4/18/25

 Friday, April 18, 2025

D+163/90

1944 Geraldine Edith Aquavia was born in Oak Park, Illinois

In bed at 9:40, awake at 3:53, and up at 4:15.  SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH, first thunderclap at 7:14 a.m. 

Prednisone, day 363; 2 mg., day 1/21; Kevzara, day 4/14; CGM, day 2/15; Trulicity, day 7/7.  Prednisone at 4:25 a.m.  Other meds at 5:20 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 7 a.m.

Geri's Birthday.  My words at her 80th birthday dinner last year:

A few years back, I started keeping a list on my iPhone of 'what I love about Geri and it started with her laugh.  I was listening to her chatting on her phone with one of her friends and she was really enjoying whatever it was they were talking about and she was laughing, a wonderful, deep, exuberant laughter that was a pleasure to listen to, infectious inasmuch as just hearing it made me smile.  

Later I added "sharing her thoughts" and "sharing time" with me to the list, realizing how she has privileged me by that sharing.  I'm the only person in the world she shares so much of her life with.  I have often thanked her for agreeing to marry me.  It's a great and unique privilege married people confer on their partners, a privilege we too often lose sight of as we cope with the daily necessities and distractions of life.

Then I added her devotion to duty.  It sounds as if I were thinking of a soldier or a 'first responder' but in all of the roles she plays in her life, Geri has an innate sense of duty. 'Sense of duty' doesn't capture what I'm referring to.  As a child to her parents, as a parent to her children, as a life partner to me, as a sister to her brother Jim, and as a friend to her many friends, she is true, caring, trustworthy, attentive, solicitous.  The people in her life can count on her for help, for advice, for an open ear and a ready hand, to respect confidences, to pitch in when some pitching in is needed and to butt out when some butting out is needed.  When my twice-widowed father came to live with us, Geri became his best friend at a time in his life when he so badly needed a real friend.  When her older brother lost his wife and his children were spread out across the country, Geri encouraged him to move near us and she personally cared for him for several years.  We should all have these qualities but not all of us do and few have them as innately, as suffusely as Geri does.  This sense of duty carries into all her undertakings, e.g., as an employee, as a volunteer (ombudsman at a nursing home, child welfare investigator, poll worker) and even to our pets.  When our beloved cat Blanche needed to be hydrated by transfusion every day, Geri turned her ironing board into a gurney for her, hung the hydrating solution from a closet door, and served as her nurse.  And Lilly, . . . words fail me.

She is courageous.  She has faced some difficult challenges in her life and addressed all of them head on.  Where many, including me, would have faltered, backed off from a difficult challenge, she has put her shoulder to the wheel and addressed them.  She has guts, tough-mindedness, patience, and an admirable sense of self-respect and determination that lets her succeed at challenges that would defeat many of us.

My iPhone list is lot longer and includes stuff like leading the way when there is tought, unpleasant, nasty work to be done.  She is first to pick up the mop or shovel, not waiting for others, including me, to get at it. But my list is inevitably incomplete.  She is who she is in all her uniqueness.  She is special in large part because she doesn't treat herself as special, as better than or not as good as anyone around her.  But she is very special to me, and she's very special to her family and to her many friends who count themselves privileged to have her in our lives.

Last year on this date,  I was living on my recliner, day and night, wishing I could die and 'get it over with, be done with it.'  I wrote the long letter to Dr. Chatt describing my symptoms and asking whether it might be polymyalgia rheumatica that could be treated with medication or alternatively, "whether this is what the rest of my life will look like."  The letter seemed to offend her, but when Geri took me to see her and later Dr. Ryzka, she had to push me into the VA in a wheelchair.  I was at the end of my rope.    

Deborah Kerr in an Actor's Studio interview: “I don't like getting old. I hate it, in fact. I don't know an honest person who likes it. You just thin out and all your energies go toward surviving or moving safely from one room to another. But the mind thrives, thank God. Or mine does. I used to try very hard not to regret it. I thought that regrets were a waste of time, a sign of weakness. I think only the most insensitive of people have no regrets, because in this time, this slower time, your mind goes back to so many instances when there should have been more kindness, more attention paid to others. I missed so many opportunities to be a better friend, a better mother, a better actress. Of course, I can't remember now what I was in such a hurry to get to that I grew so bad at the important things. So I regret and I think. Old age is the big index to the foolish young people we were."

