7/15/2026

 Wednesday, July 15, 2026

1973  My mother died at age 51

Today. Jimmy Aquavia died around 5 a.m. at age 92

In bed at 9:10, up at 6:10, but on the LZB from 3 to 4:20, b/c of flank pain.

Morning meds at 9 a.m.,  and Eliquis at 6:50 a.m. and p.m.

 My mother at Kitty's wedding, Oct. 8, 1966

My Mom.  On this date and on her April 15th birthdate, I honor her and subordinate all entries to remembrances of her, her heroic strength and resilience, her loving heart, and the care she bestowed on all around her, especially me and my sister.  I devoted a long section of my memoir to her.  Here are the opening and closing portions (addressed to my children):

My mother was a hero and a saint.  You may have heard me say that we are surrounded by saints and miracles, that the world is full of them.  I believe that, and I should add heroes to that short list.  It was my mother who first introduced me to real-world saintliness and heroism. . . . . 

My mother’s early life reads like a melodrama.  Born to poor immigrant parents, she was motherless by age 5, left the only female in her family.  She was 7 years old when the market crashed in 1929 and a child and adolescent throughout the Great Depression.  Her father may have been an alcoholic during her childhood (as he was in his later life), and there were times (I know this from her) when the Salvation Army left baskets of food at the Healy doorstep.  She left high school before graduation to get a job, either to support herself or to help with the family's expenses, or, more likely, both.  (It’s uncertain whether she lived with a couple of aunts for a time before she married.  My Aunt Monica says yes, my father thinks not.)   She became a bride at 18, a mother at 19, a victim of a brutal sexual assault at 25.  Her husband was drafted before she turned 22, leaving her with a 2½ year old son and a daughter on the way.  For support, she had $22 each month from my father’s $50 private’s pay and an $80 military dependents’ allotment from the government.  Her father was 64 years old and probably an out-of-control drinker by the time her husband was drafted and all three of her brothers were away in the services.  Her husband fought in the worst slaughterhouse battle in the Pacific theater, with Marine casualties so horrific that William Randolph Hearst wrote an editorial calling for a change of top command in the Pacific theater of operations, and TIME magazine wrote about the furor over the editorial.  When the war ended, and her husband came home, he was one of the thousands of hidden casualties with no missing limbs but with a hole inside him where his heart and soul had been and with a mind full of horrors that, like the Japanese defenders on Iwo Jima, crept out of hidden recesses to terrorize him.

My mother suffered greatly in her too-short life.  She suffered from the absence of a mother, she suffered with an alcoholic father and alcoholic brothers, and, after the war, she suffered with an alcoholic husband with a terrible case of long-term PTSD.  She suffered from James Hartmann’s vicious attack on her in her own home.  These were in addition to the “ordinary” sufferings that life brings to each of us.  

I would create an altogether inaccurate picture of your grandmother, however, if I were to paint her as some sort of long-suffering victim and martyr.  Of all of us in the family, it was she who was the strongest and the most life-loving, the least self-pitying and least blaming, the most aware of life as a blessing and a gift, the most religious and Catholic, and the most grateful for all that she had, especially her children.  She was the most loving and the most loyal, even to those who did not return the love or loyalty.  She was no whiner or sniveler.  She sang, and she danced.  She laughed.  She liked people, and people liked her. She was not naïve or Pollyannaish, but rather optimistic and hopeful.  She saw goodness and promise and dignity in people who were down and out after the Depression and the war, (including her husband, her father, and her oldest brother.)

Ironically, I believe your grandmother was the happiest person in our family.  It is clear to me as I look backwards that my paternal grandparents and Grandpa Dennis were unhappy people.   My poor Aunt Monica was terribly burdened and not a happy person.  Uncles Jim and Bud were heavy drinkers, as was Uncle Bim until Aunt Marie straightened him out.  Kitty and I were also unhappy because of what we lived with.  My mother hated my father’s drinking and withdrawal (and wasn’t averse to letting him know about it), but she was grateful for what she had.  She had ‘the attitude of gratitude,’ a sure mark of a basically happy person.  She was most grateful for her children, and she let us know how much she loved us and how much we meant to her.  She rejoiced in us.

Her not wallowing in self-pity, her not worrying about what she didn’t have, her seeing positives in what were to most observers totally bleak situations are as much proof as I need of her saintliness.  She had Faith, Hope, and Charity, not just as the so-called theological virtues, but as practical day-to-day living virtues.  Paul wrote to the Hebrews that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  My mother had a firm belief in the “things not seen.”  She, like T. S. Eliot in Ash Wednesday, knew that 

. . . . time is always time

And place is always and only a place.

And what is actual is actual only for one time.

And only for one place

She never lost sight of the fact that there is more to life than the troubles of the moment.  

She had Hope in abundance; witness her sticking with my father, witness her support for her children’s success in school and other endeavors, witness her own stick-to-it-iveness in moving up from “the Greeks” to The Old Barn, from the factory floor to the Quality Control Lab.

