1031

 Monday, October 31, 2022

In bed by 11, awake a 6 but managed to fall back to sleep till 7:45, wonderful, many pss,  1 and 1/2 glasses of red, one snifter. 48 degrees out, cloudy, with a week of pleasant temperatures expected.

The Leisure Seeker

We watched the 2017 film The Leisure Seeker last night.  Each of us enjoyed it, though the movie received pretty crappy reviews when it was released, perhaps because of its denouement,  a husband-wife murder-suicide.  Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland played Ella and John Spencer, she with terminal cancer for which she had opted out of treatments, and he suffering from some form of dementia.  They take off from their home and family in Massachusetts in their 40-year-old Winnebago RV and head south to Key West for a last vacation adventure.  Along the way, they review their lives via discussions of projected photos with a startling discovery of John's long-ago infidelity with a neighbor and Ella's good friend.  The plot and dialogue are a bit hokey, especially the portrayal of John's dementia, but it can't be easy capturing the realities of dementia, its burden on the sufferer, and of course on the caregiving spouse.  And of course, the euthanasia-suicide issues are, to say the least, challenging, although both Geri and I believe that the right to end one's own life is the ultimate (pun intended and unintended) right, the ultimate human freedom.  The film's brief reflection of life in a nursing home, with a cameo by Dick Gregory as Ella's first love, was probably too benign.  A more thorough depiction would certainly make the denouement more probable, with John unable to care for himself after Ella's death from cancer.  In any event, the film does reflect the real intertwining of the lives of long-term married couples, and their mutual interdependence, at least those fortunate enough to love one another.  Watching this story with Geri nearing 80 and me past 80 must be quite a different experience from those of younger viewers.

Brazil

It appears Lula da Silva won the Brazilian run-off election although, according to the NYT, Bolsonaro and his social-media-active sons, have yet to utter a word about the results of the election.  This is ominous in light of Bolsonaro Trumplike denials of the validity of Brazil's election apparatus.  My familiarity with the Bolsonaro-da Silva competition comes almost entirely from Petra Costa's terrific documentary "The Edge of Democracy", revealing the scary similarity between the rise of Bolsonaro and the rise of Donald Trump.

Billion Dollar Powerball

I wonder whether, if I could be assured of acquiring a billion-dollar fortune right now, I would accept it.  I'm reminded of course of the 1950s television series "The Millionaire," the title a reference to the fictional John Beresford Tipton who each week would give his executive secretary Michael Anthony $1,000,000 tax prepaid to some recipient.  Some recipients' lives were enhanced with the money, while others had the opposite results.  How would I react today to such a gift?  I suspect I would accept it, not so much for Geri and me at our ages but to parcel out to our children and grandchildren though I say that in a rather knee-jerk fashion.  I'm not convinced by any means that having financial security early in life is necessarily a good thing.  On the other hand, it is hard to deny that having some wealth and security is better than living without wealth and some security.

Where's Nancy?

"This is not who we are"???  This is indeed who we are.

Geri and Cheri

Heartwarming to watch the two neighbors and friends walking across from Cheri's yard to Geri's yard, Geri holding a tall shepherd's crook, Cheri holding a wooden garden bench, both scheduled to be trashed till Geri rescued them for our gardens.

Forest Home Green Burial

Stopped at Forest Home Cemetery to buy my green burial plot and pay for the opening and closing of the site 'when the need arises' as the cemetery folks say.  The next step is making some arrangements with Schmidt and Bartelt Funeral Home for their services pre-burial.

Zablocki VA Medical Center

The arrival and departure valet parking area at the hospital's entrance.

Barbara Chase-Riboud

I listened to more of I Always Knew on my reconnaissance trip to St. Luke's in anticipation of dropping off Geri for her cataract surgery tomorrow, my stop at Forest Home Cemetery, and my visit to Zablocki.   The letters are up to 1964 and I have listened to some 7 hours of them.  I am still almost astounded at the life of wealth, luxury, privilege, and world travel that she and her photojournalist husband Marc lead.  Born in 1939, she was 25 or so as she wrote these letters and a listener, at least one in his 80s, can't help but notice how upbeat she is and why not?  She married at age 22 into one of France's wealthiest families and traveled extensively with her famous husband - Europe, Russia, North Africa, India and she had a baby at age 25 and another 3 years later.  Up to this point in her life, as far as one can tell, she has experienced no hardships in her life, no deep-seated fears, or difficult to surmount challenges.  A life like a fairy tale, so utterly different from the lives of most people.  At 25, I was fresh (not) from Vietnam, dreading CACO calls every day.  In the summer of 1964, I turned 23 in Yuma, AZ, and Michael Schwerner (24), James Chaney, (21) and Andrew Goodman (20)  in Mississippi to register black voters, were killed by local Klansmen outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.  Riots by Blacks moved to action by police violence against Blacks erupted in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York and in Barbara's hometown of Philadelphia where almost 350 people were injured and more than 750 arrested.  Barbara knew of the 'civil disturbances' and 'race riots' in the States from news reports and correspondence, mentioned the troubled state of American race relations in her letters, and recognized the legitimacy of the grievances of Black protestors generally.  But there is some cognitive dissonance in listening to her letters from France living in 'the lap of luxury' while life in the U.S. was so roiled.

Being Flynn

We watched this movie on Hulu tonight, starring Robert DeNiro, Paul Dan, and Julianne Moore.  I don't know how well it was received by the public or critics when it was released, but I was glad to have watched it, although the father-son issues, the emotionally absent father, emotionally/mentally disturbed father resonated in me in hardly welcome ways.  I need to reflect on this for a while.

1030

Sunday, October 30, 2022

In bed at about 9:30, awake at about 5:30, up about 6, 5 pss, snifter nightcap.  59 degrees out, cloudy high of 57 is expected.

Trick or Treat

Today is Bayside's little goblins day.  Over the last couple of years, we have had no kids come to our door.  The most we have ever had knocking on our door is probably 3 groups.  I'm usually the one to answer the doorbell and distribute the candy and I enjoy it, really delight seeing the kids in their costumes and their orange plastic pumpkin collection baskets.  On Andy and Anh's former block in Fox Point, literally hundreds of kids would show up from far and wide on Beggars' Day to gather candy.  Most of the houses were adorned with Halloween ghosts and skeletons and other creative spooky decorations for what had somehow become an annual neighborhood festival of sorts.  Quite a sight to see.  In my childhood in Chicago, trick-or-treating was always done on October 31st and after sundown, regardless of which day the date fell on.  Somehow, somewhere, sometime the problem of poisoned candy, razor blades embedded in apples, and other horrors became commonplace enough that trick or treating was moved to daylight hours on a weekend day near the 31st. What to think of this? 

Neighbors Roman, Anna, and MaryLou Savary

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

We watched this movie on Netflix last night, a story of a lonely widow, played by elegant Joan Plowright, ignored by her daughter and grandson after the death of her husband and her move to a 'golden age' hotel in London.  After tripping and falling in front of the basement flat of a young writer named Ludovic Meyer, Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo strike up a friendship.  At the Claremont Hotel where she resides in a small cheerless room, Ludo comes to be mistaken by the other residents as Sarah's grandson, a mistake encouraged and then sustained by Sarah and Ludo.  It's a lovely but sad story of old age and loneliness and approaching death, although as one of the residents tells Mrs. Palfrey "We're not allowed to die here."  All the elderly residents in the Claremont, played by character actors, are portrayed humorously but respectfully in the movie.  In another fall, Sarah breaks her hip, is hospitalized, developed pneumonia, and dies, with Ludo her friend to the end.  Leaving the hospital, Ludo sees a shrunken old lady in a wheelchair, alone on a walkway outside the hospital.  He makes a point of greeting her which causes her to look up and smile, reminding me of John Prine's brilliant, sensitive "Hello in There" and Brandi Carlile, barefooted and at home, singing it on Stephen Colbert's program after Prine's death.

