4/8/2025

 Tuesday, April 8, 2025

D+153/79

1956 6 Marine recruits drowned during a night "marsh march" in Ribbon Creek at Parris Island, South Carolina; the drill instructor was court-martialed

1970 Senate rejected Nixon's choice of Judge G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court

2000 Nineteen Marines were killed when a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft crashed

2019 600 million birds die each year in the US after striking tall buildings, with Chicago being the worst city, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

2020 Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic race for US president

2024 New Vatican document rejected the concept of changing a person's biological sex despite Pope Francis's overtures to the Trans community

In bed at 9:35, awake and up at 3:45, wishing I could fall back to sleep.  25°, wind chill is 14°, high of 39°.  My chronic morning runny nose is a washerless faucet this morning.   

Prednisone, day 353; 3 mg., day 12/21; Kevzara, day 7/14; CGM, day 6/15; Trulicity, day 5/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4 a.m. and    p.m.  Other meds at 10 a.m.

My globetrotting daughter has friends all around the world.  She has been in the theatrical lighting control business for more than 30 years now, has been based in Bavaria for the last 15, has traveled to and worked in probably 20 (?) countries, and has 596 Facebook friends.  She posted this morning from the big trade show in Frankfurt am Main and has 16 likes/loves so far, with names like Tone Lyche, Akihiro Ishikawa, Dimitrii Dragunov (Ukrainian?), Vladimir Kraynov (Russian?), Coralie Diaz, and Pepijn van der Sanden.   She's also a polymath: skilled and gifted in theatrical lighting, landscape and art photography, painting, sewing, cooking, and baking.  She sewed her own wedding dress and baked her own wedding cake, each a thing of beauty.  She has her own baking channel on YouTube, @insignbakery1875.  (Guinness chocolate cake, apple strudel from südtirol, lussekatter (saffron buns) and more.  She is equally at home in two languages (English and German) and has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Germany.  A remarkable woman and beautiful. 

These copies of just a few of Sarah's photos don't do justice to the originals, especially the one on the botton, which is one of my favorites not just for the single new leaf that stands out, but for the many tiny spores (?) on the bottom left that arebarely visible on this printed page.  The middle photo is, I believe, from the Eng Valley in Austria, where she took me on my first visit to Bavaria.  She captured the light in the valley and the shadowy mountains beyond.   I don't know where she took the photo on top but it is stunning and reminds me of color field paintings, but for the dramatic tree, so solitary.