Friday, May 31, 2024
I'm grateful that Geri appears to have weathered the knee surgery well although she experienced quite a bit of discomfort afterwards. She is such a trooper., strong in so many ways. I'm hoping that she is getting a good night's rest as I write this. I'm concerned that she may have more pain and/or discomfort today than yesterday, with all of yesterday's anesthetic effects worn off. She was still sitting up on the sofa with her leg outstretched, elevated, and iced when I crashed and went to bed last night. She gets around well with her walker, and standing and walking doesn't seem to increase the pain. We had to enter the house through the front door becaue the stoop provided support for her walker that wasn't available at the backdoor or garage door. I walked right behind her as she walked from the driveway to the stoop, thinking about how she walked behind me and pushed my wheelchair on our visits to the VA Geriatric Clinic and to the Rheumatology Clinic. How much we rely on each other, especially me on her! How much I love and admire her. I was semi-crippled by the arthritis in my lower back by the time I returned from getting a bag of ice at Sendik's and her second prescription (aspirin?!?) from Walgreens. I have to start using the Lidocaine patches to make myself more useful.
Trump's convictions and the media coverage. I was a bit surprised that the jury came back with a verdict yesterday. I had thought the deliberations would be longer, after 5 weeks of evidence and lengthy instructions. The prosecution's closing argument, which lasted almost 5 hours and that I thought was surely too long, must have been terrific, as was the presentation of their entire case. I think of what Trump must have paid his lawyers - millions to Todd Blanche, Emile Bove, and Susan Necheles - and what the assistant D.A.s - Matthew Colangelo, Susan Hoffinger, and Joshua Steinglass - are paid by their municipal employer.
The media coverage was predictable. MSNBC and CNN had all hands on deck analyzing the case, mindreading the jury, and generally engaging in robust schadenfreude. FOX and the other fascist outlets engaged in denial and magical thinking. I instantly grew weary of the liberal talking heads repeating endlessly that DJT was found guilty of 34 felonies as if there were 34 different sets of behavior involved instead of one scheme, i.e., as if he were guilty of not only murder, but also larceny, and also burglary, and also arson and sedition! Dayenu! 34 different felonies!!! Willie Geist on Morning Joe: "I think the prosecution hoped for but didn't expect a clean 34 for 34 sweep on every count, to get convictions on those." Tedious. On the other hand, I watched the nasties on Fox and Friends - Ainsley Earhardt, Steve Doocey, Brian Kilmeade, and new and predictably Black guy Lawrence Jones - all outraged over the gross miscarriage of justice and weaponization of the justice system represented by Trump's trial and conviction. They had Speaker of the House and Christian Fascist Mike Johnson as a guest touting how much money Trump and the Republicans are raising as a result of the convictions and suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court should "step in" and "set this straight." Amazing. Tedious.
On this date in 1669, Samuel Pepys recorded the last entry in his famous diary. He had chronicled the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire. He wrote voluminously from 1660 to 1669 and, equally importantly, of his times and mores. O tempora, O mores! I think of him today and wonder why he did it, what at the end of a full day's work and other activities, he sat at his table and took up a pen or quill and wrote about it. I wonder about his habit because I wonder about my habit. Compulsive writing? Hypergraphia? Juvenal's "incurable writing disease"? Bipolar disease? I think of two little poems about writing. The first is a haiku by Katsushika Hokusai, A Poppy Blooms:
I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
The second is The Three Oddest Words by Wislawa Szymborska:
When I pronounce the word Future, / the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence, / I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing, / I make something no non-being can hold.
Keeping a diary or a journal is an exercise in trying to preserve something of the Present as it becomes part of the Past in the Future. Without some record of each day, the day will become Silence, Nothing in the Future. What was I doing or thinking about on March 13, 1983? or on July 20, 1968? On my birthday in 2020? No idea, not a clue, gone with the wind. What was I doing and/or thinking about on this date a year ago? My journal reminds me I was nervous thinking about my upcoming "double dip" at the VA. I was also reflecting on the 3,000 sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic Church in California, including the Santa Rosa Diocese where in 2023 I had explored employment as its Communications Director. I reflected on why I withdrew from the competition. Journaling provides an opportunity to self-reflect, to think seriously about how we have lived our life, to make judgments about "things said or done long years ago, or things I did not do or say," to examine our conscience and confess our sins, to compare what we claim as our values with our actions. Another poem is just a couplet, by Henry David Thoreau:
My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.
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