3/31/2025

Monday, March 31, 2025

D+145/71

1889  The Eiffel Tower officially opened, designed by Gustave Eiffel

1968 President  Johnson authorized a troop surge in Vietnam, bringing the total number of US military to a peak of 549,500, and announced  that he would not seek re-election

1971 William Calley was sentenced to life for the My Lai Massacre

1989 Donald Trump purchased Eastern Airline's Northeast Shuttle

2020  British pensioner Robert Weighton became the world's oldest man at 112 years

2021 New York state legalized the recreational use of marijuana

In bed at 9, awake and up at 4:15.   

Prednisone, day 345; 3 mg., day 4/21; Kevzara,  day 13/14; CGM, day 13/14; Trulicity, day 4/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5 a.m. and 5  p.m.  Other meds at 8:50 a.m.    

Kristi Noem's prison visit.  When I saw the video footage of the DJS Secretary's visit to the notorious El Salvador prison holding her Venezuelan deportees, I noticed (who wouldn't?) the form-fitting outfit she wore, gray slacks and a long-sleeved white top, the combination displaying her still-appealing 53 year old tukhes and belle poitrine, a cruelty to parade in front of hundreds of incarcerated young men,  This morning I learned she also wore an 18 carat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona wristwatch reported to cost $50,000, a reminder, I suppose, of her membership in Trump's cabinet of plutocrats.   I wonder, though, why anyone would own a $50,000 wristwatch and why wear it to work, especially when one's work is at a prison in El Salvador.  Perhaps the same reason she wore that outfit?  If you've got it, flaunt it? . . .  I try not to be too hard on Noem because I have some real respect for her, despite the tits and glitz and right-wing politics.  She has some grit to go along with her glitz.

 Trump is pissed off at Putin.  Or so he told NBC/s Kristin Welker yesterday and so she reported on Meet the Press.  But, as Rachel Maddow often reminds her viewers, don't pay attention to what he says, watch when he does.  He is so pissed off at Putin, that he has already offered him unilateral, i.e., unreciprocated, major concessions on Ukraine including territorial concessions and non-membership in NATO.  He has helped Putin by trashing America's soft power in the world by dismantling the Agency for International Development and shutting down Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.  He has halted funding for a three-year project by the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab to trace the fates of perhaps as many as 35,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Putin and barred any evidence from being sent to the International Criminal Court, which has indicted Putin as a war criminal.  He has weakened NATO, perhaps fatally, by creating deep doubts about his willingness to abide by its Article 5, 'an attack on one is an attack on all,' and by suggesting he might use military force to seize Greenland from our NATO ally Denmark.  His minions, J. D. Vance and Pete Hegseth, are visibly hostile to European "freeloaders."  We should all be so lucky to have Trump 'pissed off' at us.

Signs of Old Age.  I put my warm flannel shirt on inside out this morning.

 

I have been a big fan of Brian Crane's humor displayed in his Pickles comic strip. Earl and Opal remind me so much of Geri and me.  Crane has been writing and drawing the strip for 35 years.  Remarkable!  Kitty and I looked for the strip every morning and often laughed about them during our morning conversations.  When Kitty died, I stopped reading the post until yesterday, when I saw a Pickles strip on Facebook and got hooked again.  The strip I copied and pasted above is about a very unhumorous subject, remarriage after the death of a spouse.  Geri and I have often discussed this, about how I am much more likely than she to die first, how life doesn't always do what we expect, witness my Dad, Jimmy Cummings, Jimmy Aquavia, and Bill Guis, each of whom outlived his wife.  My Dad and Jimmy C. remarried, each rather soon after his wife's death   Other than those two, I can't think of any other person who lost a spouse and remarried. Susan Friebert, Micaela St. John, Christine Klaer, Ed Felsenthal, Marianne Herrick, all stayed unmarried.  We tend to talk about remarriage after losing a spouse as if it were a choice readily available and I suppose it is for some folks, but not for most.  Even finding a compatible 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' in your 60s, 70s, or 80s is difficult, to say the least, after you've been married for 30, 40, 50, or 60 years.  For women, it's especially hard because there are so few 'eligible bachelors' around, those of the right age and having all the other requirements for a successful, pleasing relationship.  Plus, marrying someone in their 60s, 70s, or 80s is considerably more complicated than marrying someone in their 20s or 30s.  Children, grandchildren, assets, a long history and short future, chronic diseases - no such factors get in the way of people in their 20s deciding to get married, but they do for people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.  Before any marriage issue can arise, one has to get through the dating challenge - not easy.  On the other hand, if a surviving spouse does not remarry or at least find a steady boyfriend or girlfriend, s/he can look forward to some serious loneliness and lack of companionship: watching television alone, traveling and vacationing alone, get-togethers with married friends alone, holidays alone, happy and unhappy memories alone, fears and vulnerbilities alone, creeping and galloping decrepitude and chronic illnesses alone, sicknesses and injuries alone - a lot of aloneness.  If one is lucky enough to have children, grandchildren, or other family nearby, they may provide some emotional support and relief from loneliness, but they will have their own lives to live and after get-togethers, the widow or widower will go home alone and wake up alone.  The best support for a widow or widower is a group of good friends and the hope that you won't outlive all of them.

    As I write these thoughts, I think of Caela and her many challenges since Tom died, and I think of my Dad.  I sympathize deeply with Caela and admire her strength in moving along in life without Tom.  My Dad didn't do nearly so well when my mother died.  He fled to Florida to be with his mother and sister, gave up his union job with Continental Can Company, and promptly remarried a woman he knew from his neighborhood tavern, Grace.  Kitty called me in Milwaukee, distraught or disgusted, and said (I'll still remember the exact words): "Dad married a barfly."¹  I still laugh thinking about tbat call, but it wasn't a funny situation.  Indeed, shortly after he married Grace, he divorced Grace.  And then he married her again.  And then she died.  I could do a deep speculative dive into all that but to what end?  My mother's been gone more than 50 years now, and my father more than 20.  He suffered a lot in his life and I have much sympathy for him now, though it has taken me nearly a lifetime to get to this point.  I am so deeply grateful for the fact that we spent the last 11 years of his life trying to make up for the prior 55 years and that we were able to live together for his last few years.  Maybe I should start volume 2 of my memoir just to deal with those years and why they were as they were.  If only I had the energy, memory, and focus. 

¹ A way-too-harsh description of Grace.  The neighborhood tavern was her social club, as it was for so many working class Chicagoans, and it was where she could deal with her own loneliness.  I don't remember, or more likely I never knew, whether she was a widow or divorced, or never married. I liked her and was glad that she helped my Dad deal with his own loneliness and depression after my Mom died.

Me and Pop at Snook Haven, Englewood, Florida

3/32025

 Sunday, March 30, 2025

D+144/70

1965 Vietnam War: A car bomb exploded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, killing 22 and wounding 183 others

1972 North Vietnam launched a major conventional offensive against South Vietnad

1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley

2018 Palestinians began a "Great March of Return", 6 weeks of protests on the Gaza Strip demanding Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israel. 19 Palestinians were killed and 1,416 injured on the first day.

