1/6/24

 Saturday, January 6, 2023

3rd Anniversary of insurrection

In bed around 9, awake at 4:40 thinking of J.A., up at 5 as I heard Lilly walking noisily, let her out into falling snow, 33°, high of 35°, sinc SE at 11 mph, 2-12/18, wind chills today from 24° to 32°, 0.15" of snow expected this morning.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:31, 9+8.

Treadmill; pain. PP continuing this morning and this afternoon.  Big struggle to put the sheets back on my bed after laundering them, back pain, pelvic pain combo.  30:01 & 0.65 at 4:30 watching Youtube lecture on Chomsky's theory of mass media as propaganda/

I'm grateful for having had J.A. as a regular part of my life for almost 4 years during which he became a friend, a friend I now miss.  I'm also grateful for K.A.T. and J.T. for assuming the responsibiltiy of caring for him as he grew older.  K. texted yesterday that J. is in a hospital again for a bleeding problem and may require some minor surgery, though at his age, it's hard to think of any surgery as 'minor.'  How wise it was of G.A.C. and K. to recognize that it was time for J.A. to be moved closer to K. and Jo. as J. moved closer to his 90th year and G. moved closer to her 80th.  G. received a text this morning that J. will undergo surgery/fulguration at 9:30 a.m. our time, a procedure with which I am very familiar.  My heart is with him. . .  Around 12:30, we got the word that the surgery was successful and that J. would stay in the hospital until Monday.  

LTMW at an intrepid gray squirrel hanging upside down on the suet cake basket, nibbling away at the suet and seeds.  How hard she works to get some nourishment in the cold and snow while I sit on my recliner in my warm, dry house just a few feet away from the refrigerator and pantry loaded with fooder.

Trees and other entanglements is a remarkable documentary by Irene Taylor, " a poetic meditation on nature, mortality, and the passage of time in her exploration of our symbiotic nexus with trees.  I watched it yesterday and today.  A remarkable film, especially for a tree-hugger, full of a sense of reverence, of poetic insight, of commoness and of singularity, strength and fragility, life and death.  At left, an ancient bristlecone pine.

Greenfields, The Brothers Four, 1957

Once there were greenfields kissed by the sun;
Once there were valleys where rivers used to run;
Once there was blue sky with white clouds high above;
Once they were part of an everlasting love.
We were the lovers who strolled through greenfields.

Greenfields are gone now, parched by the sun;
Gone from the valleys where rivers used to run;
Gone with the cold wind that swept into my heart;
Gone with the lovers who let their dreams depart.
Where are the greenfields that we used to roam.

. . . . .

I thought of this sad song from my past as I watched the Trees and other entanglements documentaries.  The song seems more timely now living with the entanglements of climate change and what is likely to happen as our planet gets ever warmer.  I wish I could be optimistic that the politically and economically and militarily powerful of our species can stop or reverse the warming, but alas . . . 

Current Readings.  In the 12/21/23 issue of NYRB, Sherrilyn Ifills essay on How America Ends and Begins Again and Linda Greenhouse's How U.S. Law Failed our Covid Response.  In Greenhouse's essay, she assesses ". . .an American exceptionalism of a particularly disquieting form: a legal mindset that has come to value individual freedom over communal welfare and so has “lost sight of contagion’s most compelling lesson: Our own health depends on the health of others.”  

Main reading: the nonfiction Killing a King, by Dan Ephron, about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the remaking of Israel.  Rabin's death and the killing of the Oslo Accords started Bibi Netanyahu's rise and that of Likud and its more noxious allies in the current Israeli governemnt.  An interesting read about events that occurred 30 years ago, still somewhat fresh in my memory.