8/4/2026

 Tuesday, August 4, 2026

1919 Rodin Museum opened in Paris 

1925 US Marines left Nicaragua after a 13-year occupation

2016 Sarah Catherine Clausen married Christian Kovacs in Geretsried, Germany

2025 At least 74 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes, including ten seeking aid, and another five Palestinians died of starvation. (Reuters)

In bed at 9:30,up at 5:10; 0525 202.8 120/73/67 122; 68/83/64, sunny

Morning meds at a.m., Eliquis at 6:20 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.

I started Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee yesterday after finishing Everything Happens For A Reason.  The book consists of story after story about White men screwing Indians, something I had some knowledge of from general reading over a lifetime.  I had hoped the book would have more of a narrative sweep to it, but it appears to be chapter after chapter of variations on the same theme, i.e., how, driven by greed for land or gold or power, Americans from European backgrounds stole land and all its resources from, as it is put in the Declaration of Independence, "merciless Indian savages."  It is hard reading, not because of difficulties with the author's style, diction, or syntax, but of the repeated wrongdoings it (probably) pretty accurately portrays.  I suspect most of us today have some sensitivity to the idea of White Privilege in America and White Racism, so reading about how it was exercised by our predecessors and our government to destroy or at least dominate racial minorities, especially the red men and Blacks who got in the way of White mastery, is painful.  I stopped reading   A few years ago, I stopped reading Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson because it has the same challenge as Bury My Heart, story after story of racial injustice perpetrated by Whites in the pursuit of wealth and social and political and economic dominance.  Both books are valuable compendiums of evidence of America's racial sins and crimes, valuable as research resources, and well worth reading, but in bits and snatches rather than cover to cover, which is just emotionally exhausting. They remind us always of why Adolph Hitler looked principally to American history for inspiration on how to build a society dominated by a Master Race.  The early chapters of Bury My Heart, addressing the rounding up and incarcerating the Navahos at Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico and the war of Chief Little Crow in Minnesota,  remind me of  Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.  A settler class (White Americans) wants the land on which another people (Native Americans or Indians) have lived for generations, forces them onto other lands, and the other people fight back, resist dispossession, and fight back against occupation.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Hitler had America as a model for dealing with Untermenschen, so did the early Zionists and later settlers in territories occupied in 1967, but it all goes back to Thucydides's wisdom as he wrote about the Peloponnesian Wars: The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.  And homo hominis lupus.

After writing the above, I decided to move on, temporarily, from Bury My Heart to John Steinbeck's East of Eden, which I have never read.  There, in the introductory pages, I found this:

The history [of the Salinas Valley] was like that of the rest of the state..  First there were Indians, an inferior breed without energy, inventiveness, or culture, a people that lived on grubs and grasshoppers and shellfish, too lazy to hunt or fish.  They ate what they could pick up and planted nothing.  They pounded bitter acorns for flour.  Even their warfare was a weary pantomime.

and

When people first came to the West, particularly from the owned  and fought-over farmlets of Europe, and saw so much land to  be had for the signing of a paper and the building of a founda- tion, an itching land-greed seemed to come over them. They wanted more and more land — good land if-possible but land anyway.  Perhaps they had filaments of memory of feudal Europwhere great families became and remamed great because they, owned things. The early settlers took up land they didn’t need and couldn’t use; they took up worthless land just to own it.   And all proportions changed. A man who might have been well-to-do on ten acres in Europe was rat-poor on two thousand in California. , . 

Illuminating lines. 

There's an article in the current edition of the online Atlantic Magazine titled "The Catholic Church's New Schism," by Paul Parales.  It's about the recent excommunication of all members of the Society of Saint Pius X, a//k/a SSPX.  SSPX is a group of Catholics who broadly reject the teachings of the ecumenical church council that met between 1962 and 1965 and is generally known as "Vatican II."  These dissidents are mostly known for their rejection of the new Mass liturgy, especially the use of vernacular language rather than the traditional Latin,  the priest facing the congregation rather than the altar, and the call-and-response interaction between the priest and the congregation.  Their disagreements with much broader and deeper, however, including the Council's teaching that salvation is possible outside the Church 😱, and the promotion of religious freedom, and interfaith dialogue and collaboration.  The SSPXers believe extra ecclesiam nulla salus, no salvation outside the Church, and that all other religions are false religions and the creation of the Devil.  These guys take me back to my childhood and youth in Chicago's Irish Catholic Church in the 1940s and 1950, though really they would like to go all the way back to the world in the days before the Protestant Revolution, to the days of the Papal States.  From my memoir, the chapter titled "Raised in the Bosom of the Church":

As volatile as things could be at home, there was no visible volatility in the Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, especially the Irish American version that ruled in Chicago and in St. Leo Parish.  The Church taught us that it was infallible, immutable, incorruptible and, in its view, specially commissioned by God Himself to lead us little children to Jesus.

In English feudalism after the Norman Conquest, all land was considered ultimately owned by the King.  The king distributed the land to vassals who promised always to render him loyalty, often to pay him money and other things of value, and usually to provide troops to him for his wars.  The top vassals, barons and earls, subdivided their tenures to subvassals who made similar promises of loyalty, rents, military service, or other ‘incidents of tenure’ in return for protection of their tenures by their immediate overlord.  From the king to the barons though layers of ‘subinfeudation’ down to the lowest freeholder there existed a system of reciprocal rights and duties between lords and vassals.

This kind of system is still in play in the Catholic Church.  The Pope has the role of King or more aptly Emperor, the ultimate owner of the Church’s dominions and principalities (in trust for God, of course.)  He has his imperial court or curia.  He divides the imperium into geographical and jurisdictional dioceses (much as the Late Roman Empire was divided into dioceses) in which the usual vassal is the local ‘ordinary’ or bishop, who owes fealty, obedience and a share of his revenues from the diocesan holdings to the Pope in return for the Pope’s loyalty and protection (witness the Pope’s cushy treatment of Bernard Cardinal Law after his resignation in disgrace from the Boston archdiocese.)  The diocese in turn is subdivided geographically and jurisdictionally into parishes controlled by pastors who owe fealty, obedience and a share of the revenues from their parochial holding to the bishop in return for the bishop’s loyalty and protection (witness, as but one example, the bishops’ disgraceful protection of criminal priests in America, Ireland, Austria, and elsewhere.)  It is all very feudal, based on personal power and loyalty relationships between lords and vassals.  It is not mere tradition that causes the bishops to kneel before the Pope and kiss his ring or that calls for new priests and deacons to lie prostrate before their bishop during the Litany of Saints in the ordination liturgy in which they vow obedience to him, or that has the Pope addressed as “Your Holiness.” cardinals as “Your Eminence,” archbishops as “Your Grace,” and bishops as “My Lord.”  These practices and many more have their roots in the imperial courts of the Roman Empire and in European feudalism.  The Church’s feudal power structure was very much in force in the Chicago in which the Clausen children grew up.  Our parish priests were accountable to our pastor, our pastor was accountable only to the archbishop who was accountable only to the Vatican.

