10/13/23

Friday, October 13, 2023

In bed at midnight, awake at 3 & onto brr till 5.  52°, high of 54°, 0.35" of rain in last 24 hours, 1.85" expected in next 24 hours testing the new gutters and downspouts, AQI =24, wind E at 21 mph , 16-24/37.  Sunrise at 7:02, sunset at 6:12, 11+9.

Insomnia and worse.  A very unusual night.  I couldn't get to sleep until after midnight and woke up around 3.  Geri also had much difficulty falling asleep and then suffered some flu-like symptoms during the night.  We each wondered whether all the news of atrocities in Israel and the pending massacre in Gaza triggered the insomnia.  ?!?  Long day and evening ahead.😦

VA today, 'hat trick.'  An 11:45 appointment for my 7th covid vaccination followed by at 12:30 meeting with my Whole Health coach plus I should get my back x-rayed for PM&R doc Chang. . .  All missions accomplished.

Bill Cannon died on October 7th at age 75.  He was one tough hombre, brother of my law school colleague and fellow Marine Vietnam veteran, Tom Cannon, another tough hombre, now 77 years old.  The cause of Bill's death was not given but memorials were suggested to a cancer fund.  Bill and I worked together in the late 80s  on one of the DeRance Foundation cases involving Erica John and Dr. John Gallagher when Tom Cannon was conflicted-out.  I can't remember any of the particulars but I recall flying to Washington (?) with Bill for a deposition.  My friend and former student and colleague at F&F Madeleine Kelly worked for Bill's firm after she departed F&F, where she and they worked late every night.  

Settlers in the West Bank have been targeting Palestinians since the invasion of Israel by Hamas on the 7th.  I've seen virtually no media coverage of these killings until a story today that revealed 35 Palestinians have been killed "by soldiers and settlers" in the West Bank this week.  Three Palestinians were killed by settlers on Wednesday in the town of Qusra.

This perpetual war between Israelis and Palestinians remind me  of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland between the Catholic IRA and Sein Fein and the Protestant Unionist zealots, and the deep ethnic hostilities in the Balkans, most notably between the Orthodox Serbs and the Muslim Bosnians and Montenegrins and the Serbs and the Catholic Croatians.  These enmities never end.  "We are all tattooed in our cradles .  . ."

Speaker of the House.  Steve (David Duke w/o the baggage) Scalese has withdrawn his candidacy.  The House is paralyzed.

 Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs moral consistency, not moral clarity  From Paul Waldman's column in this mornings WaPo:

So perhaps what we need more than clarity is consistency. I feel Israel’s anguish, fear and rage; I have family and friends there. But I’m horrified by Hamas fighters going house to house and murdering people not because the victims were Jews like me, but because they were human beings. And so are the innocent civilians now being killed in Gaza.

None of us is immune to the tribalistic impulse that was bred in our bones over thousands of generations. But tribalism is the source of most atrocities. If you find yourself thinking that a child killed by a bullet as she cowers in her family’s safe room is fundamentally different from a child crushed by falling concrete when a missile destroys her apartment building based on her religion, then you haven’t found moral clarity. You’ve abandoned moral judgment altogether.

 . . . . . . . . 

My heart is aching watching the news this morning, seeing mothers with their children, reading the leaflets dropped in Gaza City, telling them to move to southern Gaza, watching families on carts drawn by donkeys, with whatever of their possessions they could pile into the cart, heading out of Gaza City, while cars similarly loaded drive past them.  And children everywhere. 

His brother was worse.  One of my favorite old jokes is the one about a town's bad guy, bully, thief, etc., dying and the local preacher asking someone in the audience to share a good word about the deceased.  No one volunteers until the preacher threatens to keep the congregation in church until someone shares some good word about the hated deceased.  At last, one member stands up and says "His brother was worse."

I'm reminded of that joke by the Republicans' thrashing about trying to elect a Speaker of the House.  I remarked to Geri the other day that whenever I'm inclinded to be happy when the Republicans do something positive, like dumping Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, I have to remind myself that they will probably follow up with something or someone worse.  Sure enough, they unseated McCarthy only to nominate Steve Scalese who compared himself with new-Nazi David Duke "without the baggage."  Yippee.  When Scalese withdrew, the proceeded to nominate  the most mean-spirited man in the Congress, Jim Jordan.  Who's next, Marjorie Taylor Greene?  It's like a limbo contest: how low can you go?