3/30/24

 Saturday, March 30, 2024

On the BL all night, awake at 2:30, lights on at 3 a.m., with lots of pain, especially left shoulder and right hand/wrist.  38°, rain, high of 45°, wind E at 9 mph, 3-12/20.  Sunrise at 6:36, sunset at 7:16, 12+40.

Pain, etc.  I had a lot of pain (7)?) on awakening in both shoulders, right wrist and hand, back, and hips.  I took 1,000 mg. of Tylenol at 4 a.m.  I'm not applying Diclofenac to my left shoulder because my right shoulder's ROM is too limited by pain to reach all of my left shoulder.

I'm grateful     

More random and not-so-random thoughts on Israel AT 3:20 a.m.

(1)  For 34 of the past 47 years, Israel's prime ministers have come from the Likud Party.  For half of the 34 years that Likus governed Israel, Netanyahu was prime minister.  In the last 48 years, Democrats have occupied the White House for 24 years and Republicans for 24.

(2) Likud is Israel's Republican Party.  Netanyahu is Israel's Trump.  Both have been indicted for serious crimes.  Each seeks to retain or reacquire power to shield himself from prosecution.  Each is secular and probably an atheist but each relies on religious zealots for political support. Each is a scheming conniver and views relationships transactionally, i.e., what's in it for me.  Each has little respect for the so-called 'Rule of Law.'  Each considers himself to be 'the Chosen One', the only one who can properly run his country.  The big difference between the two is that Netanyahu is really smart, much smarter than Trump.  He also has some loyalty to Israel in ways that Trump doesn't have to the U.S.

(3)  Biden has authorized another massive shipment of bombs and fighter jets to Israel including 1,800 2,000 bombs.  

3/29/24

 Good Friday, March 29, 2024

Sunrise, 7:30 a.m.

In bed from 9 to 9:30, but no good so I moved to the BL.  Woke up at 3:15 with quite a bit of pain in both shoulders, more in the left. 29°. high of 43°, cloudy day ahead  The wind is NW at 6 mph, 2-10/18. Sunrise at 6:37, sunset at 7:15, 12+37.  I slept in chunks till 7:30

Pain, etc.   As usual, pretty nasty most of the morning and got better in the afternoon.  

I'm grateful that Sarah and Christian have gone to the effort, expense, and normal life disruption to travel thousands of miles to visit us, Anne, Andy & Anh & the children this Easter season.  It's no small commitment of time, energy, and resources on their part.  I'm humbled by it.    

3/28/24

 Thursday, March 28, 2024

Sarah and Chrisitan here

Serendipity: a magnificent tiny mushroom or toadstool I noticed in the swale in front of our house one day

In bed at 9 but not a good idea, couldn't sleep on my right side w/o pain, onto the LZB and up at 1 a.m. to let Lilly out, then onto the BL till 3 and let Lilly out again.  29° under clear skies continuing throughout the day, high of 43°. Westerly wind at 10 mph, 6-13/21.  Sunrise at 6:39, at 85° sunset at 7:14 at 276°, 12+34.  Solar noon at 12:56, altitude 50°.

The northernmost sunrise is at the winter solstice in December at 122°, the southernmost at the summer solstice in June at 56°.

Pain, etc.  My hand and wrist are painful this morning though I wore the thumb splint while sleeping.  The shoulder pain was enough to keep me from sleeping on the bed but it was OK on the recliners.  The pain is different this morning, more muscle pain than impingement pain.  My vertical ROM is almost 90°, horizontal about the same, much better forward than aft.  On the other hand (no pun intended), my right shoulder is painful this morning and again I wonder if it is from the PT stretches performed yesterday, i.e., muscle pain, or simply arthritis.

2 Tylenol Extra Strength at 11 a.m. + Diclofenac on left shoulder

I'm grateful for reclining chairs, especially the motor-powered ones like my BarcaLounger.  They permit me to get chunks of sleep during the many nights when I can't sleep totally horizontally on my bed.  They let me sit upright without greatf effort, especially the BL which does it simply by pressing a button.  The LazyBoy requires me to lift a lever which is sometimes quite a challenge when my right hand and wrist pains are significant.  The white leather recliner in the sunroom is too big for me, i.e., it is built for a user taller than I am, and, having neither a motor drive nor a lever, it requires very considerable effort both to recline it and to un-recline it simply by pushing backward on it.  Ditto, but to a lesser extent, my old recliner in the basement.  Am I on my way to a lift chair, since it is at least a challenge to get up and out from any chair, the lower the chair the more challenging the effort?  Perhaps one I see on the internet, the "SleepingTitan Lift Chair, Extra Wide with Dual Motor, 180° Lay Flat Recliner, Heat and Massage, Black ‪(FREE 2 Years Warranty)."  Thoughts like these remind me that my father was about my current age when I started encouraging him to move up to Wisconsin to be nearer to us (and eventually living with us) and that I am now always asked if I need a wheelchair when I check into the VA hospital for an appointment.

h9gr   I am trying the dictation app.    

3/27/24

 Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Sarah and Christian arrive

Richard Serra, 11/2/38 - 3/26/24

In bed On the BL until 2:30 when I awoke with moderate pain in my left shoulder, right wrist/hand, and both hips.  Took a short walk around the house to get some movement in my joints, especially the hips.  Around 4, I loaded the dishwasher and started a load of laundry.  I let Lilly out at 4:15 (second outing; first at 11:30).

Pain, etc.  Both hips have become pretty arthritic but the normal pain on standing and walking after sitting for a while decreases with the walking.   Also, I've noticed that the pain in my right wrist is localized more on the right side of the wrist, i.e., the side opposite to where the severe degenerative changes in the wrist are.

I'm grateful for modern household conveniences, the dishwasher and the washer and dryer.  I'm pleased too that our washer and dryer are on the main floor of the house, off the kitchen, rather than in the basement, where there are stairs to deal with.  I'm thinking back to my childhood home in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald.  Our front door was in our kitchen, in a depressed stairwell space.  Our back door led into the apartment building's main basement area where there were storage lockers, a furnace area, a space for old-fashioned wringer washers, and the space for hanging wet laundry to dry, right outside our back door.  In those laundry areas, I learned to like the nice, clean smell of bleach and of wet fabric drying.  At some time my mother acquired a more modern washing machine, i.e., a top-loading cabinet without wringers on it, and it was located in our small bathroom.  I assume it drained into our bathtub though I don't remember.  My mother also acquired a fancy (to my way of thinking) Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner to replace our old push-pull carpet sweeper.  I assume the vacuum cleaner was a gift, perhaps a hand-me-down because the only carpet we had was a small one that fit into our dinky living room.  The only cookware I recall were two cast iron skillets, one small and one large and a coffee percolator, although we must have had a couple of pots and maybe a baking pan.  There were no built-in cabinets in the kitchen, just one wooden cupboard which along with the kitchen table and chairs comprised the kitchen furnishings.  I have no recollection of sitting down at that table and eating a meal with my mother or my father, only with my sister, and I suspect we had only two chairs.   I still remember finding World War II food ration tickets on top of that cupboard.  My addled memory tells me there was also a very small pantry but as I recall the layout of the kitchen (and the rest of the apartment), I can't imagine where it could have been.  It was 60 years ago that we moved out of that tiny basement flat with the cockroaches and the asbestos-wrapped steam pipes running along our ceilings and moved to the three-bedroom, second-floor apartment next door.  For us, it was like moving from the old Bowery to Park Avenue.

