1/7/24

Sunday, January 7, 2024

In bed at 9:15, awake at 4:17, and up at 4:52 after some meditation.  Let Lilly out, and again at 5:20.  31°. high of 35°, cloudy then partly cloudy day ahead.  Windd WNW at 11 mph, 5-11/19.  Wind chills today, 21°-27°.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:32, 9+9.

Treadmill; pain.  30.32 & 0.75  while watching a 2-hour, multi-national, 2016 documentary titled "The Settlers," a pretty thorough history of the settler movement in 'Greater Israel' from Rabbi Kook before and after the 1967 war through the time of Naftali Bennett.  It confirmed my most negative thoughts about the movement, its crazy religious roots, the overall complicity of the Israeli government in the movement, and its dominant role in making a 2 state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict practically impossible.  On the other hand, it also made clear the political difficulty and perhaps impossibility of the Israeli government stopping the movement once it began.  As I watched it, I noted the male settlers with their "srugim" or knitted or crocheted kippahs and thought back to the Srugim television series that we enjoyed so much, ignorant of the role of the Religious Zionists in the settler movement.  

I'm grateful for water, for the water I d,rink and that Lilly drinks after consuming one of her treats.  I drink water when I am thirsty and, increasingly, even when I am not particularly thirsty.  I've come to appreciate that drinking water is important in keeping my aged organs functioning, not only for my kidneys and painful bladder, and not only for all the hollow organs of the GI tact, but for every cell in my old body.  Since my terrible day on November 25th, I haven't consumed any wine or other alcohol, any carbonated drink, or (with 3 exceptions) any caf or decaf coffee or tea.  I have come to accept that most of the pain and discomfort I am living with now is probably due in very large measure tooverconsumingg coffee throughout the day and my favorite wines in the evening.  Coffee to wind up and wine to wind down.  The coffee habit started at 19 while aboard the USS CONEY, DD 508 on the North Atlantic, my first active duty assignment in the Navy.  Ships re  manned 24 hours a day while at sea and because of disrupted sleep schedules, sailors tend to drink a lot of coffee 24 hours a day.  It's a habit that stayed wmeh my through my adult life and the coffee, when accompanied by other 'assault elements' of carbonated soft drinks and beer and wine, finally led to lesions in my bladder, 3 outpatient surgeries, and chronic interstitial cystitis.  So now I'm a drinker of unflavored, non-carbonated, non-alcoholicolic water and some herbal teas.  Even now, I fear I do not regularly consume as much plain water as I should but I try and for the water that I do drink, I am grateful.

I have mostly warm memories of my summer aboard the USS Coney and I am grateful for them  Relatively few people are privileged to spend weeks at sea on a Navy destoryer.  It is a unique experience and on the whole a good one, watching sunrises and sunsets on the ocean, sitting on the foc'sle watching the stars at night while listening to the wind whistling through the weighed anchors, watching pods of dolphins or porpoises racing the ship,  taking part in underway transfers of fuel or other supplies, etc.  The Coney had a distinguishedshed record in the Pacific campaign of WWII, in the Korean War, and even during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  She received 11 battle stars in WWII and another 2 in the KoreanWarr.  She participated in the 1944 assaults on Saipan and on Tinian, from which the Enola Gay took off to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, where I was to visit as a tourist 21 years later.  When I served aboard her, in the summer of 1960, she was part of Task Force Alfa, an experimental tactical force concentrating on anti-submarine warfare.  In 1961, she was part of he  disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and, in October 1962, she took part in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  On 27 October, Cony intercepted the Soviet submarine B-59, an incident that nearly led to war between the United States and the Soviet Union.  Service on the Coney provided me some brushes with pretty significant world history.  Alas, the Cony was decommissioned on 2 July 1969 and was sunk as a target off Puerto Ron ico 20 March 1970.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

I wrote that I have mostly warm memories of my service on the Coney.  Not-so-warm memories include 2 bouts of mal de mer, the first after 3 days at sea and the second during a hurricane or tropical storm.  An even less welcome memory is that when I returned to Chicago from my active duty, during which I nightly dreamed of and daily longed for my First True Love Charlene, she told me that she was dating another and that we were through.  I was devastated.  I walked home and wept on our back porch.  My mother and sister tried to comfort me but I was forlorn.  I wonder whether I ever truly 'got over it.'  My homecoming after my year away in Vietnam, Okinawa, and Japan didn't help.

SecDef Lloyd Austin's Mysterious Concealed Hospitalization.  The mystery gets moproblematictic every day.  He was admitted to Walter Reed on Monday and remained hospitalized yesterday (and today?).  The cause of his hospitalization has not been revealed, other than it was initially for some "elective" procedure during or after which he developed "complication that required treatment for 4 days in the ICU.  President Biden and the National Security Council were not informed until Thursday and Austin didn't resume full duties until Friday night, but on Thursday, while Austin was hospitalized, U.S. forces launched a rare airstrike in Baghdad, killing the leader of an Iranian-backed militia that the Pentagon said was plotting attacks against U.S. personnel there and in Syria. The incident prompted an outcry from Iraqi officials and raised questions about how long U.S. troops will be allowed to remain in the country.   Que pasa?  What was the 'elective procedure'?  Was it expected to be an outpatient procedure?  Was he under a general anesthetic or local?  What was so personal and private about it that Austin ordered that the President and NSC not be informed?  What were the 'complications'?  How unexpected are those kinds of complications?  What was his cognitive condition while he was hospitalized?  Why, when he was admitted to the ICU, was the President not informed?  Who should have informed the President, notwithstanding Austin's orders to the contrary?  Why did he or she or they not inform the President?  Who ordered the bombing in Baghdad?  What role did the President and the NSC have?  Did he or they talk with Austin about it?  Should Autin resign?  Should he be fired?  How will this play out in his next testimony before the House and Senate Armed Forces committees?  In the presidential election campaign?  The big classic question all along the route: What was he thinking?  What were his subordinates thinking?