4/21/2026

 Tuesday, April 21, 2026

1954 The USAF flew a French battalion to Vietnam

1956 Elvis Presley's first hit record, "Heartbreak Hotel," reaches #1

1975 Last South Vietnam President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned after 10 years in power

1989 Thousands of Chinese crowded into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, cheering for students demanding greater political freedom

2025 Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, announced that Pope Francis had died early on Easter Monday, at the age of 88.

In bed around 9, up at 4.  0445 148/58/32, 0500 131/62/62, 0515 136/65/64 207.8; 45/38/68/43, sunny, partly cloudy.

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:30 a.m. and X p.m.  I was told by Dr. Singh this morning that the Ranolazine didn't work and to stop taking it and start taking a half dose of the med that put me in the hospital for 5 days.  

Cardiology.  I saw the cardiologist this morning at the VA, or more accurately, I saw the electrohysiologist, the arrythmia specialist.  He told me that the medication I've been taking isn't working to fix my ventricular tachycardia and that he recommends that I undergo a catheter ablation, for which the first available date is June 1.  I told him I needed to think about it.  I spent about 10 minutes with him and didn't learn much other than what I reported above, plus the risks of not having the surgery are increasing heart failure and cardiac arrest.  My first instinctive response to the recommendation of heart catheterization was to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."  I am ever mindful of Ezekiel Emanuel's article in the October 2014 Atlantic,  Why I Hope to Die at 75 and the tension between wanting to live forever and not wanting to grow ever older and ever more decrepit.  With every passing year, I am physically weaker, with decreased executive function, more frail/feeble, and less mentally focussed than I was the year before.  If it weren't for Geri, I would probably be in an assisted living facility now.  I can't take care of ordinary maintenance requirements at home, anything that requires climbing a ladder or getting down on the floor (I can get down, but I can't get up unassisted.)  Climbing and descending stairs is a challenge for me.  So is climbing or stepping down from one step.   A one step stoop without a railing, like ours was and Andy's is, is a real impJediment for me.  Just a few weeks ago, I fell onto our driveway taking our garbage cart from the garage to the street and my Apple Watch Fall Detector called the North Shore Fire Department to come get me up from the driveway's 20℉ surface.  The same watch regularly reminds me of my "very unsteady gait" and "high risk of falling."  I'm closer to age 90 now than I am to my 80th birthday and I'm mindful of my brother-in-law and friend Jimmy at age 91 and addled.  Researchers opine that Americans have a 42% lifetime risk of dementia with the majority of the risk occurring at age 85 and after.  Zeke Emanuel's article reports that one in three Americans 85 and older has Alzheimer's.  How many others have disabilities from strokes, on top of the many disabilities resulting simply from age, from body parts breaking down and/or failing, or from late-onset cancer of the bladder, lungs, pancreas, or other organ?  

Cardiac catheterization is considered a relatively safe procedure, but it is not risk free.  It can lead to bleeding, blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, stroke, injury to heart muscles, blood vessels, or a heart valve, and lesser problems.  But it's not surgical risks that give me pause, though I don't minimize or ignore them; it's what I want to do to avoid  a 'natural death' from cardiac arrest, or heart failure.  I started to write 'to avoid early death' but what is "early" about death in the mid or late 80s?  I am going to die from something someday and I've been in the "dying zone" for several years now, where when I die no one would call the death 'tragic' or 'untimely' or think, 'but he was so young, with so much to look forward to."  My Health Care Power of Attorney on file with the VA contains a DNR instruction, Do Not Resuscitate in the case of my heart stopping.  Before my last outpatient surgery I was asked if I wanted to waive that instruction if my heart stopped during the surgery.  When I was hospitalized on March 19th with a serious heart and blood pressure condition, I was asked the same question.  In each case, I said NO.  I didn't want extraordinary medical means to be employed to keep me alive if I died.  Those situations concerned the use of extraordinary means to restore life after tmy heart quit.  My current situation concerns an extraordinary measure to prevent a natural death from occurring.  The situations are very different. of course.  If I were faced with the choice I'm facing at age 65, I daresay I wouldn't hesitate very long before saying 'yes' to the surgery, but doesn't may age and poor health make this and poor prospects make this a difficult choice?  Or am I being foolish?  

Here's what Zeke wrote.  

Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either. Today, when the doctor recommends a test or treatment, especially one that will extend our lives, it becomes incumbent upon us to give a good reason why we don’t want it. The momentum of medicine and family means we will almost invariably get it.

My attitude flips this default on its head. 

At 75 and beyond, I will need a good reason to even visit the doctor and take any medical test or treatment, no matter how routine and painless. And that good reason is not “It will prolong your life.” I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings, or interventions. I will accept only palliative—not curative—treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability. . . Similarly, no cardiac stress test. No pacemaker and certainly no implantable defibrillator. No heart-valve replacement or bypass surgery. If I develop emphysema or some similar disease that involves frequent exacerbations that would, normally, land me in the hospital, I will accept treatment to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the feeling of suffocation, but will refuse to be hauled off.

. . . . Obviously, a do-not-resuscitate order and a complete advance directive indicating no ventilators, dialysis, surgery, antibiotics, or any other medication—nothing except palliative care even if I am conscious but not mentally competent—have been written and recorded. In short, no life-sustaining interventions. I will die when whatever comes first takes me.

As I told Dr. Singh this morning, I need to think about this. 

As I've written about before, Zeke's thoughts are the thoughts of a single man.  He's long divorced and never remarried.  Everything is more complicated for those of us who are married and care about our spouses.  What does Geri think I should do?  Why?  How do I - and we - go about analysing the factors that should go into decision-making on these life and death issues?  Another factor: would undergoing this catheterization not be primarily extending my life by avoiding a natural death, or be palliative, in the sense for protecting against the many disabilities and burdens of heart failure?

Depleted US stockpiles.  Center for Strategic and International Studies:  45% of precision strike missiles, 50% of THAAD missiles, and 50% of Patriot Air Defense Interceptor missiles.   This is a major problem.  Hegseth and Trump have been lying about the US having no problem in terms of running out of weapons, especially high-tech, high-cost weapons that take years to produce.

The Idiot.  I'm 75% through the novel with mixed feelings about it.  A good deal of it seems contrived, partly the result of its initial serialization for magazine publication, but much of it reminds me of a soap opera, the way the characters interact and the pivotal roles of two women, Natasia Phillipovna and and Aglya Ivanovna.

4/20/2026

 Monday, April 20, 2026

1964 86% of black students boycotted the Cleveland public schools

1965  The People's Republic of China offered North Vietnam military aid

1968 British politician Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech

1980 Fidel Castro openied the Mariel Port, about 125,000 left in the next 5-6 months

1983 President Reagan signed a $165B bailout for Social Security

1999 Columbine High School massacre: 13 killed,  24 injured, shooters committed suicide 

2021 Former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd 

In bed at 9:15, awake and up around 4,  0455 140/50/61. 0505 129/76/32. 205.8; 33/47/33, sunny morning, cloudy/partly cloudy afternoon.

Morning meds at a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:25 a.m. and p.m.   

 I picked Andy up at Ogui's  a little after 8 to start the day and learned the Anh is flying to St. Louis to interview for a national consulting job this weekend while Andy and Lizzie will be in Minneapolis at a volleyball tournament.  Lizzie has a 3.95 academic average at NHS even with all her other activities.  Drew has been an accomplished drummer, but has a sprained or perhaps broken ring finger on his right hand.  Peter is not expected to gain admission to UW Engineering School, and will live at home and commute to and from MSOE next year if he's not in Madison.  Such busy lives they all lead.  When I got home, I fell asleep till about 10:30.  I woke up from the nap to find a note from Geri informing me that she was outside spreading and seeding topsoil along our new sidewalk.  She came inside to open the water valve for the outside faucet so she could water the grass seed.

4/19/2026

Sunday, April 19, 2026

1775  Paul Revere's midnight ride from Lexington to Concord

1989 Central Park Five: Violent rape of jogger Trisha Meili in NYC's Central Park became one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s. Five teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent between 6-12 years in prison.

1993 After a 51-day siege by the FBI, 76 Branch Davidians died in a fire near Waco, Texas (accident, suicide, and tear gas are disputed causes)

1995 Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh triggered a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168. including 19 children, and injuring 500

In bed at 9 and up at 3, read 2 chapters of The Idiot and fell back to sleep until 6:20.  3:10 120/57/33 206.0;  34/26/44

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Ranolozine at 6:40 a.m. and 6:10 p.m.

