Saturday, April 19, 2025
D+164/91
1775 Paul Revere's midnight ride from Lexington to Concord
1989 Central Park Five: Violent rape of jogger Trisha Meili in NYC's Central Park became one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s. Five teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent between 6-12 years in prison.
1993 After a 51-day siege by the FBI, 76 Branch Davidians died in a fire near Waco, Texas (accident, suicide, and tear gas are disputed causes)
1995 Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh triggered a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168. including 19 children, and injuring 500
In bed at 9, awake at 4, and up at 4:20. 45°, cloudy, high of 54°
Prednisone, day 365; 2 mg., day 2/21; Kevzara, day 5/14; CGM, day 4/15; Trulicity, day 2/7. Prednisone at 6:05 a.m. Other meds at 8
Sentimentalist. Yesterday, I engaged in what has become a tradition in our home. I got up early in the morning and went through my collection of greeting cards to find the birthday cards I had given her and saved over the years. For many years, I have refused to give greeting cards that are trite and meaningless or cards that express thoughts that I don't really believe. Picking a Father's Day card used to be a challenge since so many of them speak of what a great father the recipient was when the sender, me, was a child, something that wasn't true of my Dad. In any case, this morning, I strategically placed several of the cards that accurately expressed my feelings about Geri around the house where she would discover them after she arose on her birthday, starting in her bathroom and ending at her usual spot on the TV room sofa. I also ineptly wrapped a birthday present I bought for her a couple of months ago, a simple wood carving of a dog standing and leaning against its beloved owner. When I saw it advertised with other carvings, I immediately ordered it because it reminded me of one of my favorite photos of Lilly standing and excitedly kissing Geri, who was seated on a park bench. Her dear friend Fredi Miller took the treasured snapshot years ago and sent it to Geri when Lilly died. Geri now has the photo and the wood carving next to Lilly's ashes on the living room buffet.
While searching through the collection of saved cards, I opedned a jewelry or organizer boxI''ve had for years, one from my days in the Marines. It was useful for keeping the various military insignia we wore on our uniforms, rank insignia and EGA stuff (eagle, globe, and anchor.) In it I still have a Marine Corps belt buckle, one first lieutenant bar, a couple of EGA devices for my dress blues/dress white unforms, 2 of Sarah's diaper pins, a pink slipper from Sarah's toddler days, a letter to the tooth fairy from Sarah, a note from Andy asking whether the 'toth' fairy would leave him a quarter and providing a choice of two response boxes, one for "yes" and another for "no," a pocket-sized booklet of "Prayers and Observances" from Leo High School, a 1982 letter from Sarah to me from her German language camp in Minnesota, and a 'holy card' from my Grandpaa Dewey's funeral in 1967. I was hoping I would also find the 'holy card' from Johnny Flynn at the Irish Christian novitiate, but no luck, though I think I have it somewhere. I still have the crucifix that lay on my mother's casket in 1973 and the one that was on my friend Roland Wright's casket. I have Andy's Most Valuable Player Award from one of his Little League games in 1984 and a plaster sculpture of a penguin he gave me when he was a child. I have my Dad's wristwatch and a postcard he sent to my Aunt Monica from a Marine base in 1944 or 1945, before Iwo Jima. I have a pearl ring of my mother's as well as an elegant porcelain pitcher that I believe to have been her mother's. All of these things are treasures to me, more relics than mementoes, but in any case, things of great value. But coming up on age 84, I know my days are numbered and that, when I'm gone, my memories will be gone too and, with them, the significance of these items. All or most of them will be trashed, and why not? The same will be true of my memoir and this journal, at least the 'hard copy' of it. Again, why not? I think of Geri's china cabinet and of her 'good china' and chrystal, and of her mother's, all protected and saved to pass on, but to whom? They are valued by her, and by me, but 'good china' and chrystal are from another age, another culture. I suppose the stuff will end up in a consignment shop, if there is a consignment shop that is willing to take them. Does anyone buy this stuff anymore? My paintings and drawings? Destined for the trash bin and again, why not? I'm a little sad about all this, but not blown away or depressed. As Billy Pilgrim reminded us in Slaughterhouse-Five, "So it goes" and, as the priests reminded me every Ash Wednesday, Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.
