9/1/23

 Friday, September 1, 2023

In bed at 9, up at 4:30 to let Lilly out. 57°, high of 78°, sunny day ahead, AQI=30, wind SSW at 6 mph, 4-13, 20.  DOs 57-6.  Sunrise at 6:15, sunset at 7:27, 13+11.

Lilly plopped down heavily in my bedroom before 4:30, breathing heavily  Her breathing is often labored now (if that's the correct term.)  She pants when there appears to be no reason for heavy breathing.  She is less than 6 weeks away from her 14th birthday.  I let her out when I got up and sniffed around both sides of the front yard but I couldn't see whether she 'did her business.'  Some of her behavior makes Geri and me wonder if she may be experiencing some dementia. I let her out again at 5:30, and then again at 5:50.  After the first outing, she didn't take up her usual "post" in the dining room doorway waiting for a treat.  After the 2nd and 3rd outing, she took up her post but turned her nose up at each treat that I offered her, taking none.  When she came in after her 3rd outing, her right hind leg seemed to be misbehaving, both on the stoop and in the dining room.  I let her out again at 7:50 and offered her a meat stick when she came in, which she refused, but she then accepted a doggie beef jerky and drank a lot of water.  I let her out one more time before Geri awoke.

Painting yesterday afternoon; Judy Garland.  I painted an eye on a canvas yesterday just to see whether I could do it decently and to see whether painting might lift my spirits.  Little success on either count although painting usually does help me to "forget your troubles, c'mon get happy."  Recalling that song from my childhood led me to Wikipedia, Judy Garland, and the 1950 movie Summer Stock.  Judy and my mother were born within weeks of each other at the hospital in Grand Rapids, MN in 1922 and I've long had a special interest in her because of that one commonality.  Both of them left Grand Rapids as children, Judy (Frances Gumm) for California and movie stardom, my mother for Chicago, for marriage, and me and my sister.  They had another point in common: early death.  Judy died at 47 of a barbiturate overdose, my mother at 51 of an aneurysm.  I watched the YouTube video of Judy's famous "Get Happy" song-and-dance production number with her black tuxedo jacket and fedora and thought how bitterly ironic it was.  She was 26 when the movie was filmed.  She had been habituated to amphetamines and barbiturates since before her role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz at age 17.  The studio moguls and minions made big bucks off of her talent and got her hooked as a teenager on 'uppers' and 'downers' which ultimately led to her death at age 47.  A major challenge for her throughout her career was weight maintenance and in Summer Stock, she had to resort to 2 months of hypnotherapy to lose 15 to 20 pounds before filming the "Get Happy"  number and that was after all the other scenes of the movie had been filmed.  She was a huge movie star, a major box-office draw, but also drug-addicted and under constant stress.  "The sun is shining / Come on get happy / The lord is waiting to take your hand / Shout halleluja / Come on get happy / We're going to the promised land."  Some Promised Land.

You know, morons.  In Blazing Saddles, Jim, the Waco Kid, says to Sheriff Bart: "You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.  It's the greatest line in a movie full great lines and I immediately thought of it in reading David French's op-ed in this morning's NYT: "The Articulate Ignorance of Vivek Ramaswamy."  Exceprts:

Civic ignorance is a very old American problem. If you spend five seconds researching what Americans know about their own history and their own government, you’ll uncover an avalanche of troubling research, much of it dating back decades. As Samuel Goldman detailed two years ago, as far back as 1943, 77 percent of Americans knew essentially nothing about the Bill of Rights, and in 1952 only 19 percent could name the three branches of government.

That number rose to a still dispiriting 38 percent in 2011, a year in which almost twice as many Americans knew that Randy Jackson was a judge on “American Idol” as knew that John Roberts was the chief justice of the United States. A 2018 survey found that most Americans couldn’t pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. Among other failings, most respondents couldn’t identify which nations the United States fought in World War II and didn’t know how many justices sat on the Supreme Court.

But I don’t share these statistics to write yet another story bemoaning public ignorance. Instead, I’m sharing these statistics to make a different argument: that the combination of civic ignorance, corrupt leadership and partisan animosity means that the chickens are finally coming home to roost. We’re finally truly feeling the consequences of having a public disconnected from political reality.

We almost always forget just how always-ignorant and often-stupid the American electorate is.  I remember Jay Leno's 'JayWalking' schticks in which he would do 'man on the street interviews and ask tough questions and receive answers like the following:  (1) In what country would you find the Panana Canal?  I have no clue.  In what country would you find the Great Wall of China?  China?  OK, in what country would you find the Panama Canal?  China? (2)  Name two of the Founding Fathers?  Founding Fathers of what?  Who was the 1st president of the U.S.?  Benjamin Franklin? (3)  What was the Gettysburg Address? (hesitation)  Have you heard of it?  Yes, I've heard of it.  I dont know the exact address.  (4) Fourscore and seven year ago, our forefathers . . . A. Who art in heaven.  (5) Who wrote the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin?  I couldn't tell you.  Who would writea your autobiography?  That would have to be my freind Jesse.  (6) Who wrote Handel's Messiah?  I don't read books.

Shopping trip to the Saukville Walmart for  CBH, Benefil for Lilly, coffee filters, a comb, and nail files and to Grafton Costco for Lilly treats, olive oil, omeprazole, and Rao marinara sauce

GERD sequellae.  The very distressing GERD reflux occurred on Sunday night.  It's 5 days later and I still have congestion in my and the remnants of rib and diaphragm muscle pain from the severe coughing.  I'm increasing my daily omeprazole dosage from 20l to 40 mgs.  Back pain is better today but CPP is a problem.