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