How the Church operated internally, e.g., how it handled its finances and its personnel, was kept secret from the “laity,” a term whose only meaning is negative: those who are not priests.  How much money did the parishes provide to the archdiocese?  How much did the archdiocese provide to Rome?  How were bishops selected?  How were pastors and curates selected?  How were priests with alcohol or worse problems handled?  These were not matters for the ‘laity,’ but rather for ‘the Church,’ i.e., the priestly caste.  The Church was the clergy; the role of the laity was to pray, pay and obey.  As Pope Pius X wrote in his 1906 encyclical  Vehementer Nos: 

It follows that the church is by essence an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.  So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end  of the society and directing all its members toward that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.

I mentioned earlier that the Church was the greatest influence on Kitty and me other than our family.  It would be hard to overstate the centrality of the Church in our lives in the post-war, pre-Vatican II era.   Mondays through Fridays we were in the care of the Sisters of Providence, with prayers and religion classes every day of the school week. Every piece of school paper we turned in had “JMJ” (Jesus, Mary and Joseph) and a “+” on the top of the page.  Friday afternoons during Lent and Advent were for Stations of the Cross and Benediction. Saturday was Confession day.  Sunday of course was Mass.  Baptisms, First Holy Communions, Confirmations, marriages and funerals were all occasions for churchgoing and family gatherings.  There were four ‘daily masses’ Monday through Saturday mornings, 6:30, 7:15, 8:00, and 8:45, and those of us of the male persuasion (girls weren’t allowed and still aren’t in many parish venues) who were able to learn the Latin (Ad Deum mumble mumble . . .) served as altar boys at these masses for three years, 6th, 7th and 8th grades.  On weeknights there were various “Devotions” during the year: benedictions, novenas, 40 hours adoration, stations of the cross and so on.  There were weekend retreats for men and separate ones for women.  Women who had given birth were “churched” after weekday morning masses.  Marian devotions were huge: devotions to Our Lady of Fatima and to Our Lady of Lourdes and to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, devotions relating to the Miraculous Medal, the May Crowning of the main statue of Our Lady, and of course rosary beads were prayed by everyone.  During Lent and Advent we fasted and abstained as directed by the Church.  Throughout the year, we abstained from meat on Fridays, forming fish fry and macaroni and cheese habits that for many of my generation have lasted a lifetime.  On top of all the liturgies and devotions, there were also many social groups organized around the parish: the Holy Name Society for men only, Altar and Rosary Society for women only, the Happy Death Society, the Men’s Sodality, the Women’s Sodality, St. Vincent de Paul Society and so on.  Finally, there were parish bowling leagues, basketball and softball leagues, the Catholic Youth Organization boxing and other sports tournaments and weekly bingo games. 

Dayenu.  As if the liturgies and devotionals and social organizations were not enough to set us apart and to ensure the centrality of the Church in our lives, there was also the shunning of people and things beyond the control of the Church.  Going to a wedding or a funeral in a non-Catholic church or synagogue was forbidden.  (Attending a regular worship service of course was unthinkable, tantamount to apostasy.)    Attending public schools rather than Catholic schools was forbidden if there was a Catholic school available and in Chicago there was always a Catholic school available (if you weren’t African-American.)  Socializing with non-Catholics was discouraged.  Marrying ‘outside the Faith’ was strongly discouraged, with both the Catholic and the non-Catholic who failed to convert made to jump through hoops to ensure that any children would be baptized and raised Catholic.  Dating non-Catholics?  An occasion of sin.  There were plenty of good Catholic girls at Mercy High School and Mother MacCauley taught by the Sisters of Mercy, at Visitation taught by the Sinsinawa Dominicans, and at the many other Catholic girls’ schools.  We met the Catholic girls through common Catholic friends, or because we went to Catholic elementary school together, or at Catholic socials, like the weekly chaperoned ‘sock hops’ at St. Sabina parish just west of St. Leo parish.  When we met another Catholic, we identified ourselves by parish, not by neighborhood.  It was no accident that my first three girlfriends, Shirley Jankowski, Maureen Boyle, and Charlene Wegge (rhymes with “Peggy,”) were all Catholic.  We shared a common culture: Chicago Catholic.

With almost a million and a half Catholics living in Chicago, organized into largely self-contained parishes under the control of the Cardinal Archbishop, it was pretty easy for Catholic children to grow up in a very Catholic environment, not quite sociologically and psychologically ghettoized, but approaching it.  I didn’t have a good friend who was not Catholic until I was 16 or 17 years old when I became friends with Dave Sinclair, a Protestant who lived down the block from us.   We both worked as stockboys at a food and liquor store on the corner of 74th and Halsted owned by Wally Halperin, the first Jew I ever met.  The store was kitty-corner from ‘the Greeks,’ where my mother started her waitressing career.  Dave Sinclair was an altogether good guy who attended our neighborhood public high school, Calumet. I saw no reason why he shouldn’t be eligible for Heaven notwithstanding his non-membership in the One True Religion and Church.  Wally, on the other hand, though very good to Dave and to me, clearly wasn’t saved because he stashed ‘girlie magazines’ in the stockroom at the back of the store, which of course Dave and I peeked at.  More mortal sins for me, but no effect for Dave since he wasn’t Heaven-bound to begin with.

Until my exposure to Wally and Dave at the liquor store, my world was thoroughly Catholic: Catholic church, Catholic elementary school, Catholic high school, Catholic friends, Catholic (in a manner of speaking) family members.  The ‘best’ hospitals were the Catholic hospitals, like Little Company of Mary.  The ‘best’ old age homes were the Catholic old age homes, like the Little Sisters of the Poor.  The only movies we could attend were those that passed muster with the Catholic Legion of Decency, whose movie ratings were published every week in the archdiocese’s Catholic newspaper, The New World.  When television arrived on the scene, the programs, unlike post-war movies, were family-oriented and non-threatening (Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Howdie Doodie, I Remember Mama, etc.), but on Tuesday nights we all watched Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s network program Life is Worth Living, even though it ran opposite The Milton Berle Show.  Sheen was an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of New York, under the powerful Cardinal Spellman.  It speaks to the size and influence of the American Church in the 1950’s that the first national televangelist was a foppish  Catholic hierarch and not a Jimmy Swaggert or Pat Robertson or even Billy Graham.