Deborah Kerr: I recall my good high school friend Larry Stack's mother pronouncing her name De-bor-ah, with the accent on the second syllable.  The close friendship disappeared when we graduated from high school; he stayed in Chicago to attend DePaul University and become an accountant or CPA, and I went off to Milwaukee.  I strain to remembr if we continued to double date and see each other during my returns to Chicago to see Charlene, but I don't thnk so.  Johnny Flynn and Jack O'Keefe went off to join the Irish Christian Brothers and we also lost touch with one another, except for a visit I somehow made to Johnny in his novitiate, though I don't recall how I was able to do that.  Perhaps my freshman Navy cruise port stop in New York?  For many years, I kept a 'holy card' he gave me, or sent to me, signed "Your friend, Johnny."  Decades after our graduation, Ed Felsenthal encouraged me to come down to Chicago for the annual Leo High School alumni dinner.  He told me Larry Stack attended them and would like to see me, but I never attended any of the dinners.  I regret it now that I am running out of friends.  Perhaps I associated Larry too much with double-dating with Charlene, and my heartbreak and long-lasting heartache after she dumped me when I returned from that freshman cruise.  I wonder if most high school friendships evanesce like mine did after the friends go off to different cities and schools.  Larry and I were pretty tight.  We frequently double-dated.  I would take the streetcar (or bus?) to go to his house, play ping pong in his basement, and listen to records.  We talked on the phone regularly.  And then it was over, 'Gone with the Wind.'  We were on different and diverging paths.  So it goes.  Or was it the 'Char shock'?

Milwaukee’s Lead Crisis: Flaky Paint, Closed Schools and a C.D.C. in Retreat is an article in this morning's NY Times by Julie Bosman.  Excerpt:

Milwaukee is facing a deepening lead crisis in its schools, and it suddenly finds itself without help from the country’s top public health agency.Four children in the Milwaukee Public Schools have been found to be exposed to high levels of lead in the last six months. Investigators have discovered seven schools with flaking lead paint and lead dust inside classrooms and basements. Three school buildings have been shuttered so far, and officials said that more are expected to follow — as soon as next week — as the investigation expands.

In the past, school districts have turned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help manage lead problems. But weeks ago, the commissioner of the Milwaukee health department was told that a toxicologist and epidemiologist from the C.D.C., both lead experts who were expected to assist city officials with the local response, had been fired from the agency.

Then the Milwaukee health department was dealt an even sharper blow: Its request for federal assistance from C.D.C. experts to help manage the lead crisis, known as an Epi-Aid, had been formally denied.  “There is no bat phone anymore,” Dr. Michael Totoraitis, the Milwaukee health commissioner, said in an interview. “I can’t pick up and call my colleagues at the C.D.C. about lead poisoning anymore.”

The C.D.C. is already reeling from layoffs targeting 2,400 employees, nearly one-fifth of its work force.  

Children in Milwaukee suffer from especially high rates of lead poisoning: In some census tracts on the north side, more than 20 percent of children under 6 years old had high levels of lead in their blood, according to state health data. .. . . .

C.D.C. cuts could quickly threaten public health, experts say, pointing to reductions in agency resources to promote environmental health and prevent communicable disease. 

Thanks to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE.  Trump is probbly still p.lo.'d tt the CDC because it didn't save him from the Covid-19 pandemic which showed him to e moron.  Tony Fauci lost his security protection and the CDC lost one fifth of its workforce.  We are living through an unimaginable disaster..  Meanwhile, another article in the NY Ti,es points out that the Evangelical Christian community is ecstatic with Trump back in the White House.

From the moment Donald J. Trump was re-elected to the presidency, his conservative Christian supporters have rejoiced in a second chance for their values to have power.  . . Mr. Trump is not known to attend church regularly, and at times in the past he has sounded ignorant of Christian language and beliefs. But after the assassination attempt, Mr. Trump said he had been saved from death by “the grace of almighty God.” . . . . 

On Sunday, Mr. Trump opened the Easter festivities with a statement  referred to as a “proclamation.”

“This Holy Week, Melania and I join in prayer with Christians celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” the statement begins, referring to Jesus as “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.” 

Pass the basin.  

The new dryer was dellivered this morning. 

The Clausen Theory of America's Deb Burden.  For too many years, the government has taxed too little and borrowed too much.  We don't pay enough in taxes and haven't for many years.  For congressmen and senators, raising taxes is politically costly; borrowing isn't.  It's similar to the nation's infrastructure, that was and is so badly in need of updating and improving, largely the consequence of deferred maintenance and political/legislative irresponsibility..