2023 Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan Grand Jury on charges over hush payments paid to porn star Stormy Daniels

2023 Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak signed an open letter warning that the race to develop AI systems is out of control and asking for a suspension of at least six months

In bed around 9, awake at 3:18, and up at 3:33.  39°, haze, rainy, high of 48°.

Prednisone, day 344; 3 mg., day 3/21; Kevzara, day 12/14; CGM, day 12/15; Trulicity, day 3/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4:30  a.m. and   p.m.  Other meds at 8 a.m.

Am I growing more alive the closer I get to death?  Something has been happening to me the older and more decrepit I get.  I am becoming more aware of how much beauty there is all around me.  I am becoming ever more aware of how much I treasure Geri's presence in my life and I use the word 'treasure' advisedly.  I almost write that she is my reason for living, as indeed she is, since I can't imagine going on in life without her by my side, sharing my days and nights.  But to say that she is my sole reason for living denigrates what else I'm thinking which is that I've become much more aware and appreciative of everything around me, from the clouds in the sky to the houses and other buildings I see as I drive, to the farm fields outside the urban area, to the millions of trees reaching up from the earth to the sky.  I'm starting again to see the child in other people I encounter.  I first had this kind of insight one night in Dublin when Sarah and I went there for a long weekend in mid-December using our Irishfest tickets on Aer Lingus.  As luck would have it, Sarah came down with a nasty case of bronchitis on our holiday, but we enjoyed the visit as best we could.  In the middle of one night, while she was finally enjoying some restful sleep and I was awake, I looked at her face and saw the little girl whose eyebrows I would rub as I sang her to sleep at night - "Is this the little girl I carried?  Is this the little boy at play?"  She was a grown woman, self-sufficient, self-supporting, self-confident, and very accomplished and we were in a foreign land on a holiday that she had planned and put together.  But as I looked on her face that night I saw the child she had been and from whom grew this wonderful grown-up person.  I've started to have this kind of experience more lately, seeing persons not only as who and what they are now, at this very passing moment, but as a person who was once a child, needing love, nurturing, and support as she encountered all the forces that life would visit upon her up until this moment.  This kind of vision comes easiest with our own children, of course, because we've known them throughout their infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.  But each of us, every one of us, started our journey as a child, needing love, nourishing, and support and shaped by how those needs were satisfied (or not), and by all the forces that life has visited upon us.  I can't address here the question of how much we shape our own lives by our own agency, 'free will' if you will.  I leave that to Robert Sapolsky and the philosophers and theologians.  I note here though, that I believe life becomes easier if we remember that each of us started out as a child, and that child lives in each of us, still.

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

    My appreciation of trees is not something new in my old age, but it has deepened with age.  The fact that there are millions of them doesn't lessen the enjoyment I experience looking at them, any more than the fact that there are milllions of birds doesn't diminish my delight in watching them.  The trees and the birds all seem like some kind of miracle to me.  How is it that they exist, that they are so beautiful, so hardy, so adapted to their environment?  I know Darwin's answer - natural selection and evolution - and I'm in no position to take issue with it, but still I marvel at them, each tree, each sparrow, each squirrel and mouse, each minnow and guppy.

    And those old homes and other buildings in Milwaukee and the older suburbs.  The old stores on Third Street and Water Street.  The homes on Grand Avenue in Port Washington.  The warehouses in the Third Ward.  The churches near our former home in the Knickerbocker: Immanuel Presbyterian, All Saints Cathedral, St. Paul's with its Tiffany windows, Summerfield Methodist -so many structures with their own histories and the histories of so many people who prayed in them for so many things over so many years.  So many baptisms, weddings, funerals, Sunday services, etc.  I have loved that neighborhood since I delivered Milwaukee Sentinels to stores and bus stops there the winter of my senior year at Marquette, 62 years ago.  I still love it. 

    Am I just getting overly sentimental in my old age?  Does this happen to everyone, or most old geezers?  Nosalgia?  Or is this a grace, an undeserved blessing?  In any case, I am grateful for it.  It makes it easier to bear with the burdens of old age, of which there are as Damon Runyon might say, more than somewhat.

Some anniversary thoughts:  First, on Artificial Intelligence, here's some of what Elon Musk had to say about AI just 2 years ago today:

AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research[1] and acknowledged by top AI labs.[2] As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.

Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system’s potential effects. OpenAI’s recent statement regarding artificial general intelligence, states that “At some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new models.” We agree. That point is now. 

 . . . 

In parallel, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should at a minimum include: new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated to AI; oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability; provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks; a robust auditing and certification ecosystem; liability for AI-caused harm; robust public funding for technical AI safety research; and well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.

Humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with AI. Having succeeded in creating powerful AI systems, we can now enjoy an “AI summer” in which we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of all, and give society a chance to adapt. Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society.[5]  We can do so here. Let’s enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall. 

Quaere how many of the recommended actions have occurred under the Biden regime?  Under Trump's?

Second, the prosecution of Trump for the Stormy Daniels' hush money was a mistake.  It contributed significantly to the feeling among his supporters that Trump was being persecuted, not prosecuted.  It was legally 'iffy' from the get-go, as was NY AG' Letitia James's case against him for overvaluing his properties and defrauding the State of New York and various banks and insurers. 

 

3/29/2025

Saturday, March 29, 2025

D+143/69

1971 1st Lt William L Calley Jr was found guilty in My Lai massacre

1973 The last US troops left Vietnam, 9 yrs after the Gu;f of Tonkin Resolution

2020 Anthony Fauci warned America may see between 100,000 - 200,000 deaths from COVID-19

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 5:05.  I have abdominal/stomach pain this morning.   

Prednisone, day 343; 3 mg., day 2/21; Kevzara, day 11/14; CGM, day 11/15; Trulicity, day 2/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5:20 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.  Other meds at 8:30 a.m.

I wonder what I would be feeling now if I were a lawyer at Paul, Weiss or at Jenner and Block.  If I were at Paul, Weiss, would I feel ashamed at the deal my management made with Trump, or would I feel relieved that we dodged the bullet of his retribution.  Wooul I feel both, knowing that to much of the world incluiding our competitor firms and our clients and potential cllents but  we look so venal, so chicken-shit, and unwilling to fight,  but that also knowing it's also clear we took a bllet to protect the work we are doing on behalf of today's clients and our ability to continue to provide legal representation?  How will I feel if I am the one designated to provide pro bono legal servies to one of Trump's pet nonprofits? If I were at Jenner and Block, would I be proud that we are fighting  in court Trump's executive order against us, or would I be shaking in my boots over the effect of the order on our clients' willingness  or ability to continue to retain us, wondering whether they must take their business to our competitors so our revenues shrink, our lawyers will have to be laid off, and our partners' income decreased?   