I have scratched the surface of some of the besetting sins of the Church I knew as a child and a youth: clericalism, legalism, authoritarianism, sexism coupled with a morbid sexual obsessiveness,  racism,  secrecy and superstition.  It was an institution marked by pride and arrogance and an addiction to power and control.  St. Paul admonished the Colossian Christian community “as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”  These virtues were for the sheep, Pius X’s ‘docile flock,’ not for the shepherds.  The besetting sins of the Church existed long before the mid-20th century and well beyond the archdiocese of Chicago.  Some of them pre-dated but became fixed by the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 and they were still around at and after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.  

And so it was. 

 

 

8/3/2026

 Monday, August 3, 2026

1492 Christopher Columbus set sail on his first voyage with three ships: Santa María, Pinta, and Niña from Palos de la Frontera, Spain, for the "Indies"

1882 Congress passed the first law restricting immigration

1934 Adolf Hitler merged the offices of German Chancellor and President, declaring himself "Führer" (leader)

1940 My mother and father married at St. Bernard's church in Englewood on the south side of Chicago

1943 General George S. Patton slapped a US GI in a hospital, accusing him of cowardice

1967 45,000 more US soldiers were ordered to Vietnam

1981 13,000 air traffic controllers (PATCO) began their strike; US President Ronald Reagan stated during a press conference, "If they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated."

1940 My mother and father wed at St. Bernard's Church at 66th and Stewart in Englewood.

2023 Trump pleaded not guilty to subverting the 2020 election

2025 Israeli forces kill at least 33 Palestinians seeking food and six other Palestinians die of hunger. (AP) (Reuters)

In bed at 9(?), up at 5:55; 0610 202.0  127/78/63 114; 61/77/60, sunny.    

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Eliquis at 6:30 a.m. and p.m.

Everything Happens For A Reason.  One of Bowler's major themes in her memoir is the unfairness of life and how difficult that is to square with the belief in a Loving, Just, and Benevolent God.  In her case, she rued the unfairness of her stage 4 cancer in her mid-30s, with a toddler son, and still beginning her career at Duke's Divinity School.  In my case, it's the opposite: wondering why my Dad and I have lived into our mid-80s when my saintly mother died at 51, and my saintly sister died at 77.  Why did David Branch die at 53?  The list, of course, is endless, not for me especially, but for the whole world.  During a press conference in 1962, John F. Kennedy famously said: "There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country. It's very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair."  Why were Reneé Good and Alex Pretti shot to death by ICE agents this year in Minneapolis?  

 Here is a favorite passage in the memoir:

Most everyone I meet is dying to make me certain.  They want me to know, without a doubt, that there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos.  Even when I was still in the hospital, a neighbor came to the door and told my husband that everything happens for a reason.

"I'd love to hear it," he replied.

"Pardon?" she said, startled.

"The reason my wife is dying," he said . . . effectievly ending the conversation as the neighbor stammered something and handed him a casserole.

. . . 

What if everything is random?  A woman who has left the faith for science writes: "I find it comforting to believe the universe is random, because then the God I believe in is no longer cruel." 

This reminded me of course of a kitchen table conversation among Geri, her cousin Sue Clark and husband Tom, and me in thier home in Arlington Heights, IL, many hears ago in which I argued, like the woman referred to immediately above but more surrilously, that it's much easier to think of god as "a mean prick" than as a loving, all powerful Father and that was how I moved towards atheism, i.e., to take God off the hook for creating a "vale of tears."  There was nothing clever or intellectual in my thinking, just one old soul struggling with the contradictions within so much religious thought in which God plays a role like that of King George III in Hamilton, who sang:

 You'll be back like before

I will fight the fight and win the war

For your love, for your praise

And I'll love you 'til my dying days

When you're gone, I'll go mad

So don't throw away this thing we had

'Cause when push comes to shove

I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love

Da-da-da, dat-da, dat, da-da-da, da-ya-da

Da-da, dat, dat, da-ya-da

Da-da-da, dat-da, dat, da-da-da, da-ya-da

Da-da dat, da-ya-da

When push comes to shove, I'll send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love... I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.  It's like George Orwell's "Doublethink" in 1984, in which the three Party slogans are War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.  The Party's purpose is to get the ruled, the governed, the enslaved, to simultaneously hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time, considering both as True.  Aren't the priests and theologians doing this kind of thing with their attempts to not hold God responsible for the mess He created?  We owe him eternal gratitude for all the Good Stuff, but He's not responsible for any of the Bad Shit.  I think back to the last lunch I had with my long-lost friend Vicki Conte when she wisely told me, "It's a heart thing, Chuck, not a head thing."  I knew then and know now there was a lot of wisdom packed into that short sentence, but I have a devilish time getting past the "head thing."

Email exchange with LOA

On Sunday, August 2, 2026 at 08:06:14 PM CDT, Lawrence Anderson wrote:

    Spent the weekend (Fri-Sun) with my buds from the USA’s office in Milwaukee. Jeff Hirschberg, Tom Brown, etc. They told me to say hello to you when I see you. Hirschberg is still full of himself and lives in DC. Joe Stadtmueller, Charlie Clevert, Steve Kravit, Bill Callahan, and John Nelson were there. Leah Lampone and Jim Fergal couldn’t make it. We were all Bill Mulligan hires. All were young with new wives/families and starting our careers in the best job we would ever have. The stories just kept coming. We all met at Brown’s gorgeous home on a lake near Waupaca.

