11/17/24

 Sunday, November 17, 2024

D+12

1894 Serial killer H. H. Holmes was arrested in Boston after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons

1993 US House of Representatives approved Nafta

In bed by 9, awake at 3:46, and up at 4:12.  I let Lilly out around 4:45 but she never got farther than the sidewalk.  As usual, she is restless and pacing.  She comes into the TV room, lies on her mattress for less than a minute, and then is up again moving about, unable to rest.

Prednisone, day 187, 7.5 mg., day 4.   Prednisone at 5:00.  My shoulders are sore but with full ROM.  The right side of my mid- and upper back is painful. CBH & 2 eggs at 7:45.  Morning meds at 8:00.

LTMW I see the first chickadees arrive at the tube feeder at 6:53, followed by house finches and a nuthatch.  The sunrise was at 6:49 with overcast skies.  Ghassan, our Maronite Lebanese neighbor,  and Athena, his bull mastiff, walk by and turn the corner from Wakefield onto County Line at 6:55.  I wonder what goes on in his head and heart as the Israeli war on Hezbollah continues. . . At 12:07, FINALLY, one goldfinch showed up on the niger tube! By 12:40 or so, many goldfinches while sparrows, house finches, and woodpeckers work the sunflower/safflower tube.

 Posted this on FB on November 5, 2020 as a reply to a FB friend’s posting: 

I texted this to Kitty on 11/5/2020:

 I'm afraid I think that "American values" stuff has always been mythical. Hasn't the most enduring American value been white superiority? And male hegemony? And guns and violence? The evidence of how enduring these real 'values' are in our society and culture is awfully (literally) convincing. As an ancient who has benefitted from white male privilege all my life, as I look back on 8 decades of life in the real America, the most hopeful times were also among the most contentious, the late 60s and early 70s when the government was able to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the Medicare Act in 1965, all under President Johnson, and the Environmental Protection Act, the OSHA Act, and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, and other progressive legislation under President Nixon. During much of that time, there were massive demonstrations and even riots in the streets protesting the nation's actions in Vietnam (in which I played a minuscule but guilty role) and our shameful discrimination against our Black fellow citizens. Donald Trump represents the long-simmering pushback against all the progress made in those years and not surprisingly, he can hardly find enough American flags to serve as a backdrop to his fascistic authoritarianism. As Sinclair Lewis wrote: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." Or, in Donald Trump's case, a bible.

Anniversaries:  H. H. Holmes was a serial killer whose exploits were the subject of Erik Larsen's 2003 book The Devil in the White City.   The hotel he built across the street from his pharmacy at 63rd and Wallace in my Englewood neighborhood was where he committed some of his murders.  It was a block or two east of where our family friends the Raschke's lived and had a Mom and Pop grocery store.  The hotel was razed sometime after Holmes's crimes were discovered.  Now the site is occupied by a local post office.

NAFTA is in large measure responsible for the crime and poverty situation in Milwaukee.  Shame on Bill Clinton for signing it.  Shame on the Democratic and Republican legislators for passing it.  The best government money can buy.