7/30/23

 Sunday, July 30, 2023

 In bed around 10, awake at 5:32 up at 5:42, one snifter.  63℉, high 75℉, mostly sunny day ahead,  AQI=20, wind N at 7, 3-8/14 mph, dps 58-62,  The sun rose at 5:39 at 63 degrees E and will set at 8:15, 14+36.    

Half a poem, remembered on the patio.

God's Grandeur 

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.  

Country roads, interrrupted.  It's a gorgeous day today, warm but not hot, low humidity, the sky full of floating, billowing clouds, a perfect day for a ride in the country, enjoying barns, silos, sheds, farmhouses, and fields of corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, alfalfa, whatever.  So I took off around 12:30 intending to head out to Holy Hill, Heiliger Huegel, and to wander about Washington County, perhaps the scenic Town of Erin.  On my way west on Donges Bay and Mequon Roads, I got distracted and thought I could find the Rustic Road with all the horse estates on it.  I mistakenly thought it was on Highland Road but it was Hawthorne Road I was looking for so I ended up driving mainly through suburban/exurban Mequon with some, but precious few, barns, silos, etc  In any event, I thought again as I passed one high-end subdivision after another, one palatial manse after another, how unrealistic it is to think that people living in circumstances like these would identify with and vote with the Democratic Party which is now so identified with racial minorities, especially Blacks, higher taxes, and social welfare programs.  So many thoughts race through my brain when I drive through these venues, thinking back to our basement apartment on Emerald Avenue in Englewood, Vietnam & Okinawa, the neighborhoods served by the House of Peace, the prisoners encountered at Janine's restorative justice gatherings at the Green Bay prison.  I also thought of a metaphor I read just this morning, a writer saying he wondered whose shoes he was wearing when he felt out of place among some 'swells.'  The thoughts were all disquieting, reminding me as usual what a limousine liberal I am, about to turn 82 and still wondering whose shoes I have on.

Genuine Chicago street sign given to me by Steve K.

Dinner with the Lowes at the Goldbergs tonight.

7/31/23

Monday, July 31, 2023

In bed at 11, up at 6:03, body all achin' and racked wid' pain.  62℉, high of 78, sunny, AQI=35, Good, wind NW at 5 mph, 2-9/14 mph, dps 54-58.  Sunrise at 5:42 at 64 degrees E, sunset at 8:14,14+33.

Dinner with old friends was terrific, as always.  Pip reminded me that we have been gathering regularly for about 25 years now, which sort of astounds me.  I'm the old man of the group, about 12 years older than David and Pip, and 17 years older than Caren and Dan.  Again there was talk of dealing with old parents, clearing out their residences as they have moved to 'assisted living', reminding me that I am closer in age to those old surviving parents than I am to my friends, their children.  What to keep, what to sell, what to toss?  My Pandora's boxes, Manhattan Project papers.  There were also discussions about children and grandchildren, including an upcoming wedding,  I'm glad we didn't discuss the dire situation in Israel, where both Caren and David have deep ties and where all 4 of them visited a few years ago.  Nor did we talk about American politics, with its own menacing aspects.  It looks like D&P's new home outside Tucson will be ready in September, maybe October, with their relocation thereafter.  Our quarterly gatherings will undoubtedly be affected.

Max Boot in this morning's WaPo: "[W]hile I retain affection for Israel, I often feel as if I do not recognize what it has become. This is a familiar feeling for me since I am similarly befuddled by modern America: How did we turn into a land of book banners and covid deniers? Both Israel and the United States have been disfigured by the rise of populist rabble-rousers who have tapped into ugly and unsavory prejudices."  Amen and amen.

The Marshes of Glynn.  In December of 1963, I completed 6 months of training at the Officers Basic School in Quantico, VA, and received orders for Air Defense Control training at Naval Air Station, Glynnco, GA, a former dirigible station in Glynn County, GA, just outside Brunswick, midway between Jacksonville, FL, and Savannah on Highway 17.  Just east of the city, between the northbound and southbound lanes of the highway was a large, old live oak tree, called Sydney Lanier's Oak.  Legend had it that he wrote his most famous poem The Marshes of Glynn sitting under that tree, or more likely he was simply inspired to write it while resting under the tree and looking out on the expansive salt marshes between the city and the barrier sea islands.  There is a historical marker at the site.  In this morning's NYT there is a story of another commemorative marker, a multi-part sculpture by Beverly Buchanan:  "A Vanishing Masterpiece in the Georgia Marshes." 

For the most part, I enjoyed my stay in Glynn County.  I loved spending most of my non-working hours on Sea Island, St. Simon's Island, or Little St. Simon's Island.  I had a good, if temporary, friend there, Andy Furlong, a Navy ensign, and memories shared with him, an aborted trip to the Okefenokee Swamp and Waycross, GA, and favorite waitress Susie Shoney at the Big Boy restaurant ("I smoked it, I'll drink it."  But Brunswick and Glynn County became identified with Deep South racism and murder with the hunting down and killing of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020.

Today I'm enjoying my memories of the islands and Andy Furlong and Lanier's poem, which I have liked since first reading it down in Glynn County.  It's erotic, even its rhythms suggesting sex.  " Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band  / Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. / Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl / As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows / the firm sweet limbs of a girl."  And this -

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea 

Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: 

Look how the grace of the sea doth go 

About and about through the intricate channels that flow 

        Here and there, 

                        Everywhere, 

Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, 

And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, 

That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow 

  In the rose-and-silver evening glow. 

                        Farewell, my lord Sun! 

The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 

'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; 

Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; 

Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; 

And the sea and the marsh are one. 

How still the plains of the waters be! 

The tide is in his ecstasy. 

The tide is at his highest height: 

                        And it is night. 

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep 

Roll in on the souls of men.

Lanier wrote of an uniting with God, but the reader gets a sense of a more carnal coupling.  The great song Ebb Tide creates the same impression by much the same means.  

Lanier was a native Georgian and fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.  He composed The Marshes of Glynn in the mid-1870s, as Reconstruction was ending and Jim Crow was beginning.  He was rhapsodic about the natural beauty of those marshes.  Beverly Buchanan's Marsh Ruins is situated near the site of an Ibo slave insurrection (and suicides) and seems anything but rhapsodic. but it bespeaks strength on the one hand and both endurance and transience on the other.  That is to say, its meaning is hardly clear but, as Picasso is said to have remarked to a questioner who asked him what a piece of his art 'meant', "What does a bird's song 'mean'?"

7/29/23

 Saturday, July 29, 2023

In bed after 10, following Ferrante's fish fry at 8, awake at 5:53, up at 6:15, Lilly sleeping next to BR recliner, let Lilly out, 66℉, high 76℉, sunny., AQI=37, Good.  Wind N at 11, 3-11/21.  .4"of rain last night.  The sun rose at 5:38 and sets at 8:17, 14+38. 

Mood swing.  I was uncommonly 'up' yesterday.  Was it the result of the rewarding dinner with Caela on Thursday night with a serendipitous visit with Tom and Patti Hammer, Caela's visit on Wednesday combined with Ellis' all-day visit with Nona and my finishing the sketch-y paintover of Camille Claudel/Aunt Lydia, and the call from LOA?  It was good to have a good day, especially after a few difficult days but it had me half-thinking (in med student syndrome) that I was bipolar.  Clearly not; my uncommon 'highs' are not so high nor are my 'lows' so low.  But I certainly had the feeling of emotional yo-yo-ing. 

I also am wondering why I seem so fixated on working on versions of the Camille Claudel portrait although I am happy to have any 'muse' that has me painting again.  ". . . painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decriptiude."  Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime.  and

"Now he was speculating whether Laurette would pose half-nude on the car seat.  The whole idea was preposterously silly but why not?  It was no more cheeky than the idea of his resuming painting.  Part of the grace of losing self-importance was the simple question: "Who cares?"  More importantly, he didn't want to be a painter, he only wanted to paint, two utterly different impulses . . . Clive didn't want to be anything any longer that called for a title.  He knew how to paint so why not paint?  Everyone had to do something while awake."  Jim Harrison in "The Land of Unlikeness" in THE RIVER SWIMMER.

