1/29/23

 Sunday, January 29, 2023

In bed around 9:30, up at 5:20, after several pitstops, feeling a bit hungover though nothing to drink last night other than water Drained phone battery completely ...overnight with tinnitus masking app on all night.  Too much vanilla bean ice cream before bed, feeling it now.  Big snow last night, more today.  18 degrees now, high of only 21 today, wind chill of 2 degrees, current wind at 17 mph with winds today 9 to 18 mph, gusts to28 creating wind chill temps of -9 to 10 degrees.  Hard on furry and feathery friends, hard on the rest of us.  Sarah should be in LA today for the start of her 3 week business trip out West (CA, UT, WA, TX).

Our Town  A 1-year-old boy was killed in a hit-and-run car crash Friday night, and Milwaukee Police are looking for suspects.  The crash occurred in the 4200 block of North 35th Street at about 11:35 p.m., according to a police statement.  The boy and a 31-year-old female driver were in a white Pontiac that collided with a green Dodge Caravan. The Caravan's driver and passengers fled the scene on foot.  The Pontiac's driver and the boy were taken to a local hospital. She is expected to survive and was taken into custody. The boy died at the hospital.

Tyre Nichols  Dauntre Hamilton, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Rayshard Brooks, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean, Ahmaud Arberry, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, [Reserved]. [Reserved].[Reserved], . . .

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly by

Musee des Beaux Arts, W. H. Auden, 1938