Civil Rights 1963, White Rights 2022

I listened to Barbara Chase-Riboud's I Always Knew on the way to Whole Foods to find the salsa that Micaela served the other night on our last game night.  The letter to her mother was written in the summer of 1963, the summer of MLK's March on Washington.  As I listened to her description of frustrations and fears and anger of American Blacks in 1963 I pondered how it might apply to MAGA people today and probably since Obama's election in 2008:

    "I read about the riot in Philadelphia in the Times but I'm afraid one must be prepared for a lot worse to come before things get better.  By the March on Washington we Negroes have shown a remarkable unity.  Remember we used to say they could never get together like Jewish people?  Well, they have! and the opposition can certainly see their strength and determination.  This scares and frustrates them because they see also their ultimate defeat.  When people see defeat coming, it makes them mad, frustrated and desperate.  The result is nastiness, violence, and brutality to the last degree.  Now everyone is so aware of the problem that there is no escaping it anywhere.  People resent this.  They resent having to think about something that never concerned them before, which really concerned only us.  Already in the South, the violence has already started and the segregationists are digging in for a long, hard fight.  They can no longer either ignore the problem or pretend that Negroes are happy or pretend that they can't change it or anything else.  There are no shadowy corners left for people to hide [in.]  You are either for or against.  In America, the Negroes will begin to see how wicked and nasty the people can get when they are pushed to the extremes of a decision.  And if this [1964] civil rights bill doesn't pass, the Negroes have no choice then but to be just as nasty back. It is going to be Hell."

    Barbara's letter was written when Anne and I were living in a dinky furnished apartment on US 1 in Stafford Courthouse, Virginia, where many of the March on Washington participants from further south would have passed on their way to Washington.  It was written a few months before JFK was assassinated on 11/23/63 and about a year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by LBJ on July 2.

    Is it a stretch to analogize the fears, frustration, disappointments, and anger among American Blacks in the 1960s with similar feelings among White American MAGA people in the 2000s, especially after the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008?  Perhaps, and all analogizing carries incongruities within it.  The huge difference of course is the fear, anger, etc., of the Blacks was grounded in oppression, persecution, and long-term lack of the 'privileges and immunities' of citizenship and personhood whereas any similar feelings among Whites are based on loss of hegemony, power, and privilege. Blacks in the 60s and 70 knew they were relatively powerless in a racist society where they were stigmatized by race and heritage.  Powerless politically, powerless economically, and powerless on the streets against racist law enforcement.  "BLACK POWER" was sought not only by Stokely Carmichael and SNCC but by all the civil rights organizations, militant and otherwise.  And it's growing Black power, highlighted by the election and re-election of a Black president, that triggered the growth of right-wing, white nationalist, white supremacy movements, and the election of a White racist, authoritarian, fascistic, anti-immigrant president in 2016.  "Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have more people from places like Norway." White Replacement Theory.  "Jews Will Not Replace Us!",  Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson.  Sean Hannity.  QAnon.  White supremacy, Black subordination, Reconstruction battles, Jim Crow, States' Rights - The Civil War never ended.  It continued and continues in differing guises up to today.  The January 6th assault on the Capitol and on Congress was its most vivid manifestation.  More will probably follow and probably with more success.  Barbara Chase-Riboud wrote her mother that 'when people see defeat coming, it makes them mad, frustrated and desperate' and "They resent having to think about something that never concerned them before, which really concerned only us", i.e., minority status and power sharing in a multi-racial, multi-cultural polity.  

    The things one thinks of on a trip to buy some salsa and nacho chips.

War

News today that because of drone attacks on Russian warships in the Black Sea, Russia is pulling out of the UN-brokered agreement permitting Ukrainian grain to be shipped out to the world.  So Russia retaliated for a bomb blowing up a strategic bridge between Crimea and Russia by raining down cruise missiles, bombs, and rockets on civilian targets throughout Ukraine and retaliates for an attack on warships by contributing to world hunger, especially in poor nations, i.e., punishing more non-combatant civilians, always claiming that their inhumane crimes are the fault not of their own decisions, but because of the West.  Also news of Russian forces blanketing battle areas with white phosphorus, "Willie Peter" as Americans called it when they used it in Vietnam, supposedly for illumination purposes only.  It burns through everything and everyone it lands on, from the skin down to the bone.  An American soldier who had fought in Ukraine reported that soldiers who were sprayed with it committed suicide rather than live with the burns. 

Eighth Air Force by Randall Jarrell

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,

A puppy laps the water from a can

Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving

Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man

Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;

Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one

Lies counting missions, lies there sweating

Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.

O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,

Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,

I did as these have done, but did not die--

I will content the people as I can

And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,

Many things; for this last saviour, man,

I have lied as I lie now.  But what is lying?

Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:

I find no fault in this just man.

Gospel of John, Ch. 19  I find no guilt in him.  So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.  Pilate said to them: 'Behold the man . . .I find no guilt in him. . . .  We have no king but Caesar. . . So he delivered him to them to be crucified.

Gospel of Matthew 27:19  While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him. 'Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.'

Gospel of Matthew 27: 24-25  Pilate saw he was getting nowhere and a riot was developing.  So he sent for a bowl of water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood.  The responsibility is yours."  All the people answered: "His blood is on us and on our children."

1029

 Saturday, October 29, 2022

In bed at 10, awake at 5:00, out of bed at 5:10, 4 or 4 pss, 2 glasses of red.  Much better night than the night before.  32 degrees outside but I went outside with Lilly in just my nightshirt and it didn't seem so cold.  No wind, I guess.

A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting

Geri's dear friend Fredi Miller, her longtime on-the-road roommate on recruitment trips, mentioned to her in a text or email a documentary on HBO on the Tree of Life shooting.  We watched it last night.  Heartbreaking, sobering.  Its 4th anniversary was 2 days ago.  Fredi and her husband live in the same Squirrel Hill neighborhood where Tree of Life is located, though they are not members of the synagogue and were snowbirding in Florida when the murders occurred.  There has been a tremendous increase in anti-semitic incidents since Trump became president, part of the surge of right-wing extremism.  Not unrelated to the following

Obama in Milwaukee: and they wonder why . . .

Barack Obama appears in Milwaukee today for a big rally for Tony Evers, Mandela Barnes, and other Democrats.  The rally is at North Division High School, at 10th and Center Streets, in the heart of Milwaukee's Black ghetto, zip code 53206,   It is a high crime area where, according to a 2015 article in Milwaukee Magazine, only 37% of adult males are employed and the poverty rate for children is 66%. "Leaving aside the loss of family-supporting manufacturing jobs, consider: There are no public libraries in 53206. No major parks. No Walmart, Kohl’s, Home Depot, or Ace Hardware. No prominent restaurants, not even a McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Burger King. No Jewel-Osco, Sentry, Aldi or Pick ’n Save, with only a small Lena’s grocery off Fond du Lac and Meinecke. Child care centers, which have a median hourly wage of $8.64, are the fastest-growing business."  About 2/3rds of the families in 53206 are single-parent families with the parent being female.  Why hold the Obama/Evers/Barnes rally at North Division?  Why not, e.g., South Division? Fiserv Forum? the Arena or Auditorium downtown?  Presumably to turn out Black voters for the midterm election because Black voters are an essential component of the Democratic 'base' and Black voters are notoriously no-shows at midterms.  Milwaukee Blacks turned out in droves for Obama, and supported Hillary and Biden, but will they report in numbers for Evers and Barnes?  Probably not, despite racial solidarity with Barnes.  So the rally is held in the heart of the impoverished, crime-ridden inner city supporting the notion that the Democrats are the party of minorities and liberal elites, unconcerned about 'ordinary white workers.'  And they wonder why they have lost so many white (and Hispanic) voters to the Republicans.

Not the only pessimist

In Maureen Dowd's op-ed this weekend, "The Pelosis and a Haunted America," her concluding sentence about the dystopia we are living in is "But a feral mood has taken hold.  If you think Washington is monstrous now, just wait."

The Worst Human Being?

Writer Ken Auletta recently said that the worst human being he ever profiled was Roy Cohn.  "Flawed?  He was beyond flawed. . . he was evil in some ways, but a brilliant lawyer. . . “Prospective clients who want to kill their husband, torture a business partner, break the government's legs, hire Roy Cohn,” Auletta wrote in his 1978 profile, “Don't Mess With Roy Cohn." “He is a legal executioner—the toughest, meanest, loyalest, vilest, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America.”