There comes a little space between the south side of a boulder

and the snow that fills the woods around it.

Sun heats the stone, reveals

a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,

and tufts of needles like red hair,

acorns, a patch of moss, bright green . . .

I sank with every step up to my knees,

throwing myself forward with a violence

of effort, greedy for unhappiness -

until by accident I found the stone,

with its secret porch of heat and light,

where something small could luxuriate, then

turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

Depression in Winter by Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon suffered from serious depression much of her life before dying from leukemia at 47.  She's a poet I read, like Whitman, Eliot, Smith, Yeats, Jarrell,  Williams, Dickinson, and the classic greats Blake and Pope. .  Her death left her husband Donald Hall desolate; I'm surprised he lived on, till almost 90.  In similar circumstances, I would not.   "Sun heats the stone," what an image, as are "greedy for unhappiness" and the "secret porch of heat and light, where something small could luxuriate."  I encountered her through her great poem "Otherwise" with its concrete particularity and its simplicity and its haunting finale with which, in old age, we live every day.  Other favorites:  Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School, and Woman, Why Are You Weeping.  All of them strike home with me.  "Resonate," is that the right word?  It's seems so overworked now, but it does seem le bon mot.

10 a.m., and I am still in my nightshirt, thinking birdcage or minnow bucket thoughts, looking out my window at the same basic view every minute, every day, every year, except for the weather and seasonal effects and the varying and unvarying bird and rodent visitors, the walkers, the joggers, the cyclists, the parents with strollers and buggies.  It's past time to shower and shave and get into living but I'm in no hurry; indeed, I'm postponing it.  Laziness, lingering tiredness from last night, some listlessness, inertia.  Some downsloping?  Some 'what's the point?'ism.?  Now I'm watching my beautiful wife walking our beautiful Lilly up Wakefield, waving at the driver of a passing car.  I hear you, Kitty: Snap out of it!  Get moving, Buster.

Reading some Pope after showering, from An Essay on Man.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,

The proper study of mankind is man.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little or too much:

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused or disabused;;

Created half to rise and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

. . . 

C'est moi!  In doubt, in doubt, in doubt, reasoning but to err, thinking too much, thinking too little, chaos of thought and passion, all confused.

Denny Doofus

Pandora's Basement Boxes and Why Religion Matters.  In the several boxes I opened in the basement a few weeks ago were some books that I valued and had packed away when we moved to Bayside, among them Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters.  I started it years ago and got distracted; I have no idea how far into it I got.  In any event, I picked it up again yesterday and have started to get into it again.  It's in large measure because I am so thoroughly confused in my old age not so much about religion but about the whole idea of "God."  I know as I look back on my life that what I was taught in Catholic schools for so many years - 8 years elementary school, 4 years high school, right into 10 academic credit hours of Theology and 15 hours of mostly Thomistic Philosophy - means nothing to me as I get nearer and nearer to death.  All that 'all' stuff - all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-good, all-this, and all-that - still leaves me with the problem that has haunted Mankind for millennia: why so much suffering in our lives, so much evil and wickedness in the world, the 'theodicy' question.  It's as I said to Geri's cousin Sue and her husband years ago, if there is a God, a good case can be made that He is a mean prick, or, if He isn't, He has a brother who is (a bit of Manichaeanism.)  To the query 'Do you believe in God' I'm always inclined to ask "Which one?"  If "He" is beyond definition and beyond description, how can we deal with that in any meaningful way?  On the other hand, I was once blessed with a bit of wisdom from an old friend of mine, Vicki Conte, who when I was pissing and moaning about such matters, said to me "It's not a head thing, Chuck, it's a heart thing."  She was a lot smarter than I was and am.  But I do think that there is Something ineffable about Life, about the World, about Being at all.  Why is there anything?  I don't think I spout BS when I say, as I so often have, that the world is full of Saints and Miracles (and Heroes) though we usually don't see what is all around us.  I don't think it's just sentimental claptrap.  I think the Whatever is not in the same realm as other stuff that is unimaginable and incomprehensible to me, like quantum physics, the nature and behavior of subatomic particles, etc.  The Whatever is in the realm of Awe, of poetic apprehension, of some sort of mysticism, and thus unquantifiable, unmeasurable, unfalsifiable.  I think these thoughts are what Huston Smith's book is about and I hope I have the discipline to see it through.  Maybe I'll learn something and help my "Chaos of thought and passion, all confused."

A note:  Smith wrote the book as the Millennium was upon us.  He wrote in the introduction that he objected to "science's claims concerning what constitutes knowledge and justifies belief."  He refers to "our spiritual crisis .  . . join[ing] other crises as we enter the new millennium- the environmental crisis, the population explosion, the widening gulf between the rich and the poor . . ."  Almost a quarter century later, the environmental crisis has become the existential Climate Change Crisis.  I'm not sure where we are in terms of the population explosion.  Perhaps climate change and pandemics will take care of that.  And to the widening gulf between rich and poor, we can add the profound political polarization within polities throughout the Western World that sees Democracy weaken and Fascism strengthen.  These are not encouraging thoughts.

This marks the end of one year of journaling.  Quid nunc?  Quo vadis?

7/28/23

 Friday, July 28, 2023

In bed around 11:30, up at 8:45.  78℉, high 84℉, cloudy, AQI=39, Good.  Wind S at 4 mph, 3-10/22  Rain expected.  Dew points 65-75😬 The sun rose at 5:37 and will set at 8:18, 14+40.

Dinner with Caela and Saul was very lovely, outside on the veranda where it was surprisingly cool on a warm, humid night.  Two tables away Geri spotted Tom and Patti Hammer.  Tom only retired this year from the MULS faculty after 43 years, the last remaining MULS graduate on the full-time faculty.  Janine G. is technically on the faculty as Director of the Restorative Justice Center, funded with $5M by Louis and Sue Andrew.  Tom and Patti have been married 40 years now; I remember when they started dating and when they started living together, which Tom wanted kept secret because of the traditional Catholic morality that obtained at the law school in those days.  Their son Matt is a neuro-anesthesiologist in Phoenix, mostly brain and back surgeries and daughter Lauen is a state and professionally certified Spanish interpreter living in Monterey, CA, with more work than she can handle.

Three hours of conversation with Caela was good for both of us, I think.  With her visit to our house yesterday, it was the most we've been together since Tom died.  So much for her to deal with.  The time with her and Saul and the visiting with Tom and Patti Hammer drives home to me how much my reclusiveness is harmful and foolishly selfish, self-defeating.  The lead op-ed in this morning's WaPo is "Like many men, I had few close friends. So I began a friendship quest" by writer Leonard Felson.  Some excerpts:

- [M]en in particular tend to face a harder time than women making and maintaining friendships, research suggests, and it appears to only be getting worse.  That decline in social connectivity has grown so severe that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy in May sounded another alarm, declaring loneliness a public health threat as great as smoking, obesity,,, and addiction.

- Though I know a lot of people, I don’t have close friends, not the way my wife, Julia — who keeps up with friends from childhood, college, work,,, and our kids’ school days — does, a fact that experts say underscores a common difference between how men and women treat friendships.

-  Cynthia Post, a Silver Spring, Md., psychologist has seen in her nearly 30-year practice. “Men in general don’t feel particularly skillful in how to form friendships, how to maintain relationships, how to be honest and connected in a way that feels comfortable,” she said. That contrasts with many female relationships, “where there’s a lot more room for vulnerability,” she said, based on what she has seen among her patients.

- [P]eople tend to connect when they share their vulnerable feelings such as hurt, fear,,, or sadness. Among her own patients, she said, “Men … tend to share protective feelings like frustration, anger, irritability, defensiveness, even guilt.”

