3/20/23

 Monday, March 20, 2023

IIn bed around 10)30, awake at 4:30, up at 4;41, with thoughts of my mother, all she dealt with during and after the War, Hartman's crime, life in the basement, so much, guilt & ingratitude,  30℉ outside with a strong SW wind at 16 mph, gusts up to 22 mph today and wind chill at 19℉.  Sunrise at 6:55, sunset at 7:03, 12+8

SSpring arrives this afternoon when the sun is directly over the Equator and the Northern Hemisphere starts its annual tilting toward the sun.  Poetically and religiously, it is the season of renewal, new life, hope and resurrection, the season of Easter and Passover..  Socially and politically, it seems like Bunyan's Slough of Despond, Yeats' Rough Beast, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.  In Eurasia, Xi Jinping starts an official state visit to Moscow a year after Russia's naked aggression against Ukraine and its civilian population and only days after Putin was indicted by the International Criminal Court for some of his war crimes, i.e., kidnapping Ukrainian children and moving them into Russia.  The message to the West could hardly be clearer, calling to mind the 1936 Rome-Berlin Axis Agreement between Hitler and Mussolini.and the Anti-Comintern Pact between Hitler and Japan.

IIInternally, I can't remember in my lifetime a time when the United States was more torn apart, even in the 1960s and 70s.  "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; . . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. . . . What rough beast . .. slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"  I struggle with the question of whether the polarization is worse now than in the 60s but I'm persuaded that the answer is 'yes.'  There were 2 dominating issues in the 60s: Vietnam and civil rights.  Vietnam only became a deeply divisive issue after 1965 when draftees/conscripts were being sent there and coming home disillusioned, missing limbs, or dead.  The most fervid opponents of the war were college students vulnerable to the draft.  The "America, Love It or Leave It" crowd, Nixon's 'Silent Majority,' were mostly older, World War II and Korean War types, with very different mindsets from the 'baby boomers' being drafted to fight in Vietnam.  In any event, the war was time-limited.  By 1968, LBJ had been effectively driven out of the White House, a broken man.  On  January 27, 1973, the draft was ended and on March 29, 1973, the last U.S. combat troops were withdrawn ending 8 years of military combat in Vietnam and political combat in America.  The civil rights issues are still with us, not in the same form as during the Jim Crow Era before the civil rights legislation of the 60s, but in persistent vestigial forms of systemic racism, including voting suppression, police misconduct, etc.  I continue to believe that Race Writ Large is the dominant cause of the polarization within the U.S. today.  As Heather Cox Richardson argues, the South lost the Civil War but won the peace, that is to say, White Supremacy is still a dominating policy, value, or goal for many Americans.  It has come to be the never stated, but always present hallmark of the Donald Trump Republican Party.  

If If the growing sinister alliance between Russia and China and the internal fracturing of the United States weren't enough to cause a tailspin, today's WaPo reports: "The report released Monday from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines, and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end."

Visit to the Apple Store.  I ordered a new MacBookAir with an M1 chip, 16 gigs of memory and 1 terabyte of storage.  Delivery to the store is expected by April 11, 3 weeks from now, probably will arrive sooner.

TThe Nuns Who Left Brooklyn is a feature piece in this morning's NYT.  It tells the tale of 10 Discalced Carmelite nuns who moved from the Monastery of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel & St. Joseph in Brooklyn to rural Pennsylvania outside Scranton.  Their old quarters became too noisy for the recluses who are true "nuns", i.e., those who live in a cloister.  Their daily life is as follows:  5:00 AM - Clappers are sounded to awaken the sisters for prayer / 5:30 AM - Lauds is recited in choir, followed by an hour of mental prayer / 7:00 AM - The hour of Prime is recited followed by the Holy Rosary / 7:30 AM - The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and thanksgiving / 8:15 AM - The hour of Terce is recited, followed by a light breakfast.  / 9:00 AM - Manual Labor: the sisters work in solitude in the cells or offices of the monastery / 11:15 AM - The hour of Sext is recited in the Choir, followed by an examen of conscience / 11:30 AM - Dinner in the refectory / 1:00 PM - Recreation / 2:00 PM - The hour of None is recited followed by spiritual reading in the cell / 3:00 PM - The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is recited followed by manual labor / 5:00 PM - Vespers is recited in the choir followed by an hour of mental prayer.  / 6:15 PM - Supper (or collation during the Fast from September 14 until Easter Sunday) / 7:30 PM - Recreation / 8:30 PM - Compline is recited, followed by the Litany of Loretto / 8:45 PM - Free time in the cells. The Great Silence begins after Compline.  / 9:30 PM - Matins is recited, followed by the commemorations of the Order.       The Gospel of the following day is read to prepare for the morning's meditation.  / 10:30 PM - The sisters retire to their cells, receive the night blessing, and rest in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

It It turns out that living a life of poverty and prayer isn't cheap.  "[T]he sisters have ambitious plans for their permanent home, which will include a Spanish-style monastery, a barn and a caretaker’s house, estimated to cost about $25 million. They should be able to move into a modular cloister of about 3,500 square feet on the [13 acres of]  donated land by year-end."  That's $2,500,000 per nun.  Let's hope their prayers are worth it.  I am reminded of James Baldwin's observation about involuntary poverty: “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” 

Coda

I  I am old and just about worn out, my parts mostly failing.  I have cut down on the time I spend watching the news on television because it is so - what is the word? - depressing doesn't quite cut it, desponding is closer to it, the verb form of Bunyon's Slough of Despond.  Can I cut down on reading the newspapers?  Become more of a recluse than I am now?  Do the ladies in the cloister know something that I don't?  Are they fools, or am I?  I fear for my children & grandchildren, all children, all grandchildren.  I despond.