5/16/23

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

In bed by 9:30; half-awake at 4:30, and up at 5:10, thinking of Geri's driving through Chicago to Urbana. 52℉, high of 75℉, cloudy morning, sunny afternoon ahead, wind W at 10 mph, 3 to 13 mph today with gusts up to 30 mph, sunrise at 5:27, sunset at 8:09, 14+42.

LTMW at our first bird visitor of the morning, a big downy or small hairy female woodpecker on the sunflower tube at 5:46.  Second visitor is a wild turkey strutting across the front yard sy 5:52.  By 6:10, one of the neighborhood squirrels is hanging upside down on the sunflower tube.  By 7:15, John McGregor is out for his morning walk, up into Mequon.  At 9 a.m., the orioles returned one each on each of the orange halves mounted on the shepherd's crooks. Also, feasting on the suet cake.   Blossom petals are falling or blowing off the flowers on our berry trees along County Line Road.

CPAP.  Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of my being tethered to my CPAP machine at night.

Succession.  I watched Sunday night's episode yesterday afternoon.  I'm not a huge fan of the show both because the characters are so unadmirable and because I find it hard to follow what's going on as it goes on.  The characters, especially Kendall and Roman, speak in code that is unintelligible to me.  The neural pathways in my brain are not quick enough to keep up with the action as it occurs.  On the other hand, two features of this latest episode appealed to me.  First, the willingness of very rich and powerful (the same thing) people to sacrifice the 'common good' to further private gain:  Roman, Kendall, and Tom calling the election for fascist Mencken who will supposedly block the GoJo deal.  Second, the 'butterfly effect' described by Tom to Greg:  (a) Tom lays out a doomsday scenario in which Greg fails to get coffee for Tom to keep him from getting drowsy, Tom miscalls the results in Colorado, China invades Taiwan, the world blows up and “We’re back to amoeba” and (b) Greg wolfs down some bodega sushi and somehow some Wasabi gets into the eye of Darwin, the vote count guru, then pours lemon-flavored LaCroix into Darwin's eye making things worse, while the Roys scheme to declare Mencken the winner of the election.

Nakba.  Yesterday the UN officially commemorated the 75th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs connected with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.  The Israeli ambassador to the UN protested; the US and the UK did not attend; the rest of the world did attend.  According to UN figures, more than 700,000 Arab Palestinians fled or were expelled from Palestine by Israeli Jews between 1947 and 1949, a number greater than the remaining population of the State of Israel.  To the best of my knowledge, all of our Jewish friends are supporters of the State of Israel.  Many, perhaps most, have visited Israel, many more than once.  The existence of the State of Israel is more than dear to them in part no doubt because of their inbred awareness of the long history of Jewish persecution, ghettoizations, pogroms, social exclusion, and invidious discriminations of all sorts, and of course the Holocaust.  Israel stands as a refuge for Jews around the world.  Under its Law of Return enacted in 1950 all Jews, including people with at least one Jewish grandparent, have a right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship.  Palestinian Arabs who fled or were driven out of Israel in connection with the creation of the State of Israel have no right of return under Israeli law.  The same is true of their descendants. This discrimination between Jews and non-Jews with at best tenuous ties to Palestine and Arabs with deep ties to the land accounts in large measure for the claim that Israel is a racist state.

I was not yet 7 years old when David ben Gurion proclaimed the existence of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.  I was 25 years old and 4 days out of the Marine Corps when the Six Day War started.  During and after the war, tens of thousands of Arabs fled or were driven from the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights.  Some were permitted by the Israeli government to return and some did return, but many remained refugees, in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.  After this war and especially after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Gush Emunim movement within Israel created Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights claiming the right to Jewish dominance over the land as part of the land God promised to his Chosen People.  Currently there are almost 150 settlements in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem.   In addition, there are over 100 Israeli illegal outposts in the West Bank. In total, over 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, with an additional 220,000 Jewish settlers residing in East Jerusalem.  Additionally, more thann 25,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights.

