10/31/24

 Thursday, October 31, 2024

1517 Martin Luther sends his Ninety-five Theses to Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, precipitating the Protestant Reformation

1992 Roman Catholic church apologized for its treatment of Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei after 359 years

1999 Roman Catholic Church and Lutheran Church leaders signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, ending a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation

2000 Pope John Paul II declared Saint Thomas More as "the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians"

In bed at 9 and up at 4:15.  Lilly was in the TV room and woke up when I came in.  When I opened the front door for her, she stood and sniffed for a few minutes before deciding to stay inside.    

Prednisone, day 170, 5 mg., day 21/28.  Prednisone at 5 a.m. followed by a piece of soda bread.  I took morning meds at 7:30.   I think my PMR is returning, very sore shoulders and stiff hips.  The first notation on shoulder pain in this journal was on October 11, referring to pain experienced the day before.  I sent a secure message to Dr. Ryzka: "I think my PMR may have recurred. I've had sore shoulders since October 10th and more recently sore hips. I checked the lab results from my appointment with my PCP on Tuesday and see that the CRP score is 19.4. I couldn't see a sed rate score. I took 7.5 mg. of prednisone daily from September 13 until October 11 (4 weeks) and then reduced to 5 mg. daily for the last 3 weeks.  I don't know whether you will receive this message before our appointment on Monday, 11/4, but I thought it might be best to send it in any event. Thank you."

The photo I was trying to load yesterday when the formatting blew up on me.

 

Baitbucket thoughts  (1) It's almost over.  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Election Day.  I shouldn't be eager for it to be over because I'm wishing away days when Trump is not in power.  I'm reminded of my Dad advising me not to wish my life away.

(2) I read a New Yorker article "The Deceit and Conflict Behind the Leak of the Pentagon Papers" by Ben Bradlee, Jr., in the April 8,2021 edition.  Daniel Elsberg surreptitiously took the Pentagon Papers from the government and Neil Sheehan surreptitiously took them from Elsberg.  Cloak and dagger stuff.   What struck Ellsberg most was the pattern of deception engaged in by military and political leaders. He concluded that the critical calculation for each President was domestic politics: no one wanted to be the first to “lose’’ Vietnam.  I'm reminded of the Afghanistan Papers published by the WaPo which revealed that in our other 20-year-long war, both politicians and generals persistently lied to the public about 'progress' and 'light at the end of the tunnel' and all those optimistic assessments that even when I was in Vietnam, we knew to be 'happy horseshit.'  From the WaPo story:

The Lessons Learned interviews contradict years of public statements by presidents, generals and diplomats. The interviews make clear that officials issued rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hid unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. Several of those interviewed described explicit efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public and a culture of willful ignorance, where bad news and critiques were unwelcome.

The same was true in Vietnam.  From my memoir:

The day I left Cleveland for Japan and Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson spoke with Robert McNamara about the situation in Vietnam:

. . . it’s going to be difficult for us to very long prosecute effectively a war that far away from home with the [political] divisions we have here and particularly the potential divisions.  And it’s really had me concerned for a month and I’m very depressed about it because I see no program from either Defense or State that gives me much hope of doing anything except just praying and grasping to hold on during [the] monsoon [season] and hope they’ll quit.  And I don’t believe they’re ever goin’ to quit.  And I don’t see that we have any plan for victory militarily or diplomatically

How prescient.

(3) All that jazz.  I'm quite a fan of soft piano jazz: Mary McPartland, Oscar Peterson, Bill Charlap, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Ahmad Jamal, Errol Garner, George Shearing, Beegie Adair, , . . . 

(4) Trumpian genius.  I can't deny Donald Trump has a particular genius for fascist rhetoric.  I thought of this while reading an article in today's online The Atlantic, "What Orwell Didn't Anticipate" by Megan Garber which discusses the diminished power of the words fascist and fascism. in the context of Orwell's 1945 essay “Politics and the English Language.”

(5) Little things show us that our life is falling apart.  I now have two of my pencil drawings - one of Geri, the other of a Vietnamese woman - that have fallen off the wall in my bedroom.  Apparently, the thin sheet metal clips that hung on the nail in the wall pulled out from their anchoring slot on their wooden frames.  Geri's drawing fell off first, then the Vietnamese young woman.  Each was high on its respective wall.  Each is too high for me to rehang it.  Each sits on the floor.  Once I was able to hang them.  No more.

(6) I see my good neighbor John out walking with his rollator.  He puts me to shame.  Body bent from childhood polio, dealing with chemo for leukemia, and he's out walking while I'm on my butt typing this.

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, the troublemaker Martin Luther couldn't leave bad enough alone.  Mr. Smartypants had to make a big fuss about all sorts of things, stir everybody up, and cause a whole bunch of wars in which lots of people were killed or hurt over theological differences that nobody understood.

The Chuch's apology to Galileo 359 years after its offense reminds me of Joe Biden's 'official' apology to America's Indigenous peoples for forcing their children into Indian schools to deprive them of their Indigenous identities, languages, customs, etc.  Better late than never???

482 years after Luther raised holy hell with his 95 theses, the Catlickers and the Prods came to some sort of an agreement about how exactly the Creator of the Universe treats the dominant species on one of his planets circling one of his suns in one of his galaxies.  700 guests at Augsburg’s Lutheran Church of St. Anna’s and more than 2,000 observers in a tent nearby watched, applauded, and hugged as officials from the two bodies stated that both churches believe the salvation of individual Christians is justified by God’s love alone, not by human efforts.  From the Vatican, Pope John Paul II welcomed the signing as a “milestone along a difficult path full of joy, union and communion among Christians.”  How well I remember the joy I felt on that Halloween (when I wasn't wondering whether all the computers in the world crash at midnight on 12/31/99.)

To celebrate the first anniversary of all those Catholics and Lutherans clapping and hugging, Pope JPII, not one of my favorites, designated St  Thomas More as the heavenly GoToGuy for Statesmen and Politicians.  Prior to this honor, Thomas was principally the GoToGuy for Lawyers since he had been one himself and there aren't all that many of them in Heaven.  Actually, as I think about it, is it such a great honor to be the GoToGuy for Lawyers and Politicians?  How many lawyers and politicians make it into Heaven?  My own connections with Thomas More are these.  First, my first True Love Charlene Wegge belonged to St. Thomas More parish on the southwest side of Chicago.  Going to mass with her was my introduction to Thomas More.  Then she dumped me and broke my heart.  Second,  I've long been fond of Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait of him in the Frick Collection in New York, hanging in the Living Hall on the left side of the big El Greco St. Jerome with Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell on the right side of Jerome.  More looks warm and lovable and Cromwell looks cold and nasty. (According to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, More was far from warm and lovable, but who knows?  We get a very different picture of him in A Man for All Seasons.)  Yet another connection with Thomas More is through the Thomas More Society, a Catholic association of lawyers that sponsors an annual Red Mass for lawyers and judges.  I gave a speech to the Milwaukee chapter one year entitled "The Practice of Law as an Occasion of Sin," perhaps not surprisingly not a crowd-pleaser.

