4/30/2025

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

D+175/101

1975 Saigon fell & became Ho Chi Minh City

1977 Human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo began protesting at the forced disappearances of thousands, under the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, in Buenos Aires

2015 Bernie Sanders announced he would seek the Democratic nomination for President

2021 45 were killed and 150 injured in a crush of people at the Israeli Lag B'Omer festival at Mount Meron

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 6:30.  Pretty bad pain in right shoulder and left hip during the night.      

Prednisone, day 251; 2mg., day 13/21; Kevzara, day 1/14; CGM, day 13/15; Trulicity, day5/7.  Prednisone at 7 a.m.  Other meds at 7:20 a.m.   

Starting out the day thinking about our old friend Hannah Dugan, charged with 2 federal crimes, suspended by the Wisconsin supreme court, famous and heroic to many, infamous and notorious to many others.  I'm unsure what to think factually or legally about her case, but I'm sorry that she is in trouble, with Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel aligned against her.   Trump describes the U.S.-Canadian border as "an artificial line, drawn by a ruler,"  but disrupts the lives of millions who treat the U.S.-Mexican border the same way.  Also thinking about the significance of the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the almost 60 years since I was sent there.  Finally, I woke up perseverating on "Once upon a midnight dreary, . . ."  Where did that come from?  

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more.”

What a great poem!  Not only for the terrific rhyming schemes, but also for the theme of the poem, including "Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—"  How many of us have turned to books to borrow surcease of sorrow?  The rhymes in the poem are super, but some are a little cheesy, like "that is something at my window lattice; / Let me see, then, what thereat is,".  😀 Reminds me of some favorite song lyrics: "maybe Tuesday will be my good news day," and  "You said that love was too plebian, said that you were through with me, and . . ."

Trump's first 100 days and our retirement savings.  In her column in this morning's WaPo, Michelle Singletary advised me to check our retirement accounts' records during Trump's first 100 days.  I did.  Good news and bad news.  The bad news is that we're down about 3%, with no withdrawals by us.  The good news is that we've done a lot better than the S&P 500, which is down 7.3%.  He inherited Biden's economy of declining inflation, low unemployment, and strong economic growth, and converted it to one of declining securities markets, declining consumer confidence, increasing market volatility, trillions of losses in retirement accounts, and approaching stagflation.  The reason?  Trump is living in a dream world, the world of his hero, William McKinley, and the Gilded Age, when the federal government was funded by tariff revenues rather than by income taxes, and was imperialistic and expansionist, acquiring  Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa.  For Trump, it's Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada.  Why does he love tariffs - "the most beautiful word" - because they are regressive, most onerous on the poor and middling, and most favorable to the wealthy.  His tragic error, of course, is that America and the world in 2025 are not the world of William McKinley and the world in the 1890s.   We are all paying the price for Trump's, Peter Navarro's, and Howard Lutnick's stupidity.  If the country continues on the path of Trump's first 100 days, we will be in deep, deep trouble.  Who can we count on to help us, Stephen Miller?  Pete Hegseth?  Karoline Leavitt?  J. D. Vance?

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the lawn guys are.  Our lawn service guys showed up for the first mowing of the season.  Our grass is in terrible shape after the winter.  Geri's several gardens are languishing because of her being semi-out-of-commission with knee surgeries last year.  She is back in the swing of things now, which will be good for her, I hope, and good for Blackacre.

On the Same River  1959,  I watched this movie made in North Vietnam, 5 years after the French forces were disassterously defeated at Dien Bien Phu, and the division of Vietnam under the Geneva agreements.    It's a serious film, but it looks a bit like an old, black and white, silent film era melodrama.  It is an anticolonial, nationalistic, propaganda film designed to illustrate how very good the Vietnamese communists were and how thoroughly rotten the government in South Vietnam was.   The plot is a love story between a young woman, Hoai, and her fiancé, Lan.  The dramatic tension is provided by the fact that she lives on the south side of the Ben Hai River that divides North and South Vietnam, and he lives on the north side.  He is a Viet Cong, or communist nationalist, dedicated to the reunification of his country and freeing his countrymen in the South from the oppression by their colonialist (Catholic) rulers in the South.  The military and police officials on the south side of the river are all bad; those on the north side of the river are all good.   The police chief on the south side of the river lusts after and pursues Hoai with attention and gifts, but her heart belongs to Lan.  The division of the country also divides families, some of whom live north, and others south.

Although the movie is simplistic or reductionist, it is based on some realities, including the fact that the division of the country did divide families, including my in-laws, the Hoangs.  Like many other Catholic families, they fled the North when the communists took over in 1954. More than 1,000,000 people fled to the South, including perhaps 800,000 Catholics.  This was the first great exodus of Vietnamese refugees seeking freedom.  The second started in 1975 when North Vietnamese troops entered and took control of Saigon, and the South Vietnamese government collapsed.  Again, my in-laws became refugees, this time ultimately to Appleton, Wisconsin.  The movie depicts the communists as benevolent patriots, which is simply not true, Jane Fonda to the contrary notwithstanding.  From Max Hastings' monumental history, "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975", chapter 5, The Twin Tyrannies":

Northern and Southern Vietnam have always been as different as are their regional counterparts in Britain, the United States, Italy, and many other nations . . . In the years that followed the Geneva Accords, both fell into the hands of oppressive authoritarian regimes.  That of Ho Chi Minh, however, profited from some notable political advantages.  While the North was devastated by the war [with the French] and subjected to destitution rapidly worsened by communist economic policies, it became far more efficiently disciplined.  Ho had spent less of his own life in Vietnam than had Ngo Dinh Diem.  As victor in the independence struggle, however, he commanded immense prestige, and deployed his charisma and charm to formidable effect on the international stage.  Moreover, by exercising iron control over information and access, North Vietnam veiled from foreign eyes its uprisings, purges, and killings.  In the South, by contrast, the follies and cruelties of the Diem regime took place in plain view.  Many peasants found Vietnamese landlordism no more acceptable than the French variety but learned nothing of the worse plight of their Northern brethren.  Only much later would Southerners come to look back on 'the six years' - the years between 1954 and 1960 - as a lost idylll, because relatively few of their countrymen killed each other.

 

I think of Hastings' book today, and of the truths and insights it contains, because today is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, an event that drove home to anyone with eyes, ears, and a brain the folly of America's invasion of that tragic country in March 1954. about which I have thought and written about so much and so often in this journal over the last 33 months. 

 Paintings reminiscent of Vietnam which I did some years ago.  I wish now I had at least dated my paintings and drawings, if not signing them.