Her Charity or loving kindness towards others was abundant, towards my father during the terrible years, towards her father, towards her brother James, towards her in-laws, towards her children, and towards herself.  Unlike so many of the other adults around her, she never sank into self-destructive behavior (except for the then-commonplace habit of smoking cigarettes and a fondness for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that were to play a role in her death)

I close this terribly inadequate portrait of my mother by repeating my central point, that she was my first, best, and most lasting model of a saint and a hero in a world that I eventually came to see as full of saints and heroes and miracles.  Through strength of will and strength of character, she was a happy person despite all of the obstacles, all of the excuses for unhappiness.  If Kitty and I had not had her model for happiness in adversity, had we only had our father, our grandparents, my uncles, and my aunt as models, I don’t know that we would have known any happiness in our lives or that we could have transmitted any sense of happiness to our own children.   It took effort, it took strength, it took heroism for my mother not to feign happiness, but to be happy despite everything.  

She was also a circle-breaker.  Her father, her brothers, her husband, and her in-laws were all unhappy for one reason or another.  It is easy enough to say that they ‘had every right to be unhappy’ and to wallow in the ‘slough of despond.’  But no one had any greater ‘right to be unhappy’ than my mother.  If she had chosen to live a life of self-pity, however, she would have transmitted an attitude of self-pity to her children, her husband, and to all around her.  Attitudes are contagious.  Your grandmother’s attitude was one of courage, of continued engagement with life, of not giving in to despondency.  She transmitted that attitude to Kitty and to me, and although we have faltered along life’s road, it is her attitude that still sustains us.  It is her attitude that we have tried to transmit to you.  I hope you can, from this wholly inadequate word portrait, garner some idea of why your grandmother is, for your father and for your Aunt Kitty, our patron saint, our guardian angel, and our hero. 

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Jim Aquavia, June 28, 1934 - July 15, 2026

7/14/2026

 Tuesday, July 14, 2026

1570 Pope Pius V introduced a standardized Roman Missal (text of the Latin Mass), a reform of the Council of Trent.  It will remain unchanged for 400 years.

1789 The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille Prison in Paris.

2025 Twenty-four U.S. states and the District of Columbia filed a joint lawsuit against the  Department of Education in an attempt to reverse the freezing of education funding ahead of the start of the school year. 

In bed at 9:40, up at 5:35; 0545 204.4 138/80/61 97, 0555 128/7762; 71.92/71, sunny

Morning meds at a.m., and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and 7:52  p.m.

Quagmire, noun, an area of soft, wet ground that you sink into if you try to walk on it; a situation that can easily trap you so that you become involved with problems from which it is difficult to escape.

The U.S. has been trapped in three quagmires during my life: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  Will Iran become the fourth?  Will Iran be yet another in the line of America's "endless wars"?  I suspect it is too soon to tell; it's been going on for only somewhat less than 5 months, since February 28th, a blink of an eye compared to Vietnam and Afghanistan, and even Iraq.  Nonetheless, it sure has the feel of another quagmire, another endless war that constantly consumes American military and economic resources, American treasure, and American lives.  Early on, I called it Trump's tar baby, and so it has become, at least so far.

The morning news: 

The new attacks over control of the waterway, which is a crucial transit route for oil and gas shipments, could intensify a conflict that has already roiled the global economy and left many dead. Oil prices soared on Tuesday in one of the biggest daily jumps since the start of the war, as Mr. Trump’s preliminary cease-fire deal with Iran lay in tatters.

Which surprised no one.

President Trump has said that the United States will charge a 20 percent fee on cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, despite his own administration’s position that such fees violate international law.

Demonstrating once again Donald Trump's complete contempt for the requirements of law. 

Trump Backs Off 20% Strait of Hormuz Fee:  The decision comes just a day after the president floated the idea of charging other countries shipping cargo through waterway that Iran has sought to control

President Trump’s Iran strategy abruptly reversed course Tuesday when he announced the end of a plan to charge a 20% fee for commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

“Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. 

Demonstrating once again his consummate skill as an extortionist. 

President Trump et al. v. Internal Revenue Service et al.  Judge Williams' ruling is great and is now an official record for historians.  It has gotten a fair amount of attention from the media, but I'm surprised that it is being treated only as a Rule 11 case, a case involving a frivolous, sham, totally non-meritorious lawsuit, and not as a judicial finding of a criminal conspiracy by the president, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.  The judge found that Trump's civil lawsuit was a sham designed to bilk the United States government out of billions of dollars.  Must that not be some species of fraud and of misconduct in public office? 

Tell Me Everything.  I started this Elizabeth Strout novel yesterday and have made very slow progress making my way into it.  I'm only on page 25 of my library copy of the book, having a hard time staying awake as I read it and avoiding tired eyes.  I may break down and buy a Kindle edition with Audible.  Already, in the very first paragraph, I was reminded of why I enjoy Strout's writing:

This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset an who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him.  Bob has a big heart, but he does not know that about himself, like many of us, he does not know himself as well as he assumes to, and he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document.  But he does; we all do.

