("Hamburger Hill"), Vietnam

1976 Paul Harvey's daily syndicated program "The Rest of the Story" premiered on the ABC Radio Networks, continuing until his death in 2009

2012 Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree of canonization of the Benedictine nun and composer Hildegard von Bingen, completing the sainthood process started in 1228

2017 President Donald Trump shared classified information about ISIS plot with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Offic

In bed at 9, awakened at 1:40 by Low Glucose Alarm, moved to LZB at 3:25, did weigh-in at 3:40, and moved to Tv room by 4.  Several consecutive low glucose warnings yesterday afternoon/evening.0350112/54/32 133 205.0; 39/57/37, sunny morning, cloudy afternoon.   

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m., half dose of Bisoprolol at7:10 a.m.   

I've started reading The Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistence (2021) by Noam Chomsky and Marv Waterstone.  They posit that there are two forms of government: hegemony and coercion.  Hegemony is government by and with the consent of the governed and coercion of course is the opposite.  They acknowledge that this is actually a continuum and that even hegemonic governments have aspects of coerciveness in some circumstances.  They argue that governments that claim to be hegemonic must claim that the governors act on behalf of and for the benefit of the governed.  This is the source of their hegemonic legitimacy and it requires that the governed believe that the governors act on behalf of the whole.  It's clear that they will make the case that America's capitalist government does not act on behalf of us governed, but rather on behalf of the interests of capitalists, corporations, banks, and financial institutions of many sorts, all representing what I call Big Money, accumulated capital.  I come to the book already believing this and I don't know whether I will get through the almost 400 pages of the book.  I know that I live and learn in a silo, like perhaps all of us, and my silo is philosophically anarchistic, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, deeply distrustful of Power and the powerful, and of claims of Authority.  I don't believe that the American government acts on behalf of and for the benefit of all Americans.  I don't believe that it derives its authority from the consent of the governed.  I don't believe that it is very "democratic." I don't believe that 'all men are created equal,' nor that 'they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.'  I believe those notions are what we used to call in Vietnam "happy horseshit," propaganda issued by the powerful in Washington and Saigon to persuade, to cajole, to inveigle or mollify the powerless to do what is necessary for the purposes of the powerful.  I believe that, as Thucydides wrote in his history of the Peloponnesian War, "The powerful do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must."  I believe, alas, that the miscreant Stephen Miller was correct when he said "We live in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, and that is governed by power.  These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."  One may argue with Thucydides and with Stephen Miller, but it seems to me that they have all of human history on their side.  Did Thomas Jefferson have anyone or any evidence on his side in arguing that 'all men are created equal' or that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed?  Wasn't that just a pipe dream until the rebels (who constituted probably a minority of the colonists) defeated the Brits and their allies militarily?  That is to say, until they killed them and otherwise sufficiently hurt them to persaude them to go away? to give up?  Wasn't the Revolutinary War just another contest of strength, force , power against competing strength, force, power?  One review of the book that I read describe this book as "a horror story to read" about our country, but that's only because the truth hurts.  

The cartoon is one I drew of myself, on a piece of cardboard, with my signature beret, in 2021, wide-eyed, fearful, and chagrinned over the world we were living in then, signified by the name of Samuel Alito because of all that he portended, and Vladimir Putin (ditto), and references to climate, atomic weaponry,  abortion by coathanger, election corruption, the MAGA movement, and the coup/insurrection on January 6th of that year.  Little did I suspect, though, at that time, that the American public would re-elect Trump, voting in 2024 in even greater numbers than his 2016 numbers, to put him back in power and lead to the nightmare we are living through now and will suffer from for many years.