2/4/2025

 Tuesday, February 4, 2025

D+89

1849 University of Wisconsin began in 1 room with 20 students

1938 "Our Town" a play by Thornton Wilder opened on Broadway, NYC

1938 Hitler seized control of the German army and put Nazis in key posts

1990 10 Israeli tourists were murdered near Cairo

2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room

2020 Radio personality Rush Limbaugh was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump during the State Of The Union Address

In bed around 10:30 (?), awakened and up at 4:30 with a LOW GLUCOSE ALARM.  58 mg./dl.  A menthol cough drop brought it up above 70, but then another alarm, remedied by a chocolate chip cookie. 

Prednisone, day 291, 5 mg. + 2.5 mg., day 28, Kevzara, day 14/14. 5 mg. prednisone at 5 a.m.   Other meds at 6 a.m. Kevzare at 1:10 p.m. 

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in his field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." H. L. Mencken.

More on The Nightingale.  Because of its subject matter, it's not possible to say that I liked or enjoyed this film.  Only a sadist could derive pleasure from watching its depictions of homo hominis lupus: White European imperial hegemony, male hegemony, settler colonialism, racism and its effects on victims, oppression and violent criminality and its effect on victims, violent revenge, what acts are sinful and lawful in an environment and world that is itself lawless and immoral, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.  This is a very powerful film, deserving not to be enjoyed but to be seen and thought about.  It is not a gratuitous slash-and-burn film although it may be the most violent film I have ever seen.  Reportedly some audience members at film festivals showing the film walked out   during rape scences, of which there are several. But it is a film about cruelty and brutality, about White domination of Blacks and Browns, about male domination of women, about English domination of the Irish, about injustice in an unjust world and about revenge.  The central characters are Clare, a young Irish mother convicted of some unidentified crime and sent in the early 19th century to a British penal colongy on Tasmania run by a detachment of British soldiers led by a sadistic lieutenant who refuses to sign Clare's release papers for 3 years after the completion of her 7 year sentence.  He also rapes her, more than once, otherwise abuses her and causes the death of her husband and their infant child.  The enormity of the crimes against her takes possession of Clare and she is hellbent on revenge.  And she gets her revenge, though in part through the acts of Billy, the aboriginal tracker who assists her on her quest.  Through her relationship with Billy, she comes to recognize her own White racism and the effects of settler colonialism on native peoples, something she was already aware of from England's treatment of the Irish.  Their common hatred of the English leads them to develop a bond.  The three 'bad guys' in the story are the English lieutenant Hawkins, a subordinate English ensign Jago, and an English sergeant Ruse, though the ensign is a man of conscience, unlike the other two.  Jago is killed by Clare, Hawkins and Ruse by Billy.  Was Clare's act murder or justifiable homicide?  Was Billy's?  Were the acts of the October 7th raiders murder or justifiable homicide?  Were the retaliatory acts of the IDF?  of the IRA before independence or the Provos during the Troubles?  The West Bank Palestinians?  These are the kind of questions I thought about in watching this film.

     The writer/director of the film is Jennifer Kent and I wondered if she was English with that name "Kent."  I found that her ancestry includes "Carroll"s, an Irish name and noted that Clare's last name was Carroll.  The intensity of the depiction of the savagery of the English soldiers in the film made me think she must be Irish.  Sure 'nuf.

Semi-busy day.  Taking Geri to Dr. B.'s office, stop at Blick's to pick up 2 canvases.  Trip to Metro Market for ice, chicken broth for a clear liquid diet, culling the refrigerator.  Geri went to bed and fell asleep while I was sleeping on the recliner, i.e., without waking me to fill the ice machine and securing it to her knee.😟

Almost beyond belief:  Trump's press conference with Netanyahu this evening.  US to occupy Gaza, ethnic cleansing, "Riviera on the Mediterranean," real estate development,  US to "own" Gaza.