    We last did this about 2 years ago at Tom’s place, and the death of Dave Bukey this year prompted Tom to host another one. A magical weekend. Rode the 2000 Triumph Legend TT from Fish Creek to the gathering, about 150 miles. Didn’t want to leave Jan w/o the rental car for 3 Days. The ride went ok but emphasized that my days of riding that far are coming to an end.  See ya next week.    s/

Charles Clausen.  Mon, Aug 3 at 8:03 AM

What a great weekend!  What a great group! Bill Mulligan and I were on the faculty together at MULS, but we were both like fish outta water.  Same with Tom Cannon.  I remember Joe from when he was in private practice with another guy who graduated a year ahead of us at MULS and whose name I can't pull up right now (a recurring event). Bill Callahan and Leah were students of mine way back when.  D. Jeffrey was our classmate, right?  And I practiced with him at Friebert & Finerty for a while. He was full of himself back then too.  Not what you'd call a legal scholar but good with juries.  A great bullshitter.  Good for Tom Brown that he has a great place on a lake; he deserves it.  A great guy.  You stir mixed feelings with your statement about riding the Triumph.  Driving my old Volvo isn't nearly as exciting as you riding your bikes, but taking long rides in beautiful Wisconsin countryside north of Milwaukee is one of my few remaining thrills.  I used to do it with my Dad when he was living with us, but now no one's interested in joining me on these drives that give me so much pleasure, so I go alone, always missing my Dad's company.  We're looking forward to seeing you and Jan. Stay safe and healthy. s/f

My FB post today:

It was 85 years ago that my mother and father wed.  She was 18; he was still 19, each of them still a virgin.  They were in love, full of hormones, and wanting to live and sleep together, and, as practicing Catholics, they had to be married to do that.  I was born one year and three weeks later.  What was to become the Second World War was already raging in Europe and Asia, but America wouldn't become a combatant participant until 4 months later, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war on Japan, and Hitler declared war on the U.S.  My Dad was drafted into the Marines in February 1944, when I was 2 and 1/2 and my Mom was 3 months pregnant with my sister Kitty.  The government released him in November 1945, wrecked by the war.  My Mom, my sister, and I lived with the effects of the war on him and the effects of him on us for the rest of our lives.   I think of the four of us now, and of the few years we all lived together, with love and sadness, and with some sense of reverence.  I am the sole survivor, left with memories, photos, thoughts and emotions, and not a few regrets, some of which haunt me.  Mostly today I am grateful, especially to and for my mother and sister for all the love they gave me throughout their lives, but also to and for my Dad, who struggled to love even himself, probably especially himself, after his 27 days on Iwo Jima in 1945.

The priest who officiated their wedding was Father William Cousins, later to become Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1958 to 1977.  Throughout his life, he was admired and loved.  Milwaukee's diocesan center was named after him.  After his retirement, it became known that, while archbishop, he had participated in the cover-up of some clerical sex abuse cases.  In 2019, Milwaukee's Archbishop Listecki had Cousins' name removed from all Milwaukee buildings and institutions.  I think of my Mom and Dad and then-Father Cousins on August 3, 1940, what the world looked like to them then, and what lay in store for them.  There is a point to be made about that now, but I'm not sure what it is.

Another favorite passage in Kate Bowler's Everything Happens For A Reason . . .:

. . . I have always loudly proclaimed that Catholics, of all God's children, are wonderful at being sad.  I have seen the mourning of Lent a million times, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday: The sad kiss of an overturned cross at the fronnt of a chapel, scraping their knees on the floor as they ignore the stares of strangers and friends.  The shuffle past the inscriptions around the church marking the Stations of the Cross.  When the priest dips his thumb in the black ash of burnt palm leaves, marking foreheads with the sign of the cross, he whispers the last part of Genesis 3:19: Pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.  From dust you came, and to dust you will return.  It is so grim. There is no denying our finitude.  It is plain and hard and true.

This reminds me of the long Easter weekend in 1998 I spent alone in Paris, moving from one ancient church to another, from one service to another, among thousands of Parisians and others, from Holy Thursday to Easter Monday.  The cathedral of Notre Dame (before the fire), St. Germain des Pres in the 6th Arondissement, St. Germain l'Auxerrois behind the Louvre,, St. Sulpice near the Luxembourg Gardens, St. Roch, St. Thomas d'Aquin, St. Eustache, near Les Halles,  the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal where the BVM is said to have appeared to Sr. Anne Labouré whose preserved body is on display at a side altar, St. Gervais-St. Potais, St. Severin in the Latin Quarter near the University of Paris, La Madeleine, where Gabriel Fauré had been music director and where his magnificent Requiem in D premiered in 1888, and (hard to believe!) others.  I filled 88 pages of notes in a pocket notebook on this trip, where I saw so many memorable sites and sights.  I'm thankful that I've been a scribbler of notes, even back then, preserving memories that would otherwise be lost forever.  This journal is a continuation of my compulsive scribbling.

Back to Everything Happens: I certainly believe Kate Bowler's judgment that Catholics are wonderful at being sad.  At least, it certainly was true in my fetchin' up, during which I recall at times being reduced to actual tears by religious thoughts of God's, Jesus's, and the Blessed Mother's goodness and my own unworthiness.  The brilliant imagery of Jesus's passion and death evokes sadness, as do the so-called Triduum rituals of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. The rituals I participated in in Paris were particularly evocative, especially the Easter Vigil at the Cathedral, presided over by Cardinal Lustiger, Paris's Jewish archbishop.  I wonder if anyone "makes" the Stations of the Cross anymore.   Is the reality of Roman crucifixion too real for us?   Is the unreality of the Resurrection too unreal?

 

8/2/2026

 Sunday, August 2, 2026

1790 1st US census conducted; population is 3,929,214, including 697,624 slaves

1865 Lewis Carroll published "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

1939 Albert Einstein wrote to US President FDR informing him of recent research on fission chain reactions, making possible the construction of "extremely powerful bombs."

1964 North Vietnam fired at the destroyer USS Maddox in what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

1990 Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait,  George H. W. Bush ordered troops to Saudi Arabia

2018 Pope Francis declared the death penalty unacceptable in all cases, reversing church teachings.

2025 Seven people have died from malnutrition in the past 24 hours due to the Israeli blockade, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In bed at 9:45, up at 5:40; 0555. 203.8  120/71/59 101; 66/61/74/65; Beach hazards, waves 4 to 8 ft., dangerous currents, cloudy morning, sunny afternoon.

Morning meds at 8 a.m., Eliquis at 6:20 a.m. and 7:20 p.m.

Watashi-wa and constant companion, Blanche, engaging in our favorite activity

The first movement I see through my window this morning, other than the birders at the feeders, is my neighbor Lebanese American Ghasson walking his bull mastiff, Athena, at 6:30.  Athena is in the habit of stopping and looking around whenever they round the corner from Wakefield Court onto County Line Road.  What strikes me is not Athena's habit, but Ghasson's response.  He always waits patiently for her to satisfy herself with whatever she's looking at or looking for, and then they move on up County Line Road.  He doesn't tug the leash attached to her collar, or worse, pull her forcefuly until she starts walking again.  Sometimes I have seen Athena sit down on the street, and just rest and stare.  She reminds of a favorite little poem called "Leisure" by W. H. Davies, whose closing couplet has stayed with me for years: "A poor life this, if full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare."  What also strikes me is that Ghasson has owned a succession of bull mastiffs, even though they have a life expectancy of only 7 to 9 years.  I think of the great loss we felt when we lost our mixed-breed Siamese cat, Blanche, after 17 years, and when we lost our Labradoodle, Lilly, after 15.  If Geri were willing, I'd get another cat, probably a Siamese, but Geri, perhaps because she so lovingly nursed Blanche through her final days, including giving her daily IV hydrations, is not interested.  Nor have we considered replacing Lilly with another dog.  Living with her in her final days was not only emotionally hard, it was also physically overtaxing - lifting her into the car for trips to the vet.  Ghasson is younger than we are, and I suppose that accounts for a lot of his willingness to keep replacing his short-lived bull mastiffs.  More power to him.

