2/15/24

 Thursday, February 15, 2024

In bed at 9:30, awake at 2:50, and up at 3:02 with a painful shoulder.  On the  LZB from 1:30 to 2:05 with my painful shoulder.  Let Lilly out.  33°, with heavy, slushy snow falling.   High of 37°, wind SE of the lake at 9 mph, 6-21/35, wind chills today between 13 and 32°°.  Winter weather advisory is in effect until 8 a.m.  Sunrise at 6:50, sunset at 5:22, 10+32.

Treadmill; pain.  Shoulder pain was a problem during the night; it had me on LZB and up at 3.  PT tomorrow.  Typing these entries is painful, both from the shoulder and the right wrist and hand.  I am semi-disabled by these conditions, not having a strong arm-hand tool on either side.  The wrist gets better with use during the day, but not the shoulder.  I'll see what the physical therapist has to say about the shoulder tomorrow, but I'm guessing I may end up getting a cortisone injection from the PM&R clinic.

The Newberry Library and "Bughouse Square"

I'm grateful for libraries, from the Hamilton Park Library, a childhood treasure trove, to the North Shore library that serves me now.  As I remember it, the Hamilton Park library was pretty small.  I suspect that it was actually smaller than I remember it.  The only book I distinctly recall getting there was a nonfiction work on the (in)famous bank robber Willie Sutton.  Perhaps it was his own work Where the Money Is, the title of which comes from the answer he apocryphally gave to the question of why he robbed banks - 'because that's where the money is.'  The library was housed in the park's fieldhouse which is probably no longer standing.  The fieldhouse also housed a gymnasium with a basketball court where some friends of mine and I played in a basketball league wearing the fancy uniforms bought for us by our team sponsor, the Mays Oldsmobile dealership in our Englewood neighborhood.  It also had a weight room and a trampoline, both of which I used.   In my senior year at Leo High School, my wonderful English teacher, Brother Coogan sent me on research assignments to the great private Newberry Libary downtown and to the library at the University of Chicago.   Great privileges, great challenges.   Years later, I attended a lecture there with Deirdre McChrystal Keenan on some aspects of Milton's poetry.  I didn't understand a thing that the lecturer said, but I enjoyed being in the Newberry again.  I don't recall being a library member when I lived in Virginia, Arizona, or Pennsylvania but, when I returned from active military duty, I was a regular customer of the Marquette Memorial Library and of course the Law Library, as well as the Milwaukee Central Library and the Golda Meir Library at UWM.  In Saukville, I used the Eastern Shores Library System headquartered in Sheboygan, getting books at the libraries in Saukville, Port Washington, Cedarburg, Mequon-Thiensville, and even  Sheboygan, which was quite a distance from Saukville.  When we moved back to Milwaukee County after my Dad died, we donated a great many books to the Saukville Library rather than packing them up and moving them again.  I came to regret parting with a number of those books, including among others William Manchester's The Arms of Krupp and James Carroll's Constantine's Sword, but of course, I have ready access to them simply by going to the library, for which I am most grateful.  

We were glued to TV most of the day watching the evidentiary hearing in Atlanta on the motion to disqualify Fani Willis from the little RICO case against DJT and his apparatchiks for election fraud.