12/4/24

 Wednesday, December 4, 2024

D+29

1674 Father Marquette built the first dwelling in what is now Chicago

1943 MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and former MULS dean announced that any baseball club may sign Negro players

1961 MOMA hung Henri Matisse's picture "Le Bateau" right side up, after a visitor noticed it was displayed upside down, the first of 116,000 people in 47 days to notice 

2014 US authorities promised a "fair" investigation into the death of Black Eric Garner after a White NYC  police officer who held him in a chokehold faced no charges

I was in bed by 9:45, awake at 1:30 thinking of Lilly, and up at 2:10. I lit a log in the fireplace by 2:30 and loaded the dishwasher around 4. 

Prednisone, day 204, 7.5 mg., day 19.   Prednisone at 4:30 with peppermint vanilla cream tea.  I see Dr. Cheng at the VA PM&R Clinic this afternoon about my shoulders, back, and hips.  Morning meds at 4:45.   

Dog's Death by John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.

Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn

To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor

And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.

The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.

As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin

And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed

And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.

We found her twisted and limp but still alive.

In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur

And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.

Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,

Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,

Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame

Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor

To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism?   There was a story in yesterday's WaPo about a Vietnamese court sentencing a Vietnamese national for siphoning $12 billion from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she controlled, into shell companies.  How is it that in a Communist nation,on one can own a private bank with sufficient assets to permit the embezzlement of $12 billion?  As in the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party runs the government and does so with an iron hand, but what about the economy is "communist" as opposed to "capitalist" if private citizens can acquire massive wealth and own and control private enterprises?  When the Communist Soviet Union dissolved, the vast assets or wealth of the country promptly ended up in the ownership of private oligarchs.  How so?  According to Forbes Magazine, in 2022 China had 607 billionaires which put the country second in the world, after the United States (735).  With only 5 billionaires, Vietnam is a piker compared to China, but nonetheless, I wonder how it is that there is so much private wealth in these supposedly communist nations.  In terms of economic systems, how do Vietnam and China differ from Hitler's fascist nation?  Both China and Vietnam are one-party states, but so are Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Nicaragua.  So was Nazi Germany.  Are there essential differences in these economic systems?

Both Geri and I are feeling sort of stunned today after losing Lilly last night.  We're not sure it has really sunk in.  We haven't told anyone yet, not wanting to talk about it.  I've started to tear up twice today, including now as I write about it.  I can't help it; having her "put down," "put to sleep," or euthanized seems such an act of betrayal.  I need to remember her distress while unable to stand, during her seizure, thrashing about helplessly, Geri down on the floor with her, comforting her.  I'm getting teary again, remembering it, and remembering her on the gurney at the animal hospital, wrapped in a blanket, looking out from under the blanket.  I need to stop now. . .  two or three more welling-ups after my appointment at the VA.  We had dinner at McDonald's tonight.

My PM&R VA appointment with Dr. Cheng was uneventful, except for the enjoyable chat we had our many Jewish friends, many of his Jewish friends encountered during his schooling at Albert Einstein Medical School in NYC, associated with Montefiore Hospital.

 Nasty snow this evening with lots of blowing snow.  Wind advisory tonight, gusts close to 50 mph, sustained winds close to 30 mph.  WeEnergies reports power outages in Mequon.