Jonathan Lawson, Colonial Penn, whole life insurance, and PPP.   These Colonial Penn ads seem to me to be despicable.  I'm sure they are not misleading in any legal sense, but they surely fool a log of people who don't understand whole life insurance.  It sounds too good to be true:     

"Prince you can afford, price that can't increase, and price that fits your budiget.  Coverage options start at $9.95 a month.  You can buy more.  Premium based on coverage option you select.  Coverage amounts based on age and gender. 'I'm 80, what's my price?'   9.95 a month for you too.  If you're age 50 to 85, call now about the number one most popular whole life insurance plan available through the Colonial Penn program.  Opions start at $9.95 a month.  No medical exam.  No health  questions.  Your acceptance is guaranteed."

How much whole life insurance can a 85 year old in poor health get for $9.95 a month?   Ridiculous. 

Phil Klay in this morning's NYTimes.  A former Marine officer, served in Iraq, wrote Redeployment, Missionaries, and Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War.  His op-ed today is "Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.."  Excerpts:

As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense. The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.

 [A] military career starts not with training in lethality but with character formation. When I joined the Marine Corps two decades ago, I entered a decidedly archaic, premodern society for which virtue was of paramount importance. At Quantico, Va. — where Mr. Vance traveled on Wednesday to speak with Marines in training — they shaved my head and put me in a uniform, because my individuality was less important than our shared purpose. Before they taught me how to fire a rifle, they taught me about honor, courage and commitment. We weren’t supposed to be hired guns; we were supposed to be the first to fight for right and freedom.

There’s a reason essentially every warrior society throughout history has had a code like this — and it’s not that every society has been enlightened. Soldiers don’t need to be saints. But to be good soldiers, to complete their missions and protect their comrades, they do need a bedrock of integrity.

In that light, the absurdity of the Signal chat takes on a more sinister cast. You don’t need to be a military expert to know that what the administration did is unconscionable any more than you need to be a meteorologist to know that the sky is blue. It requires only a willingness to speak honestly about serious matters.

That task is evidently beyond the ability of the members of our national security team. Instead, they have lied. They have mocked. The national security adviser, Michael Waltz, has called Mr. Goldberg “scum,” even though Mr. Goldberg took more care with sensitive military information than Mr. Waltz did. The head of the F.B.I. has not promised an investigation. Mr. Trump dismissed the affair as a “witch hunt.” They have treated this as a media event to be spun rather than a grievous error to be rectified.

They have behaved, in short, like people without honor. The lives of our service members are in their hands.

 Klay reminded me of my time at Quantico, 40 years before his time there.  A lot has surely changed in Marine officer training in 40 years but I suspect the 'basics' are the same, including the values, traditions, and the sense of honor among Marines.  An officer's first duty: accomplish the mission.  Second duty: take care of your men.  In the field, officers eat only after the troops eat.  On the battlefield, never leave a fallen Marine behind.

Sheri Bubrick, no longer a neighbor but still our good neighbor.          She came over this afternon and cut Geri's hair, feeling crapping from a persistent and recurring sinus infection.  A good neighbor and good friend.    

3/28/2025

 Friday, March 28, 22025

D+142/68

In bed by 9:15, awake at 4:15, and up at 4:35.  41°, high of 72°!?!  

Prednisone, day 342; 3 mg., day 2/21; Kevzara, day 10/14; CGM, day 10/15; Trulicity, day  7/7.   2 mg. of prednisone at 4:50 a.m. and  5 p.m.  Other meds at 6 a.m.   Trulicity injection at 8:45.

Caela came over to visit after her Pilates session this afternoon and brought me a big sandwich, which was almost too much to consume.  She related her serious problem with her car, a health concern, and the situation with Dick.  Widowhood has been hard on her, not surprisingly.  I feel bad for her and hope things start looking up.  Fingers crossed, but, like us, each day she gets a day older, and old age doesn't tend to get easier with the passage of time.

Chauffeur duty. A busy morning: pick up Lizzie at 9 to trip to Nicolet; 10:30 take Geri to PT; 11 pick up Lizzie; 11:30, pick up Geri.

Werner Herzog, His Stars, and His Stories.  I watched Herzog's 1977 film Stroczek yesterday afternoon.  It is a very depressing film, perversely comic at times, but ultimately nihilistic (wrong word?), bleak, and depressing.  The film features 3 'stars:' Bruno Schleinstein playing Bruno Stroczek, the protagonist; Eva Mattes as Eva, a prostitute he befriends and helps; and Clemens Scheitz as Scheitz, Bruon's landlord and friend.  Bruno and Eva are beaten and abused by Eva's pimps in Berlin so they decide to move to Northern Wisconsin with Mr. Scheitz whose nephew has a car repair garage and auto salvage business there.  Though they have no money, they buy a big TV and a big manufactured home, which are soon repossessed and auctioned off by the bank that financed the purchases.  Eva returns to hooking at a local truck stop and hitches a ride to Vancouver from one of her 'johns'.  Bruno and Mr. Scheitz rob a barber of $32 and use the money to buy a frozen turkey and other groceries at a store across the street from the barber shop.  Mr. Scheitz is promptly arrested, but Bruno escapes with his frozen turkey, steals his boss's truck, drives to a truck stop near a ski lift and amusement arcade that features performing animals, including a dancing chicken.  Bruno rides the ski lift with the frozen turkey and his stolen rifle and kills himself.  The film closes with a protracted shot of the chicken, dancing.  Is this Herzog's opinion of life, or of modern life, capitalist life?  He painted a grim picture of life in Midwest America (Plainfield and Nakoosa, Wisconsin) and an even bleaker picture of life in Berlin.

    Bruno Schleinstein was the protagonist in an earlier Herzon movie, the 1974 The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.  He was a favorite of Herzog's, like Klaus Kinski, who starred in Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo.   Both Bruno S. (which is how he is billed in his movies) and Kinski are odd, indeed very odd.  Kinski had uncontrollable rages and spent time in a psychiatric hospital.  He was initially diagnosed as schizophrinic and then as psychopathic.  His daughter accused him of sexually abusing her for15 years.  Bruno was a victim of child abuse and spent part of his childhood in mental institutions.  Roger Ebert's review of Stroczek referred to his character as mentally retarded.  I don't know quite what to think of his character in the movie, but I was reminded of the long-suffering donkey in Robert Bresson's film Au Hazard Balthasar and of Ted Lasso in the eponymous AppleTV series - almost Christ figures, long-suffering innocents in a crel, uncaring world.  Even Eva and Mr. Scheitz seem like innocents in their own ways.

    What I am wondering is what Herzog's story lines and choice of protagonists and actors to play them says about Herzog himself.

I made a loaf of banana bread this afternoon.

The temperature reached 76° this afternoon!!!  'Pneumonia front" tomorrow morning; the temperature is expected to drop 18° in one hour.

3/27/2025

Thursday, March 27, 2025

D+141/67

1863 American Confederate President Jefferson Davis called for a day of fasting & praye

2019 US Special Council Robert S. Mueller wrote a letter to US Attorney William Barr regarding Barr's summary of the Mueller Report stating Barr's letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the findings. "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."

