Friday, August 2, 2024
1790 1st US census conducted; population is 3,929,214, including 697,624 slaves
1865 Lewis Carroll published "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
1939 Albert Einstein wrote to US President FDR informing him of recent research on fission chain reactions making possible the construction of "extremely powerful bombs"
1964 North Vietnam fired at the destroyer USS Maddox in what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
1990 Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, US President George H. W. Bush ordered troops to Saudi Arabia
2018 Pope Francis declared the death penalty unacceptable in all cases, reversing church teachings..
Prednisone, day 82, 15 mg., day 4/14. I took my 15mg. at 5:45 a.m. I had a slice of buttered bread for breakfast at 7. I took 1300 mg. of Tylenol later in the morning. . . . Dr. Cheng called at 12:45 p.m. and, after asking a number of questions about my knee and thigh pain, said that it sounds like I have developed sciatica for which either gabapentin or Cymbalta is usually prescribed. I said the gabapentin made me 'like a zombie' the last time I took it for chronic pelvic pain, and I couldn't get to the pharmacy to pick up Cymbalta in my condition, so I'll wait till Tuesday's appointment with Dr. England and see what he suggests and/or does then. Maybe a mistake; should I have found a way to pick up some Cymblata? I just looked up Cymbalta and see that it is an antidepressant with nasty side effects, similar to gabapentin. One of them is insomnia, that last thing I need more of. I may be in trouble I also looked up sciatica and see that it results from pressure or effects on the nerve root coming from between L4 and S1 vertebrae which is where my X-rays revealed "severe arthritis." I also see that sciatica may cause incontinence problems, which I experienced a couple of days ago. I am in trouble. I'll try to talk to Dr. England about this on Tuesday.
LTMW Anne Lemott has an essay in this morning's NYTimes titled "Do Not Mess With the Very Old." In it, she writes of "the elderly, whose days are quieter, who gladly ruminate and gaze out windows a lot." It's the story of my life now: I'm either gazing out my window a lot, or looking at the screen on my laptop or the screen of a television monitor. I described myself to Micaela as 'the lump on the recliner.' I'm largely immobile, a lump. I get up to go to the bathroom or to quickly grab something to eat or to let Lilly out, but I use my lowboy rollator Judy to move anywhere and I'm on my feet as for only a minute or two before sitting down. My knee and thigh seem to be a bigger problem for me now than my hip. It's especially bothersome that I can't even rest my laptop on my right leg anymore without experiencing pressure pain.
Lamott, who says she is "about 70," writes of her friends who are 'very old,' and it appears that at almost 83, I am among her 'very old' for she writes:
Do not mess with the very old and their gangs. I see them live with grace and (sometimes cranky) humor, along with infirmity, pain, wobbly brains and the scar tissue of decades enduring the blows and losses splattered through human life. They laugh gently at me when they hear me once again in do-or-die mode: They’ve seen over and over that most things will be okay as long as we’re tender with each other. They are whom I want to be in 10 years, if I am alive and can remember this one thing.
I don't have a gang anymore, unless it's the Lowes and the Goldbergs, but the Lowes have moved to Tucson where David plays a lot of golf in his early 70s and the Goldbergs keep busy with their children and grandchildren around the country and with playing pickleball back home. Tom St. John, David Branch, Ed Felsenthal have all died. The group that used to play golf together in Wautoma is disbanded. "For my days vanish like smoke, and my bones burn like glowing embers. My heart is afflicted, and withered like grass . . . I lie awake; I am like a lone bird on a housetop." Psalm 102. A bird alone,, like Sean O'Failain's novel. It reminds me of my days as an altar boy at St. Leo's church, reciting the Latin mass. The priest would mutter: Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me and I would reply Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea: quare me repulisti? et quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus? All from Psalm 42, though I didn't know it, or care. All recited rotely by me, and almost certainly by the priests.
Master of the universe - Bibi Netanyahu. Tom Freidman's op-ed in the Times this morning is daunting, pointing out that we are on the brink of a major regional war in the Middle East and that whether it occurs or not is largely in the hands of Bibi Netanyahu. Does he want such a war? Does he want to force a war between Iran and the United States so that Iran's nuclear weapon infrastructure can be destroyed and so that he can continue to hold on to power in Israel (and stay out of prison) as long as possible? I am struck by how much of world history is determined by the wishes and acts of single individuals. Speaking of which . . .
Kamala Harris's campaign raised more than $300,000,000 in July. I wonder whether Joe Biden is finally ready to admit he was a hopeless candidate and would have lost to Trump.
Notes from YouTube's The Settlers. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides: "An Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Early settlers: Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Levinger, Rabbi Porat made settlement a religious matter, hastening the coming of the Messiah. The movement was known as Gush Emunim. The opponent was Yitzhak Rabin who maintained that settlements were illegal. Once the issue became religious rather than political and legal, Rabin's opposition wasn't simply wrong, it was Sin. And once the government was opposing what God wanted, the government was illegitimate and could be opposed by force and violence.
The first intifada erupted in December, 1987, and lasted for years.
In 1992, Rabin was elected prime minister for a second time and froze all settlement construction. A year later, Rabin and Arafat engaged in a peace process. The Oslo Accords included a commitment by Israel not to build any new settlements. In February 1994, Dr Baruch Goldstein went to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and killed dozens of Moslem worshippers and wounded dozens more, all in an attempt to stop the Oslo peace process. Among the true believers in Zionism and Greater Israel, he was believed to be a friend of Arabs and Moslems as well as Jews because he was hastening the coming of the Messiah. One of those attending Goldstein's funeral was Yigal Amir who on November 4, 1995, murdered Rabin.
The second intifada, between 2000 and 2005, was more lethal, and more brutal than the first. More than 4,000 Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis were killed, among them 200 settlers. It led to the construction of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians, and other checkpoints and barriers between the settlers and the Arabs. Apartheid.
Today, settlers who settled for economic opportunities and less expensive suburban lifestyles comprise about 80% of West Bank settlers, compared to 20% who settle for religious reasons.
2005 Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza and leveled the Israeli settlements, but while 7,500 settlers were removed from Gaza, 150,000 new settlers moved to the West Bank.
"We are facing an irresolvable paradox. The Greater Land of Israel, the democratic State of Israel, and the Jewish state of Israel cannot be reconciled. One of the sides of that triangle has to be dropped." Either Israel will maintain its sovereignty between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and then it won't be Jewish, or it won't be democratic, because the demographics will be the deciding factor. Or the state of Israel will limit itself to the 1967 borders and will preserve its Jewishness and its democracy"
Anniversaries thoughts. First, Today's population is 336,855,250 and growing.
Second, “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ 'The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass. Different book, also great.
Third, from Einstein's letter to FDR to Hiroshima - 6 years.
Fourth, the Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 10th and the game was on. Eleven months later I was landing on the SATS strip at Chu Lai on my way to Danang. 58,000 dead Americans and millions of dead Vietnamese later, we had our asses kicked good.
Fifth, the invasion of Kuwait led to George H. W. Bush's flexing his muscles after Margaret Thatcher 'gave him a spine transplant'.. Bush later crows "It’s a proud day for America. And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." Tha“t kind of thinking led his beloved son "W" to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq to add to our list of disastrous national failures.
Lastly, Pope Francis said it's morally wrong to murder people as punishment for crime. Better late than never.
"It’s a proud day for America. And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"
Could it really have been more than 30 years ago that I painted this???
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