6/7/24

just Friday, June 7, 2024

1965, Supreme Court hands down Griswold v. Connecticut

1981, the Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's nuclear reactor during Operation Opera.

In bed by 9:30 p.m., up and back to the TV room at 12:40 a.m. unable to get comfortable in my bed. I'm feeling OK, even with only 3 hours of sleep.  I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher in stages, favoring my stiffening back but disturbing Lilly's nighttime sleeping. I dozed off between 3ish and 4:10.  At 4:30, I let Lilly out in the predawn first light, with the only neighboring bird awake and singing a melodious robin.  I tripped on the rug before the door, lost my balance, and came very close to falling.  Would I have been able to get back up or would I be the lady on the floor at the bottom of the stairwell: "Help. I've fallen and I can't get up."

Prednisone, day 26,  day 4 back at 20 mg.  I took my pill at 5:45.  My shoulders are a little gimpy today.  Reduction in prednisone?  Phonso's measuring stretches?  Happenstance?

Childhood freedom  As I drove up to Sendik's yesterday afternoon, I passed the empty lot where Ferrante's Restaurant used to be.  There I saw a gaggle of six preteen kids on their bicycles, gathered together looking like they were deciding where to go and what to do next.  No adults in sight.  No helicopter parents.  It reminded me instantaneously of my childhood in the now notorious Englewood neighborhood on Chicago's South Side where, during summer vacations from school and during weekends, I would head out in the morning on my J.C. Higgins bike to meet up with friends and spend the day cruising here, there, and everywhere without adult supervision.  Hamilton Park to play outdoor handball or baseball, Ogden Park and its swimming pool, or just reconnoitering our neighborhood or neighboring neighborhoods.  Did I ever bike all the way to Rainbow Beach at 74th and the lakefront or did that require a bus ride?  Regardless, freedom, adventure, exploration, and responsibility,  It was great.  Today, unthinkable, child neglect.  Alas.

Geri's PT yesterday was good but disappointing.  The therapist told her her knee was not healing and needed another couple of weeks of elevation, icing, and exercises.  The news was dispiriting.  She's rarin' to go, eager to tend to her gardens, frustrated by the need to take it easy on her knee.

VA pain psychologist.  Yesterday, I had a 25-minute chat on the telephone with Dr. Spalding, the pain psychologist I met at the Geriatric Clinic several weeks ago.  I explained my change in circumstances with the PMR diagnosis and prednisone.  She described a Healthy Aging once-a-month telephone chat program that sounds much like the Meditation/Mindfulness group I participated in until the PMR knocked me for a loop.  I said I would like to try her group which meets on the second Tuesday of each month.  I have a competing meeting with Jill Hansen regarding the freestyle libra CGM & insulin next Tuesday but will join Dr. Spalding's group if the meeting with Jill is less than an hour.  Otherwise, next month.

Thinking about Hunter and other Bidens.  I have mixed feelings about Hunter Biden.  I experience no pleasure in seeing him publicly humiliated and disgraced in the Delaware courtroom where he is being tried.  No schadenfreude.  Indeed, I have sympathy for him, his family members, and former lovers who have been called to testify about his degrading behaviors during his addiction to crack cocaine.  I wouldn't want to happen to me what is happening to him and them in that courtroom, in the press, on television news shows, and in social media - my worst behaviors exposed to the world.  It seems like that theory of the Last Judgment in which God doesn't judge us but rather we simply look at a great mirror that reflects all our sins.  No way to hide, to self-deceive, to pretend that we are not guilty of our most wretched wrongs.

On the other hand, I can't say there is much that I like about Hunter Biden (other than his paintings.)  There doesn't seem to be much to admire about the way he lived his life which was marked by dissolution, debauchery, dissipation, infidelity, and the pursuit of unearned wealth based on his last name.  The affair with his brother's widow, getting her hooked on crack, the gun, the denial of paternity of his daughter in Arkansas, his refusal to agree to use the right to the Biden name, the Burisma caper in Ukraine, his marriage to his current wife one week after he first met her.    He wasn't just a crack addict; he was a mighty nasty, impulsive, and self-destructive human being.