10/30/24

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 

1917 British government gives final approval to the Balfour Declaration

1950 Pope Pius XII witnesses "The Miracle of the Sun" while at the Vatican

In bed by 9:30, awake at 4:05, up at 4:20 with sore shoulders and painful mid/upper back.  I let Lilly out at some time and then again around 9 when I woke up from my first morning nap.  It's another warm, windy day with the berry trees teeming with robins.  A rd-winged blackbird has appeared on the tube feeder.

Prednisone, day 169, 5 mg., day 20/28.   Prednisone at 5:05.  Three slices of soda bread later.  Morning meds at 9:10.  It seems like my entire body is aching this morning, even my butt muscles.  Is my inflamation up?  I'll be interested in seeing the sed rate and CRP scores from yesterday's blood tests.

George W. Ball and Vietnam. I picked up The Pentagon Papers at the library yesterday. I've been especially interested in learning more about Undersecretary of State George W. Ball's advice(s) to Lyndon Johnson urging early withdrawal from Vietnam before the U.S. became bogged down in a quagmire.   I recall that by the end of 1965, my Marine buddies and I were persuaded that the war we were involved in 'would not end well.'  We had recently been briefed by the Air Wing's Intelligence people that, despite the incredible tonnage of high explosives, incendiaries, and defoliants we had dropped on them,  the number of "hostiles" in the area surrounding "our" airbase had doubled in the less-than-a-year period since the Marines landed in March.  I wrote about this in my memoir:

It is a sad experience to think back on those days in Vietnam and to re-read the ‘happy horseshit’ of the politicos.  I remember quite clearly talking with other Marines about the futility of the war, sharing the judgment or intuition that no ultimate good was going to come from all the death and destruction.  I talked about it in the middle of the night with my friend Bob Hilleary during those endless night watches in ‘the bubble.’  My tentmates and I groused about it while holed up under canvas during the endless monsoon rains.  We talked about it over alcohol and blackjack hands at the officers’ club.  Regarding the “happy horseshit” in the news reports on Armed Forces Radio and in Stars and Stripes and in hometown newspapers that were mailed to DaNang, I remember with surprising vividness my good friend, from Yuma and Iwakuni and DaNang, Warrant Officer Ron Kendall frequently quoting his high school football coach in Iowa who used to tell his team: “You can fool the spectators but you can’t fool the players.”  The players, at least in my unit, didn’t believe the happy horseshit from Saigon and Washington, just as I haven’t believed the happy horseshit from Baghdad and Washington 40 years later.  A nation does not ‘win the hearts and minds’ of another people by dispatching an invading army of highly trained killers to its shores, airfields, or landing zones.  A nation cannot successfully use as ambassadors of good will Marines and soldiers who are always at least a lethal threat to kill locals and often a homicidal force.  We do not ‘save villages’ by ‘destroying them,’ whether the village is a hamlet in the Mekong Delta or the city of Fallujah on the Euphrates.  We do not preserve national honor by becoming an international pariah.  My heart aches when I think of the price the Clausen family and millions of other families paid in foreign wars only to lead to policies of invasion, occupation, torture, kidnappings, detentions without legal process, and claims of almost boundless executive authority by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzales.  Did we learn nothing from Vietnam?   Is there no limit to the amount of happy horseshit gullible Americans will willingly eat?

When I arrived in Vietnam on July 12, 1965, the conflict there was not yet a full-fledged American war.  The mission of American combat forces was limited and essentially defensive.  It all changed two weeks later when President Johnson made the decision to grant General Westmoreland’s request for a massive infusion of American forces in 1965 and more in 1966.   He granted the request for the very reasons that should have caused him to deny it - because he knew that the South Vietnamese government was incapable of effectively governing the country and the South Vietnamese military was incapable of defending it.  That decision on that date for those reasons turned the war into an American war.  The whole world knew of the fecklessness and corruption of the Vietnamese government in Saigon and of the powerlessness of the South Vietnamese military and of the determination of the VC/NVA forces and we Marines knew it too.  In Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect, he acknowledges the mistake of not pulling out of Vietnam early.  He wrote:

By [the early or mid 1960s] it should have become apparent that the two condition underlying President Kennedy’s decision to send military advisors to South Vietnam were not being met and, indeed, could not be met: political stability did not exist and was unlikely ever to be achieved; and the South Vietnamese, even with our training assistance and logistical support, were incapable of defending themselves.

Given these facts – and they are facts – I believe we could and should have withdrawn from South Vietnam either in late 1963 amid the turmoil following Điem’s assassination or in late 1964 or early 1965 in the face of increasing political and military weakness in South Vietnam.  And, as the table opposite suggests, there were at least three other occasions when withdrawal could have been justified.

Date of Withdrawal US Forces US Killed Basis for Withdrawal

Nov. 1963             16,300 advisors 78                 Collapse of  Điem regime and political                                                                                                     instability

Late 1964 or

Early 1965             23,300advisors 225                 Clear indication of SVN’s inability to defend                                                                                             itself, even with US traing and logistical support

July, 1965             81,400 troops 509                 Further evidence of the above

December, 1965     184,300 troops 1,594         Evidence the US military tactics and training                                                                                             were inappropriate for guerrilla war being                                                                                             waged.

December, 1967     485,600 troops 15,979         CIA reports indicating bombing in the North                                                                                             would not force North Vietnam to desist is                                                                                             the face of our inability to turn back enemy                                                                                             forces in South Vietnam.

January, 1973             543,400 troops*     58,191         Signing of Paris Accords, marking end of US                                                                                         military involvement

* Highest commitment of American troops, April 1969 

The information related above is contained in a table in my memoir.  This blog I am writing in can't handle the MS Word table formatting from the memoir, , but all the information from the table is present.