[I painted the two portraits of Caela in oil many years ago from photographs Tom took on a skiing trip on which she injured her thumb(?).

New Painting over Old, a New Camille for old Aunt Lydia.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I like it a lot.  Sketch drawn with colored chalk, no grid lines.

Mitch's Momentary Muddle yesterday during a press conference has the internet and tv anchors chattering today about his age and fitness for the job as minority leader in the Senate.  He was born of Frebruary 20, 1942 and is 6 months younger than me.  He has had two serious trip & falls in the last couple of years, the first leading to a broken shoulder, the second to a concussion that had him away hospitalized, in a rehad facilty, and then away from the Senate for many weeks.  And now this very public and embarrassing 'absence seizure'.

Senator Feinstein at age 90 had an embarassing 'senior moment' yesterday when she was called upon to vote "aye" or "nay" on a measure before a committee on which she serves and started to read her prepared stateent rather than simply voting "aye."  An aide whispered to her "Just say 'sye', which she did, but the deomonstration of her incapacity was clear.

And the beat goes on with the superceding indictment.  DJT is a crook, a criminal, an enemy of the state.  I am reminded of a FB posting I made on 7/22/2022.  "Donald Trump is a bad man. He was a bad man on January 6, 2021. He was a bad man on January 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated and on November 8, 2016 when he was elected. He was a bad man on June 15, 2015 when he magisterially rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy and to denounce Mexicans as criminals and rapists, though "some, I assume, are good people." Trump's personal wickedness, dishonesty, and perfidy have been open and notorious throughout his adult life. I am mindful of that every time I watch the Republican witnesses called by the January 6th Committee. They are all Trump enablers. Pat Cipollone, his White House counselor, is the most flagrant, successfully fending off Trump's first impeachment in 2019-2020, enabling Trump to stay in power, to run for reelection, and to put all of us through the wringer of the 2020 election and its aftermath, especially January 6th. That said, while I acknowledge the testimonies of Cipollone, Pottinger, Matthews, Hutchinson, and the other Trump administration officials, I never lose sight of the fact that they were all voluntary Trump enablers. Ditto the 'Christian first, conservative second, republican third' Mike Pence.  Each hitched his or her wagon to the evil star of a bad man, a very bad man. Forgive me if I don't applaud them."

Thinking what should be obvious>  The purpose of life is to help one another.  Mt. 25: 31-46

Ellis here today, a bundle of energy and brilliance.  Nona up past midnight last night after our dinner at the Wisconsin Club. Challenging  mix.  David picked up Ellis at 5ish, Nona took a nap.😍

Phone Call from Larry Anderson, telling me he'll be here in early September for a get-together.  Always happy to talk with him, good friend for 55 years.

Sent text to Caela.  "I'm thinking of you, grateful for your friendship."

7/27/23

 Thursday, July 27, 2023

In bed at 10, awake around 3:00 and up at 3:50, unable to sleep.  Dream of funeral prep with 2 French-speaking brothers for a 3rd, thoughts of TSJ and of the week struggling over his eulogy.  Let Lilly out, worrying about the pack of coyotes that attacked a dog in Fox Point.  67℉, high of 82, sunny day ahead, AQI=53, Moderate.  The wind is N at 3 mph, 2-11/17 today.  .35 inch of rain yesterday.  None today.  Dew points betwee 65 and 70 today.😟 Sunrisea at 5:36, sets at 8:19, 14+42.

Rough day ahead.  Not enough sleep, unsteady on my feet, mentally slow, drive on I-43 to VA.😰

Wasted day, but dinner at Wisconsin Club with Micaela and Saul on Tom's 79th birthday.  Temp is 88℉, heat index 91.😩

My second home?

7/26/23

 Wednesday, July 26, 2023

In bed at 10, up at 6:10.  71℉,  mostly cloudy, high of 83℉, AQI=146, UFSG, the wind is S at 8 mph, 4-11/19, rain expected this afternoon, dew points 63 to 73 today😩.  The sun rose at 5:36 and sets at 8:20, 14+44.

Sinead O'Connor, dead at 56, 12/8/1966 - 7/26/2023.  A courageous human being, a damaged soul.  Immensely talented singer.  Victim of sexual and physical child abuse.  Spiritual searcher.  Truth teller.  Sufferer.  Survivor of commitment in a Magdalene asylum.  Early accuser of Catholic Church abuse of children.  SNL, 10/3/1992.  The painting on the left is one I did decades ago, probably when we lived in Shorewood, using a reference photo of her. I couldn't capture her likeness, her stunning beauty but I've always known it's my attempt to paint Sinead.  I surprised myself drawing the underlying sketch freehand, a skill I've never come close to mastering.  Black Boys on Mopeds, I Am Stretched on Your Grave, Jerusalem, Nothing Compares 2 U, The Emperor's New Clothes, Just Like You Said It Would Be, so many . . .

Time to stop?  I started this journal on July 30 of last year.  I don't remember why I started.  I do remember wondering whether I would be disciplined enough to keep it up every day and thinking I would see if I could do it for one month, and then 3 months, and then 6 months and a year, which is almost here.  I have frequently wondered, in my head and in this journal, why I bother, what's the point?  I usually conclude that I'm just a compulsive writer, much more inclined to write out thoughts than to speak them.  This is partially from the realization that there aren't many people interested in listening to me pontificate or rant about whatever happens to get under my skin on any given day, usually determined by the morning newspapers, Chuck Clausen, The Lone Haranguer, the Bilious Bloviater.  I also think -and fear - that I am giving myself a daily test of my cognitive decline, executive function, and onset of increasing loss of memory and of dementia.  Am I still able to type? to write in complete sentences (except when I don't want to)?  To string together sentences coherently?  Or am I trying simply to leave a record of having been alive on these days, having occupied space, breathed air, had thoughts, seen and heard stuff, felt sentiments and emotions?  I live a pretty reclusive life, usually talking only to Geri about diurnal stuff.  No phone calls, no visiting.  Or maybe I'm just indulging in some old-fashioned narcissism, enjoying looking at my own words and thoughts on my laptop screen the way Narcissus enjoyed looking at his own face reflected in water.  Or maybe it's just boredom, ennui, or acedia or weltschmerz.  I can't forget what was probably the biggest impetus to start the journal, as a totally inadequate substitute for my daily morning conversations with my sister.  Whatever the combination of motivations, the year is almost over and I find myself wondering now whether I should call it quits, even whether I should just trash the hard copies that I have saved and delete the blog entries. I am embarrassed by my cynicism, pessimism, and feelings of hopelessness about the U.S. and much of the world.  Climate change, growth of fascism/authoritarianism, the demise of effective democracy, gun violence, mass shootings, and always thoughts of complicity, a lifetime of tolerating all of it, going along to get along.  Pathetic moral weakling.  Limousine liberal.

Micaela stopped for a visit in the late morning and early afternoon.  Good conversations  Joining her and Saul tomorrow at 6:30 for dinner at the Wisconsin Club.  Sad day: Tom's 79th birthday, the first since his death on 1/18.

7/25/23

 Tuesday, July 25, 2023

In bed at 10, up at 5:53. 66℉, high 83℉, mostly sunny, AQI=114, UFSG, wind WSW at 5 mph, 3-9/16.  Sun rose at 5:35, sets at 8:21, 14+46.

'Suffusive emergencies,'   I got out of bed this morning after the sun had risen above the Lake Michigan horizon but before it had risen above the treetops across the street.  It rose at 62 degrees NE, 6 degrees south of its northernmost position on the solstice.  I looked out my window at about 7 after filling Lilly's water bowl and saw the sun as a fuzzy glowing globe of light perhaps 35 degrees above the eastern horizon.  What struck me was its fuzziness,  its lack of definition, and I realized that what I was seeing was sunlight filtered through wildfire smoke from Western Canada.  It reminded me of driving out to visit Kitty one year, perhaps to pick up my Dad for the drive back to Wisconsin.  Rather than driving south from Flagstaff, I approached from the East through the Apache Reservation.  When I reached Globe, AZ, I was looking down on the Valley of the Sun and what I saw was a pall of pollution, a cloud of chemicals and tiny particulates floating over the entire Phoenix metropolis.   Once I was in the valley and under the pollution I could not see it but I was breathing it, living in it, like a tiny fish in a toxic ocean.

