Tuesday, September 26, 2023
In bed by 10, up from brr at 4:40, shooting back pain. Let Lilly out. 64°, high of 68°, cloudy day, Beach Hazard Alert, 3 to 6' waves and dangerous currents. AQi=33, wind ESE at 10 mph, 10-14/24, 50% chance of rain, 0.25" in next 24 hours, DPs 61-63°. Sunrise at 6:43 at 91° and sliding south. Sunset at 6:42 at 269, 11+58.
Dora Carrington, painting. Most of my paintings of persons have the subjects looking like cartoon characters but I'm OK with that. I've tried to draw cartoon characters and almost always fail, but I do enjoy my paintings even though they are flat and cartoonish. The biggest favor I've done myself is to accept that I am not skilled or talented at either drawing or painting BUT that I do very much enjoy drawing and painting despite my lack of talent. "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly." I was the same way at golf, so for the last years when I was still able to play, I just didn't keep score, not in it to compete or win anything, just to enjoy the activity, companionship, and surroundings. Is it a mistake to be so cavalier about my abundant inabilities, to set so low a bar, or no bar, for myself? Perhaps. I was never tempted to take golf lessons from a pro or to take the activity seriously, worthy of spending a lot of money or of getting upset over a bad stroke or a bad round, or worthy of knowing how 'handicaps' are computed, that sort of thing. On the other hand, I do wish I had been able to take art lessons, drawing and painting lessons. I know I could draw better drawings and paint better paintings if had instruction from knowledgeable teachers. I got into painting at age 24 back in Yuma, AZ, taking lessons with Anne and our friends John and Nancy Kroll from a lady who gave basic lessons in her home. And then, perhaps 4 years ago, I took some lessons from a lady in Riverwest who gave lessons in her attic. They were helpful and I enjoyed them but I had to climb outdoor stairs to get to the attic classroom and it became too much for me, especially in the winter. So I forge on in my untutored ineptitude, thankful for the pleasure I get from this pastime and for the distraction it provides from my curmudgeonry.
The older I get, the more aware I become of the wide ambit of my ineptitudes, not just in pastimes like drawing, painting, and golf, but in seemingly everything, including my major life callings. I never quite 'fit in' in the Marine Corps, or at the university, or at the law firm, or even at the House of Peace, always a bit of a square plug not fitting the round hole I was in. A VA counselor recently asked me a routine question on a list of questions they use to assess suicide risks, 'do you ever think of yourself as a failure'' or something like that. It's one of those standard NIMH suicide assessment questions like 'Do you ever think of harming yourself or harming others?' that the VA nurse asks at every semi-annual visit with my primary care doc. (And my standard smart-ass answer tends to be 'If I were, I probably wouldn't tell you, would I?) But on feeling like a failure question, I answered truthfully "Yes." I had a 'regular' as opposed to a 'reserve' commission in the Marine Corps but I resigned it at my first opportunity. I was hired onto the full-time MU law faculty on 3 separate occasions, but I also left voluntarily each time. I never felt 'at home' in the law firm, never was entrepreneurial in developing a clientele, never comfortable about representing clients able to pay big legal fees to the exclusion of people like my own family, never comfortable with the built-in conflicts inherent in fee-for-service billing, etc. And never fully 'at home' working for the Capuchins for various reasons. I left all of those pursuits for various reasons. I left my first marriage, though it almost killed me. I resigned as president of the Milwaukee Ballet Foundation, where I regularly rubbed elbows with 'the swells.' I've never devoted myself to making a ton of money or being 'a big deal' as we used to say. I wonder about that now, was it a mistake, a series of mistakes, the way I lived my life. Have I failed my children? My family? How could I have let so many enriching friendships wither? How could I have been so oblivious of my mother before she died so young? of my father for so long? And not a day but something is recalled, my conscience or my vanity appalled. The Last Judgment mirror, all-seeing, all-revealing. Kyrie eleison.
Lizzie the Intrepid missed a landing at gymnastics yesterday and broke her ankle.😩 She really is intrepid, an adventurer and a trooper. Gymnastics, volleyball, stagecraft, art - our Renaissance granddaughter. She'll be wearing a boot for a while.
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.
I am reminded of this as I see the brouhaha over Cassidy Hutchinson's new book. She was a featured guest on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday and will appear on Rachel Maddow's show tonight and Lawrence O'Donnell's show tomorrow. She follows in the tradition of former Trump enablers, most notably Michael Cohen, but also Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Jarad Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Peter Navarro, Bill Barr, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Kellyanne Conway, Stephanie Grisham, Sean Spicer, Mark Meadows and a few others who chose to assist Donald J. Trump in his perfidious occupancy of the Oval Office and then benefited from book contracts and the royalties they generated. Lest we forget.
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