Strout likes her characters because she likes people.  I suspect the same is true of Ann Patchett, and perhaps Anne Lamott.  She knows we are all flawed, that we all have weaknesses, that we are all subject to "the human condition."  She knows that we all suffer from ignorance and confusion about ourselves and about the people in our lives.   She is deeply compassionate and forgiving.  She knows we are all profoundly affected by our histories, our backgrounds, all the factors that Robert Sapolsky argues make "free will" imaginary.  I don't know that Strout goes as far as Sapolsky, but she goes pretty far along that continuum between "free will" and determinism.  As she writes in opening this novel, we all have some things worthy in our lives to document, though for most of us, virtually nothing is documented,  On page 21 of the book, Lucy Barton on learning of Olive Kitteredge's parents' lives, remarks, "Jesus Christ.  All these unrecorded lives, and people just live them."  It's clearly her purpose to record at least some of them, which, even though fictional, cast light on the lives all her readers live.   Early in chapter 2, she writes about the family backgrounds of Lucy Barton, Bob Burgess and their spouses, including:

Margaret Estaver [Bob's wife] had been raised a Catholic before becoming the Unitarian minister that she now was, and William [Lucy's former husband] had been raised a Lutheran, as his father had come over from Germany after the war.  We like to think that our lives are within our control, but they many not be completely so.  We are necessarily influenced by those who have come before us.

Or, as Emily Dickinson wrote,

In this short Life that only lasts an hour

How much - how little - is within our power

And William Blake,

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.  

 On page 5, Strout writes that Lucy had always liked Bob Burgess - "She thought he had a quiet sadness to him, most likely from this early misfortune."  It made me think of my family and how, on my father's side, most had "a quiet sadness" to them that lasted their entire lives.  Grandpa Dewey, Grandma Charlotte, Aunt Monica, my Dad himself, and then Kitty and me.  It wasn't that everyone was a Micky the Mope all the time, but, as  I wrote years ago in my memoir, 

Ironically, I believe  [my mother] was the happiest person in our family.  It is clear to me as I look backwards that my paternal grandparents and Grandpa Dennis were unhappy people.   My poor Aunt Monica was terribly burdened and not a happy person.  Uncles Jim and Bud were heavy drinkers, as was Bim until Aunt Marie straightened him out.  Kitty and I were also unhappy because of what we lived with.  . . . . .  If Kitty and I had not had [my mother's] model for happiness in adversity, had we only had our father, our grandparents, my uncles and my aunt as models, I don’t know that we would have known any real happiness in our lives or that we could have transmitted any sense of happiness to our own children.   It took effort, it took strength, it took heroism for my mother, not to feign happiness, but to be happy in spite of everything.  

She was also a circle-breaker.  Her father, her brothers, her husband, her in-laws, all were unhappy people for one reason or another.  It is easy enough to say that they ‘had every right to be unhappy’ and to wallow in the ‘slough of despond.’  But no one had any greater ‘right to be unhappy’ than my mother.  If she had chosen to live a life of self-pity, however, she would transmitted an attitude of self-pity to her children, and to her husband, and to all around her.  Attitudes are contagious.

 

The conservative Republican talk radio host Dennis Prager wrote a terrific book I read many years ago, titled "Happiness is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual".  One of his major points was that attitudes are contagious, that people who are in the presence of happy people feel happier themselves, and the opposite is true of those surrounded by unhappy people.  He argued that striving to be happy is a moral obligaation.   "We owe it to our husband or wife, our fellow workers, our children, our friends, indeed to everyone who comes into our lives, to be as happy as we can be" because our happiness conditions affects those around us, especially family members.   Persistent unhappiness can make life significantly harder for those around us, so striving for happiness is a way of serving others, not just ourselves.   One of his recurring themes is that grateful people are happier, while chronic ingratitude fosters unhappiness. He argues that cultivating gratitude is one of the principal ways to fulfill this "duty" to be happy.  

All of these thoughts are triggered in me by reading Elizabeth Strout's novels.  

Anniversary thoughts:  First, how well I remember that official missal and how pleased I was to have my own St. Joseph's Missal, with its red ribbon page marker, its "Proper" and "Commons", the parts that varied with the liturgical calendar and the parts that were common to all masses, the original Latin and the English translation.  It was all so exotic, so historical, so well designed to be mysterious and to set us Catholics apart from other religionists who spoke and prayed in their vernaculars.  Vatican II hit as I and millions of other Catholics were moving from youth to adulthood and its changes reduced much of the exoticism and mystery of the liturgy by requiring that the mass be celebrated in the vernacular, having the priest facing the congregation, having the congregation respond to the priests' call in the vernacular rather than altar boys responding in Latin, etc.  Of course, it was inevitable that there would be resistance to all those changes and there was.  It's still going on.  In a long article in the Sunday NYTimes on July 10, 2024, entitled America’s New Catholic Priests - Young, Confident and Conservative"  In an era of deep divisions in the church, newly ordained priests overwhelmingly lean right in their theology, practices and politics, it seems clear that the traditionalists opposing the spirit and the letter of the Vatican II changes are winning the battle within the Church.  Perhaps this is not surprising in our world which seems to be generally moving away from reform and liberalism toward tradition, authority, and conservatism.  Alas.  I wonder what happened to my old missal.  It probably stayed at my parents' home as I grew up and moved away and eventually got trashed.  So it goes.

Second, it doesn't seem right to mark July 14th without acknowledging Bastille Day and the French Revolution which as much as a revolution and rejection of monarchy and aristocracy was also a rejection of the Church, theism, clergy, and hierarchy.  The Church has been fighting the French Revolution from Bastille Day till today.  So it goes.

