Sunday, October 8, 2023
In bed by 9, up at 4:50, after a vivid dream in which I was a participant in the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles😳!?!. 42°, high of 54°, cloudy day ahead, AQI=17, wind NW at 8, 7-11/19. Sunrise at 6:56 at 97°ESE, sunset at 6;21 at 262°WSW, 41° at solar noon 12:39.
One year ago I woke up after 6 and 1/2 hours of sleep to 34° cold. Geri bundled up to visit Elise Samson and I worked on my "death dossier" which I need to review and update. We had dinner with the Goldbergs at the Lowes' home. I was frustrated that I couldn't obtain a print of the Bachman photo of the stately, beautiful young woman in the full-length green dress facing off the National Guard troops at a demonstration in Baton Rouge, LA. I lit a candle to memorialize(?) Kitty's 55th anniversary, the first since her death.
Aaron Rodgers is a Fool, from this morning's JSOnline and USA Today, an opinion piece by Mike Freeman: "Aaron Rodgers is a fool.
This isn't easy to say but it's been established for years now. When this week he called Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce "Mr. Pfizer" he was again dressing himself in a clown suit, with the floppy shoes and red nose, and yes, again, his words are potentially dangerous.
Rodgers joins a loud and equally foolish right-wing chorus that has attacked Kelce, and for once, those attacks have nothing to do with Taylor Swift. The attacks have been vicious and lacking in facts and they do something else. They portray Kelce as someone who is spreading death when he is actually doing something to help save lives.
Kelce and his mother, Donna, launched a new campaign with Pfizer, encouraging people to get their flu shot along with the latest COVID-19 vaccination. Yes, Kelce is likely being paid well by Pfizer, but encouraging people to stop the spread of a deadly disease is (checks notes) a good thing. Only a fool would believe it isn't. Or a legion of fools. . . . So here we are. One of the most popular athletes of our time, a Super Bowl winner, a former quarterback for a storied franchise, and a current quarterback playing in the most high profile market in the nation. Mocking someone who is asking people to get flu and COVID shots that could save lives. This is where we are. It's all so foolish."
Isn't this a lot worse than simply "foolish"? Encouraging gullible people NOT to protect themselves against very contagious diseases that kill thousands every year? Foolish???
Israel (and Ukraine) Too horrible for words. One commentator remarked yesterday: 'It will only get worse before it gets worse.' Israel and the Palestinians are an intractable problem, making me think again that the problem goes back to 1948 and the creation of the State of Israel, Shoah and Nakba. Israel's Original Sin. More than 2,000,000 Palestinians live in Gaza and I fear the Israeli response to Hamas' attack will be to turn Gaza into a slaughterhouse. Perhaps the presence of Israeli (and American?) hostages will temper the bloodshed. And perhaps not. The Israeli Defense Force has been embarrassed, even humiliated, by the success of Hamas' attack, even capturing IDF soldiers and civilians, and I'm thinking there will be Hell to pay.
I am hearing talk of the U.S. supporting Israel in this matter more than diplomatically and legally, but also with additional aid, including arms. I hope this is not accurate. Israel is a very rich country, certainly in comparison to Gaza and Hamas, even with it's support from Iran. With so many Republicans already threatening to withdraw support for Ukraine, providing additonal aid to Israel will just give them more ammunition to support thier pro-Putin position, and pardon the pun.
Do bad guys wear bow ties? I'm not sure of all my prejudices but I am very aware of one: guys in bow ties. Like the new acting Speaker of the House Patrick McHenry. I have a less intense prejudice about guys named Jeff. I can't remember when or why my prejudice against guys with bow ties started but it preceded an iteration that I do remember, when Tom Shriner, a pompous, bow-tiw-wearing, jerk and big Republican at Foley & Lardner sent a letter to Tom Curran, the big Republican federal judge in Milwaukee's suburban school desegregation lawsuit stating that I had done something unprofessional and against the rules in filing an affidavit attaching a number of newspaper editorials showing community support for the settlement position our firm was advocating in the lawsuit. (Shriner and the judge were also big Catholics and fellow parishioners at St. Robert's parish in Shorewood.) The judge admonished me😱 and I filed a classic non-apology apology pointing out to the judge (and to Shriner) the applicable law that demonstrated the relevance and propriety of my filing. I know there have been and are so good guys who wear bow ties (e.g., Daniel Patrick Moynihan), but anyone regularly wearing one today comes with a presumption of jerkiness as far as I'm concerned.