    This got me wondering who I consider to be 'the worst human being' and of course, I came up with Roy Cohn's client,  Donald John Trump.  Not Hitler? Not Putin?   Hitler and Putin at least were/are beset with notions of imperial grandeur of their countries.  It was the Fatherland and Mother Russia visions that impelled them.  With the Donald, it's all Donald, not really "America Great Again."  He'd sell America down the drain in a New York minute to Russia or Saudi Arabia if the deal were good for Donald.  He's a Christian Nationalist only to attract power and adulation from hordes of Christian nationalist fools who follow him like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

1028

 Friday,  October 28, 2022

In bed around 10, up at 1:30 with GERD, the result of eating 3 cookies with chocolate chips/chunks around 9.  Should have known better.  Out of bed, into to recliner, using a long bath towel as blanket/throw, thinking thoughts of The Messenger, Doylestown, Willow Grove, Danang, New Hope, CACO, where did I get my hair cut that year, my Dad's visit,  me a shit,  my conscience appalled.  Awake and out of bed from 1:30 till 4:30 then back to bed till 7:45 or so.  Not a great night, but I've had a lot worse.

The Messenger

We watched this movie last night, maybe should not have.  The 'messenger' of the title is an Army Casualty Notification officer or staff NCO, whose duty is to notify next-of-kins (callously called NOKs by the Harrelson character) of the death or wounding of their soldier kin.  Woody Harrelson stars as the officer member of a notification team, which is the role I played in 1966-1967 in Philadelphia and its northern suburbs. The Marines refer to this duty as Casualty Assistance Calls Officer or CACO.   Every 6 days, I had CACO duty.  Every 6 days my stress level rose each hour from the time I woke in the morning till 9 p.m. when it became too late to make a notification, any notice of a KIA, WIA, or MIA arriving after 9 going to the next day's CACO team.  At 9 o'clock, I could take off my uniform and go to bed or drink some Jim Beam.  How vividly I remember eying my watch or the wall clock on each of those CACO nights, hoping the phone would not ring.  The American war in Vietnam was still young in 1966 and even in early 1967,  our major invasion occurring in March of 1965. allegedly to protect the giant airbase at Danang, where I would be stationed a few months later.  With the war being in its early stages and American troop levels being lower than they would later be, there were fewer American casualties.  I had to make only a few notification visits but I remember them.  In the case of a KIA, the screaming, the gasping, the dread that the family member had lived with since learning of their Marine's orders to Vietnam coming to fruition (wrong word) with my appearance at the door, an angel of Death.  If the Marine had 'only' been wounded, I had to shout above the screaming 'he's not dead, he's not dead.'  Gunnery Sergeant Schmidt, from Antigo, Wisconsin, was my CACO partner.  He lived in a trailer park with his wife and was my assistant at MARTD, NAS Willow Grove, which was decommissioned and transferred to the air national guard between 2005 and 2011.  I was 25 years old while stationed there, fresh out of Vietnam and thinking I'd rather be back there than serving as an Angel of Death, one of the worst years of my life, my annus horribilis.

More Time With Barbara Chase-Riboud

I listen to my Audible copy of I Always Knew only when doing something else, driving on an errand or pleasure drive, cleaning the kitchen, etc.  I have listened for more than 6 hours now, with another 17 hours remaining.  In some ways, it seems a bit of a waste of time spending time on the letters and additional text she added to the volume, but it is interesting as a real-time tale of a very talented, very newly rich, very young African-American woman in the late 50s and into the 60s.  I listened to some 1962 letters while driving to the village hall to vote and to the library to drop off some books.  She writes her mother of her and her husband's desire to buy a small shop and house for the mother in Philadelphia.  She mentions almost offhandedly the "discrimination thing to deal with" in buying any property but dismisses the concern because they can always buy the property through her white husband, Marc Ribbed, or his photojournalism agency.  Barbara was writing these letters from Europe at the same time southside Chicago was going through rapid and total racial changes in its neighborhoods, including our Englewood neighborhood.  The letters were written about 2 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and about 6 years before the 1968 Fair Housing Act, 14 years after the landmark SCt case of Shelley v. Kraemer which declared the enforcement of restrictive racial covenants in deeds unconstitutional.  It's striking though that even though legislation and court cases have improved the housing discrimination situation in the U.S., we still live a highly segregated society, notably in our cities.  Milwaukee long has been one of the most segregated cities in the country, along with Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Baltimore, despite all the laws, housing marches, and court cases.  

Casting my ballot, exercising my franchise!

Geri and I filled in our absentee ballots today.  Afterward, she went out on errands which included dropping off the ballot at the village hall.  I asked her to drop mine off too or leave it in the lockbox in the brick wall of the village hall; she said she thought that neither was allowed.  I took my ballot up myself and sure enough, the drop box in front of the village hall has been sealed along with the lockbox ensconced in the brick wall.  I dutifully got out of the car, walked the ballot into the reception area and handed it to a village clerk, who glanced at it to make sure it bore signatures for the putative voter (me) and a witness (Geri) although she didn't ask for my ID to ensure that I was indeed the voter.  Wisconsin's Republican legislatures and our Republican supreme court who declared drop boxes illegal have been vindicated, but I voted for all Democratic candidates anyway.

Where's Nancy?

82-year-old Paul Pelosi was beaten with a hammer by an intruder in his San Francisco home.  The assailant demanded of him "Where's Nancy?"  soundly ominously like the chants of some of the invaders of the Capitol on 1/6/21.   This attack will be attributed to a 'madman' of course, some 'mentally sick' individual, a 'one off' event.  I don't think so.  January 6th wasn't the beginning of the political violence (witness Michigan legislature intimidation & kidnapping plot) and Paul Pelosi won't be the end of it, especially if the Democrats manage to hold on to either the House or the Senate, very unlikely events in my pessimistic judgment.

1027

 Thursday, October 27, 2022

In bed after 11, up at 6:30, with various incoherent dreams, 3 glasses of red, 4 or 5 pss.  32 degrees out, a high of 53 expected and a sunny day.

Barbara Chase-Riboud; democrats in the WOW counties

During my long drive in Ozaukee and Washington counties yesterday as I listened to I Always Knew, I frequently thought 'This is almost unbelievable', a fairy tale.  Before she was 21, she was socializing with famous artists, like Menotti, architects, like Le Corbusier, and actors, like Charlton Heston from her bit part in Ben Hur.  From 1961 to 1971, she was married to renowned photojournalist Marc Riboud, from a fabulously wealthy French family.  Her sculpture was displayed at the first Spoleto international art fair when she was still a teenager.  She traveled the world, immensely privileged, an African-American female two years old than me, a contemporary.  And she was, I suppose not surprisingly or perhaps surprisingly, happy with her life and generally with Life.  This was in large measure because she lived, by choice, in Europe and not in the U.S.  I can't help but think of Privilege on my country drives outside Milwaukee, not necessarily in the sense of inherited wealth and status, but in the sense of 'living the American dream' with a house or farm in a beautiful location, 'far from the madding crowd' as Thomas Hardy put it.  Or as in Thomas Gray's  "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751):

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Boat launch at Little Cedar Lake

I know I am imagining or fantasizing when I think of the lives of the folks living in the countryside are unchallenged, untroubled, worry-free, and blissful, but I can't help comparing them to so many urban poor, especially Blacks in inner city ghettoes, men and mostly women I encountered at the House of Peace, getting free food in the Food Bank, free clothing in the Clothing Closet, free health care or consultations in our nursing clinic.  Black men in orange jumpsuits at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.  Mostly descendants of Blacks who came to Milwaukee in The Great Migration to work in the breweries, the foundries, the heavy industries of Allen-Bradley, A. O. Smith, Harnishfeger, Harley Davidson, and the great many smaller employers whose businesses supplied the big employers.  When the factory work disappeared, outsourced to Mexico, China, and Vietnam, life for the factory workers degenerated, especially for Blacks, and despite what seemed like hundreds of government programs to lift the community up, we are left with what we see now in the country's inner cities.  And all the problems compounded by White Backlash in the form of the contemporary Republican Party, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the social fabric of the country coming apart at the seams.  Each time I take one of my drives in the countryside, I wonder why anyone would expect people who live in the areas I drive through to vote Democratic when the Democratic Party has become so identified with racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, especially Blacks.  Lyndon Johnson was underestimating when he (apocryphally)  said, after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, that the Democrats had lost the South to the Republicans for a generation.  When Bill Clinton ("America's first Black president") signed NAFTA and Joe Biden's crime law in 1994, he made life worse for many urban Blacks.  The combination of the Democrats' identification with Blacks and other minorities and with the elites who pushed outsourcing American jobs, coupled with regulating everything from chewing gum to cow manure, the air we breathe and the water we drink, all this has led to the creation of a lot of yellow dog Republicans especially away from the cities.  There's some non-sequitur-ism in these thoughts, but they are thoughts that come to mind going for a ride in the country where yard signs for Democrats are rare as hens' teeth and Republican signs abound.  William Blake:

Every Night and every Morn,  Some to Misery are born.