In bed at 10  half awake at 5:05, and up at 6.  37°, wind chill 29°, high of 52°, cloudy   

Prednisone, day 341; 3 mg., day 1/21; Kevzara, day 9/14; CGM, day 9/15; Trulicity, day 6/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 6:20 a.m. and 1 mg. at 6:55 p.m.  Other meds at noon.

MLB's Opening Day and a telling comment by Mike Barnacle on Morning Joe: "The point about major league baseball and opening day is is the word 'hope,' 'hopeful.'  We've never needed baseball more than we need baseball today because baseball is an everyday proposition.  It gives you someplace to vent - your anger, your hopes, your dreams,  It gives you a chance to realize that failure is an option because you don't win every game.  And it takes your mind off the things that we talk about here every day which is so deeply depressing."

The program's first 10 minutes were devoted to blather and banter about the upcoming season and I paid little attention, but just before they turned to the news of the day, they guessed who would win the World Series and David Ignatius said he had to pick the Red Sox because his mother was a true blue Red Sox fan till the day she died at age 94.  It reminded me of my mother and her devotion to the White Sox.  I remember her listening on the radio to Jack Brickhouse announcing the games while she irioned her uniform for her work as a waitress.  Are these tears welling up in my eyes as I remember her , or is it the eye drops I put in earlier?  My memories are of her in that dingy, roachy, 3 room, basement apartment, with Kitty and me and my miserable, war-wrecked  Dad, the worse living quarters in the neighborhood, and our family the most notorious because of Hartman's crime against us, but Mama's delighting in the successes of Billy Pierce, and Sherm Lollar and Chico Carasquel and Luis Aparicio and Minnie Minoso and lamenting their failures.  I hope and wish that there really is a Mormon Heaven and that Mom and Dad, and Kitty and Jim and Uncle Jim and Aunt Monica are all up there, happy together, waiting for me.  

The faded, B&W photo is of my mother wearing the Italian peasant outfit she was required to wear when she worked at Louis George Restaurant.  It was that blouse with the puffy sleeves that I recall her ironing in our little kitchen while listening to White Sox games.

Is it crazy to believe that Elon Musk has bought the US government and that Donald Trump sold it to him?  The 25% tariffs on vehicles and vehicle parts that Trump announced yesterday has stunned both our domestic automakers and our long-term allies that also make vehicles for the American consumers, i.e., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, and South Korea.  The one carmaker that may benefit, however, is Tesla, owned by Elon Musk.  Tesla makes all the cars it sells in the U.S. in California and Texas and will not be subject to Trump's tariffs. 

I had a VA visit with Deena this afternoon to check on my swollen lower legs, feet, and ankles.  It was routine.

Are we becoming/Have we become a police state?  Wikipedia:

A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are typically one-party states and dominant-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systems as well.

I wondered about our status as a police state as I watched a video of a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University,  Rumeysa Ozturk, being arrested by a team of blacked-garbed, mostly masked, plain-clothes ICE agents before being whisked off to a detention center in Louisiana.  I rhink also of Trump's attacks on "Big Law" and on the national news media (ABC, CBS) and local media (Des Moines Register),

 

3/26/2025

 Wednesday, March 26, 2025

D+140/66

1945 Marines secured Iwo Jima

1953 Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully tested a vaccine to prevent polio, 

1967 Pope Paul VI published encyclical Populorum progressio

1997 39 bodies were found in the Heaven's Gate cult suicides in California

1999 A jury in Michigan finds Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man

2016 US primary elections: Bernie Sanders wins Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska

In bed at 9:20, awake and up at 3:15.  32°, high of 43°.  

Prednisone, day 340; 4 mg., day 21/21; Kevzara, day 8/14; CGM, day 8/15; Trulicity, day 5/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5 a.m. and 4  p.m.  Other meds at 2:30 p.m.

Major accompllshment of the day:  We took our mail-in ballots to the village hall, with our votes for Susan Crawford for the supreme court and Jill Underly for superintendent of schools.  Our fingers are crossed but we're placing no bets.

Should Pete Hegseth be fired?  Of course.  He never should have been nominated.  He never should have been confirmed.  Perhaps he is doomed already and his head will roll after some of the heat dies down over the Signal Principals Committee chat re the air assault on the Houthis.  There are worldwide repercussions from the Signal incident and what it reveals about the lack of competence and lack of judgment in the U.S.'s top national defense team.  The U.K., toadie that it has long been to the U.S., insists that it will continue to share intelligence freely with the U.S., but how about other European allies, or Australia, or Canada, or Japan, or even Israel?  Trump's team, starting with Hegseth, reminds me of children playing with new toys.  We expect a lack of experience in people starting a new job.  By definition, they are new to the job, i.e., inexperienced.  But we don't expect lack of judgment and gross incompetence, and yet that is what we have with Trump's national defense/intelligence team.  

One wonders how Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe could testify yesterday and how Trump and Mike Waltz could repeat that there was no classified information in the Signal chat.  Or were Gabbard and Ratcliffe just saying there was no classified 'intelligence information' as opposed to 'defense information'?  Will we ever know or will further comment be shrouded by Gabbard's ploy before the Intelligence Committee: no comment because there is an investigation being conducted by the National Security Council?  I expect that the controversy won't die down for a while and that the opposing sides will harden as time goes on.  The MAGAies will circle the wagons and hold tight to "no harm, no foul.'

I listened to John Meacham this morning suggest that the underlying problem revealed in this Signal scandal is that 40.9% of the American electorate chose to place the tremendous power of the federal government in the hands of people who are shameless.  Trump and his people have no sense of shame, and thus they don't learn from their shameful acts, their shameful mistakes.  Trump's shamelessness was abundantly clear all his life, and certainly during his first term in office, and knowing it, the voters nonetheless empowered him.  I am reminded of the American voters returning George W. Bush to office even after the wrongfulness of his invasion of Iraq was well known.  They chose Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld over John Kerry, 50.7% to 48.3%,  fully knowing what a huge blunder and deception they had engaged in with the Iraq invasion.  What does this, and Trump's reelection in 2024, tell us about "who we are"?

Closing rant: Trump's failure to fire Pete Hegseth reminds me of Joe Biden's failure to fire his secretary of defense Lloyd Austin after Austin's secret hospitalization between January 1 and January 5, 2024.  Neither Austin nor senior leadership at the Pentagon informed President Biden or the National Security Council of Austin's incapacity during that period or that he had transferred authority to his deputy.  It was a tremendous case of profoundly, egregiously bad judgment on Austin's part, yet Biden declined to replace him, another case of profoundly bad judgment providing Trump's people another "what about . . ." excuse.  I liked General Austin, and still do, but his lapse of good judgment in not informing Biden and the national security team of his "out of commission" status should have resulted in his firing.

God is on our side.  Little noted comments in the Signal chat by J. D. Vance and Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles:

Vance: I will say a prayer for victory.

Wiles: Kudos to all - most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM!  Really great. God bless.

With God on Our Side, lyrics by Bob Dylan

Oh my name it ain't nothin', my age it means less

The country I come from is called the Midwest

I was taught and brought up there, the laws to abide

And the land that I live in has God on its side

Oh the history books tell it, they tell it so well

The cavalries charged, the Indians fell

The cavalries charged, the Indians died

Oh the country was young with God on its side

. . . . . . 

