1231

 Saturday, December 31, 2022

In bed around 10?, awake at 3, and up at 3:15, nasty dream  and waking thoughts of increasing urban death & destruction a la 60s & 70s, Weathermen, SLA, arson, and bombings, but from both Left & Right, Happy New Year.  26 cloudy degrees out, high of 34., snow all melted.  Sunrise today at 7:23, another 4 hours😱, sunset at 4:26, 9 hours and 3 minutes of daylight.

'It's a good day': Majority of tents, occupied by Milwaukee's homeless population, removed from MacArthur Squ

Homeless men congregate around the encampment of tents Oct. 7 at MacArthur Square in Milwaukee. Roughly 95% of tents in MacArthur Square near Milwaukee's courthouse have been removed as of Friday, and the vast majority of people who were occupying the tents are now indoors.  Street Angels is a local nonprofit that provides clothes, food, sleeping bags and tents for the homeless, as well as resources to help them find housing.  As many as 41 tents were in MacArthur Square at one point, Sarasin said. That number is now down to four tents, with half known to be still be used.

Pope Benedict XVI and Ewell Dewey, the apostles.   Pope Benedict has died at age 95.  I think of him playing an apostle, indeed the successor of the head apostle Peter and Robert Duvall playing the apostle Euliss F. Dewey in the film I rewatched last night.  Benedict was elected to apostle status by a conclave of powerful Princes of the Church, his fellow cardinals (but only those under the age of 80) voting in Conclave.  Euliss F. Dewey appointed himself an apostle and formalized the appointment by dunking himself in some unnamed river in Texas or Louisiana while fleeing from the police after murdering his wife's lover with a baseball bat.   Benedict was supposed to lead a religion of about 1,ooo,ooo,ooo people worldwide..  Apostle E.F. led the membership of The One Way Road to Heaven church in Bayou Boutee, Louisiana.  Each was a True Believer after his own fashion.  Quaere: who was more Peter-like?  who was more deluded?

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'It's a good day': Majority of tents, occupied by Milwaukee's homeless population, removed from MacArthur Square

Drake Bentley

Milwaukee Journal Sentin

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Roughly 95% of tents in MacArthur Square near Milwaukee's courthouse have been removed as of Friday, and the vast majority of people who were occupying the tents are now indoors.

Street Angels is a local nonprofit that provides clothes, food, sleeping bags and tents for the homeless, as well as resources to help them find housing.

The group's co-executive director, Shelly Sarasin, said a coordinated effort throughout December from the Milwaukee Continuum of Care has resulted in many of the homeless population at MacArthur Square being placed in warming centers.

The Milwaukee Continuum of Care is the organization tasked with housing those experiencing homelessness. The group is a combination of government and nonprofit partners.

"It's not like a typical warming room, where it is (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.)," Sarasin said. "These are more permanent warming spaces, where people are connected to case managers, and are on the search for permanent supportive housing."

As many as 41 tents were in MacArthur Square at one point, Sarasin said. That number is now down to four tents, with half known to be still be used.

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New Year's Resolutions.  I don't know that I have ever made New Year's resolutions.  Perhaps I have but, as with so many things, I have no memory of any.  This year I should try. 1. Try not to be a jerk, selfish, self-centered, judgmental, supercilious, intellectually vain,  pity partyer.   2. Try to be kinder, more understanding, more open, more accepting of differences (except for MAGA types and dangerous Republicans.) 3. Try to paint more, be more communicative,  draw more, walk more.  OTOH: Emily Dickinson "In this short life that only lasts an hour  / How much - how little - is within our power?"

My rant on Trump's Taxes.  As I watch a bit of the news coverage of the newly-disclosed tax returns of DJT and see that he wasn't audited by "our" government, i.e., the IRS, until Rich E. Neal sent the letter demanding copies of his returns for the House Ways & Means Committee, I see Republican lawmakers & supporters fulminating about the 'weaponization' of the IRS (like the supposed 'weaponization' of the FBI).  I call to mind Sen. Scott of Florida and so many other Republicans opposing the Omnibus spending bill's increased funding of the IRS which they have starved from funding for years, telling small potatoes Americans like me that the IRS with increased funding will be 'coming after' us rather than well-heeled tax evaders like them and DJT.  I'm reminded of Bob Friebert saying 'Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining out.'  When I was a little kid my mother told me the Republicans were for the rich and the Dems for the rest of us.  Nothing has changed over my 81+ years; it's only gotten worse.  Try as I may to understand why the Trumpeters are so angry about governments, particularly the federal government (and I do have some understanding of the sources of that anger) I can't help thinking of them as plutocratic, oligarchic, existential threats to what has erroneously passed for so long as 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people'.  It hasn't been by happenstance that income and wealth inequality has increased to where it is now.  We have long had government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy.  The Internal Revenue Code and its implementing Regulations stand witness to this.  As a wealthy real estate developer and owner, Trump wouldn't have to break the law (which he almost certainly did) to reap the benefits of our tax laws which were written by well-heeled lawyers and CPSs and slipped into law by well-heeled lobbyists feeding well-heeled legislators specifically to protect and increase his wealth.  Depreciation, accelerated depreciation, business expenses, tax shelters.  We all know it and we all tolerate it because, as a practical matter, there is little we can do to change it.  It is as it always has been the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.  The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.  Trump has always known this.  Indeed it's clear he learned it at his Daddy's knee.  It's how he came to divide all mankind into "winners" and "losers."  The winners merited his admiration, the losers his contempt.  And the overwhelming majority of what my mother and sister referred to as "our fellow man" were to Trump and his kind simply losers.

1230

 Friday, December 30, 2022

In bed somewhere around 9, dry cough kept me awake, got up to get some Halls cough drops, Geri still reading Stephen Miller's transcript, awake around 4, up at 4:10, let Lilly out onto wet grass but balmy temperature of 45 degrees.  Another windy day expected with gusts over 25 mph, windiest year I can remember, climate change???  Sunrise 7:23, sunset 4:25, 9 hrs. 2 min.