My normal morning regimen or protocol lately has me waking up between 2 and 3 a.m., switching from the bed to the beroom recliner to try to get back to sleep, engaging in my daily weigh-in and blood pressure measurement, recording the results in my phone, then walking with 'Judy' out to the kitchen to make a caup of decaf coffee, onto the tv room recliner to record the weight and BP data in the VA booklet, and then in my journal, and then my day begins, by opening my laptop and  starting to write in this journal, reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and usually checking out Morning Joe. Tired all morning and much of the afternoon.

Geri's birthday dinner was lovely.  Steve and Nikki came up from Chicago, and David came over with Ellis.  Sharon was home with a very bad cold.  She had David go down to Benjy's earlier to get her some chicken matza ball soup.  Geri and David grilled a wonder piece of beef for the top of the menu, with mashed potatoes, chimichurri, and a Costco luscious chocolate mousse birthday cake.  Steve brought up and gave to us a beautfiul incense holder which he had made in his pottery class and Nikki gave us some incense cones she had made herself.  I told them that I think it is wonderful that they are both engaging in art-making with their hands, an activity all of us humans can benefit from.  I'm feeling the deficit in my life now that I've long since stopped drawing and painting.  They remind me to get on the ball and try to do at least a little patchwork on old paintings to get the juices flowing again.  The photo is of Steve's incense holder below with the residue of some of Nikki's homemade patchouli incense, with another creation of Steve's above it.

 The Idiot.  On Sunday afternoon, I'm 40% through the novel, still reading it, on page 192 of 506 pages. It is said that Dostoevski didn't think it was such a good novel, but it was his favorite.  Like all his novels, it's pretty long, filled with character studies, and explorations of good and evil, man's relationship with God and religion.

 

4/18/2026

Saturday, April 18, 2026

1944 Geraldine Edith Aquavia was born in Oak Park, Illinois

2025  Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration was ready to abandon diplomatic efforts and "move on" if it is not possible to end the war in "a matter of days". 

In bed at 9, awake at 3, up at 3:30.  120/65/62 204.8; 44/31/59/38, cloudy, windy all day.  Pretty wild weather all week.  4 days of storms and tornadoes. 

Ranolazine Morning meds at a.m.  Ranolazine at 4:35 a.m. and 4:45 p.m.  I forgot to take my evening Ranolazine with my attention distracted by incoming storms.  Also forget Trulicity injection.

Geri's 82nd  Birthday.  My toast to her at her 80th birthday:

A few years back, I started keeping a list on my iPhone of 'what I love about Geri and it started with her laugh.  I was listening to her chatting on her phone with one of her friends and she was really enjoying whatever it was they were talking about and she was laughing, a wonderful, deep, exuberant laughter that was a pleasure to listen to, infectious inasmuch as just hearing it made me smile.  

Later I added "sharing her thoughts" and "sharing time" with me to the list, realizing how she has privileged me by that sharing.  I'm the only person in the world she shares so much of her life with.  I have often thanked her for agreeing to marry me.  It's a great and unique privilege married people confer on their partners, a privilege we too often lose sight of as we cope with the daily necessities and distractions of life.

Then I added her devotion to duty.  It sounds as if I were thinking of a soldier or a 'first responder' but in all of the roles she plays in her life, Geri has an innate sense of duty. 'Sense of duty' doesn't capture what I'm referring to.  As a child to her parents, as a parent to her children, as a life partner to me, as a sister to her brother Jim, and as a friend to her many friends, she is true, caring, trustworthy, attentive, solicitous.  The people in her life can count on her for help, for advice, for an open ear and a ready hand, to respect confidences, to pitch in when some pitching in is needed and to butt out when some butting out is needed.  When my twice-widowed father came to live with us, Geri became his best friend at a time in his life when he so badly needed a real friend.  When her older brother lost his wife and his children were spread out across the country, Geri encouraged him to move near us and she personally cared for him for several years.  We should all have these qualities but not all of us do and few have them as innately, as suffusely as Geri does.  This sense of duty carries into all her undertakings, e.g., as an employee, as a volunteer (ombudsman at a nursing home, child welfare investigator, poll worker) and even to our pets.  When our beloved cat Blanche needed to be hydrated by transfusion every day, Geri turned her ironing board into a gurney for her, hung the hydrating solution from a closet door, and served as her nurse.  And Lilly, . . . words fail me.