Milwaukee's official high temperature today - 99℉!!!

 

 

 

7/13/2026

 Monday, July 13, 2026

1949 Pope Pius XII excommunicated communist Catholics

1960 US Democratic convention nominated Catholic JFK for the presidency

1967 Riots broke out in Newark, New Jersey; 27 died

2018 Outline of a 5,000-year-old henge was discovered at Newgrange, Ireland, through drought and drone footage

2024 Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in rural Butler, Pennsylvania

2025   Israeli strikes kill at least 30 people, including six children, at a water collection zone, bringing the official death toll in Gaza to over 58,000

2025   The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Donald Trump's second bid to overturn the civil ruling of Carroll II (2022)

In bed at 9, up at 6:30; 0645 134/79/64 116 204,0;78/89/66, sunny.  I had a bad pain night, right flank, bottom of rib cage, neck, even a toe on my left foot, plus I passed hardly any urine during the night.  After taking my 'vitals,' I stayed on the recliner and slept sitting up until 8:20 when Geri came in to check on me.   

Morning meds at 9:30 a.m., and Eliquis at 8:40 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Semi-lost day.  Last night's semi-sleepless & painful night impacted my day.  I've been a little out of sorts and brain foggy all day.  I did take a trip out to La-Z Boy in Wauwatosa and purchased a replacement recliner to replace my Barcalounger, which is too big for my shrinking body and, I think, is contributing to my right-side flank pain.  On the way home, I stopped at the Whitefish Bay Library and checked out a copy of Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything, which is the fifth and last novel in her Lucy Barton series, the others of which I've read already.

I bought the new recliner because I suspect, but without much conviction, that the Barcalounger is contributing to the recurring and often persistent pain on the right side of my torso.  That pain is worse when I sit on the Barcalounger and better when I sit on the La-Z-Boy in my bedroom, which was built for a guy my height.  Hence, my hope is for a health and lifestyle benefit, but I won't be surprised if the hope is in vain.  The one they have in stock is gray, and it would be a six-week wait to get one in a brownish color to go with the color scheme in the TV room, so I went with the gray, knowing Geri would be displeased, as she was.  Two thoughts motivated my choice.  First, another 6 weeks of pain, and second, I could die in the next 6 weeks (or 6 days or 6 hours). It wasn't very rational thinking, but, as I wrote above, I've been a bit brain foggy today.  The possibility of near-term death is never very far from me, and it's been closer since I developed heart failure and cardiac arrhythmia conditions.  On71, 7 top of that came the month-long coverage of Mitch McConnell's mysterious hospitalization at 84 (my age) and Lindsey Graham's death at 71, reminding me of how old I am.  

2

7/12/2026

 Sunday, July 12, 2026

1804 Alexander Hamilton dies after being shot in a pistol duel by Aaron Burr

1951 Mob tries to keep black family from moving into all-white Cicero, Illinois

1966 Start of 3 day race riot in Chicago, looting brings out National Guardsmen

1967 Race riot in Newark, New Jersey, 26 killed, 1,500 injured & over 1,000 arrested

t6y

In bed at 9:05, up at 5:05; 0515 203.8 135/82/65 130; 63/82/62 sunny

Morning meds at 10:15 a.m., and Eliquis at 6:53 a.m. and 7 p.m.

I finished Ann Patchett's The Dutch House this morning.  I am hesitant to write about it because it triggers so many thoughts that I can't adequately express.  It is a story about intra-family relationships: brother -  sister, parent - child, step-parent - step-children, and husband - wife.  It's also a story about the relationship between Christian saintliness and mental illness and the costs of the Christian ethic, reminding me of Reinhold Niebuhr's An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, and its chapters titled "The Ethic of Jesus" and "The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal."  It's a story about grudges and forgiveness that also raises the persistent issue of free will vs. determinism.  It has been aptly described as resembling a fairy tale (evil stepmother, victimized children), but the characters and plot seemed believable enough to me.

The narrator of the novel is Danny Conroy, and its heroes are he and his seven-year-old sister, Maeve.  They grew up in the elegant, opulent eponymous mansion of the book's title.  Their father bought the mansion for their mother, Elna.   Their mother, however, hated the house and the wealthy lifestyle that came with it, and left the family when Danny was 4 and Maeve was 11.  The story was that she walked out on her husband and her children to move to India and work with the poor.  Elna plays a central but absent role in the novel until towards the end of the story, when she reappears in her children's lives, and the story of her departure from the family becomes less mysterious.  The family's housekeeper, Sandy, and the children's nanny, Flossie (Fiona) also reappear and provide more information about Elna's profound unhappiness in the Dutch House.  It turns out that the household staff had a deep love for Elna, whom they considered to be a true saint.

Why did Elna leave the house and the family?

Danny to Maeve: "OK, if you know so much about her, tell me why she left.  Maeve:  "She wanted - she stopped, exhaled, . . . she wanted to help people."  Danny:  People other than her family.  Maeve: "She made a mistake.  Can't you understand that.  She's covered in shame.  That's why she never got in touch with us when she got back from India. . .  Danny: Abandoning your children to go help the poor is India means you're a narcissist who wants the adoration of strangers . . . What kind of person leaves their kids? . . . Maeve: "Men! Men leave their children all the time and the world celebrates them for it.  The Buddha left and Odysseus left and no one gave a shit about their sons.  They set out on their noble journeys to do whatever the hell they wanted to do and thousands of years later we're still singing about it.

