5/10/2025

Saturday, May 10, 2025

D+184/109

1960 John F. Kennedy won presidential primary in West Virginia

1968 Vietnam peace talks began in Paris between the US and North Vietnam

1969 US troops began the attack on Hill 937 ("Hamburger Hill"), Vietnam

1976 Paul Harvey's daily syndicated program "The Rest of the Story" premiered on the ABC Radio Networks, continuing until his death in 2009

2012 Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree of canonization of the Benedictine nun and composer Hildegard von Bingen, completing the sainthood process started in 1228

2017 President Donald Trump shared classified information about ISIS plot with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Offic

In bed  Lights out on the recliner at about 10 and up a little before 4.  52°, high of 58°, wind gusts up to 20 mph, wind chill = 44°  

Prednisone, day 360; 1 mg., day 2; Kevzara, day 11/14; CGM, day 7/15; Trulicity, day 2/7.  Prednisone at 4:10 a.m.  Other meds at 3:45 p.m.

Cataract surgery:  (1) This morning I had the follow-up visit with Dr. Nikita Saladi who performed the surgery.  All was well.  She was a little late in opening up the Eye Clinic for her three patient: another Vietnam vet, a Korean War vet with no legs accompanied by his elderly sister from Grafton, and me (and Geri.)  The Vietnam vet was fro West Allis and raises racing pigeons, which made for a very interesting conversation.  We chatted with the lady from Grafton in the waiting room.  She has lived there for 45 years, after moving from the North Side of Milwaukee because of, as they say, "changing neighborhood characteristics."  She offered to give me her number so we could visit when I/we went to Costco or Meijer's.  Ust then Dr. Sladi called for me or I might have taken her up on the offer.  I should have; she seems to be another lonely elder.

(2) Pre-op and the DNR question.  Dr. Saladi's pre-up visit was all the normal stuff but it slowed down when she asked me the DNR question.  I have my Healthcare Power of Attorney filed with the VA and it includes a Do Not Resuscitate instruction.  There is always the possibility of a cardiac event during a surgery and she asked me whether, in the very unlikely event that I should experience one, I wanted to be resuscitated.  I had to think a while before answering that.  When I executed the POA, I was thinking of my having a cardiac event or a stroke at home and the likelihood of brain damage, disability, nursing home, all the potential horrors of old age.  Yesterday what I thought about was Geri in the waiting room and being told that I had just died in the OR, i.e., that she was a widow and there would be no need to drive me home.  I also thought that right now life has not been nearly intolerable, notwithstanding all my health and mobility problems.  I told the doctor that I wanted to be resuscitated if the need arose, but even before I was wheeled into the OR, I wondered if I had made a mistake.  I thought that dying quickly in the VA OR would be a gret way to go, not as great as TSJ dying while snorkeling in the Virgin Islands, but still not a bad way to go.  I talked about the issue with Geri after Dr. Saladi left and realized that the DNR issue is more complicated than I thought when I executed the DNR.  I need to give this some more thought.

(3) The procedure went well but I was surprised that I was so awake and alert during it.  I was given a light sedative but not a general anesthetic or the kind of sedation I was used to for an upper GI endoscopy or colonoscopy (versed & fentany.)  I could hear the entire conversation between Dr. Saladi and the supervising surgeon, the breaking of the cataract into pieces, their removal, the placement of the new lens, the whole shebang.  At times, I could feel uncomfortable pressure but no serious pain, nor anxiety.

(4) Acts of Kindness.   As I usually do at the VA, I witnessed acts of Kindness during my time there.  At the entryway to the hospital, there was a young woman in a wheelchair.  Because her profile was so low, it did not trigger the automatic door.  Another vet rushed to stand in front of the door so it would open for her.  We had a similar situation when Geri and I left, this time with me in the wheelchair. but again another vet positioned himself in front of the door to trigger its opening for us.  While we were in the waiting room before the surgery, I had to fill out a questionnaire.  When I struggled a bit to get out of my chir to return it, the vet across from me asked if he could bring it up to the nurse for me.  I thanked him and told him I could do, and then chatted with him.  He was another Vietnam vet, 67-68, Army, Central Highlands.  He had a brother who was a Marine in Vietnam and died a suicide 3 years after returning to the States.  Before we cold talk longer, a nurse called me into the pre-op area to prep me.  While we were there, there were  3 separate "Medical Emergency, Rapid Response Team needed" PA announcements.  So it goes at the VA.

