11/29/24

 Friday, November 29, 2024

D+24

1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo erupted after UN votes to partition Palestine, with the cost of 75 lives and the disappearance of the medieval manuscript the Aleppo Codex

1948 Puppet TV show "Kukla, Fran, & Ollie" starring Fran Allison debuted on NBC's WNBQ in Chicago, Illinois

1961 Following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion CIA Director Allen Dulles resigned and was replaced by John McCone

1961 Freedom Riders were attacked by a white mob at a bus station in Mississippi

1963  LBJ set up the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of t JFK

1964, The Roman Catholic Church in the US replaced Latin with English

1967 Robert McNamara was elected president of the World Bank

2019 Wood fragment believed to be from Jesus'manger was returned to Bethlehem after 1400 years by Pope Francis

In bed around 9:30, up with a LOW GLUCOSE ALARM (68) at 2:45, remedied by a cough drop, up for good at 5:35l.  Outdoor temperature is 21°, wind chill 2°, expected high of 27°  

Prednisone, day 199, 7.5 mg., day 15.  Prednisone at 6 a.m.  Both shoulders are sore, the right one sorer.   

Geri got home around 8:15 yesterdaywith Steve and Nikki and a leftover pumpkin pie (!) from David's dinner.  We schmoozed for an hour or so and then everybody went to bed, stuffed with Thanksgiving dinners.  Today, they put up the Christmas tree and OMG, t'is the season already!

Thank you letter to the VA.  Today I drove to the post office, bought a book of stamps,  and mailed the thank you letter I drafted some time ago but only signed yesterday

 

November 28, 2024

Thanksgiving Day

James D. McLain         Andreea Anton, M.D.

Executive Director        Chief of Staff

VA Milwaukee Medical Health Care VA Milwaukee Medical Health Care

Zablocki VA Medical Center Zablocki VA Medical Center

5000 West National Avenue 5000 West National Avenue

Milwaukee, WI 53295-1000 Milwaukee, WI 53295-1000

 

Dear Director McLain and Dr. Anton:

I have been receiving medical care from the providers and staff at the Zablocki Medical Center since 2017.  I am an 83 year old former Marine and Vietnam veteran.  I did not enroll in the VA medical program until I was 76 years old because I had some skepticism about the program and I had good health care from local private providers.  

I write to tell you that I regret having waited so long to enroll in the VA program.  It would be hard for me to overstate how grateful I have been for the highly professional care I have received not only from my primary care physician and the staff in the Gold Clinic, but also in the many specialized clinics within the Medical Center.  It is hard for me to imagine receiving superior care anywhere else, though my long experience with private providers in the Milwaukee was, on the whole, excellent.  I needn’t tell either of you what a great group of health care providers you have at Zablocki but I want to put my appreciation in writing, ‘on the record’, and, by copies of this letter, to personally thank at least some of the many professionals who have helped me over the last 8 years.  

I am assigned to the Gold Clinic where my primary care physician for the last 6  years has been  Doctor Kumkum Chattopadhyay.  I have also received much help from nurse Kim Kitzke , pharmacist Jill Hansen, and from staff member Verniece  Bearden and others.

I have also received much help from the therapists and staff members of the Outpatient Physical Therapy Clinic, from the doctors, nurses, and staff of the Physical Medicine & Rehab Clinic, from the Urology Clinic, the Dermatology Clinic, the Audiology Clinic, the Eye Clinic, the Pain Clinic, the Prosthetics Department, the Whole Health Program, the Rheumatology Clinic, and the Emergency Department.  This list is not complete.   I know I haven’t exhausted the resources of the Medical Center, but I sure have taken advantage of many of them over the last 8 years and I am grateful to all of them.

I especially want to mention another aspect of receiving help at Zablocki, an aspect that has been every bit as important to me as the professional care I have received.  There is a spirit at this Medical Center that is unlike that at any other private or public hospital, medical center, or clinic where I have been a patient.  I know I won’t succeed in putting it into words and I want to avoid getting maudlin about it, but I feel the spirit each time I come in for an appointment.  There is a sense of kinship or fellowship with the other patients I encounter.  It comes from the fact that all of us are military service veterans.  I usually drive in from the Mitchell Boulevard entrance.  I drive through the National Cemetery looking at the thousands of headstones, all the same size and shape, none larger than any other based on rank, length of service, or decorations earned.  I drive through the historic Soldiers Home campus to arrive at Zablocki where I see so many vets, most of us but not all old, many of us in some stage of decrepitude.  Some are missing limbs.  Some are in wheelchairs, or are holding onto walkers.  Some are carrying wounds no one can see.  They were all young once and for a time  wore a uniform.  None was above serving, some in the worst of circumstances.  Sometimes we talk with one another in an elevator or in a waiting room, other times we don’t.  We sit quietly and await our turn.  But when I see someone needing help with anything, I always see one or more  of the other vets offer to help.  It’s an unusual visit when I don’t see some act of kindness in the corridors, elevators, and waiting rooms.

