1/1/24

 January 1, 2024

In bed at 8:40 and up at 5.  Let Lilly out.  26°, high of 31°, clear morning, partly cloudy afternnon.  Wind NNW at 11 mph, 7-13/24, wind chill at 15°.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:27, 9+3.

Treadmill; pain. Woke up with upper back pain and having some PF spasms this morning.  On the treadmill around noon, 30:17 & 0.60, listening to Robert Sapolsky argue that "Free Will" is non-existent on the University of Chicago "Big Brain" podcast on YouTube.  It was a good program that left me wanting to hear more on the subject of determinism.  Not surprisingly, it had me thinking solipsistically of my own life and my sister's, considering our childhood with all the PTSD in our lives, and about my 3 cousins, each so different.

I'm grateful that 2023 is finished.  It was in some ways a rough year, starting with TSJ's death and the long ordeal of the eulogy.  Considerable pain challenges, IC, CPP, RP, Meijer's parking lot, the 11/25 visit to VA ER and Dr. Uilein, visits to Dr. Chatt, Dr. Cheng in PM&R, Dr. Shankar in the Pain Clinic, visits to the Urology Clinic, PT Jennifer Garrison in Physical Therapy, OT Melinda Matusewic in Whole Health Clinic. LPN Jody Kressin with Healing Touch, Lou and Mary with the Mindfulness Meditation group, etc.  This month alone starts the year with Jody on 1/8, hypnotherapy on 1/9, Eye Clinic on 1/11, Urology on 1/25, acupuncture on 1/29, PM&R on 1/31, plus 5  separate 'video connects', some with Melinda, some with I'm not sure whom.  I'm grateful to the VA for the comprehensive medical care they provide and for Ed Felsenthal's help in enrolling me.  I look at a list like this and wonder if I'm a hypochondriac, a Munchausen misfit, but I don't imagine the pain and discomfort, the failing eyesight, diabetes, etc.  As my Dad used to say, "My parts are failing."  If we were cars, the parts could be replaced.  As it is, they can realistically only be treated, but nonetheless, I'm grateful.

Lilly distressed?  6:20 a.m.  Something is wrong with Lilly.  She noisily clomped or stomped into the TV room from the living room, stood by my chair, walked backward a couple of steps and a couple of times, and then plopped heavily onto his mattress, not in her customary location, but rather on the very edge, leaning against the book cabinet, with her left front leg off the mattress.  Something is not right.  She lays her head down for a minute or two but then raises it again, unable to rest.  After some time, she fell asleep.  At 7:15, she got up and stretched and lay down in her favorite spot, on the carpet but abutting her mattress.  Crisis over?

    No.  At about 3:15 this afternoon, she had a similar distressing experience.  I let her out and she lay on the cold ground for 11 or 12 minutes before I lured her back inside with treats.  Something is definitely not right with her.  Back to the vet?  (Geri is out visiting Ellis and her new puppy, Peaches.  I texted her but it seems she didn't get the text.)

Real existential threats presented by right-wing, Republican thinking.  Climate change: Republicans deny it and oppose governmental restrictions required to stall or minimize its effect.   Guns: Republicans deny they are a cause of injury (people kill, guns don't), and oppose legislation banning assault weapons, and virtually any restrictions on possession/ownership.   Epidemics/pandemics: Republicans oppose public health mandates, like masking, limitations on the size of gatherings, required vaccinations, etc.

LTMW at a female hairy woodpecker perched atop the far shepherd's crook patiently waiting her turn while a red-bellied woodpecker goes to work on the suet cake I just moved there from the near crook. Meanwhile, the house finches, chickadees, a song sparrow or pine siskin, and red-bellied nuthatch,  fill up on the near crook and a downy woodpecker arrives to work on the diminishing suet cake.  Down below, two squirrels and some snowbirds feast on the little suet nugget and larger seeds I dropped there when I filled the sunflower/safflower tube this morning.  In a while, I'll fill both suet cake baskets with fresh suet to start the New Year.  Yesterday's treat was many visits by our handsome local tufted titmouse(s).

The increasing threat of climate change.  From this morning's WaPo:

Even if its extremes are ultimately eclipsed, as seems inevitable, 2023 will mark a point when humanity crossed into a new climate era — an age of “global boiling,” as United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called it. The year included the hottest single day on record (July 6) and the hottest ever month (July), not to mention the hottest June, the hottest August, the hottest September, the hottest October, the hottest November, and probably the hottest December. It included a day, Nov. 17, when global temperatures, for the first time ever, reached 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial levels.

Discomfort, destruction, and death are the legacy of those records.

And we can't say we weren't warned. 

Facetime call from Sarah and Christian this morning and a Happy New Year email from Gerhard and Olga.

4, 282 weeks.  I believe that is how long I have lived.  I've read that the average American lifespan is about 4,000 weeks so I'm 'living on borrowed time' as they say, or 'playing with the house's money.'  My long-term friend TSJ lived about 4,134 weeks and other dear friend DSB much less.  My father lived about 4,500 weeks, my mother fewer than 3,000 weeks and my sister about 4, 030.  I'm thinking of these numbers because of Isabel Fattal's article in The Atlantic "How to Make Better New Year's Resolution" in which she cites Oliver Burkeman's book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals."  Four thousand weeks is just about 77 years which is pretty close to the average American life expectancy.  Breaking down a life span to weeks instead of years and fractions of years gives us, or at least me, a different perspective on a lifetime.   I think of this on this date relative to the idea of "resolutions," and goals, how we hope to live a better life, to be a better person, not simply self-improvement but in accomplishing something worthwhile in terms of others, not wasting the discrete number of weeks in our lives.  OTOH, Emily Dickinson: "In this short life that only lasts an hour, how much - how little - is within our power."  I look back on my life with a lot of regrets. Yeats' Vacillation.  Is this the Last Judgment mirror?  Do I make old age more or less bearable by looking into it?  Should I call it quits with this journal and all the remembering and reflecting it prompts?  Or is it a way of recognizing the regrets and trying to come to terms with them?  

On this date in 1660, Samuel Pepys recorded the first entry in his famous diary: "This morning (we lying lately in the garret), I rose, put on my suit with great skirts, having not lately worn any other clothes but them."  

Is this who we are? is the title of Karen Tumulty's op-ed in this morning's WaPo.  Excerpts:

In 1964, when the radical right John Birch Society was near the peak of its influence, renowned journalist Martha Gellhorn, who had launched her career covering the Spanish civil war three decades earlier, wrote a friend: “Unless there’s a Johnson landslide, the country and world will know how many incipient and energetic home-grown Fascists we have. I never for a moment feared Communism in the US but have always feared Fascism; it’s a real American trait.”

. . . .

If, knowing everything Americans now know about [Trump], they reelect him — or even come close to doing so — it will be time for all of us to quit lying to ourselves.

This is who we are. 

Forget the "if", Ms. Tumulty.  We know the truth already and you pointed it out in this very op-ed, as you wrote:

Yet with Trump himself back on the ballot [in 2020], the outcome was far closer [than in 2016]. Though Trump lost the popular vote both times he ran, in 2020 he increased his totals, both in the number and the share he received. Were it not for about 45,000 voters in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, he would still be president. 

Mene, Mene, tekel upharsin. 

Geri's walking partner Shirley and her friend dropped off a gift for Geri at 3:45.  Very thoughtful.