Hearts and Minds is a 1974 Peer Davis documentary about the Vietnam War.  I watched it last night and early their morning, a brutal experience.  Once I left Vietnam in 1966, it wasn't until 1982 or 1983 before I watched a Vietnam movie.  It was Apocalypse Now..  I couldn't watch it in one sitting; it took three.  Later I watched Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.  Much later I watched The Messenger, about CACO duty, Casualty Assistance Calls Officer.  They were all disturbing (to say the least) to watch, and so was Hearts and Minds.

The title is based on LBJ's speech on May 4, 1965 in which he said, ""The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there."  That was less than 2 months after the Marines landed at Danang to protect the airfield, and the more fateful decison to go on the offensive and  escalate the war in July.  As we who temporarily lived out there used to say, just more happy horseshit.  King George sang in Hamilton,  "And when push / Comes to shove / I will send a fully armed battalion / To remind you of my love!"

Some of the memorable segments of the film:  (1) Interview of Gen. William Westmoreland, head of MACV: ""Well, the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner.  Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient.  And, as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it it, life is not important"

(2) Speech by historic journalist I. F. Stone at a big antiwar rally: ""As long as the American president is commander-in-chief of the biggest war machine in human history with bases on every continent, we are going to get into trouble  Our enemy is the growing militarization of American life.  Our enemy is American imperialism."

(3)  Daniel Ellsberg: "Truman lied from 1950 on on the nature and purposes of the French involvement, the colonial reconquest of Vietnam, that we were financing and encouraging.  Eisenhouwer lied about the reasons for and the nature of our involvemnt with Diem and the fact that he was in power, essentially, because of American support and American money and for no other reason.  Kennedy lied about the type of involveent we were doing there , our combat involvment, and about the recommendations that were being made to him for greater involvement.  President Kennedy lied about the degree of our participation in the overthrow of Diem.  Johnson of course lied and lied and lied about our provocations against the North Vietnamese prior to and after the Tonkin Gulf incidents, about the plans for bombing North Vietnam, and the nature of the buildup of American troops in Vietnam.  Nixon as we now know misled and lied to the Amerian public from the first months of his office in terms of our bombing of Cambodia and Laos, ground operations in Laos, the reasons for our invssion of Cambodia and Laos, and the prospects of our mining of Haiphong that finally came about in 1972 but was envisioned as early as 1969.  The American public was lied to month by month by each of these five administrations.  It's a tribute to the American public that their leaders perceived that they had to be lied to. It's no tribute to us that it was so easy to fool the public.  . . . What has always surprised us, what we've never been willing to predict or understand, is that the Vietnamese Communist leadership can find enough people to live in the tunnels, fight for nothing, wearing ragged shorts year after year under the American bombs. A war in which one side is entirely financed and equipped and supported by foreigners is not a civil war. the only foreigners in that country were the foreigners we financed in the first part of the war and the foreigners we were in the second half of the war.  Basically we didnt want to acknowldege the scale of our involvment there.  We didn't want to realize it was our war because that would have been to say that every casualty on both sides was a casualty caused by our policy.  The question used to be "might it be possible that we were on the wrong side in the Vietnamese War?  But we weren't on the wrong side.  We are the wrong side."

(4) A former Marine confined to a wheelchair remembering that he had visited the Marine Barracks at 8th and "I", watched the Sunset Parade, listened to the Marine Band play the Marine Corps Hymn and the Natioal Anthem, feeling so proud and so patriotic that he actually cried. "Vietnam took all of that away.  All gone."

The filmmaker, Davis, breaks the American attitude toward the war into 4 categories: Crime (radicals). mistake (liberals),  mistake not to win it (conservatives), and crime not to win it (hard right).

This is a very incomplete picture of all the thoughts and images in the film, which included a lot of scenes of football, parades, marching bands, cheerleaders, drum majorettes, and various parts of American life in the 50s and 60s that emphasized Americans as winners, patriotism, an omnipotent military, the pledge of allegiance, fighter jets flying over the beginning of sporting events,  Mixed with these scenes are scenes of devastating injuries in Vietnam, both of Americans and of Vietnamese civilians and combatants, napalm, Marines burning hootches, and on and on.