Horrifying: Elderly driver, elderly victim.  A 75-year-old woman was killed Wednesday when she was hit by a vehicle as the driver pulled out of a driveway, police said. Whitefish Bay police said the incident happened around 5:38 p.m. at the intersection of East Lake View Avenue and North Santa Monica Boulevard.  According to police, the woman was walking on the sidewalk when a 77-year-old Whitefish Bay man backed out of a driveway and unintentionally struck the woman.  The woman became caught under the vehicle and was dragged several blocks before witnesses were able to alert the driver, police said in a statement!!!

Is the Pandemic over?  At least 261,000 Americans will have died of covid-19 in 2022.  Mostly old folks, not surprisingly.  In China, covid is rampant and certainly mutating, almost certainly to avoid vaccine immunities.  New futile testing requirements instituted for travelers entering the U.S. from China, as if that will stop the inevitable spread.

The IRS Really, Really Should Have Audited Trump: The failure to do so is outrageous and needs to be investigated..  By Noah Bookbinder in this morning's Atlantic  but Washington abides by its Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

Aunt Lydia.  Working on her portrait, very crude.

Heavily glazed, companion piece to The Handmaid

Kieslowski, The Dekalog 3.  This is the kind of story/film/narrative that usually throws me; either it's too subtle in revealing what is going on as it is going on or I am just too obtuse.  I fully suspect that it is the latter.  I'm just slow on picking up things that are clear to others.  My wife has had occasions to remind me of this.  It's Christmas Eve.  The protagonists in this one were adulterous lovers at an earlier time.  They were discovered in flagrant delictu by her husband who gave her the option of staying with her lover or staying in their marriage.  She went with her husband but on this Christmas Eve, she telephones her former lover telling him that her husband has disappeared and expecting, and getting, the lover's help in finding him.  In fact, the husband had divorced her a few years ago and remarried.  She was profoundly lonely on Christmas Eve and wanted her former lover's company.  There are indications of suicidality, a lot of lying, a lot of cryptic dialogue, a superabundance of dark scenes, and an ending that, as usual, wasn't too clear to me except that the lover returns home to his wife with the suggestion that he is now and intends to be faithful to their marriage.  The Decalogue touchpoints are keeping holy the Sabbath (Christmas Eve), adultery, bearing false witness, coveting thy neighbor's spouse, and perhaps others.  In any event, not an enjoyable or particularly uplifting or instructive flick.

Georgie Oliver called Geri.  Got filled in on family happenings, illnesses, Jimmy.  

Total Wine was incredibly crowded today over the noon hour.  I picked up a supply of St. Regis Brut.

Robert Duvall's The Apostle, one of my favorite movies.  Robert Duvall's performance is superb.  Love the Gospel music.  Great character study of True Believers, those with a rich vivid imaginary lives.  Bible believing evangelical Baptists, cocksure of their beliefs, sure of what's good for them and for everyone else.  Some glad mornin' when it's time to go, I'll fly away, to my home on that eternal shore,  I'll fly away.  I'll fly away, O Glory, I'll fly away.  'Victory is mine, victory is mine, victory today is mine, I told Satan get thee behind, victory is mine today.'

January 6 Committee Report, NYT edition arrived today.

1229

Thursday, December 29, 2022

In bed at 10:30, awake at 4:30, half awake till 5:50, 5 pss, one cognac. Back ache, loud tinnitus.  40 degrees, expecting 49, cloudy all day, Sunrise 7:23, sunset 4:24., 9 hours, 1 minute.

Opening the Laptop.  I should give more thought to the tabs I leave open when I close the laptop for the night for that is the tab I will see when I open the laptop at whatever hour I lumber out of bed.  This morning I opened to The Atlantic and Nicole Davidoff's "Poverty is Violent," but after finishing that feature I turned to Nicole Chung's newsletter  I Have Notes.  I followed a link to reviews of her memoir A Living Remedy and its story of our inadequacy and inequality of health care, which led to her parents' early deaths.  It reminded me of my good friend Roland Wright, a fellow parishioner at St. Francis of Assisi parish in the inner city.  Roland was my first pickup and last drop-off during the years I drove the church van every Sunday.  I sat in the driver's seat, Roland 'rode shotgun.'  Over several years, we became good friends.  He was poor, Black, a recovering alcoholic, a resident of public housing for the elderly at the Convent Hill 'project,'  a quiet man of deep modesty and of deep gratitude, a former alcoholism counselor who carried in his heart a burden of guilt, of sin.  He had lived with his father in his drinking days and one night there was a smoky fire in their residence that killed his father.  Roland was so drunk he slept through it and survived, I'm not sure how, but he blamed himself and his drunkenness for his father's death.  At some point, I noticed that Roland didn't seem well and I asked him about it.  For a time he denied that he was ill but eventually admitted to me that he had esophageal cancer.  He had no car and reluctantly agreed to my driving him to his medical appointments and accompanying him during his sessions with his doctors.  I remember how taken aback I was when his oncologist at Mt. Sinai told him his cancer was incurable, that 'it will take your life.'  He said it coldly, unemotionally, or, as it seemed to me sitting there next to Roland, almost brutally.  I wondered if he was like that with all his terminal patients or only with his poor, Black, Medicare/Medicaid patients who live in public housing.  On reflection, I think I was too harsh in my judgment.  The doctor's job was one that none of us would volunteer for and he surely knew better than I did how such news is best delivered.  I also accompanied Roland to other medical appointments at an inner city senior center, the Clinton Rose Senior Center on 3td Street (now MLK Drive) and Burleigh Avenue. The patients there were all poor, all Black.  The rotating doctors were all doing charity work.  Roland's medical file was thick, not surprising for an old man who had attended this medical clinic for years, but I wondered how much attention the attending physician could give to the information in that file.  As I recall, the wait to see the doctor was long but I'm not really sure, it was a long time ago and my memory is poor.  I had a bit of a struggle to pull up Roland's name from my sclerotic hippocampus and amygdala.  Soon Roland couldn't swallow and I and a nurse at the housing project who also happened to be a parishioner at St. Francis shared the duty to visiting him in his apartment, grinding up his pills, mixing them into his protein drinks, and pouring them into his "g-tube" implanted into his stomach.   Eventually he had to be moved to a local inner city nursing home.  I drove him there and visited him regularly as he quickly (as best I can recall) became so doped up or 'medicated' that he was uncommunicative.  Roland had no family, at least none that we knew of.  At his funeral mass at St. Francis, which was well attended because he had friends there, the eulogies were delivered by the nurse and by me.  I don't have a copy of mine anymore, but I remember its gist: that in his life, Roland refused to accept any praise but now I was free to heap praise on this good, kind, gentle man.  His burial was attended only by Father Matthew Gottschalk from the House of Pease, me, and one other person whose identity I can't now recall.  I still have the crucifix from his casket and on the shelf in my painting area I keep a small photo of him sitting on his bed in his little apartment.  My experiences with Roland opened by eyes to the challenges of health care for the poor, especially the elderly Black poor.  It's not that there is no health care available, though one wonders what would be the case without the "socialist' Medicare and Medicaid programs, but there are real challenges just accessing it.  In my life, I had the same primary care physician, Kathleen Baugrud, for more than 25 years.  I had the same gastroenterologist for my Barrett's esophagus, the son of a lawyer I knew in law school and agasint whom I had litigated a case.  I always had my own car to get me to and from appointments.  I had my own insurance, my own income adequate to pay co-pays and deductibles and uncovered expenses.  Roland and I lived in very different worlds mainly because he was born poor and Black and I was born poor and White.  White Privilege = Not Being Black in America.

