The Tuesday, December 10, 2024
D+35
1978 Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel
1981 El Salvador army killed 900
1984 South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu was presented with his Nobel Peace Prize
1994 Nobel Peace Prize was presented to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat
In bed at 9, up at 5
Prednisone, day 210, 7.5 mg., day 25. Prednisone at 5:10., my shoulders are painful, especially the right one as usual, and peripheral neuropathy in my fingers
LTMW at a red-bellied woodpecker pounding away at a suet cake. Do they get CTE from concussions? The red-bellied is followed by a little downy woodpecker who seems almost delicate by comparison, and then by a red-bellied nuthatch, more delicate still.
A journal entry two years ago today:
Russia:Ukraine::United States:Cuba The NYT headline is ‘Cuba Is Depopulating’: Largest Exodus Yet Threatens Country’s Future. We Americans piss and moan and clutch our pearls when Russia cruelly imposes its will on Ukraine, displeased that Ukraine aspires to join 'the West,' become a member of the EU and ideally a member of NATO. Ever since Fidel Castro won the Revolutionary War in Cuba, the US has engaged in a similar kind of imperialism with respect to Cuba, not with the kinetic violence of bombs and missiles (at least not since the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs) but by slow ruthless economic strangulation. In the Land of the Free, we are not free to travel directly to Cuba, nor are Cubans, desperate to flee from the wreckage America has made of their homeland, free to travel to the US. “This is not rocket science: If you devastate a country 90 miles from your border with sanctions, people will come to your border in search of economic opportunity,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser under Mr. Obama and was the point person on talks with Cuba." The critical clause is "if you devastate a country . . .", a reference to what we have done to Cuba and the Cuban people. We make life barely livable for them on the island and then work to keep them imprisoned there. We rightly call the Russians barbaric; what are we?
Thinking about Lilly, Tasha, and my Dad. My grandmother, Charlotte Davis Clausen, died in North Port, Florida in 1995 at age 95. I found this out from my sister Kitty and used it as the occasion to write my father a sympathy letter, my first communication to him in 13 years. When he received my letter, he got my telephone number from Kitty and called me. We spoke without mentioning the fact that we had been incommunicado for those 13 years. A couple of weeks later I flew down to Florida and spent a week with him, again with nary a mention of the fact that he hadn't spoken with each other for 13 years. For the next two years or so, I flew or drove down to spend a week with him 4 times a year. His second wife Grace was by then living in the same nursing home where my grandmother had died. Dad visited her every day and when I was in North Port, I did also. When I was down there, he never drove; he gave me the keys to his car and I did all the driving, just as now I have Andy drive when we're together. On one of my quarterly visits, Grace died, and after I left, he lived alone. On the next visit, Geri went with me and Kitty flew in from Arizona. Over my objection about respecting his protestation about not wanting a dog, Kitty and Geri insisted on getting him a dog to keep him company. They went to the local humane society and found a lovely mature dog named Tasha, came back, and took Dad and me to the 'pound' where it became clear that Dad did want a dog and Tasha was the dog for him. She came home with us. Thereafter, except during my visits, Dad lived alone with Tasha. After a few years together, Tasha died. I can't remember clearly, but I think I also found out about this from Kitty. We were both concerned about the effect on Dad. I called him and flew down to Florida the very next day to be with him. That was when I first talked with him about moving up to Wisconsin to be near Geri and me. He protested that he "never wanted to be a burden" on me or Kitty. I argued that it was more of a burden flying to Florida four times a year than it would be having him in Milwaukee with us. When I got back to Milwaukee I discussed the matter with Geri and, with her concurrence, called Kitty who agreed that Dad could spend the warmer months with us in Wisconsin and the colder months with her and Jim in Phoenix. Jim agreed. We came at him from both flanks and he, not so reluctantly, agreed. Thus it was that Geri and I and Kitty and Jim came to share the last few years of his life with him. Thus it was that he and I were able to cement the long-delayed friendship that we finally started forming in 1995 when his mother died. Thus it was that Geri and I sold our condo in the Knickerbocker and moved to the house outside Saukville that was so perfectly suited for him. Thus it was that I started and completed my memoir, with the vain hope that it would help my children better understand their grandfather and some of their own paternal history. I was moved to pull together these thoughts today after thinking of Lilly's death which reminded me of Tasha's death and of the great changes that occurred in my life and the lives of Geri's life, Kitty, Jim, and especially my Dad triggered by Tasha's death.
I read a short story by Albert Camus, "The Guest", an archive selection in yesterday's The Atlantic. As usual, I didn't quite 'get it.' I read it on the Samsung 55-inch TV screen because I am having increasing difficulty reading on my laptop screen, even with enlarged fonts. Too much screen time, I suspect.
Our Senators and Our Health. From this morning's NYTimes:
More than 75 Nobel Prize winners have signed a letter urging senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
RFK, Jr. is a crackpot and of course, he should not be confirmed by the Senate, but in our Brave New MAGAWorld, there is every reason to believe that he will be confirmed thanks to the Republican majority. who will gladly put public health at risk to preserve their own political positions against an assault by Trump and this MAGA True Believers. It is these same Republican senators we need to call out for our appallingly bad national health care system that Luigi Mangione berated in his manifesto. Why is America the only industrialized nation without some form of universal health care? Because our government is " the best government money can buy" and it is bought and paid for in large part by the healthcare industry. Will the vast public outrage against the health insurance industry triggered by the murder of the United Healthcare CEO move the Republicans in the House and Senate to work toward a single-payer system, one without the need for private, profit-driven health insurance corporations? Never happen. USA, USA, USA!!!
From the January 2025 issue of The Atlantic, "THE LONGEVITY REVOLUTION: We need to radically rethink what it means to be old" by Jonathan Rauch
LTMW at a doe and her two fawns eating berries from our County Line trees. They were on the front lawn when I went out to fill the niger tube and the sunflower tube. I got the 'deer in the headlights' look from the doe as she stood her ground. I love living in an animal sanctuary. Bring on the turkeys!Copious evidence shows that most of what people think they know about life after 50 is wrong. Aging per se (as distinct from sickness or frailty) is not a process of uniform decline. It brings gains, too: greater equanimity, more emotional resilience, and what Carstensen and others have called the positivity effect, a heightened appreciation of life’s blessings. Partly for that reason, the later decades of life are, on average, not the saddest but the happiest. Contrary to popular belief, aging does not bring mental stagnation. Older people can learn and create, although their styles of learning and creativity are different than in younger years. Emotional development and maturation continue right through the end of life. And aging can bring wisdom—the ability to rise above self-centered viewpoints, master turbulent emotions, and solve life’s problems—a boon not only to the wise but to everyone around them.
Late adulthood is a time when the prospects for earning diminish but the potential for grandparenting, mentoring, and volunteering peaks. It is—or can be—a time of reorientation and relaunch, a time when zero-sum goals such as social competition and personal ambition yield to positive-sum pursuits such as building community and nurturing relationships.
Geri and I rode in the same elevator at the Marquette Student Union building. Thrilling.
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