4/11/2025

Friday, April 11, 2025

D+156/82

1963 Pope John XXIII published the encyclical "Pacem in terris", that peace between all peoples must be based on truth, justice, love, and freedom

1968 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1968 Civil Rights Act

2019 Ex-Pope Benedict XVI claimed that the Catholic sexual abuse scandal was caused in part by the 1960s sexual revolution

2022 The mayor of Mariupol said over 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege, with the likely death toll twice this, as bodies are " carpeted through the streets” [1]

2024 Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced to death for embezzlement, bribery, and banking violations worth $12.46 billion), [1]

In bed at 9 and up at 3, thinking of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.

Prednisone, day 356; 3 mg., day 15/21; Kevzara, day 10/14; CGM, day 9/15; Trulicity, day 7/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5 a.m. and 1 mg. at 4 p.m.  Other meds at 5:25 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 5:20 a.m.  My iPhone tells me that my CGM sensor will end in 4 hours.  WTF?

Timothy Snyder.   I watched on YouTube an earlier version of his 'New Paganism' speech at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, this one titled "The New Paganism: How the Postmodern Became the Premodern."  He is affable in his public lectures, but I get the feeling he's a man angry about la condition humaine.  In the main, he speaks about the power of Putin, Trump, and Musk, but more broadly, he bemoans oligarchy and our digitized lives, with our personal computers, iPhones, and immediate access to information and entertainment.  He argues that the best defense against this world we are living in and the only way to understand it is the humanities, which I suspect is true, at least the understanding part.  He says we are all complicit in the rise of the pagan godlike oligarchs and in the coming destruction of the world through climate change, which I'm sure is also true, especially the complicity part.  His charge explains, at least in large part, my own recognition of my complicity in much that I bemoan, living among those aboveground in our Metropolous.

I read too much and not enough.  “Do I contradict myself?  Very well then I contradict myself,  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.  And the rabbi with the two disputants: You're right.  You're right. And you're right.  I say I read too much insomuch as I spend so much of the time left to me sitting in my recliner, reading.  Newspapers, highbrow magazines, Kindle.  But what I really mean is that I probably read too much generated within my own silo, left wing or centrist liberal, anti-Trump stuff.  Consequently, almost everything I read uis depressing because we all know Trump is in the catbird's seat.  In each of his three presidential runs, he received more votes than he did in the preceding election.  The more the American electorate knows of Trump, the more of them who vote for him.  Those of us of a certain age remember too that George W. Bush received more vote in 2004 after the disastrous Iraq invasion than he did in 2000.  Why keep reading this stuff and punishing myself?  Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Fintan O'Toole - you're killing me.  On the other hand, I don't read enough.  I subscribe to great journals, including The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Independent, and The Guardian.  They contain so many worthwhile articles and essays that I would like to read on subjects other than politics,  but don't or can't.  It's partly because of a lack of physical and mental energy and partly because of my failing eyesight.  I save my copies of the NYRB and LRB for Steve with the hope that he may find some interesting reading in them.  I usually can't read more than a few minutes before my eyes lose focus.  I keep expensive preservative-free artificial tears with me, and they help, but they also create their own problems.  I started to reread The Iliad last week and would like to reread the whole work, but I know it's not in the cards.  I read much less of the articles in the Times and Post than I used to.  I'm satisfied just reading the headlines.  Alas.

LTMW today I see moe phenomenoal acrobatics from the sqiuirrels.  They are becoming a problem.  I think it was only two or three days ago that I put out a fresh suet cake; today it was gone, mainly because of the voracious squirrels.  Today, I watched one squireel lift the nearly empty metal suet cake holders and drop them to the ground where he or she hoped to empty them or take them away to its nest.  The new flat feeder I bought at 'Birds 'R Us' has become very popular, especially with our local cardinals.  Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, almost surely a couple, are frequent visitors.  We still have snowbirds feeding on the ground; I expect them to fly north soon as we warm up.  We are being fairly regularly visited by one or two crows.  One of them very awkwardly tried to feed on some suet yesterday but struck out; he was just too big to manage it.  We are also being more frequently visited by our neighboring whitetail deer.

Jim Reck's birthday.  He would have been 84 today, but it was not to be.  He was a good man.  I can only imagine what life was like for him after Kitty died.  Jim's gone, Kitty's gone, Mom and Dad are gone.  Uncle Jim, Aunt Monica, Uncle Bud and Aunt Mary, Grandma, Grandpa, Boppa Denny, Cousin Christine all gone.  Ed Felsenthal, Tom St. John, David Branch, Bob Friebert, Bill Guis, Bill Rousch, gone.

A graphite and colored pencil drawing from several years ago

Graphite pencil drawing