In this morning's edition of The New Yorker online, there is an article about the cover art on the upcoming print edition, July 31, 2023.  It's titled "Christoph Niemann's Recipe for Disaster," and refers to global climate change.  I was struck by the author's use of the term 'suffusive emergencies' in the opening sentences:  "News cycles, by nature, tend to document crises as discrete events. Suffusive emergencies—like the climate crisis—are captured mostly in the accelerating pace and frequency of such coverage. The increasing regularity of droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and deadly floods can remind us that our planet is rapidly warming and that disaster, in many ways, is already upon us—but also, not entirely." (Italics added by me.)

Has our world not become a panoply of "suffusive emergencies," a world in which "disaster, in many ways, is already upon us - but also, not entirely?"  Not only climate change but also right-wing authoritarianism (fascism) led in the U.S. by Evangelicals and Catholic zealots, American gun violence, senseless mass shootings, triumphant capitalism, nationalism, and individual and structural racism.  Or am I just an old, whining, sniveling, Lefty Chicken Little, pissing and moaning about the sky falling, a chronic cynic and pessimist?  Am I falling for gaslighting by the liberal elites, left-wing politicians, scientists, academics, and the news media?  Or maybe I'm just experiencing geriatric depression, a common enough mental illness in old coots thinking things were a lot better in the old days.  Depression could account for the belief that disaster 'is already upon us'; anxiety for the belief 'but also not entirely.'  And that ineradicable sense of complicity, guilt, shame, responsibility, stupidity, vanality.

I did not elevate my mood by watching two programs on Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project this afternoon and evening.  The first was on the streaming service OVID, a 2023 discussion sponsored b the Museum of Jewish Heritage between Kai Bird, one of the authors of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Joseph Kanon, author of the novel Los Alamos.  The second was a 1980 documentary on the Criterion Channel titled The Day After Trinity.  The documentary reminded me of my Uncle Bud Healy and Aunt Mary living and working at Los Alamos and of the possibility that my father might be called upon to be a part of an invasion force on the Japanese home islands after Okinawa was secured.  It reminded me too that the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were less destructive by a factor of thousands than the hydrogen bombs that are available today and the fission bombs possessed by the United States, Russia, China, the UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.  And probably soon Iran.  How confident can any rational human being be that none of these weapons will be deployed, accidentally or on purpose?  How confident can we be that Russia will not deploy one or more of its 'tactical' nuclear weapons in Ukraine?  It has been 78 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  How long will the world's luck hold?

Both the documentary and the discussion also reminded me of the tremendous power of the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 Farewell Address to the nation, and of the ever-present right-wing interests within the U.S.  Oppenheimer was crucified for striving to get international controls over nuclear weapons, i.e., urging a diminishment of American unfettered sovereignty in favor of what was feared as "one world government," perhaps now as "globalism."  And all that I have read and watched since last Friday's viewing of Oppenheimer reminds me that Oppenheimer was a Jew and many of his friends, colleagues (and family members, of course) were Jews and communists, or socialists,  'pink if not Red.'  It's hard not to believe that anti-Semitism played a role in his downfall even in a perverse way since Lewis Strauss who engineered his downfall was an observant Jew offended by Oppenheimer's secularism and disdain for Jewish religiosity.

 

7/24/23

 Monday, July 24, 2023

In bed around 9:14, u at 6:10. Let Lilly out.  65℉, high 84, AWI=83, Moderate, Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, Canadian Smoke.,  The wind is WNW at 5, 3-7/13, dew point 59-63,  Sunrose at 5:34, sets at 8:22, 14+48

Poland, A Green Land.  I finished the novel today.  The protagonist is Yaakov Fein, a middle-aged owner of a women's dress shop in Tel Aviv, a former Israeli Army officer, a secular Jew.  His parents, Holocaust survivors from Szydoche, Poland, are both dead.  He had a distant relationship with them and with religious Judaism, even resisting being bar mitzvahed.  His relationships with his wife and 2 daughters is cold and distant.  He seems estranged generally for life, having positive feelings mostly about his military life.  In his mid-life crisis he decided to go to the small Polish village of his parents and ancesters. for reasons that aren't all that clear either to him or to readers.  He falls in love with the Polish shiksa, a farmer, with whom he boards for a few weeks.  The plot and a good deal of the dialogue seemed forced to me by the author does catalogue pretty well the most common anti-Semetic projudices which are shared by all the Poles in Szydoche except his landlady/lover and an old woman in town who knew his grandparents and even his highly respected grandfather, Itche Meir.  One theme of the novel seems to be that, in terms of fear and envy and hatred of Jews, nothing has changed among the Poles from the Holocaust and pre-Holocaust days and today.  I can't say I enjoyed the novel very much though I am thinking of the description of Yaakov's estrangement , his loneliness, his mid-life crisis, and his regret, remorse really, about ignoring his parents before they died and even when they died.  He sold their home as soon as he could and gave all of its contents to a charity, including items that most people would hold onto.  "Take everything", he told the movers.  I'm thinking too of his too-late learning about his parents' lives, and his grandparents' through his lover Magda and through Wanda, the wise old lady of the village, and a little bit throught Nikolai, the Polish farmer who hid his parents from the Nazis, for a time and for a price.  I am reminded of the great effort I devoted to learning some of my parents' history while writing the memoir, reminded of driving up to Grand Rapids and Taconite , Minnesota, to see where my grandparents lived when my mother was born.  I'm thinking too of the regret I'm feeling this week about not being able to find the documents from Los Alamos that my Aunt Mary kept for decades after she and Uncle Bud lived there when he worked on the Manhattan Project.  So many mysteries about grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles.  How many questions I wish I had asked when they were all alive.  Old man regrets.

Random bait bucket thoughts about Israel and the U.S.  They are so similar in such significant ways.  Each is aptly described as a political project and a political experiment.   Can the U.S. succeed as a roughly democratic republic?  ("A republic, if you can keep it" and all that)  Can Israel be both a Jewish state and a democracy?  Each is divided down the middle and appears to be coming apart at the seams.  Left vs. Right.  Religious vs. Secular.  Fascist vs. anti-Fascist.  In America, urban vs. rural.  A part of Israel's problem is that it doesn't have a constitution, and has been kept from the worst extremism by its supreme court's power to invalidate laws as "unreasonable."  A part of America's problem is that it does have a constitution, but one written by anti-democratic oligarchs and plutocrats more than 230 years ago for a pre-industrial economy and society.  Israel is only 75 years old, governed in its formative years by secular, socialist, Ashkenazi, Holocaust-haunted Jews.  Now it is governed by ultra-religious, ultra-nationalist groups whose racist policies regarding Arabs/Palestinians have erstwhile supporters of Israel wondering whether the Israel project and experiment has failed and whether Israel itself has become a racist and fascist state after 56 years of military occupation and aggressive settlement of formerly Palestinian lands.  

. . . . 

The Knesset passed the first and vital part of the judicial 'reform' bill today, limiting the supreme court's ability to nullify laws based on 'unreasonableness.'  The opposition staged a walkout so the bill passed unanimously with votes from Nehanyahu's coalition.  The controversy should make us wonder about what is the real basis for judicial review and invalidation of legislation.  Conservatives raise the issue when a court of last resort invalidates a law or practice that conservatives favor; Progressives raise the same issue when a law or practice that they favor is struck down.  I think any fair analysis of the issue will lead to the conclusion that judicial review is all based on politics, power politics.  Any interpretative result that is desired can always be justified by some rubric, some rule of interpretation.  It is a myth that judges of a court of last resort don't make the law, they only interpret the law, that the meaning of the law and the meanings of the cases and constitutional language relied on to sustain or nullify any law are inherent in the language of the statutes and cases; the meaning simply has to be 'discovered,' or 'discerned.'  All the judges know that the law is what the judges say it is.  For any desired result, AI could compose a rational rationale.  Perhaps most distressing is the spurious use of history to compel results, whee the judges become historians rather and lawyers and jurists.  Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito have all induldged in this in the Indian Child Welfare Act case, and the dobbs case.  "History" is like 'rule of statutory construction' - ripe for cherry picking to support any desired results.   All the nonsense we read about 'originalism' and 'the Framers' intent' is baloney, a gloss of lipstick on the pig of power politics.