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain? is an article in The New Yorker online.  It's a tale of tremendous decline marked by two main forces: austerity and Brexit.  It's clear to me that the kinds of terrible results experienced in Britain will be experienced here in the U.S. when the Republicans win complete control of the government.

A voicemail from Ed Felsenthal let me know that he had received a text from Anne about Lyn's death.  He wanted her phone number so he could call or text her.  I'm not sure he's into texting or he'd know he could return her text from his phone without knowing her number.  I know he doesn't do much if any emailing.  In any case, I called back ad got his voicemail and left her phone number.  (Perhaps it was a voicemail he received from her, rather than a text.)

The Oven-Bird

• 
• 
• 
• 

Robert Frost

1874 – 

1963

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

3/26/24

Tuesday, March 26 

In bed  On the BL all night till 3:30 when I let Lilly out, but I didn't sleep particularly well and I'm awake but a bit tired as I type this with an aching left shoulder and right wrist and a shooting pain in my right elbow.  44°, high of 50°.   The wind is SSE at 21 mph, 7-21/39.  0.3 in of rain in the last 6 hours and 0.4" expected in the next 24.  Sunrise at 6:43, sunset at 7:11, 12+28.  Solar noon altitude will be 50°.

Pain, etc.   The pains on awakening are moderate but enough to keep me from falling back to sleep.  I let Lilly out again at 4:15, refreshed her water bowl, and strolled around the house, keeping my iPhone in my robe pocket 'just in case.'  I loaded the dishwasher at 4:45 after which my lower back was so tight and achy and my torso so stooped, I needed to sit down.

I'm grateful that I'm alive, but pretty grumpy about it because of the physical discomforts, what they steal in terms of joie de vivre, and what they require in terms of tending to.  I'm mindful of my good friend David Branch who died so young and of course of my mother, even younger.  I'm mindful of Kitty and of TSJ and of the millions who never lived to attain my age, and of others who could only dream of living in a home like ours in a neighborhood like ours, with good fortune like ours.  I'm mindful of Jane Kenyon and her poems that are a part of me, Otherwise and Woman, Why Are You Weeping? (India . . . has taken away the one who blessed and kept me) and Insomnia at Solstice ('The dog's wet nose appears / On the pillow, pressing lightly, / Decorously.  He needs to go out."), Trouble With Math in a One-Room Country School (". . . hardened my heart against authority. . .") and Depression in Winter:

There comes a little space between the south

side of a boulder

and the snow that fills the woods around it.

Sun heats the stone, reveals

a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,

and tufts of needles like red hair,

acorns, a patch of moss, bright green…

.

I sank with every step up to my knees,

throwing myself forward with a violence

of effort, greedy for unhappiness

– until by accident I found the stone,

with its secret porch of heat and light,

where something small could luxuriate, then

turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

She died at age 47 of leukemia after years of suffering from depression.  I'm mindful too of Robert Frost's The Ovenbird ("The question it asks in all but words / Is what to make of a diminished thing.") 

 

3/25/24

 Monday, March 25, 2024

In bed On the BL at 10 and up at 4 after 2 PS, fairly rested.  38°, high of 49°.  The wind is SE at 15 mph, 12-19/37.  Cloudy, windy, rainy day ahead.  0.65" of rain is expected in the next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 6:44, sunset at 7:10, 12+25.  The high noon altitude will be 49°. 

Pain, etc.  I took 2 8-Hour Tylenol and applied diclofenac at about 9 last night and slept reasonably well, with brown background noise, black screen, on YouTube, helping to mask tinnitus and perhaps subdue 'monkey brain' or 'bait bucket' thoughts.  I tried consciously to avoid overstretching my shoulder muscles and tendons while doing the prescribed physical therapy stretches yesterday and last evening.  Normal waking pains at 4.  The left shoulder pain seems localized in the front, near the acromion.  I took an intentional walk around the house to loosen my limbs and joints, something I should do every morning and indeed throughout the day.  I emptied the dishwasher at 6:45 but had to forego filling it for a while when my lower back tightened up and became painful.

Two 8-Hour Tylenol at 5:30 a.m.    1:30 & 9:30 follow-ups.

Diclofenac at 5:30, focused on the upper front of the shoulder.

I'm grateful for this wonderful house we live in that provides so much space for so many discrete activities.  The sunroom is also Geri's exercise room and reading room.  The  TV room has become another bedroom for me.  The living room is Geri's dedicated puzzle nook and reading room.  The dining room is Geri's office.  In the basement, I have a large open office space and my painting studio, as well as large storage and utility areas.  Plus, the treadmill I hope to start using again, a TV on which to watch YouTube stuff and avoid devastating boredom on that treadmill, and a great old recliner for reading and watching the TV, or snoozing.

I'm losing the physical and mental energy to write.   I suspect I may abandon this journalling project one of these days. I've never been entirely sure why I do it in the first place except perhaps that I have no attractive alternative, certainly not watching television.  Reading is increasingly difficult for me except on a Kindle or on my laptop with its ability to enlarge fonts.  There's certainly enough wretchedly bad news to read about, to think about, and to write about but I haven't much energy.  I am bowled over by how seemingly fast I have gone downhill with these chronic pain problems, with the interstitial cystitis assortment of pains lasting about a year and a half (?) only to be resolved by surgery and replaced by rotator cuff and various arthritis pains, all debilitating and at least semi-crippling.  At least as distressing as the physical pain is the cognitive decline that has accompanied it.  It's very noticeable to me, both in terms of executive function and in terms of increasing short-term memory problems and confusion.  

One year ago today  we were under several inches of snow and I had finished reading Gilead and posted the following:

Finished reading Gilead: "While I am thinking about it - when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing.  In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one's sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some way."  John Ames' frequent description of himself as old and tired, the metaphor being "ember," dull and gray but with an internal heat and fire, ready to be refulgent again when the Lord breathes life on it.  I was struck by "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain," how true that seems of old age, the age with little new except daily diminishment, little to look forward to but more diminishment, but filled with so many old memories, 80+ years of memories.  The good ones fade away, the regretful ones linger and haunt.  The good ones are almost all of the goodness of others - mother, sister, Uncle Jim, Aunt Monica, Brother Coogan, Wally Halperin, Johnny Flynn, Troy Major, Father Matthew, so many nurse-nuns - while the regretful ones are of my own failings, ingratitude, cowardice,  selfishness, vanity, pettiness, indifference.  It's curious that Marilynne Robinson named her fictional town "Gilead."  I suppose  she intended her novel to be healing, affirming.  "There is a balm in Gilead / To make the wounded whole / There is a balm in Gilea / .To heal the sin-sick soul. / Sometimes I feel discouraged / And deep I feel the pain / In prayers the holy spirit / Revives my soul again"  For those without the faith of a John Ames or Marilynne Robinson, hope comes harder.

