1/8/23

 Sunday,  January 8, 2023

In bed near midnight, up at 6:40, one gewürztraminer grappa.  House seems cold, wearing my scarf as a shawl.  24 degrees, high of 32, wind W @ 5 mph, wind chill 18.  Sunrise 7:23, sunset 4:34, 9 + 11.

Bernardine Dohrn podcast.  I listened yesterday to the first episode of a a 12 episode podcast called Mother Country Radicals narrated by Zayd Ayers Dohrn, son of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers  leaders of the Weather Underground in the late 69s and 1970s.  I've long been interested in Bernardine not only because of her prominent leadership of the violent anti-government movement as a young woman, but also because she is a native of Whitefish Bay,  graduate of WBHS and University of Chicago law school,, and was a clinical faculty member Northwestern U. law school.  She was pretty and very smart, both a cheerleader at WBHS and editor of the school newspaper. She is only a few months younger than I am, a contemporary.  I learned that she is Jewish through her father, Bernard D. Ohrnstein, who changed the family name to Dohrn to look less Jewish. Listening to the podcast reminded me, though I need no reminder, of the similarities between the late 60s/early 70s and now.  It's not clear to me precisely when, where, and how Dohrn was radicalized but the overall causes were clear enough and included police violence, racism against Blacks, capitalism, and imperialistic wars, especially Vietnam.  She was a participant in Martin Luther King's housing marches in Chicago's Marquette Park neighborhood where my family lived for several years.  She became a leader in SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, the Weathermen, and then the Weather Underground  She was a protester at the 1968 Democratic National Convention where Mayor Richard J. Daley sicced his cops on the protesters, later characterized by in the "Walker Report" as a 'police riot.' "The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder."  It was half a century ago so it's hard to how widespread intense anger and real hatred was in American society then, all continually compounded by police and riot violence in the streets, the rise of the Black Panthers, Black Power, Malcolm X and Black Muslims to succeed MLK's non-violence, ever-escalating killing, bombing, napalming and defoliating in Vietnam and the government's ever-increasing conscription of young men to kill or be killed in the war that was tearing apart families, communities, and the nation.  I lived through all that. I participated in that war and then returned to Milwaukee and its 1967 'civil disturbance'.  I lived through Nixon's and Kissinger's invasion of Cambodia, the Kent State and Jackson state killing of students by National Guardsmen, and the Sterling Hall bombing at the University of Wisconsin.  And now we all live with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the 3 Percenters, the New Confederacy of Deep Red States, and the 'Freedom Caucus' in the Congress.  1968 saw its "Days of Rage," we saw  Donald Trump, 'Stop the Steal' and January 6th, 2021.  It's hard not to believe that there are many Bernardine Dohrns and Bill Ayers afoot in the country, but mostly on the Right rather than the Left, plotting to burn down the house.

Speaking of which: Police probe 5 shootings at homes and offices of New Mexico Democratic lawmakers.  This morning's WaPo reports:  "Police in Albuquerque are investigating whether five shootings that hit Democratic lawmakers’ homes and offices over the past four weeks are connected or politically motivated.  In each incident, several rounds of gunfire hit the walls and doors of buildings. No injuries have been reported but some elected officials wrote on social media about living in fear. The FBI and state police are assisting in the investigation.  “We don’t want to speculate that these are related … The investigation hopefully will determine what’s related and what’s not related,” Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said at a news conference Thursday. “I think on the surface, we could all recognize and see that they are all members of the Democratic Party that we know of, so, you know, there’s always that connection, but we don’t know.”

Reading the History of the House of Peace.   I have also been browsing the history of the House of Peace with ixed feelings.  I led the ministry from December, 2000 till May, 2003.  It was in so many ways an enriching experience, not always pleasant, sometimes very challenging but overall a very good experience.  I would have stayed on as executive director had I had a better relationship with the Capuchin Franciscans who owned the place but alas I did not.  A good part of it was my own fault, if fault it be, that I was naive and impolitic in letting be known my thoughts on sex abuse within the Church to Fr. Al Veik, OFM Cap., whose main job as "Vicar for Religious"  I was to discover was to handle sex abuse and tother troublesome cases involving members of religious orders for the Milwaukee archbishop.  Not smart, just authentic.

Damar Hamlin and the Beautiful Terror of Loving Football, NYT, Jane Coast  "Some of the fans from the stadium gathered there to pray for Mr. Hamlin, while others went to the hospital to stand outside in a show of support. They did that because on the field that evening, they saw what we all should see when we watch an N.F.L. game: real human beings taking part in a beautiful, brutal sport for our entertainment." Interesting juxtaposition of descriptors: "beautiful terror" and "beautiful brutal."

Dinner with Caren and Dan, David and Pip was heartwarming, as usual.  I've had a friendship with David since 1975 or so when he was a young law student.  Now he is 70 years old.  Caren and Dan are younger but both retired.  I've had a regular meeting for lunch friendship with Caren since left our law firm, or is it since I left the law firm?  She since rose to high position in the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Pip holds us dear in part because we were the first of David's friends she was introduced to in Milwaukee after she and David 'became an item.'  David and Pip will put their North Shore home ion the market in the Spring as they prepare to move to the new home they are having built outside Tucson.  As usual, some of the conversation concerned the condition of Caren's 92 year old mother and Pip's 90 year old mother, both in elderly care facilities, and of Geri's brother Jimmy.  Always a bit daunting for me in the midst of my 82nd year and increasingly decrepit.

Injury follow insult for Hamlin adjunct: A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job.  This morning's NYT.  Wokeness, political correctness, administrators caving in to pressure from Muslim student organization.  

January 6 in Washington a dress rehearsal for January 8 in Brasilia: Bolsonaro backers storm congress, court, presidential office in Brazil’s capital.   Thousands of radical backers of Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro breached and vandalized the presidential office building, congress and the Supreme Court on Sunday, and sought to enter other halls of power, in scenes that hauntingly evoked the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.