Throughout her life, Elna devoted herself to helping others.  

Mt. 19:21: Jesus said unto him, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come and follow Me.”

Lk. 14:26: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Elna was in a convent when Cyril Conroy, Maeve and Danny's father, persuaded her to leave and marry him.  Throughout the novel, she appears as a radically committed Christian, someone who has completely internalized the ethic of Jesus of Nazareth.   What was Patchett's purpose in creating this character who behaves as she does?  What is she saying about Christianity? The teachings of Jesus?  The relevance of Jesus's teaching to real life?

    I came to this novel because of its focus on the loving relationship between a sister and a brother, which of course reminded me of my relationship with my sister.  For the last several years of her life, we started every single morning conversing with one another.   In the novel, the sister Maeve is the older sibling, whereas in our lives, Kitty was the younger.  We were only 2 years apart, whereas, with a 7-year age difference and an absent mother, Maeve took on a semi-parental role with Danny.  Nonetheless, the two of them reminded me of Kitty and me.

    Each of the principal characters in the novel has some flaws.  No one's perfect.  Danny was pretty vindictive towards his mother, never entirely getting over it.  He went through an entire medical education and residency, never intending to use the education for any healing purpose.  He just wanted to deplete his father's educational trust fund so his stepsisters wouldn't have access to it.  He and his faher both had a lust for real estate.  And, as he says of himself and his sister, "We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it." Maeve was pretty nasty about her mother's caring for the demented or aphasic Andrea Conroy.  Andrea, on the other hand, was just about perfectly evil when she ousted Maeve from her bedroom in the Dutch House, and then ousted both Maeve and Danny from the house and their putative inheritances from their father.  She was like Cinderella's evil stepmother.  

    Reading a book like this makes me wish I were a member of a book club that had read the book.  It's a great subject for discussion.  

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.  Lindsey Graham has died at age 71.  'nuf said.

The US has bombed more than 300 targets in Iran in the last few days,, yet we are told by our Dear Leader that we are not at war.  More happy horseshit from the American government.  It never ends.

7/11/2016

 Saturday, July 11, 2016

1798 US Marine Corps was formally established as a distinct military branch by an Act of Congress signed by President John Adams

1863 1st draft lottery in New York City; exemptions are offered for $300,

1955 Congress authorized all US currency to say "In God We Trust"

1995 More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serbs after they overran the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica on directive of Radovan Karadži

2025 Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians near Ramallah in the West Bank. One of the victims, identified as a Palestinian-American, was beaten to death,  the other victim shot in the chest. 

2025 Donald Trump confirmed plans to sell weapons to NATO allies to be provided to Ukraine after the Pentagon previously paused weapon shipments

In bed around 9:15, up at 5:40; 0555 203.8 144/80/58 118, 0605 144/78/57; 64/78/61, mostly cloudy

Morning meds at 9:30 a.m., and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and  p.m.  I'm wondering about the blood pressure readings again - will decide tomorrow whether to 'secure message' cardiology and NPs Maggie and Kali.

Some thoughts at midday near midmonth and midyear and nearing my endtime on a near-perfect summer day when I'm more interested in reading and napping than in writing.

1. The Dutch House.  I'm really into it, chapter 9, page 143 of 344.

I was struck by a passage about the role of chance in our lives, the protagonist speaking of how he met on a train the woman whom he would eventually marry:

In you lived in Jenkintown in 1968 or went to school at Choate, chances were good you'd cross paths with most of the people there evenually, even if just to nod and say hello, but New York City was a wild card.  Every hour was made up of a series of chances, and choosing to walk down one street rather than another had the potential to change everything: whom you met, what you saw or were spared from seeing.  In the early days of our relationship, Celeste loved nothing more than to recount our original story to friends, to strangers, and sometimes to me when we were alone.  She'd meant to be on the 1:30 train from Penn Station that day but her roommate wanted to take the subway together as far as Grand Central.  The roommate that then proceeded to dawdle with her packing so long that Celeste missed her train.

"I could have taken some other train," she said, putting her head on my chest.  "Or I could have taken the 4:05 and ended up in a different car.  Or I could have picked the right car, but ended up in a different seat.  We could have missed each other."

How often I think of the role of Chance in our lives, in the relationships we form and the choices we make.  And of the role of Fate, Kismet, or determinism vs. free will. 

2. Geri spent most of the morning watering and otherwise tending to her new grass patches where the two tall spruce trees used to be, weeding and otherwise tending to the marginal gardens bordering the backyard.

3. I noted the killings on the West Bank because we Americans are so complicit it them.  The settlement movement is driven by religious zealots who believe, or purport to believe, that Judea and Samaria were promised to them by GOD, and by nationalist zealots hellbent on expanding the borders of Greater Israel.  Our government has tolerated and encouraged the settlement movement by not effectively opposing it, either under Republican or Democratic administrations.  By continually providing billions of dollars of military and other support to the Israeli government, regardless of its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, we have greenlighted years of atrocities. 

