Saturday, June 15, 2024
1864 Robert E. Lee's plantation home became Arlington National Cemetery
In bed by 9, awake at 3:30, and up before 4 after a good night's sleep, unlike the night before. Nonetheless, I'm tired and sleepy this morning and nod off at some point, waking up again at 7:15.
Prednisone, day 34, 20 mg day 12. I took my 20 mg. and ate my breakfast of Raisin Nut Bran, banana, blackberries, raspberries, milk, and yogurt at 7:30, anticipating the glucose spike that would show up on my freestyle Libre3. How long will it take? How high will it go? How much have I been hurting myself with my big breakfasts loaded with fruits each morning? Continuous glucose monitoring will be like having a spy watching me 24/7 and I will probably overreact. I saw that my reading in the middle of the night was as low as 116 after yesterday's high of 389 with its bothersome alarm beeps. . . Two hours after breakfast my reading is 366->. Over time, it goes down to 192-> when I had a lunch of corned beef hash and basted eggs at 12:30 p.m. By 2:30, the count is up to 329->, at 3;00, it is only 319, and at 3:30, it's 312->->. No more Raisin Nut Bran breakfasts for me. Tomorrow I'll try oatmeal. Dinner at 5:30,, reading at 221: baked salmon, one fingerling potato, crunchy salad, beets, spinach. 1 hour: 264; 2 hours 237-> Two thoughts: (1) I'm having difficulty reading again. Giant cell arteritis? (2) Unexplainable fatigue today after a good night's sleep.
I have mixed feelings about our national cemeteries. On the one hand, they symbolize our nation's willingness to sacrifice the lives of its youth to accomplish political goals. Nearly 400,000 people are buried at Arlington alone and the cemetery conducts between 27 and 30 funeral services each weekday and between six and eight services on Saturdays. Wood National Cemetery here in Milwaukee is full now, with 36,000 dead, current burials occurring at the Southern Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery at Union Grove in Racine County where 25,000 more graves are located.
I drive through Wood National Cemetery almost every time I have an appointment at the Zablocki VA Medical Cemetery and I always have a sense of respect, perhaps reverence, doing so for it reminds me of my time in military service and of the men I served with, including my college roommates. Ed Felsenthal and Bill Hendricks, Navy officers, and Tom Devitt and Jerry Nugent, Marine officers. All my fellow Marines in Quantico, Yuma, Vietnam, Okinawa, and Willow Grove. All of us such ordinary people, not ordinary in the sense of fungible or cut from the same cloth, for we were each unique, but ordinary in the sense of being like the mix of people you would encounter at Sendik's or at a Brewers ballgame. Not heroes, not monsters, ordinary Americans who, for a period, wore a uniform and subordinated their personal life goals to the nation's requirement of a powerful military to protect our interests. "Our interests" were often the interests of American business enterprises, from the United Fruit Company to Standard Oil or Goldman Sachs, but hardly any of us thought about that. We were told we were serving "to defend freedom," "to protect democracy," and so on. My generation grew up with the exaltation of the victories over Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini, the service and sacrifices made by our parents in World War II and then again in Korea. All that would be changed by Vietnam. We weren't the heroes of D-Day and Iwo Jima, where "uncommon valor was a common virtue," but rather 'baby killers.' "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" But good wars and bad wars, winning wars and losing wars, the dead soldiers lie side by side in our national cemeteries, each under a standard upright granite or marble headstone 42 inches long, 13 inches wide and 4 inches thick weighing approximately 230 pounds. Each displays the veteran's name, rank, branch of service, war served in (if any), dates of birth and death. The headstones are perfectly placed in rows and columns, ranks and files, much as those veterans lined up in formations while they were in the service, 'Dress right, dress!' It's all very formal, symmetrical and orderly, and it creates an atmosphere of disciplined peace and serenity, an atmosphere very different from that the veterans may have experienced on active duty.