The Second World War came to an end

We forgave the Germans and then we were friends

Though they murdered six million in the ovens they fried

The Germans now too have God on their side

But now we got weapons of chemical dust

We note that the Houthis are a religious group as well as a political and military one.  They are Shia Muslims.  Their official name is Ansar Allah, the Partisans of God.  They are led by a Shia Muslim cleric, Hussein al-Houthi.  Their religious ideology is complex, but it is definitely religious. I suspect that their leaders, like ours, pray for victory over the Small Satan Israel and the Great Satan America.  

“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst.”  Mark Twain, The War Prayer 

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. Psalm, 137:9

I do not disagree with the decision to strike the Houthis.  They attack international shipping heading to or from the Suez Canal.  They strike U.S Navy warships.  They need to be at least controlled, if not destroyed.  I take issue with the ham-handed way they attempt to defend the Signal chat and note how feeble J. D. Vance's "I will say a prayer for victory" sounds. 

The Folks Who Live On The Hill is a song from 1937, lyrics by Jerome Kern and music by Oscar Hammerstein.    For some reason, it has been in my thoughts lately.  I used swooned to the song on an album by Tommy Edwards while dancing or making out with my First True Love Charlene Wegge in her basement.  We of course identified ourselves as the Darby and Jane/ Jack and Jill in the song, and our home on the hill was in our fantasized Berlin, New Hampshire, but that's another story.  Now I think of Geri and me as the old couple who live on the hill, "when the kids grow up and leave us, we'll sit and look at the same old view, just we two."  I'm grateful to have had Charlene in my life and to have known that passionate, deep, youthful first love.  I'm more grateful to have Geri in my life, sharing the joys and challenges of middle age and old age, just we two.         

Many men with lofty aims,

Strive for lofty goals,

Others play at smaller games,

Being simpler souls.

I am of the latter brand;

All I want to do,

Is to find a spot of land,

And live there with you.

Someday we'll build a home on a hilltop high,

You and I,

Shiny and new a cottage that two can fill.

And we'll be pleased to be called,

"The folks who live on the hill".

Someday we may be adding a thing or two,

A wing or two.

We will make changes as any fam'ly will,

But we will always be called,

"The folks who live on the hill".

Our veranda will command a view of meadows green,

The sort of veiw that seems to want to be seen.

And when the kids grow up and leave us,

We'll sit and look at the same old view,

Just we two.

Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill,

The folks who like to be called,

What they have always been called,

"The folks who live on the hill". 

3/25/2025

March 25, 2025

D+139/65

1954 Pope Pius XII's encyclical "Sacra virginitas" (On consecrated virginity)

2024 UN Special Rapporteur said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a report "Anatomy of a Genocide." 

In bed at 10, half-awake at about 4:30. and up at  5:20.  29°, high of 43°.  I did a load of laundry, emptied and refilled the dishwasher,  cleaned up the kitchen, and enjoyed some Irish soda bread and lavender chamomile tea.    

Prednisone, day 339,]; 4 mg., day 20/21; Kevzara, day 7/14; CGM, day 7/15; Trulicity, day 4/7.  2 mg., of prednisone at 5:45 a.m. and 5 p.m.  Other meds at 8:10 a.m.

One outrage after another.  First, we had the leak of Yemen war plans by National Security Advisor Waltz and Defense Secretary Hegseth to the editor of The Atlantic, and the mere fact that a discussion of top secret war plans would take place on an unsecured platform, Signal, which is hackable by China, Russia, Iran, and who know who else.  Then, we had the government's argument in the D.C. Court of Appeals in the case of the hurried-up, secretive deportation to a hellhole prison in El Salvador of alleged Venezuelan gang members without any due process, i.e., notice and an opportunity to be heard before a neutral magistrate.  Inhumane, indecent.  Third, Steve Witkoff, Trump's personal envoy and negotiator in the Gaza and Ukraine wars, parrots Vladimir Putin's talking points.  Excerpts from an editorial in this morning's Wall Street Journal, "Steve Witkoff Takes the Kremlin’s Side":

Steve Witkoff, the Trump Administration’s special negotiator on Ukraine, says he’s not taking sides as he tries to mediate an end to the war Vladimir Putin started in 2022. He could have fooled us after a podcast interview this weekend in which Mr. Witkoff parroted one specious Russian talking point after another.

The biggest howler during a long podcast with Tucker Carlson—we’ve struggled to narrow down the list—is Mr. Witkoff’s claim that Mr. Putin “100%” doesn’t want to overrun Europe. Mr. Witkoff suggested Russia doesn’t even want to control Ukraine, with the exception, that is, of the large areas Mr. Putin already occupies. . . . Mr. Witkoff also continued the Administration’s bad habit of disparaging allies, as when he described Britain’s peacekeeping proposal for Ukraine as “a posture and a pose.” Europeans, he suggested, have a “simplistic” desire to mimic Winston Churchill. It’s more accurate to say Europeans understand what’s at stake in this major war on their doorstep. Europe will be safer if Ukraine is safe, and Washington can at least not mock allies as they finally take concrete steps to provide for their own and their neighborhood’s defense.

I ask again: is Donald Trump merely a Russian asset, or is he rather a Russian Agent?  I ask again: what does Putin have on Trump?  If it isn't a 'golden shower' tape, it must be something equivalent.  He often accuses his adversaries, i.e., anyone who disagrees with him, of 'treason.'  He should take a long look in one of his gold-encased mirrors. . .  And then there are the tariffs due to come into effect next week

From two years ago:

Finished reading Gilead: "While I am thinking about it - when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing.  In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one's sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some way."  John Ames' frequent description of himself as old and tired, the metaphor being "ember," dull and gray but with an internal heat and fire, ready to be refulgent again when the Lord breathes life on it.  I was struck by "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain," how true that seems of old age, the age with little new except daily diminishment, little to look forward to but more diminishment, but filled with so many old memories, 80+ years of memories.  The good ones fade away, the regretful ones linger and haunt.  The good ones are almost all of the goodness of others - mother, sister, Uncle Jim, Aunt Monica, Brother Coogan, Wally Halperin, Johnny Flynn, Troy Major, Father Matthew, so many nurse-nuns - while the regretful ones are of my own failings, ingratitude, cowardice,  selfishness, vanity, pettiness, indifference.  It's curious that Marilynne Robinson named her fictional town "Gilead."  I suppose  she intended her novel to be healing, affirming.  "There is a balm in Gilead / To make the wounded whole / There is a balm in Gilea / .To heal the sin-sick soul. / Sometimes I feel discouraged / And deep I feel the pain / In prayers the holy spirit / Revives my soul again"  For those without the faith of a John Ames or Marilynne Robinson, hope comes harder.