New Record for Goldfinches.  15 or 16 on the niger feeder at one time.

POVERTY IS VIOLENT: Why are so many Black men shot to death in certain American neighborhoods? By Nicholas Dawidoff, The Atlantic, 12/28/22

An interesting article in many respects, notably the effects of moving manufacturing and other jobs away from American cities to China, Mexico, etc.  From THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MILWAUKEE: "After employing more than 15,000 workers in the late 1950s, for example, Allis-Chalmers declared bankruptcy in 1987. By the end of the twentieth century, the site of its massive factory in West Allis became home to a K-Mart and several other stores and restaurants. A similar fate befell other industries in Milwaukee. A former Caterpillar factory on Holt Avenue became a Pick ’n Save grocery store, while the Blatz brewery changed into apartments. [Ditto Pabst Brewery & Schlitz Brewery] 50,000 manufacturing jobs left Milwaukee between 1979 and 1983. Between 1979 and 1989, the Milwaukee metropolitan area lost 19 percent of its industrial employment. This decline was three times higher than occurred nationally."  Former workers become the unemployed.  Family stability decreases.  Home ownership decreases.  Median household income and educational attainment decrease.  Hope for a prosperous future life decreases and for some disappears, resulting in the lethal criminality, illicit drug use, and gun violence we see in American cities today, including Milwaukee.  Roughly 90% of metro Milwaukee’s black population lives in the city, the lowest rate of black suburbanization of any large metro.  About 40% of black men 25 to 44 aren’t working, either because they are unemployed, out of the labor force, on disability or jailed, he said. Milwaukee has one of the highest black household poverty rates among large metro areas.  Black men are the disproportionate victims of gun violence, dying of firearm homicide at a rate 22.3 times higher than other Americans.  I saw the real-life effects of this when I worked at the House of Peace where I learned not to ask mothers about their children, especially sons, as I was so often told 'he was killed.'  Hattie Clayton, a single mother of 5 children (Tiffany, Chrystal, Brian, Kelly, and Lovie) living across the street from the Catholic private high school, Messmer, said she heard gunshots almost every night.  Capuchin Brother Bob Smith, principal of the school, told me the same thing.  Roughly 90% of metro Milwaukee’s black population lives in the city, the lowest rate of black suburbanization of any large metro area.  The author of The Atlantic article points out that "the political right tends to describe gun violence as part of a cultural apocalypse arising from liberal tolerance for criminals . . . The left prefers to avoid talking about it at all.   Both the desire to exaggerate crime and the impulse to downplay it undermine constructive attention to a horrific problem"  He cites a "study . . . conducted for internal state use in 2018 of people arrested for serious crimes as juveniles found that 30 percent suffered from fetal drug or alcohol syndrome, and another 30 percent had been removed from their families because of abuse or neglect." 

    I attribute this suffering and injustice to America's  largely unbridled free-market capitalism and White indifference.  An intrinsic characteristic of capitalist business, at least corporate business, is the desire to minimize labor costs.  Profits equals revenues minus expenses and for many if not most business the highest expenses are employee costs: wages and fringe benefits.  If it's cheaper to produce widgets in China or Mexico than in Detroit, do it where it's cheapest. Bill Clinton and our Congress helped this project along with NAFTA.  Our government is in the pockets of Corporate America, transnationalAmerica.  The best illustration is our health care system, lately controlled by 'free market' enthusiasts who assure Americans that we can't afford 'socialized medicine' like almost all advanced economies have, even though we are 'the richest nation in the history of the planet.'  The health care that Sarah enjoys in Germany, we 'can't afford' here.  Getting rid of Obamacare, which ensures some members of our family, has been a top priority of Republicans since its passage. Only the wisdom and courage of one senator, John McCain, saved it for the nation.  

Lilly's annual visit with the Vet.  She's OK.  Cost $500+

Geek Squad and the Oven Door.  Fixed.

1228

 Wednesday, December 28, 2022

In bed at 9, up with GERD at 11:30, in tv room recliner between 11:30 and 3:40 catching up on various Amanpour & Company interviews, back in bed from 3:40 till 6:30, watching an interview of Cher.  28 degrees outside going up to near 40 cloudy degrees, seeming like a heat wave.

Our Town.  At 8 a.m., the Sherriff's Office also indicated a full freeway closure was underway on southbound I-43 at Mequon Road in response a single-vehicle accident after the car was struck by gunfire during a road-rage incident. No injuries were reported, but all lanes were shut down from Mequon Road to Brown Deer Road.  That was the second reported shooting of the morning on the freeway system. Shortly before 7 a.m., westbound travelers on I-94 also began getting diverted off the interstate at 68th Street following a reported shooting.

