5/26/2025

Benedetta Monday, May 26, 2025

D+180/125

Memorial Day

1945 The US drop firebombed Tokyo

1966 A Buddhist set himself on fire at US consulate in Hué, South Vietnam

2004 NY Times published an admission of journalistic failings, claiming its flawed reporting and lack of skepticism during the buildup to the 2003 Iraq War helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction

2018 Ireland voted to repeal their 8th Amendment to allow legalized abortion, 66.4% voting yes

In bed at 9:45 after falling sound asleep in the recliner, up at 5:45, 43°, high of 59°, another sunny, pleasant day. 

Prednisone, day 376; 1mg., day 18/21; Kevzara, day 14/14; CGM, day 9/15; Trulicity, day 4/7.  Prednisone at 6 a.m.  Other meds at  7:45 a.m.  Triamcinolone at 9:30  a.m.  Eye drops at 6:15  a.m. and 8   p.m.   

Exchange of texts with Geri,  last night and this morning:

Hi,

Going to sleep now, it’s 9:38 pm.

Kate and I went to two garden nurseries as I mentioned in my earlier text. To my delight the nursery had 25% off all perennials. We had dinner when we got back to Kate’s then went through Kate’ closet checking out clothes.

I’m planning on coming home on Tuesday, not only do I want to try at least to miss holiday traffic I do need to rest! Although we planned a quiet day for today walking thru the nurseries ogling every plant we both were pretty bushed by the time we got back to Kate’s. It was great fun though.

It was overcast and almost rainy today. Not the warm weather I anticipated.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

It sounds like you two are having a great and exhausting Springtime adventure and I’m happy for both of you!  It seems wise to leave on Tuesday and I hope you succeed in getting some rest today.  I have finished all the chili and most of the pea soup

And the Mac and cheese and may treat myself to a holiday dinner out this evening.  I love you dearly, Sweetie and look forward to your homecoming.♥️💓❤️🥸    

I may drive over to West Bend via Gravel Road outside of Newburgh and Pioneer Road, and maybe up to Holy Hill and/or the Town of Erin.  That is, if I’m up to it. 

Mixed feelings on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.   My Facebook posting today.

I made my regular Memorial Day weekend visit to Wood National Cemetery yesterday.  It was all decked out with its normal 35,000+ flags in front of each gravesite and scores of larger flags all along the driveways, but it was quiet on the day before Memorial Day, only two other cars plus mine.  This morning there were thankfully many more  people there for the ceremonial speeches and statements of gratitude for the veterans buried there, especially those 'who gave all.'  I have to admit to mixed feelings about Memorial Day (and Veterans Day.)   I very much appreciate the recognition of the service of those who did, and do, serve and I recognize that there are a great many other persons who serve though not in uniform, not only folks like the employees of the Veterans Administration, but also the the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives, husbands and children of service members.  We should salute all of them who provide such vital support to service members as well as the men and women in uniform.  On the other hand, I regret the flag-waving by those who consider those in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marines "suckers" and "losers," and by those who wrongfully and shamelessly avoided military service during a time of armed combat and made someone else serve in their stead.  I regret the ruthless  cuts that are being made to the VA and to services like Medicaid that assist that help so many veterans and their families, and I regret the staging of any grand military parade that will waste milllions of dollars that could be put to more humane uses, require thousands of military men and women to march only to satisfy an insatiable ego, and will remind many only of Red Square, Tiananman Square, or a production staged by Leni Riefenstahl.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”  He chortled in his joy.  My text to Geri this afternoon.