I so often note Israeli crimes against Palestinians in my daily anniversaries listings not because of an anti-Israel animus or, worse yet, anti-semitism, but because America is so complicit in it, unlike the crimes in, e. g., Myanmar, China, Somalia, Sudan, or Haiti.  We have enabled these crimes for years, while publicly engaging in pearl-clutching and hand-wringing.   I recall all the public wondering about "Why do they hate us?", after 9/11.  Our complicity in Israel's crimes is one reason.

4. Our American Gestapo.  I can't help thinking of DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as Gestapo agents.  I confess to having a deep-seated distrust of cops from growing up in the 40s and 50s in Chicago, where police corruption and criminality were rampant.  I've never lost a leeriness of men (and now women) who choose a line of work that requires them to carry a lethal weapon and a cudgel.  I've never believed that all undocumented immigrants should be treated as dangerous criminals, though I know a small percentage of them fit into this category and deserve this treatment.  I believe that DHS under Trump and Kristi Noem purposefully recruited anti-immigrant, thugish brutes for their vastly-expanded ICE force, and that the killings of Renee Good and VA nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis were at least manslaughter, if not some degree of murder.  The most recent killing in Houston comes as no surprise.

5. Not all conspiracy theories are false.  Some paranoids are being followed.  Trump's firing of the last two commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission is just the latest and most visible evidence of the conspiracy by Trump and his myrmidons to steal the midterm election in November and the 2028 general election.  Joseph Stalin: "Those who vote decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.

6. I write these journal entries in bits and snatches, starting in the middle of the night or early morning and continuing throughout the day.  They are often discursive and perhaps incoherent, in part because they are done 'on the run' and are not edited.  So it goes with writings that are not intended for publication (other than the daily unedited blog) and are not edited, but it reminds me too that if I were not writing down my thoughts but rather just thinking them as they dart around my brain like minnows in a bait bucket, even more unorganized and random than my journal jottings, my thinking would be even more fortuitous, erratic, scatterbrained.  

7. Anniversary thoughts. l First, it is always the case that our wars are fought by the poor and powerless and profited from by the rich and powerful.  "The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must." Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.  This is why Trump called the dead Marines and soldiers at the World War I Aisne-Marne American cemetery in France and the 1,800 Marines killed at the battle of Belleau Wood "suckers" and "losers" because, in a tragically real sense, that's what they were, suckers for falling for the propaganda that urged them to fight and die pro patria mori, and losers of their young lives.  How many politicians and wealthy draft-age men served in Vietnam with my fellow Marines and me?  John Kerry.  Who else?  George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump?  Were my buddies and I in the Marines suckers and losers?  In a sense, we were.  Trump was at least partially right.

Second, the anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, ordered by the Serbian genocidal war criminal Radovan Karadžić, reminds me again of how barbarian Europe history is.  And they claim to be Christian and civilized.

710/2026

 Friday, July 10, 2026

1917 Emma Goldman was imprisoned for obstructing the draft

1971 National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) was founded by women Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Gloria Steinem, et al.

2025 Israeli airstrikes killed at least 15 Palestinians, including eight children and two women, queuing for nutritional supplements near a medical point in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. They were among at least 82 killed in strikes in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that it struck a member of Hamas's elite Nukhba forces who took part in the October 7 attacks.

In bed at 9:10, up at 4:35; 0555  203.2. 133/71/60  118; 63/75/63, sunny early, cloudy afternoon.

Morning meds at a.m., and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and  p.m.

Tom Lake.  I finished the novel yesterday afternoon.  I try - unsuccessfully - to remember why I chose this particular novel, of all of Ann Patchell's novels, to get introduced to her writing.  It's an interesting story, but not my cup of tea.

One aspect of the novel that I enjoyed very much is that it is semi-structured around Thonton Wilder's great play Our Town, which I've referred to at least a few times in entries in this journal, specifically Emily Webb's return to life in her mother's kitchen and her bitter disappointment that we human beings fail to appreciate life as we live it.   

But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.

But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking. And Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

I've long loved Our Town and Emily's soliloquy,  so it was easy to relate to its incorporation into this novel.  I had a hard time, on the other hand, relating to Lara's relationship with Duke at Tom Lake, and especially with her visit with him in the asylum/rehab facility outside Boston, and their sneaky bathroom sex there.  Their steamy relationship at the summer stock theater can be chalked up simply to youth, hormones, newfound freedom, and naughtiness, but why, after he betrayed and dumped her so unceremoniously, did she go to Boston at his call and into the bathroom?  It's a sign of my opaqueness, and I suppose of Lara's opaqueness, that I can't understand why she went into the bathroom and took off her tights.  I suppose the trip to Boston and the bathroom sex were characteristic of the relationship between Lara and Duke from the beginning.  He was using her, and she was using him, like the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams:

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I've traveled the world and the seven seas
Everybody's lookin' for something

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

 

When Duke called her in New York and asked her to travel up to Boston to visit him, "I told him yes, because yes was the only word I had for Duke.  Yes was the only word I knew."  And I, an old man, wonder "Why?"  And wonder about the mysteries of male-female relationships.  And wonder again about "free will" and determinism. 

