Slogthrop Imponderables and Incommensurables: 2/28/2025

Friday, February 28, 2025

D+113. . . . Bad

1933 On Adolf Hitler's advice, German President Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree after the building was destroyed by fire in Berlin; this eliminated many civil liberties in Germany

1953 Crick and Watson discovered the chemical structure of the DNA molecule

2013 The brains of two rats were successfully connected so they could share information

The 2022 UN Landmark climate change report warned that climate change is outpacing human efforts to adapt, with a best-case scenario rise of 1.5C, and 14% of species face a "very high risk of extinction."

In bed around 9:30, awake at 3:40, and up at 3:50 to do a full load of laundry and repeat the drying cycle on a full load of towels in the dryer that were not quite dry. I unloaded and put away the dishes, etc., in the dishwasher, reloaded and restarted it with last night's contributions, and refilled the humidifier. I lit a Kitty candle and sat down to type these words and read the morning papers at 4:25.

Prednisone, day 313, 5 mg., day 24, Kevzara, day 10/14. 2.5 mg. prednisone at 4:45 a.m. and 5 p.m. Other meds at 8:55 a.m. Trulicity injection at 8:50 A.M.

Sunset Song Last night, we watched Terence Davies' beautiful film set in Scotland before and during World War I. The characters are played by Scottish actors I had never before heard of. The lead character, Chris Guthrie Tavendale, was played by Agyness Deyn, her father John Guthrie by Peter Mullan, her brother Will by Jack Greenlees, and her husband Ewan Tavendale by Kevin Guthrie. The plot centers on Chris; she is not only the protagonist but also the narrator. I described the film as beautiful, and indeed it is, but it is not easy to watch as it depicts the hard lives of small farmers in Scotland (and everywhere? At the start of the 20th century. More importantly, it depicts the hard lives of their wives and children, with scenes of marital rape and child abuse. Chris and Will's father is cruel, exercising the prerogatives of the 'king of the castle' on his subservient wife and children. He rapes his wife, beats his son, and tries to rape his daughter. His wife poisons herself and her newborn twins rather than continue to live in the only circumstances available to her. Son Will runs away from the farm to Aberdeen and eventually to Argentina. Chris stayed with her father, but what else could she do? What choices were available to her? The father eventually dies, for which the viewer is thankful, and Chris marries Ewan. The marriage is initially happy but falls apart after Ewan feels pressured to join the army during the Great War. His experiences in the army turn him into a bitter, angry, demanding man who, like Chris' father, treats Chris like a servant and rapes her. He is executed by a firing squad for his unsuccessful attempt to desert from the army, leaving Chris a widow needing to raise their son and tend the farm. It is hardly a happy film, but it is beautifully and thoughtfully done.

As I watched the film, I thought of my own history with my sister Kitty and our war-damaged father. Will's leaving the farm for Aberdeen, leaving Chris to live with her father, reminded me of Kitty telling me late in her life how forlorn, bereft (my words, not hers) she felt when I went away to college in Milwaukee. I was off on an adventure, leaving her not alone with our father but without her fellow-sufferer and best friend. She said she was depressed for weeks. I left home in 1959 at age 18, while Kitty continued to live at home until she married in 1966 at age 22, never feeling loved or accepted by our father.

The scenes depicting Ewan's decision to join the army triggered thoughts of my father being drafted in 1944. From my memoir:

Of the 16,000,000 men who served in the military during World War II, 6,000,000 were volunteers and 10,000,000 were draftees. The draft began in October, 1940, a couple of months after my parents married. The term of service was 12 months, but that changed after the war started. All men between 18 and 45 were eligible for military service, but occupational and hardship deferments were available. Farmers, auto workers, munitions workers and many others whose work was important to the war effort were not drafted. My father’s job at Johnson & Johnson was making sanitary dressings for combat wounds; he was employed in a war industry. He had one small child and, after November 1943, another on the way. When I asked him recently why he didn’t apply for a draft deferment, occupational or hardship or both, he just shrugged. Was his passivity prompted by patriotism or something else? It may have been patriotism, of course; there was of lot of it afoot during the war and there is no reason to think that he was any less patriotic than the next guy. It may have been pride and a fear of being considered a ‘shirker,’ one who failed, as the Irish would have said, to “do his bit” while others were fighting and dying. It also may have been, however, at least in part, a desire to get away, to escape the responsibilities of married life and fatherhood. He had just turned 23 when Kitty was conceived and he was to be the father of two by age 24. Did he want to get away, to live among other young men, with no wife or children about? It certainly would not have been an unusual desire for one who had married and become a parent at so young an age. If he didn’t desire to be drafted, for whatever reason or reasons, why did he not seek an occupational or hardship deferment, like hundreds of thousands of other draft age men? Did he and my mother discuss the possibility of deferment, especially when she became pregnant with Kitty? As it was, when he was drafted, she was left at age 22 with me 2½ years old and Kitty on the way and precious few resources to rely on. Could either patriotism or pride make up for the difficult situation she was in? Was he using the draft as a way to run away from responsibilities, rather like walking away from the responsibilities of high school to make a few bucks as an unskilled worker? If so, each decision represented seizing on a short term solution to an immediate frustration, with long term negative consequences. Though I am only guessing on the basis of very inadequate evidence, and perhaps projecting, my best guess is that that was what was going on between my parents in 1944.

In the film, the scenes depicting Ewan's changed personality after his experiences in the army reminded me of course of my father's PTSD after the war and its effects on my mother, Kitty, and me. Much of the memoir is devoted to reflections on those effects. I could spend the rest of the day writing about that and copying and pasting sections of the memoir about that, but enough already. It's sufficent to say the film pushed a lot of emotional hot buttons in me.

PMR, PM&R, and Geri. The results of my blood tests on Monday were good, which is good news and bad news. The good news is that my PMR seems to be under control and Dr. Ryzka has ordered a supply of 1 mg. prednisone pills for me so I can reduce from 5 mg./day to 4 mg./day for 3 weeks and than 3 mg./day, 3 weeks, and so on, with another apointment with him and blood tests in April. The bad news is that the persistent pain in my right shoulder and hip must be osteoarthritis, and I'm stuck with it, which raises the question of whether I should see again my young friend Dr. Cheng in the PM&R Clinic and perhaps Dr. England for another hip injection of steroids and lidocaine. My tendency to pitch forward and take a header keeps getting worse, and it seems inevitable that I will end up on the deck one of these days, at home or away, and probably will be unable to get up. This is becoming a more serious concern with Geri semi-out of commission with her knee. I suspect and dread hearing today that the physical therapy has been insufficient to get the degree of flexion she needs to avoid future 'complications' and that a 'manipulation' will be necessary, or at least recommended. She was so looking forward to getting this knee replacement and getting rid of the persistent pain she had been experiencing because of her 'old knee,' and now she's had nothing but pain, discomfort, and sickness for the last 6 weeks. . . . 10 a.m., bad news, but expected. No progress in flexion. Geri placed a call to Dr. Graf regarding the next step and left a message. It was a big disappointment... Dr. Graf called: manipulation will be on Thursday, 3/3/35, at 11 a.m.

SHITSHOW; Trump and Vance vs. Zelensky.