It is against that background that I am reading again The Pentagon Papers and focusing on George W. Ball's advice to Lyndon Johnson.  Here are some excerpts from Ball's memo to Johnson dated July 1, 1965.

(1) A Losing War: The South Vietnamese are losing the war to the VietCong. No one can assure you that we can beat the Viet Cong or even force them to the conference table on our terms, no matter how many hundred thousand white, foreign (U.S.) troops we deploy.

No one has demonstrated that a white ground force of whatever size can win a guerrilla war—which is at the same time a civil war between Asians—in jungle terrain in the midst of a population that refuses cooperation to the white forces (and the South Vietnamese) and thus provides a great intelligence advantage to the other side. . .   

(2) The Question to Decide: Should we limit our liabilities in South Vietnam and try to find a way out with minimal long-term costs? The alternative—no matter what we may wish it to be—is almost certainly a protracted war involving an open-ended commitment of U.S. forces, mounting U.S. casualties, no assurance of a satisfactory solution, and a serious danger of escalation at the end of the road.

(3) Need for a Decision Now: So long as our forces are restricted to advising and assisting the South Vietnamese, the struggle will remain a civil war between Asian peoples. Once we deploy substantial numbers of troops in combat it will become a war between the U.S. and a large part of the population of South Vietnam, organized and directed from North Vietnam and backed by the resources of both Moscow and Peiping.The decision you face now, therefore, is crucial.  Once large numbers of U.S. troops are commited to direct combat, they will begin to sustain high casualties in a war they are ill-equipped to fight in an uncooperative if not downright hostile contryside.

Once we suffer large casulaiteis, we will have started a well-nigh irreversible process.  Our involvement will be so great that we cannot - without national humiliation - stop short of acheiving our complete objectives.  .  Of the two possiblities I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives, -- even after we have paid terrible costs.

It is painful to read this prescient and wise advice given to Lyndon Johnson before he decided to agaree to Gen. William Westmoreland's request for 44 additional combat battalions to tbe sent to South Vietnam.  No one can say that LBJ - and Robert McNamara , Dean Rusk, and McGeorge Bundy - were not given accurate and sound advice before plunging the U.S. into the tragic invasion of Vietnam.  On October 5, 1964, Ball had written a longer (67 pages) memo to Johnson, shared first with Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy, titled  "How Valid Are the Assumptions Underlying Our Vietnam Policy", which also recommended getting out of South Vietnam: "Once on the tiger's back we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount."  What a tragedy.  The more I learn of it, the greater my embarassment and shame at playing even my miniscule role in it.  'Not a day but something is recalled, my conscience or my vanity appalled.'

FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH, ch. 14, Danielle Trussoni

. . . My father had recently read Robert McNamara’s book [IN RETROSPECT].  Dad was never much of a reader; although he was quick-witted and intelligent, he had a hard time staying with a book.  That one, however, got his attention.  I don’t know if he finished it or not, but the parts he had read were memorized.  He would rattle off sentences between sips of his drink, quoting McNamara’s admission of his miscalculations in Vietnam.  I tried to understand exactly what made Dad so angry, but after a while he went silent and would answer my questions tersely.  Finally, he turned to me and said, “Do you know what this book means?  Do you know what this guy is saying?”

I didn’t know anything about Robert McNamara back then.  I had never even heard his name before.  At that point in my life – before I studied the war, Vietnam was not a historical event.  It was just something that happened to my family. 

My father shook his head, disgusted.  “McNamara’s saying they didn’t know what the hell they were doing over there.  We were wrong from the goddamned beginning.

First and Last Day on the Patio?  Geri and I spent some time this afternoon on our patio.  I think it wa probably my first time on the patio all year, at least my first time sitting down in one of my favorite patio chairs, the ones Geri had at her apartment in Lake Mills, and enjoying simply sitting there.  Was it last year or the year before I used to sit out there in the morning with Merlin and watch and listen to the birds and catch sight of the squirrels and chipmunks scurrying about on their morning chores/  This year I have been too ferkrimpter to leave the house and enjoy the Spring and Summer mornings, or evenings for that matter.  Today we out so Geri could give Lilly a much needed grooming, which she does her best to avoid.  I sat in the chair and held her lease so she couldn't escapte Geri with her scissors and clippers.  As I sat there, I noticed that our elegant bottlebrush buckeye tree (or shrub) is a goner, with one major branch lying on the patio deck awaiting disposal for weeks.  It's been that kind of a year for both Geri and me.  Since we moved into this lovely home, Geri has been an avid gardner, sometimes with help from her good friend and former across-the-street neighbor Cheri Bubrik, also an avid gardener and landscaper.  I noticed too that all the foliage in the ephemeral pond we share with our neigbher to the west has dropped or drooped, letting us see the lowland that had been masked all summer.  Will Geri be able to get back to her gardening next Spring?  There will be a ton of work to be done and she'll be 81 years old.  Will her left knee and leg get better - finally?  Will her right knee hold up?  It's hard to think of next Spring.  Will we be talking aobut President Trump or of President Harris?  Will the country be in the care of Democrats or of Republcans, of neither or both?  Will we be even more psychically and civically scarred than we are now?  Will we have dodged a bullet or will we be living under a lawless, oligarhic, kleptocractic regime of Trump, Vance, Musk, Bannon, Miller, and others.  I derived some solace while I was outside from seeing the rich colors and the shapes of the fallen leaves on some pachysandra.

IRREVERSIBLE FORMATTING GLITCH!!!😰😱😡😠

10/29/24

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

1618 English adventurer, writer, and courtier Walter Raleigh was beheaded for allegedly conspiring against King James I of England

1922 Italian King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) as Prime Minister of Italy

1929 Stock market crash on Wall Street, known as "Black Tuesday," triggered the Great Depression

1945 First ballpoint pen went on sale, manufactured by Reynolds in the US

1969 US Supreme Court ordered the end to all school segregation "at once"

1998 South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented its report, which condemned both sides for committing atrocities

I was in bed by 9, awake at 5:05, and up at 5:25, thinking of Ray J. Aiken, Pat Aiken, Jeff & Tim, the house purchase on Newberry, and yesterday's interview.    

Prednisone, day 168, 5 mg., day 19.    Prednisone at 5:35.Three pieces of soda bread at 5:50.  Morning meds later in the morning.  COVID and flu vaccinations this afternoon at the VA.

