12/11/23

 Monday, December 11, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:40, let Lilly in.  24°, high of 32°, mostly sunny day ahead, wind WNW at 7, 6-15/27, w/c is 16°.  Sunrise at 7:13, sunset at 4:16, 9+3.     

Treadmill; pain.     30:40 & 0.60, nice slow walk while watching a lecture by Dr. Robert Sopolsky on Biological Underpinnings of religiosity, schizotypalism

I'm grateful for leaves.  They are beautiful and abundant.  I am truly grateful that I notice them, pay attention to them, admire their symmentry and beauty and strength and delicacy.  I found a particular beauty on the back doorstop just yesterday.      

LTMW at a tufted titmouse on the short tube feeder and a male hairy woodpecker on the suet cake, followed by two downy woodpeckers and the red-belly.  I need to replace the one suet cake which is now almost a goner.  Very busy day at the feeders: red-bellied nuthatch, mourning doves, juncos, sparrows, house finches, goldfinches, chickadees, and all those woodpeckers.  There is hardly anything left of the suet cake on the far feeder yet the red-bellied woodpecker keeps working at it rather than filling himself on the large cake still left in its cage on the near feeder.  . .  By 3 p.m., the birds have eaten (or gathered for storage)  more than half of the short feeder's supply of seeds and the red-bellied woodpecker has finally moved over to the suit cake on the near feeder, the other cake haven't finally been completely consumed.  Three deer just walked slowly across our front yard.

Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins

1844 –1889

Glory be to God for dappled things—

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                     Praise Him.

Deadly incommensurables.  Which should be moe dreaded: being attacked by heavy munitions whose blast effects can dismember and/or kill you or by White Phosporous which burns at 1500℉, sticks to human skin, and burns through it down to the bone?  I was introduced to such thoughts by my time in the Marine Corps, studying ways to kill people (and be killed) and destroy stuff (and be destroyed.)  WaPo has confirmed that Israel used White Phosphorous, delivered by 155 mm howitzers, in a small town in Lebanon in October, injuring at least 9 persons.  The munitions were supplied by the United States from plants in Arkansas and Louisiana.  We used the weapon in Vietnam and called it "Willy Peter."  Willy Peter and "Yankee Hell Jelly", napalm.  Just two of our contributions to freedom and democracy for the Vietnamese people, our way to win their "hearts and minds."  White prosphorous, cluster bombs, land mines - we must lead the world in manufacturing them and distributing them throughout the world.  Virtually all those bombs and artillery shells used to blow up and bury mothers and children and old men and women in Gaza - made in the USA.  Buy American!  Our $3B annual support for Israel?  Largely a way to subsidize our own weapons and munitions industries.  I heard Tony Blinken almost brag about this this other day.  "Don't get all exercised over sending $3 billion every year to Israel.  They spend it all here in America!😁"  

What, me worry?  First the Russians, now the Chinese.  From this morning's WaPo:

The Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems, according to U.S. officials and industry security officials.

Hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army have burrowed into the computer systems of about two dozen critical entities over the past year, these experts said.

The intrusions are part of a broader effort to develop ways to sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific, they said.

58 years ago I was able to swim, boat, and water ski in the South China Sea, the the most likely "confliction area" between the U.S. and China.  The recreational activities stopped pretty soon after I arrived in Vietnam, as did the freedom to go into the city of Danang.

First cup of coffee in 15 days.  I'm risking it for its internal stimulative effect.  Keeping my fingers crossed that I won't have a flare.  No coffee, nothing carbonated, no alcohol since my visit to the ER.   Abstemious😧 

Finished The Nuns' Priest's Tale in the throne room, very entertaining reading, reminding me too of the semester-long course on Chaucer that I took in 1961 or 1962 from Roger Parr in Marquette's English department.  The Canterbury Tales, of course, but also The Parlement of Foules and Troilus and Criseyde.  If I am remembering accurately, we read them all in Middle English rather than modern English translations, but I'm not sure of that.   In any case, I enjoyed the course. Dr. Parr was a good teacher, the junior half of the department's dynamic duo, John Pick and Roger Parr.  The other member of the department I remember warmlu was a Jesuit, Fr. Buckner, who taught a course titled "English Catholic Literary Revival" featuring the poetry of Hopkins and G. K. Chesterton (Ballad of the White Horse) and the novels of Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One and others.  Roger Parr's son later became one of my students at the law school.

New tires for Volvo.  I ordered 4 from the Goodyear store, to be mounted on Friday.

Andy dropped off bird seed and logs from back of Volvo.

We watched "Why didn't they ask Evans"  on BritBox.  Agatha Christie, excellent.