Bait Bucket thoughts: cinnamon toast, childhood treat; tube feeders and suet getting low, need replenishing; why does it seem like local tv weathermen and anchors so often talk to viewers as if we are children

Morning Ukraine headlines:  Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children are a genocidal crime;  ‘Nothing left to destroy’: Russia is fighting for land already in ruins.  Lyman and cities across Donbas have been invaded and liberated multiple times 

Midweek adventure.  Trip to Whole Foods

Late Christmas delivery. Pink trim-fold exercise mat, probably Lizzie's.  Texted Andy to have him check.

Navy Bean Soup. Chalked it up as a failure.  Hard to screw up bean soup, but I managed.

Attempt at Aunt Lydia portrait.  Started by drawing grid lines on 8 &1/2  x 11 printer paper and 20x24 canvas.

1227

 Tuesday, December 27, 2022

In bed around 9, up at 4, no toddy.  Woke up thinking of Steve's stopping smoking, Kitty's COPD, Pall Malls, thinking life's a blessing while able to function, to think even if not as clearly and quickly as once was the case, to experience delight at the beauty of trees and leaves and birds and music and so much despite infirmities, decrepitudes, diminishments, awareness of failings.  7 degrees outside warming up to 24, and winds at 8 mph out of the SW, leading to the much warmer weather we'll get this week.  Sunrise at 7:22, sunset at 4:23, a minute more of daylight.

Our friend, Jonathan Lawson for Colonial Penn & $9.95. Why is this guy permitted to hawk his products to elderly consumers on television?  He is selling not term insurance, but 'whole life' insurance with no medical exam required and guaranteed acceptance, rates 'starting' at $9.95 a month up to age 85.  No mention of any face value of any policy.  To quote Norm Crosby, this has 'an aura of reek' about it.  There's a 2-year 'limited benefits' feature, i.e., if the insured dies within 2 years of the policy's purchase, the 'benefits' consist only of a return of premiums paid, or some portion thereof.  Why would any sane 70 or 80-year-old want to purchase any whole-life policy, especially one with a premium of $9.95 cents a month?  They must be attracting customers or they wouldn't be advertising the product on tv as much as they do.  It stinks.  It reminds me of despicable Tom Selleck hawking reverse mortgages to elderly buyers.  "I trust them.  You can too."  Reprehensible.

The English Patient (1996).  I rewatched it last night and this morning though I'm not sure why.  Is it the story?  the fact that Juliette Binoche is in it?  the exquisite soundtrack by Gabriel Jared?  Roger Ebert wrote of the film: "It is the kind of movie you can see twice--first for the questions, the second time for the answers."  I've decided it's not the storyline that I liked, but my long-term crush on Juliette Binoche and long enjoyment of Jared/Yared's score.  I fully suspect that, in terms of the plot, the novel by Michael Ondaatje was more believable than the film.  Katherine Clifton falls in love with the cold Count Almasy and has a torrid affair with him in her first year of marriage.  Her husband Geoffrey is so devastated by her infidelity he tries to kill them both in a suicidal biplane crash.  Katherine actually loves both Geoffrey and Almasy or is it just friendship with the husband and lust with Almasy?  The brief love affair between the Sikh demolition expert Kip and nurse Hana, thrown together in the murderous circumstances of war, is easy to understand.  Not so with the relationship between Katherine and Almasy.  On the other hand, I couldn't understand the attraction between Dr. Zhivago and Lara the first time I saw that film.  I'm definitely not too swift in understanding complicated (or not-so-complicated) human relationships and I am probably simply too obtuse to find the Katherine-Almasy relationship believable.  I do have some comprehension of obsessive-compulsive, lust-driven or other-driven, and destructive love affairs (Madame Bovary, The Red and the Black, Anna Karenina) and I suppose that's what the story is really about, but for some reason on second viewing, the story struck me as kind of hokey, maudlin and mawkish, a melodrama and a disappointment.  I think I am doing a huge disservice to Ondaatje's widely praised novel, and probably also to Anthony Minghella's widely praised film.  The side barely-stated issues in the story are provocative.  Hana's engaging in euthanasia, Geoffrey's murder-suicide attempt, interracial love between Hana and Kip, a barely visible taunt of British imperialism/colonialism in Kip's description of the Brit's taking the Sikhs' cups and spoons to make cannons to shoot at the Sikhs, and issues subtly raised by Almasy asking Hana "Why are you keeping me alive?" and she answers "Because I am a nurse."

Kieslowski, Dekalog 2 contains a feature similar to The English Patient, a wife who purports to have a very good marriage, one in which she loves her husband, but is carrying a child fathered by another man.  She tells the husband's doctor that she loves 2 men at once, her husband and the father of the fetus within her.  If her husband will live, she will terminate the pregnancy.  If he will die, she will carry the child to term.  She begs the doctor to tell her whether the husband will survive or not.  He tells her that medical science says there is a 15% chance of survival, but the doctor has seen many cases with little chance of survival survive.  The husband has been infertile and this is her only chance for mothering a child.  She asks the doctor if he believes in God.  He responds "I have a God; there's only enough of him for me" and she says "A private God.  Then ask him for absolution."  She sees another doctor and schedules an abortion and tells her lover who says their relationship will end if she aborts and her husband lives.  Then she tells the doctor who tells her not to do it, that her husband is dying.  In fact, the husband is improving and survives, coming to tell the doctor joyfully that 'we're going to have a baby.'

Many commandments are implicated.  First, with the doctor playing God.  5th, thou shalt not kill.  6th, thou shalt not commit adultery.  8th, bearing false witness.  7th, stealing.  Didn't doctor steal woman's autonomy, agency?  Powerful scene of a wasp struggling to avoid drowning in a glass of tea.  The mysterious stranger reappears in this film, in a white lab coat instead of outdoors in front of a campfire.