For my entire life and even before, Jews and Arabs have been fighting and killing one another.  The    "two-state solution" is no more possible today than it ever was and if it ever was; indeed, with all the settlements in the West Bank and on Golan and with the growing political power of the settlers and the ultra-orthodox in Israeli politics, it appears that no solution to the conflict is possible and moreover that there never was a viable solution to the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.  The "one state solution" is impossible if Israel is to remain both a Jewish and a democratic nation.  Both "solutions" are pipe dreams.  If that is true, Israel is condemned to be a racist, apartheid, colonizing, imperialist nation in saecula saeculorum.  And one's attitude toward Israel and its government will remain, like abortion and religion, topics to be avoided at polite dinner parties, even among friends.

Geri departed at 11 this morning, leaving poor Lilly and me to play Micky the Mope for the next few days.  I am very happy that she is able to take this trip to visit with Kate and Tuz who have been her dear friends for about 60 years now, but neither Lilly nor I do very well without her.😞 . . . At around 4, she texted me that she had arrived 'safe and sound.'

Ballerina.  I watched this documentary this afternoon.  It is focused on only a few ballerinas in the famous St. Petersburg ballet school, the Vaganova Academy, that trains dancers starting at age 10 and on the Kirov Ballet of the Mariinsky Theater, especially Diana Vishneva and Ulyana Lopatkina.  I am always struck by the incredible beauty of the movements of ballerinas, their whole bodies, their heads and neck, their legs, their feet, their arms and hands, every finger.  So graceful, so elegant, so beautiful.  I am also struck by the extraordinary discipline required to become a talented ballerina, the long years and hours of training and performing under the watchful and demanding eyes of teachers, fellow dancers, artistic directors, and audiences.  I am reminded of my few years on the board of directors of the Milwaukee Ballet Company, founded by fellow board member Roberta Bourse and led by artisitc director Jean-Paul Comelin.   I was treasurer of the company for one year, following my friend Ara Cherchian who was instrumental in bringing onto the board.  The following year I was elected president of the company but I stayed in that role for only several months, perhaps only a few, I can no longer remember.  I resigned when the board was persuaded by Jean-Paul to schedule an expensive tour of performances in the South that I had vetoed because of cost.  In my preceding year as treasurer, I had fielded innumerable telephone calls from angry and insistent creditors of the company demanding payments on our many debts, payments I was unable to make because we had not enough money.  I refused to agree to the tour  that Jean-Paul wanted because I saw no way of paying the bills that would be incurred and I didn't want to go through another year of making excuses to creditors.  My vice-president, Santo Saliture from Northwestern Mutual, succeeded me as president.  He had backed me in the Executive Committee in rejecting Jean-Paul's tour, but switched his vote at the full board meeting.  I left it to him to deal with the creditors.  I was instrumental in two major accomplishments during my time as an officer and board member.  First, we raised enough money to put on a new production of The Nutcracker, a ballet that our dancers rather hated but which was an annual moneymaker for the compnay each Christmas season.  Second, and I can't recall whether this was related to the first, we staged a benefit gala with two stars formerly with the Kirov Ballet, Valery and Galina Panov, husband and wife, who attracted world attention when the Soviet Union denied them exit visas to emigrate to Israel and briefly imprisoned them.  I recall being on a telephone call with them in Vienna making some arrangements about their travel.

Anne Clausen produced this poster for the gala.  I don't know who was responsible for the photo of the balleriana's foot but it is one of my favorite pieces of art, shown poorly here because of reflections  of me in my tee shirt, my arm, hand, and iPhone on the glass.

A better photo of the original photo which I  had enlarged and framed and have held onto and treasured for about 45 years.

Early evening.  I ate a huge bowl of Geri's homemade beef vegetable soup for dinner with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert.  I fed Lilly at about 4, her normal kibble but with some of her regular topping plus grated cheddar cheese and some more finely grated parmesan cheese.  I let Lilly out a bit after 6 p.m. and she took charge of her regular post at the northeast corner of the house next to the Euonymus bush where she can look down County Line Road for Geri's coming home.  I called her in at 6:30 concerned about her getting cold from the 'Pneumonia Front' that passed over us earlier dropping the temperature from 75 to 55 in about an hour.  When she saw and heard me calling her, she got up and moved a few feet to the north side of the house out of sight so she could continue her faithful watch for Geri.  She finally came to the front door to be let in at 6:42, looking for her normal reward treat about which she has lately gotten mighty fussy.