Friday, November 8, 2024
D+3
1923 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party staged the "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich, Germany
2014 President Obama authorised the deployment of 1,500 additional troops to help train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State militants
2018 CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's White House clearance was revoked after continuing to question President Donald Trump while an intern tried to wrestle the microphone from him
In bed by 9:15, awake at 2:48, and up at 3:13.
Prednisone, day 178, 5 mg., day 4/5. Prednisone at 4:30 with some soda bread. Morning meds and Trulicity injection at 5:45.
Sedated? I'm feeling that way today. Not depressed, not morose, not beside myself, just calm. I think it's because I expected Trump to win. That expectation was consistent with my pessimistic nature, my hopelessness about American society and culture, about human nature, about our species made 'in the likeness of God,' about Nieburh's Moral Man and Immoral Society, but at bottom, it's chickenshit, protecting myself from disappointment when the dreaded event occurs. The news today reveals that Elon Musk was on Trump's call with Ukraine's Volododyr Zelenski and that Biden has authorized American miliary contractors to work in Ukraine. We are going to be hit with a firehose of frightening news day after day now. God only knows the nasty stuff that will occur once he's in office and crimially immunized by John Roberts and his cronies. Why am I so calm?
MULS ORAL HISTORY. I finished watching Jim Ghiardi's interview by Dan Blinka and earlier watched Frank Daily's, Frank Gimbel's, Mandy Stellman's, and Olivia Brown's. I wondered how and why I was invited to be interviewed. I felt a bit of a chill watching Jim Ghiardi, remembering his imperiousness, his hegemony during the Boden years, wondering if he was the same during the Seitz years, remembering his selfishness. I felt a different kind of chill listering to Olivia Brown sing the praises of PKR in the classroom and in the part-time program, remembering his connivings with Bonnie T. and Jeff whatsisname and its impact on GAC, his betrayal of me with MKM. I got a kick out of Frank Gimbel calling MULS "a vocational school," repeating a frequent charge against the school, especially as compared with UWLS. I also got a kick out of Joan Kessler's description of the law school to which she transferred from UW Law. She reminded me of Jim Ghiardi's (and perhaps Ray Aiken's) practice of having a secretary show up at the classroom door to take attendance at each class.
Family health report. I'm doing better and Geri's doing worse. Her leg is giving her quite a bit of pain. This is worrisome.
Today's FB post: This is a copy of a post from May 25, 2020. On my last visit to our national cemetery and the VA Medical Center, I found that my favorite tree had been removed. I'm sure it wasn't literally 'chopped down,' but it was taken down and is gone. It's destruction now seems somehow symbolic to me.
A photo of my favorite tree at Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee. It's old and gnarled and shades a few of the more than 36,000 veterans buried there. I usually visit the cemetery every time I visit one of the clinics at the Zablocki VA Medical Center that care for me and more than 64,000 other veterans every year. For decades I drove past the National Cemetery on I 94 heading to or from Madison or some other westerly destination. Now I stop in and visit, taking in its beauty and its peacefulness. Many of those buried here lived in the Milwaukee Soldiers Home next to it, authorized by Abraham Lincoln shortly before his assassination to provide care for Civil War veterans. Thankfully, after falling to near ruin, the Soldiers Home and its supporting facilities are being restored to provide housing for veterans who need help.
I never visit Wood, or Zablocki, or the grounds of the Soldiers Home without feeling some emotion, mostly gratitude and a sense of kinship with the 'motley crew' who comprise the other visitors, temporary at Zablocki and permanent at Wood. I'm always conscious of the fact that each of us is special because none of us is special. The medical caregivers at Zablocki don't ask what branch of military service we were in, whether we were officer or enlisted, or whether we served in a war zone. They know we all served somewhere sometime, as ordered. Each headstone in Wood is the same size and material, regardless of the veteran's rank or when or where he or she served. They remind the few visitors who come that each is special because none is special. They almost inevitably bring to mind the adage found on the walls of VFW posts everywhere: All gave some, some gave all.
I still wear on a chain around my old neck the dog tags I wore in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. Not because I'm a militarist since quite the opposite is true. But because they remind me of my abiding kinship with all those vets at Zablocki and all those vets buried at Wood and all who have served and who serve now. And they remind me of our right to expect more of our national leadership than what we have.
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