2/6/23

 Monday, February 6, 2023

In bed around 10:15, up at 6:45, up at 6:45, several pss, one cognac.   A chilly morning with 20 degrees outside but no wind, but winds will pick up this afternoon up to 20 mph and gusts up to 36 mph producing wind chills between 16 and 28 degrees with a high temp of 38.  Sunrise at 7:00, sunset at 5:10, 10+10.

The Hound of the Baskervilles.  Last night, I watched the 1939 version of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic thriller with Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Wendie Barrie, Lionel Atwill, and John Carradine, an all-star cast.  Atwill played the hysterically funny one-armed Inspector Krogh in another 1939 classic, Son of Frankenstein.  I believe 1939 was also the year of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful World, and Goodby, Mr. Chips.  Wendie Barrie made many movies in England and in the U.S. and was the lover of and bore a child fathered by Bugsy Siegel.  John Carradine (Dracula) played character roles in a great many films and sired 4 sons who became actors plus a number of grandchildren who followed in their footsteps.  When I was a child I loved to watch Sherlock Holmes movies.  I continued to watch them as an adult when Jeremy Brett took on the role made famous by Rathbone.  At some point in my youth, I started reading Conan Doyle's stories.  I still enjoy watching these classics with the all-knowing, ever-alert Holmes and the mumbling, bumbling Dr. Watson.

Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho and the walls came tumblin' down. Israelis killing Palestinians in Jericho, Palestinians killing Israelis.  Political vacuum among the Palestinians, the fascist government in place under Netanyahu.  Plus ca change, . .  Has Israel known one moment of real peace in its entire existence?  Jews will always have their psychological identity, their souls, marked by the Shoah; Palestinians have theirs marked by the Nakba, their expulsion from British Mandate Palestine.  A peaceful '2-state solution' to the situation has been effectively abandoned by the Israeli government, rendered a practical impossibility by the ever-increasing Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.  A Jewish State that is also a democratic state also seems to be a practical impossibility.  Israel can be Jewish or it can be democratic; it can't be both.  We appear to have a state of perennial warfare, perennially waiting for the next intifada, perennial anxiety, distrust, and hostility with the United States not exactly in the middle but always in a highly compromised position because of Israel's schizophrenia about its own identity, it's own values beyond mere existence as a Jewish homeland.

Road to a Supreme Court Clerkship Starts at These Ivy League Colleges: The chances of obtaining a coveted clerkship, a new study found, increase sharply with undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Mah nishtanah.  Gateway education. Fortune favors the fortunate, the legacies, the wealthy, the Jared Kushners of America.  Those with brains and pedigrees.  Those with brains and provenance.  Others need not apply.