Lilly, at her post, carefully keeping track of Geri and her walking partners Shirley and Barbara, the three barely visible figures on the road in the distance

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare. 

 

I'm halfway through Kate Bowler's memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, and other lies I've loved.  I discovered her only yesterday when, by chance, I stumbled upon a YouTube video of her interviewing Ann Patchett.  I learned that she (Kate) had written about her life with Stage 4 cancer in her mid-30s.  She's a Canadian (Manitoba) and was raised in a Mennonite community and is a professor at Duke U. Divinity School.  I liked what I saw of her in the interview and picked up a Kindle copy of her memoir.  The book is, in large measure, about how she came to reject "the Prosperity Gospel," about which she wrote a comprehensive history, and the notion that God rewards those who act in accordance with His desires, and punishes or at least withholds rewards from those who don't.   Some quotes:

"I too was taught that you had to have just a little faith to be healed, command money to come down from heaven in order to receive a blessing. That the reason why you were not healed is because you lacked faith. Either that or you need to tithe your money in order to receive a breakthrough from God..WHAT?? Now that I think about it, that is a load of Bullshi....SHUT YOUR MOUTH!"

"When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason."

"I wanted to make God to make me good and make me faithful,with just a few shining accolades along the way. Anything would do do if hardship were only detours on my long way life's journey. I believed God would make a way. I don't believe that anymore."

“A lot of Christians like to remind me that heaven is my true home, which makes me want to ask them if they would like to go home first.” 

“I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should‑haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible—separation. Brokeness. An end without an ending.” 

“Life is a series of losses," says my father-in-law one afternoon...."What Dad?"..."oh, I was just thinking about how, with age, it is one loss after another, " he replies. "Huh." He is right. With age we slowly lose our senses and even our pleasures, our parents and then our friends, preparing us for our own absence. An interesting thought.” 

"I think the same thoughts again and again. Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.”

What I'm wondering about Kate Bowler is what I've wondered for years about Reinhold Niebuhr, the popes, clergy generally, my mother and sister: how is it that they believe in God at all, at least  the God who is All Love that we all taught to love and adore?  This book is another theodicy, an attempt to deal with the question of why an all-loving and all powerful God would create a world with so much pain, suffering, unfairness, wickedness and evil.  I've struggled with this most of my life, including the many years I was a churchgoing Catholic.  I'm not sure whether I've won the struggle or lost it.

Some anniversary thoughts: (1)  Isn't it rather astounding that, even in our nation's first census in 1790, almost one out of every five of those counted were enslaved?    This was 14 years after the most powerful men in the nation declared to the world that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.”  Think of the astounding hypocrisy of our primary founding document and of its draftsman, T. Jefferson.

(2) Two of my favorite books: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

(3) The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 10th, and the game was on.  Eleven months later, I was landing on the SATS strip at Chu Lai on my way to Danang.  58,000 dead Americans and millions of dead Vietnamese later,  our ass was grass and Ho Chi Minh was the lawnmower.

(4)  After driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait, George H. W. Bush famously boasted, “It’s a proud day for America. And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all."  What a fool.  Some time later, I painted a painting of him and Margaret Thatcher (who claimed to have given him a spine transplant), with him exulting and the ghosts of dead victims of the war in the background.

8/1/2026

 Saturday, August 1, 2026

1959 Pope John XXIII published the encyclical Sacerdotii nostri primordia

2025 Trump ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines near Russia for potential military action against Russian forces in response to statements made by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and current deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation regarding Trump's previously-stated deadline for ending the war in Ukraine.

In bed around 9, up at 5:10.  0525. 113/69/57  109  204.0; POWER OUTAGE; .88/58/70/64, BEACH HAZARDS, rain

Morning meds at noon.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.  I started, and expect to finish, this novella today.  I remember seeing the 2024 movie starring Cillian Murphy and being touched by it.  It's only 70 pages long, and I read the first 25 or so this morning.

The hero is a coal merchant named Bill Furlong, whose name reminds me of Andy Furlong, a friend I met at the end of January in 1964 at Naval Air Station Glynco outside Brunswick, GA, where we were both in training to become air defense control officers, providing guidance to fighter pilots tasked with shooting down enemy aircraft approaching friendly troops or other targets.  Andy was a Navy ensign from northern New Jersey, and we became good friends over the two months we spent together there.  He had been an English Lit major in college, and at the time I was trying (mostly vainly) to read and understand William Blake's prophetic poetry, which may have been (who can remember) how we met at the bachelor officers' quarters where we lived while there.  I have warm memories of Andy, including our many visits to the barrier islands beyond the tidal salt marshes of Glynn immortalised by Sydney Lanier's eponymous poem, our futile attempt to visit the Okeefenokee Swamp, and the night I still remember at Shone's Big Boy where Andy declined to have his coffee replaced into which he had dropped his cigarette ash, with the memorable: "No, I smoked it; I'll drink it."  What I regret now, so many years later, is that we allowed our friendship to lapse when we left NAS Glynco, he to report to some ship and I to report to MCAS Yuma, AZ.  Why didn't we stay in touch?  Why didn't I stay in touch with Bob Hillary, with whom I served at Yuma and again in Vietnam, and with John Kroll?  With Larry Stack, my best friend in high school, or Cathy Semrau and his wonderful parents?   With Ara Cherchian and Vicki Conte?  How foolish I've been throughout my life.

Back to Small Things Like These.  I finished it this afternoon.  It's teaching is encapsulated on page 67:

. . . he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?  Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?