She is courageous.  She has faced some difficult challenges in her life and addressed all of them head on.  Where many, including me, would have faltered, backed off from a difficult challenge, she has put her shoulder to the wheel and addressed them.  She has guts, tough-mindedness, patience, and an admirable sense of self-respect and determination that lets her succeed at challenges that would defeat many of us.

My iPhone list is lot longer and includes stuff like leading the way when there is tought, unpleasant, nasty work to be done.  She is first to pick up the mop or shovel, not waiting for others, including me, to get at it. But my list is inevitably incomplete.  She is who she is in all her uniqueness.  She is special in large part because she doesn't treat herself as special, as better than or not as good as anyone around her.  But she is very special to me, and she's very special to her family and to her many friends who count themselves privileged to have her in our lives..    

Deborah Kerr in an Actor's Studio interview: “I don't like getting old. I hate it, in fact. I don't know an honest person who likes it. You just thin out and all your energies go toward surviving or moving safely from one room to another. But the mind thrives, thank God. Or mine does. I used to try very hard not to regret it. I thought that regrets were a waste of time, a sign of weakness. I think only the most insensitive of people have no regrets, because in this time, this slower time, your mind goes back to so many instances when there should have been more kindness, more attention paid to others. I missed so many opportunities to be a better friend, a better mother, a better actress. Of course, I can't remember now what I was in such a hurry to get to that I grew so bad at the important things. So I regret and I think. Old age is the big index to the foolish young people we were.

Tornadoes all over the state, from western counties to Lake Michigan, northern counties to Illinois state line.  Flood warnings in Waukesha and Milwaukee counties; flood watches elsewhere.  The ground has been saturted most of the week, nowhere for all the rain to go.  As of April 15, the National Weather Service had issued 154 weather warnings in Wisconsin for severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and flash floods, according to the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. That's more than six times the historical average and well above the previous April record of 123 warnings in 2002.  Wisconsin had also already seen 31 tornado warnings as of April 15, compared to the previous record of 28 warnings in April 2011.  As of April 15, the Milwaukee area had seen 8.03 inches of rain for the month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  According to data since 2000, the last time Milwaukee approached that much rain was in April 2013 with 7.38 inches logged for the month.  This month's weather is not just a one-off anomaly: The severe weather season has been getting steadily longer in Wisconsin for years, according to the State Climatology Office.  Before 1990, Wisconsin's severe weather season spiked in July. In recent years, that spike has spread out from March to September with some peaking between May and July.  

4/17/2026

 Friday, April 17, 2026

1905  Supreme Court held that the maximum work day was unconstitutional in Lochner v. New York by declaring the "right to free contract" implicit in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution

1941 US Office of Price Administration formed to handle rationing

1961 1,400 Cuban exiles landed in the Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro

1969 Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating US Senator Robert F. Kennedy

2025 Two people were killed and six others were hospitalized in a mass shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee. The suspect was arrested by local police.

In bed at 9:45, awake at 4:15, up at 4:39  3 blood pressure readings between 4:45 and 5:06, 148/74. 118/69. and 137/59.  Glucose 109. weight 203.6.  What to make of those BPs?

Morning meds at 7 a.m.  Ranolazine at 5:30 a.m. and  p.m.

On Morning Joe this morning, we learned that Pete Hegseth confused Scripture for the movie script in Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino's film in which Samuel L. Jackson plays a hit man, Jules, who purports what is supposed to be Ezekiel 25:17, before assassinating his 'mark'"

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.  Blessed is who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.  And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.  And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

The real Ezekiel 25:17 says:

 And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes: and they shall kow that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my veneance upon them. (KJV)

Hegseth chose the Quentin Tarantino/Samuel L. Jackson version of the scripture when he led his religious service at the Pentagon on Sunday, modifying it to accommodate it to the situation of the two downed American pilots who were rescued in Iran last week.  It seems so appropriate that he chose and appropriated the make-believe Hollywood version of scripture rather than the real thing, since so much about him and his C-in-C is performative art, make-believe. happy horseshit.  Maybe Orange Julius will post an image of himself and Pete aiming their pistols at the heads of opponents like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, perhaps with a Jesus figure hovering behind them and blessing them for smiting CNN and the 'failing' New York Times

 I've done a lot of sleeping today, dozing off while listening to Audible The Idiot.