Holy Week. Today is Holy Saturday, tonight the Easter Vigil. Here is a posting from April 9, 2023, with some thoughts about "Holy Week"
25 years ago today, I was in Paris attending the Holy Thursday / Last Supper mass at the Abbey St. Germain de Pres. It was the beginning of 4 days spent staying at a cheap hotel on the Left Bank and attending services at just about every church in central Paris, including the solemn Easter vigil mass at Notre Dame, celebrated by Paris' Jewish Cardinal Aron Lustiger. (Knowing my plan to binge on ancient churches, Geri wisely opted to stay home.) The liturgies were theatrical, dramatic, and affecting. I filled 88 pages of a little pocket 100-page notebook with notes of my visit, which I have occasion to read every now and then, including today. I have always been affected by religious venues and by liturgies, illustrating, I suppose, that those who designed them accomplished their purpose. I was struck by how many young people attended the services in supposedly secular France. Three years after my visit, the Boston Globe started its investigation into childhood sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese and its efforts at cover-up. How much has changed since then. The extensive structural damage to Notre Dame Cathedral seems emblematic of the institutional damage to the Church. I wonder today what differences, if any, I might see in the people in the pews during this Holy Week compared to 25 years ago. I wonder especially if I would see as many young people in those pews. Social scientists and pollsters tell us that church membership generally and among the young is declining, that increasingly the responses to questions asked about religious affiliation is "none" or "n/a." One wonders whether this trend will reverse as the situation in the country and in the world becomes more ominous, or is traditional religion, including the evangelical and pentecostal varieties, whose members skew old, becoming a sputtering flame.
In 1998, when I made that pilgrimage to Paris, Bill Clinton was the American president, the United States was nearing a budget surplus rather than a deficit, and the national debt was $5.5 trillion, 60% of the GDP. Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia, not yet succeeded by Vladimir Putin. Europe was at peace and the Brexit madness had not yet overtaken Great Britain. In 2023, when I posted the FB recollection, the UK had finally succumbed to its self-defeating Brexit folly, Russia and Ukraine were well past the first anniversary of their war, and NATO had been reinvigorated by that war after its shaky existence under Trump's regime. The U.S. was a year and a half past its controversial and bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden. This Easter weekend, Trump is back in the White House, and the world has been turned upside down. The Ukraine War is more than 3 years old, and the U.S. has switched sides under Trump. Europe has been called an adversary of the U.S. - "the EU was created to screw us" - and NATO can no longer count on the U.S. for its protection against Russia, which now is allied in large measure with Trump's America, which is increasingly fascistic and Christian nationalist. Now, even more than two years ago when I wrote the FB post, I wonder what current developments are doing in terms of religious faith.
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. . . Routinely, and often at Mr. Trump’s enthusiastic direction, senior administration officials and allied pastors are infusing their brand of Christian worship into the workings of the White House itself, suggesting that his campaign promise to “bring back Christianity” is taking tangible root. . . .there is an enduring sense among many of his Christian supporters that Mr. Trump miraculously survived an assassination attempt last summer to remake America.
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.”
To his supporters’ particular delight, Mr. Trump’s new White House Faith Office has physical office space in the prized real estate of the West Wing.
To paraphrase, is this good for the Christians? A "Faith Office" in the West Wing? An amoral and immoral president believed to be an emissary of The Most High? If it's good for the evangelicals and pentecostals, is it bad for the non-evangelicals and non-pentecostals? Is it good or bad for a multi-cultural, multi-religious, largely secular America, in other words, the rest of us? Will the steady downward trajectory of America's democracy under Trump's erratic and idiosyncratic leadership, tightly associated with right-wing Catholicism and Protestantism, drive people, especially young people, away from religion or toward it, perhaps in despair and desperation?
Am I wrong to think there is something obscene about Putin's declaration of a temporary ceasefire for Easter? Same thought about LBJ's and Nixon's Christmas bombing pauses on North Vietnam.
Peter's Nicolet FEAR robotics team won the Excellence in Engineering Award at the International Competition in Houston today, a tremendous achievement and a wonderful conclusion to years of hard work at Nicolet.. Mazel tov, Peter and to Andy and Anh for all the support they have given him along this long journey.
Steve and Nikki, David, Sharon, and Elllis will be here for dinner tonight, celebrating Geri's birthday.
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