On yet another hand, however, I wonder how much of what we see in Hunter Biden the man is an outgrowth of Hunter Biden the child, the son of Joe Biden, ever the seeker of fame, fortune, and political power. Hunter's mother and sister were killed, and he suffered a fractured skull and brain injury, on December 18, 1972, when Hunter was 2 years old and his also-injured brother Beau was 3.  Sixteen days later Joe was sworn in as our youngest U.S. senator, having been elected at age 29 and sworn in 44 days past his constitutionally minimum age of 30.  He has said he thought of resigning and I suspect he did, but I bet he didn't think particularly long or hard about it.  His life has been a quest to be King of the Mountain, Top Dog, Numero Uno.  It's why even now at age 81, he is seeking reelection to a term of office that would take him to age 86.  Should he have stayed home and devoted himself to raising Beau and Hunter?  Would it have made it easier for them growing up?  There's no telling, of course, but in fact, he wanted to be famous, well-off, and powerful and so he was and his life clearly affected his sons' lives.  In Beau's case, the effect was good.  In Hunter's life, not so much.

Additionally, Hunter seems to have been the less favored son.  Beau was the apple of his father's eye.  He graduated from his father's high school and his father's law school and followed his father's interest in elected office, becoming attorney general of Delaware.  Beau was given his father's familial middle name Robinette; Hunter wasn't. When Joe became Obama's vice president, Beau was expected to run for his seat.  Joe announced ""It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General, would make a great United States Senator just as I believe he has been a great attorney general. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life that any office he sought he would earn on his own... [I]f he chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own. He wouldn't have it any other way."  As it turned out, he did not run for his father's seat and eventually died in 2015 from brain cancer but there seemed to be little doubt that Beau was the favorite son, not Hunter.  While Beau followed in his father's footsteps, Hunter set off to make bundles of money profiting off his name and his relationship with his powerful father.  Ultimately, he crashed and burned, ended up the subject of congressional investigations, and a special counsel investigation, and was twice indicted.  Would all this have happened if his father had chosen to forfeit his senate seat back in 1972 if he had concentrated on raising Beau and Hunter in a quieter environment?  There is no way of knowing, of course, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  Beau emulated his father's political and public service career; Hunter emulated his father's desire for DuPont mansions, Corvettes, etc.  I can't help thinking that Hunter's character flaws and behavioral and legal problems derive in very large measure from being Joe Biden's son.  I know I may be wrong about all of this.  That I may be engaging in a form of victim-blaming with Joe, part of my ongoing distaste for and distrust of the guy.  Maybe I am superciliously offended that this very ordinary guy, 76th out of 85 in his law school class at Syracuse,. a mumbler and a bumbler, a gaffe meister and liar, thinks that he should wield extraordinary power as America's chief magistrate and leader of the free world.  Maybe I'm guilty of my own superciliousness and hauteur, a victim of my own grudges.    Could be.

Visit to the VA this morning.  On the way in, I was met by Salvation Army workers offering free coffee and doughnuts to all arriving VA staff and patients.  In the waiting room, I struck up a long conversation with a wife whose husband was being treated by Phonso, the therapist I was waiting for.   The wife and I exchanged memories of our visits to Ireland years ago.  Once again I was surprised at my own outgoingness and garrulousness.  Is it just relief and happiness now that the pain and hopelessness of the PMR are under control, or is it prednisone-induced euphoria?  Phonso got a 2-wheel walker for me which is not as fancy as Geri's walker, but I used it getting back to the parking garage and it provides a lot more support than a cane does.  I think I'll rely on it mostly to get to and fro during my awake time in the middle of the night.

Today's anniversaries.  First, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) held that the Constitution protects the right of married couples to use contraceptives.  The controversial legal premise of the decision was that government interference with that right violates "the right to marital privacy."  The dissenters, White and Black, held there is no constitutional right to privacy.  Subsequent decisions, including Roe v. Wade, relied on Griswold's right to privacy.  When the Court subsequently overruled Roe, it called into question Griswold and its progeny, Clarence Thomas expressly so.

Second, the Israeli Air Force destroying Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981 reminds us of how aggressive Israel is with its neighbors, especially when it perceives truly existential threats to its existence and that of its people.  Just today, I heard on NPR a report that 62% of the Israeli people (including Arabs?  not clear) are in favor of engaging in a full-scale war in Lebanon with Hezbollah right now with the war in Gaza still raging.  A small-scale war has been going on for months (years?) and many villages near the Lebanese border have been evacuated for months because of Hezbollah shelling.

Errand outing.  I drove up to Grafton this afternoon and picked up some CBH, soup, Lilly's toppings, and birdseed at Meijer's.    Then to Office Max for medium binder clips and felt tip pens.  Then to Costco to get my eyeglasses adjusted, pick up some salmon, Campari tomatoes, and eggs for us, and some beef jerky treats for Lilly.  I wore my back brace for the first time and I think it may help the crippling lower back pain.  All the long walking in each of the three stores, and their parking lots, constituted my exercise for the day.