'Nuf said'  From an article in yesterday's NYTimes "For a Stalwart Voice of Liberal Catholicism, A Complicated Centennial" by Jennifer Schuesler:

Today, attendance at weekly Mass continues its decades-long decline. There are sharp political divisions in the pews and in leadership, while the ranks of newly ordained priests are trending overwhelmingly conservative, theologically and politically. And in the intellectual realm, conversation is dominated by conservative Catholic “postliberals” who argue that liberal individualism has eroded culture and community. Some call for a toppling of current elites — or even an end to the separation of church and state.    

2001,  A Space Odyssey  I watched the middle portion and end of the film when I returned from the VA.  "Open the podbay door, HAL." "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."  Then, Dave's arrival at Jupiter and the spectacular visual effects leading up to the images of the "space child" and the unending questions as to what the image means.  Ditto the black monolith.

Geri reset the bird feeders this afternoon.  I helped.  She came in when finished and lay down.  I refilled the feeders, hoping for a repeat of this morning's bird action, and put out the recycling cart for tomorrow morning's pickup.  On the way back up the driveway, I enjoyed the great beauty of the fallen, golden yellow. ginko leaves,  The ginko berries seem to have all fallen and been spirited away.  The temperature has been unseasonably warm lately, over 80 today, more tomorrow. 

LTMW I see a first, a red-winged blackbird filling himself on the tube feeder while sparrows and chickadees alternate on the suet cakes, another chickadee stops for a nip of orange juice, while house finches flutter about and snowbirds, and doves, and a pair of cardinals peck peck on the ground.  Robins will be working the County Line berry trees until the berries disappear. . . Later, a yellow-shafted flicker showed up atop one of the suet cakes. 

Dr. Chatt.  My semi-annual visit went well.  Good blood pressure, good glucose, good A1c (6.7), good cholesterol, etc.  She ordered a "swallow test" on me.  I got to chat with an old Marine in the waiting room when I finished.  He had served from 1953 to 1953.  Chatted with another Marine in the elevator about him getting leave from RVN when his father was very sick.  I also had a long chat with the LPN who gave me my flu shot and covid booster, drew my blood, took my BP, etc.  On the way in, I drove through the Wood National Cemetery, as usual, and again one road was blocked by markers for "Funeral" and "Privacy Requested, " the second time recently I have seen such signs.  The bad news was that my favorite ancient maple tree in the cemetery has been felled.  It was old, twisted, and gnarled, like many of the veterans I see in the corridors, elevators, and waiting rooms at Zablocki Medical Center, including me and the two other former Marines I encountered and chatted with this afternoon.

Anniversaries.  First, it is widely thought that it was the trial of Walter Raleigh for treason that led to the development of the hearsay rule of evidence, which I used to teach at the law school, and the right to confront witnesses in the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."

Second, we tend to forget that Hitler was hardly the first fascist dictator in 20th-century Europe.  Mussolini beat him in Italy by more than 10 years.

Third, the stock market crash.  My Dad was 9 years old and my mother 7.  My paternal grandfather maintained his employment at Western Electric throughout the Great Depression.  For my maternal grandfather, it was a struggle that led him from Taconite/Grand Rapids, Minnesota, back to Chicago, down to San Antonio, and back to Chicago.

Fourth, I remember early ballpoint pens. My recollection is that they tended to be smudgy.  In school, we used only graphite pencils and ink pens filled with ink from the ink wells in our desks.  Those were the days of getting free "blotter" from insurance agencies to keep from smudging wet ink.

Fifth,  the Supreme Court's order in 1969 to end school desegregation "at once" was just as effective as its order in 1954 to end it "with all deliberate speed," to wit, not at all.  It's a huge mistake commonly made to think that passing a law, or getting the same result from a court decision, or n, will cause big changes in social behavior.  If it were true, statutes criminalizing murder result in the abolition of murders.  As if.

Lastly, the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission report reminds me of Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah: guilt for atrocities on all sides.  We will never see a similar commission in Israel. 

10/28/24

 Monday, October 28, 2024

MULS Oral history

1956 Pope Pius XII published the encyclical Luctuosissimi Eventus

1958 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected Pope, taking the name John XXIII

1965 Pope Paul VI proclaimed Jews were not collectively guilty of the Crucifixion

In bed at 10 after watching the James Carville documentary on CNN, awake at 3:45 and up at 4:05.  I let Lilly out at 6:20.  Again she was very slow in stepping outside after I opened the front door, very cautious.   

Prednisone, day 167, 5 mg., day 18/28.   Prednisone at 5 a.m.,  morning meds later in the morning.

Oral History Initiative.  I spent an hour and a half on a Zoom call with Jane Eddy Casper this morning, talking about life at the Marquettte University Law School, which started in 1976 when I arrived there after my discharge from the Marine Corps.   The years were historic and fraught, especially with the civil rights struggles, urban riots throughout the country, the Vietnam War and the resistance to it especially on college campuses throughout the country.  The disturbance in Milwaukee occurred on July 30-31, two months after my discharge from the Marines and one month before I started law school.  The Tet Offensive in Vietnam started on January 31, 1968, at the start of my second semester and Lyndon Johnson ended graduate school deferments two weeks later.  My classmates were allowed to keep their deferments until the end of the semester so there was a mad scramble to get into an Army or National Guard Reserve unit where the chance of being ordered to Vietnam was much less than than it was for those who were drafted.  My class lost somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of its members to service in the Reserves or to the draft.  In November of my first year, Nixon was elected and in 1970 he ordered US troops to invade Cambodia which led to widespread demonstrations around the country.  At Kent State University, 4 unarmed students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen patrolling the campus and I was asked to stand sentry duty at the law school because of credible bomb threats.   Student-faculty relations at the school were generally hostile.  I spent probably more than a full hour running off at the mouth about those days.  Were my descriptions useful for anyone?  Who knows?  The interviews, of which there are many, will be available in the Law Library archives for anyone studying or otherwise interested in the law school's history and can be accessed through the law library but won't be generally available online.  I don't know whether I can access all the interviews but I am told I will have access to my own.

Fatigued and not feeling very well this afternoon.  I took a long nap, after which I emptied the dishwasher and then watched more of 2001: A Space Odyssey which I started yesterday.  The movie is just short of 3 hours long.

Anniversaries thoughts.   Luctuosissimi eventus was Pius XII's encyclical about the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.  I note it because it reminds me of my college roommate Tom Devitt and me serving mass the the Hungarian immigrant Catholic church St. Emeric, at 17th and Highland Avenue, before we both stopped attending mass.

