9/7/24

 Saturday, September 7, 2024

70 Roman army under General Titus occupied and plundered Jerusalem 

1812 Battle of Borodino: Napoleon won a pyrrhic victory against Russia in the most ferocious battle of the Napoleonic era; 70,000 were killed

1940 Beginning of the Blitz as the Luftwaffe bombed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights losing 41 bombers as the Nazis prepare to invade Britain

1963 American Bandstand moved to California

1986 Desmond Tutu became Anglican Archbishop of Capetown

In bed at 10:30 and up at 4:30 from a drowsy, dreamy half-sleep.  I woke up with shooting pains in the middle toes of my right foot and a sore left hand and fingers which I strained last night removing my compression sock from my swollen left foot, ankle, and lower leg.  Lilly got up when I came into the TV room and after I let her out and back in, she repaired to her mattress in Geri's bedroom to resume sleeping. 

Prednisone, day 117, 10 mg., day 23.   Prednisone and diclofenac at 5 a.m.   Morning meds at 6:50.  Breakfast was 2 hunks of banana bread around 5:10.

I've avoided network and cable news for a full week, listening only to NPR newscasts.  I should try the PBS News Hour next week if I can't make it through the weekend without CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast network news.  I still inhabit my printed (online) silos: NYTimes, WaPo, JSOnline, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and sometimes The Wall Street Journal, and I sometimes dabble in YouTube but I see how their algorithms work to steer and addict me. Click click click.

These Americans Want Out is an article in this morning's NYTimes by Ronda Kaysen.  It makes me think of Sarah of course and of her newly-acquired dual American-German citizenship.  This summer, nearly 2,000 readers responded to a New York Times survey asking if they would leave the United States should their favored candidate lose the presidential election in November. Another 3,000 people responded to similar questions asked over social media. Some respondents had already moved. Others were taking the steps — looking for jobs overseas, or seeking ways to qualify for residency.  These numbers, 5,000, are not significant in a country of about 335 million people, but they give me some reassurance that Geri and I aren't crazy in thinking of (though not intending to) moving away from the U.S. which seems to be in irretrievable social and political decline.  I can't imagine Geri ever moving far away from her sons and their families and I can't imagine moving away from the VA medical center that has become so much a part of my old age, but if the circumstances were different, I suspect both of us would seriously consider kissing off our native land.  Even as things are now, if residency and citizenship in Canada were easily available, which I think it isn't, I could imagine us making a move but for my increasing decrepitude.

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, I am wondering about the claim that the Jews were 'exiled' after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple.  I have often heard it said that the Jews were exiled, i.e., driven from their homeland, by the Romans, but I've also heard it said, by professional historians, that this is not true, but rather that the Jews had already started dispersing throughout the Roman Empire and elsewhere, by 70 A.D., and that the dispersion accelerated after the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, but there was no forced exile.  The question is significant in terms of the claims by Zionists that the State of Israel represents for Jews in the diaspora, a 'return from exile.'  If there was no 'exile,' the claim is specious.

Second, Borodino was a pyrrhic victory for Napolean and a great example of the horror and stupidity of War.  The fighting involved around 250,000 troops and left at least 68,000 killed and wounded, making Borodino the deadliest single-day battle of the Napoleonic Wars and one of the bloodiest single-day battles in military history until the First Battle of the Marne in 1914.  "Wounded" at this battle effectively meant later death, either through starvation, neglect, or lack of medical care.  Again I wonder what caused those 250,000 troops to sacrifice themselves in this slaughter.  Love of Napolean or la France, love of the Czar or of Mother Russia?  I doubt it.  

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W. B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Third, the start of the Blitz reminds us that at least since the start of the Second World War, all wars have been wars of Terrorism, i.e., directed against civilian populations.  When horrified at what the Israelis are doing in Gaza (and in the West Bank), we need to remember Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Curtis LeMay and George Patton.

Fourth, 1963 was the year I graduated from college, got married, got commissioned in the Marine Corps, and set out into the world.  It was also the year that ABC moved Dick Clark and American Bandstand out of Philadelphia to California.  I should have seen that move as presaging dire days ahead as the early 60s, so like the 50s, turned into "the 60s," so very unlike the 50s.  The assassinations of Diem and Kennedy, the Vietnam invasion, 'race riots', civil rights, MLK and RHF assassinations, SDS, Sterling Hall, Kent State, etc.  It started with ABC moving American Bandstand out of Philadelphia with its dancing teenagers from Philly and Jersey and out to Southern California, Tinseltown.

Lastly, one of the unexpected, thrilling good fortunes in my life was standing next to Desmond Tutu in an elevator at the Marquette University Student Union and exchanging greetings with him.  It was 2003 and Tutu was at Marquette to receive the Pere Marquette Disconvery Award and to give a remarkable acceptance speech.  I didn't attend the speech but I read it this morning and it triggers many thoughts.  The first is Tutu's extraordinary eloquence.  The second is his gift for humanizing and personalizing Gospel stories.  The third is the way he humanized and personalized God, but I thought as I read it how he was making it all up or, put another way, imagining it.  It reminds me of Brother Booker Ashe imagining the miracle of the loaves and fishes.  I think of TSJ picking me up after mass at St. Francis church one Sunday and asking me 'Do you really believe that shit?'  I remember his question but I can't remember my answer, but I'm sure it wasn't a simple yes or no because I've long thought that the only way to have any kind of grasp of the religious or spiritual dimension of life is through the imagination, not through ratiocination.  The story is told that Thomas Aquinas stopped working on his magnum opus, Summa Theologica, on the Feast of St. Nicholas in 1273 and, when asked by a friend why he had stopped writing, he replied " I can write no more. All that I have hitherto written seems to me nothing but straw."  He wrote no more before his death.  His 'nothing but straw' however became the basis of Scholasticism and dominated Catholic theological thinking for centuries, right up through my theology and philosophy classes at Marquette.  I suspect that what Aquinas realized was that the ultimate questions of our existence, including the question of "God" and the relationship between "God" and Man, the question of our alpha and omega, whence we come and whither we go, cannot be answered or understood rationally, logically, scientifically, or analytically, but only poetically, through the faculty of Imagination.  Of course, I can't explain exactly what I mean, but neither could Aquinas except through metaphor - 'straw.'  Finally, how interesting that Desmond Tutu delivered his acceptance speech on February 12, 2003, a month before the American invasion of Iraq.   Tutu concluded his speech thusly:

How could we contemplate so nonchalantly, as if we were ordering our breakfast, the prospect of visiting devastation and death on these others if we are family? How could we go on spending such obscene amounts on budgets of death and destruction, when we know that a small fraction of those budgets could ensure that those others had clean water, enough to eat, a good education, adequate health care, secure homes, if they are indeed family?

God weeps as God looks on what we are doing, on what we are contemplating doing to one other. The just war theory, amongst other things, postulates that a legitimate authority declares and wages war. A war against Iraq declared unilaterally by the United States would be one not declared by a legitimate authority and so would be immoral. God smiles through the tears to see the many who oppose this war.

This is a great, great country, a generous country, a compassionate country, a country that helped Nelson Mandela come out of prison, a country which helped make South Africa free and democratic. That is your legacy, your tradition. Why want to tarnish it with a war most of the world opposes? Help to wipe the tears from God's eyes. For God says, "Yes you and you and you, you can make a difference. You can help me realize my dream that my children, my children, you are family."

Too bad George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld weren't in the audience listening and heeding his advice.  Or perhaps they did.  The invasion of Iraq wasn't entirely unilateral.  We had our lap dogs the U.K., Australia, and Poland on our  "Shock and Awe" team.