One year ago,  I was in really bad shape with undiagnosed and untreated polymyalgia rheumatica and kvetching about it:

I'm losing the physical and mental energy to write.   I suspect I may abandon this journalling project one of these days.⁺⁺ I've never been entirely sure why I do it in the first place except perhaps that I have no attractive alternative, certainly not watching television.  Reading is increasingly difficult for me except on a Kindle or on my laptop with its ability to enlarge fonts.  There's certainly enough wretchedly bad news to read about, to think about, and to write about but I haven't much energy.  I am bowled over by how seemingly fast I have gone downhill with these chronic pain problems, with the interstitial cystitis assortment of pains lasting about a year and a half (?) only to be resolved by surgery and replaced by rotator cuff and various arthritis pains, all debilitating and at least semi-crippling.  At least as distressing as the physical pain is the cognitive decline that has accompanied it.  It's very noticeable to me, both in terms of executive function and in terms of increasing short-term memory problems and confusion.

About one month later, I stopped writing in these notes for about 16 days.  With the PMR, it was too painful to hold my laptop and type.   On April 26th, I stopped writing until May 13th, when I was finally diagnosed with PMR and put on prednisone.  Daily and nightly thoughts of suicide, similar period to when I was beset with ulcers in my bladder years before.  

 Major accomplishment today:  I mailed the federal income tax return to the feds.  I should have done it a month ago, but in any event, I took it to the central post office downtown just to follow my tradition.  I drove home along the lakefront, through the upper East Side, and the North Shore suburbs on my way to get some bratwurst at Metro Market, where, as Geri admonished me, they were on sale.  The drive home was, as usual, and actually even more than usual, very nostalgic.  In my old age, I have become quite enamored of Milwaukee, not just of its history and architecture but of my now-long history here, my connections to the area.  I skirted the Marqueette neighborhood and the law school, the neighborhood I came to as a nervous 18-year-old in 1959, living in the Schroeder Hall dormitory on 13th Street, drove through downtown where I practiced law for so many years, up the beautiful lakeshore, which  I've long believed to be the prettiest urban lakeshore in the country.  I drove past Geri's and my first house on Newton Avenue, her old lower flat on Maryland Avenue, my old upper flat at Don Jones's house on Murray Avenue, my old house on Frederick, and Tom St. John's house on Edgewood.   UWM and the old Downer College for women.  So many years, so many expereinces, so many memories.  Good times and hard times.   I felt like 'the ghost of Christmas Past,' an old spectre looking back on an entire, long adult lifetime, from 18 to approaching 84, from earliest adulthood to old age, all of it in the Milwaukee area except for 4 fateful years in the Marine Corps, and also my retreat after the House of Peace to exurban Town of Saukville.  I almost understood, accepted, and forgave myself for my mistakes, my failures and inadequacies.  Instead of reminating on the 5th stanza of Yeats' Vacillation:

Things said or done long years ago,

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do,

Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled,

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

I felt I was experiencing the 4th: 

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

It is not often that I am more in line with stanza 4 than stanza 5, but on my long drive home from the post office today, I was.  I felt like the professor in Wild Strawberries. 

A word on the anniversary of Sancta virginitas.  The dour diplomat and protector of all things sacerdotal, Pius XII, continued a long Christian tradition of disparaging both sex and married people as less God-worthy than chastity and the unmarried people in the priesthood or in a religious order.  He relied on the New Testament, especially Matthew 19: 10-12 and 1 Corinthians ch 7.  It puts me in mind of what I wrote in my memoirs about Saint Maria Goretti.

 

O

 

3/24/2025

 Monday, March 24, 2025

D+137/64

2019 Attorney General William Barr summarized the report submitted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller (The Mueller Report) in a letter to Congress stating that the "investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities" and "Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense"

In bed at 9:10, awake at 4:17, and up at 4:37.   31° outside with a wind chill of 12°, high of 41° It seems like it's been a very windy Spring, cold and damp.

Prednisone, day 337; 4 mg., day 19/21; Kevzara, day 6/14; CGM, day 6/15; Trulicity, day 3/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4:55 a.m. and at 4:45 p.m.  Other meds at 9:45.

67 days post-surgery

From A conversation with Werner Herzog, Roger Ebert, December 14, 2012:

Regarding German film historian and critic Lotte Eisner:

Eight years later, she must have been 90 years, nobody knows exactly how old she was because she started to cheat from 75 on, I think she celebrated her 75th birthday a couple of times. And very casually, we were having tea, and she said to me, nibbling on a cookie, she said to me, “Listen, listen to me, I’m almost blind, I cannot read any more, I cannot see any more films, I cannot walk any more, I’m tired of life” — she actually even said it “sucked” and she was saturated of life, and she said to me, “but there’s still this spell on me, that I must not die” and I said to her very casually “The spell is lifted” and two weeks later she died. And she died at the right time then, it was good, it was good to die then. 

Heerzog was 70 years old when this interview occurred.  He is now 82.  I wonder what his thoughts were then - and what they are now -- about "the right time" to die,  when it would be "good to die."  

I watched both Aguirre and Fitzcarroldo over the weekend and don't quite know what I think of either,  Klaus Kinski stars in and dominates both of them.  In both, he is monomaniacal, in Aguirre to find El Dorado and in Fitzcarraldo, to build an opera house in a Peruvian rain forest and to have Enrico Caruso perform in it.  He is impossible to warm up to in Aguirre and hard to relate with in Fitzcarraldo.  His character's compulsive or monomaniacal behavior in each seems to mimic Herzog's compulsive behavior in filming in an Amazonian rain forest and especially in risking lives by primitively transporting a 360-ton steamboat over a tall hill in Fitzcarral.  Kinski was ever crazier, odious, and even criminal offscreen than he was onscreen.  He was notorious for raising hell with his directors and other cast and crew members and was accused of sexual assault by his older daughter, and inappropriate fondling by his younger daughter.  Neither daughter attended his funeral after he died of a heart attack at age 65.

Roger Ebert was a big fan of Herzog.  So are many other critics and cinephiles.  I've ordered Stroszek from the library and may try to obtain and watch others of his works, but I wonder about the guy.  

VA layoffs:  From this morning's JSOnline:

A disabled veteran who was fired from a VA facility in Wisconsin, then reinstated and placed on paid administrative leave this week, said he hasn't been given a date of when he can return to work.

The worker, who asked not to be identified because of fears of retaliation, questioned whether the VA is actually complying with the order, citing the judge's comments that workers were supposed to return to their jobs, not just be placed on administrative leave. Such a move “would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore,” wrote Judge William Alsup in his brief order.

As the veteran waits for answers, he said he is being "thrifty" and looking for work, but is nervous about the current economy — and the future of the VA.

"My biggest concern is the diminishing quality, or accessibility to care, at the VA," he said. 

He said he relies on the VA for all of his medical care, including counseling and medications, and there would be serious health consequences for him if that were to stop abruptly.

"If the VA goes under, that's a frightening possibility," he said. 

One Year Ago:  A first: I slept in the recliner all night  In bed  Last night I realized it was foolhardy to get into bed around 10 knowing I would be at best very uncomfortable and unable to sleep with my shoulder(s) pain and other pains so I slept on the BarcaLounger in the TV room until 3 a.m. when I woke, lit my Kitty cadle, let Lilly out, loaded the dishwasher and made a cup of strong herbal tea.

