8/15/24

 Thursday, August 15, 2024

“I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.”― Henry David Thoreau, Walden  This applies to me, with a consciousness of shame and guilt for a thousand complicities on top of individual 'things said or done long years ago, or things I did not do or say . . .'  I think of the tracking shot of the checkout lanes in the supermarket in Godard's Tout Va Bien, what it requires to live in this culture, what it required for Thoreau to separate from his, and what it would take to separate from ours?  Courage, will, purpose.

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1549 Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier came ashore at Kagoshima, Japan

1876 US law removed Indians from Black Hills after gold find

1917 Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh

. . . . .

In bed by 10 p.m., awake around 3:40, up and out at 4:10 to let Lilly out.  She seems increasingly confused in her old age.  

Prednisone, day 96, 10 mg., day 3/28.   I took the 10 mg. at 5:20 with cottage cheese, blackberries, and raspberries.  Morning meds at 9:10 a.m.  The photo is of my daily morning meds, my polypharmacy, less the hydrochlorothiazide, and 3 tabs of misoprostol which I have stopped taking, perhaps foolishly.  I think I empty my bladder frequently enough that increasing the frequency with HCT would be a problem.  I stopped taking the 3 tabs of misoprostol after my ER visit in November 2023 when I eliminated all caffeinated, carbonated, artificially sweetened, and alcoholic liquids from my diet, now almost 9 months of abstinence.  Also, I had the lesions in my bladder fulgurated in outpatient surgery on March 5, 2024, and the surgery obviated chronic bladder/pelvic pain.   Adding these meds would have me up to 15 pills per day plus the prednisone.  Also, I stopped taking 3,000 mg. of Tylenol for the hip and knee arthritis pain (another 6 pills) but I'm thinking I need to try something for pain relief and increased mobility.  Try Tylenol again despite uncertainty about effectiveness, or move on to NSAIDs and risk stomach ulcers because of their ulcerative side effects on top of the prednisone's ulcerative side effects.

The Haditha Massacre; the Marine Corps' My Lai.  I have listened to the first 5 episodes of The New Yorker podcast IN THE DARK, Series 3. about the massacre of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005.  It is a horrible, chilling report of mass murder by U.S. Marines, murders for which no one went to prison.  From Wikipedia:

Three officers were officially reprimanded for failing to properly initially report and investigate the killings. On December 21, 2006, eight Marines from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were charged in connection with the incident.  By June 17, 2008, six defendants had their cases dropped and a seventh was found not guilty.  The exception was former Staff Sergeant, now-Private Frank Wuterich. On October 3, 2007, the Article 32 hearing investigating officer recommended that charges of murder be dropped and Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide in the deaths of two women and five children.  Further charges of assault and manslaughter were ultimately dropped; Wuterich was convicted of a single count of negligent dereliction of duty on January 24, 2012. Wuterich received a rank reduction and pay cut but avoided jail time.  

The upcoming episodes will report on the coverup by the Marines and DOD.  What has been most chilling to me has been listening to the gung-ho death talk by individual Marines, e.g., speaking of their disappointment at not having killed anyone yet, or cavalierly dismissing the deaths of the Iraqi civilians as collateral damage.  The murders were cold-blooded, not in the heat of battle, and they included women and young children.  I believe that we can assume that these Marines were not murderers before they enlisted in the Marine Corps, but they were prepped to become murderers at MCRD Parris Island and San Diego, and at infantry training before deploying to Iraq.  We didn't get the same kind of prepping at T&T Regiment and Basic School in 1962 and 1963, but we got enough of that 'lean, green, killing machine' stuff.  We did know that the business of the Marine Corps is killing people and destroying stuff and we were all volunteers, i.e., we had a pretty clear idea of what we were signing up for.  I think back to Full Metal Jacket and the brutalizing indoctrination of boot Marine boot camp, and I shiver.  What were we thinking?

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, Francis Xavier.  I'm not a big fan of missionaries, especially missionaries directly tied to colonial, mercantile imperialism, as Xavier was to the Portuguese Empire in Asia.

And speaking of empires, in the westward expansion of the American White Empire, once it was discovered that "there's gold in them thar hills", the Indigenous tribes were screwed.  Another treaty broken by our government, another violation of the so-called Rule of Law in obedience to the REAL rules of law:  He who has the gold makes the rules, and the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.  USA, USA, USA!!!

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, are two favorite poets.  Sassoon's The Hero reminds me, painfully, of my days as CACO for north Philadelphia in 1966-67.

'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read.

'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke

In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.

She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt

For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Owen's Dulce et Decorum is bitter and true:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Owen was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice was signed ending the war.  His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day.  Sassoon lived until age 80, dying in 1967.  He converted to Catholicism at age 70 for some uncertain reason.