Every Morn and every Night,   Some are Born to Sweet Delight.

Some are Born to Sweet Delight, Some are Born to Endless Night.

Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Poorly

My paintings, my drawings, my journaling.  If I had to do these activities well, I would not do them.  Every drawing, every painting, and every journal entry has errors, mistakes, and imperfections but if I weren't able to engage in these activities because of falling short of high standards, my life would be emptier and less worth living.  Three cheers for low standards.

Jimmy

Katherine reports that he has taken to calling her and Jordan "Geri" and "Chuck."  I miss him.

Macadamia Nuts

Learned today the hard way not to eat big fistfuls of macadamia nuts.

YouTubeTV

God bless Steve K. who called and led us through all the steps to find and select programs on YouTubeTV.

Zeke Emanuel and the Ballad of Narayama

I saw Dr.  Ezekiel Emanuel interviewed on a cable news show this morning, about the upcoming flu and covid season.  Reminded me of the article in the October 2014 Atlantic that he authored "WHY I HOPE TO DIE AT 75: An argument that Society and families—and You—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly. " It's a longish article but this was pretty much its gist: ". . . here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, and the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic." [Of course, he was describing ME at 81 going on 90].  Emanuel was 57 when he wrote it and is 65  now.  I wonder how he will feel as he nears that 75-year mark.  The article(which I printed off and have retained since 2014) reminds me of the 1983 Japanese movie The Ballad of Narayama, a story of a hamlet in 19th century Japan with a custom that when villagers attained the age of 70, they would go or be taken up a mountain where they would be left to die of hunger and exposure, a practice known as ubasute or omasute.  The idea was that resources were so scarce for villagers that they couldn't be shared with nonproductive useless oldsters. who consumed resources but did not contribute to creating them.   Long ago, I read a book by the Dane Peter Freuchen called Eskimo in which he described a similar custom obtained among indigenous people, Eskimos or Inuits, in the Arctic who had to be mobile to follow and hunt their food.  If an elder was slowing the family down, threatening its survival, an igloo would be built for him or her, with no exit, and he or she would be left to die (but protected by the igloo from predators, at least till the thaw.)  What would the 'pro-life' people say about these rational utilitarian choices to sacrifice the few to save the many?  I wonder what Zeke Emanuel thinks of assisted suicides?  

1026

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

In bed at 10:30, up at 5:30, ?? pss, 2 glasses of red.  Woke up with a dream of Geri telling me the basement was on fire.  😱  42 degrees outside, high of 52 expected, partly cloudy day, autumn-like.  The left hand seems to be 95% healed.  Wazupwiddat?  Hoping for a much better day than yesterday.

Paradise Drive

The heading is a pun on my favorite Rustic Road over in Washington County and the drive I took to get to it this morning.  I took our two Advisory Account signed authorizations to Jake Bain at Stifel's West Bend office.  The sun was shining this morning with temperatures in the 40s.  A favorite drive in the country from our days as Saukville residents: Pleasant Valley Road to CTH Z and Little Cedar Lake, Hy. 45 to 33 and Stifel, River Road to Paradise Road to Wausaukee Road to Gravel Road to CTY Y to St. Finbar's Road to Shady Lane Road to CTH I to Hy. 33 to I 43 and home.  'Colorama' coming to an end, with thousands of trees in beautiful reds and oranges and greens and ochres and yellows. big apple orchard with trees loaded with ripe apples, Riveredge and Little Cedar Lake (Ackerman County Park) more built up than in the days when I frequented these places, St. Finbar's Cemetery, the Opitz Dairy Farm whose manure we could smell on manuring days on Deerfield Road, cows peacefully lying on the ground in pasture land,  hundreds of acres of matte ochre field corn, still green alfalfa,  brown dry soybeans, widely spread out houses and picturesque farmhouses, barns, sheds, silos, outbuildings.  Many homes shielded from the road, at the end of long driveways, 'social distancing' from neighbors, Republican yard signs outnumbering Democratic 30 or 40 to 1.

THE MORNING NEWS

As Climate Pledges Fall Short, a Chaotic Future Looks More Like Reality: Without drastic action, a United Nations report said, temperatures are set to rise far more than the goal set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Texas Goes Permitless on Guns, and Police Face an Armed Public: A new law allowing people to carry handguns without a license has led to more spontaneous shootings, many in law enforcement say.

Pro-Trump Republicans court election volunteers to ‘challenge any vote’: Supporters of former president Donald Trump who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen have summoned a swarm of poll watchers and workers in battleground states to spot potential fraud this year. It is a call to action that could subject voting results around the country to an unprecedented level of suspicion and unfounded doubt.

A ‘Tripledemic’? Flu and Other Infections Return as Covid Cases Rise: Flu cases are higher than usual for this time of year and are expected to soar in the coming weeks. A third virus, R.S.V., is straining pediatric hospitals in some states.

Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935)

"In modern society the basic mechanisms of justice are becoming more and more economic rather than political, in the sense that economic power is the most basic power.   Political power is derived from it to such a degree that a just political order is not possible without the reconstruction of the economic order.  Specifically, this means the reconstruction of the property system.  Property has always been power, and inequality in possession has always made for an unjust distribution of the common social fund.  But a technical civilization has transmuted the essentially static disproportions of power and privilege of an agrarian economy into dynamic forces.  Centralization of power and privilege and the impoverishment of the multitudes develop at such a pace, in spite of slight efforts at equalization through the pressure of political power upon the economic forces, that the whole system of distribution is imperiled.  Markets for the ever-increasing flood of goods are not adequate because the buying power of the multitudes is too restricted.  Consequently a periodic glut of goods leads to unemployment crises and general depressions.  Efforts to solve this problem, short of the socialization of productive property, lead to a dangerous increase in the power of the state without giving the state final authority over the dormant economic power.  Whatever the defects of Marxism as a philosophy and as a religion, and even as a political strategy, its analyses of the technical aspects of the problem of justice have not been successfully challenged, and every event in contemporary history seems to multiply the proofs of its validity. . ."

I can't remember what caused me to pull out my dog-eared, widely underlined, and highlighted copy of Niebuhr's An Interpretation of Christian Ethics.  I don't remember when I bought and read it but it's clear I read all of it and thoroughly marked it up notwithstanding the fact that, at least now, I need to read it very slowly and think about the meaning of just about every sentence and to try to gain some understanding of Niebuhr's understanding of "God."  He wrestles quite directly with the competing 'religions' of communism and capitalism and the inadequacies of each and so it appears I should try to reread the entire work again in old age, along with Moral Man and Immoral Society.  Presbyopia and always flagging energy and focus will make that kind of undertaking difficult, maybe practically impossible.  Let's see.

1025

 Tuesday, October 25, 2022

In bed by 10, up at 4, 4 pss, 2 glasses of red,  unable to sleep, my left hand with a lot of pain, started yesterday, no idea the cause of the pain, but it's pretty bad.  Doesn't seem to be arthritis, centered in knuckles but rather muscle pain or maybe tendonitis? Problematic for a left-hander.

