Tuesday, November 14, 2023
In bed at 9:45, awake at 4:50, onto lzb until 5:25, let Lilly out, 35°, high of 57°, wind SW at 4 mph, 2-15/27. Sunrise at 6:43 at 114°SE, sunset at 4:28 at 245°WSW, 9+45. Did a load of laundry at 6 a.m.
Treadmill; Pain. Some moderate CPP this morning, gove by the time I got to the VA for my 10:30. It came back this afternoon, fairly bad, while I shopped at Walmart, MetroMarket, and Sendiks.
Nyad. We watched this remarkable film last night. It features a tour de force performance by Annette Bening as Diana Nyad. Geri and I had the same thought - that it is Academy Award worthy. The on-screen relationship between Bening and her co-star Jodie Foster is also remarkable. These are two of our favorite actors so we were eager to see this film starring both of them. It's a tale of obsession, determination, grit, arrogance, self-determination, goal-fulfillment, egoism and foolishness, depending on your point of view. I am reminded of the story in the news last week of a 17 year old boy who solved a Rubik's Cube in record time while free-falling during a skydive. He's in the Guiness Book of World Records. And??? What will be his next death-defying feat? Will he survive it and what's the point? I suppose we can ask these questions of many human endeavors - why do it, what's the cost, why is it worth it? Bening's Nyad - and apparently Nyad herself - is a character that is not easy to like or perhaps even to admire, again depending on your point of view. Her obsession exacted a toll not only on her, but also on others, particularly her coach and best friend Bonnie and on the navigator John Bartlett who plotted the route Diana had to follow between Cuba and Key West, and the valorous assistants who jumped in the water to fight off an attacking shark with tennis balls mounted on long shafts. I will probably want to watch this flick again to focus less on Diana's feat and more on the relationship between her and Bonnie, not amorous but supportive, at least on Bonnie's part. To use a Trumpism, what was in it for her?
I'm thinking also about 65-year-old Annette Bening's preparation for and execution of her role as Nyad. It fairly mirrored Nyad's dedication to her goal in real life. It wasn't death-defying like Nyad's, but it was demanding and indeed grueling so it raises the same kind of questions I asked above, why do it, what was the cost, why was it worth it? In this sense, the movie seems more than a little philosophical about much of what we do in our lives, the 'why' and 'at what cost' and 'is or was it worth it?' It also raises questions re goal-setting, shying away from difficult goals, and quitting. I'm thinking of Dr. Baugrud calling me from her office one Friday evening, and my asking her (presumptuously) what she was doing in her office at that hour and her response: "It's what I do." Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and all that. It's what they do. And Ecclesiastes: vanitas vanitatem. . .
Supreme Court promulgates unenforcible ethics rules for itself.
Since . . . it has been my intention to write something of use to the understanding reader it has seemed wiser to me to follow the real truth of the matter rather than what we imagine it to be. Imagination has created many principalities and republics that have never been seen or known to have any real existence; for how we live is so far different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.
Niccolo Machiavelli, THE PRINCE, ch. XV.
and
[L]aw was superb as a code. And the more perfect and logical a code was, the more magnificent it was. But this was at the cost of increased artificiality, rendering it less capable of existing in reality. Hence the opportunity to study and reflect on law offered the greatest satisfaction while the requirement to implement it was the saddest or most painful fate that could befall one. The practice of law led either to cynicism or madness. We could see examples of the former all around us and, as for the latter, suffice it to recall Kafka, who, though few realized it, was a Prague lawyers.
Ivan Klima, JUDGE ON TRIAL A. G. Brain trans., 1993
VA day: "Healing Touch" with Jody. Sights and Sounds: One of the administrative workers stopped me in the hallway on my way out and asked if she could thank me for my service. I asked her if she worked for the VA and when she said she did, I said 'thank you for your service. We old vets really appreciate it." An announcement on the PA system about a program in the auditorium celebrating the service of Native Americans. I said 'good morning' to an elderly Black lady in the elevator, pushing a very old man in a wheelchair with a Korea veteran baseball cap. I said 'how are you?' and she replied "I'm blessed." I said "I'm blessed too." She told me the vet whose chair she was pushing was 93 years old. An old vet on the house phone in the lobby as I was leaving, saying to someone on the other end that he would have some money on the 15th and then again on the 30th, living from check to check, SSA? Disability? Discussing co-pays?
Netanyahu to Biden and Blinkin: fuhgedaboudit. At a press conference last Saturday, Netanyahu stated that the U.S. and Israel do not agree on 'the end game' of the Gaza war. Israel will take responsibility for security in Gaza 'for an indefinite period. Biden and Blinken are pushing for the seemingly unattainable "two state solution" with the Palestinian Authority governing both the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu says NO but keep sending us $3B each year on top of the $14B you have requested for us from Congress even though we are a wealthy nation in our own right and don't give a shit what you want after we destroy most of the infrastructure in Gaza and make it unlivable and perhaps ungovernable. In other words, kiss my ass, Joe. It's not easy to judge who is right on this issue, Do Blinken and Biden really believe that a two state resolution is really possible with 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and other prepared to move into Gaza once that territory is demolished? And with the West Bank carved up with roads and checkpoints designed to keep the resident Palestinian communities separated? There was hell to pay when a much smaller contingent of settlers were forcibly removed from Gaza back in 2005. Removing the religiously militant Zionist settlers from "Judea and Samaria" would lead to civil war. Failure to remove them would lead to a non-contiguous Palestinian speckled throughout with hostile Zionist communities and guaranteed conflict.
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