This short novel is an indictment - of the Irish Catholic Church, of Irish Catholic religious orders, of Irish Catholic culture, of Irish society, and of the Irish govenment.   It is set in a small Irish town in 1985.  It's hero is Bill Furlong, son of an unwed mother who gave birth of him at age 16, after which both he and his mother were kept by their Anglo benefactress, Mrs. Wilson.  Bill is a deeply empathetic, compassionate, kind man who learned of the cruel treatment of the girls and women kept as virtual prisoners at the town's local convent., named after "The Good Shepherd."  The nuns at the convent ran both a girl's school for fortuante and good girls and a Magdalen laundry for unfortunate and bad girls.  The novel tells the story of his rescue of one of the girls and of his inner turmoil leading to the rescue.  His wife and the whole town advise him not to concern himself with the girls in the convent's laundry business, nor to even think about them, but he can't not think or be concerned about them, and indeed about all the unfortunates in life who must deal with cruelty, neglect, and suffering in our "vale of tears."  

Keegan dedicated Small Things Like These to "the women and children who suffered time in Ireland's Magdalen laundries," but the main focus of the narrative is on Furlong's moral and emotional struggle with his conscience, especially as a Christian but more broadly as a human being.  The last Magdalene laundry in Ireland was not shut down until 1996.  These evil instituions were managed and financed by the Catholic Church in active concert with the Irish government.  No apology was issued by the Irish government over the Magdalene laundries until Taoiseach Enda Kenny did so in 2013.

Another wicked religious institution operated by the Irish Cathoic Church was the Mothers and Babies Homes for unwed mothers.  An recdnt official report from the Irish government revealed the 9,000 children died in just 18 of the homes investigated.  In 2014, the historian Catherin Corless made public her discovery that 796 babies died between 1925 and 1961 in the Tuam home in County Galway.

This is not ancient history. These institutions were operated during my lifetime by the Church of which I was a member.  At the age of 15, following her acts of shoplifting and truancy, Sinead O'Connor was placed for 18 months in the Grianán Training Centre in Drumcondra,[29] which was run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity.  From Wikipedia:

On 3 October 1992, O'Connor appeared on the American television programme Saturday Night Live (SNL) and staged a protest against the Roman Catholic Church. After performing an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's 1976 song "War" with new lyrics related to child abuse, she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II taken from her mother's bedroom wall eight years earlier, said "fight the real enemy", and threw the pieces to the floor.  A month later, O'Connor said she felt the Catholic Church bore some responsibility for the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she had suffered as a child. In describing her actions, she said the church had destroyed "entire races of people", and that Catholic priests had been abusing children for years. Her protest took place nine years before John Paul II publicly acknowledged child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

In 2002, ten years after O'Connor's dramatic accusation against the Church, the Boston Globe published it's exposé of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and its coverup by Church authorities.

Knowing what we know, what are we to think of the Church as an institution?  as a religious authority?  as an infallible guide in matters of faith and morals?  Just askin'.

      

7/31/2026

Friday, July 31, 2026

1917 World War I: The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) began and caused approximately 500,000 casualties.

1961 Israel welcomed its one millionth immigrant.

1972 Senator Thomas Eagleton withdrew as Democratic vice presidential candidate at George McGovern's request after news that Eagleton had sought treatment for depression.

2025 Donald Trump announces revised tariff rates set to start on August 1, including a new 35% tariff on Canada.

In bed at 9:15. up at 5:15; 0535 203.6 114/67/58 112; 65/77/64, cloudy, rain later.  Beach hazards warning: waves tomorrow 4 to 7 ft., dangerous currents.

Morning meds at 8:30 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 11 a.m.      

Man in the Holocene by Max Frisch.  I'm slowly working my way through this Swiss novella.  It's about a 74-year-old widower, Geiser, living alone in a Swiss village in the Alps, coping as well as he can with cognitive decline.  His memory is poor and getting worse with age.  He engages in a lot of reading non-fiction stuff - his encyclopedia, the Bible, etc. - because he is still intellectually curious, but he remembers very little, so he cuts out sections from his books and tacks them to his paneled walls.  During the narrative, his village is experiencing nonstop rainfall, which has already led to roadways being blocked by landslides and threatens to bury the entire village.  It's a meditation on aging, loss of faculties, and the relative insignificance of human life 'in the grand scheme of things."  He reads about developments in the various geological ages - Triassic, Jurassic, and the current Holocene - and also about quantum physics, subatomic particles and their interaction.  We human lifeforms are seen as infinitesimal compared to Nature's development over eons and even compared to the temporary but mighty atmospheric river that threatens to destroy him, his lifetime of accumulated possessions, and the entire community.  The story is a somber reflection on our puniness and for some reason, puts me in mind of Baruch Spinoza's theory that "God" is simply Nature and its immutable laws.  In his Ethics, he wrote: “God or Nature is one and the same substance”, emphasizing that everything—trees, animals, stars, and human thoughts—is a mode or expression of this single divine substance and answers to its inexorable laws. The book is not an easy read, but I'll finish it before I move on to something a bit more palatable.   Geiser at 74 reminds me too much of myself at 84. . . . 

I finished reading it before dinner this evening.  It's not an enjoyable reading experience and I won't be tempted to read it again.  I said that the protagonist Geiser reminded me too much of myself and he does.  He cuts out entries from his Bible and from his encyclopedia, tacks or tapes them to the walls of his house as a protection against memory loss.  I do the same with this journal/blog.  I've written about it often on these pages: why I keep writing a journal intended only for my own eyes.  It's a protest against my failing memory and, I suppose, against my own mortality, the realization that I have relatively few tomorrows ahead of me.  It could be ten years (God forbid!) or ten days or ten minutes, but it's a short time compared to all my yesterdays.  Geiser's keeping little pieces of paper all over to prevent his unpreventable forgetting reminds me of my brother-in-law Jimmy A., who used to have little pieces of paper in his various pockets or scattered about his apartment, to prevent his deep memory loss.  Pathetic.  Jimmy did it with little pieces of paper; I do it with notes on my iPhone or on my laptop.  But it's hopeless.

Differences.  Geri came in from doing some gardening this morning, telling me that she "is becoming a North Shore Nancy," a disparaging term about well-off ladies living in the affluent North Shore suburbs.  I asked her why, and she said, "I'm having lunch today with Shirley and Barb, having lunch on Monday with Caela, on Tuesday with Helen Hamson, and on Thursday with Cheri."  I told her I envied her and that she should be pleased that she has so many friends who want to spend time with her.  I am indeed pleased that she has so many friends, but it's no surprise to me since she is so often on the telephone schmoozing with them, not just the Milwaukee area buddies, but long-term friends in Pittsburgh, Connecticut, and Topeka, KS, as well as her cousin Sue in North Carolina and occasionally her college buddy Tuz, who calls from Dublin, Ireland.  Her wide circle of friends reminds me of how isolated I have become in old age and makes me wonder what it says about me.  Alas.  I'm reminded of how lonely my Dad got, in his 80s, down in Florida after his second wife died, and then his friends, one by one, died off or moved away to be closer to their children, prompting him finally to agree to move north and live with Geri and me during the warmer months, and with Kitty and Jim during the winter months.  His move was a great blessing for all of us, but it was occasioned only by his loneliness and (I suspect) his increasing sense of vulnerability in his mid-80s.  I'm sure it was because of his increased sense of security after he made the move that let him so readily to give up driving long before he died at age 86, surrounded by his family.

