August 9, 2024
1253 Clare of Assisi's rules confirmed by Pope Innocent IV for Clare's Order of Poor Ladies
1854 American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau publishes "Walden"
1945 Nagasaki
In bed by 10, awake around 3 and up and out at 3:30.
Prednisone, day 89, 15 mg., day 11/14. I took the 15 mg. at 5:50 followed by 2 slices of buttered Dave's Bread. My hip, thigh, and knee all hurt this morning which worries me and now I have to figure out how to avoid deepening my bed sore by keeping pressure off it. How do I do that while spending most of the day sitting? I took my morning meds at about 9 a.m. and injected 3.0 mg of Trulicity at 9:25 a.m. I've given up on Tylenol after doing some research on its effectiveness vs. osteoarthritis, which is about zip.
More on J. D. Vance. I watched an hour-and-a-half 2021 interview of Vance on a podcast by a right-winger named Jack Murphy on YouTube. I'm persuaded the man is a classic fascist. He spoke the "American Spirit" as if it were a thing, a reality, not a construct. It's a notion that harkens back to Mussolini's and Hitler's evocation of Italianism and Aryanism as concretized and racialized supernationalisms, which ultimately was conceived of as "blut" or blood by the Nazis. Hitler glorified German peasants and farmers and rural culture much like Vance glorifies hillbillies and factory workers; he disparaged "elites" much like Hitler disparaged "decadents." He sees the world very much through "us" and "them" lenses. He sees the government, big business, the educational establishment, the media, and indeed the whole world other than those who agree with him as captives of evil "woke" ideologies who need to be expunged, and driven out from their positions of power. He sees the U.S. apocalyptically as at its "late republic" stage, like Rome's late republic during which government by the Senate and the public collapsed and dictators took over, culminating in Julius Caesar, dictator perpetuus. He purports to believe that "the hour is late and the time is near" stuff - Armageddon/Apocalypse. The "muscular conservative" senators he identifies with are Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Tom Cotton. He believes that the Left has used unconstitutional means to foist their 'woke' culture on the nation and that the Right needs to fight fire with fire. He would 'seize' the Harvard Endowment Fund and the Ford Foundation by confiscatory taxation, and otherwise employ extreme measures to reward friends and punish enemies. He supports giving the president (hopefully Trump) plenary power to fire civil servants and replace them with Right-minded supporters. It is not surprising to me that he converted to Catholicism in 2019, considering the Church's authoritarian, top-down, dogmatic, infallible, God-directed, and God-protected, which is to say fascistic, constitution and culture. Vance is very clearly very intelligent and very articulate and it may be that he is the designated successor of Trump. He is much smoother, more personable, and more persuasive than Ron DeSantis. He comes across as less angry than John Hawley and Tom Cotton and less generally creepy than Ted Cruz and Rand Paul (as if). He's got that Yale law degree, Horatio the Alger and Marine Corps history behind him, making him formidable at least until he steps on his own dick with some off-the-wall misogynistic or otherwise unpalatable statement that unmasks him as the weird, damaged person he is under his polished persona.
Going downhill. Two years ago, on 8/10.22, I wrote: "She is cleaning the grill tonight and watching her drives home to me that she makes it possible for me to live in this house. I can't get down on the ground or floor and get back up. I can't reliably climb a ladder without getting dizzy and risking a bad fall. But for Geri, I would be living in an apartment or condo or some kind of congregate living facility. I'm doing some perseverating on what that means, i.e. that to the extent that I can't take care of this or any house, I am to that extent unable to care for myself as a homeowner. I turn 81 on the 24th. Thinking daunting thoughts." How much worse I am now than I was then! I'm on the 3rd day following the steroid injection in my hip and still little pain relief. I could barely get up the one step from the sidewalk to our stoop yesterday after my daring walk to the mailbox. My eyesight and ability to read are going downhill fast. And now, of all things, a bed sore has me beside myself, knowing they can become serious, deep ulcers. On the other hand, I have managed to do some housework this afternoon, tidying up my bedroom which has been a terrible mess for weeks, and unloading and reloading the dishwasher with the help of my rollator Judy. I want to take out the recycling and trash bags to the carts in the garage but realize I can't count on being able to negotiate the two steps I would have to mount to get back into the kitchen.
Years ago, Geri and I spent a memorable day in Assisi, touring the town, visiting the huge basilica atop the hill, and visiting the Portiuncola now housed and protected inside a much larger papal basilica, St. Mary of the Angels. We saw the shabby, faded robe that Francis supposedly wore which revealed how very short and small he must have been. We visited his crypt in the lowest level of the church, where many people were fervently praying. During that 2 week vacation in Italy, we also visited Francis's 'hideout' atop a hill at LaVerna or Alverno. where the legends of Francis's preaching to the birds and his wrestling match with the Devil were said to occur. We saw the "letto di Francesco" or Francis's 'bed,'. There was no bed, just a small cave or stoney depression in the side of the hill. It was there that Francis was reputed to have wrestled with the Devil. I take that legend to have some footing in historical fact, as so many religious myths do. I believe that 'the Devil' was Francis's struggle with a desire to throw himself off the hill and kill himself. His followers were rejecting his rule of very strict poverty, rejecting his example and leadership. I suspect too that the legend of Francis preaching to the birds is rooted in a fact, but got the story reversed. It was the birds who preached to Francis, not vice versa. New King James Version, St. Matthew, ch. 6, 26-31:
26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one [a]cubit to his [b]stature?
28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not [c]arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
In any event, what I wonder most is WHY Francis and Clare chose a life of beggary, pauperism, and destitution on the road rather than a comfortable town life. The question was not significantly different in the early 13th century than it is in the early 21st century, except I suppose for the higher degree of faith in religion, Christianity, and the Church in medieval Italy. I find myself thinking, with no particular clarity, of J.D. Vance and his professed rejection of 'elites', and his speaking of the emptiness of life within the elite meritocracy. It's easy enough for him to say after he's made his millions and now that he has the financial backing of billionaires like Peter Thiel. But I think too of my mother speaking of our renting rather than owning our homes and warning that 'you can own a house, but a house can also own you' if you don't have the reliable income to support home ownership.
But I'm thinking also of the other anniversary today, that of the publication of David Thoreau's Walden with his terrifying judgment that "“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Was 'quiet desperation' what drove Francis and Clare down the hill to the Portiuncola? For how many and how much does it us today? He also wrote "“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” and "“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Does 'quiet desperation' equal meaninglessness? empiness? hollowness? AAs in Eleanor Rigby? As in Eliot's::
We are the hollow me / We are the stuffed men
Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when / We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass / In our dry cellar
And what does Nagasaki have to do with this? With us? Or Tokyo or Dresden? or Passchendaele? or Ukraine or Gaza? or Stoney Brook school, Tree of Life Shul, or Stoney Brook School? Nothing? or Everything?
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