I was surprised by Lara's attitudes about sexual morality and about abortion.  We know she was born in the early 1960s, a full generation (and more, really) after my pre-WWII generation, and she doesn't appear to have any religious formation in her background, but I was nonetheless surprised that she slept with Duke the day she met him, and indeed 'shacked up' with him immediately at Tom Lake.  And, even after he so callously moved on from her to Pallace once she was replaced as the lead actress in Our Town, she nonetheless bussed up to Boston to see him and be fucked by him, on demand, in the hospital, "because yes was the only word I had for Duke."  Pride, self-respect, agency?  Ann Patchett was raised, and perhaps still is, Catholic.  She has said that her writing and attitudes are deeply influenced by Catholic values, although her novels are not overtly religious.   In any case, for this old, pre-60s, cradle Catholic, Lara's sexual looseness with Duke was hard to relate to, and even more difficult was the ease with which she had their fetus aborted after Boston: 

I'm here to tell you, I felt nothing but grateful.  There was always going to be a part of the story I didn't tell Joe or the girls.  What I did was mine alone to do.  I tore the page from the calendar and threw it away.

The act is not hard to understand, but the emotional easiness about it that she claims is. 

An interesting subtext of the story is that parents lie to their children, or at least withhold the truth from them.  Lara wasn't about to reveal to her husband or her daughters the truth about her great sex with Duke, about her trip to Boston and the bathroom tryst, or her pregnancy and abortion thereafter.  I'm reminded of Maggie Smith's great poem, Good Bones:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

I sent this poem to my sister Kitty a few years before her death.  She told me she thought it was terribly depressing, and I replied that I thought it was hopeful, with the conclusion that

 This place could be beautiful,

right?  You could make this place beautiful. 

The belief that, although the world is "a real shithole," we can make it beautiful, that so much depends on our attitude and how we react to and interact with the shithole, what we bring to the game.  Isn't there much truth in that thought?  I don't know that I persuaded Kitty, or even that I've persuaded myself, but I hope so.

Should I read another Ann Patchett novel, or perhaps some of her essays?  I can't remember why, out of her 10 novels, I picked Tom Lake to read.   There must have been some reason. (Here I am again; free will v. determinism!). If I were to read another of her novels, it would be The Dutch House because of its focus on the close relationship of a sister and brother who grew up in challenging circumstances.

The Dutch House.  I decided to stick with Ann Patchett for at least one more novel.   I bought the satory because of its treatment of the brother-sister relationship at its heart, but I was struck by this sentence early on:

Maeve and I were forever under the impression that we were moments away from cracking the code on our life, and that soon we would understand the impenetrable mystery that was our father.

Kitty and I never got close to understanding the mystery that was our father until later in life. 

Jimmy.  Katherine has been with her dad since Wednesday.  He mostly sleeps.  He woke up today, looked at Katherine, and said, "Sis."  Geri looms large in whatever thinking he has retained.

 

7/9/2026

 Thursday, July 9, 2026

1956 Dick Clark's first appearance as host of American Bandstand

1978, the American Nazi Party held a rally at Marquette Park, Chicago

1980 Seven people died in a stampede to see Pope John Paul II in Brazil

1987 Colonel Oliver North, USMC, admitted to shredding Iran-Contra evidence

2021 June 2021 was declared the hottest June ever recorded in the US in 127 years, with an average temperature of 72.6 degrees F (4.2 degrees above average

6:30 a.m. Bambi, a regular visitor recently in our backyard.  We never see his mother, only him.  He's resting, chewing his cud, and vulnerable, waiting for his mother, I suspect.

7:45 a.m. On the other side of the house, two tom turkeys feast on seeds spread on the ground under the bird feeders

In bed at 10, up at 5:40; 0555 202.0 133/78/60  126; 67/79/66 cloudy

Morning meds at a.m., and Eliquis at 6:40 a.m. and 7 p.m.  Trulicity injection at 7:30 p.m.

Three years ago today, I wondered: Cur scribo?  I often wonder.  Is this just some form of narcissism?  Is it just to have something to do while idling on my recliner?  Am I just using this exercise as a daily check on cognitive decline, a clue for creeping dementia?  Is it because I have so few interactions with other human beings, and so few friends that I have regular contact with?  Just a silent way of blowing off steam over the sorry state of the world and the U.S.'s deep polarization?  Am I trying to leave a record of having been alive the last days of my life, expecting that I could kick the bucket anytime now?  Is it, as I have long thought, just a very inadequate substitute for my daily morning chats with my beloved sister with whom I shared a relationship like no other?  Or is it what I suggested in an earlier journal entry, just the need to write, as in 'fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, a writer gotta write'?  There was a fairly long period after my grandmother died in 1995 when I reestablished (or first established) communication with my father and I sent him a handwritten letter every day.  Trying to make up for lost time?  Or just trying to give him something to look forward to, because I knew he enjoyed receiving those letters?  And I enjoyed writing them, just as I enjoyed sending long, thoughtful text messages to Kitty all those mornings, for 5 or 6 years.  I kept sending her those morning messages well after she was no longer able to write back when she was in her last days, and even for a week or more after she died.  I didn't want to stop even though I knew she was not with me anymore.  A form of denial perhaps, but I knew she was gone and had been pre-grieving her loss long before she finally died.  Fish gotta swim.       