Grace.  I drove up to Walmart in Saukville while Geri was lunching with Shirley and Barb.  I wanted to augment my supply of seedcakes and safflower seeds.  I pulled into a "Handicapped" parking space, grabbed my cane, and slowly started to get out of the Volvo.  A pretty young woman (when was it that I consider any woman under 70 as 'young', and almost all young women as 'pretty'?) asked me if she could bring me a cart.  She wasn't pushing a cart herself, but rather offered to go get one and bring it to me so I could use it as a walker, which I normally do.  I declined her offer but thanked her for her kindness.  I thought to myself that it is occurrences like this that remind me of all the unrecognized, uncelebrated kindness there is in the world.  It's heartening, uplifting.

7/30/2026

 Thursday, July 30, 2026

1945 After delivering the atomic bomb across the Pacific, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by the Japanese submarine I-58. 880 of the crew died, many eaten by sharks.

1965 US President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare bill. 

1967 'Race riot' in Milwaukee (4 killed)

1988 Jordanian King Hussein renounced sovereignty over the West Bank to the PLO, hours after dissolving Jordan's House of Representatives

2025  Canadian prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would recognise Palestine as an independent country in September, conditional on the Palestinian Authority committing to certain reforms.

In bed at 7:30 with a nasty back/flank ache, I woke up at 1:10 and was up at 1:25; 0140 203.0 121/68/56 109; 62/84/61, sunny or partly cloudy day ahead.  Hoping to get back to sleep . . . Dozed off between 4 and 5, back in bed at 5 until 6:30.

Morning meds at a.m.    

Today marks the beginning of a 5th year of journaling, or maintaining this diary/chronicle/logbook/notebook of sorts.  It's both a good thing and a bad thing that there are no rules for personal journals; one can do with one whatever one wants.  This makes it easier to jot down whatever pops into one's mind at whatever hours one happens to be up and about, without concern over editing, proofing, or very much thought, but it also means the collection of thoughts can be pretty incoherent, not at all thought out.  So it goes.

I was still 80 when I started this, about to turn 81, and now I'm about to turn 85.  I was still smarting from my sister's death then, while now I live with a dull, mopey emptiness from her absence.  She was my daily interlocutor, my daily communicant, to borrow and enlarge an old Catholic expression.  Nothing has ever replaced those daily early-morning chats we shared; nothing could.  She was the last personal contact with our childhood, living with my Dad's war-related PTSD, my Mom's rape PTSD of her own, in our one-bedroom, three-room basement flat with the cockroaches at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue.  The building is long gone, along with the Clausens, the Jenkins, the Bradshaws, the Considines, the Baxters, and its other inhabitants.  It's now an empty lot, and I may be the sole survivor of all those who lived there during our tenure.  I wonder whether Ralphie Bradshaw, Jeananne Baxter, or either of the Considine girls or the Senrau girls next door is still alive.  Perhaps so, perhaps not.  In any case, I feel like a creature from Jurassic Park, a survivor from another age, another era, that period at the end of World War II, with Harry Truman in the White House, and Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, Germany and Japan under American and Allied occupation, and the fear of godless Communism and atomic warfare infecting daily life.  How far - or how little - have we moved from those days???

When I started this, the legislatively effective but politically feckless Joe Biden was in the White House, but Donald Trump still dominated national news and everyone's thinking.  He's lived in our minds for more than a decade now.  The January 6th hearings were still going on.  The Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24th.  Inflation exceeded 9% in June, and the price of gasoline averaged over $5 per gallon.  Political polarization was continuing and probably increasing, as was distrust in institutions.  We were coming apart at the seams then, and it's only gotten worse over the last 4 years, primed by Biden's ignominious decision to seek reelection in his dotage and Trump's reelection.  After a year and a half in office, he has turned America's name to shit all over the world, effectively destroyed NATO, alienated Europe and even Canada (?!?!), and gotten us involved inextricably in another war which will add to our growing list of wars the almighty, supposedly unbeatable US has lost: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran.

Two years ago, I wrote about the anniversary of the "riot" in Milwaukee in 1967, Medicare's 59th birthday, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, and the death of William Calley, including these thoughts:

What struck me in reading the story was the similarity between My Lai and Hamas's actions in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. but also what has been happening for the 9 months thereafter in Gaza, i.e.,, the killing of women, children, and elderly noncombatants, although on an industrial scale in Gaza.  I was also struck by how, by the beginning of 1968, less than 3 years after the 3rd Marine Division landed in Vietnam, the military was so hard up for leadership.  Calley was about 5' 3" tall and 130 pounds, child size.  He had to repeat 7th grade.  He graduated in the bottom quarter of his high school class.  He flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College after which he worked as a hotel bellhop and a restaurant dishwasher.  With that background, he was selected for Officer Candidate School where he graduated 120th in his class of 156.  What is most striking about Calley and his men and the My Lai massacre is that these American soldiers were ordered to kill hundreds of Asian civilians - women, children, and old men - and they did it.  They did it, much like the Hamas "terrorists" did it on October 7th, just like the Russian soldiers did in Bucha, north of Kyiv, in 2022, much like the Marines who killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq.

 

The latest polls show at least 60% of Americans disapprove of the war against Iran.  Some polls run as high as 72%.  Even higher numbers disapprove of Trump's performance as president generally, including on the economy (inflation, tariffs, cost of living) and immigration (ICE arrests, detentions, and deportations).  Yet we see no significant movement from Trump and Stephen Miller.  I think back to the  60s and early 70s, when LBJ decided not to seek reelection, and the electorate voted in Richard Nixon.  What's different between now and then?  Then our college campuses were in turmoil, Sterling Hall in Madison was blown up, students were shot down at Kent State, and demonstrations against the war (and the draft) drew tens of thousands of Americans to the streets and the Pentagon.  Now we have occasional "No Kings" rallies and demonstrations, populated mostly by older women, but little more in the way of public protest, all while Trump and his co-conspirators publicly and secretly lay the groundwork for controlling the outcomes of the mid-term and 2028 elections.

