5/26/24

 Sunday, May 26, 2024

In bed at 9 p.m. and up at 2:20 to let Lilly out, refill the water bottle,t and turn the slow cooker down to "warm."  Back to bed and awake at 3;45, back up at 4:05.  Let Lilly out again and listened with Merlin to a loudly-singing robin, a cardinal, and (!) a pine siskin which Merlin tells me is "rare," but this sounding seems to confirm my earlier tentative sightings at the bird feeders.

Prednisone, day 14.  I took my 20 mg. pill with oatmeal & berries at 5 a.m.  As usual, acid indigestion followed.

Major accomplishments: (1) Retiring to my bed at night for the first time in months and enjoying a reasonably full night's sleep. (2) Major progress tidying up my bedroom which had become a major mess during my PMR.

Notes for PM&R visit on 5/29.  (1) Clear up x-ray issue re one shoulder/two shoulders (2) Pain/discomfort in right hip even lying in bed. (3) Still some discomfort in both shoulders despite prednisone; osteo? (3) What to expect, if anything, re scheduled PT and OT appointments in light of PMR diagnosis.  Should I cnacel?

Notes for Dr. Ryzka visit on 6/3.  (1) Indigestion, misoprostol? Omeprazole? Magnesium or aluminum based antacids? History of GERD.  (2)  Same as (2a0 and (3), above.  

Facebook posting today.  Charles D. Clausen, shared with friends:

Like me, Phil Klay, who wrote this piece, is a former Marine officer.  He was born 42 years after me and was sent to Iraq 42 years after I was sent to Vietnam.  Like me, he is still troubled by the moral failures that overlay the military failures in those wars and thinks of how badly our nation, and especially all those young Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen, were misled and disserved by our political leaders.  I was touched by his concluding listing of all the reasons why they served and why they died, and why we remember them this weekend along with those who fought successfully  to end slavery in America and Fascism/Nazism in the world.

Opinion | How Should We Honor the Dead of Our Failed Wars?  We owe it to the dead to remember what mattered to them, and the ideals they held, . . . 

His concluding paragraph struck home with me: 

 This year, when I remember them, I will not just remember who they were, the shreds of memory dredged up from past decades. I will remember why they died. All the reasons they died. Because they believed in America. Because America forgot about them. Because they were trying to force-feed a different way of life to people from a different country and culture. Because they wanted to look after their Marines. Because the mission was always hopeless. Because America could be a force for good in the world. Because Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden didn’t have much of a plan. Because it’s a dangerous world, and somebody’s got to do the killing. Because of college money. Because the Marine Corps is cool as hell. Because they saw “Full Metal Jacket” and wanted to be Joker. Or Animal Mother. Because the war might offer a new hope for Iraq, for Afghanistan. Because we earned others’ hatred, with our cruelty and indifference and carelessness and hubris. Because America was still worth dying for.

 

A snapshot I took almost 60 years ago that still breaks my heart

WTF's with Biden, Netanyahu, and Israel?  This morning's newspapers are full of stories about the relationship between Israel and the U.S. and its damaging effects on U.S. national and international interests.  The WaPo lead headline is "U.S. silent as global condemnation of Israel’s Rafah offensive grows."  The lead op-ed is by Senator Patrick Leahy: "I created the Leahy law. It should be applied to Israel: Requiring Israel to respect human rights does not imply “moral equivalence” with Hamas."  The long insulting and condescending behavior by Netanyahu towards Barack Obama is described in another piece: "Netanyahu’s split with Biden and the Democrats was years in the making: The Israeli leader’s longtime strategy of aligning with the GOP has helped shatter the American consensus behind Israel."  Headlines in the NYTimes read "Condemnation Slows, but Does Not Stall, Israel’s Assault on Rafah" and "As Rafah Offensive Grinds On, Hunger in Gaza Spirals:  Aid officials and health experts expect famine this month unless Israel lifts barriers to aid, the fighting stops and vital services are restored."

I have to believe, probably naïvely, that most Americans are appalled by the suffering of Palestinian civilians, especially children, under the siege imposed on them by Israel, leading to famine and disease. This is  in addition to the "indiscriminate" and "over the top"(Biden's words) destruction by bombardment of most of Gaza's infrastructure.  At the same press engagement where Biden referred to Jsrael's conduct in Gaza being "over the top," he said "There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it's got to stop.  Number One."  Netanyahu has kissed off American Democrats, leftists, and progressives for years, starting at least when he accepted John Beohner's invitation to address Congress and urge rejection of Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.  Obama reportedly told Ben Rhodes after his Oval Office meeting with Netanyahu that Netanyahu "pee'd on my leg," i.e., treated him condescendingly, contemptuously, and deceitfully as in "don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining out."  Biden was Obama's VP and was privy to all this, so why now does he continue to eat Netanyahy's shit?  Why does he tie America's interests so tightly to Israel's and Netanyahu's interests?  What does Biden or the U.S. get in return that makes the trade-offs worth it for him or the U.S.?  We get the advantages of a close relationship with Israel's intelligence services and their sources throughout the Middle East and the world, but quaere how good are those services considering the massive failure on October 7th?  Beyond that, what of the moral issues about the treatment of Palestinians both in the West Bank and in Gaza?  It seems to me that it can't seriously be denied that Israel has long been a racist, apartheid state, increasingly a pariah state, supported in its pernicious policies and practices principally by the United States and now by Joe Biden.  Why?  What does Biden get out of it but a deep fissure in his own political base in an existential election year?  What does the U.S. get out of it except the world's contempt for its hypocrisy?

Michael Sugrue has died at age 66.  I had never heard of him until today but I read his obituary in the NYTimes.  He has a channel on YouTube of a great many of his lectures at Princeton about the history of Western Thought.  I watched the one on Don Quixote today and enjoyed it and learned from it.  I read some but not all of the novel many years ago, and enjoyed what I read although I agree with Sugrue's judgment that the book, like the great Moby Dick, all of which I did read, would have been twice as good if it had been half as long.  In any event, I'm sure that, now that I have been introduced to his lectures, I will enjoy many more of them.

The obituary quotes Sugrue quoting a line from T.. S. Eliot's Burnt Norton ("“The roses had the look of flowers that are looked at.”) that sent me reading Burnt Norton again and trying to understand it.  A passage in the first section of the poem grabbed me: "Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden."  How often I have wondered about decisions I made in my life, passages not taken, doors not opened, and how those decisions shaped my life.  How exquisitely Eliot expresses this.  (And, alas, as I read an analysis of the poem online, what do I see between paragraphs of the analysis but a photo of my ubiquitous former law student David Gruber flashing his fabulous smite and beckoning the injured with "One call, that's all!"  Does he never tire of seeing his face everywhere?  Does Narcissus not need ever more reflections to worship?)

Geri attended Ellis' Spring ballet performance today with David and Sharon.

Today is the anniversary of the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945.  Also, the day in 1966 when a Buddhist monk set himself on fire in Hué.  I was at the end of my time at Camp Schwab on the north end of Okinawa, realizing yet again that this war was not going to turn out well for the US.  The writing was on the wall.  I was anxious and uncertain about my return to the States, an anxiety that turned out to be prescient in light of the culture shock and worse that lay ahead.