CNN chryon re; mass shootings tells us that mass shooting in America are far outpacing former years, averaging 2 every day.

Another semi-crappy day.  Not fit company for man nor beast.  Not fit company for myself.  Vanitas, vanitas et omnia vanitas.  I need a cave to retire to.  Shame on me.

7/23/23

 Sunday, July 23, 2023

In bed at 9:45,  up at 6:35, many pss, let Lilly out.  63℉, high of 79℉, mostly sunny day ahead, AQI=30, Good.  Wind W at 6 mph, 3-6/14.  got 1/4 in of rain yesterday.  Sun rose at 5:32 and sets at 8:23, 14+50.

'Slaves developed skills . . . useful in later life.'  That is what Florida's board of education wants Florida schoolchildren to be taught as part of their education about chattel slavery.  DeSantis pooh-poohs the fury and disgust being expressed by those who are opposed to this effort to soften the horror of slavery.  We Whites in America have never been exposed to the real horrors of the slave labor camps euphemistically called "plantations."  We old folks grew up in a world of Gone With the Wind, of the beautiful Miss Scarlett, getting her corset tightened by the loving and lovable Mammy, being served by the indolent flibbertigibbet Prissy, and the ever-faithful field foreman Big Sam, who seemed to just love being enslaved by Miss Scarlett's benevolent Dad, played by the benevolent and then pitiable Thomas Mitchell. who played the lovable Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life.  The credits listed Hattie McDaniels, Butterfly McQueen, and Oscar Polk as "house servants," not as slaves.

Just as wars are never "over" but rather change form and circumstances, so it is with America's experience with racialized chattel slavery.  Even Blacks who have "made it" in American society because of great talent and/or great effort or even because of getting a leg up from an affirmative action program, they aren't genuinely free  because they lack White Privilege.  Barack Obama was followed watchfully while shopping in stores.  They may be rich as Croesus but they are not White.  1619 to 2023, 404 years and still counting.  'Slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.'

What we can be sure of not being taught in Florida's classrooms?  The story of slave revolts and the fear of slave uprisings, especially after the successful Haitian Revolution against the French, 1791 - 1804.  They won't be taught about "maroons" like those described in the article in the current New Yorker section Annals of Inquiry, "Searching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery:  Its ruins are somewhere in the swamps of Georgia. What will it take to find them?"  by Matthew Hutson,  July 21.

Lest we forget, limousine liberals.  In the current The Atlantic, "How Rich Blue Suburbs Keep the Poor Away:" "Wealthy conservative areas also erect barriers to new housing, but liberal areas are typically worse. Writing in 2022, the Brookings Institution researcher Jenny Schuetz observed that “decades of painstaking research of zoning by economists and urban planners have produced a high degree of consensus on which places in the United States have tight land use regulations, regardless of the method used to measure zoning.” She argues that “overly restrictive zoning is most prevalent and problematic along the West Coast and the Northeast corridor from Washington D.C. to Boston.” These areas “lean heavily Democratic in national, state and local elections.” And studies that examine the stringency of zoning within states—for example, California—find that the most restrictive zoning is found in the more politically liberal communities."  More complicity.

Semi-crappy mood.  I'm out of sorts today, irritable and irritating, unappreciative of life.  Not depressed, not anxious, not angry, but not enjoying life, a crabby, unappreciative old man.  Not good.  An insolent rebuke to the life my mother worked so hard to give me.  Snap out of it, Buster!

7/22/23

 Saturday, July22, 2023

In bed at 9:10, up at 5:40 with backache and thoughts of Oppenheimer.  Let Lilly out.  63℉, high of 78, mostly sunny morning, mostly cloudy later, AQI=48, Good.  The wind is WSW at 6 mph, 3-6/12. No rain.  The sun rose at 5:32 and will set at 8:23, 14+52.    

Hearing and Hearing Loss.  An op-ed in this morning's NYT caught my eye, reminding me of Merlin and me and my quiet mornings on the patio.  "The Birds Are Singing, but Not for Me" by  David George Haskell:  "Where I live in the Southeast, late spring is marked by the songs of blackpoll warblers, tiny black-and-white birds migrating from South America to the boreal forests of Canada where they breed. They’re here for a week just as the school year ends and tomato-planting season begins, a joyful time. This year, I heard none. My partner, though, could hear their high-pitched song and pointed the birds out as they flitted in the treetops.  The sonic erasure felt deeply unsettling. I could hear other everyday sounds — passing cars, cardinals whistling, neighborhood kids at play — but the blackpoll’s song was gone."  The ornithology app on my iPhone hears more than I do.

The other day there was a story in the WaPo: "Hearing aids may cut the risk of cognitive decline by nearly half."  It put me in mind of Jimmy in his late 80s with significant hearing loss, constant problems with his hearing aids, and how it all contributed to his social isolation and confusion.

And my recent throne room reading includes this from Leaves of Grass, 26:

Now I will do nothing but listen,

To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,

I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,

I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,

Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,

Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,

The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,

The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence,

The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,

The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,

The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,

The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,

(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)

. . . . . . 

Was ever any poet, or any human being, more alive than Walt Whitman?  'I hear bravuras of birds', marvelous.

LTMW  I see some chickadees are the first to show up for some early morning seeds but the red finches aren't far behind, enjoying seeds and orange juice.  These finches, often paired up, are becoming favorites of mine.  They remind me of our windowsill visitors at the Knickerbocker.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: With Israel, It’s Time to Start Discussing the Unmentionable

"Israel is in the headlines, evoking tumultuous debate. Yet one topic remains largely unmentionable, so let me gingerly raise it: Is it time to think about phasing out American aid for Israel down the road?  This is not about whacking Israel. But does it really make sense for the United States to provide the enormous sum of $3.8 billion annually to another wealthy country? . . . Aid to Israel is now almost exclusively military assistance that can be used only to buy American weaponry. In reality, it’s not so much aid to Israel as it is a backdoor subsidy to American military contractors, which is one reason some Israelis are cool to it."

Worse yet, we have to borrow money from China and increase our deficits and national debt to subsidize Israel and our arms industry.

War is Hell.  The lead headline in this morning's WaPo: "Ukraine is now the world’s most mined country. It will take decades to make it safe.  An area larger than Florida is now a wasteland of unexploded ordnance that could take hundreds of years and billions of dollars to undo." And the land becomes more lethal every single day as Ukraine fires American-made and American-provided 155mm cluster bomb artillery shells.  H. L. Mencken: "To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason and "In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars."  CDC: Wars are never 'over.'  The underlying enmity and greed and wickedness live on in different forms, different circumstances, but always present, always pending, ready to erupt again.

Oppenheimer.  I took in the 12:30 matinee of this movie yesterday, drawn to it for 2 specific reasons plus the overarching importance of the Manhattan Project and the development and use of nuclear weapons.  The narrower reasons were (1) my visit to Hiroshima in 1965, and (2) the fact that my Uncle Donald 'Bud' Healy was a machinist who worked on the Manhattan Project.  I don't know what his job or role was but he and my Aunt Mary Horigan lived for a time at Los Alamos.   