Two Years Ago:

More Gilead: "There have been heroes here, and saints and martyrs, too, and I want you to know that.  Because that is the truth, even if no one remembers it.  To look at the place, it's just a cluster of houses strung out along a few roads, and a little row of brick buildings with stores in them, and a grain elevator and a water tower with Gilead written on its side, and the post office and the schools and the playing fields and the old train station which has pretty much gone to weeds now.  But what must Galilee have looked like?  You can't tell much from the appearance of a place."

  I have long believed, and said, that we are surrounded by saints and heroes and miracles if only we have the eyes to see them.  The saints and heroes that I have seen up close and personal are mainly my mother, my sister, and my wife.  Their saintliness and their heroism is of the type referred to explicitly in Mt. 25: 31-46 - my mother caring for her father and her brother James, and nourishing and protecting Kitty and me, and even standing by my father in his long years of need, though both Kitty and I wished during our childhoods that she would leave him.  Kitty and Geri both for their taking in my father in his old age, and caring for him when he would otherwise be so alone and lonely.  For Geri becoming his best friend and confidante in his last years and for her loving care of her brother Jim during Nancy's long last illness and when Jim was widowed, like my father alone and lonely.  And for the love she gives me and her sons and Lilly.  And her visits to Elise, suffering from advancing Parkinson's disease.  I have been so blessed by such good, loving, strong women in my life.  Domine, non sum dignus . . .  As for miracles, they are all around us, as John Ames [Gilead] realizes.  He focuses on light, air, even gravity but more broadly on all Nature including other humans.  I tend to focus on birds and trees, forests and farm fields, barns and farmhouses, so much else.  Even in the dumps, beset with pain or general gloominess, I can't forget all the saints, heroes, and miracles throughout my life.  For some reason, I am recalling Wally Halperin who employed me as a stock boy at his food and liquor store at 74th and Halsted during my senior year in high school.  When I was awarded the NROTC scholarship and was accepted at Marquette, Wally moved me from part-time to full-time at the store to let me earn some cash before moving to Milwaukee.  I worked the checkout counter as well as stocking shelves and coolers and the fruit and vegetable stands.  I was 17 years old and illegally checking out customers buying alcohol.  Each week a Chicago cop would come to the store for a payoff from Wally for overlooking the underaged clerk. Wally never told me this; I learned of it from other adult employees. Wally was kind to me, solicitous, when he didn't have to be.  He was my first Jewish friend, but far from the last.

 A miracle in our front yard

 

  

3/23/2025

 Sunday, March 23, 2025

D+136/63

1933 German Reichstag hastily passed the Enabling Act and President Paul von Hindenburg signed it the same day, granting Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers

2003 In Nasiriyah, Iraq, 11 soldiers and 18 U.S. Marines were killed during the first major conflict of Operation Iraqi Freedom

2010  President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), nicknamed 'Obamacare', expanding the availability and affordability of health care insurance

In bed at 9:05, awake and up at 3:15 to fill the humidifier, light a Kitty candle and a log in the fireplace, and enjoy a cup of lavender chamomile tea.  

Prednisone, day 336; 4 mg., day 18/21; Kevzara, day5.14; GCM, day 5/15; Trulicity,  day 3/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5 a.m. and  5 p.m.  Other meds at 2:30 p.m.   

À la recherche du temps perdu.   At the conclusion of Bill Maher's Real Time program this week he concluded his "New Rules" segment ranting about America's military, i.e., war budget.  The 2024 U. S. federal budget was $6.8 trillion. Discretionary spending is only $1.8 trillion, of which 47% was devoted to military spending.  Another 8% went for VA benefits, 7% to Health and Human Services, and 6% to Homeland Security.  We should probably add that 8% allocated to veterans benefits to DOD's 47% since providing promised health and other benefits to military veterans is merely another cost of our gigantic war machine costs.  Our defense budget is higher than that of the next 9 countries combined.  It is greater than the combined defense budgets of China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, Ukraine, France, and Japan.  It is more than triple that of our biggest adversary, China, and 8 and ½ times that of Russia.  The Pentagon itself, in a 2017 self-assessment, says it has 19% more bases than it needs.  According to a Cato Institute analysis, there are 750 American military facilities in 80 nations and territories all around the world.       

Maher's righteous and right-on rant reminded me of a brief lunchtime conversation decades ago in our law firm's lunchroom.  We were discussing world affairs or national security or somesuch and I offered that the greatest threat to world peace is us, the U.S.  I believed then, as I believe now, the the rest of the world realizes this and the only people who don't are us/US.  I argued that the reason was our voracious for raw materials, goods, and markets.  I guess I had said the wrong thing; you would have thought I had challenged the virtue of all my colleagues' mothers.  But how else does one explain the size of our war machine budget?  How else does one explain the 750 military facilities in 80 nations?  How else does one explain the subordination of universal health care, child care, ample and affordable housing, excellent public education, and so on to the financing of our war machine?  How else to explain our misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?  Of course, there are lots of reasons for each individual facility-siting and staffing and for each war we get ourselves into, or support, or threaten, just as there are a lot of reason for each social welfare program we underfund, e.g., health care, education, housing, etc.  But the old truism remains true: our budgets reflect our priorities and our values.  Our defense budgets, ever since the end of World War II, reflect both our desire to dominate the world, to be the hegemon, and our willingness to use military force, i.e., to wage war, in order to maintain our dominance.

Trump's War on Law, Lawyers, and Judges.  There have been three Executive Orders against prominent law firms that have represented persons and interests against the federal government: Covington and Berling, Perkins Coie, and Paul, Weiss.  Covington was targeted because it represented Special Counsel Jack Smith in his proceedings involving Donald J. Trump.  Perkins Coie represented Hilary Clinton.  Paul Weiss has long represented Democratic parties and interests.  Paul Weiss, unlike the other two firms, caved into Trump, settling with him (1) by agreeing to donate $40 million worth of work on pro bono work favored by the Trump administration, and (2) by agreeing to engge an audit firm to audit its hiring and promotion practices, especially its so-called DEI practices.  There is another Executive Order saying that the  White House is tasking all federal agencies with bringing sanctions motion against lawyers and law firms that may have violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Rule 3 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.  Lastly, there are the disparagement, vilification, and villainization of judges who rule against the government in litigation, the encouragement to impeach them, and seeking to have them removed from cases, and worst of all, the incitement of the MAGA crackpot crowd to threaten and perhaps do violence against them.  One can argue about whether the Trumpkins are 'merely' authoritarian or fascistic, but it seems to me to be beyond cavil that the incitement to violence of lone wolf crackpots and of mobs comes right from 1930s fascists using their Black Shirt and Brown Shirts to cow their opponents.  Seig heil!

