3/19/2025

Wednesday, March 19,  2025

 D+132/59

1987 Televangelist Jim Bakker resigned after rape accusation by his secretary

2003 Airstrikes by an American and British-led coalition signaled the beginning of the Invasion of Iraq, without United Nations support and in defiance of world opinion

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 4:15.  36°, high of 41°.  I lit a log in the fireplace, wondering how much longer it will be that I can start or end my days doing so before the temperaatures get too warm to sustain an updraft in the chimney.I also lit a Kitty candle, thinking can it really be that she's been gone for more than 3 years and that since losing her, I've lost Ed Felsenthal and Tom St. John.     

Prednisone, day 332; 4 mg., day 14/21; Kevzara, day 2/14; CGM, day 1/15.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4:35 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.  Other meds at 8:30 a.m.   

The Wind that Shakes the Barley.   Last night, we watched this 2006 film about the Irish War of Independence and its ensuing  Civil War.  The tension in the plot involves the O'Donovan brothers, Teddy and  Damien, members of the IRA who fight the British together during the War for Independence and then fight each other during the ensuing civil war over the Anglo-Irish treaty that divided Ireland.  It reminded me of my notion that wars never end, or I suppose I should say some wars never end.  I think of the 100 Year War in Palestine and the resumption yesterday of devastating aeriel warfare in Gaza.  I think of Russia's Catherine the Great conquering Crimea in 1783, Putin's annesation of Crimea in 2014, and Trump offering to officially recognize Crimea as part of Russia in his dealings with Putin carve up Ukraine.    I think of the American War Between the States in which, as Heather Cox Richardson reminds us, the North won the war and the South won the peace.  It still goes on today with Trump in the White House whose name seems even appropriate with his war on "DEI."  And we still have the unsettled issue of the unification of Ireland,  "26+6", which reared up again during "The Troubles", and again during the UK's negotiations over BREXIT, and simmers still in the hearts of millions of Irishmen.  

The film depicts, accurately I suspect, the brutality of the "Black and Tans,"  British viewers would, I suppose, dispute this, but among most Irish, the Black and Tans are remembered only as cruel thugs, and I suspect that view is largely accurate.  One of my earliest childhood memories  is of my Grandfather, Dennis Healy, 'in his cups' one day, visiting my mother, Kitty and me, in our little basement flat on Emerald Street, railing about 'the goddamn Black and Tans.'  That was in the 1940s, more than 25 years after the end of the Irish War of Independence.  'Boppa Denny' left Ireland in 1904, long before the invasion of the Blank and Tans after World War I.

The film also reflects the tension between bourgeois Irish nationalsts and their socialist brothers-in-arms.  For the bourgeois, the goal of the war of independence was simply to oust the British, gain self-rule, and continue life much as before the war.  For the socialists, the goal was to change the capitalist economy into a socialist one, with land reform and greater social and economic equality high on the list of goals.  One of the most powerful scenes in the film is in a Catholic church during a mass.  The priest is at his pulpit railing against the anti-Free Staters, i.e., the socialists.The scene reflects the power of the Church in Ireland until recent years, and its usual alliance with rich and powerful classes and against socialists and economic reformers.

The film is a blunt, honest takedown of British imperialism, settler colonialism, and 'Cruel Brittania.'  It is not hard to see why the government of Ireland and the Irish people side so readily with the Palestinians in their never-ending conflict with Israel.  It is also in a suble way, an indictment of bourgeois capitalism, reflected in a scene in which Damien O'Donnell, a doctor, visit a dying, malnourished little boy in a smallholder's cottage and in the scenes showing the elegant manorhouse of an English landlord.  The scene with the half-starved boy reminded me of the scene in The Year of Living Dangerously in which Linda Hunt, playing Billy Kwan, visited the ded (or dying?) child  he had been caring for, with Richard Strauss' exquiste Beim Schlafengehen as background music.

The film succeed as drama and not melodrama because of the excellent screenplay, direction, and acting, especially by Cillian Murphy playing Damien O"Donnel and by Padraic Delaney playing his brother, Teddy.  The film won the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 2007 and I can see why.

Arithmomania is a common subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) characterized by an intense preoccupation with numbers and a compulsion to engage in repetitive counting behaviors.  Last night I counted the number of days since I started maintaining this jounal, or daily notebook - 972.  Then I counted the number of days I didn't make any entry in the compendium - 16.  Then I subtracted the latter from the former to arrive at the number of days I wrote daily notes - 956.  Why did I do this?  To see how close to the nuber 1,000 I am in writing daily notes.  OCD?  I suppose.  Since the day my fellow Americans elected Donald Trump as our president, I have counted the days - 132 as of today.  And now I'm counting the days since his inauguration -59.  OCD?  I suppose.  Hypergraphia, arithmomania, just waiting for schizophrenia.

I ran into a fellow Marine and Vietnam vet at Costco on today's shopping outing.  He was in for 4 years and in Nam in 66-67.  The two of usstruck up quite a conversation for about 20 minutes while his poor but patient wife went on with her shopping.  He was an explosives technician and was in the Corps for 4 years.  Both of us use the VA Medical Center in Milwaukee.  Our conversation had to end before I could ask him what he tought of Trump's plan to cut 70 or 80 thousand personnel from the VA.  I wasn't wearing either of my USMC baseball caps but he was so I said 'Semper fi, brother' and started the conversation.

FB exchange with Janine Geske today.  CDC: I wish you could publish a book of these Lake Michigan sunrise photos. You are our Ansel Adams🙂 I would stand in line to buy the book and brag to the many others in the line "I know the photographer!"😄 You've got me now taking iPhone photos of skies and cloud formations here in Bayside. Thanks (again!)  JPG: You are so funny. I just like to share the beauty I see in the morning (helping me to heal from everything happening in our country).  CDC:  I'm going through a very similar process, but I'm far from healed (actually nearly despondent.)