I'm thinking once more of that insight that "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain."  Why am I so self-conscious in one sense and yet so unsure of who and what my 'self' is?  Or is it as the Buddhists or at least the Zenists assert that there is no 'self'?  

3/24/24

 Sunday, March 24, 2024

A first: I slept in the recliner all night

In bed  Last night I realized it was foolhardy to get into bed around 10 knowing I would be at best very uncomfortable and unable to sleep with my shoulder(s) pain and other pains so I slept on the BarcaLounger in the TV room until 3 a.m. when I woke, lit my Kitty cadle, let Lilly out, loaded the dishwasherm and made a cup of strong herbal tea (cinnamon apple & black cherry berry.)  29°, cloudy, snow forecast to begin around 4:15, high of 39°.  The wind is SE at 7 mph, 4-21/34, a windy day with snow ahead. Sunrise at 6:46 at 87°E, sunset at 7:09 at 273°W, 12+22.   Solar noon at 12:57, altitude 49°

Pain, etc.  Much of the pain I was experiencing last night subsided overnight though my left shoulder os still achy with limited ROM.  The absence of any significant right shoulder pain confirms my thought that it was due to the PT stretches, mainly overdoing the pulls on the yellow elastic exercise band.   

I'm grateful to Ashley Boynes-Shuck for the following poem she wrote about arthritis pain. Her website is arthritisashley.com.  It's a bit too buoyant for me right now but I appreciate how she describes the reality of severe arthritis and I recognize the wisdom in what she says about healing.  There is a huge difference between being 'healed' and being 'cured.'  I've known this for some time now.  When I got involved in the VA's Whole Health program, I told my 'health coach' Melinda that I didn't expect my pains (then mainly pelvic) to go away, but I hoped to learn to live with them better, not to be laid low by them.  So I have tried hypnotherapy, acupuncture, 'healing touch' and mindfulness.  As it turned out, the pelvic pain did go away (fingers crossed) after my bladder surgery, but then arthritis, bursitis, tendonitis, and rotator cuff pains set in.  I'm reminded of Roseann Roseannadanna reflecting the wisdom of her grandma Nana Roseanadanna to Jane Curtin: "7. "Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it’s always something! If it’s not one thing, it’s another! You either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper clinging to your shoe."

Joys and Pains by Ashley Boynes-Shuck (2011)

“Unrelenting pain and never-ceasing fatigue.

Hurts and aches in every place.

Wondering at times, “Why is this? Why me?”

But putting on a happy face.

Prone to sickness and infections, too

Difficulty sleeping at night.

Limited on what we can physically do,

Trying hard to see the light.

Living with swelling and joints on fire,

We wonder how this could be real.

But when we get past the negative thinking,

We can rise above it and heal.

Maybe our physical struggles will stay,

And it’s true that there may be no cure.

But if we choose optimism to lead our way,

It will be easier on us, for sure.

Yes sometimes it feels like our bones are all broken

And our hearts, sometimes, too.

We have so many internal struggles unspoken

That may, at times leave us blue.

But the support that we get from others like us

Can make this an easier ride.

We can help to lift each other up,

And learn to take our sickness in stride.

Sure at times we feel frustration

For all the things we cannot do.

And there are times we’re in desperation

Because it seems no one else has a clue.

“You don’t look sick!” “You’re too young for arthritis”

Makes this journey even more tough.

But with it all comes a strength deep inside us,

a compassion for when times get rough.

“I have arthritis, it doesn’t have me!”

We need to learn to make do with what we’ve gotten.

There will be tears and struggles and adversity

And we may even at times feel forgotten.

But the important thing is we rise above.

We do what we can when we can.

By surrounding ourselves with support and with love,

And by accepting it as best as we can.

No one wants to be sick, yes this is true,

And no one would choose this life.

There’s things we give up, and things we can’t do,

and trials, tribulations, and strife.

But realize this – you are still blessed!

Every day you wake up is a gift.

So open it with kindness and try not to stress –

You have a life – so LIVE!”

Another Roseanne Roseannadanna: A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, NewJersey writes in and says: "Dear Roseanne Roseannadanna, Last Thursday, I quit smokin'. Now, I'm depressed, I gained weight, my face broke out, I'm nauseous, I'm constipated, my feet swelled, my gums are bleedin', my sinuses are clogged, I got heartburn, I'm cranky and I have gas. What should I do?" Mr. Feder, you sound like a real attractive guy... you belong in New Jersey!

 

3/23/24

 Saturday, March 23, 2024

In bed at 9 then I did the recliner circuit all night, letting Lilly out twice.  Bad pain in both shoulders, right wrist and hand, hips, and lower back.  I think I overdid the yellow elastic exercise band yesterday, which could account for the pain in my right shoulder.  Plus, it's difficult to stand up from the recliners. I'm losing the will to maintain this journal, too distracted by pain, immobility, and lack of good sleep.  I took 2 500 mg. tabs of Tylenol at about 7 a.m.   In case I didn't know, my iPhone's Walking Steadiness Notification feature regularly warns me that I have a "very high risk" of falling within the next 12 months.

I'm grateful for all the stuff and to all the people I have written about in past entries, but the pain and related problems do a good job of keeping me not very conscious of all that gratitude at any given time.  But I read a little essay in The Atlantic 'on communing with trees' that reminded me of my deep fondness for trees, individually and in their plenitude, reminding me of Mary Oliver's "each as common as a field daisy, and as singular."

I opened my laptop to the feature essay in The New Yorker which I had started yesterday, "The Children Who Lost Limbs in Gaza: More than a thousand children who were injured in the war are now amputees. What do their futures hold?"  by Eliza Griswold, March 21, 2024.  Were these injuries caused by American bombs, rockets, or missiles given to Israel in my name by Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin?  To further enrich the American world-leading arms industry?  While the Republicans in the House invite Netanyahu to address the Congress despite Biden, as they did once before to spite Obama?