Dirty Bomb, Dirty War

Putin and Shoigu spread the word that Ukraine is planning to detonate a 'dirty bomb' and blame the Russians.  This seems unmistakably a cover for the Russians to do in fact what they accuse the Ukrainians of planning.  At the same time they are making this accusation, they are withdrawing (retreating) their military from Kherson, the west side of the Dnieper River and evacuating people into Russian-held territory.  Kherson is a city of more than 250,000 people, a shipbuilding center on the Dnieper River leading to the Black Sea.  Before the Holocaust, it was home to many Yiddish-speaking Jews (30%.  I fear that the Russians will detonate a 'dirty bomb' and make the city uninhabitable for the Ukrainians, a form of scorched earth strategy.  Carthago delenda est.  If Putin's Mother Russia can't have it, Putin's Mother Russia will destroy it, make it into another Chernobyl.  The downside of course is that Russia would lose the city too as a valuable Black Sea port and terminal for traffic on the Dnieper.  How could NATO respond?  How can this war end?  How much of Ukraine will Putin and the Russians make uninhabitable rather than accept defeat?  If President Zalensky is to be believed, the Russians have already packed the dam 40 miles upriver from Kherson with explosives which, if detonated, would release a tsunami on the land and inhabitants downriver.  How dirty must the war get to satisfy Putin's and the Russians' bloodthirst?

Dead Heats

The U. S. Senate races in Ohio (J.D. Vance v. Tim Ryan), Pennsylvania (Mehmet Oz v. John Fetterman), Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto and Adam Laxalt), and Wisconsin (Ron Johnson v. Mandela Barnes) are in a dead heat 2 weeks before the election. The races in New Hampshire and North Carolina are also very close and could go either way.  The pessimist in me, or the realist, sees most of these races breaking for the Republicans down the stretch and the Republicans regaining control of the Senate and the House next January.  Crime (a dog whistle for race), inflation (especially gas and food, and housing prices) will trump (pun intended) abortion, strong employment, and legislative accomplishments.  I can't help thinking that we have crossed the tipping point and the country has moved from a center-right/center-left polity towards right-wing authoritarianism a/k/a some variant of fascism.  As I said 100 times to Kitty, I hope I'm wrong.

Circadian Rhythms

Donald Hall, Notes Nearing Ninety, 'Way Way Up, Way Way Down.'  "The next morning I felt wretched, as I did the next and the next, from late September all the way into February.  All day every day I felt down, down, down - exhausted until circadian rhythms took over at suppertime.  I felt almost human until 9 p.m. and bed.  I slumped into sleep.  I woke feeling weak, even moribund.  Was I about to die?  I was a mere 86. . . Now when I had done 4 or 5 letters or emails, 5 or 6 to go, fatigue began to hollow me out.  I was not merely tired, much less sleepy.  I felt a blackness drag from my toes through my trunk into the follicles of my hair. . ."  

I thumbed through much of a small book I read a few years ago, a collection of letters that the poet Hayden Carruth wrote to a fellow poet (and wife of Donal Hall) Jane Kenyon during her final illness.  I recall one letter in which he described his decrepitude at age 73, reminding me of course of myself.  I can't find the letter (or maybe I'm misremembering, another malady of the 80s.)  I did come across "Another crisis of aging -  the loss of very perceptible chucks of my mind, and just as painful as the head and back, damn it." And this:  "Already almost a week of the new year is gone.  It's hard for me to assimilate, the passage of time now in old age.  I live in the midst of confusion, so that time doesn't go fast, as it used to when I was on top of my life, it nearly doesn't exist, everything is the same from one day to the next, and I can't remember in the evening what I did in the morning.  I sit like a frog on a lily pad in the midst of the flow.  Well, not exactly."  For Geri and me both, time goes by at meteoric speed.  We now laughingly refer to receiving our 'daily' New Yorker weekly magazine.  As for sensing the passage of time, or having some sense of it, I seem to get it only when I'm working on a painting, or from looking at various paintings and drawings I've done over many years.  They are a reminder of time spent in days past, creating paintings and drawings years ago some decades ago.

Lost Day

Too little sleep, too much pain, discomfort, too much pity party, too little gratitude.  If I were sharing a morning exchange with Kitty, she would remonstrate with me: SNAP OUT OF IT.

1024

Monday, October 24, 2022

In bed around 9:30, up at 5:30, 5 pss, no nightcap.  59 degree outside, high of 70 expected, last really warm day of the year.

Dear Dear Ellis

Geri accompanied David and Ellis up to Costco to pick up some stuff yesterday afternoon.  They got some fresh cod in typical Costco mega-size which they split between them when they got home.  While they were attending to that task, Ellis came back to the bedroom and found me replacing the sheets and pillowcases I had just washed and dried,.  I said, "Is that my favorite ballerina?"  She gave me a big hug, let me give her a big smooch on top of her head, and said 'Grandpa Chuck, I haven't seen you for SO long!"  She showed me the book Nona bought her at Costco: Dracula!  I was surprised that she had an interest in the nasty count but now that I think of it I wonder if the interest springs from Sesame Street's "The Count (One, two, three . . .).  She said Costco also had a Frankenstein book available. Geri later told me that the store didn't have much of a selection for 8 years olds.  I guess.  Ellis' book reminded me of my monster period of reading, when I read Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hydes, back to back.  Great reads all of them.  I think I enjoyed Bram Stoker''s masterpiece the most but Stevenson's is terrific two, reminding now of Solzhenitsyn's great insight: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts.  Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

Reveal Radio: Marquette, the Jesuits, and Indian Boarding Schools

That I didn't think to include Ellis' heartwarming visit and the Reveal Radio episode on WUWM yesterday reminds me of how scattered my brain is in old age.  I listened to part 2 of Reveal Radio's broadcast of 'Buried Secrets: America’s Indian Boarding Schools', dealing with the Jesuit boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation, near the slaughter field of Wounded Knee.  The school is now named Red Cloud Indian School, and is still a Catholic and still Jesuit school, but was originally called Holy Rosary Mission, run by the Jesuits and an order of German Franciscan sisters.  All very interesting, all a reminder of America's history of racist oppression not only of Blacks but of Native Americans and other minorities, but what especially caught my attention was the portion of the documentary report relating the narrator's attempt to access records that the Jesuits and an order of German sisters kept.  The focus of the episode is on unmarked graves, burial places of infants and children who attended the Catholic school, like the burial places of children in Ireland connected with the infamous 'mothers and children's homes.'  The episode also addresses briefly the issues of native land given to the Church and monies collected by the Church from tribal resources.   A group of Lakota Sioux try to collect information about the school and especially about the children buried at the school from the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, which administered boarding schools like Red Cloud.  The records are all kept in the Archives of Marquette University, but efforts to retrieve information are restricted by the archivists, some information is redacted, and many records are simply 'off limits' to researchers on claimed grounds of 'privacy'.  Marquette head archivist, Amy Cooper Cary, says it is up to the Bureau of Indian Catholic Missions to decide what the public is allowed to see.  Quaere: how many records deal with predation?  abuse?  The researchers do happen upon a diary maintained by one of the German religious sisters at the school.  The diary describes the widespread deaths from diseases on the reservation, the absence of medical and medicinal help, the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, 'on the doorstep' of the Mission and Church, and the cemetery next to the church building holding the remains of many of the Wounded Knee slain.  My tenuous connection to Red Cloud Indian School/Holy Rosary was George Winzenberg, S.J., who was pastor of Gesu Parish on the Marquette campus from 1996 till 2002 when he left for the Pine Ridge mission.  He succeeded Andy Alexander as pastor (1988-1996), one of our retreat ants in the Dominican Republic in 1999. or 2000.  Winzenberg served as president of Red Cloud Indian School for 9 years and served another 5 as member of the board.

STWTMW

Old man, hunched forward with arthritis(?), walking a little black and white dog with one brown spot, man's pace slow, dog's fast; young father pushing a stroller with baby; sparrows and finches above, snowbirds below.

Threats to Democracy, the basics, or the best government money can buy

According to a very recent NYT/Siena poll, "while 71 percent of registered voters agreed that democracy is “under threat,” only about 17 percent of voters described the threat in a way that squares with discussion in mainstream media and among experts — with a focus on Republicans, Donald J. Trump, political violence, election denial, authoritarianism, and so on. . . .  Instead, they point most frequently to a longstanding concern about the basic functioning of a democratic system: whether government works on behalf of the people.  Many respondents volunteered exactly that kind of language. One said, “I don’t think they are honestly thinking about the people.” Another said politicians “forget about normal people.” Corruption, greed, power and money were familiar themes.  Overall, 68 percent of registered voters said the government “mainly works to benefit powerful elites” rather than “ordinary people.”