The main point of my letter is this: I believe that the spirit of good will at Zablocki is due in very large measure to the generally welcoming and caring treatment the vets receive from the health care providers and staff at the Medical Center.  If Zablocki had a different spirit, if we patients were made to feel like numbers processed through an indifferent government bureaucracy, the spirit in the elevators and waiting rooms would be very different.  In the military, it’s called morale and anyone who has served in a unit with bad morale knows that it drags everybody down.  The opposite is true here.  So I say thank you to each of the hundreds of Zablocki workers who  have smiled at me in the corridors, who have asked if he or she could help me find my destination, who have asked me whether I could use a wheelchair when I arrive, who have been patient with me when I am confused or troubled about something, or who have otherwise been kind to me and to the thousands of other vets who regularly rely on all of you at the Zablocki VA Medical Center.

I am an old guy feeling older every day and I’m not a Pollyanna.  I know there are occasional problems at Zablocki, some misunderstandings, some employee and management problems, some patient problems, and some bad days.  But I have had many hundreds of encounters with  Zablocki workers, professional and otherwise, over the last 8 years and I am thankful that the overwhelming majority of those encounters have been positive and spirit-lifting.  I’m grateful for that and thankful to all those who have eased and enriched my life and the lives of so many other veterans.  Thank you to all of them.

Sincerely,

Charles D. Clausen “6341”

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, lest we forget that just as Zionist Jews drove Palestinian Arabs out of Palestine in the Nakba, neighboring Arab states drove Jews out of their territories. Zionism gave rise to multiplicious wrongs.

Second, I was a 7-year-old Chicagoan who lived Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, Burr Tilstrom's creation.  I would never miss the show when I could see it, but we didn't have a television set in those days after the war.  When our neighbors the Semraus got a tv, Kitty and i would watch the show with Cathy and Rosemary Semrau.  The cast included not only Kukla and Oliver J. Dargon, but also Madame Oglepuus, Fletcher Rabbit, Ollie's neice Deloras Dragon, and Cecil Bill.  One day at St. Leo Grammar School, my classmate Robert Schulke was asked a question by the teacher and he didn't know the correct answer.  I whispered it to him:  "Cecil Rhodes."  Robert answered: "Cecil Bill."  The class cracked up and I think I got in trouble with the nun, but I can't remember for sure since it was so long ago.  What I can't forget, however, was Robert's "Cecil Bill" answer.

Third, the bellicose Dullles brothers, John Foster and Alan had a lot of bad ideas.

Fourth, 1961 was the summer of the Freedom Riders down South and the summer that my best friend Ed Fellesthat and I decided it was a good idea to hitchhike through the Deep South from the Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, TX to the Naval Amphibious Station, Little Creek, VA, where we had left Ed's car. when we were airlifted to Corpus Christi.  From my memoir:

When we were released from active duty, Ed and I stuck out our thumbs and hitchhiked 1700 miles back to Little Creek.  We hitched day and night.  One of us would stand at the side of the highway with his arm extended while the other stretched out alongside the road trying to get some sleep until the next ride came along.  I don’t recall whether we used a hand-lettered sign (“U. S. Navy”) or not.  I think probably not because I vividly recall being asked upon being picked up “You boys ain’t freedom riders, are you?”  We stayed at a motel one night for sure (we were in bad need of shower facilities) and perhaps two.  The motel night I remember was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  Hattiesburg was a ‘dry town,’ no bars or liquor stores.  Ed and I were wiped out after a few days on the road and wanted to relax with a drink.  The gentleman who picked us up on the highway and drove us into town dropped us off at the motel and went to his private club to get us a bottle of whiskey.  We thanked him for his kindness as he left our room and he said “No need, boys.  We do this for ‘most anybody, ’cept’n niggers.”  Another driver in North Carolina, a dentist, gave us a jar of his moonshine that he kept under the passenger seat of his car.  Spending days on the road in the summer of 1961 mooching rides from drivers in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia was a unique introduction to civility and incivility of the South during the bloody era of the civil rights movement, but not one I would like to repeat.

Fifth, the Warren Commission was supposed to answer all questions about the assassination of JFK.  People are still arguing about its conclusions today.  Was there a second shooter on 'the grassy knoll"?  Were the Soviets behind it? .

Sixth, moving away from the "Tridentine" Latin mass to the vernacular English mass was a tremendous jolt for practicing Catholics, a 'Protestant' move.  Here again, people are still arguing about it  with reactionary traditionalists pressuring for a return to the Latin mass, or "the magic show" as we used to call it.]

Seventh, having very badly screwed up the American situation in Vietnam, with his 'best and brightest' team of Ivy Leaguers at the Pentagon, McNamara was finally ground down by his errors and resigned only to be rewarded with the presidency of the World Bank.  So it goes.

Lastly,  a wood fragment from Jesus's manger in Bethlehem?  Words fail me.