Gazal was wounded on November 10th, when, as her family fled Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, shrapnel pierced her left calf. To stop the bleeding, a doctor, who had no access to antiseptic or anesthesia, heated the blade of a kitchen knife and cauterized the wound. Within days, the gash ran with pus and began to smell. By mid-December, when Gazal’s family arrived at Nasser Medical Center—then Gaza’s largest functioning health-care facility—gangrene had set in, necessitating amputation at the hip. On December 17th, a projectile hit the children’s ward of Nasser. Gazal and her mother watched it enter their room, decapitating Gazal’s twelve-year-old roommate and causing the ceiling to collapse. (Multiple news reports have described the event as an Israeli attack. The I.D.F. claimed the incident could have been caused by a Hamas mortar or the remnant of an Israeli flare.) Gazal and her mother managed to crawl out of the rubble. The next day, their names were added to the list of evacuees who could cross the border into Egypt and then fly to Qatar for medical treatment. Gazal’s mother was nine months pregnant; she gave birth to a baby girl while awaiting the airlift to Doha.

unicef estimates that a thousand children in Gaza have become amputees since the conflict began in October. “This is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history,” Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a London-based plastic-and-reconstructive surgeon who specializes in pediatric trauma, told me recently.

In Gaza, Abu-Sittah was performing as many as six amputations a day. “Sometimes you have no other medical option,” he explained. “The Israelis had surrounded the blood bank, so we couldn’t do transfusions. If a limb was bleeding profusely, we had to amputate.” The dearth of basic medical supplies, owing to blockades, also contributed to the number of amputations. Without the ability to irrigate a wound immediately in an operating room, infection and gangrene often set in. “Every war wound is considered dirty,” Karin Huster, a nurse who leads medical teams in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders, told me. “It means that many get a ticket to the operating room.”

and this from the NYTimes, "Gaza’s Shadow Death Toll: Bodies Buried Beneath the Rubble":

Gaza has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within. . . .

Some were buried too hastily to be counted. Others lie decomposing in the open, in places too dangerous to be reached, or have simply disappeared amid the fighting, the chaos and ongoing Israeli detentions.  The rest, in all likelihood, remain trapped under the rubble. 

A year ago at this time I was reading and enjoying Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.

While waiting for the Diclofenac on my shoulder to dry enough to put my shirt back on, I watched Bill Maher on CNN and thought we ought to start watching him again.

Sarah and Christian arrive from Germany Wednesday evening.  I hope I'm in decent enough shape for their visit, concerned a bit about sleeping on the BL in the TV room while they are here.  

A Poem about Pain

BY DAVID BUDBILL

I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing

from this life, just as my father did. 

When the pain you're in

is so great you can’t think about or pay attention to anything

but your own pain, the rest of the world and all other life

don't matter.

I think about my friends with dementia, cancer, arthritis, and

how much more pain they are in than I am, but it does no good,

their pain is not mine, and therefore, no matter how magnanimous

I might want to be, their pain is not as important to me as my own.

 EMILY DICKINSON

Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,

Its infinite realms contain

Its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain.

. . . . I can recollect the beginning of my current pains by viewing my VA health records on line and my entries in this journal.  On Christmas Day, 2022, I wrote "I woke up with a sore shoulder" and on January 13, 2023, I wrote of my sore painful right wrist.  The chronic pelvic pain that was taken care of by my surgery on March 5, 2024, began in September or October of 2022 which I know from the VA Notes in my medical records about an Urgent Care visit to the Gold Clinic in November of that year.  Only recently have I made an effort to make note of pains and other medical problems 

3/22/24

 Friday, March 22, 2024

In bed Slept on the BL during the finale of The Old Man and went to bed at 10:30 but up and on the LZB by 11.  Then up and out to the BL at 1:30 where I tried unsuccessfully to sleep even playing a pleasant "brown noise" app on YouTube.

Pain, etc.  I usually have difficulty extricating myself from the bedding when I struggle to raise myself and get out of bed.  I have had a fear that I may wake up in the middle of some night and be unable to lower either the LZB or the BL and that I won't be able to get out of the recliner.  Tonight, I had the problem for a while on the LZB when my wrist and hand were so painful that I couldn't raise the lever to 'unrecline' the LZB.  The other night I made a point of leaving the front door unlocked and of having my iPhone with me in case I needed to call 911 to extricate me from one of the recliners.

I'm grateful but again half brain dead today.  Thoughtless.    Dopey.

   One of my favorite drawings, Nikki, from a photo I took of her.

3/21/24

 Thursday, March 21, 2024

In bed at 9:45, then did the LZB, BL, LZB, and bed circuit during the night and up at 4:41 with the usual pains.  23°, high of 33°,  Winter Weather Advisory starting 1 a.m. tomorrow, 4" to 8 " of snow.  The wind is N at 9 mph, 5-10/17.  Sunrise at 6:52, sunset at 7:06, 12+13.

Pain, etc.  On awakening, the shoulder is stiff and achy, the wrist achy. I'm able to raise my left wing to about 90° with my arm crooked, less with the arm straightened.

I'm grateful for the sleep sound whadyacallems on YouTube.  I think they actually help me sleep on the recliners.  At least they tend to mask the tinnitus.  They are OK even during the day.

Brainfoggy day.  Picked up Andy at Ogui Garage at 8 and drove him to work downtown, then again at 5ish but his car wasn't ready so he kept the Volvo to get to work and Peter to school tommorow during the expected snowfall.    

My office, 1965-1966

3/20/24

 Wednesday, March 20, 2024

In bed at 9 after dozing on and off on the BL, then on to the LZB with shoulder pain, the pain worsened around midnight, back to bed but no good, up at 12:35.  Let Lilly out.  35°, high of 36°, low of 25° toward dawn.  The wind is NW at 16 mph, 9-18/28.  Sunrise at  6:53, sunset at 7:04, 12+10.

Pain, etc.  It was another disjointed night.  I'm concerned that the combination of Diclofenac, lots of Tylenol, and physical therapy doesn't appear to be doing much in terms of improving the pain situation, deterioration overnight, effect on sleep, and even cognitive functioning.  The pain and loss of functionality is mentally distracting, making me feel a bit 'brain dead.'  

I'm grateful to Chie Hayakawa for writing and directing Plan 75.    

