3/25/23

 Saturday, March 25, 2023

In bed at s10:30, up at 6, screens covered with wet snow.  31℉ outside wth heavy snow.  Winter Storm Warning until 4 p.m.  High temperature of 37.  3.1 in. of wintery mix in last 6 hours, 9.24 inches fo snow predicted in next 24 hours. Heart attack snow.  The wind is NNE at 19 mph, gusts up to 33 mph today, wind chill now is 19℉.  Sunrise (so to speak) at 6:46, sunset at 7:09, 12+23.

WaPo story on books re: Vietnam.  I don't normally read readers' Comments to WaPo and NYT stories anymore.  I used to be a frequent contributor during the reign of George W. Bush and his band of neer-do-wells, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales.  Saving those comments was a reason I started this Slogthrop blog.  In any event, the subject of this morning's feature being Vietnam, I looked at the reader comments which were interesting and reminded me of how I have avoided reading the many highly praised books about Vietnam and what we did in it and to it and to the people who participated in the war, voluntarily or involuntarily.  I noted especially the shortest comment: "I learned a lot about my government through my forced participation in the war in Vietnam. Those are lessons not forgotten."  And let the church say Amen.  Next Wednesday, March 29, will mark the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of American troops.  Words fail me, this morning at least.

I took this photo of 2 Vietnamese boys who lived in "Dogpatch" in

1965 or early 1966.  I have the print in a frame in my office downstairs and have

drawn a coupleof drawings of them.  It has always 'tugged at my heartstrings"

and still does, how thin they were, how close together they stood, how

they held onto the barbed wire that separated Us from Them, that separated

us Americans from the Vietnamese people so culturally and otherwise different from us.

CPP returned at 2:30 a.m. after an entire day without serious pain.  Thank you, Jenn.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”.  "What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!"

What are we to think of the American electorate that gave this lunnatic 48% of its votes 2 years ago knowing who he is, how he is, what he is?

Winter Wonderland.  I neglected to fill the birdfeeders yesterday and now it's too late, the ground covered with several inches of wet snow.  The north sides of the tube feeders are covered with the snow, precluding access by the birds.  The suet cake is entirely covered.  I'm afraid this storm will cause even more damage to trees than the last heavy, wet snowstorm which did a lot of damage.

Finished reading Gilead: "While I am thinking about it - when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing.  In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one's sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some way."  John Ames' frequent description of himself as old and tired, the metaphor being "ember," dull and gray but with an internal heat and fire, ready to be refulgent again when the Lord breathes life on it.  I was struck by "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain," how true that seems of old age, the age with little new except daily diminishment, little to look forward to but more diminishment, but filled with so many old memories, 80+ years of memories.  The good ones fade away, the regretful ones linger and haunt.  The good ones are almost all of the goodness of others - mother, sister, Uncle Jim, Aunt Monica, Brother Coogan, Wally Halperin, Johnny Flynn, Troy Major, Father Matthew, so many nurse-nuns - while the regretful ones are of my own failings, ingratitude, cowardice,  selfishness, vanity, pettiness, indifference.  It's curious that Marilynne Robinson named her fictional town "Gilead."  I suppose  she intended her novel to be healing, affirming.  "There is a balm in Gilead / To make the wounded whole / There is a balm in Gilea / .To heal the sin-sick soul. / Sometimes I feel discouraged / And deep I feel the pain / In prayers the holy spirit / Revives my soul again"  For those without the faith of a John Ames or Marilynne Robinson, hope comes harder.