Tornado Watch again.  4th day this week.

From two years ago today:  I'm grateful for Emmylou Harris' rendition of Wayfaring Stranger and for Johnny  Cash's who said “The haunting melodies and poignant lyrics of Wayfaring Stranger have the power to transport listeners to a place of deep introspection.”  I can't hear the old gospel song without thinking of my mother, father, and now my sister, 'over Jordan' and myself as the 'sole surviving son.'

I am a poor wayfaring stranger / I'm traveling through / This world of woe

And there's no sickness, no toil or danger / In that bright land / To which I go

I'm going there to see my mother / I'm going there no more to roam

I'm just going over Jordan /I'm just going over home

I know dark clouds will hover o'er me /I know my pathway is rough and steep

But golden fields lie out before me /Where weary eyes no more will weep

I'm going there to see my father . . .

I'm going there to see my sister . . .

 

4/16

Thursday, April 16, 2026

1962 Walter Cronkite began anchoring the CBS Evening News

1993 The jury reached a guilty verdict in the federal case against police officers (two convicted, two acquitted) who beat Rodney King.

2007 Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The gunman killed 32 people and injured 23 others before committing suicide.

In bed at 9:30, and up at 4:10.  128/63/34 119 202.8; 56/56/46 rain, flood watch.

[I deleted accidentally everything I wrote before these words] jowel with neighbors.  More severe thunderstorms expected tomorrow.  It was last August that we experienced about 11 inches of rain in 2 days and basement flooding that cost more than $20,000 to repair/restore.  I'm remembering all those Republicans denying the reality of climate change, the goofy senator from Oklahoma who gleefully was filmed with a snowball during an unusual snowfall and offering it as proof that climate change was a hoax.  The village of Sussex in northeast Waukesha County suffered quite a bit of tornado damage last night, reminding us that it's foolish to think Milwaukee County is immune to tornados.

Rainfall in Fox Point just south of us since Sunday has been 6.27 inches.  In Mequon just north of us, it's been 5.87 inches, so we've had pretty close to 6 inches so far this week, with much more coming tomorrow. 😱

Nesting time.  I bought a big cotton ball at Wild Birds Unlimited a week or ten days ago and hung it on one of our shepherd crooks.  I saw sparrows filling their beaks with the cotton a couple of days ago.  This morning it was pairs of house finches.  I love watching them.  The birds remind me that, come what may, life goes on.  Consecutive days of powerful thunderstorms with torrential rains and gale-force winds, the birds survive, just as they survive (most of them) the bitter weather of our winters.  When the skies clear, they fill their little beaks with cotton, dead grasses, and twigs and prepare for their eggs and coming offspring.

Desmond has a barrow in the marketplace, Molly is the singer in a band

Desmond says to Molly, “Girl, I like your face,” and Molly says this as she takes him by the hand

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,Life goes on, brah, La-la, how the life goes on

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, Life goes on, brah, La-la, how the life goes on.

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevski.  I been thinking about reading this novel for years and finally started it today.   

 

x

4/15/2026

 Wednesday, April 15, 2026

My Mom's 104th birthday

1922 Mary Norma Healy was born in Grand Rapids, MN

In bed at 10 during a raging thunderstorm, up at 4:40 to quiet.  0445 124/66/32 117 204.0; 62/66/52, cloudy.

Morning meds at 9:30 a. m.  Ranolazine at 8 a.m. and p.m.

Wild night of thunder, lightning, and dense rainfall.  The rain started falling after Geri had shut the venitian blinds for the night.  When I opened them to look out on the storm, the air looked like it was solid water, like we were underwater in a submarine.  We went downstaira twice to check the basement, and each time we had a little rain seepage coming in from the window well areas on our west wall.   These increasingly common storms reminds us how dependent we are on technilogical services, especially electric power and internet, which is to say, how vulnerable we are to technology.  I think of this vulnerability today as I read of threats being traded by Trump and the Iranian regime.  Does Trump think the Iranians are without power in cyberwarfare?  or in old-fashioned terrorism, suicide bombers, 'dirty bombs', etc.?  Am I crazy for thinking it is not impossible to imagine the Iranians doing something particularly destructive within the U.S. and Trump responding with a nuclear weapon?  Is that sort of thing beyond the realm of the possible?  I don't think so.   More severe storms expected this afternoon, evening, and night.  I dread it.  Fox Point, our next door neighbor to the south, got 2.88 inches of rain last night. and I suppose we received something like that.  Today and tonights storms will be Day 3 in a row, with at least another inch of rain predicted.  Fingers crossed.