I note the election of Pope John XXIII because he was and is my favorite pope. One wonders how he would have responded to the birth control commission that he created but his successor Paul VI filled.  Pau VI bowed to the pressure of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła and rejected the recommendation of the commission to approve birth control pills as consistent with Catholic morality.  In doing so, he destroyed Catholics' faith in the teaching authority of the Church in America and Western Europe.  My hunch is that John XXIII would have followed his commission's recommendation.  Alas.

Re the Church's position on the responsibility of Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus, Paul VI was, as I recall, simply following the teaching of Vatican II in Nostra Aetate.

10/27/24

 Sunday, October 27, 2024

Trick or Treat day

312 Roman Emperor Constantine the Great was said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross

1941 Chicago Daily Tribune editorialized there would not be war with Japan

2017 Catalan parliament met and unilaterally declared independence from Spain

In bed at 9, up at 5:52 after a night of many strange dreams including a big family gathering for a holiday meal, many small children, my cousin Chris who was taller than me, and something like the casting of electoral college votes after dinner. ?!?  A few minutes before the 7:20 sunrise, chickadees and finches arrive at the tube feeder and woodpeckers at the suet cakes.  I listened to Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony while unloading and loading the dishwasher, cleaning up the kitchen, and belatedly cleaning the big cast iron skillet in which  Geri cooked the beer-battered cod two nights ago.  A big cleanup job.  As best I can recall, Tchaikovsky's 6th was my first classical music album purchase at the National Food Store at 73rd and Halsted Street. Our neighborhood's first supermarket,  I'm not entirely sure about the 6th being my first classical purchase; it may have been the 1812 Overture.  In any case, Tchaikovsky was my introduction to classical music and I still enjoy his music, the 5th and 6th symphonies, the piano and violin concertos, and Swan Lake.  As a teenager, I made a point of learning about his life, his homosexuality, marriage, suicide attempt in the Neva River, relationship with the reclusive, idiosyncratic, and wealthy Nadezhda von Meck, his brother Modeste, etc. . . Lilly didn't show up until 7:40.

 Prednisone, day 166, 5 mg., day 17/28    Prednisone at 6:05. AllBran w/ berries & prunes around 11.  Morning meds at 2:40 p.m.  Yesterday I was in a brain fog and never got around to taking my meds, other than the prednisone.  The day before I missed my appointment with the VA lymphedema specialist.  Regularly now I walk away from my iPhone and lose Bluetooth contact with my continuous glucose monitor.  There's no question in my mind that I am experiencing some memory loss/cognitive decline/loss of executive function.  . . Today I woke up with nasty back and shoulder pain and napped much of the morning despite my long though interrupted sleep.  My normal routine now is to wake and remain fatigued much of the day, until mid or late afternoon.  I wonder whether I may have fibromyalgia, a recurrence of the PMR, or some other autoimmune disorder.  Or is this just life in the mid-80s?  I see Dr. Chatt at the VA on Tuesday at 1 and I'll mention these symptoms, in addition to my difficulty swallowing, but I suspect she'll just recommend physical therapy for my back and maybe something else for the swallowing.  The swallowing problem has me concerned about choking, which I've come close to a few times.

The Washington Post’s Decision to Stop Presidential Endorsements.   There's no disputing that Jeff Bezos's timing couldn't be worse, and it's hard not to indulge the thought that he was worried about retribution from Donald Trump, should Trump prevail in the presidential contest, but his decision to stop presidential endorsements is not unreasonable.  It is virtually inconceivable to me that any American voter changes his or her vote for president based on who newspaper editorial boards recommend.  That is to say, newspaper endorsements at the level of presidential elections may not be entirely meaningless, but they change no votes.  By the time a newspaper publishes its endorsement, every voter has been swamped, flooded, and overwhelmed by thousands of stories in the newspapers, reports on television news, obnoxious ads in every available media, mailings, visitors at the front door, and text messages all designed to affect his or her vote.

Trick or treat!  We had only 4 visits this afternoon, a total of fewer than 10 kids, all in costumes.

Geri goes to Ellis' volleyball 'practice' this evening.  This afternoon,, Ellis had a rehearsal for her role in this year's Nutcracker.

Anniversaries thoughts.  I wonder what the real story is behind Constantine's seeing "In hoc signo vinces."  Regardless, his supposed but doubted conversion to Christianity marked the beginning of the corrupt relationship between the poobahs of the Church and the poobahs of the State.  I recall that those words appeared on every pack of Pall Mall cigarettes in my smoking days.

The Tribune predicted no war with Japan.  Less than 6 weeks later, Pearl Harbor.  This is the same paper remembered for its headline on November 3, 1948: "Dewey Defeats Truman!"

Many Catalonians are still working to secede from Spain.  How long will it be before Texas or some other Red state tries to secede from the U.S. if Kamala Harris wins this election?

10/26/24

 Saturday, October 26, 2024

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I was in bed by 9, awake at 3:30, and up by 4:00. I let Lilly out into the 40° morning around 6:00 and lit the first fireplace log of the season.   At 7:30, a small, young, scraggly coyote walked by my window, next to the bird feeders. 

Prednisone, day 165, 5 mg., day 16/28.   Prednisone at 4:42.     

Israel has attacked Iran which has verbally responded that it has "a duty" to respond.  The US and UK respond that Israel has "a right" to defend itself.  Iraq, Syria, and other countries say Iran has "a right" to defend itself.  There are no aggressors, only defenders.  Who started the exchange of hostilities?  No one.  Tit for tat.  Tat for tit.  When will it become unrestricted warfare?  What will be America's involvement?