I can't remember the source of my bias about "Jeffs" either except I had a problem with a neighbor's kid named Jeff when my children were young and I served with an A-4 pilot named Jeff in Vietnam and he was another jerk. I wrote about him in the "Vietnam" chapter of my memoir:
I added a footnote:We drank a lot of liquor, smoked a lot of cigarettes and did a lot of gambling in DaNang. The drinking and gambling occurred at the officers’ club at night. There was a blackjack table that was privately co-owned by 6 junior officers and a poker table at which high stakes games were played. When the club shut down at night, there was a craps game in the adjoining officers’ mess hall. After I had played at the table for some months, I was offered and accepted the right to purchase a departing Marine’s share of the blackjack table. The six of us owners shared the duty of dealing. When one dealer got cold and started losing a lot, another would relieve him. At the end of the night, we would split up the winnings and there were almost always winnings to be split. Often we would then take the winnings and move to the craps game. When I did so, I lost whatever I had netted from the evening’s blackjack winning. When I was transferred out of Vietnam, the other partners determined that an A4 pilot named Jeff Something-or-other, who had lost a lot of money at the table, should be offered my share. I disliked him a lot. He had a cold and distancing personality to begin with and he was supercilious and condescending towards those who were not pilots. Jeff Hotshot was the origin of my long term irrational and regrettable wariness of guys named ‘Jeff.’ But it was not my call who should get the opportunity to buy the share I had to surrender when I left DaNang. After I had been out of country a few weeks, Headquarters Marine Corps issued a regulation that there would be no privately owned gambling tables in Marine Corps clubs. We all believed, probably accurately, that there was only one such table in the Marine Corps: our blackjack table at Danang. Jeff’s investment had gone sour. I debated whether I should send his money back to him and decided against it. I was quite legalist and casuistic in my reasoning (I didn’t mislead him, I made no representations, I didn’t issue the new regulation, he assumed the risk, caveat emptor, and so on), but I think the real reason was because I couldn’t stand the guy. My behavior was certainly not illegal or particularly immoral, but it was stamped with petty vindictiveness and schadenfreude and I have never been proud of it. On the other hand, I still take a wait-and-see attitude towards guys named “Jeff.” Prejudices die hard.
Jeff reminded me of the description of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby: "Now don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are."
Eyebrows and Treadmill. I painted eyebrows on my latest lady this morning, watched Margaret Brennan's program, and then did 20 minutes and 0.40 miles on the treadmill, slow walking.
Her nose has disappeared and I'm inclined to leave it where it is(n't).
The Poor, by William Carlos Williams
It's the anarchy of poverty
delights me, the old
yellow wooden house indented
among the new brick tenements.
Or a cast-iron balcony
with panels showing oak branches
in full leaf. It fits
the dress of the children
reflecting every stage and
custom of necessity -
Chimneys, roofs, fences of
wood and metal in an unfenced
age and enclosing next to
nothing at all: the old man
in a sweater and soft black
hat who sweeps the sidewalk -
his own ten feet of it
in a wind that fitfully
turning his corner has
overwhelmed the entire city.
. . . .
Wonderful images: the old yellow wooden house indented among the new brick tenements; fences in an unfenced age and enclosing next to nothing at all; the dress of the children reflecting every stage and custom of necessity; the old man sweeping his ten feet of sidewalk in a wind that fitfully turning his corner has overwhelmed the entire city.
Williams isn't delighted by poverty and those enduring it, but the disorderly sights reflecting it, disorderly compared to the more orderly, more uniform appearance of the homes, neighborhoods, and non-hand-me-down garb of the well-to-do. His poetic rule: "Say it: no ideas but in things." Sensations, sensual perceptions, not ideas or abstractions. Like his not-so-subtly- erotic The Young Housewife.
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