1130

 

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

  In bed at 9:30, Andy sent a text at 9:50 re Peter's pick-up, up at 6, 4 pss, one cognac.  Remembering to make Geri's coffee first thing after yesterday's forgetfulness.  25 degrees out with a stiff 21 mph wind directly from the West producing a wind chill of 10 degrees, high of 32 expected.  Winter getting serious.

Jill Lepore, These Truths

I listened to a portion of my Audible copy of this history, the portion relating to FDR, his attempts to provide relief of various kinds during the Great Depression, the resistance of the Business Interests (i.e., Republicans), the inevitable charges of "SOCIALISM!!!".  He and Hitler both came to power in 1932, he at the beginning, and Hitler at the end.  In 1936, a cigar-chomping Texas congressman named Martin Dies, Jr., started the notorious  House Committee on Un-American Activities, intended to ferret out fascist and communist influences within the U.S.  With the Republicans back in charge of the House come next January, I suspect we may see a resurgence of HUAC under Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.  What Faustian bargains is Kevin McCarthy making in his quest for the Speakership?

LOMW seeing 7 goldfinches perched on the long niger tube feeder and another on the niger sock, thinking of Darwin and evolution, natural selection, niger seeds vs. sunflower seeds vs. millet seeds vs. peanuts and suet.

Nick Fuentes

I continued watching the YouTube 90-minute podcast featuring Nick Fuentes being interviewed at age 21.  He also has me thinking of Darwin and natural selection.  He is clearly quite intelligent, articulate, and quick-witted,  He attended Lyons Township high school and one year at Boston University.  He uses words like "heuristic" comfortably and not ostentatiously.  He has some grasp of historical facts though probably tendentiously, if that is a correct use of the term, historical facts helpful to the positions he advances.  Some of his identity features seem counter-intuitive, e.g., dogmatic Catholic, virgin, incel, but of course he may be simply lying since the ability to lie can be very useful in the media, celebrity world, in a Darwinian-Spencerian world of the survival of the fittest, Trump's world.  There can't be any serious doubt of his racism and antipathy towards Jews.  Re Blacks and criminality, he blames genetics in large measure.  He's good-looking, almost cute, and very upbeat, happy.  Reminds me of Rush Limbaugh.  At bottom, he is a Nazi.

Hakeem Jeffries was elected Leader of the House Democrats today, widely heralded as the first Black party leader in the history of the Congress.  I admire him and remember his performance as one of the 7 managers in the first Trump impeachment trial.  I can't help wondering thought about the political cost of having as one of the principal Democratic spokesmen a Black man from Brooklyn with a name that is one of the 99 names of God in Islam while the Senate Democratic leader is a Jew from Brooklyn nicknamed 'Senator Wall Street.'  Pete Aquilar, a Mexican-American, will be Jeffries's assistant leader.  Jeffries and Schumer are both lawyers.  Jeffries attended Georgetown and NYU, Schumer Harvard and Harvard Law School.  In the 'New Confederacy' the charge against the Dems is that they are a party of and for minorities and coastal elites.  The Democratic congressional leadership will only reinforce that notion and probably make the Republican grip on the 'red states' even firmer.

Boppa Denny was my maternal grandfather, Dennis M. Healy.  He died when I was 11, my first experience with death.  We don't know how old he was when he died.  He was born in the Townland of Slaheny, Village of Kilgarvan, in County Kerry, Ireland.  There were 14 houses in Slaheny: 4 occupied by Healys, 4 by Sullivans, 3 by Peahens, and 1 by Finnegans.  House #5 was a 2 room thatched roof cottage with 2 windows.  The head of household was listed in the census as Dennis' brother Daniel, age 30, who lived with his wife Mary, also 30, their daughter Mary, 4, and their 3 sons John, 1, Timothy, 3, and Jeremiah, 5.  The pater families was Daniel, age 75, and the mother, Margaret, age 55, who also lived in that same cottage.  Dennis gave his age as 24 when he arrived in 1904 at Ellis Island from County Kerry via Cobh on the steamship Oceanic.  Years later when he applied for citizenship he gave his year of birth as 1883 which would have made him 21 at Ellis Island.  The 'holy card' from his wake and funeral gave his DOB as April 28, 1887, which would make him barely 17 at Ellis Island.  The birth registry for my mother lists his year of birth as 1886.  Perhaps he was 72 when he died, perhaps 65, perhaps something in between.  I think of him today because I've been continuing to read in small bits Sean O'Faolain's Bird Alone.  I'm at the part where the protagonist Corny is in London at the Irish pub behind which his Uncle Mel lives.  The group in the barroom sings The Ould Ivied Ruin, referring to abandoned homesteads in Ireland and mournful yearning to return.  "There were cries from time to time . .  or a silence for several verses when the pathos of the thing moved them too much, or thoughts of 'the ould land' they might never see again . . "  My grandfather carried a piece of "the ould sod", a chunk of dirt from Ireland, wrapped in a Kleenex in his pocket.  I wonder what became of it when he died.  I remember looking at it once, unwrapping the frayed Kleenex around it.  When Boppa Denny would come to visit us in our basement digs after he had had too much to drink, he would get filled with emotion and curse the English, especially the "Black and Tans" who savaged the Irish during their War of Independence, long after Dennis was already in the U.S.   I vaguely remember him once trying to dance an Irish jig in our little living room, losing his balance and falling into a chair.  He was a sad man, alcoholic in his old age and probably before, widowed early, left with 3 sons, a daughter, and dim but fervent memories of Ireland.

Geri's Telephone Marathon with Spectrum is on day 3, total of about 7 hours.

Pickup Duties Today: Peter to and from work, Lizzie from Bayside Middle School to home.

Pain today: OK