Plan 75 is a film by director Chie Hayakawa starring actress Chieko Baisho playing Michi, a 78-year-old housekeeping maid in a hotel.  A premise of the film is that Japan has passed a law creating a 'right' for any citizen more than 74 years old to choose to 'die with dignity,' i.e., to be euthanized.  Under the law, it is no longer necessary to be in irremediable pain or at the end stage of a terminal illness, all that is necessary is that you be 75 or older.  The reason for the law was that in Japan's aging society, the elderly have come to be recognized as a drain on the economy, depriving younger citizens of resources that could be put to more productive use than keeping alive old 'takers' at the expense of younger 'makers.'  The film is chillingly realistic.  First, it depicts the way such a law would operate, i.e., by enticing the poorest, loneliest elders to opt for suicide.  The program, in its liberal and libertarian kindness and respect for individual autonomy, is purely voluntary.  No one needs to sign up; once signed up, a participant can opt out anytime.  Of course, those who enroll are those with the least resources, economic, social, and otherwise, to enjoy life, i.e., those like Michi, the unemployed, unemployable, familyless housemaid.  Secondly, the film depicts ageism in a modern, industrial, technocratic, bureaucratic society.  Michi loses her job at the hotel because she is noticeably old and slow-moving.  The guests prefer to see younger, more vigorous help making their beds and cleaning their rooms.  Just as her age accounted for her losing her job and income, it prevented her from getting another job, except as a traffic signaller, akin to a school crossing guard.  Thirdly, the film depicts some of the loneliness of old age, especially for those who live alone, without support from family and close friends, and why for such people, choosing to die might be preferable to futures of loneliness and increasing declines in mobility, functionality, and social connections.  The death of contemporary friends and family members plays into this.  Fourthly, the film shows that it is always possible to get people to work in even the grisly business of servicing mass suicides, illustrated best by Maria, a young expat Philopina who needs money to pay for her 5-year-old daughter's heart surgery.  Most significantly, the film shows how easily "the right to die" can get transformed to "the duty to die."  How selfish of me to stay alive eating up resources that could be put to use bettering the lives of others.  Better that I should die so that they can live better.  In modern life, this duty-to-die problem comes up with the elderly requiring long-term care the cost of which is eating up the estate that would otherwise go to heirs. 

The opening sequence of the film depicts a mass murder in an elderly residence of some sort, inspired by a 2016 mass murder in a Japanese city in which the murderer stabbed to death 19 residents of a home for disabled people because they were wastefully and selfishly using national resources that he thought should be devoted to productive members of society, or in Paul Ryan's Ayn Randish world, "makers rather than takers."

The director of the film, Chie Hayakawa, is a woman.  I feel that this film could not have been made by a man.  It is too sensitive, too subtle, especially in its portrayal of Michi, whose facial expression rarely changes throughout the almost 2-hour-long movie, and whose dialogues are scant, but who nevertheless is revealed as living, feeling, thinking, sensitive, and independent human being.

The film is a futuristic science-fiction piece but it is also a devastating assessment of the value of life, the value of human beings in modern society.  More accurately I should say it depicts the lack of value of the lives of the marginalized: the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the "takers."

A painting I started years ago and never finished; it seems apt.

One year ago, I wrote in this journal:  "I am old and just about worn out, my parts mostly failing.  I have cut down on the time I spend watching the news on television because it is so - what is the word? - depressing doesn't quite cut it, desponding is closer to it, the verb form of Bunyon's Slough of Despond.  Can I cut down on reading the newspapers?  Become more of a recluse than I am now?  Do the ladies in the cloister know something that I don't?  Are they fools, or am I?  I fear for my children & grandchildren, all children, all grandchildren.  I despond."  Are things better now?  I'm semi-hobbled by shoulder pain and arthritis pain, a bit addled by sleep disruption, and the "VA Note" on my last ER visit had me at "mild cognitive decline."  The nation is as divided as ever, Trump seems likely to regain power over the federal government, and Biden has us complicit in a genocide.  Charlie Downer, the guy you don't want to talk with at a party.

3/19/24

 Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Spring equinox

In bed at 10, moved to the LZB at 11, moved to the BL at midnight, a 1:45 PS took me back to the LZB, 3:05 PS took me onto the bed, but at  3:25, shoulder pain sent me back to the BL.  5 a.m. temperature is 30°, wind chill of 18°, high of 49°.  The wind is SW at 18 mph, 10-20/36.  Sunrise at 6:55 at 90°E, sunset at 7:03 at 271W, 12+7.  Solar noon at 12:57 p.m., altitude 47°.    

Pain, etc.  I applied Diclofenac before bedtime and took 2 extra-strength Tylenol.  The shoulder pain was moderate during the night and my sleeplessness may have been more insomnia-related than pain-related.  At 7:45 this morning, the resting pain was not bad, but my ROM was very limited so I took 2 more extra strength Tylenol, hoping to deal with my post-bleed suppository and the initial set of PT stretches later this morning.  I took a photo of my leg ulcer which has been supporating and will send it to Dr. Chatt as instructed by Kim.  I'll also ask about a referral to the Geriatric Clinic. . .  Dr. Chatt confirmed the sore is a leg ulcer and referred me to the Wound Care Clinic and to the Geriatric Clinic.  

I'm grateful for my solitude time early in the morning, even though I know I am getting entirely too much of it in recent months.  I'm lonely when Geri is out of town and especially lonely when both she and Lilly are away, but not during the long predawn hours I spend reading and writing. Some mornings I light my votive candle and meditate a bit.  Our good friend Janine told me after her mother died and while her father was still among us that she worried about him because 'they did everything together.'  Of course, that was something of an overstatement, but I'm sure that generally it was true.  They had married young after WW II and were blessed with a long, fruitful, happy life together until the mother died.  How different Geri and I are, having both been married and divorced before our marriage in middle age, each of us with 2 children.  We spend most of our days engaged in individual pursuits, she with her reading, knitting, studying stuff on her iPad, organizing, planning, conversing with family and friends on the phone, walking, etc., and I reading, writing, 'tending my wounds,' painting (except for the last couple of months😟), and little else.  We may watch some news programming around lunchtime but generally don't watch TV together until dinnertime and in the evening.  Geri tends to our agéd Lilly much more than I do and I am immensely grateful for how lovingly she cares for all of Lilly's needs, including her medical needs.  Geri also does all the preparation of evening meals and I do the clean-up, although recently she has undertaken some of the clean-up herself when I am particularly hobbled by arthritis and/or shoulder pain.  When the weather warms up, she takes care of all the gardening and outdoor tasks, which can be considerable.  I am so aware of the fact that the only reason I am able to live in this wonderful house is because Geri takes care of most that needs to be taken care of.  I love her dearly and am sorry that I contribute so much less to our daily lives than she does.

I'm becoming a Night Creature, living monk hours but without the prayers or chants.  I have 'sleep sounds' playing softly on the bedroom tv and on the Samsung.  Why am I not tired and sleepy at midnight?  Am I becoming like Kitty, a real insomniac?  . . . I dozed for a while then got up again at 1:45 for a PS, and dozed again on the LZB till 3;05 when I tried to lie on the bed and sleep, but shoulder pain had me up and back in the TV room at 3:25.  At 4:40, I'm cooking a pot of steel cut oatmeal.  By 6ish, I dozed off again and slept until 7:45 when Geri got up.  Today I am having a hard time keeping my eyes open and am half brain dead.

3/18/24

 Monday, March 18, 2024

In bed at 9, on LZB for a while (shoulder), unable to sleep and up at 1:30.  Let Lilly out.  25°, high of 37°, wind chill 14°.  The wind is NNW at 13 mph, 9-14/24.  Sunrise at 6:57 at 90°E, sunset at 7:02 at 270°, 12+6.  Solar noon at 12:59, altitude 46°.