Email to Solas, 6:54 A.M.: "Hi, Sweetie.  I read Jay Kuo's most recent posting and Heather Cox Richardson's.  I learned last night of the decision by the owners of the LA Times and the Washington Post to pull the papers' intended endorsements of Kamala Harris.  I also know that the most recent - and last - respected polls show Harris and Trump in a dead heat, 48/48 in the Times poll and 47/47 in the other (CNN?) poll.  I would rhetorically ask what this says about the U.S., but we know the answer to that question.  America has long, perhaps forever, had a sizable fascist element.  I wonder whether this may be true of any large polity.  People who are harsh in their judgments of the German (and Austrian) people who supported Hitler in the 1930s and 40s foolishly think that they would have acted differently if they had been in the same social, economic, and historical circumstances.  They're fooling themselves.  It's hard for me to imagine myself with the Seig Heil crowds but then I remember I voted for Goldwater in 1964.  There were and are plenty of homegrown fascists here as Sinclair Lewis demonstrated in "It Can't Happen Here" in 1935.  Britain had its Oswald Moseley and Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor.  In any event, most of the Western World is turning rightward and it appears it may now be our turn.  That said, I'm pretty despondent over the situation.  Nate Silver, the NYTimes numbers guy, said in his recent column that his gut tells him Trump will win.  My gut says the same.  By hook or by crook.  By popular vote, electoral vote, in the House of Representatives or the Supreme Court, wherever, whatever, whenever.  By chicanery or otherwise.  I'm inclined to agree with the now-deceased Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."  By that standard, it would be hard for anyone to beat Donald Trump, the psychopath/sociopath.  I've lived too long and read too much history to believe that anything good can come out of a second, well-informed, much savvier Trump presidency.  I am despondent at the prospect, not so much for myself who must at some not-too-distant point pass on from this 'vale of tears,' but for you and Andy, the grandchildren, Steve and David and their families, all the younger people who will live with the consequences of a second Trump presidency and probably a Trump-dominated Congress and Supreme Court.  I'm glad you have acquired German citizenship.  I know Germany has its own significant challenges but I'm hopeful that Germany, having lived through its own catastrophic experiences with fascism and autocracy, won't sink to America's level.  On this side of the pond, I'm shaking in my boots and barely holding on to the hope that somehow Trump will lose." 

10/25/24

 Friday, October 25, 2024

1954 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower offered aid to the Prime Minister of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm

1962 US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson demanded that the USSR UN representative answer regarding Cuban missile bases, saying, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over"

1963 Anti-Kennedy "WANTED FOR TREASON" pamphlets were scattered in Dallas

2020 Pope Francis announced the appointment of 13 new cardinals including 1st African American Wilton Daniel Gregory

2021 Elon Musk made $25 billion in one day pushing his estimated worth to $255.2 billion, likely making him the richest person ever according to Forbes

In bed by 9, awake around 3;30 and lay in bed half-awake until 4:40 when I crawled out of bed.  I cleaned up the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher while I listened with my earpods to Brahms's German Requiem, a magnificent, lush work of choral and orchestral music, even while tending to the dishes.   It is one of my favorite pieces of music and it pleases me to know that it was occasioned by the death of Brahm's mother.  Brahms was a religious skeptic and drafted the libretto with no references to Jesus. ,,, Lilly didn't show up until 8:15.    

Prednisone, day 164, 5 mg., day 15/28.  Prednisone at 5:00.  Cinnamon swirl cake at 5:30.  Morning meds near 6:00.  Trulicity injection at 9:45.

Looking back. Today marks 11 months since Andy drove me to the VA emergency department with severe pain, a "flare" of my interstitial cystitis/lesions in my bladder.  It's also 11 months since my last cup of coffee, bottle or can of any soft drink, and my last glass of wine or of any alcohol.  Andy was my 'guardian angel' because Geri was down with covid. One year ago today, I called and spoke with Ed Felsenthal and his eldest daughter Mary Fran sent me, for the second time, this photo of Ed and me at Lyn's wake.  I was smiling foolishly because one of Ed's other 4 daughters had just said something funny.  Considering the occasion, it wasn't to be expected that Ed would be smiling though Lyn's death after so much suffering must have occasioned mixed emotions in Ed.  Two years ago today I was thinking about the 2022 elections and the Senate.  I wrote in this journal:

Dead Heats:  The U. S. Senate races in Ohio (J.D. Vance v. Tim Ryan), Pennsylvania (Mehmet Oz v. John Fetterman), Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto and Adam Laxalt), and Wisconsin (Ron Johnson v. Mandela Barnes) are in a dead heat 2 weeks before the election. The races in New Hampshire and North Carolina are also very close and could go either way.  The pessimist in me, or the realist, sees most of these races breaking for the Republicans down the stretch and the Republicans regaining control of the Senate and the House next January.  Crime (a dog whistle for race), inflation (especially gas and food, and housing prices) will trump (pun intended) abortion, strong employment, and legislative accomplishments.  I can't help thinking that we have crossed the tipping point and the country has moved from a center-right/center-left polity towards right-wing authoritarianism a/k/a some variant of fascism.  As I said 100 times to Kitty, I hope I'm wrong.

I was wrong about the Republicans regaining control of the Senate because both Fetterman and Masto won their contests, but I still think and fear that the country is moving to some variant of fascism.  We'll know sometime after November 5.  The pessimist/cynic in me still thinks Trump will defeat Harris and that it won't be all that close.  Again, I hope I'm wrong.  Trump has taken to calling the United States a "garbage can", making immigrants and asylum seekers "garbage."  I assume he would say the same of my Irish immigrant maternal grandparents.

Catherine O'Shea Healy, an immigrant

Mary Healy Clausen, daughter of the immigrant and first-generation American

Captain Charles D. Clausen, USMC, grandson of the immigrant and second-generation American

I missed my VA appointment with Deena, my lymphedema specialist, this morning.  It's the second time I have missed an appointment with her.  I'm disgusted with myself.  Absent-minded, scatterbrained.  I'm living too long, remembering my Aunt Mary, Uncle Bod's wife, asking God, 'What are you waiting for, I'm ready.'  By that time she was in the nursing home, Kitty fearing she would burn the house down with her Alzheimer's.  I think of Ray Aiken after he had retired and was beset with Alzheimer's introducing himself to me - twice - at some law school function. 

The Oven Bird

BY ROBERT FROST

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

The Widow's Lament in Springtime

William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard / where the new grass / flames as it has flamed / often before but not  / with the cold fire  //that closes round me this year.  / Thirtyfive years / I lived with my husband.  / The plumtree is white today  / with masses of flowers.  /Masses of flowers  / load the cherry branches / and color some bushes  /yellow and some red  / but the grief in my heart / is stronger than they  / for though they were my joy  /formerly, today I notice them  /and turn away forgetting.  / Today my son told me  / that in the meadows,  / at the edge of the heavy woods  / in the distance, he saw  / trees of white flowers.  / I feel that I would like  / to go there  / and fall into those flowers  / and sink into the marsh near them.

Crabbed Age and Youth

William Shakespeare

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: 

Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care; 

Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; 

Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. 

Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; 

Youth is nimble, age is lame; 

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; 

Youth is wild, and age is tame. 

Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee; 

O, my love, my love is young! 

Age, I do defy thee: O, sweet shepherd, hie thee, 

For methinks thou stay'st too long.