Repairers of the Breach

Made another trip to 14th and Vliet to drop off winter and fall coats and jackets.  In retrieving my old garments from wardrobes in the basement, I realized I had a collection of sport coats down there.  I wondered whether to donate those along with the outer garments and decided it might be better to donate those to the House of Peace.  Still wishing there was a program focused on assisting men to prepare for job interviews with professional-looking clothing, especially to donate my Allen Edmund shoes.  I can't get myself to donate them to Repairers when they would be so much more useful for men seeking employment.  Ditto with the clothing bank at the HOP, where there's a good chance they would be scarfed up by someone just to sell them and make some money for God knows what, probably not food, or rent, or meds, but who knows.  I need to get on a stick about this.  The shoes have been sitting in their Allen Edmond boxes for years and ought to be used by someone.  

Barbara Chase-Riboud: I Always Knew

For several days, I have been listening to my Audible text of this collection of letters from Barbara Chase-Riboud to her mother.  The book is very long, 24 hours long in spoken form, and 480 pages in writing.  She is a truly extraordinary person - a celebrated sculptor, novelist, and poet.  In 1956 when she was 18 years old, she graduated from Temple University with a BFA and was awarded a scholarship to the American Academy in Rome.  She spent the next year in Europe, mostly Rome but also Paris, Egypt, Spoleto, and elsewhere where she rubbed shoulders with many artists, actors, models, and others.  She earned some money selling pieces of sculpture and by modeling and even playing bit parts in movies.  She met an extraordinary assortment of artists, scientists, and other significant people, including Charleton Heston, Ben Shahn, and Gian Carlo Menotti.  Her letters are interesting and I've listened to about 3 and 1/2 hours of them. but I'm wondering whether I should continue listening.  The letters I've heard are from a 19 or 20-year-old young African-American woman living an extraordinary privileged life in the late 1950s.  The many parts that are politically or sociologically or otherwise historically interesting are sandwiched between comments on clothing, hairstyles, friends and dates, etc., matters of great interest to a young woman in her late teens but not to me.  I'm guessing the letters get more interesting as she grows older and is more celebrated for her artistic achievements.  To continue or not continue, that is the question.😕  Actually, I think I know the answer.  I want to hear how she got into writing poetry and her novel about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.  Talk about a polymath!

YoutubeTV

Finally succeeded in subscribing to this streaming service but can't download the app that would let me control choices. 😡😠😢xfljattleavndaxx!!!!!

10/23

 Sunday, October  23, 2022

In bed around 10, awake at 6:30, 5 pss, one glass of chablis before dinner, and another with dinner.

I43 Construction Project

Reading an article in this morning's WaPo by Ashley Parker about the ups and downs of Joe Biden's first two years as President.  The article mentions the massive Infrastructure Act but says little about it.  The reference however made me think again of how impressive the reconstruction of I43 is.  It's hard to imagine how much planning and management have gone into this project.  I see its implementation every time I drive north or south on the freeway, all the way down to Capitol Drive and all the way up to Grafton.  It's impossible not to be impressed, struck by the immensity of the undertaking, the number of engineers, planners, managers, construction workers, foremen, and supervisors whose somehow coordinated work makes the accomplishment of the overall goals possible.  It reminds me in a less grand way of the extraordinary accomplishment represented by the Webb telescope, orbiting the Earth from its spot 1,000,000 miles away, reaching farther into the Universe's past, back toward the Big Bang, than ever before possible.  Also, the project of aiming a satellite at a 'moon' of an asteroid, trying to hit it so as to be able to deflect an asteroid that may one day hurl towards Earth and a fatal Big Bang.  Just astonishing feats of human cooperation towards a common goal, so clearly possible for engineers and scientists, so woefully impossible for politicians and hoi polloi as we hurl towards not just authoritarianism but Fascism.  The current electioneering for the midterms reminds us almost every hour of every day, at least when there is a television or radio on, that it's much, much easier to hate one another than it is to love one another, the Great Commandment notwithstanding.  It's infinitely easier to be simply indifferent to one another than to love or, perhaps even harder, to like one another, to harbor nasty thoughts or judgments or simple hunches about others than to imagine hidden goodness in them, kindness or even saintliness in them.  It's as if we live in Bunyan's Slough of Despond except that rather than being crushed by our own sinfulness and unworthiness, we are crushed by the wickedness, the worthlessness of Others, political Others.

Nemeses

Is the plural of nemesis nemeses or nemesises? I opt for the shorter word, Occam's Razor.  Geri's nemeses are mostly seasonal.  In the Spring, it's the white-tailed deer eating her new flowers.  In the Fall it's the ginkgo berries, thousands of them on the garage driveway and lawn, waiting to be stepped on and squished, oozing smelly exudate on the bottoms of shoes and temporarily staining the dark asphalt with ochre splats.  Throughout much of the year it's the chipmunks, brazenly digging into her outdoor flower pots to secret their treasures.  And not to be forgotten - those predatory coyotes who probably would not seek to make a meal out of our beloved Lilly, who is probably too large for coyote bait, but you never know, especially if they are paired up or, God forbid, in a pack.

Winter Coming

Time to turn off the water to the outside spigots.  Geri's scooping up every ginkgo berry she can, bagging them for tomorrow's trash pickup.

Schadenfreude

How petty can I be?  I'm feeling some delight that the Packers lost again today, 3-4 on the year, 3 straight losses, and 2 straight home losses.  My feelings are based entirely on being a big non-fan of QB Aaron Rodgers, god's gift to football and to the world.  How does a team with Mr. Football at the helm lose like this, Mr. Leadership, Mr. 'Yes, I've been immunized'?

Petit's Clavigo

Watched more.  Wow, lusty.  Who knew?  Lotsa bouncing, twitching, lurching, and leering,  and no mistaking what is being reflected by the movements, oral and genital coupling.  I wouldn't have thought a ballet based on a story by Goethe would be this sensual.  I guess I need to learn more about Herr Goethe.  😓😅😈😳

What Just Happened

We watched a movie with this name on Hulu in the evening, big stars including Robert DeNiro, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, Kristen Stewart, Catherine Keener, and John Turturo.  Barry Levinson directed.  Huge put down of Hollywood and the movie-making culture.  Found out after watching it that it was rated "Rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes, but I enjoyed it. thought the actors all did good jobs in their roles and that the plot was believable-enough satire.  DeNiro was one of the producers of the movie in which he played a sad sack movie producer in a world of self-serving narcissists.

1022

 Saturday, October 22, 2022

In bed a bit after 10, up a bit before 5, 5 pss, 1 and 1/2 glasses of red.  Woke up thinking of the Lincoln Project and thinking of doing some work on the hands and/or hair on the large portrait in the basement. Cynthia Ozick, whose name I couldn't conjure up, no surprise. . . . .In the afternoon I confirm what I feared about Cynthia, it's an oil, not acrylic.  Not ready to get back into oils and the need for turpentine, solvents, and good ventilation.  Not doable in the basement.  Can't paint acrylic over oil.  Sad or glad?  Big expensive canvas, bought on sale.  To cover and repaint would have to be oils, smell up the basement.

The Lincoln Project

We finished watching the 6 episodes of this fascinating and informative Showtime series last night.  I had a vague recollection that the project had ended and that there was a scandal connected with the breakup, but never knew how deep and emotionally charged the fractures within the group were.   These folks were kind of heroes to us when they were cranking out ads on TV during the 2020 election season, and writing and appearing on TV talk shows excoriating Trump and his people.  Steve Schmidt was especially prominent because he was so eloquent in denouncing Trump and Trumpists on his very frequent guest appearances on MSNBC and elsewhere.  We tended to temporarily at least forget that he was a true blue Republican, mastermind of John McCain's failed presidential campaign and responsible in large measure for McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate.  Rick Wilson wrote the book with the magnificent title "Everything Trump Touches Dies" and Stuart Stevens wrote "It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump" in which he admits, from the inside, that the Republican appeal in elections is based on race, white fear and white resentment. John Conway, Kellyanne's husband and prominent Washington lawyer, was a founder who brought his legal expertise to the project and many others brought marketing and other communications skills to the effort to defeat Trump.  It all blew up after the election after the disclosure of homosexual predation on interns by founder John Weaver and secret financial self-dealing by Schmidt, Wilson. Reed Galen and Stevens (?). Wilson and Galen and Schmidt are still with what is left of the Lincoln Project, but Schmidt, Conway, Weaver, and Jennifer Horn have all severed their ties.

