5/10/23

℉ Wednesday, May 10, 2023

In bed at 9:30, awake at 3:45, unable to sleep, up at 4:10, the battery drained on my iPhone from the tinnitus app on overnight.   46℉, clear all day, high of 65℉, wind SW at 2 mph, 1 to 8 mph today, gusts up to 12 mph,  sunrise at 5:33, 8:03, 14+29.  Beautiful spring day.

LTMW at a female Baltimore Oriole on the suet feeder. . . . At 4:45, I see the goldfinches are returning in numbers: 4 on the niger feeder, 5 on the sunflower seed feeder, and one on the suet cake.  We're also getting lots of visits from the red-bellied nuthatches. + a small flock of wild turkeys hens.

Not Enough Sleep during the night makes for a wasted day following.  I dozed off a couple of times but neither my body nor my brain is working very well today.  I performed my kitchen duties and made a trip to Sendik's for milk, bread, eggs and a few necessities, including two pieces of Susie's New York cheesecake as a well-deserved treat for Geri.  I watched Morning Joe early this morning (something I rarely do) and watched both Joe and Mika rant and rave about Trump the rapist.  They were correct of course about what a nasty, wrongdoing human being he is and how long and how often he has figuratively, perhaps, gotten away with murder, but I kept thinking back to 2015 and 2016 when they (and MSNBC) gave him hours and hours of free TV time.  Every time Trump called in, they put him on national television to promote himself and his candidacy.  They knew then what a racist, narcissistic miscreant, reeprobate, and scoundrel he was, but he had entertainment value, he increased their viewership (including me), so they provided him abundant free airtime.   Tonight CNN is hosting a televised Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire starring the Donald.  The network is being lambasted for doing so, but it's probably more important to show the world Trump under questioning from Kaitlan Collins and an audience (probably Republican primary voters) than to restrict his appearances to right wing networks rarely viewed by moderate and independent audiences.

Going Home.  There's an article in this morning's NYT about a star swallowing a planet, describing the process of 'planetary engulfment.'  Astrophysicists believe that this is the future of planet Earth, i.e., that in about 5,000,000,000 years from now, our Sun will swallow us.  Somehow this seems fitting - dignum et iustum est - at least if the theory that we are all made of stardust is true.  That theory is that the elements that comprise us, that are necessary for life, i.e., carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur, are all found in abundance in the stars of our Milky Way galaxy and that they found their way here in the process of planetary formation.  So eventually my remains in the green section of Forest Lawn cemetery may end up back where they came from and ultimately in a black hole when the sun collapses.  What then?  Where do black holes go?

Song of Myself, 31

Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Song of Myself, 32

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

. . . . . . . .

It's hard not to appreciate Walt Whitman's poetry.  His enthusiasm for life is infectious, as is his emmpathy for those who suffer.  In Song of Myself, 24, he describes himself: "Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan, the son  / Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding,  / No sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, / No more modest than immodest."  He has the heart, the brain, and the soul of a poet.  His Come Up From the Fields, Father touches my heart every time I read it, a crushing poem about who bear the highest costs of warfare.  It reminds me of my mother, in the vestibule of their Chicago triplex in 1965, crying as she read the letter I sent from Japan saying I was on my way to Vietnam and crying.  It breaks my heart thinking of her reaction to that letter, with all she suffered with my Dad and his wartime experiences and emotional wounds.