Hi, Sweetie.  I just arrived home after a magnificent drive in the country.  I’ll just mention the highlights.  I covered all of beautiful Maple Road between Cedar Creek and Cedar Sauk Roads north of Grafton.  It’s the road Dan Goldberg alerted us to, very hllly, beautiful homes, crabapple trees and lilac bushes full of blossoms.  Then I traveled the entire length of Pleasant Valley Road from County O in Grafton to its terminus at Arthur Road, southwest of Little Cedar Lake, where I went next for my first pit stop and great memories of fishing there with the kids and grandkids, including Peter catching his first fish.  There have been a lot of changes since I was last there.  Then I skipped stopping at the Mayfield Garden Center, though I was sorely tempted to see whether they might have a Cuban Oregano, and drove into West Bend and onto Pioneer Road, the gorgeous Rustic Road, onto Wausaukee Road and Gravel Road to County Y in Newburgh and past the Riveredge Nature Center.   NoNo’s is not NoNo’s anymore, (something like “The Traditional Supper Club.”. On Pleasant Valley Road I passed The Jailhouse Restaurant where you and I, and my Dad had dinner one night, up on the second floor, making me fear for my Dad’s ability to negotiate the stairwell.  Then I drove dpwn St Finbar Road to the St. Finbar Cemetery where I enjoyed my second pit stop ‘en plain air’ before driving down Shady Lane Road past the big Opitz dairy farm due west of our house on Deerfield, down County O and onto Deerfield Road, where I see the mailbox for the house across from our old house still says “Carters” on it, making me wonder whether Barb and her hubby are still living there.  Then I stopped at Walmart to pick up some sunflower seeds for the birds before driving home.  I left at 10 and got back almost exactly 3 hours later, at 1.   I was happy as a clam all morning, enjoying the great scenery, beautiful home, rolling farmlands, great trees, everything I saw, and thinking, as I always do on these jaunts, how wonderfully beautiful Wisconsin is, including Ozaukee and Washington counties.  I miss living out ‘in the middle of nowhere’, but I’m glad we are still so close to ‘nowhere.’😍  When I left I had put a load of laundry in the washing machine and connected by external drive to my laptop for a backup, both of which were done when I got home, my version of multi-tasking.😋  I  hope you and Kate are resting up after your busy day yesterday and that you’ll have fair weather tomorrow for your drive home.  Plese let me know when you leave and when you hope to arrive home.❤️💕❤️ 

I had the thought that always comes to me on my long, leisurely, slo-mo drives through Ozaukee, Washington, and Sheboygan counties: how can anyone expect the people who live 'out' here to vote Democratic?  The Democratic Party, and its office holders and candidates, have become too closely identified with racial and other minorities, with higher taxes, and with wide-ranging government regulation.  Unlike urban and suburban residents, the people living on these country roads are not living cheek-by-jowl with neighbors.  They rely on private wells for their water and on septic tanks for their sewage.  What they do on and with their land rarely directly affects their neighbors' land or property value.  They are often individually responsible for dealing with their waste, either through private collection and disposal contracts or by personally taking their waste (and recyclables, if any) to the town dump.  They live in privileged circumstances, largely free of the many restrictions that attend and often burden urban and suburban Americans.  In the main, they are not Black, Brown, Asian, or Indigenous.  They are not gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgender.  They are not poor.  They are not immigrants.   In the main, they fall outside the identity-constituencies, the protection of whose interests is seen as the stock-in-trade of the Democratic Party.  They may admire or loathe Donald Trump, but they find so little to draw them to the Democrats that Trump (and other Republicans) get their vote almost by default.  It's hard for me to see this situation changing in my lifetime.  Since 2016, I have been harsh in my judgment about those who vote for Donald Trump, even though I know their numbers include some good friends and family members.  The more I think of it, however, the more I think I am suffering from TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, i.e., that my fear and loathing of what Trump means for our country is so intense that I have overlooked the political sterility of the Democratic Party for millions of American voters, 77 million of them in 2024.  I place most of the blame for this on the Bill and Hilary Clinton effect, although Obama and Biden have surely contributed to it, each of them having been succeeded by a Trump presidential victory.  Where do we go from here?  It looks grim.

Benedetta.  It's sorta fun to bandy about what is the worst movie ever made, or at least the worst that I've ever seen.  When any given movie gets in the running, it's usually so very bad that its title is quickly forgotten.  Most movies are pretty crappy so a movie has to be considerably worse than pretty crappy to vie for the prize as the worst movie ever made (or seen by me.)  Yesterday and today I watched in two sittings the movie Benedetta by Paul Verhoeven, who already made a candidate for this title, i.e., Showgirls, a real stinker.  I watched it for 2 reasons.  First, it deals with hypocrisy and corruption in the Church and the strange relationship of sex and religiosity.  Second, it features Charlotte Rampling in a starring role, which suggested to me that it might have some redeeming social value, despite Verhoeven's role in its provenance.  Conclusion: though he had a lot to work with in Church history, human nature, religious quackery, sex and religiosity, etc., and despite Charlotte Rampling's participation, the movie is in the running for the worst movie ever made, or at least the worst that I've ever seen, or the movie idea that had the most to work with and did the least with it.  I wonder whether it may become one of those classic bad movies that become a cult favorite after a few years because it's so egregiously badly done while showing the most gratuitous full frontal and full backal😁 female nudity.  Why in the world is Charlotte Rampling in this flick?