Pain, etc.  Mild to moderate shoulder pain made sleeping difficult, especially on the bed.  I should have applied Doclofenac before going to bed.  A rough night. 

 I'm grateful that Geri, Lilly, and I are all together.  A blessing for all of us, especially for Lilly and me.    

Cognitive decline; executive function.  The last few weeks, or months, are taking a toll on my brain as well as my body.  Not enough sleep, or enough of the right kind of sleep, plus persistent pain, loss of functionality, mobility, and short-term memory.  My voice has grown noticeably weaker along with my body.  Parts wearing out.

We took Lilly to the vet again for diarrhea.  2 unsuccessful jumps into the car.  Geri handled everything at the vets.  She means more to me, and to Lilly, than I can say.  How much we rely on her.

I tried to reset my password with my computer virus protection provider, but I couldn't do it correctly.

Taxes are still undone, indeed unlooked at, unstarted.

Going downhill.  My tools: my handcrafted walking stick from Bean's Lake, my house cane given to me by Andy 35n or 40 years ago, my outdoor cane I bought for my Dad about 20 years ago, now normally kept in the Volvo, my ottoman, my BarcaLounger, my 17 year afghan made by Geri, and my 'sharf', also made by Geri

      

s

Nicolet FEAR.  Peter's robotics team won the Wisconsin Regional competition, a huge victory sending them to Houston, TX for the world competition with their team fee paid by NASA.  Peter and Andy were both moved to tears by this culmination of so much individual and team effort over many months, really years, counting the experience, skills, and  STEM knowledge gained in previous seasons.

3/17/24

 Sunday, March 17, 2024

In bed at 9 and on the LZB by 10:30 and on the BL at 11:13, shoulder pain. 39°, high of 37°.  A windy day ahead.  The wind is 15 mph WNW, 8-17/27.  The wind chill is 23°,  Sunrise at 6:59. sunset at 7:01, 12+2.  

Pain, etc.  The bedtime pain was not severe but it was enough to keep me from sleeping.  We lost internet service around 8 p.m. last night, but it had been restored when I moved to the BL and turned on a biaural sound site on YouTube to help me sleep.  I dozed off till some unknown time then moved to the bedroom for a PS, back in bed, and up again at 2:30 with shoulder pain.  I let Lilly out and filled her water bowl, then back to the TV room awake.  I had a piece of Irish soda bread and then I applied Diclofenac to the shoulder around 3:15.  I read the papers and at some point dozed off to awaken at 6:11

I'm grateful to the helpers at the Zablocki VA Medical Center.

We have our national cemeteries; the Vietnamese have theirs.

Do wars ever end?  There was a feature article in yesterday's NYTimes titled "An American Who Has Helped Clear 815,000 Bombs From Vietnam: Chuck Searcy has spent decades of his life redressing a deadly legacy of America’s war in Vietnam: unexploded ordnance."  Before I copy some excerpts, I note that the unexploded ordnance in Vietnam is only part of the legacy left by our invasion and occupation, there is also the teratogenic damage from Agent Orange and other chemicals used in the war and of course, the generation-spanning effects of PTSD among the combatants and the civilian population.

[Chuck Searcy] As a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, he had had access to a full range of raw information, from the enemy’s body counts to exaggerated claims of American progress.  “We got to see almost everything,” he said in a recent interview. “And I saw that our friends back home were being given information that was not just misleading but deliberate lies.”

By the time his one-year tour of duty ended, Mr. Searcy found himself doubting not only the war but his own character.  “I’ve really sometimes wondered if my timidity or refusal to step up and say this was wrong, whether this was a moral failure on my part,” he said.  . . . 

That sense of duty has propelled him to commit his life to redressing one of the most deadly legacies of the war: the millions of unexploded bombs and land mines that continue to kill and injure people every year. . . . .  The phrase he particularly embraces is a Marine Corps directive that involves clearing away spent metal shell casings on a firing range: Policing up your brass.  Mr. Searcy is, both figuratively and literally, policing up the deadly ordnance that the Americans left behind throughout Vietnam. . . .

Altogether, Mr. Searcy said, almost eight million tons of ordnance was dropped on Vietnam from 1965 to 1975. Bombs that failed to detonate became de facto land mines, which the Vietnamese government estimates have caused 100,000 deaths and injuries since the war’s end. 

In Project Renew’s two decades of operation, 815,000 bombs of all types have been detonated or taken out of action, Mr. Searcy said: aerial-dropped bombs, cluster bombs, artillery shells, booby traps, grenades and mortar rounds.  “Imagine that! 815,000, “ he said, “My god!” 

In despair for America: the truth hurts.  Notes from a speech by Chris Hedges "The Politics of Cultural Despair", 3 years ago.  (1) We squander our resources in military adventurism: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.  Millions of lives were destroyed or wrecked.  (2)  There are 8.1 billion Muslims in the world, 24% of the world's population.  We have turned almost all of them into our enemies. (3)   We pile up massive deficits, trillions of dollars, while we neglect our basic infrastructure to spend more on our military than all the other major powers combined. (4) We are the world's largest producer of arms and munitions.  (5)  The virtues we ca\laim to have the right to impose on others [democracy, human rights, the free market, the rule of law, and personal freedoms) are mocked at home where grotesque levels of social and economic inequality and austerity programs impoverish much of the public, destroy democratic institutions, including Congress, the courts, and the press, and create militarized forces of internal occupation that carry out wholesale surveillance of the public, run the largest prison systems in the world, and gun down unarmed citizens in the streets with impunity.

Watching, listening to, or reading Chris Hedges is experiencing a present-day Jeremiah or Cassandra.  You feel like telling someone, anyone, to 'take me out behind the barn and shoot me.'  He is incredibly dismal, hard to take in large doses.

   

3/16/24

 Saturday, March 16, 2024

In bed   I spent the night on the recliners in the TV room and bedroom, unable to manage bed because I feared my inability to get up from it.  Lilly got me up at 4:30.  40°, high 51°, a windy day ahead.  The wind is SW at 14 mph, 7-20/34.  Sunrise at 7:00, sunset at 7:00, 11+59.     

Pain etc.  Very bad pain yesterday and last night.  Acupuncture?  Physical therapy stretches and pulls?  I had pain in both shoulders but mainly the left one, also the right wrist, thumb, and hand, my back, and my hips. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep on the LZB. I'm semi-crippled.  I left the front door unlocked in case I needed to call 911.  The worst day for pain since the ER on 11/25.  Unable to deal with the suppository last night and didn't mix the Miralax.  I'm not keeping track of when I took the Tylenol Extra Strength and when I applied the Diclofenac. ADVIL at 7:30 a.m. and at 1:15 p.m.  2 8-Hour Tylenol at 10 p.m.(ish)

I'm grateful for the birds who visit our feeders and amaze and astonish me with their - what is the right word? - dexterity? adroitness? finesse?  How can they fly to the feeder from a nearby tree at a speed sufficient to stay aloft and then - in a split second - stop and land on the tube holding the nourshing safflower and sunflower seeds?  I think of how long it takes a thoroughbred horse to slow down from a sprint at the conclusion of a race, or the stopping distances of cars traveling at 30 or 50 or 70 miles an hour.  These beautiful little feathered descendents of prehistoric dinosaurs are amazing in so many ways, including how they survive Wisconsin winters, or migrate twice each year for thousands of miles.   For the trees that provide them shelter and the amazing nests that they construct in them, twig by twig, I am also grateful.