1226

 Monday, December 26, 2022

In bed by 11, up @ 6:30, 2 cognacs, 1 Benedictine,  10 degrees, wind from the Northwest at 6, wind chill at -1.  Sunrise 7:22, sunset 4:22, 9 hours of daylight.  Cloudy morning, sunny afternoon forecast.

Late Christmas night had Geri and me engaged in long, animated discussions with Steve and Nikki about the state of the world, politics, health, cryptocurrency, a little religion, stuff we're supposed to steer clear of on holiday get-togethers but we never do since we all appear to be of one mind on these topics. I am always delighted by the range of not-so-general knowledge in Steve, actually in all our children.  Makes me feel simultaneously proud and a little dim-witted myself.  S&N were in bed before 10 and Geri and I emptied the first load from the dishwasher and loaded a second load before going to bed at the end of a very full, very heart-warming day, counting our blessings.  I had a bit of a boost when the others were leaving and Maribeth praised my paintings and drawings in the TV room walls and said the the next time she was here she wanted to see my other stuff in the basement so I gave her a quick tour of my crowded bedroom walls, especially drawings of her daughter and granddaughter.  I'm easily pleased with a little praise.😊

Portrait by Geri, Deirdre Keenan McChrystal, & Nancy Cannon many years ago during a dinner party in Shorewood.

Lilly and Buddy got along well over Steve & Nikki's overnight visit.  No hostility was shown by either, even when Buddy lay down on Lilly's mattress in the TV room.  I thought that the temporary usurpation of turf might provoke a problem, but Lilly was cool.

Bean Soup has been disappointing, a bit too al dente.  I've added some water and simmered it some more.🙏  Suspected problem: not soaking beans overnight, relying on 'quick soak' method described on packaging.  

Sunroom ceiling lights.  We had two burned-out bulbs in the recessed ceiling lights.  I can't deal with standing on a ladder or stool and looking up to replace them without getting dizzy and losing balance.  Geri insists she can do it and pooh-poohs my advice that it's not a great activity for a 78 and 1/2 year old lady to undertake.  Thank God, Steve came to the rescue - again.

Krystof Kieslowski, The Dekalog, Dekalog 1.  I started watching this series again after many years away.  Ebert suggests that Dekalog 1 ia the central story.  A man, his son Pavel, and his sister.  The man believes, as his sister puts it, in measurement, that everything can be measured.  He has his computer, his son has another. Each is into the computer as an instrument of understanding and measuring and controlling life, reality.  The son asks precocious questions: what is death?  what is left after death?  what is God?  The aunt believe in God.  The setting is in deep winter in Warsaw and features a mysterious nameless, identiyless character who appears wordlessly at times during the unfolding of the narrative, sitting outdoors near a pond, dressed very warmly, in front of a campfire.  Midstory, there is a chess match between a young woman chess whiz and perhaps a dozen contestants, including Pavel and his father.  Pavel calls the plays for his father which result in a victory over the chess whiz.  The aunt arranges for religious lessons from a nearby priest for Pavel, to which the father agrees.  The next scene shows the father's computer screen turned on and the father asks Pavel if he has turned it on to which Pavel answers 'no.'  The father addresses his computer as a 'colleague' and tells it to turn itself off, giving intimations of robotics and AI.  Then the father is shown lecturing a university class on language, linguistics, semantics and the untranslatable differences between all languages, each word, each phrase, each symbol carrying different cultural 'baggage.'  He imagines a supercomputer of sorts: "This device, which seems only to differentiate between zero and one, has not only a kind of intelligence, it selects.  That makes it capable of choice, perhaps even an act of will.  In my opinion, a properly programmed computer may have its own aesthetic preferences, a personality.." The son is present at the lecture, watching and listening to his father.  At home, the boy finds the milk bottle that has been delivered and left outside has frozen and broken the glass.  The father uses his computer to determine if the ice on the pond is safe for the son to skate on.  He also steps on the ice later to test it and then assures his son it is safe to skate on.  The next day, while the father is working at his desk, an ink bottle mysteriously breaks and ink spreads over his work and the book he is working from.  The next day, the father returns from work and discovers that Pavel is not at home.  He had gone skating on the pond relying on the father's computer-aided mathematical calculations, the ice broke under his weight, and he died.  The nighttime scene showing Pavel's body being recovered from the water as the father and aunt look on is devastating.  The father returns home where his computer has turned on with the message on its screen: "I am ready."  The father goes to the nearby church and kneels in front of a large icon of the Black Madonna, then pushes over the altar with its burning candles.  He puts his hand into a baptismal font or perhaps just a 'holy water' font and the water at its bottom is frozen.  He places the ice to his face, images of Pavel appear on the screen and the film ends.

First Commandment:  I am the Lord thy God... thou shalt not have other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

There is nothing subtle about the message of this film about the limits of mathematics, science, and computer technology and the danger of over-reliance on these tools.  It's not clear to me what Kieslowski was suggesting about God. Nor is it clear to me who or what the mystery man with the campfire is supposed to be or represent.   In any case, the film, released in 1989 seems a bit prescient from our viewpoint today in the age of Siri, Alexa, Chat GPT, and Google Assistant.

Very quiet day today.  Lots of dishwashing, lots of resting from all the excitement (and for Geri, work) yesterday.  I did some touch-up work on The Handmaid's bonnet.

1225

Sunday, December 25, 2022

In bed  at 10, up at 6:50, one cognac.  Ran my iPhone out of juice with 'brown noise' on throughout the night.  Snowbirds on the ground feeding.  3 degrees outside, high of 11, wind out of the NW at 16 mph, wind chill 16 below zero.

