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September 6, 2022

In bed at 10ish, awake at 3, after 2 pss, no vino.  Lilly came in the room when I returned to bed, lay down licking her front legs from her 'corn tassel' allergy.  I got up at 3:25 and let her out.  Normally when I would let her out and in while Geri is still asleep, she goes right into Geri's bed and stays till Geri wakes up (or Lilly wakes her up.)  This morning she went right into the kitchen for a treat as she does after her daytime outings, drank quite a bit of water, then returned to Geri's bedroom.

    Can it be?  My backache seems to have largely disappeared.  Started on August 20, overnight, and been with me every single day until today.  17 days.  What is that all about?!?!

    Steve texted a photo  last night of Jimmy sitting happily next to Jordan. The torch passes.  Geri went over to Jimmy's apartment this morning to finish cleaning up and cleaning out Jimmy's 'stuff.'  For all of her very real toughness (in the sense of strength, courage, and resiliency) and occasional hyperbolic or histrionic talk about her nemeses (flower-eating whitetail deer, chipmunks, Donald Trump and a few other member of the human species), she is such a remarkably caring and loving and responsible human being.

    This morning's WaPo has a feature story headlined "The Logistics of Death Can Be Overwhelming. New Apps Can Offer Help."  It mentions applications named 'Cake,' 'Lantern,' and 'Empathy'.  I forwarded it to Geri and myself.  Time to get on the ball.

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    Thinking of Niebuhr, I came across the following thought of H.L. Mencken in a short piece called "The Mind of Man:" 'Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, and hobgoblins' and 'The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.  It is the chief occupation of mankind.'  Both seem relevant to Niebuhr's thoughts on group behavior, group ethics, group morality.

    And E. J. Dionne again in 'Obama's Favorite Theologian:'  "We need a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us and a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy’s demonry and our own vanities. Americans, Niebuhr argued, were never safe against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire. One great Niebuhrian quote should hang over all seminars. Niebuhr once said that “we must always seek the truth in our opponents’ error and the error in our own truth.” And that is also classic Niebuhr."

    All the reading and thinking about Niebuhr has me reflecting on the wickedness of the deep cynicism and pessimism I've permitted myself to sink into.  Ditto the wickedness of entertaining any thought that well, I'm going to die soon and won't have to live with the fascism looming over us.  Can't claim to harbor any love for neighbor, family, children, grandchildren, millions of other children growing up as I grow older and older and consider myself a decent human being while thinking it won't effect me so so what.

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    I started watching the 2014 film Ida, set in Poland in 1962 and telling the tale of an 18 year old orphan raised in a convent orphanage and about to take her vows to join the sponsoring religious order when her superior sends her off to meet her only known relative, an aunt, who lets her know that she is a Jew whose family were killed in the Holocaust.  Powerful film, tremendous in the ancient sense of 'to be trembled at,' from tremor and tremendus.   Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, beautifully filmed in black and white, softly, subtly acted a la Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman.  Stunning.

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    Did some painting on the Calder knockoff.  I need to figure out what to do on the right side to provide some kind of balance, or do I want it unbalanced, like its painter?😀