10/24/24

 Thursday, October 24, 2024

1948 Pope Pius XII published encyclical In Multiplicibus Curis

1954 Dwight D. Eisenhower pledges United States' support to South Vietnam

1962 Soviet ships approached but stop short of the US blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis

In bed around 10, up at 6:12 and let Lilly out around 8. 

Prednisone day 163, 5 mg., day 14/28.    Prednisone at 6:20.  Breakfast of corned beef hash and 3 basted eggs at 8:45.  'Morning meds' at 1:10 p.m.

Logbook: Morning spent barely reading thenewspapers and nodding off despite long time in bed overnight.

11 a.m.  Shower, shave, dress.

Noonish.  Mix and bake a cinnamon loaf.

12:30.  Filled two weeks worth of medications in pill boxes. 

1:45  Filled the bird feeder tube.

2:00 I removed the cinnamon loaf for its pan and glazed it.  Looking out the kitchen window, I noticed that the robins have started gathering together and eating the red berries on our trees along County Line Road.  Do robins actually gather in flocks at the time of year or do they just appear to be flocking because they all show up on these trees when their berries are ripe enough to eat?  Will we spot a flock of cedar waxwings this year on these trees?  Fingers crossed. 

3:00 I went to Sendik's to pick up some cereal and Listerine.

  

This is the note I found on my recliner as I started the day.  I love her humor.

10/23/24

 Wednesday, October 23, 2024

1943 First Jewish transport out of Rome reached Birkenau

1973 Richard Nixon agreed to turn over White House tape recordings to Judge John Sirica

1983 Suicide terrorist truck bomb killed 243 US personnel in Beirut

1991 Clarence Thomas was sworn in as US Supreme Court Justice

In bed at 9 an up at 5 to let Lilly out into the cold, windy morning.  The wind is WNW at 15 mph gusting to 30 mph.  Thousands of tiny locust leaves are falling like ochre snowdrops caught in the light of our outdoor light fixtures.  Lilly wasn't so hesitant to leave the house today or to step off the sidewalk onto the north lawn to do her business.  I let her out again at 7:30, in daylight, and no hesitancy.  I saw a neighbor wearing a winter jacket walking her dogs on Wakefield.  The "feels like" temperature is 40°. 

Prednisone, day 162, 5 mg., day 13/28.  Prednisone at 5 a.m.  "Morning" meds at 4 p.m.  Bad day.

I want to scream or to break something.  I just tried to call the cashier at the checkout counter at the Fox Point Best Buy where I purchased an adapter for my external microphone for this laptop. I may have left the microphone on the counter; in any event, I can't find it.  I called the store and connected with a computerized voice giving me several options, none of which would connect me with the cashier.  After trying a couple of times to have my call transferred, I was connected to someone in India  When I explained what I was trying to accomplish, she told me I would have to call the Fox Point store directly, which I had just done.  I foolishly tried again, connecting with the computerized voice and got nowhere.  ARRGH!!!  Modern life.  Computers.  Businesses doing everything they can to avoid paying human beings to provide customer service.

Despairing.  The election is less than two weeks away.  In hiw op-ed today, Nate Silver said that the election is up for grabs, 50 - 50, but his gut tells him Trump will win and he suspects that the guts of a great many Democrats are telling them the same thing.  My gut too.  According to Silver's model, there’s about a 60 percent chance that one candidate will sweep at least six of seven battleground states.  Considering that Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona are in that mix, is it even conceivable that Harris will sweep six of these states?  I don't think so.

Words fail me.  That I should have lived so long as to see such a possibility or probability.  

10/22/24

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

1962 US President John F. Kennedy made a live television address about Soviet missile bases in Cuba and imposes a naval blockade on Cuba, beginning the Cuban Missile Crisis

1978 Pope John Paul II was inaugurated as Pope

2018 A pipe bomb was sent to George Soros' New York home address, first Democrat to receive series of pipe bombs in US

2019 Top US diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, testified President Donald Trump tied aid to Ukraine to demands the country open an investigation into the Biden family

In bed at 9:15, up at 2:20 to let Lilly out.  She left the doorway without hesitating this morning but then did her normal look-around on the sidewalk, turned around, and came back into the house without relieving herself.  She never stepped onto the grass.  I let her out again at 7:00 in the predawn light and she went out willingly.  Geri got up a little after 7 and called me to the sunroom to see the colors of the foliage that had changed overnight.  I let Lilly out for a third time at 7:25/

Prednisone, day 161, 5 mg., day 12/28.  Prednisone at 5 a.m.  Two toasted and buttered slices of Dave's Bread with blueberry preserves a little later.  Morning meds at 7:15.

Voting Day.  Geri and I took our absentee ballots to the Village Hall this afternoon, the first day to submit ballotsin person.  There were two clerks accepting ballots and registering people to vote and a line of registrants waiting.  We should have a big turnout of Bayside voters by Election Day on November 5. 

Marquette Law School Oral History Project.   An exchange of emails with Jane Casper.

[October 21, 3:11 p.m.]]  Dear Chuck,

Please find attached a list of topics and questions for our Monday, October 28, 11:00 AM Oral History Initiative Zoom interview.  As indicated previously, these topics/questions are not written in stone; feel free to add or delete, embellish or ignore as you see fit.  The interview is meant to cover your experience as a law student in the late 1960s and your experience as a law professor from the 1970s through the 2000s.  You will note that I've tried to balance the questions/topics with each of your law school lives: student and professor. But again, feel free to focus on one or the other if you wish.

I have also attached a summary of the years you were listed among the faculty, at least as far as Jim Mumm could research for me and as far as I could find perusing Law School catalogues from the 1970s.

I have two questions for you as I prepare my introduction for the interview:

1. How would you like to be referred to throughout the interview?  Attorney Clausen? Professor Clausen? Chuck?

2.  Where will you be physically located during the interview?  At a home office? Some other location?

I will email Zoom connection details in the next day or two.  In the meantime, please let me know if you have any problem opening the attachment or have questions about the interview itself.  Once more, thank you for your participation in the Law School's Oral History Initiative.

Sincerely,

Jane Casper

. . .

[Today,  6:04 a.m.] Hi, Jane (and Chris).

I had no trouble opening the documents you sent me and I thank you for them. I also thank Jim Mumm for compiling the list of courses I taught a total of about 25 years on the faculty, but note that the list is incomplete because faculty teaching assignments were not typically printed in full in the annual catalogs, bulletins, etc..

