12/30/23

 Saturday, December 30, 2023

In bed before 10, awake and up at 11 with Lilly in the bedroom with me, terribly agitated, pacing, heavy breathing, lying down and immediately getting up, moving to another spot, repeating the behavior.  I let her out but the behavior continued when she came in.  I stayed in the TV room until 2, mainly listening to her pacing which sounded clumsy.  Up around 8 wondering whether she may have been suffering a stroke and was dead, but she was like her old self, took a long walk around the property, came in for her treat and a long drink of water, and laid down.  Was it all the vaccines she received yesterday?   28°, mostly sunny, high of 38°, wind WSW at 7 mph, 3-8/13.  Sunrise was at 7:23, sunset at 4:25, 9+1.  

Treadmill; pain.   Not too bad today.  30:25 & 0.65 while watching a documentary on OVID about Antonio Negri, famous/notorious philosopher, anti-capitalist, anti-globalist, and political activist in Italy during the 1970s and 80s, during the era of the Red Brigades and the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro.  It was also the era of the ouster of the Shah of Iran and the capture of personnel of the U.S. embassy in Tehran that led to the election of Ronald Reagan in the U.S.

I'm grateful that I heard back from my niece Chrissie this morning.  She was very busy with work (not unusual for her, who's a dynamo) and the holiday and forgot to answer my Christmas text.  She, her brother Mike, her Dad, and I all have a hole in our hearts that used to be filled with her mother, requiescat in pace.  We will probably never see one another again, but Chrissie, Mike, and Barb Tunney are my remaining links to Kitty.   

"Ken" was sent another text this morning from some Republican MAGA source asking whether he had ordered his "I Stand With Israel" coffee mug.  For the last time, I clicked the "Delete and Report Junk" button.  I've done it many times for all the Republican texts I receive but it never works.  The torrent continues and will only get worse in 2024.  One of the things to hate about modern life and the availability of cheap messaging technology - text messages and email, are cluttered with crap.😡

Child Homicides in Milwaukee in 2023.  Prosecutors have charged a 13-year-old Milwaukee boy with homicide in the shooting death earlier this month of 10-year-old Trinity Johnson at 39th and Hampton.  The death is likely Milwaukee’s 21st child homicide of 2023, according to police data as of Nov. 30. Of those, 19 were committed with firearms.  In Milwaukee, child gun victimization has doubled in the years since the pandemic. From 2016 through 2019, about nine children died by homicide every year and 49 were injured in shootings, according to data from the Medical College of Wisconsin.

A memory of Herb Kohl.  In 1994 (I think) Geri and I flew to Washington where I was to testify at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee in support of Herb Kohl's "Sunshine in Litigation" bill, a bill designed to limit the use of protective orders in federal product liability and toxic tort cases.  We stayed at a hotel across the street from the building that had been intended to be the Russian Embassy until all the American 'bugs' were discovered in it.  The day before I testified, we went to Kohl's office to meet him and the staff member shepherding the bill.  Kohl gave us tickets to the Senate gallery, the Senate dining room, the White House, etc., and in the course of schmoozing asked me where we lived.  I told him, out of Geri's earshot, that we lived in Shorewood, on Newton Avenue.  The next day, after the hearing was completed, Kohl schmoozed with us again and this time, he said to Geri something like "You look familiar.  I think I've seen you before.  Do you live in Shorewood, perhaps on Newton Avenue?"  Geri was flabbergasted that the senator recognized her and knew where she lived.  On the way to the Senate dining room, I burst her bubble by telling her that I had given that information to Kohl earlier when we first met.  Herb was a smooth politician.  Herb had run the family food store business before his political career and was highly respected both by the public and by his employees.  His brother Sydney Kohl ran the family shopping center businesses, Northridge and Southridge, and I met and did business with him when our firm represented Southridge when its roofing system failed.

Another memory from that trip was attending Mass at the Episcopal National Cathedral, a favorite stop of mine in Washington.  The homilist was a priest who was a woman and she gave a terrific homily.  I remember saying to Geri after mass 'That's why the Catholic Church doesn't allow women to be priests.  They can't stand the competition.  Not that I believe in any priestly state anymore, but if I did, my preference would be for women as priests, just as I prefer women doctors.  I believe women are better healers, or, as I used to say to my dearly departed pal David Branch, I believe that women are just generally better human beings than men.  He would take great exception to my gross generalization and our friend Cordelia Monroe would laugh as we fought it out.  Now David is gone and I don't know what has happened to Cordelia.  So it goes.

I turned off the water to the outside faucets this afternoon.  Finally!  I don't want to risk frozen water pipes and flooding in the basement, my sanctuary.

Geri took Lilly out for a walk today, the first in all these past weeks when Geri's been so sick.  Lilly seems to be in great shape after her terrible night last night.  Her hind legs that have been so knock-kneed seem to have recovered their old form.  Can this be an overnight result of the $100 arthritis injection she received yesterday???  She also jumped up onto the sofa to lie down next to Geri without the difficulty she usually experiences.

Dinner with Andy and Anh and the grandkids tonight.

Gaza destruction.  According to the Wall Street Journal:

The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.  By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair. 

Most of the strip’s 36 hospitals are shut down, and only eight are accepting patients. Citrus trees, olive groves and greenhouses have been obliterated. More than two-thirds of its schools are damaged.