1220

 Tuesday, December 20, 2022

In bed around 9:30, awake around 3:30, up at 3:50. several pps, no toddy. Winter itchiness all around midsection, shoulders.  Awoke thinking of Peter's Christmas Bucks sweats not arriving before Christmas, Andy, Lizzie, maybe Drew aversion to Lilly.  Lilly's morning outing a short one with temp at 25 drizzly flurried degrees, high of 27 today, wind chill at 15 with wind out of SW.  Sunrise at 7:28, sunset at 5:24, 9 hours, 56 minutes of daylight.

Geri Returned on time at 5:35 yesterday. very short wait in the cell phone lot and easy ride home, stopping for McDonald's at BrownPort. Her visit was a very good one, Katherine and Jordan putting her up in their bedroom despite her protestations, Steve and Maggie timing their visit to coincide with Geri's, lots of warm feelings all around.  Jimmy recognized Geri Saturday through Monday, but he's not in good shape. Skin and bones, his daily unhappiness continuing, no happier at Silverado in Alexandria near K & J than he was at Newcastle near us.  Geri's description of other residents at Silverado made me think of buying a gun to avoid the 'blessing' of a long life with ever-fading capacities.  Lilly as expected was overjoyed at Geri's return, me too.  I remembered to have her coffee ready for her when she awakes.

January 6 Committee DOJ referrals of Trump (and John Eastman) were no surprise.  I suppose they will both be indicted but I'm not betting the farm on that, nor on the likelihood of an indictment in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case.  It's hard to imagine Trump being arrested and perp-walked out of one of his golden palaces without serious, maybe deadly, consequences from the wackos who still support him.  I wonder how hard it would be to seat a jury that would convict him.  He has courted legal danger his entire adult life and dodged many bullets with his money, celebrity, and stable of enabling lawyers and underlings.  He is a master at speaking in code and acting through agents, as the creep Michael Cohen loves to point out.  He personally escaped the consequences of his many business bankruptcies and business failures.  He has been living proof of falsity of the cliche that no one is above the law.

The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose off the common/but leaves the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose./The Law demands that we atone when we take things we do not own/ but leaves the Lords and Ladies fine who take the things that are yours and mine./The poor and wretched don't escape when they conspire the Law to break/This must be so but they endure those who conspire to make the Law./The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common/but geese will still common lack till they go and steal it back.

Our Town set another record yesterday, 211 homicides so far this year.   Most recent: 4 year old girl on the Southside.  29 year old caregivers both arrested, suspected child abuse.  Third straight year the city has set a homicide record.  AND,  a 22-year-old is hospitalized but expected to survive after being shot during a road rage incident on the city's north side, police said.  The incident happened Tuesday around 3:50 p.m. on the 2400 block of North 27th Street.  According to police, a suspect fired shots into a vehicle striking the victim. The man was then transported to a hospital with non-fatal injuries.  Police do not have anyone in custody and are asking anyone with information to contact them.  211 homicides, how many non-fatal gunshot wounds?

Blizzard Coming?  Big storm likely heading our way for Thursday, 6 inches or more of snow, wind gusts may reach 45-50 mph.  Projected wind chills Friday, Saturday 15 to 25 below zero.  Yecch, when should we stock up on???  My Mormon larder is depleted.  And how will we deal with Lilly's plumbing needs?

Looking out the window, seeing a lovely mourning dove and several beautful slate and white snowbirds feeding on the ground, while half a dozen goldfinches perch on the tall niger feeder, an English sparrow in the globe feeder.  I wonder whether they can all sense an approaching storm with decreasing barometric pressure or other clues.  From a posting on FB I see Eastern bluebirds are still in the area.  Maybe we'll get lucky, maybe the storm will fizzle, maybe, maybe, . . 

Aging Thoughtfully is a book by Martha Nussbaum and Saul Levmore.  One chapter is "Living the Past Forward:"  "As people age, they often spend more time thinking and talking about the past, usually their own past.  That's hardly surprising: after all, they see less life ahead of them, and more life behind.  Planning and hoping, even fearing, seem less productive than before - or productive only in an altruistic mode, as aging people hope and fear for their children, grandchildren, and other younger loved ones.  And to the extent that aging people spend time looking backward, they also tend to spend time with backward-looking emotions such as regret, guilt, retrospective contentment, and of course retrospective anger."How do I plead?  GUILTY AS CHARGED, much regret and guilt, no anger, no particular 'retrospective contentment' that I can think of.  W. B. Yeats' Vacillation, stanza V:

Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.