Our Town

There have been 185 homicides in Milwaukee so far this year, 24 more than last year's record-breaking rate.  Few than half of all Milwaukee homicides result in someone convicted of a crime.  The Journal-Sentinel graphic of homicide locations shows no homicides east of the Milwaukee River, all homicides west of the river.

RIP Schatzi

Jimmy's cat Schatzi, renamed Jane Fonda by Steve and Maggie, died yesterday after only 2 months or so as a Californian.  Jimmy was so concerned that the cat not survive him, worried about what would become of the cat if Jimmy died first.  I miss him, his sensitivities, his quirks, and his terrific sense of humor.

WTWTMW

Tall gangly fellow, sitting upright on his bicycle, wearing bright yellow stripes on a black cycling outfit, a la Tour de France.  Judging from his stately posture atop his bike, not likely a competitive biker.  Wondering why the outfit.   Debbie McGregor is out walking their white lab Armand, our decidedly unfriendly neighbor dog.  Small leaves or bits of leaves fall gently on the front lawn.  Sun shining, bird feeders unvisited in midmorning after busy early morning rush.  Two more days of unseasonal warm weather are expected.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, John Kenneth Galbreath, Charles Healy Clausen

Why is it that some of us go by 2 names while others go by 3, or even 4 with hyphens?  Women with maiden/married names of course but men?  The Brits seem to be really into it, at least the haut bourgeois.  I thought Camilla Parker Bowles was using her maiden name and married names but not so.  Her husband was Andrew Parker Bowles, son of Derek Henry Parker Bowles - 4 names, no hyphen.  Wassupwiddat?

Me and the Poet Laureate

Donald Hall, A CARNIVAL OF LOSSES; NOTES NEARING NINETY: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.  "Last night I went to bed at 10:30 and got up at 7, a good night's sleep.  During the night I woke three times, but I didn't lie there twitching.  When I woke I looked at the clock's illuminated hour, turned on my reading light, took a sip of water, stood up to piss in a bottle, took another sip of water, read a paragraph in The Economist, and went back to sleep.  Each waking interlude - at 11:57 p.m., 2:12 a.m., and in the wee August light of 5:15 - took four and three-quarters minutes.  I follow this script seven nights a week, sometimes two wakes with pees and a page, sometimes four wakes, and once I didn't wake up until 8 a.m.  I feel fine, sip some coffee, smoke an electronic cigarette, eat breakfast, read the paper, do an eighty-seventh revision, an eighty-eighth . . . After I married Jane, . . . . during the night, I got up to scoop ashes from the cast-iron stove and got up again, I hung up my nightshirt . . .

Ballet Nu,  Ballet Blanc

Watched Petite Mort by what I assume to be a Russian company, probably Kirov Ballet, modern work by Jiri Kylian.  Identifying script in the Cyrillic alphabet.  Mind-blowing, exquisite movement and music by Mozart, including 'Elvira Madigan.'  Dancers appear to be nude.  Also watched the opening sequence of Clavigo by Roland Petit with the Paris Opera Ballet, and music by Gabriel Yared, one of my favorite composers of movie soundtracks.  Both works are very erotic, a bit shocking.

1021

 Friday, October 21, 2022

In bed around 11, awake at 5:30, CPAP mask off trying to sleep, up at 5:45 with thoughts of Hattie Clayton and her children, telephone calls this past year from Hattie, Lovie, children w/o fathers, children having children, Tiffany's 'my cousin has a bay and I want a baby,'  'culture of poverty', the goodness/badness of cutting loose, shotgun weddings in ''white culture''.  37 degrees and clear skies outside but getting up to 70 today and for the next 3 days supposedly.

Freeway construction.

Returned two books to the North Shore library last night (Kees van Dongen) and picked up Donald Hall's A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, two books of poems by Mary Oliver, and one titled Gestapo Crows: Holocaust Poems by Louis Daniel Brodsky.  Port Road shut down for construction between Bender Road and the library road and signs approaching Good Hope told me to detour.  Didn't see the sign saying 'open to local businesses' and ended up taking a sinuous route to get to the library.

One of Hall's little essays "Cutting a Figure" strikes home: "My mother in her mid-80s wore the same thing every day, a long and voluminous device that she called a caftan.  It reached from her shoulders to the floor, was easy to put on and take off, and required no underwear.  When she walked hunchbacked to warm up her oyster stew or squat in the WC, her caftan was sufficient. From birth to death, we inhabit one sort of clothing after another . . . . When I had trouble tying my tie and it took half an hour to button a shirt I graduated to T-shirts all year, long sleeves in the winter and short in the summer.  But for my legs?  Linda thought sweatpants might work . . . I am equipped for the remainder of my life, except for the penultimate johnny and ultimate shroud.  I dress almost as easily as my mother did in her caftans.  My sweatpants hold up all day and don't fall down.  Gradually the elastic cuffs crawl from my ankles up to my knees, returning me to the nickers of Spring Glen Grammar School, or much better, the Boston Red Sox."  This reminds me not only of my current tendency to wear sweatpants every day but also of the fact that a couple of months ago  I actually looked up men's caftans on the internet, thinking they would be my preferred habiliment.

Sinead O'Connor: "Nothing Compares" and Seinfeld: 'The Bris'

Stayed up later than usual last night and watched a segment of my partial recording of the Sinead O'Connor documentary, which reinforced my admiration for her, my appreciation for her courage and values and extraordinary talent and extraordinary beauty and my sympathy for her many struggles in life.  I remember watching her in October 1992 when she tore up a photo of John Paul II on SNL saying "Fight the real enemy."  This was before the pedophile/coverup scandal broke worldwide.

Then watched episode 5 of season 5 of Seinfeld: "The Bris" which brought tears to my eyes from laughter.  The older I get the more I appreciate the comedic acting skills of Julia Louis-Drefuss, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards.  Extraordinary.  When George passes out at the bris, I 'lost it' laughing.  I'm laughing just remembering it, wondering whether I should watch the episode again.  Having memories of attending the bris of one of David Lowe's sons with Friebert and John Finerty and Finerty's and my squeamishness.

Sean O'Faolain's BIRD ALONE

PAGE 128; "It was the end of our piety.  All the bitterness of the miserable years after Parnell soured us both - made us full of hatred and contempt.  Less and less often we went into the city for the faction fights and the tar barrels and the speeches.  My grander returned to the pubs and the old meeting rooms where he met his friends who had known the old days and would talk to him of their glories as captive Jews might talk of Israel.  In that way, when I had not Elsie, I became a bird alone, a heron without a mate in an expanse of grass."

Security Insecurity

This morning's WaPo: Globally, stocks have lost roughly $30 trillion in value so far this year while bonds have suffered one of their worst years ever.  70/30 allocation?

“There is a risk of a disorderly tightening of financial conditions that may be amplified by vulnerabilities built over the years,” the International Monetary Fund warned this month in a report, which said financial stability risks had grown since April and are “significantly skewed to the downside.”

Wild Turkeys

8 of them showed up under our feeders after I filled them and dumped some large seeds and nuts out of the tube feeder.

Bannon predicts impeachment of Merrick Garland

After being sentenced to 4 months incarceration for contempt of Congress, he predicted that in the next Congress with Republicans in the majority, Garland will be impeached 'and removed from office.'  Probably correct re impeachment assuming that by next January, Garland will have authorized the indictment of Donald Trump for one or another felony.  Conviction and removal from office however requires a 2/3rd vote in what will be in any event a closely divided Senate.  If an impeachment investigation does occur in the House, it's hard to imagine what an incredible mess it will be with subpoenas issued to DOJ prosecutors and other officials.