It was my first visit to a movie theater in more than 3 years, since before the pandemic.  Notes: (1) The ticket cost only $7.39, weekday matinee price plus senior discount, (2)  The sound system in the auditorium was painfully loud, even for an old guy with hearing loss and tinnitus. (3)  The 12:30 'showtime' was misleading.  There were fully 20 minutes of 'coming attractions' followed by another 5 minutes of commercials and a greeting from Marcus Theaters before the film started.  The 'coming attractions" were painfully loud PLUS they were produced and edited in such a way as to make them as attention-demanding, i.e., annoying, as possible.  (4)  Very few people were at the showing and they were all old timers, not surprising I suppose.  (5) The 3-hour movie required one pit stop.

About the film: (1) A major problem - I'd be surprised if I understood half of the lines of the film's dialogue.  Part of it may have been due to the auditorium's volume setting, or perhaps just a crappy sound system.  More likely it was my general inability to make out words in songs and movies.  I need closed captions.  I need to buy the DVD when it is released or get it at the library so I can watch it again with captions and better sound control.  (2)  I didn't know much about Oppenheimer other than he was a scientist connected with the development of the atom bomb.  I didn't know that he was Jewish or that he lost his security clearance because of his associations with communists.  I didn't know he was one of the early researchers on quantum mechanics and also on astrophysics and 'gravitational collapse' a/k/a black holes.  He was clearly quite a genius.  (2) The film reminded me of the hysteria about communists when I was a youngster.  It was the era of the John Birch Society and right-wing, anti-communist fanatics looking under every rock and behind every tree for a communist.  Oppenheimer's security clearance was taken away in 1954, the same year Joe McCarthy was staging his infamous hearings on communist infiltration in the Army and other components of the U.S. government.  I can remember those televised hearings, with McCarthy and his lawyer Roy Cohn, and Attorney Joseph Welch's famous "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?  Have you left no sense of decency?"  But I don't remember anything of Oppenheimer in those awful years.  I turned 13 in 1954 and was in 8th grade.  How interesting that it is acceptable on the right wing to call opponents "Communists," not just Socialists.  (3) The movie depicts an example of 'the weaponization of governments.'  Oppenheimer's enemies included J. Edgar Hoover & the FBI, and Eisenhower's nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Lewis Strauss, whom JRO had once embarrassed.  They used the Atomic Energy Commission to bring JRO down by suspending his security clearance and making him ineligible for any government work.

I need to watch and listen to this film at home on a DVD to try to get more out of it.  Ann Hornaday, the WaPo's chief film critic, lauded the film and wrote "[T]he dialogue in “Oppenheimer” is scrupulously comprehensible — a victory for anyone who has found Nolan’s sound mixes to be unintelligible in the past."  My inability to make out the words in that dialogue makes me want to keep trying.

An Awful, Sinking Feeling is upon me.  I had a box full of original materials and working papers from when I worked on drafting my memoir.  Among the treasures that I believe were in it were original documents with rules and regulations for those living in Los Alamos while working on the Manhattan Project.  I had placed the box between a basement wall and an end table next to my basement recliner.  I went down to retrieve those Manhattan Project papers this afternoon and the box was not where I had placed it.  I searched in the storage agrea of the basement and in the workroom area but no luck.  Is it possible that I three it out when I was trashing a bunch of other stuff from my mildewed  Pandora boxes?  It's hard for me to believe that I would have trashed that historical stuff en masse, i.e. the whole box, but if not, where is it?  The thought that I may have sent those papers to a landfill sickens me. 

7/21/23

 Friday, July 21, 2023

In bed at 9, awake at 4:20, rolled over, dropped off, and up at 5:20.  60℉, high of 77, sunny all day, AQI=32, Good.  The wind is NNW at 8 mph, 5-8/16.  Sunrise at 5:31, sunset at 8:25, 14+54.  No rain.

Friend request from Hannah White.  I hesitated but accepted.  I wondered why this extraordinary 22-year-old violin virtuoso and shirt-tail relative would send me a friend request.  Maybe she's into aggregating FB friends? (I see she has 2.6 thousand followers and 117 'following', whatever that means.)   She and her family remind me of what is right with America and what is wrong with America.  She is the daughter of a mixed-race couple, father Black and mother Vietnamese, who was brought to the U.S. as an immigrant and a refugee.  She started playing the violin and age 7 and appeared with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at age 9,  Her list of significant performances, including Carnegie Hall, and prizes is too long to include here.  Her Dad Steve is a painting contractor, and an entrepreneur, and painted our house in Saukville.  Her Mom Lan does management work for the business and home schooled Hannah and her two talented brothers.  For the past 15 years, each of her parents has provided tremendous support for Hannah's growth as an artist, and for the growth of her brothers as well.  Theirs is truly an extraordinary family, with Hannah as the most high-profile star. (See Hannah White, violinist, on YouTube and the many videos on her FB page.)  I was also surprised to see a 'friend recommendation' today for my law school classmate and friend Marty Greenberg and to see that we have 3 friends in common: David Lowe, Hannah White, and Lan Hoang-White!  Small world. 

Blue Angels in Milwaukee for the annual Lakefront Air Show.  I am not a fan of these shows.  They are very expensive recruiting programs for the military, about which I have mixed feelings, but beyond that, they are literally 'death-defying."  The defiance doesn't always work.  I had a friend in Vietnam who joined the Blue Angels when he departed RVN and died in a training accident.  I can only remember him now by his nickname "Catfish."  In the 1966 or 1967 letter from my other Marine friend Ron Kendall that  I found in the mildewed boxes in the basement, he closed with "I suppose you heard Catfish bought the farm with the Blue Angels."  I remember him every time I see or watch a report on these death-defying masters of derring-do.  RIP.

"Blood on my hands"  There is a story in this morning's WaPo about Robert Oppenheimer telling President Harry Truman that he had "blood on my hands" because of his role in the development of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is reported that Harry Truman was disgusted by Oppenheimer's sense of guilt and thought of him as a 'crybaby' and a hand-wringer.  "I don't want to see that SOB in my office ever again."  I suspect that part of what disgusted Truman was the realization that Oppenheimer was also saying that Truman had a lot of blood on his hands.  The story made me think - of course - of the years-long bombing campaign  - high explosives, napalm, white phosphorous, Agent Orange and other defoliants - that we, the Americans, conducted against Vietnam and how all of us who participated in it have blood on our hands.  Complicity, complicity, everwhere and alway,s complicity.  Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

COPD.  A neighbor has COPD and had a Generac crew at the house all day yesterday installing a generator.  It had me remembering Kitty and her oxygen equipment, also thinking about all the COPD patients in the Southwest and South living under the persistent heat dome, fearing a power outage.  Phoenix continues under an Excessive Heat Warning for day 20? 21?  Alexandria will reach a high of 91 today, but the relative humidity as I type this is 98%, with the dew point ranging from 61 to 72, compared to Phoenix's averages of 17% and dew points of 43 to 56.    How well I remember those brutal summers in Quantico, and the conditioning marches on the Hill Trail, long lines of sweat-drenched young Marines followed by trucks with tubs and ice in case of heat strokes.  A relative humidity of 60% or more, common in Virginia in the summer, hinders sweat evaporation which hinders body cooling and increases the risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.  In mid-July, I think of all those young Marine officer candidates at MCS Qantico's OCS.  I'm trying to remember whether Anne and I had air conditioning in that 'squad bay' we lived in on RR1 in Stafford, but I can't remember.  What I do remember from living there in from June to December of 1963 is (1) the traffic of people on US 1 driving up to Washingtonwi for MLK's March on Washington and "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28th, (2) the telephone call from my mother on Tom and Ronnie Devit's phone (we didn't have one) about James Hartmann's crime, and (3) driving up US 1 in uniform to witness and salute as JFK's body was moved on the horse-drawn caisson from the White House to the Capitol rotunda on November 24th, hearing of Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby, the riderless horse,  the sound of muffled drums and the clacking of the horse hooves on Pennsylvania Avenue, loss of innocence.  Each of these memories has been significant in my life, the speech, the phone call, and the state funeral.  How memory works - a neighbor with COPD gets a generator ~Kitty~heat dome in AZ~Alexandria heat & humidity~Quantico~'I Have a Dream' & James Hartman & Kennedy assassination.  Neurons firing off hither and yon.  By 5 years after that historic summer, I had served my 4 years of active duty in the Marines, my 234 days in Vietnam, both MLK and RFK, Jr., had been assassinated, the police riot had occurred at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and students and workers were demonstrating all over the Western world.  Whatever remained of my innocence about America was long gone.