 

Mousicide.  We have had two mouse sightings in our house this summer, both by me, one in the basement workroom and one in my bedroom.  Geri called our professional rodent-fighter to the house, and he did whatever it is he does, checking for access points, etc. Still, Geri opened the door to the basement yesterday and uttered a little shriek when she saw the mouse brazenly perched on a basement stair, looking at her.  When I heard that outcry, I knew I couldn't avoid it: I had to set mousetraps to kill the little guy.  Except for insects and rats, I hate killing animals, including house and field mice and chipmunks.  I know it's necessary for health and property protection reasons, or to protect the plants in Geri's garden that she works so diligently to nurture; I just hate to do it.  

To a Mouse

By Robert Burns

On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

          Wi’ bickerin brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee

          Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union,

An’ justifies that ill opinion,

          Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

          An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;

What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!

A daimen-icker in a thrave

          ’S a sma’ request:

I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,

          An’ never miss ’t!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!

It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!

An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,

          O’ foggage green!

An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,

          Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,

An’ weary Winter comin fast,

An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,

          Thou thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

          Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble

Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!

Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,

          But house or hald,

To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,

          An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

          Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

          For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But Och! I backward cast my e’e,

          On prospects drear!

An’ forward tho’ I canna see,

          I guess an’ fear!

Sixty years ago today, I boarded a C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft to fly from the Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni, Japan, outside Hiroshima, to the huge Marine and Air Force base at Danang in the then Republic of Vietnam.  I was 23 years old. 2 years out of college, 60 years younger and 60 pounds lighter than I am now.  I had just started my third full year of active duty as a Marine, and most of it would be spent in Vietnam, with some of it in cushier billets in Iwakuni and on Okinawa, then still legally an American-occupied territory following World War II.  My fourth and last year of active duty would be spent at a Naval Air Station north of Philadelphia, where, among my duties, would be notifying the next of kin of other Marines who would be wounded or killed in Vietnam after I left the country.

Today I am thinking back to July 9, 1965, to who I was then and to what I was thinking during the long, lumbering flight over the East and South China Seas.  I remember hours sitting on the passenger straps along the fuselage of the aircraft, staring at the tons of military equipment and supplies loaded into its belly, the principal reason for the flight; I was just a hitchhiker.  I don't remember much of what I thought that day, other than having a sense of the Great Unknown.  What was Vietnam like?  What were the security conditions at the big airbase?  What would my new duties be at the Air Wing's headquarters, where I was headed?  How would I perform in a war zone after years of training in peace?  Why exactly were LBJ and the Pentagon sending tens of thousands of Marines and soldiers to this exotic country?  How long would this Vietnam thing go on, and how would it end?   I knew that a "communist insurgency" had been going on for many years, but I don't recall thinking of it as a civil war in which we were intervening for one side against the other.  For us, the government in Saigon and its army were the good guys, and the commies were the bad guys, though we didn't understand much, if anything, of the country's long history of colonization, foreign exploitation, and oppression that the communists fought. 

What I am remembering mostly today is the opinion shared by many of us by the end of the year that 'this is not going to end well.'  We had no confidence in the Saigon military government and no confidence in the ability of its army to outlast the other side.  Of course, as it turned out, our pessimism was spot on, though it took many years, many lives, and immeasurable suffering, mostly by the Vietnamese but also by our guys, to see what was clear to many early on. (We now know that among those 'many' were LBJ himself and Robert McNamara.)

After 8 months in-country, I left Vietnam for a remote infantry staging and training base on northern Okinawa.  My air control unit managed the base, since there was little air to control with all combat squadrons deployed in Vietnam.  We watched the young Marine infantrymen engage in their last training exercises before deploying to Vietnam.  We watched as they got drunk and got into fights in the local "ville" the last night before deployment.  We knew that some of them would be killed, some wounded, and none would escape unchanged.  I feel sadder today thinking back on those few months on Okinawa with those young "grunts," than thinking back on my time 'in-country.'  I feel sadder still remembering my return from Okinawa and Vietnam to the U.S., where Americans were at each other's throats over the war while I hoped beyond hope every six days not to receive a next-of-kin casualty call.

I think these thoughts today, on this personal anniversary, as I think of where we have come over the last 60 years.  When I flew off to Vietnam, our government told me (and you) that I was on a mission to protect a brave young democracy from a Godless dictatorship operating out of Hanoi, but with the strings pulled in China and Russia.  That wasn't true, or at least not entirely true, but it served the purposes of the government to say it was true.  We weren't there to protect the corrupt government in Saigon (never a democracy), but only to fight a perceived Chinese and Russian proxy in Hanoi, to protect our markets and sources of raw materials in SE Asia, and the international sea lanes in the South China Sea.  Most Americans believed most of what the government told us, at least until it became clear that we were being duped. 

 Today, the struggle for democracy is occurring within our own borders, and to my old eyes, it looks like a battle we are losing.  Vietnam happened on the way to today, as did Iraq and Afghanistan.    In all our military adventures and misadventures, we claimed to be fighting for democracy, freedom, and to protect America's core values.  Looking back over these past 60 years, since I stepped onto that C-130 in Iwakuni and stepped off in Vietnam, and looking at where we are today, I wonder what I am to think of democracy, freedom, and core American values.

d