1020

 Thursday, October 20, 2022

IN bed at 9:30, awake at 5:30, upas 5:40, 4 or 5 pss, 1 snifter.  Woke up thinking of Barbara Chase-Bidoud in Rome in 1957 at age 18, Italian men, bella, bella, bella, only 'colored person' or "Negro' in sight,, wondering whether she preferred Rome or Paris.  Geri and Lilly came out around 6 and Lilly started loud barking and low growling when she looked out the living room window.  Geri thought it was probably a deer and went outside with the flashlight.  Mating season has begun with the males at high testosterone levels and the females beginning estrus.  Not a time for Lilly to be challenging big guys with antlers.

0745

36 degrees, overcast, dark,  Little action at the feeders, but snowbirds and a young female cardinal rooting around on the ground.  Reading opinion pieces in the morning NYT.  Ai Weiwei's piece "No, Capitalism and the Internet Will Not Free China's People" and Carlos Lozada's "A Good Faith Examination of Bad Faith" - each makes me think hard about our culture and our economy and our politics, about my own pessimism, defeatism, fatalism, proneness to righteous certitude and smugness. Ai Weiwei's essay has me thinking of the commonality of dominant, dominating social-economic-political cultures, thought control, mind manipulation, Bib Brothers - China's dominated by the Communist Party and Xi Jinping and America's dominated by Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and Silicon Valley.  Lozada writes of "The Rhetoric of Reaction" by Albert O. Hirschman, a book I should try to read.  Lozada: " . . . Hirschman was not merely wishing for a more civil public square. He viewed democratic pluralism as a shaky bargain, based not on a consensus over shared values but on a recognition by competing sides that none could achieve political dominance. “Tolerance and acceptance of pluralism resulted eventually from a standoff between bitterly hostile opposing groups,” Hirschman wrote. Democracy is not what partisans prefer; it is what they settle for." (emphasis mine, not his).  As I have long believed, at bottom, none of us is all that committed to democracy, majority rule, or the so-called rule of law.  As Woody Allen infamously said "the heart wants what it wants.  There's no logic to these things."  Re "bitterly hostile opposing groups":  "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Democracy Now

Liz Truss has resigned after 6 weeks in office.  Two disastrous PMs in a row.  Third PM in four months.  Tories will decline to call a general election because they would be trounced by Labor.  Again, the British electorate will not select the next PM; the Conservative Party members will.  Thatcherites are in deep dung in Britain; Trumpites are probably about to take over Congress in the US.  What will this development mean in terms of Russia and Ukraine?

5-inch or 6-inch gutter guard; uselessness

We need leaf guards for our gutters.  Costco has a sale on them but they come in 2 sizes, 5-inch and 6-inch.  Don't know which we need and can't climb a ladder to do some measuring.  Useless around the house except in the kitchen. . . . .  Went to Costco on way to West Bend Stifel conference, bought 2 boxes (36 ft. each) of the 5-inch variety.  Fingers crossed that they'll fit or that we'll be able to exchange them.

Conference with Jake Bain/Stifel

TMI, too fast talking.  Called upon to make a decision about sticking with our 'brokerage account' with Stifel to an 'advisory account.'  The maintenance fee for Stifel would increase from  .64% to about .92% but, according to Bain at least, the increased return would more than cover the difference.  Would involve moving away from the Washington Funds family to a mixed bag of Vanguard, Scheewab and other funds, with the 70/30 conservative allocation staying the same.

1019

 Wednesday, October 19, 2022

In bed @ (:30, up @ 5:30,5 psss, no toddy.  Woke up with some indecipherable dream, thinking of the Goldberg family.  35 degrees outside, high of 47 is expected.

Morning Feeding

Love to see all the activity at and under the fully-loaded bird feeders on a cold morning.  On the ground snowbirds and squirrels are busy looking for seeds that birds have knocked loose from the feeders while looking for more desirable seeds.  Up above a magnificent red-bellied woodpecker takes his time searching out the perfect sunflower seed or small nut while chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches try their luck on the opposite side of the tube feeder.  At around 10 inches long and up to 80 or 90 grams in weight, the woodpecker easily dominated the nuthatches and chickadees who have about half the length and maybe 1/8th to 1/10th the woodpecker's weight.  On the ground, a white-throated sparrow joins the pretty slate-colored snowbirds and up above a little downy woodpecker has the suet cake all to herself.

Donald Agonistes

Trump is scheduled to be deposed at Mar-a-Lago by Jean Carroll's attorney in her defamation case against row defamer-in-chief.  Presumably, Trump will say what he has always said of the charge that he raped her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room back in the 90s, i.e., that he never met her, doesn't know her, didn't rape her, and perhaps his kicker "she's not my type."  What a way to nearing the end of one's life.  He's 76 years old, probably in questionable health because of age, obesity, diet, etc., and besieged by enemies seeking to hurt him - private litigants, federal prosecutors, congressional committees, a state prosecutor, and the NY attorney general.  After the 2016 election, he thought he was on top of the world, king of the hill, leader of the free world, and invincible.  His always vulnerable ego always at least tentatively satisfied by being probably the most famous man in the world, able to draw thousands of cheering fans at his rallies slaking his thirst for affirmation, adoration.  And always protected from enemies by the powers and privileges of his public office.  He knew there was a tsunami of legal woes awaiting him if he lost the office of the presidency hence his extraordinary criminal attempts to avoid losing the office.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcolm X would say.  Louis XV's apocryphal saying "Apres moi, le deluge" might appropriately be attributed to Donald John Trump.  His personal deluge of legal attacks has begun and may come to something or come to naught, but the country's political & social deluge pends like Domocles' sword.  We'll know a lot more in three weeks with the midterms, which I expect Trumpies will do well in, and even more as 2024 approaches.  We're in the middle of the Biden Pause, but I fear it's like the eye of a Trumpian hurricane, with death and destruction awaiting us.

The Myth of Democracy, British style

Liz Truss, the now-infamous prime minister of the UK is now widely believed to be on her way out as PM after only a couple of months in power.  A problem is that there is a rule in Parliament that there can't be another vote of no confidence after the one ousting the last PM,  Boris Johnson, for 12 months after the last one.  So that rule would have to be abolished/rescinded, suspended/whatever to get rid of her..  The problem with that is that there is no successor visible in the wings and the Tories are 20 or 30 points behind Labor so the last thing Truss's confreres want is a general election that would put Labor in charge of the government.  Most fascinating is how Truss became the PM of economically significant, nuclear power, NATO member: elected not by the people of GB, but by a relatively few members of the Tory Party, party members comprising @ 150,000 mostly elderly right-wing people, representing about 0.2% of the British population.  

Afternoon Feeding

By 1:00, the bluebirds return, sharing the suet cake with a female downy woodpecker.  Song sparrows and house finches or purple finches, too.  The bluebirds remind me of a corny plangent (new word I just learned) song by Marvin Rainwater that I loved at age 16.

Gonna find me a bluebird / Let him sing me a song

Cause my heart's been broken / Much too long

Gonna chase me a rainbow / Through a heaven of blue

Cause I'm all through cryin' over you

There was a time my love was needed / My life completed, my dreams come true

Then came the time my life was haunted / /My love unwanted, all for you

Those were the days when I could understand the lyrics of popular songs and even memorize them.

I Always Knew

Started listening to I Always Knew, the collection of letters to her mother from the remarkable Barbara Chase-Riboud.  The early letters are from October 1957, when she was 18 years old and on her way from home in Philadelphia to Paris and Rome.  It's clear from her diction and vocabulary that she had an educated upbringing and that she is otherwise gifted.  It's clear from her candor to her mother that they had a close relationship.  She writes at the time the USSR had launched Sputnik and notes that the French are happy about it because 'they believe in this balance of power stuff' and are just as afraid of the US as of the USSR.  As she was writing from Europe, I was a junior at Leo High School, madly in love with my first true love, Charlene Wegge who attended the Catholic snooty all-girl Longwood Academy.  Or was I still dating the beautiful Irish Maureen Boyle who attended Catholic all-girl Mercy High School?  What was I thinking about Sputnik, if anything?  Less than I was thinking about Maureen or Charlene or the records of the Leo football and basketball teams.