Thursday, August 8, 2024
1973 US Vice President Spiro Agnew said reports he took kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland are "damned lies" and vowed not to resign.
1974 Richard Nixon announced that he was resigning the presidency the next day.
2022 FBI conducted a search of Donald Trump's Florida home over his handling of classified government documents
In bed around 9:30, with 2 indignities of old age by midnight, awake around 3:30, and up and out to the tv room by 3:50. I have hoped for noticeable pain reduction in my hip today, but none so far. The right knee and mid back are also painful.
Prednisone, day 88, 15 mg., day 10/14 I took my 15 mg. at 4:45 a.m. followed by 2 slices of Dave's Bread. I took my morning meds around noon. By 3 in the afternoon, I was feeling some pain relief in my hip. Keeping my fingers crossed. . . . I'm not cured. I made the mistake of walking with my walking stick out to the mailbox and back. By the time I got to the street, I was in pain which continued until I got back to the house. Mounting the one step up to the stoop was a big challenge. I could not deal with the basement steps and probably not the two steps from the garage into the house, or through the back door into the house. Rats! Maybe tomorrow. My fingers are still crossed.
Sarah Smarsh and J. D. Vance, Heartland and Hillbilly Elegy. Sarah Smarsh has an op-ed in this morning's NYTimes, writing of her pleasure that Tim Walz has been selected as running mate with Kamala Harris. I read Smarsh's Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (2018) not long after it was published. I loved it and sent a copy of it to my sister, who also loved it. I became a big fan of Sarah Smarsh and watched a number of her lectures and interviews on YouTube. I need to look around the house to see whether I still have my copy of the book so I can reread it, or at least portions of it. I recall I developed a huge liking for Smarsh's grandmother Betty.
I haven't read J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016), though I did watch the movie and, since J. D. Vance was an Executive Producer of Ron Howard's movie, I assume the movie closely paralleled the memoir.
Smarsh's Heartland is pretty universally described as humane and big-hearted, generous even though she describes rough times and some bad behaviors by members of her family. She was especially supportive of the women in her life, tough-minded survivors of life on the Kansas prairies. I have a hard time considering Vance's book as humane, big-hearted, or generous, though he certainly credits his grandmother with putting him 'on the straight and narrow' and keeping him there. His mother's life was a trainwreck, hard to find much redeeming in it. Even his beloved grandmother, Mamaw, poured lighter fluid on her husband and set him on fire, not to mention keeping 19 loaded handguns throughout her house. Why would Vance write about such things? Why publicize these awful behaviors to the world? Both his book and Smarsh's book are success stories, coming-of-age stories of setting and meeting goals despite economic, social, and cultural impediments. But Smarsh's book left me feeling good about her and her family, especially Grandma Betty. I can't say the same for Vance's story in which I think he threw his mother and even his Mamaw and other relatives under the bus in order to smugly make himself look more admirable, a modern Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story. And what was with his introducing her - "10 years clean" - at the RNC in Milwaukee? The more I see of this guy the more I tend to loathe him. I suppose I need to read his book but I surely won't buy it. I'll have to get behind the long, long, line waiting for a copy from the library.
Quotes I ran across about siblings in an group email from Patti Smith:
"The greatest gift our parents ever gave us was each other."
"Siblings are like branches of a tree. We grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one."
"There is no one in the world, other than your siblings, who knows what it’s like to have been raised the way you were."
“I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.” – Maya Angelou
“Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring — quite often the hard way.” — Pamela Dugdale
Patti Smith's email dealt with her brother's birthday on August 5th and the closeness between her and her brother. It reminded me of course of my dear sister and her upcoming birthday on August 19th, which would be her 80th had she not died on March 3, 2022. I can't say how much I miss her, how diminished my life became as she grew sicker and less able to talk with me every single morning in the last years of her life. Now it seems I have inherited her chronic insomnia. I am awake at 2 or 3 every morning, alone, sitting on my recliner working on my laptop, reading and writing, but not to her. Were she still alive and well, we would be texting each other, or talking on the phone. We would each have our votive candles burning in their red glass holders, reminding each of us of the other, and of our shared childhoods as Irish Catholic kids growing up in challenging circumstances, and grateful for the love and mutual support we shared. "The greatest gift our parents ever gave us was each other."
Ever wonder what a 'bed sore' looks like? I had a hunch that the mysterious sore that appeared on my butt several days ago might be a 'bed sore' or 'pressure sore' from all the forced sitting I've been doing for almost the entirety of the last month. I swallowed my pride and asked Geri to take a photo of it yesterday and today sent this Secure Message to Dr. Chatt at the VA: "I am more than a little hesitant and embarrassed to send this message, but I am wondering whether I may have developed a bed sore on my butt. I have spent most of each day from July 12th until today sitting or lying on my recliner chair because of pain in my right hip, thigh, and knee. I haven't been able to stand on my feet for more than a couple of minutes without pain that forces me to sit down. I received a steroid injection in my hip on Tuesday at the PM&R Clinic, but no pain relief yet. The sore on my buttock appeared several days ago. My wife took a photo of it (another embarrassment) which I could forward to you, but I won't unless you tell me to do so. What I am wondering is whether I should be applying an antibiotic to the sore or doing anything else, other than keeping it as clean as I can. I wouldn't bother you with this except I knew that, if it is a bed sore, they can become pretty serious problems over time. Thank you." Nurse Kim got the message and called me, asking me to send the photo which I did. She called again to confirm it appeared to be a bed sore and to tell me she was ordering a "waffle cushion" for me and some dressings which I am to apply and change daily. She also advised me to keep as much pressure off the area as possible, standing and walking as much as I was able. The hip pain appears to be improving so this should be possible. Keeping my fingers crossed. I know that bed sores are a serious medical business. Kim advised me that they can appear anywhere, on my back, shoulders, even the back of my head and they are indeed serious medical concerns.
Anniversaries thoughts. The Agnew-Nixon anniversaries a year apart are interesting. Agnew protested his complete innocence and swore he would never resign. With Nixon in danger of impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal, the administration sought to remove Agnew from the presidential line of succession, and secret plea bargaining took place between Agnew’s lawyers and a federal judge. Agnew resigned the vice presidency on October 10, 1973, and appeared in the United States District Court in Baltimore on the same day to plead nolo contendere to a single federal count of failing to report on his income-tax return $29,500 in income that he had received in 1967, while governor of Maryland. Acknowledging that the plea amounted to a felony conviction, Agnew declared that he had resigned in the national interest. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation. (In America, no one is above the law, right?)
Nixon of course also maintained his innocence but he too resigned and was pardoned for his crimes by Jerry Ford. (In America, no one is above the law, right?) With Nixon we had Watergate. With Reagan we had Iran-Contra. With George W. Bush, we had WMD and Iraq and with Trump, we had 2 impeachments, the attempted coup, January 6th, and the classified documents scandal. We never learn.
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