4/1/23

 Saturday, April 1, 2023

In bed after midnight (NCAAW Iowa v S. Carolina),  up at 6:30, head full of bad childhood memories from 7303/7307.  35℉, high of 47, snow expected from 8 to 11, windy conditions starting at 11.  WindWSW at 15 mph, up to 25 mph later, gusts up to 40 mph, sunrise at 6:32, sunset at 7:17, 12+44.

Bad start to the day with troubling memories at wake-up. My brain is still trying to recall and understand some of the mysteries of childhood, PTSD, 'a little peace and quiet,' rape, amnesia, Luna Pier, no money, Mr. & Mrs Kelly's 'line of credit', . . .  I have the Iowa-South Carolina game recorded.  I ought to watch it again today, especially Caitlin Clark.  [I did watch it again.}

Columbia St. Mary's Milwaukee.  JSOnline reports CEO Bernie Sherry and senior leadership are all being replaced.  "An Ascension Wisconsin spokesperson did not answer questions about the specific reasons for the departures or the terms on which hospital leadership is leaving.  Sherry was one of Ascension Wisconsin's highest-paid executives. He received about $2 million in compensation in 2019, including about $850,000 in bonuses and incentive compensation, according to nonprofit tax filings.  Two thoughts: (1) "Nonprofit " hospitals, many of them, are a joke.  Instead of profits accruing to shareholders, they go into the pockets of hospital managers. (2) Considering its terrible record in providing health care to patients and its great record of providing wealth to its managers, it seems a bit blasphemous that the system adopted as its name "Ascension" suggesting images of religious orders caring for the sick.  "Ascension is one of the largest private healthcare systems in the United States, ranking second in the United States by the number of hospitals as of 2019. It was founded as a nonprofit Catholic healthcare network in 1999. By the end of 2021, Ascension had 142,000 employees and 142 hospitals, and 40 senior living facilities across the United States. Wikipedia

Casualties of War and Home.  I finished the former yesterday and got back into the latter this afternoon, thinking how very different the characters described in each.  Homicidal racist rapists in the former, sincere 'God fearing' persons in the latter, except for Jack, of course.  The men and women of Gilead, IA, all fundamentally decent human beings, all imperfect and flawed, but in the eyes of Reverend Ames in Gilead and Reverend Broughton in Home, all children of God, made in his image and likeness.  Then there are the American soldiers, and the VC also, caught up in the war.

Reading a passage in Home about Sunday-go-to-meeting shoes and clothes made me think of my mother sending Kitty to me to St. Leo Grammar school each schooldays and to mass each Sunday while she and my father stayed home. (And my father would have sent us to Altgeld grade school and Calumet high school, public schools if my mother would have permitted it.  I remember them having a short argument over the costly tuition payments, $1.50/month for St. Leo and $15.00/month for Leo High School.)  I wondered again as I often had what was going on in my mother's head (and Aunt Monica's head) sending us young Catholics off to parochial schools and to mass each Sunday while all the adults stayed home.  How much of it had to do with the idea of sinfulness, intentionally missing mass on Sundays and on 'holy days of obligation' being a mortal sin in the eyes of the Irish Catholic Church we all grew up in.  Did the grownups think they were going to Hell?  Did they not believe all that 'happy horseshit'?  What did they think of the incongruity of our being forced to go to mass and their never attending?   Did they wonder what we children thought, having learned from the nuns and priests that missing obligatory mass was a grievous sin?  I certainly wondered about it, and worried about it, but never raised the issue with my mother.  She had enough to worry about with my father, our roachy basement apartment, her father and her brother James ('Seamus'), our lack of money, and of course all that transpired after Hartmann invaded our apartment and did what he did.