3/22/2025

Saturday, March 22, 2025

D+135/62

1349 Black Death Massacre: Townspeople of Fulda, Landgraviate of Hesse massacred Jews, blaming them for the Black Death; part of many pogroms across Western Europe

1965 US confirmed that its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong

1972 In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the US Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people have the same right to contraception as married people

2004 Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of Hamas, and bodyguards were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles

2019 Special Council Robert Mueller submited his findings on the 2016 election to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General William Barr

2022 Microplastics were found in human blood for first time through new research [1]

In bed at 9:30 and up at 6.   Sunrise is at 6:49 but at 6:59, it is still mostly dark on the west end of Bayside when the birds first arrive at the feeders, three chickadees first, one each at the sunflower tube, the niger tube, and the flat feeder.  Then male cardinals, on the ground nd at a suet cake, and then finches.  It's 30° outside, wind chill 19° and the first dogwalkers are out in the cold with the wind blowing in from NNE over Lake Michigan.  Yesterday, I saw a young woman in short shorts walking on Wakefield on a 60° windless afternoon.

Prednisone, day 335; 4 mg., day 17/21; Kevzara, day 4/14; CGM, day 4/15; Trulicity, day 2/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 6:20 a.m. and  5 p.m.  Other meds at 7:25 a.m.  

My FB post today:

I hope my FB friends will forgive my ranting about what is happening to our country, and my focus on the Veterans Administration.  (Not that I expect these posts, especially the longer ones which I know are tedious, to be read.)  But I confess that it both hurts my heart and infuriates me to read stories like this one in this morning's New York Times.  Trump and Musk, with nary an opposing peep from the Republicans in Congress, are proposing to cut 80,000 people from the staff of the VA Medical Service, despite the fact that the program has long faced critical personnel shortages.  Every year since 2014, the Medical Officer and Nurse occupations were identified as severe shortages in the VA Inspector General’s annual determination of occupational staffing shortages reports.  The new administrator of the VA, a former congresman from Georgia, insists that services to the veterans enrolled in the program won't be affected, and that they will not be firing doctors and nurses, but they are firing critical medical support workers on whom the doctors and nurses (and patients) rely and cancelling contacts for services on which these health providers (and thus their patients) rely  This makes it difficult and sometimes impossible for these healers to do their work in a professional and ethical manner.  The effect of this is to make the VA an unsupportive and undesirable workplace and to induce these docs and nurses to take positions in the private medical sector.  We should not be hoodwinked about the ultimate goal of all these pernicious changes at the VA.  It is not "efficiency."  It is not getting rid of "waste, fraud, and neglect." It is to  'privatize' the program, which will be a huge, indeed inestimable, loss to most of the 9 million vets enrolled in it.  Although it is true that the health care services provided by the VA are available in the private sector, nowhere are they available in a comprehensive, coordinated system like the VA's, precisely geared to the needs of military veterans.  Most of the vets in the system now served in the Vietnam era and the era of the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan.  They were promised, and have earned, VA provided health care after their service.  What the government is doing now to the VA is shamefully and shamelessly breaking that promise.   Many veterans will be hurt, some profoundly.  It's a national shame.

Inside the Turmoil at the V.A. Mental Health System Under Trump: Inside the Turmoil at the V.A. Mental Health System Under Trum: A chaotic restructuring order threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Geri went shopping today!  Great news.  She's feeling considerably better.  I drove her to the UPS store for an errand, then up to Metro Market for a considerable shop.

Aguirre, The Wrath of God by Werner Herzog.  I watched it this afternoon.

3/21/2025

 Friday, March 21, 2025

D+134/61

1947 President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have "complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States"

1966 US Supreme Court reversed a Massachusetts ruling that "Fanny Hill" is obscene

1973 White House Counsel John Dean told President Richard Nixon, "There is a cancer growing on the Presidency"

In bed at 9:30 and awake at 3:15, up at 3:43 from a vivid dream of RJA, JDG, and myself, preparing for a gathering at which RJA would be honored, getting his suit altered, getting an expensive baseball mitt to present him as a gift, my sleeping neural pathways confusing RJA and his home in Delafiedwith JDG and his home in Whitefish Bay.  Not a nasty dream, but confused.

Prednisone, day 334; 4 mg., day 16/21; Kevzara, day 3/14; CGM, day 3/15; Trulicity, day 1/7.   2 mg. of prednisone at 4:45 a.m. and 7 p.m. Other meds at 6:40 a.m.   Trulicity injection at 6:40 a.m.    

Losing my marbles?  As I lay in bed before getting up, I wondered whether I am losing my marble posting yesterday's long rant about Trump and Musk on FB and copying it in a reply to JPG about her sunrise photos.    I wonder whether I ought to retire from life like a clam snapping shut its shell, or a hermit crab pulling back into its. What's the old adage about if you keep your mouth shut people may mistake you for a wise person, but open it and they'll know you're no, something like that.  My Dad's second (and third) wife Grace used to spontaneously break into song in her nursing home in North Pord, sometimes getting other residents to join in.  She would remind us that she "hadn't lost all of my marbles yet," and indeed she hadn't.  Neither have I but I'm on my way.  

From A Man For All Seasons:

William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

Tom Homan on Fox News:

“I’m proud to be a part of this administration. We’re not stoppinf.  I son'r care what the judges think.  We're not stopping." 

 Justice Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States:

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution.

Are we on our way to a true "constitutional crisis," in which the executive and judicial branches of government conflict in their edicts?  It seems almost unavoidable, or at least highly likely.  I suppose it doesn't really reach crisis stage until some matter, perhaps the deportation of the alleged Venezuelan gang members to some hellhole prison in El Salvador, reaches the Supreme which either enters its own order, or backs up a lower court order, and the president refuses to obey.  That is, when the Court asserts that it has the constitutional power and duty to act, and the President refuses to agree.  If the matter never reaches the Supreme Court, or if the Supremes bow down to Trump in one way or another, we will avoid the crisis pro tempore, until the next big conflict arises.   While mouthing "I always obey court orders,' Trump maintains his great admiration for his predecessor Andrew Jackson, who is famously though incorrectly reputed to have defied the Supreme Cour in response to its 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia, a case invalidating Georgia's right to remove Native Americans from their tribal lands.  Legend has it that Jackson said "Marshall has made his decision now let him enforce it."  The case had nothing to do with the Federal government's right to remove tribes, and there was no court order for Jackson to refuse to enforce.  Nonetheless, Trump probably loves the legend because of its 'fuck you,' 'kiss my ass,' and my-dick-is-bigger-than-your-dick quality.  It's hard for me not to believe that Trump is waiting for the right case to flex his political hegemony by defying a court order and getting away with it.  If that day comes, it's Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch' intrate.

CPM is an acronym for 'continuous passive movement,' and refers to a machine that bends a leg without the leg's owner having to exert any muscular effort.  Jim Reck used one for at least his first knee replacement many years ago, and perhaps for the second replacement as well.  In any event, here we are 9 weeks and 1 day since Geri's surgery and Dr. Graf has prescribed one for her.  He has told her again the "the window is closing' on avoiding a limp.  I'm wondering why he has waited so long before getting her on a CPM.