Friday, August 4, 2023
In bed at 10, awake at 4:15, and up at 4:37 with bad back pain, which seems centered on the lower right side. Let Lilly out. 67℉, high of 78℉,8:09, sunny morning and then clouding up, AQI=40. Wind NNE at 5, 5-10/18. Sunrise at 5:45, sunset at 8:09, 14+24.
Lilly on guard duty. I let her out at about 4:45 and again at 5:55. Each time she saw one (or more) white-tails on the front lawn and gave out her guard-dog alarm: woof woof. I didn't see the deer from the earlier encounter but I suspect he, she, or they acted the same as the deer in the later encounter, i.e., standing still and staring back at Lilly a la deer in the headlights. Lilly also stood still and stared and gladly scooted back into the house when I opened the door. Woof woof.
Local dystopic news, Washington Park, Cathedral Park. The teenager who joined in beating, raping, and killing Ee Lee at the Washington Park lagoon in 2020, when he was 15 years old, was sentenced to 32 years in prison yesterday. The ADA described him as "a ticking time bomb" and "an undefused bomb." On the same day, a group of four Muslim women picnicking with their children at the Cathedral Park playground were assaulted by two Black women in their 30s who ripped off the Muslim women's hijabs, punched them, breaking the nose of one of the Muslims, with one attacker saying, according to the complaint "We're Black, aggressive women, and we're going to defend our own kind." The two attackers have been charged with one felony and 5 misdemeanors, with hate crime enhancers.
September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives /On Fifty-second Street / Uncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade: / Waves of anger and fear / Circulate over the bright /And darkened lands of the earth, / Obsessing our private lives; / The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can / Unearth the whole offense /From Luther until now /That has driven a culture mad, / Find what occurred at Linz, / What huge imago made / A psychopathic god: / I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.
Precious Lord, Take My Hand by Thomas Dorsey and George Allen
Precious Lord, take my hand, / Lead me on, let me stand, / I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; / Through the storm, through the night, / Lead me on to the light:
Take my hand, precious Lord, / Lead me home.
When my way grows drear, /Precious Lord, linger near, / When my life is almost gone, / Hear my cry, hear my call, / Hold my hand lest I fall: / When the darkness appears /And the night draws near, / And the day is past and gone, /At the river, I stand, /Guide my feet, hold my hand:
Take my hand, precious Lord, / Lead me home.
I read stories like these about the Washington Park and Cathedral Park crimes and wonder how are they possible, or worse yet, how is it they are probable. What is going on in the heads and hearts of persons capable of such acts? I think back on some of the prisoners I have met at the maximum security prison outside of Green Bay, especially one who committed a murder for hire. He was intelligent, charming, and clearly a psychopath, a person with no conscience. Most of the others however were victims before they became victimizers. They were neglected and badly abused as children and, as Auden wrote "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." He applied the thought to Hitler and wondered what in his upbringing as a child in Linz, Austria, led to his evil character which led to his politics which led to World War II, all inspired by "a psychopathic god." I feel weighed down by our time and culture as Auden was at the start of the big war. Uncertain, afraid, waves of anger and fear obsessing our private lives. O tempora, O mores! Crimes, guns, climate change, and the 'huge imago' of Trump and Trumpism with its mass delusions looming over everything. I am reminded of the eulogy I voiced for Ray Aiken at the memorial gathering in the Grimmelsman courtroom at the law school, when I reflected on how struck I was by the singing of Precious Lord, Take My Hand at his funeral service, especially by the lyric "I am tired, I am week, I am worn." Those words aptly described him in his last days, brought low by Alzheimer's, but my memories of him were of his strength and his vigor, his occasional contentiousness or even pugnaciousness, a legacy perhaps of his days as an amateur boxer in his youth. In any event, today I feel like the supplicant in the gospel song: tired, weak, worn. The older I get, the less I understand and the less able I am to cope with the changing world as 'the darkness appears, and the night draws near, and the day is past and gone.' Again this morning I am badly hobbled by back pain. Again I realize that were it not for Geri, I would not be able on my own to live in this house, or any house for that matter. I wouldn't be able to take care of Lilly and increasinly even of myself. Daunting thoughts.
County Line Road bridge and ramps open. At last! I drove to the post office to mail a few forms to the VA claims office in Janesville. I submitted a new claim based on the PACT Act's inclusion of high blood pressure among the compensable conditions from exposure to burn pits and, in my case, Agent Orange in Vietnam. The claim was submitted on March 8th, almost 5 months ago. It took about 4 months to see a nurse practitioner who took my blood pressure and asked a few perfunctory questions. Then another mnth to send me a notice about submitting medical evidence (as if I had any) or authorizing the release of medical information from my pre-VA primary care doctor, Kathleen Baugrud. I sent the authorization in today but I am not expecting anything worthwhile to come of this whole process. I don't expect to get any result from the process until maybe March of next year, a year after claim submission and then it will probably be 'no change in disability rating." So it goes. I need to think of this protracted process and the incredible process of my getting enrolled in the VA in the first place when I consider how it is that so many people have such antipathy for the government.
No comments:
Post a Comment