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."
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:
How prescient.. . . 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
(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.
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