Messiah   I watched and listened to Handel's Messiah while Geri was toiling away into the night making pies.  Watched both the Sydney Philharmonic Choirs at the Sydney Opera House and the  Royal Choral Society at Royal Albert Hall.  Both are wonderful performances but the Sydney Opera House was also visually stunning.  It looked like hundreds and hundreds of choristers as well as the large orchestra.  I would love to have experienced it as a member of the live audience.  Stunning.  I was stuck with each performance by what an enormity of human effort it represents.  How much individual contributions were necessary to make the performance possible, from each individual singer with years of learning behind her and hours of study and rehearsal, ditto each orchestra member and the conductor, ditto the each person who manufactured each instrument, each person who contributed effort to construct the performance hall, and each person who contributed effort to obtain or make the constituent materials necessary to construct the instruments and the performance space.  How many hundreds or thousands of hours of contributed effort were necessary to created this single particular live and, but for the cameras and sound equipment, ephemeral performance of Handel's great oratorio.  I have similar feelings when I watch the credits scroll across the screen at the end of a movie, noting how very, very many people contributed effort of one sort or another to the making of that film.  How much more work and coordinated effort is required to make one movie.  I have a similar feeling as I watch the reconstruction of Interstate 43 going on between Glendale and Grafton, what an immense project it is, how many hours were and are required to plan and carry out, to coordinate this immense work of necessary infrastructure improvement and how many people over how many years benefit from it.  The live Handel performance was ephemeral; the highway is semi-permanent yet both require an enormous probably incalculable amount of coordinated human effort to effect.  Makes the musical performance even more astounding, makes me wish we could find a similar kind of coordinated working together toward a single, worthwhile goal in other social endeavors like public health, forming a more perfect Union, establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defence, promoting the general Welfare, and securing  the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.  Alas.

Was the Civil War Inevitable? NYT Magazine, 12.21.22  David W. Blight, Yale U. history professor

[O]ur country faces crises of institutional legitimacy, of utterly polarized media sources, of transparent voter suppression, of irreconcilable public-policy debates over guns, abortion, climate change, public schools and attempts to control the conduct of elections. We have reason to wonder if the persistence of racism is a transhistorical ingredient of American politics. Justifiably, we fear vigilante, militia violence against the institutions and political leaders we depend on. We rightly worry about whether American democracy can withstand the current pressures placed upon it by the authoritarian tendencies that Trumpism has unleashed. . . . Each decision says, in effect, that because certain freedoms were not enshrined in law historically, the evolution of society to embrace those freedoms is irrelevant. Would Justice Alito overturn Loving v. Virginia (1967) because marriage between two people of different races is nowhere in the Constitution, or because decades of state laws prohibited it? Should clean-air legislation be on the chopping block because it is nowhere in the 1787 or the 1868 Constitutions? What about Native American citizenship? Women’s suffrage? Federal regulation of the industrial economy? Disability rights? Same-sex marriage? And what of the precious right to vote, so long denied or suppressed by law or by violence in this country? Voting rights are not in the original Constitution, either. . .

In both cases (Dobbs & Dred Scott), the stakes are the nature and extent of freedom in this republic. What will the next year bring? Is a second Dobbs v. Jackson decision on the horizon, as Republicans in the late 1850s feared a second Dred Scott? There is good reason to fear the Moore v. Harper case from North Carolina, which will test the “independent state legislature” theory, which contends that only state legislatures — not the state courts — have authority over federal election procedures and voting rights. Progressives understandably fear that the states’ rights doctrine has become a Trojan horse of the right wing, returning power to the states so they remain safe from the post-Civil War and post-New Deal regulatory powers of the federal government. . .

Are today’s myriad crises somehow equivalent to the great question of slavery in late-antebellum America? Can our current rabble of loud difference still be governed?  . . . In other Western democracies, far-right extremists win seats in national assemblies, where coalitions can constrain their ideas. But in a two-party system, the capture of one party by extremists is enough to cause great political havoc and violence — a lesson we should have learned from the destruction of our Union in 1861.

Christian Celebration of Christmas. Texas governor Greg Abbott sent three busloads of migrants from Texas to the Naval Observatory, home of VP Kamala Harris, dropped off on Christmas Eve in sub-freezing temperatures. "Tonight, on Christmas Eve, Gov Abbott’s buses dropped off migrants at the VP’s house in the freezing cold,” the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network wrote on Twitter early Sunday. “This is not new, it has been happening for 8 months.”  "Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, but since we've got no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."  Peace on earth, good will to men.

Wonderful Christmas Day.  Spent a bit more than an hour with Andy, Anh, Peter, Lizzie, and Drew.  The present seemed to be hits.  Warm conversation. The afternoon was dinner with Steve and Nikki, up from Chicago, David, Sharon and Ellis, Maribeth Sazama and Lynn Celek, Sharon's mom and sister.  Geri roasted a leg of lamb accompanied by roasted potatoes, green beans, Brussels sprouts with pancetta, tossed salad, and hot dinner rolls plus the 2 cherry pies she made last night and the lemon mereign pie she made this morning.  Lots of animated good conversations, extended into the evening with Steve and Nikki after the other guests had left.  Lots of political talk with Steven and Nikki, each of us reinforcing our common beliefs and values. k Beaucoup de vin, some Benedictine after dinner, some cognac for me.  Lovely day all around, beginning to end.  A blessing.

1224

 Saturday,  December 24, 2022

In bed @ 9:30, awake at 3:15, up at 3:30.  Let Lilly out into 5 degree temperature with steady wind of 24 mph out of the West, wind chill of minus 18.  She was happy to come in and to go directly back to bed.  I emptied the dishwasher, recycling and trash containers.  Sunrise 7:21, sunset 4:21,  9 hours of daytime. . . By @ 4:30, Geri was up and about, unable to sleep.  Big dinner tomorrow.  By 5, Lilly was up and schnorring for some treats.  Gonna be a napping day for all of us.

New painting.  A handmaid, a la the television series based on Margaret Atwood's dystopia, to which we have moved a step closer with Sammy Alito's and the Supremes' decision in Dobbs.  

It's a bit blasphemous but I think of The Handmaid's Tale in thinking about Christmas, the Virgin Birth, and the Annunciation.   "Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Be it done unto me according to thy will." Luke 1: 37-38.  Many years ago, I did a painting of my conception (no pun intended) of the Annunciation.  It was not a happy picture by any means, rather a horror show.  