Arlington National Cemetery is the system's crown jewel with its Robert E. Lee provenance, location overlooking the nation's capital, and famous 'residents.' But Wood National has its own claim to special significance because of its history and connection with the adjacent Old Soldiers Home, authorized by President Lincoln at the end of the Civil War. The modern VA Medical Center, the historic Old Soldiers Home, and Wood National Cemetery are all located on the same large campus between I-94 and National Avenue, Brewers Boulevard and 55th Street. On that campus are the thousands of gravesites of veterans going back to the War of 1812 as well as the hospital and medical center providing services every day to living veterans like me. It's a reminder of America's military history and military power and of the willingness of the country's rulers to use that power to enforce its political will on others. I say 'the country's rulers' to make the point that it is rarely the hoi polloi who opt for warfare, the people from whose ranks soldiers volunteer or are conscripted, but rather the rich and powerful whom war will make richer and more powerful. There are 18,300,000 living veterans in the U.S., 43% from the Gulf War era and 30% from the Vietnam War era, but in the current Congress, only 18% of representatives and 17% of senators are veterans. The last president who served on full-time active duty was George H. W. Bush in WWII. Before him, presidents Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, and of course, Eisenhower all served tours of active duty. Working class stiffs are always expendable, not so with the 'swells' like Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and all the 'chicken hawks' of that era. We snicker as we say 'no one is above the law' in America but we know that the law itself is rigged to favor the rich because of The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. These are thoughts that come to mind as I drive through Wood National Cemetery, along with thoughts of the many still-living vets I will encounter once I arrive at the Medical Center., a motley crew of sick, lame, halt, and withered, mostly old guys like me. I have often said I feel a kinship with these men and women. I'm sure there is more friendliness and interaction in this hospital devoted to veterans than we would find in most general-purpose hospitals, more helpfulness and communication in the corridors and waiting rooms. I am grateful for all the good experiences I have had there both with the medical staff and with other vets. I'm grateful to Ed Felsenthal for encouraging and helping me to get enrolled in the program. I'm a lucky guy. With mixed feelings, I wish "Happy Birthday" to Arlington National Cemetery.
I have often thought that if war should cease over all the face of the earth, for a thousand years, its reality would not be believed at such a distance of time, notwithstanding the faith of authentick records in every nation. Were mankind totally free from every tincture of prejudice in favour of those gallant exertions which could not exist were there not the evil of violence to combat; had they never seen in their own days, or been told by father or grandfathers, of battles, and were there no traces of the art of war, I have no doubt that they would treat as fabulous or allegorical, the accounts in history, of prodigious armies being formed, of men who engaged themselves for an unlimited time, under the penalty of immediate death, to obey implicitly the orders of commanders to whom they not attached either by affection or by interest; that these armies were sometimes led with toilsome expedition over vast tracts of land, sometimes crouded into ships, and obliged to endure tedious, unhealthy, and perilous voyages; and that the purpose of al this toil and danger was not to obtain any comfort or pleasure, but to be in a situation to encounter other armies; and that those opposite multitudes the individuals of which had no cause to quarrel, no ill-will to each other, continued for hours engaged with patient and obstinate perseverance, while thousands were slain, and thousands crushed and mangled by the diversity of wounds. . .
Were there any good produced by war which could in any degree compensate its direful effects; were better men to spring up from the ruins of those who fall in battle, as more beautiful material forms sometimes arise from the ashes of others; or were those who escape from its destruction to have an increase of happiness; in short, were there any great beneficial effect to follow it, the notion of its irrationality would be only the notion of narrow comprehension. But we find that war is followed by no general good whatever. The power, the glory, or the wealth of a very few may be enlarged. But the people in general, upon both sides, after all the sufferings are passed, pursue their ordinary occupations, with no difference from their former state. The evils therefore of war, upon a general view of humanity are as the French say, à pure perte, a mere loss without any advantage, unless indeed furnishing subjects for history, poetry, and painting. And although it should be allowed that mankind have gained enjoyment in these respects, I suppose it will not be seriously said, that the misery is overbalanced. At any rate, there is already such a store of subjects, that an addition to them would be dearly purchased by more wars.
How long war will continue to be practised, we have no means of conjecturing. Civilization, which it might have been expected would have abolished it, has only refined its savage rudeness. The irrationality remains, though we have learnt insanire certa ratione modoque, to have a method in our madness.
James Boswell, "On War" (1777)
Knowlt Hoheimer, from Spoon River Anthology
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