Tuesday, October 31, 2023
First snow of the season
In bed at 9:30, on lzb at 3:13, not much sleep, back to bed at 4:10, up at 6:30.34°, high of 38°, wind chill of 21°, wind SSW at 12, 6-20/34 w/ snow flurries, 1.05" of snow expected😱 Sunrise at 7:25, sunset at 5:45, 10+19
Thoughts I have listening to Israelis lay all blame for the death of thousands of children on Hamas and listening to Palestinians lay all blame for the death of Israeli civilians on themselves.
Eighth Air Force
by Randall Jarrell
If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?
The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:
This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die--
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!
I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.
Gospel of John, Ch. 19 I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them: 'Behold the man . . .I find no guilt in him. . . . We have no king but Caesar. . . So he delivered him to them to be crucified.
Gospel of Matthew 27:19 While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him. 'Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.'
Gospel of Matthew 27: 24-25 Pilate saw he was getting nowhere and a riot was developing. So he sent for a bowl of water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood. The responsibility is yours." All the people answered: "His blood is on us and on our children."
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Jarrrell died, probably a suicide, at age 54, severely depressed after the assassination of JFK. Owen was KIA in France one week before the Armistice was signed., age 25.
As the Russians and Ukrainians exchange artillery fire and missiles, and the Israelis pound Gaza wit artillery and air attacks, and with tanks, I think of Jarrell's
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
I think of the condition of the thousands of bodies killed by missiles, rockets, bombs, artillery shells, tanks, crushed by concrete, or shot, stabbed, burned, or dismembered by God-directed murderers.
LTMW at snowbirds digging into the 2 suet cakes I put out the other day. Snow is falling steadily. . . . I filled the short tube at 4 o'clock to avoid the guilt I feel early in the morning looking out on an empty feeder approached by hungry birds looking for some breakfast. I also scattered some seed on the snowy ground for the snowbirds, doves, chipmunks and squirrels. Looking through my bathroom window earlier, I saw a somewhat bedraggled looking lone wild turkey, I assume a Tom, walking across our back yard. The snow has been pretty solid all day, though none of it so far has been accumulating on the roads, just on the grass. I'm looking forward to lighting a log in the fireplace at sundown. . . . At dusk, two elegant white-tail does walk past my window and stop at our easternmost berry tree along County Line Road to nibble some low-hanging still-green leaves. So elegant, so beautiful. Such a blessing.
Healing Hands at the VA with Jody was a very interesting and pleasnat experience. I wasn't feeling any pain during the session so I don't know whether it would be helpful in terms of pain reduction but I will try the "biaural beats" on YouTube and see if it's helpful in any way. I was quite dizzy at the end of the session, unsteady on my feet all the way to the parking garage. I think I may have dropped into a semi-conscious state during the session. The whole experience was very pleasant and I look forward to repeating it, though I don't understand the "chakra" theory underlying it. Twice, perhaps three times, during the session I noticed my foreheard getting noticably warm to the point where I wondered if Jody were applying some kind of heat. I asked her at the end and she said 'no', it was just her "energy" passing onto me when she was doing whatever she does near my head. Whatever it was, I could definitely feel it as heat without any sense of touching.
Ezra Klein podcast: "If Not This, Then What Should Israel Do? with Zack Beauchamp. I listened to the one hour podcast but couldn't help nodding off during parts of it. Beauchamp recommended reading "The Selected Works of Edward Said" which I just bought on Kindle and "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977" by Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg which I just ordered from the libary.
I am appalled by all the killing of civilians in Gaza, especially of course the killing and wounding and trauatizing of thousands of children. I am appalled by the "seige" warfare Israel has waged against all of Gaza for the last three weeks, witholding food, water, medicines, and fuel necessary to power generators at hospitals and drinking water facilities. I am appalled by the complete refusal to consider any pause in the bombardment of Gaza or to consider any humanitartian relief getting to the people of Gaza other than a trickle of trucks at the Egyptian Rafah border crossing. I can't justify it. Netanyahu says none of this is prohibited and illegal "collective punishment' of all the Palestinians within Gaza, that it is just part of Israel defending itself and warring against Hamas, but who can reasonably believe this? Nor can I justify Biden's and Blinken's defense of Israel's comments. The United States is intimately complicit in Israel's war crimes. The writing was on the wall when Biden flew to Israel to be seen by the whole world HUGGING the fascist Netanyahu. Shame on both of them. Shame on us.
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