Anniversary Note:  My memoir's treatment of Milwaukee's "race riot" in 1967:

By 1966, Father Groppi had been appointed advisor the Youth Council of the Wisconsin chapter of the NAACP.  The focus of demonstrations shifted for some reason from the segregationist school board to the most powerful fraternal organization in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Aerie of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.  The Eagles excluded blacks from membership but included within its membership 17 county and circuit judges, 10 county supervisors, the district attorney, the county treasurer, the circuit court clerk, half of the city aldermen, the city attorney, the city treasurer, the city comptroller, the city clerk and so on.  Youth Council members started out picketing the Eagles Club on Wisconsin Avenue, but soon were picketing the homes of targeted public officials who were members of the club, starting with the Wauwatosa home of Judge Robert Cannon, a Catholic, a member of St. Jude parish, and the father of my later friend, former Marine, Vietnam vet and faculty member at the law school, Tom Cannon.  As you might expect, the picketing of the homes of public officials, some in Milwaukee, some in the suburbs, caused tremendous tension in the community.  Picketing at the Eagles Club or at City Hall or the County Courthouse was one thing; picketing in front of homes is Wauwatosa was quite another.

Approaching the summer of 1967, the picketing of school sites and homes of public officials continued, with anger and frustration and vituperation increasing in both the white community and black community.   Father Groppi, Mayor Maier, and Police Chief Brier were, of course, the principal lightening rods during this period, and each one of them was an in-your-face fighter.

 Milwaukee’s Uprising

. On Monday morning, July 31st, your mother and I were sleeping in the bedroom of our new home, a fifth floor apartment in the northernmost Juneau Village building at 1129 N. Jackson Street.  The phone rang between 5 and 5:30.  Half-asleep, I dragged myself out of bed to get to the kitchen and answer it.  It was my father who responded to my croaky “Hello?” with a worried “Are you alright?”  I said “We’re fine.  What’s wrong?”  (My Dad is an early riser, but he was not in the habit of calling at daybreak simply to inquire about our general well-being.)  “There’s a riot up there and they’ve closed off the city.”  That was how I learned that Milwaukee had joined the list of the other cities in having what was called either a “civil disturbance” or a “race riot,” depending on one’s purpose, one’s level of excitability and one’s tendency to look at the world through race-tinted lenses.  I woke up your mother and turned on the Channel 6 news which confirmed my father’s report.  

It took some imagination to characterize the trouble in Milwaukee as a “riot.”  The disturbance was pretty much restricted to a 5 hour period on the night of July 30-31.  Starting at about 9:45 p.m. on Sunday, the 30th, a group of young blacks went on a vandalism rampage on North 3rd Street, starting north of State Street and proceeding up to Center Street, Burleigh Avenue area, breaking windows and raising hell, but without gunfire or arson or significant looting.  As the vandalism on Third Street raged, Father Matthew    left the St. Francis rectory at 4th and Brown and tried to calm down th. e vandals.  He came close to getting beaten by one of the participants, but others protected Matthew, whose peacemaking efforts however proved inadequate to the challenge of what was occurring.

A few blocks north, on Center Street, a white yahoo drove up and down the street, calling the on-looking residents “niggers” and, according to witnesses, shooting a weapon out the car window.   One of the residents was a 55 year old man of limited mental capacity named John Oraa Tucker, a janitor at Shorewood High School.  Tucker went into his house at 134 West Center Street, grabbed his shotgun, came back outside and shot at the white provocateur, who drove away.  A short time later, however, another car with 4 white men pulled up and, when the riders started to get out of the car, Tucker believed them to be threatening troublemakers.  He discharged his shotgun at them.  As it turned out, those men were plainclothes detectives.  In what quickly became a shootout between Tucker and responding police officers, one officer was killed by a shotgun blast, 6 others were wounded, and a bystander was killed by a police bullet.  Two of the injured officers were to become my law students later: John Carter, who was blinded, and LeRoy Jones, whose torso was peppered with shotgun pellets.

Mayor Maier got governor Warren Knowles to call out the Wisconsin National Guard, who set up their headquarters at Garfield Avenue School at 4th and Brown. Chief Brier established his tactical headquarters in the Gimbel’s-Shusters building kiddy-corner from the school.  Maier declared a state of emergency and put the entire city under curfew.  None of us was permitted to leave his or her home on either Monday the 31st or Tuesday, August 1st.   On August 2nd, the curfew was eased to 7 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.  It stayed in place through August 8th.  In the days immediately after the disturbance, Maier also quarantined the city, permitting no one in or out.  (This was to keep those ubiquitous fomenters of urban uprisings, the “outside agitators,” i.e., Chicago blacks.)  

The Aftermath

Milwaukee has yet to recover from that one night of vandalism and violence four decades ago.  The black uprising was followed by open housing marches led by the increasingly-in-your-face Father Jim (I’m No Martin Luther King) Groppi and his NAACP Youth Council “Commandos.” I haven’t checked the census data, but I suspect that white flight increased after the uprising, and spiked after the school desegregation decree in 1976.  The 3rd Street shopping area, the North Side equivalent of the once- thriving Mitchell Street area on the South Side, has never regained the vitality it had before the uprising.

The uprising, the state of emergency, the curfew, the National Guard troops patrolling the city, the quarantine or blockade: such was our welcome back to Milwaukee.  It would be too much to compare it to life on the airbase in Danang, of course, but there we were, confined to close quarters at night for fear of encountering hostile forces, with the area occupied by armed troops (the equivalent of about 2 ½ Marine infantry battalions), access controlled at check points, and a sense of fear and anger and resentment and distrust and suspicion afoot throughout the city.  It wasn’t all that different from Vietnam.  So much for gemeutlichkeit! 

As I was starting law school, the open housing marches led by Father Groppi and his Commandos started with a warm-up on Monday, August 28th followed by a big one – about 1,000 marchers – on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, September 2nd.  Predictably, there were hecklers and worse taunting the marchers as they crossed Milwaukee’s Mason-Dixon line, the 16th Street viaduct.  Also predictably, with all the drama of an Italian American Catholic priest leading a cadre of young blacks calling themselves “commandos” and with other marchers elbow to elbow for three city blocks, there was national press coverage.  Mayor Henry Maier and Police Chief Harold Brier were both pugnacious and stubborn, traditional German Milwaukeeans whose personal qualities ensured that there would be no real peace between the black community and the white governmental establishment in Milwaukee as long as they were in office.   Unfortunately, both remained in office a long time, Maier from 1960 till 1988, Brier from 1964 until 1984.