Friday, August 30, 2024
1956 Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opened in Louisiana, the longest continuous bridge in the world
2021 America ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan as the last military evacuation plane flew out of Kabul
In bed around 9:30 after giving Lilly her med, filling her water dish, her dinner completely uneaten, awake at 3:05 and out of bed by 3:25.
Prednisone, day 110, 10 mg., day 15/28. At 3:40, I applied diclofenac to my knee and thigh and again at 6 p.m. Prednisone at 7:10 a.m. followed by All Bran & berries at 7:30. Morning meds at 7:40. Trulicity injection in mid-afternoon.
From this morning's NYTimes: A ‘Life Review’ Can Be Powerful, at Any Age: Reflecting on the past, through writing or conversation, can help us better appreciate where we are — and where we’re going. Excerpts:
Life review arose in the 1960s to help people at the end of their lives articulate and make peace with their legacies. But new research suggests that the process of reflecting on previous experiences has value for people at all ages, including young adults and bereaved children.
In the 1950s, Erik Erikson, the influential child psychoanalyst, published his theory that each stage of life is associated with a specific psychic challenge. The work of toddlerhood, for example, is to gain autonomy. The goal of young adulthood is to develop intimacy with others. Old age, he posited, is the time to gather one’s life experiences into a coherent narrative — what Mr. Erikson called integration. Those who fail, he wrote, risk falling into despair.
Dr. Robert Butler, the first director of the National Institute on Aging, built on Mr. Erikson’s concept. For older people who get stuck on regrets or disappointments, Dr. Butler proposed something called life review therapy.
You can D.I.Y. For a classic life review, Dr. Shellman suggested reading “The Handbook of Structured Life Review” by Barbara K. Haight and Barrett Haight, which explains how to be a therapeutic listener and provides questions for each life stage.
“Writing Your Legacy” by Dr. Svensson and Richard Campbell explores how to pursue a guided autobiography on your own and includes dozens of additional themes, including life values, food and drink, passions, friendships and cultural heritage.
Try including pictures or props. Keepsakes, photos or even poems can help spark recollections, said Bonnie Kellen, a New York City-based psychologist and life review therapist. And listening to music associated with an earlier time or returning to a location from your past can help, Dr. Shellman said.
Look out for difficult emotions. Deena Hitzke, a psychotherapist from Tucson, Ariz., uses life review to help people recover from trauma. She finds the format useful because so much of our ability to adapt and grow “depends upon the narrative that we’re telling ourselves about who we are,” she said. But not all life review facilitators have clinical training. If you find the process is stirring up difficult emotions, Dr. Shellman suggested consulting your doctor or nurse practitioner.
I wonder whether this daily journal that I have maintained for longer than two years now is a form of 'life review' therapy? Or was that the purpose, or at least the result, of my memoir? There is a lot of self-reflection in both writing exercises, but the result seems to be the aggregating of regrets, self-disappointments, 'not a day but something is recalled, my judgment or my vanity appalled.' I'm reminded of David Brooks' op-ed the other day about "core affects." I've long thought that mine, and my sister's, has been depression, sadness, Yeats' 'abiding sense of tragedy' which accounts, I suppose, for my profound pessimism about the country, the world, the human species.
Feeling low the last couple of days and wondering if it's a reaction to my fall on Tuesday night, or more precisely, my inability to get up from the fall, how close I was to having the EMTs here again. Or is it Geri's knee surgery repeated, or good neighbor and fellow 83-year-old John's leukemia? Brain-fogged or brain-dead?
Anniversaries thoughts. First, the Lake PPontchartrainCausemway reminds me of the ridiculous trip Tom Devitt, Ed Felsentahl, Joe Daley, Harry Krasnick, Bill Hanrahan, and I to New OOrleansover the semester break in our sophomore year, 1960-61, and our stay at the Silver Dollar Hotal on Iberville Street, a gay hotel, where we barricaded the doors. Tom, as our most reliable buddy, was charged with protecting the cash we had set aside for the homeward drive and he lost it, or perhaps it was stolen from him, who knows? Pushing cars up the ice-covered hills (the 'knobs') in southern Illinois and Kentucky, spinning out and ending up in a ditch, nursing one drink all evening at Al Hirt's Jazz club with Joe Daley, Bourbon Street, . . .
Secondly, I've wondered why Afghanistan is called America's longest war rather than Vietnam. We didn't have combat units fighting in Vietnam for more than the Afghanistan misadventure's 20 years, but our lethal involvement lasted more than 20 years. We financed France's attempt to maintain its colonial empire in Indochina from at least 1950 when Harry Truman was president. mm
1950 First shipment of American military aid to the French colonial administration in Vietnam arrives
1955 President Eisenhower sends first military advisors to South Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese Army
1956 At the French exit the US Military Assistance Advisor Group (MAAG) assumes full responsibility for training South Vietnamese forces
1959 First two Americans were awerekilled during a Viet Minh guerillas strike at Bien Hoa
1961 President Kennedy sends 100 Special Forces troops to South Vietnam
1961 A U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in Saigon and Vice President Johnson visits Saigon
1962 U.S. Air Force begins using Agent Orange to defoliate trails used by Viet Cong forces
1963 U.S. military advisors and Special Forces increase to 21,000
1964 U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy are reported attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. U.S. Congress passes “Gulf of Tonkin” resolution authorizing President Johnson to wage all-out war against North Vietnam
1965 Retaliatory air strikes begin against North Vietnam. Operation “Rolling Thunder” lasts three years. First U.S. combat forces (2 Marine battalions) arrive in Danang, South Vietnam. The rapid escalation of force level ensues, which tops 200,000 by the end of the year. U.S. Congress provides $2.4 billion for war effort with little dissent
1966 U.S. B-52s bombed North Vietnam for the first time. The bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi begins
1967 Major ground operations continue, including Operation Cedar Falls. Troop level reaches 486,000
1968 Communist forces conduct the Tet Offensive with major attacks in almost all of South Vietnam’s 44 provinces. The Battle of Hue lasts 26 days. The Offensive is a huge military defeat for the Communists but a political and psychological victory. Johnson scales back the bombing of the North and commits the U.S. to a non-military solution to the war. U.S. troop level reaches 537,000.
1969 Secret bombing of Communist supply routes and base camps inside Cambodia begins. The “Vietnamization” program was initiated, shifting the burden of the war to the South Vietnamese Army and away from the U.S. First U.S. combat forces withdrawn.
1970 President Nixon orders more troops withdrawn reducing the total to 280,000 by the end of the year. Invasion of Communist sanctuaries inside Cambodia by U.S. and South Vietnam forces
1971 Continued troops withdrawn as combat operations wind down. Air strikes continue with heaviest attacks on North Vietnam since 1968
1972 A seventh withdrawal of forces reduces troop level to 69,000 by mid-year. North Vietnamese launched a major offensive across the DMZ into the South. In retaliation, President Nixon orders the renewed bombing of the Hanoi and Haiphong areas. Bombing above the 20th parallel continues. U.S. mines the North Vietnam harbors
1973 By March all U.S. combat forces had been withdrawn from Vietnam and all U.S. prisoners released
1974 Just before Saigon’s capture by North Vietnamese forces, the last remaining U.S. personnel are evacuated from Vietnam.
1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated to the 58,183 Americans killed during the war
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