Casualty figures out of Gaza.  "Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after the devastating Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 31,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but says the majority of the dead are women and children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) estimates it has killed between 11,500 and 13,000 militants, as it seeks to eradicate Hamas from the enclave.

The ministry relies mostly on reports from hospitals for its death counts. With the enclave’s medical system in shambles, Palestinian health officials say many more deaths have gone unrecorded. Roads are impassable and communication networks are unreliable. Israel, meanwhile, will not disclose the identities of the hundreds of residents rights groups believe its forces have detained."

We learned from the Vietnam war never to trust "body counts"  Any dead male Vietnamese was called a VC, reported to MACV, then to the government and the media where it was passed onto the believing public.  If we can't trust the US military and  governmnt to be truthful, why would we trust Hamas or the Israeli governmen or the IDF about casualty figures or anything else?  Commonly reported figures indicate that about 21,000 of the dead Palestinians are women and children, which means that the Israelis, like the Americans in Vietnam, simply count every dead male Palestinian as a Hamas militant.

I'm feeling so much better today than I was yesterday at this time.  By 8 p.m., I have taken some Tylenol and 2 doses of Advil.  Earlier I applied Diclofenac to my shoulder and in the late afternoon, I did my physical therapy stretches and the new exercise involving the yellow exercise band.  Also, earlier today I was able to deal with the insertion of the prescripton suppositories I received from the VA Emergency Room on Thursday.  Yesterday, it was an impossible task.  I will try to sleep on my bed tonight instead of moving between recliners.

I sent a myhealthevet Secure Message to Susan, the acupuncturist, this afternoon, cancelling my remaining appointments.  I hope this wasn't a mistake but in any case, yesterday's pain and misery and sleeplessness were such that I can't see risking it all again for a procedure that may or may not be truly therapeutic.

  

3/15/24

 Friday, March 15, 2024

In bed at 9, awake and up at 2:52.  Let Lilly out.  35°, high of 46°, mostly sunny day ahead,  wind 13 mph, 4-15/23,  1.1" of rain in the last 24 hours  Sunrise at 7:02 at 92°E, sunset at 6:58 at 269°W, 11+56.  

Treadmill; pain.  The thumb restrictor helped last night though the thumb/wrist/forearm pain is present after waking up.  The VA hand specialist said my wrist is quite a mess from the long-term arthritis at the base of the thrum.    The shoulder pain and ROM are moderate.  Phonzo really worked it over yesterday and started me using an exercise band in addition to the 3 stretches.   Acupuncture for my shoulder this morning.  Getting dressed, brushing teeth, and applying deodorant, all are all painful.

I'm grateful that I am struggling today to state truly that I am consciously feeling gratitude for much; I've simply "got the mizries."  Yesterday's bloody surprise, the stint in the ER, the too-persistent pains and their effects on everyday requirements, the  unexpectedlypainful acupuncture  this morning have me fighting with fighting off a pity party.  Woe is me!  My room is a mess, the tax returns are undone, I haven't picked up a paint brush since I don't know when.  I need my sister and Loretta Castorini to slap me and tell me to SNAP OUT OF IT!  OK, I'm grateful for my sister, for Cher, for Moonstruck and so much more.  I feel better already.

Painful acupuncture.  I had quite a bit of pain during this morning's acupuncture session, enough that I came close to signaling the therapist to come back into the room and remove the needles.  I 'toughed it out' until she did come back in and remove the needles but she said that 'dull, deep aching pain' is not unusual for orthopedic problems.  She inserted another needle in my left lower leg and manipulated it, which itself was painful.  She continued until I was able to move my left arm, not on its own strength, but by supporting and pulling it with my right arm.  It was a disconcerting experience and I wonder about continuing the process though I will probably attend at least one more session.  It was another disappointment, along with the ineffective cortisone injection.  I wondered whether I should avoid driving home on the freeway afterward, but I managed to do so.  Was I unwise to try?

Supreme Betrayal: A requiem for Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is an article today in The Atlantic by J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe, two respected constitutional scholars, one on the Right, the other on the Left.

The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.

In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5–4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need to reach in order to resolve the controversy before it, the Court was disappointingly unanimous in permitting oath-breaking insurrectionists, including former President Donald Trump, to return to power. In doing so, all nine justices denied “We the People” the very power that those who wrote and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment presciently secured to us to save the republic from future insurrectionists—reflecting a lesson hard-learned from the devastation wrought by the Civil War.

What ought to have been, as a matter of the Constitution’s design and purpose, the climax of the struggle for the survival of America’s democracy and the rule of law instead turned out to be its nadir, delivered by a Court unwilling to perform its duty to interpret the Constitution as written. Desperate to assuage the growing sense that it is but a political instrument, the Court instead cemented that image into history. It did so at what could be the most perilous constitutional and political moment in our country’s history, when the nation and the Constitution needed the Court most—to adjudicate not the politics of law, but the law of the politics that is poisoning the lifeblood of America. 

Joe Biden’s obsessive search for the right words: The president relentlessly grills advisers on factual details. But even aides acknowledge his delivery often falls short.  This is the title of a feature piece in the WaPo by Tyler Pager.  Excerpts:

“The words of a president matter,” Biden has said more than once. 

. . .   but Biden’s lack of attention to delivery was apparent as he meandered into asides such as this one on the importance of infrastructure: “You know, I was — when I was doing the Recovery Act in our last administration — Obama-Biden — I was in Pittsburgh — excuse me, in Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania, in a small town. And in the process, I looked at a bridge, and they couldn’t — their fire department was on one side of the bridge, and, literally, from here to that holding tank outside here, was — on the other side there was a shopping center and a school. Well, guess what? Their fire — you couldn’t get across the bridge.”

