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.