2/21/2026

Saturday, February 21, 2026

1864 1st US Catholic parish church for black worshippers was dedicated in Baltimore

1965  Malcolm X was shot dead by Nation of Islam followers in New York

1975 Watergate figures John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman & John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2½-8 years for conspiracy and obstruction of justice

2014 President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama

2020  Lilly arrived and became a part of our lives until December 3, 2024

2023  Joe Biden vowed unwavering support for Ukraine in a speech from Warsaw Castle

2025  The Associated Press filed a lawsuit against three Trump administration officials after they banned the news agency from attending presidential press events after the agency refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America". 

In bed at 9:35, awake at 2:55 but unable to sleep, up at 3:45.  27/12/32/25.

Morning meds at 11 a.m.    

Note to CBG:

I finished Theo of Golden last night.  After waking up this morning at 3 a.m., I lay in bed thinking about the ending  Theo of Golden, and more specifically, wondering about the identity of the young woman who showed up at Mr. Ponder's office, asking for his help in finding a missing person.  It came to me after my required daily weigh-in and BP check for CHF.  "Willa" was Ellen's daughter, the one she described to Theo much earlier in the narrative, in answering his question about the happiest day in her life.  The author didn't tell us what happened to her and Ellen later, a bit of a disappointment, but I suppose we are to assume that Mr. Ponder effected a meeting between Olivia/Willa and her mother, and that we'll learn more about it in the planned sequel to Theo of Golden, now planned as Ellen of Golden.

I liked the book very much.  It reminded a bit of both Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, though neither of those favorites featured a protagonist like Theo.  Neither of those classics, however, which I still return to, triggers the personal reflections that this novel does.  I was stunned by the ending, the attack on Ellen and Simone, and Theo's accidental death.  I was a bit disappointed in the posthumous revelation that Theo was Asher's father and Minette's grandfather.  It seemed a bit contrived and fantastical to me, but novels are all contrived, as is fiction generally.  It's all made up.  And, on the other hand, it is consistent with the truth that most of us have secrets in our lives, sometimes bitter and even disabling disappointments, or just sins and guilts, or, like the T-shirt I mentioned in an earlier text, 'battles others know nothing about.' 

I was also a little surprised that he paid so little attention to race, he and his characters all being residents of the Deep South and having lived through Jim Crow America and the civil rights movements of the 50s and 60s into the present.  The closest he seemed to come was when Kendrick confronted Derrick the DA for never looking him in the face, of really seeing him, as Kendrick, unrepresented by counsel, pled guilty to a crime he didn't commit, though he spent a year in jail for it.  On the other hand, however, Kendrick did see the humanity in the 'little' Hispanic man who caused the accident that killed his wife and terribly injured his daughter, Lemisha and apparently led Derrick to see it also.

The character that struck me the most, though, was Tony, the bookseller and Vietnam vet.  He returned from the war emotionally jaded, wounded in his soul.  Though he attended church services with Ellen (and her bike) after Theo's death, I suspect he never really became a believer in a loving God 'whose eye is on the sparrow' and 'who has the whole world in his hands,' the God he was taught about as a child and before he went off to fight a senseless, wicked war.  On the other hand, he was clearly affected by Theo's saintliness, which reminds me of Francis of Assisi's advice to his followers: "Preach always.  If necessary, use words."  Theo lived his belief in the great commandments, loving God and neighbor as himself.

Thanks again for recommending the book.  I'm glad I read it and was even inspired to try to be a better human being.💖

2/20/2026

 Friday, February 20, 2026

1938 UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigned, stating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had appeased Nazi Germany

1939 The American pro-Nazi organization German American Bund held a rally at Madison Square Garden and 20,000 attend

1971 National Emergency Center erroneously ordered US radio & TV stations to go off the air. The mistake wasn't resolved for 30 minutes

2023 President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine

In bed at 9:30, up at 6.  37/29/38/28. WIND ADVISORY: NW winds 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 45 mph expected.  Snowy conditions expected around 11 a.m.

Morning meds at 3 p.m.  Trulicity injection at 10 a.m.

Exchange of email with Leslie Behroozi:

Name * Charles Clausen

Email * charlesclausen2003@yahoo.com

What best describes your status? *

Retired faculty

What question do you have? *

In one of the classes I used to teach at MULS, I used a 1990 VHS BO film titled "Criminal Justice" starring Forrest Whitaker from the library. I wonder if it is still in the collection or where I might be able to access or buy a copy? I can't find it anywhere. Thank you.

. . . . . . . .  

Hello!  

I hope you are doing well!  I searched our catalog for that film and was not able to find it in our collection.  To make sure, I scanned our film collection on reserve and did not see it on the shelves either.  