7/20/23

 Thursday, July 20, 2023

In bed at 9, awake at 4:10, up at 4:21, unable to sleep, let Lilly out, upper right rib cage pain, tender to touch. thoughts of people sleeping in tent village next to Repairers, Andre House in Phoenix, Kitty.  64℉ in Bayside,  94℉ now in Phoenix in the middle of the night.  High here of 79. mostly sunny day, AQI=38, Good, the wind is WSW at 9 mph, 6-15/25, no rain expected next 10 days. 😦 The sun will rise at 5:29 and set at 8:25, 14+55.

Emes.  I came across this word in my Yiddish Word of the Day post this morning, the word meaning 'truth.'  I had not heard it in many years but as soon as I saw it, I thought of Bob Friebert, my boss, my friend, my mentor and Yiddish professor.  Emes led me to the ancient traditional blessing on death in Jewish culture, Baruch dayan ha'emet, Blessed is the True Judge., thanking G-d for all that comes our way, the bad as well as the good.   It is, I suppose, a soothing thought that even the evil that befalls us in life is somehow a blessing, but it reminds me of the belief that all that happens in life is "a part of God's plan,"  that God has a plan for each one of us, and that 'his eye is on the sparrow.'  If this be true, how can it not be true that God is not responsible for all the evil, all the suffering, in the world?  Robert Frost: 

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee

And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.” 

― Robert Frost

Life in our Dystopia.  The headline in this morning's newspaper: "3 consecutive days that a child age 5 and under has been shot in Milwaukee, police say."  Children continue to be caught in gunfire at increased levels in recent years, including a span in June when seven children were shot over four days. This year, 12 children have died in homicides in Milwaukee, including 11 shootings.  From 2016 to 2019, no more than 10 children 17 and younger died by homicide in Milwaukee, but 20 or more have been killed in each of the three years since then, according to police and the city's Homicide Review Commission. Last year, 27 children died in homicides.  Baruch dayan ha'emet?

LTMW  At 5:45, I see the first birds to show up at Clausen's Corner Feed Station - all chickadees, some on the niger tube and some on the sunflower tube, which needs filling.  A gray squirrel also arrives for some ground-level scavenging.  And now a gorgeous male goldfinch arrives and OMG a gorgeous oriole looking not-so-sure at a dessicated orange and then he is chased away by a red-bellied woodpecker.  .The oranges need replacing, and I struggle with whether to fill the suet basket. . . . .  I refilled the sunflower tube and put out fresh orange halves at 6:15, hoping to attract that beautiful oriole, or at least to provide fresh treats to the red finches who feast on the oranges.  Business picked up.  A neighbor drove by coming home at this hour from where? what? Probably one of our doctor neighbors returning from very early rounds? or a surgery?  Perhaps the anesthesiologist?  But this early???  By 6:45, there are several neighbors out walking their dogs, including our good next-door neighbor John with their new puppy, "Dorothy."  At 6:54, the sun breaks through the clouds over Lake Michigan and sunbeams fall on the glider, the sun slowly on the way south, interior sunbeams on the way north.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 5:30 at 61 degrees E, 5 degrees further south than on the June 21 solstice.

Pregnancy termination is for the 2020s what slavery was for the 1850s.  I've been thinking more about how similar the abortion issue is in our era to what slavery was in the period anticipating the War Between the States (to use the preferred Confederate term, which seems more apt.)  By the 1850s, the Northern States were all Free States and were all opposed to the slave-based economy moving into the Western territories which were slated to become new states.  The Southern States were all Slave States and all in favor of allowing slavery to be legal in newly-admitted states.  For the enslaved humans, the only realistic hope for freedom was to escape to the North and hope not to be captured by a federal marshall, a bounty hunter, or even a local official who might favor slavery or simply be a racist.  For the abolitionists and Free Labor/Free Soil people in the Free States, the Fugitive Slave Act(s) created tremendous hostility, demonstrated in Milwaukee, for example, by the Joshua Glover case in 1854.

Now we are faced again with a predominantly North-South issue.  "Red States" controlled by Republicans ban or severely restrict abortion.  Nineteen Republican state AGs are seeking to be able to obtain otherwise private information from "Blue State" abortion providers about Red State residents who 'flee North' to legally terminate their pregnancies.  They also seek to prevent out-of-state medical and pharmaceutical providers from mailing abortion medications into their states and presumably to criminalize behavior that is legal in the state where the behavior occurs.  Much like the chattel slave status followed fugitive slaves even into states where slavery was illegal, like Wisconsin, a woman who is a citizen (or resident?) of Alabama would be bound by that state's domestic law no matter where she went to terminate her pregnancy.  This morning's WaPo has a story with this headline: "Blue-state doctors launch abortion pill pipeline into states with bans:  At least 3,500 doses have been shipped to antiabortion states since mid-June, a process enabled by new shield laws."  A new procedure adopted in mid-June by one of the largest abortion pill suppliers, Europe-based Aid Access, now allows U.S. medical professionals in certain Democrat-led states that have passed abortion “shield” laws to prescribe and mail pills directly to patients in antiabortion states.  The telemedicine shield laws, enacted over the past year in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado, explicitly protect abortion providers who mail pills to restricted states from inside their borders.  We are living through a new War Between the States, not a conflict of arms, but a conflict of laws directly or indirectly impact conduct in other states.  Is this not at least akin to the situation in the U.S. under the Fugitive Slave laws?  Aren't women seeking to legally terminate their pregnancies the new slaves?  How will the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution factor into this mess?  What should we expect from this Bush/Trump Supreme Court?

Haaland v. Brackeen and the Indian Child Welfare Act.  By serendipity, I came across a blog by Professor Peter d'Errico on Indian law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the Haaland v. Brackeen decision that I find so troubling, and about which I wrote a while back.  He writes:  "The celebration of Haaland v. Brackeen as “a significant victory for federal Indian law and the rights of tribes and Native children across the nation” is an oxymoron, because ‘federal Indian law’ is actually federal anti-Indian law. It is a structure of US domination, not ‘protection’ (unless we want to see ‘protection racket’ as the real meaning of the system).  The outpouring of liberal “relief” in response to Haaland v. Brackeen is thus wholly misplaced. It misses the fundamental domination that the decision affirmed when it rejected challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).  The Brackeen majority opinion, penned by Justice Amy Barrett, opens with the statement, “Congress’s power to legislate concerning the Indian tribes [is] ‘plenary and exclusive.’”  Lest there be any doubt about the extent of the claim of a right of domination inherent in ‘plenary and exclusive’ power, the opinion adds:   Congress has plenary authority to limit, modify or eliminate the powers of local self-government which the tribes otherwise possess.  An alert reader, not mired in superficial discussions about ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ members of the court, will immediately see that Haaland v. Brackeen is a “significant victory for federal Indian law”, but not for “the rights of tribes”.  Brackeen is neither more nor less than a standard affirmation of the system of domination baked into US ‘Indian law’ from the outset. To celebrate Brackeen is to celebrate the entrenchment of the US claim of domination over Indigenous peoples."