In my first stint on the regular faculty, from 1970 to 1975, my primary teaching assignments were the three Property courses plus Legal Writing. I was the first MULS faculty member assigned to teach Legal Writing and I had every member of the 1L class as my students, about 120 students. I broke them down into 5 sections and met with them individually in my office every morning Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. It was an oppressive teaching load, grading, correcting, and commenting on so many written assignments and meeting individually with so many students and in subsequent years, the work was spread out among the faculty and eventually to adjuncts and ultimately to the much more developed Legal Writing program that now exists at the law school. In that first year of teaching, I also taught Property I, Property II, Agency and Partnership Law, and Property Security, a hybrid course focused on real estate mortgages and security interests in non-real property. When I returned to the faculty in 1977, I was assigned litigation courses, Civil Procedure and Evidence. After Dean Boden died, I picked up his Legal Ethics/Professional Responsibility course. When Ray Aiken moved on from the Trial Practice course, I picked up that course also. I left the full-time faculty in 1986 and returned in 1993 until 2001, when I retired and became Executive Director of The House of Peace, a community center at 17th and Walnut in the inner city maintained by the Capuchin Franciscans. During the third period on the full-time faculty, I again taught civil litigation courses and supervised judicial and other internships as Director of Clinical Education. In the years befor I retired, I also supervised a legal clinic for the elderly hosted by Gesu Parish. At the House of Peace, I invited the MULS legal clinic to locate there; it had been hosted at St. Francis of Assisi Parish when I was a member of the Parish Council there.

Several years ago I wrote a memoir of my early years for my children. Its penultimate section dealt with the years when I was a law student, 1967 to 1970. Those were challenging years in the nation's, the Catholic Church's, Milwaukee's, the law school's, and my personal history. That section is 27 single-spaced pages. I will try to attach it to this email. If you care to read it, you will see that it contains some very personal reflections on what occurred during those years, reflections that many people did not and do not share, but they were and are my reflections, greatly influenced by my experiences during those turbulent years. I'm in my mid-80s now and was in my late 20s in my law school years, but I confess my values and biases haven't changed much over more than half a century.

Responding to your questions: You can call me whatever you feel comfortable with and whatever suits your purposes, Chuck or Professor Clausen, whatever. And during the interview, I will be at home on my laptop, probably in our den/tv room. If you need to call me, my cell phone is (414) ***-**** and our landline is (414) ***-****..

[11:54 a.m]  Thank you for all of this, Chuck.  I was pretty sure that Jim and I had just scratched the surface of your teaching assignments. Also thanks for sharing your memoir.  I skimmed it this morning over breakfast but look forward to reading it more attentively in the days ahead.  I was in high school in the mid-60s and grew up in Oconomowoc.  My parents owned a corner grocery store and we lived above it.  Oconomowoc was not the bedroom community it is now so we got our Milwaukee news from the papers and TV coverage.  We read about curfews and marches but it was not part of our everyday experiences.

BTW: In one of the articles/blogs I found while researching, I saw that you mentioned attorney Harry Peck as having a somewhat busy practice obtaining deferments for draft eligible college students in the late 1960s/early 1970s.  I never met Harry Peck but my husband John Casper was related to him (Harry and John's mother were first cousins).   I did not know John in 1970 but from stories he has told over the years, he (John) had a relatively high draft number and was being called by recruiters to sign up for the reserves.  Harry told him he could get him a deferment if he got braces on his teeth. As much as John didn't want to get drafted, he didn't think it was ethical to falsely obtain a deferment for a condition he didn't have.  (He did and still does have perfectly straight teeth.) So he signed up for the Army Reserves and was a medic.

I will be in touch soon with Zoom connection details.  /s/ Jane

[12:43 p.m.]  Hi, Jane. First, I salute your husband John for serving in the Army reserves as a medic. We Marines and former Marines have nothing but the highest respect and near reverence for medics, or 'corpsmen' as we referred to the Navy hospital corpsmen who tended to wounded Marines. My brother-in-law Jim was an Army medic in the mid-1950s. I was also pleased to learn that your Mom and Dad owned a corner grocery store in Oconomowoc. When I was a boy in Chicago after World War II, our neighborhood 'mom and pop' grocery store was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Kelly who lived across the street from us. My Dad was one of the Marines on Iwo Jima and returned from the war with PTSD that kept him from steady employment for years after the war. I vividly remember going many times to Mr. and Mrs. Kelly's little store and getting food "on the cuff" when we had no money. Mr. Kelly kept our tab on strips of cash register paper he kept in a cigar box. (They didn't have a cash register, only the role of cash register paper.) So in my world, both medics and corpsmen and mom and pop grocery store owners have revered status.

Secondly, after sending you that chapter of my memoir, I read it myself and saw that it got re-formatted in the process of attachment to the email, making it harder to read, especially where the text had included long-ish quotes which lost their indentations. And I was embarrassed to see how many typos and misspellings are in it. You would think that as former law review editor-in-chief and professor would have been a better proofreader. I apologize! It shows how misleading class ranks and fancy titles can be!

[3:26] Dear Chuck,  We are in the midst of preparing for your Monday, October 28 11:00 AM Marquette University Law School Oral History Initiative Zoom interview.  In doing so, I have a few details to provide and two quick questions to ask:

1.  I will begin the Zoom interview with a brief introduction to the Initiative, the date and location of the interview, followed by a welcome and thanks to you for your participation.

2.  I will refer to you as Professor Clausen throughout the interview.  I think that best captures your years at the Law School.  You can refer to me as Jane when/if needed.

3.  Per your email, I understand that you will be in your Milwaukee area home during the interview.

4.  To what email address should our audio-visual technician (Patrick Vang, cc'd here) send the Zoom invitation?  I assume it is to charlesclausen2003@yahoo.com but I want to be sure that is the address you prefer.

5.  Would you like AV tech Patrick to set up a Zoom "test" a few days in advance of the interview?  No doubt you are experienced with Zoom technology and a rehearsal is not necessary; however, if you would like a test run before next Monday, please let me know.

In the meantime, Chuck, do not hesitate to contact me via email or cell phone (414-426-9531 should you have any questions about the interview.  I look forward to our conversation.

[4:24]  Hi, Jane. The email address we have been using is the one we should stay with. It is a gracious mistake to assume that I am familiar with Zoom technology and protocols. I have used it in the past, but not always successfully. A test run sounds like a good idea.