 I suppose all of us, or at least most of us, engage in such a stream-of-consciousness word salad on occasion.   I occasionally do so in writing in this journal.  But most American presidents don't.  Most heads of state don't.  I suspect that most lawyers don't., especially when speaking as the main attraction at a public gathering with cameras and voice recorders trained on them.   And I know there are a good number of people who have difficulty finishing a sentence or a thought.  They often or perhaps even usually jump from thought to thought before completing a single one of them.  But again, most American presidents and heads of state don't do this.  Joe Biden does.  Indeed, so does Donald Trump from time to time.  Biden's inarticulateness is usually attributed to his lifetime challenge with stuttering but I wonder if this is true.  Biden has been in public office since 1970, a U.S. senator from 1973 until 2009 when he became Vice President of the United States for the next 8 years.  He has had more than half a century to discipline his speaking style, yet he has not done so.  Why?  Much of the time, all he has to do is to speak less, speak carefully and thoughtfully, more slowly, but he seems incapable of disciplining himself, despite his years under a spotlight.  Plus, he often speaks falsely or at least inaccurately or unwisely, as the nation's premier gaffemeister.   Why?  Because he stuttered as a kid and occasionally still stutters?  I suspect there is more to it than that and that we wouldn't like that "more" in him that accounts for it.

 

3/14/24

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Another day in the ER

In bed before 10, up at 2:55, let Lilly out to harass a whitetail deer on the lawn.  43°, high of 45°.  Close to 1" of rain is expected in the next 24 hours.  The wind is NNE at 9, 7-21/36.  Sunrise at 7:04, sunset at 7:36, 11+53. 

Treadmill; pain.  I haven't been on the treadmill since February 19th because of shoulder/wrist pains, with concern about exacerbation and the danger of falling.  The pain continued last night and early morning.  Two 8-hour Tylenol at 7 a.m.  

I'm grateful to Chris Van Hollen and The New Yorker, see below.

Genocide by starvation and disease, how it works for Israel with U.S. complicity thanks to Joe Biden.  From the current The New Yorker online, "Why America Isn’t Using Its Leverage with Israel: Senator Chris Van Hollen on the catastrophe in Gaza, and his differences with the Biden Administration" by Isaac Chotiner, March 7, 2024 :

Where are we right now in terms of getting aid to the people in Gaza? What is preventing that aid from reaching them in sufficient levels?

Well, we’re nowhere near where we need to be. We now have hundreds of thousands of people on the verge of starvation. We also passed the grisly marker where at least fifteen children have died of starvation, so the situation has gone from bad to worse. The primary cause has been the continued restrictions on assistance by the Netanyahu government. . .  [y]ou have people like [Minister of Finance] Bezalel Smotrich holding up flour at the Port of Ashdod for at least five weeks, despite the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu promised President Biden that that flour would go to hungry, starving people. That’s just one example. You also have [Minister of National Security] Itamar Ben-Gvir indicating that he would not allow police to clear protesters who were blocking trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing.

These are Israeli protesters intentionally trying to block aid trucks from crossing into Gaza, correct?

Right. There’s also the issue of continued arbitrary denial of things like maternity kits from being able to cross into Gaza on the claim that somehow a maternity kit is a dual-use item, and that also holds true with other items like water purifiers and things that clearly are not dual use. [Dual-use items are items which could potentially be used for military purposes, aside from their intended purposes.] When there’s one of those items on the truck, the whole truck has to be turned around and go back to the start, which is now taking up to several weeks in some cases.  

You mentioned that you could fill us in more about the issue with Smotrich. What was it you were going to say?

So, this was a shipment of flour from Turkey that was at the port of Ashdod, and had enough flour to feed hundreds of thousands of people for weeks. Smotrich intervened and refused to allow the flour to be transferred because he didn’t want the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (unrwa) to be able to distribute it, even though we know that unrwa has been the primary distribution system for aid in Gaza. I should point out that Ambassador David Satterfield, our humanitarian envoy, has said repeatedly that he has received zero evidence from the Netanyahu government that U.N.-distributed aid has been diverted to Hamas. But Smotrich was holding this up, claiming that he didn’t want it to go through unrwa, and so the flour has to be transferred to the World Food Program, but before it could be released to the World Food Program, unrwa had to pay delay charges for the time that it was sitting in the port of Ashdod because Smotrich had not allowed it to be delivered, and when unrwa went to make that payment, it was rejected by the Israeli bank that refused to accept a payment from unrwa.

Am I correct that there is a law on the books in America which says that “funds appropriated or otherwise made available for United States assistance may not be made available for any country whose government prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance?” 

You cited that exactly right, . . . I’ve been flabbergasted that the Administration has not invoked and implemented the law you just cited, which is called the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act.

If that were invoked, what would follow?

So, what would follow from that is that, until the Netanyahu government allowed needed assistance to get to starving people in Gaza, the United States would suspend its military assistance. I should say that that does not cover the provision of defensive systems like Iron Dome, but it would mean a suspension of delivering bombs that could be used in Gaza. 

You’ve had a lot of conversations with people in the Administration about this. Is there a difference of opinion when you talk to people high up in the Administration about what’s actually going on, or about how to deal with it? Is there disagreement about, say, why aid is failing to reach Gaza? Are people in the Administration telling you, “Oh, no, in fact, the Israelis want to get aid in,” or is there an open acknowledgment that the Israelis are intentionally denying humanitarian aid to Gaza?

In all my discussions, Administration officials have recognized that the Netanyahu government has put up unacceptable barriers to the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, and so the question is not one of fact but what to do about it.

The idea that we’re giving massive amounts in aid to a country that is refusing our request to allow humanitarian assistance through so we have to airdrop food is embarrassing. I was wondering if you thought there was some sense of that embarrassment, and that that was what is responsible for the change in tone.

I do think that the Administration recognizes how bad it looks to repeatedly request the Netanyahu government take action and to repeatedly be ignored, while at the same time the Administration has been providing a substantial amount of military aid that’s being used in Gaza. I think the Administration recognizes the contradictions, but has not yet resolved those contradictions.

Yet another black spot on the record of Joe Biden, on whom the buck stops. 

A headline in NYTIMES: "Funniest novels since Catch 22."  I read Catch 22  as a young man before I went to Vietnam.  I remember sitting in the officers' mess hall one day in Danang and thinking to myself: "Catch 22 wasn't fiction.  I was true."  Perhaps it was the day I walked into the mess hall after finishing my watch at the TACC and seeing the 1st MAW chaplain, a bird colonel, and an Episcopal priest, hanging tinsel on an artificial tree while singing loudly "Christmas is a-coming and the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in the old man's hat.  If you haven't got a penny then a ha'penny will do.  If you haven't got a ha'penny then God bless you."  Maybe I didn't really think Catch 22 was true but, after living for months in a war zone, I sure didn't think it was 'funny.'

VA adventures.   I had two appointments this morning, one at 10 with the shoulder specialist in the PT Clinic, and the other with the hand specialist.  When I finished with both, I stopped in the men's restroom before heading home.  When I 'finished my business,' I discovered a toilet full of blood.  I went to the ER where I further discovered, after blood work, a digital exam, and a CT scan, that I had an internal hemorrhoid that had 'popped.'  I was thankful it wasn't something much worse.  Geri picked me up and drove me home.  She'll bring me back tomorrow for my acupuncture treatment for the shoulder pain and I'll be able to drive the Volvo home after its overnight visit in the parking  strange garage,