I also did a WorldCat search to see whether I could identify any other libraries that have it within their collections.  There are none noted near Milwaukee, but I'm not sure whether you are still in the Milwaukee area anyway.  I have attached the list of libraries that have it according to WorldCat.  I would try to contact these libraries to confirm it is within their collection before heading to a library, however; when I clicked on the link to see the University of Chicago's record, I could no longer find it in their catalog.  

If you are interested, we could try to obtain it through interlibrary loan, but I doubt that will be successful.  We do not loan out our own videos through ILL, and when we've tried to ILL videos from other libraries in the past, we have not been successful.  Given the age of the item and the format, I doubt any of the listed libraries would let it leave their facilities. 

When I did a basic Google search for the film, there were a few hits on eBay, but I did not see any other obvious purchase options.  If Google's AI overview is to be believed, it is available to watch through the Roku streaming platform, so could possibly be viewed on a Roku device.  

I hope the above is helpful.

Best regards,  Leslie 

 . . . . . . . 

Dear Ms. Behroozi,  I am so indebted to you.  I have looked for this film for years.  I joined the faculty 55 years ago when I graduated from MULS in 1970.  If you're interested in who submitted this strange inquiry to you, I am one of the interviewees in the law school's oral history project.  I can no longer recall the name of the course I taught in which I had my class view this powerful Forret Whitaker film, but I recall very vividly the film's treatment of some of the human costs of our criminal justice system, and especially plea bargaining.  It is indeed available on the ROKU Channel, and I intend to watch it again tonight.  You may wish to watch it yourself if you have a ROKU device.  It also features powerful portrayals by Jennifer Grey as a prosecutor, Rosie Perez as the crime victim, and Anthony LaPaglia as the defense counsel, all superb in their roles.  I was moved to try to find it again by a novel I'm reading, which I also highly recommend, Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi, a part of which involves a legal situation like that in the HBO.  The author was a practicing lawyer and judge before leaving to become a singer-songwriter and writer, believe it or not.    Thank you so much for finding this film for me.  I'm going to recommend it to my friend who turned me on to Theo of Golden.  Thanks again.    

. . . .  . .

 I later sent her an email informing her that, though ROKU lists the Criminal Justice as available, when a viewer tries to see it, he gets a Spanish-language Western film, titled Sin Justicia.  The search continues.

 

2/19/2026

 Thursday, February 19, 2026

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

1945  The invasion of Iwo Jima

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

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

Morning meds at 11 a.m. 

Text to CBG:

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

Caren Goldberg:

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

Charles Clausen:

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

Facebook entry:

Charles D. Clausen shared a memory.

It has now been 81 years since my father and about 70,000 other Marines and Navy hospitalcorpsmen landed on Iwo Jima.  I've written about it often, especially in my old age.  I think about it today as two aircraft carrier task forces approach Iran, and as the threats of military action against Greenland/Denmark, Panama, Mexico, and of course Venezuela linger in everyone's memory, threateningly.  And I can never forget that the man who makes and has made the threats never served in uniform or experienced anything like what the men on Iwo Jima experienced, nor those who served in America's too many other wars.  He plays with the lives of our fighting forces as if they were all toy soldiers which he moves around a world map, while the world wonders how Americans could have bestowed such power on such a man.

1 Year Ago

See your memories

Charles D. Clausen is  thinking about Iwo Jima

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Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day in the Battle of Iwo Jima.  I think about it every year because my father was one of the 70,000 Marines who climbed down cargo nets to ride in landing craft to the island where  5,931 of them were killed in action, died of wounds or were missing in action and presumed dead.  An additional 209 deaths occurred among the Navy corpsmen and surgeons assigned to the Marines.   I was 3 years old.  I chose this photograph, rather than Joe Rosenthal's 'iconic' photo of the flag raising on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi  because it gives a much truer picture of the slaughterhouse that Iwo became over the next 36 days.  I think of my father's days on Iwo Jima and my 234 days in South Vietnam when I hear our current commander-in-chief, whose  alleged 'bone spurs' kept him out of SVN, talk of using our military to seize control of the Panama Canal Zone and Greenland.  He also originally claimed that he might us our military in clearing the Gaza Strip of Palestinians so the US could "own" it and turn it into "the Riviera of the Middle East."  How low we have sunk in my lifetime.

 

 

2/18/2026

 Wednesday, February 18, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Text to CBG:

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

2/17/2026

 Tuesday, February 17, 2026

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

1972 British Parliament voted to join the European Economic Community

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

In bed at 9, up at 5.  34/28/42/34.

Morning meds at 7:15 a.m.

Text exchange with CBG:

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

Caren Goldberg:

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

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

Charles Clausen:

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

 Charles Clausen:

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

 

2/16/2026

Monday, February 16, 2026

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

Morning meds at 10 a.m.    

On this day

4 years ago

Facebook

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

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

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

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

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

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

      

2/15/2026

Sunday, February 15, 2026

1936 Adolf Hitler announced the construction of the Volkswagen Beetle 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  

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

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