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.