Teenage Mary being told what awaits her, painted on plywood or fiberboard, 2'X4', angels looking more like demons

More recently I did a very crude collage based on the Annunciation, again grounded on an understanding of what awaited her as the Mother of God, as told by the gospel evangelists.

The central image is of Renee Falconetti in her title role in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc.  I glued screws and nails onto the inkjet image to illustrate the suffering she was in for as the mother of Jesus.  Nest to her anguished face is the first stanza of the mournful hymn Stabat Mater: Stabat mater dolorosa/ iuxta Cruces lacrimosa/ dum pendebat filius.  The sorrowful mother stands weeping next to the cross where her son is hanging.  Other panels refer to gospel quotes of Jesus rejecting his family and exhorting his disciples to do the same thing.  “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. ” Luke 14:26.  And I included that wonderful story of Jesus being an unwelcome troublemaker, told to get out of town.  "Then the entire town came out to meet Jesus, but they begged him to go away and leave them alone." Matthew 8:34   The whole idea of the Annunciation and Mary's alleged assent to being impregnated by 'the Holy Spirit' is, to say the least, highly problematical.   Luke has the "angel: appearing to Mary; Matthew has an "angel" appearing to Joseph.  The angel tells Mary next to nothing about what she is in for except that Jesus will be great, nothing about rejecting her, being (supposedly) unmarried, considered a whacko by many, a heretic by others, a danger to the state by yet others, and of course the Passion and Crucifixion.  So the 'be it done unto me according to thy will,' was hardly an "informed consent" for what that teenager was in for.  

Brutal Weather is upon us.  The birds come to our feeders but in lesser numbers and bulked up with their feathers all puffed to help retain some body heat.  How much body heat can a little bird generate in single-digit temperatures and steady 25 mph winds?  I threw some extra seeds on the snow-covered ground to help out the snowbirds and doves and squirrels.  The snowbirds are very active, almost aggressive on the tube feeders.  Lilly still asks to be let outside every hour or so and just came in with her snoot fall of snow.  She seems to really enjoy snow and cold weather, regularly laying down in the snow to watch the world go by, but today she is skipping the leisurely lie-downs.  She seems to have the good sense to keep her outings short and purpose-driven but I still worry about frostbite on her thin ears, her tail, and her paws.

At Long Last, Homemade Navy Bean Soup!  I've wanted to make some homemade navy bean soup for a long time but was stymied by my inability to find any ham bones at the grocery store meat departments'  The other day I saw packages of smoked ham hocks and decided to try them as a substitute for a ham bone.  They seem to worked fine.  

Christmas Music.  I have managed, I think, to hear not one single piece of Christmas music this year, not on radio, not on television.  Tomorrow I will play Christmas music CDs I have in the basement.  Tonight Handel's Messiah on YouTube. "His name shall be called Wonderful! Counselor! The Mighty God! . . ."

Speaking of Wonderful, I am always moved when seeing Geri prepare a big meal for a family gathering. Tonight is no exception.  The preliminary housework, the planning, the shopping the table setting for 9, the homemade caponata, the homemade pies - all the days and night before the meal.  Tomorrow the main courses.  Phenomenal amount of work.

Nasty Backache for 2 or 3 days now.  Hoping tomorrow will be better.

1223

 Friday, December 23, 2022

In bed around 10:30, up at 5:30, one cognac.  8 below zero, wind out of the West at 26 mph, wind chill -34.

War Against Civilians  I think of the millions of civilians in Ukraine who are struggling to endure winter without electrical power.  I recall the 26 hours or so Geri and I were without power during and after our last wind storm when we had candles, flashlights,a supply of emergency water on hand, a roof over our heads, and a warm house to shelter in without missiles targeting us.  Then I think of the Ukrainians.  And the Russians who are inflicting this suffering on mothers and children, old men and women, who they say are their fellow Russians.  How do we not consider Putin, his soldiers, and his followers barbarians?

A painting I did during the Balkan Wars

Too clever by half is a phrase I first became familiar with from an old friend, fellow former Marine, fellow Vietnam vet, fellow Irish American, and fellow law faculty member Tom Cannon.  It describes a person who by attempting to be clever outwits himself.  I thought of the phrase as I listened to news coverage of the lawyer prepping Cassidy Hutchinson for her interview and testimony to the January 6th Committee.  Stefan Passantino resigned from his law firm yesterday when news of his advice to Hutchinson emerged.  Lawyers preparing a client for testimony in court or in a deposition routinely advise the client not to volunteer anything, to answer the questions truthfully but don't volunteer testimony.  Indeed a not uncommon objection to testimony by a witness on cross-examination is that the witness is 'volunteering' evidence, not simply responding to a question asked.  Another common and necessary instruction to the client-witness is 'don't guess.  If you don't know the answer, say 'I don't know. If you can't recall, say I can't recall.'  But the standard invariable instruction is "Tell the truth."  Passantino, a shanda fur die goyim, went way over the line in prepping Hutchinson, basically advising her to testify that she didn't recall an incident when she did recall it, though wasn't sure about small details.  And much more shaping of her sworn testimony.  More basically, he violated the most basic rule in a lawyer-client relationship, knowing who the client is and his duty to that client and only to that client.  Passantino was being paid and represented the interests not of Hutchinson but of Trump and the 'Trump world."  [Lord Brougham in Queen Caroline's Case: "[A]n advocate, in the discharge of his duty, knows but one person in all the world, and that person is his client. To save that client by all means and expedients, and at all hazards and costs to other persons, and, amongst them, to himself, is his first and only duty; and in performing this duty he must not regard the alarm, the torments, the destruction which he may bring upon others. Separating the duty of a patriot from that of an advocate, he must go on reckless of consequences, though it should be his unhappy fate to involve his country in confusion."]  Passantino advised Hutchinson that (1) she would not be charged for his services, (2) there would be no engagement letter, (3) the source of funding his representation would be disclosed after the end of the representation, (4) that she was to 'protect' Eric Herschmann, and (5) her job was to protect the President.  Perfidy.  In serving Trump and 'Trump World', Passantino stands an excellent chance of losing his license to practice law.  He used to work for prominent Republican law firm Michael Best whose president and 'chief strategist' is former Wisconsinite and former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Weather Watch.  The temperatures never got up to 0 today, wind chills all day in the -20 to -30 range.  The cold didn't deter Lilly from her frequent outings but it definitely shortened them.  The extreme cold also affected the behavior of the birds' behavior.  Snowbirds who normally feed only on the ground under the feeders fed on the tube feeders and the suet cake where normally they never show up.  Chickadees normally fly up to the feeders at jet speed, nab one seed and dash away to a nearby tree to enjoy their take.  Today, chickadees splitting the seed husks on the posts they perched on, so they wouldn't waste precious energy flying to and from the nearby trees.  Geri and I stayed in all day and hope to do the same tomorrow when the temperatures and winds should be almost as nasty as today's.  Spent the day reading, working on a painting of a "Handmaid", and hanging artwork in the sunroom.