FB today.  Mary Norma Healy was born 100 years ago today in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, at the south end of the Mesabi Iron Range.  1922 was the year that saw Hitler’s Brownshirts, the SA, becoming violent in the streets of Germany on their long march to power 10 years later.  It was the year that 30,000 of Mussolini’s Blackshirts marched on Rome and seized control over the Italian government.  Mary was born just a few months after Crown Prince Hirohito became Regent of Japan on his way to becoming Emperor of Japan in 1926 and just a few weeks before Frances Gumm, later to be better known as Judy Garland, was born in the same hospital as Mary.  Mary’s mother, Catherine O’Shea Healy, had two other children, Cornelius and Donald, and had had a third son, Daniel, who died at birth or in infancy, for Mary’s birth registry listed her as Catherine’s fourth child.  In 1928, when Mary was 6 years old, her mother died of pernicious anemia, an autoimmune deficiency causing non-absorption of vitamin B-12 needed for red blood cell production.  Her father never remarried and Mary grew up motherless.  Mary was 7 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929 and she lived most of her youth in the Great Depression.  She attended Catholic schools in Englewood on Chicago’s south side and on August 3, 1940, she married Charles Edward Clausen, a co-parishioner at St. Bernard’s Church.  She was 18 years old, he several weeks shy of his 20th birthday.  In August of 1941, she gave birth to her son Charles and 3 years later, to his beloved sister, Catherine, named after Mary’s mother, and always called by her nickname Kitty.  In 1944, her husband was drafted into the Marine Corps and sent off to kill or be killed by Emperor Hirohito’s soldiers on a small island called Iwo Jima.  Her brothers were likewise conscripted and sent off to kill or be killed by the soldiers of Hitler and Mussolini.  Charles survived the battle, unlike 6,800 other Americans and more than 20,000 Japanese who died on the island, but he returned to his young wife emotionally shattered, damaged in ways that lasted throughout his life.  In September, 1947, a 15 year old neighbor of Mary and Charles, broke into their basement apartment while Charles was at work, threatened Mary’s 6 year old son and 3 year old daughter with a knife, and  slashed and sexually assaulted Mary.  The investigating detective described the crime as ‘sexual torture.’ Mary survived the crime against her and her children and, though she suffered her own PTSD, she never allowed herself to become embittered by the many hurts and injuries she experienced in her life.  Like her mother, she died young, at age 51.  Her husband and her daughter are gone now too, and her son is in his 80s.  He remembers her today on what would be her 100th birthday for the love and kindness she shared with a world that so often abused and neglected her, for the love and loyalty she gave to family and friends, for the compassion she showed for all of ‘our fellow men,’ and for the strength and integrity and goodness with which she lived her too-short and too-hard life. Requiescat in pace, Mom.

The Solace of Open Spaces, by Gretel Ehrlich.  I finished this collection of essays today.  They were all about life in Wyoming - mmotly the the lives of sheepherders, ranchers, and cowboys.  It was published in 1985 and I cant imagine how life in Wyoming may have changed, or not, over the last 40 years.  I was pleased to be instructed and reminded how very many people live lives so very different from the life I have lived growing up in Chicago, indoctrinated by the Church I grew up in and by the military that influenced me for the first 10 years of my early adulthood, and being a lawyer and a law professor for most of my adult life.  How different other lifes are from the lives I experienced among my neighbors at the House of Peace.  On the other hand, I was very put off by the author's writing style.  Much of what she wrote I didn't understand which might just be because of my not-too-bright mind and my poor comprehension, but it struck me that she was always trying too hard to be poetic and original.  I suppose that's understandable since she has published two books of poetry, but it was a big turnoff for me.  I'm surprised that publishers found the essays worthy of publication in book, Kindle, and Audible forms, but, on the other hand, I bought it, read (and listened) to it till the last page.  'nuf said.