My concern with ICWA and Haaland is that "the best interest of" Indian children are subordinated to political interests, i.e., so-called tribal sovereignty.  Isn't this a form of invidious racial discrimination?  All other children are entitled to have judicial adoption and foster care decisions decided on the basis of the judicially-determined best interests of" the child.  Not Indian children, regardless of what the child herself, or her biological parent(s), or a state court might wish.  Professor d'Errico points out how anomalous this is.  "If the doctrine of domination were revoked and Indigenous nations acknowledged as the free and independent nations they rightfully are, questions of adoption would be handled exactly as they are for all other “intercountry adoptions” under the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.  The Hague Convention does not invoke any claim of domination by one country over another. The adoption framework it provides meets all the concerns stated by the parties and amici in Haaland v. Brackeen. The Convention preamble reads:  Recognising that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding,  Recalling that each State should take, as a matter of priority, appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin,   Recognising that intercountry adoption may offer the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family cannot be found in his or her State of origin,  Convinced of the necessity to take measures to ensure that intercountry adoptions are made in the best interests of the child and with respect for his or her fundamental rights, and to prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children,  Desiring to establish common provisions to this effect, taking into account the principles set forth in international instruments, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, of 20 November 1989, and the United Nations Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with Special Reference to Foster Placement and Adoption Nationally and Internationally (General Assembly Resolution 41/85, of 3 December 1986)….

Nothing more would be needed; certainly, no US ‘protection’."

Poland, A Green Land.  I am enjoying Aharon Appelfeld's novel, although 'enjoying' isn't quite the right work for a book about the Holocaust and its effect on a descendent of survivors.  The chapters are very short, which makes it easier for me to read.  I just read chapter 17 in which Yaakov, the protagonist, visits Nikolai, the Pole who provided a hiding space for Yaakov's parents - only for a while and only for a price.  Nikolai spouts a lot of anti-Jewish prejudices to Yaakov about Jews denying God and his Messiah and about Jews being responsible for Communism.  It reminds me of a conversation I had perhaps 20 years ago or more with one of my father's next-door neighbors, a snowbird Canadian immigrant from some Central or Eastern country, I can't remember which one.  He believed the same thing about Jews being responsible for Communism and the Soviet takeover of the countries behind the Iron Curtain because so many Jews were communists.   The Jews can't win.  They secretly control the entire world's economy to enrich themselves and they're communists.  Go figure.

7/19/23

 Wednesday, July 19, 2023

In bed at 10, awake at 4 and up at 4z;30, unable to sleep with bait bucket thoughts, backache and new sharp pains of unknown origin on upper right side rib cage, 'intercostal muscle' strain? 60℉, high of 77℉, sunny part of the day, cloudy other part, but no rain and none expected in next 10 days.  The wind is WSW at 5 mph, 3-12/21.  The sun will rise at 5:28 and set at 8:26, 14+57.

Hate radio and Schadenfreude TV.  I've been thinking about the similarites between our current situation in the U.S. and the 1850s, thoughts prompted again by reading the excerpts of speeches by Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in connection with the Compromise of 1850 and prompted again by listening to right wing radio yesterday on my trip to Repairers of the Breach and watching MSNBC last night.  I even heard a little bit of Sean Hannity's radio show when I put the car in the garage, the radio still tuned to WISN 'hate radio.'  What struck me about the Webster and Clay speeches was that War was in the air 10 and more years before South Carolina's guns fired on Fort Sumpter.  It wasn't just political or policy differences that separted the Slave and Free States before the Civil War.  The differences were truly existential, i.e, whether the unitary State created by the Constitutiion would, could, and should continue to exist.  The particular issue was the expansion of local economies based on slave labor into the Western Territorities and the altering of existing power blocs in the Congress that would occur if more Slave States were admitted into the Union.  Most of the North, but by no means all, said no and most of the White South said yes.   There were deep feelings of grievance on both sides, but especially in the South.

What is unmistakeable in listening to right-wing talk radio, and on Fox News and other right-wing outlets, is that sense of grievance, that "we" are being treated unfairly by "them."  That Hillary Clinton's email problem with a few classified documents in it and the '33,000" deletions,  was just as bad as Donald Trump's classified documents in the ballroom, bedroom, and bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.  That the 2020 presidential election was 'stolen' by Democrats.  That the January 6th storming of the Capitol was just a "demonstration" by patriotic citizens fed up with this, that, and the other thing.  The profound, persistent feeling that "we" are being screwed out of what is rightfully "ours" by "them," Democrats, liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists, communists, globalists.   A deep, deep, sense of injustice and unfairness and catastrophic change occurring with confirmation biases leading to a readiness to listen to and believe conspiracy theories.

What we are seeing on MSNBC is not the same kind of lunacy just coming from the Left, but rather a cloying schadenfreude as the walls close in on Trump.  I confess to sharing the schadenfreude with a conviction that Trump deserves all the trouble he's experiencing and a lot more but even I have become weary of Nicolle Wallace's, Lawrence O'Donnell's, et al., manifest delight in endlessly focusing on the travails of Trump, no matter how unimportant.  Am I remembering accurately the brouhaha, or was it a kerfluffle, when CBS moved its news programming into its Entertainment division?  OMG, the legacy of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite as entertainment? The news operation at one time was an important public service and was expected to and deserved to cost money, not to make money.  No longer.  And cable news has disrupted everything, with corporate ownership mainly interested in generating profits by catering to the interests of audiences.  The big shake-up at CNN after Jeff Zucker was forced out reveals the tensions within the news industry.  What is the mission, other than generating profits, of televison news in our era?  Giv'em what they want? Like Donald O'Connor's great number in Singing in the Rain?  "Make'em laugh, make'em laugh, . . .You can study Shakespeare and be quite elite / And you could charm the critics and have nothing to eat / Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet / Make 'em laugh."  Or make'em fear and hate.  The more audience you attract with entertaining 'news', the higher the rates you charge to corporate advertisers and the more lucrative the bottom line.  So we get fear and hate and conspiracy theories on the Right and schadenfreude and vengeance-seeking on the Left.

More particularly, I think the gleeful attitude of O'Donnell et al., fails to credit the risks the nation faces from these multiple prosecutions of Trump and his co-conspirators.  At some point, the fury and hatred being constantly amped up by Trump and his media allies will result in shootings, bombings, and burning.  In nuclear physics, "critical mass" is the minimum amount of fissile material necessry to sustain a nuclear chain reaction, including an atomic bomb blast.  I suspect we are near the critical mass of fear, hate, and grievance socially and politically necessary to generate some sustained political violence.  Right-wing zealots will exact a price in blood for the schadenfreude we are enjoying.  There will be blood. (I need my dear sister Kitty to tell me to "SNAP OUT  OF IT!")

Exchange of email with CBG

To:  Charles Clausen     Wed, Jul 19 at 8:07 AM

Chuck,  Thank you so much for your beautiful message. I feel most grateful and blessed to have met you that nervous day in Bob’s office some 38 years ago or so and to have had you in my life ever since. From our talks in the office, to laughing and choking on lunches in the blue conference room, to Goldman’s and Hooligans and Hollander, and to our seasonal dinners over the past couple decades, I always look forward to our time together and cherish the time we spend. We are off to LA today for a birthday dinner and then to take care of grandchild #1 in Santa Monica for 4 days while my daughter and son in law take a little vacay in Malibu. We’re looking forward to it and plan to come home exhausted!  See you for our next dinner, if not before. ❤️

On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 10:02 AM Charles Clausen <charlesclausen2003@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi, Dear Friend,   I think I am a day early but if so, all to the good.  Perhaps I'll be the first to wish you a happy 65th birthday.  I'm thinking back on the first time we met which I think was when you interviewed at the firm in Bob's corner office.  I liked you then and the warm feelings have only grown over so many years.   So many of the people we work with, most of them in fact, never become more than acquaintances and fellow workers while some fortunate ones become personal friends, enriching our lives 'where we live,' so to speak, not just where we work or worked.  I am thankful that you have been such a person in my life.  It's a little bit hard for me to believe that that beautiful young law school graduate nervously sitting on Bob's sofa so long ago is now a bubbe and about to receive some benefits from all those Medicare taxes you have paid so long.  Mazel tov! 💖

Camille 

Nose job botched in salvage attempt, but at least not a snout.