12/22

 Thursday, December 22, 2022

In bed around 10, up at 5, one cognac, intestinal pain overnight, woke up with Out of Africa theme repeating in my head.  A dusting of snow or frost covers the ground Lilly covers, down to one last bag of Bengal Spice.  29 degrees and light snow starting, wind SW at 7, wind chill 22.  Sunrise 7:20, sunset 4:20, 9 hours of daylight.

The Atlantic online: IT’S HIGH NOON IN AMERICA "I tell you the story of David and Doris Young not because it is remarkable—maybe it used to be, in the 1980s and ’90s, but not anymore. I tell it to you because this figure, the violent outsider driven by extremist views and hate-filled philosophies, is everywhere now. Incel spree-killers and race-war propagators. Young white men radicalized and weaponized. They are the children of the Unabomber, each with his own self-aggrandizing manifesto. They live not in Albany, Pittsburgh, or Spokane, but in the closed information loop of Internet America, a mirror universe that reflects their own grievances back at them.  Their actions may seem irrational, but they are the practical application of a political philosophy. A decades-long undertaking to remake America, to reverse what most would call progress—toward equal rights, better schools, curbs on fraud and pollution, everything our society has done to create a safer and more caring nation—and return it to the way it was in the 19th century. A savage frontier where the strong survive and the weak surrender."

I.R.S. Routinely Audited Obama and Biden, Raising Questions Over Delays for Trump  Answer honestly provided by Donald J. Trump in 2016: “It’s a disgrace to our country  . . . It’s a crooked system. We’re running against a rigged system, and we’re running against a dishonest media.”

Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist on Romney’s 2012 campaign: "The whole idea of a guy who inherited a company, inherited all his wealth, and is now talking about a ‘rigged system’? He is the poster child of a rigged system living on Fifth Avenue.”

Sarah Smarsh, What Growing Up on a Farm Taught Me About Humility  "Even as a child, I understood that families like mine, poor rural farmers, were low in the pecking order. Television shows and movies portrayed us as buffoons and hicks, always the butt of the joke.   We didn’t need those cues to know that society held us in low esteem, though. All we had to do was look at our bank accounts.  We worked the land and killed animals so that others would eat, so that we would afford propane for the winter, and so that the rich, rigged industry we supplied grain to would become a little richer. . . The profound humility instilled in me by my upbringing left no room in my worldview for exceptionalism of any sort. It also left me troubled by the ways that most humans calculate the value of things — animals, plants, land, water, resources, even other people — according to hierarchies that suit their own interests.  From there, near the bottom of the proverbial social ladder — where women drove tractors and people of all races lived in single-wide trailers — I began to see through the many false narratives of supremacy that govern our society. That men are better than women. That white people are better than everyone else. That the rich are better than the poor. Even, yes, that human beings are better than animals. . . . But guilt for crimes committed against other species and against the earth is not equally shared. Wealthy corporations and the governments beholden to them, choosing profit over sustainability and moral decency, created and fortified the food systems with which the average individual has little choice but to engage."

I highly admire Sarah Smarsh who wrote Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.  I loved the book and read it near the same time I read Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, another remarkable memoir by another remarkable young woman.  I journal portions of Smarsh's essay from this morning's NYT because (1) Smarsh wrote it, and (2) because of her references to social classifications and categorizations, and (3) her references to corporate capitalist hegemony in the food industry, and (4) her reference to the challenges of complicity in the world in which we live.  There are times I am weighed down, in rare and not particularly welcome moments of moral clarity, by thoughts of my own complicity in so much of modern life that I purport, in moments of high moral dudgeon, to hate.  When I get too uncomfortable with my own complicities and hypocrisies, I remind myself that we live in the dystopic world we live in, not in utopia.  'Two pounds of ground beef, please, and 6 links of the veal sausage.'

Storm Watch.  CNN tells me that the wind chill in Sioux City is 45 below, 39 below in Fort Dodge.  Sioux City where I litigated a case defending WEAIT for years against a local insurance broker and a "homer" local judge.  I grew fond of the city and of the local Holiday Inn with its 'stick to the ribs' menu and eventually won the lawsuit when a different judge was assigned for the trial and won the appeal to the Iowa supreme court.  Fort Dodge is meaningful to me too.  My great-grandmother, Grandma Miler, and her husband Albert lived on and worked a farm outside the city.  My great-grandfather grew up down the road in Duncombe and my father's cousins lived on farms in the surrounding Webster County.  The Duncombe graveyard has many Clausen headstones, including my great-grandfather Jacob's and great-grandmother Martha's.

Timely Deliveries!  We had two presents that we expected to arrive at Christmas.  They both arrived today, Peter's Milwaukee Bucks sweatshirt by USPS and Ellis' Barnes and Noble book by pick-up at the bookstore.  The drive from County Line Road to Bayshore was nice and easy, maybe an inch of snow on the ground, pretty windy, but traffic on I43 moved slowly and responsibly.  Took Port Road back and no  problem there either, very few cars on the roads.  Also, the bottom panel for the new oven was delivered by UPS this afternoon.  The temperature on the drive home was 3 degrees with a brisk westerly wind.  Tomorrow and Saturday are predicted to be worse than today.  Yecch.