6/30/2025

 Monday, June 30, 2025

OK? as I ever am? Not yet.

2022 Ketanji Brown Jackson (51) was sworn in as the 104th justice of the US Supreme Court, replacing Stephen Breyer (83)

2022 Supreme Court landmark ruling limited the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate power plant pollution

In be at 9, up at 6:45.  5? 6? pits stops. 67°, high of 80°, cloudy

Kevzara, day 7/14; Trulicity, day 4/7; morning meds and Blink pill at 9:30 a.m.; Eye wipes at 10 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at 12:30 p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  Zyrtec at 12:30 p.m..    BP = 141/82 at 12:18 p.m.

Time stands still in the mornings when I sit on the patio and take in the greenery, the air moving and still, the sounds of the birds, the sun on my neck and arms.  It's as close as I manage to get to Mindfulness, experiencing only the exactly here and the exactly now.  Or is it the opposite, an awareness of Time and Transience, for I inevitably think at some point of our common status as "temps," here for only a portion of time.  The cardinals have an average life span of 3 to 5 years, and though some live much longer, they are all "temps."  The robins have only an average lifespan of 2 years in the wild, less than the chickadees' 2.5 years.  I've already outlived my life expectancy, which was about 64 the year I was born.  I now have a remaining life expectancy of 6 or 7 years according to the Social Security Administration.  Fat chance!  Please, God, no!  In any event, while sitting on the patio in the morning, I feel time standing still while still inexorably moving on, I feel neither anxiety about death nor the worse anxiety about living too long.  Those spectres await me in the house and in my head.  I recall the fraught minutes with Dr. Saladi awaiting surgery when she asked me whether I waived my Do Not Resuscitate order in my HCPOA.  How preferable it would be to die on the operating table  at age 83 rather than any of the many worse deaths that might await me at 84, 85, or 90.

Looking back.  There is an op-ed in this morning's N Y Times by the novelist Rachel Kushner, titled "Where I Learned the Power of Looking at Everything,"  It's about her giving a graduation speech at Berkeley, and it includes the line "It is only later that we can see what will have mattered from our time in college, . . "  I've thought about that often in my old age, always with the same conclusion, i.e., that what mattered most to me from my undergraduate education was my literature courses.  I specifically recall John Pick's English 1 class, Roger Parr's course on Chaucer, and Fr. Bruckner's course on the English Catholic Literary Revival.  What I remember most from Fr. Bruckner's course, however, was not our study of Chesterton, the Waughs, or Greene, but his introducing me to the peculiar poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.  More than 60 years later, I still go back and read Hopkins' poetry: Spring and Fall, Pied Beauty, Carrion Comfort, I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day, God's Grandeur, The Windhover.  I remember also Fr. Bruckner instructing us that fine literature is to be read and enjoyed and that, if analysis interferes with reading and enjoyment, stop analyzing.  I don't remember anything in particular about Roger Parr's course on Chaucer, indeed, even whether it was one course or two, one on Canterbury Tales and the other on his other writings, including The Parliament of Fowls.  What I remember is that I enjoyed reading Chaucer and am moved to re-read Parliament this morning as I write these thoughts.  I remember too Chaucer's poem To My Empty Purse, and its frank concession of the vital importance of money in our lives.  I recall John Pick's introductory English classes mainly for his histrionics.  His classes were as much entertainment as education and elucidation.  When he lectured on Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn ("Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, / Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, . .  '), he held up, addressed, and verbally caressed the classroom's small trash can.  At some point, he opened the window of our third-floor classroom in Johnston Hall and emptied the contents of the trash can out the window.  Was it at the close of the poem ("Beauty is truth, Truth beauty - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.")?  Probably, but I can't recall.  I recall only his great pleasure in dealing with literature and with language. 

My major in undergraduate school was Psychology.  What do I remember of my Psych classes?  Virtually nothing.  I remember that I took a course titled Psychology 1, another called Industrial Psychology, and another called Industrial Psychology (time and motion study stuff).  Perhaps I took a course in Experimental Psychology, but I'm not sure.  I can't recall the name of any of my Psych professors.

My minor was Naval Science, i.e., my required NROTC classes, 24 semester hours worth.  I remember Major Holmberg, USMC, teaching the Marine courses and the UCMJ course, and the degenerate Lt. Sam Adams teaching some of the Navy courses in the first two years, but that's all I remember.

So what has stayed with me over the 65 or so years since my college days: the English classes that I was required to take to satisfy Marquette's Liberal Arts BA distribution requirements.

This afternoon I had an Eastern Bluebird munching on the orange over our sunflower tube.

6/29/2025

Sunday, June 29, 2025

D+214/146/1300

Day 16, Block party day

1776 Patrick Henry was elected 1st governor of Virginia

1956 DDE signed the Interstate Highway Act

1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed after an 83-day filibuster in the US Senate

1966 US planes bombed Hanoi and Haiphong for the first time in the Vietnam War

2002 Dick Cheney served as Acting President while "W"  underwent a colonoscopy

2023 Supreme Court outlawed 6-3 college race-based admission programs

In bed at 10:30, too much daytime napping, up at 7:05, 71°, 85°,  sunny

Kevzara, day 614; Trulicity, day 3/7; morning meds and Blink pill at 11:20 a.m.; Eye wipes at 7:45 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  Zyrtec at .  I am a klutz at applying the ointment to my eye, worse than my ineptness with the eye drops.  Last night I was pathetic, with ointment all over my eyelid.

I sat on the patio this morning, listening to robins, cardinals, crows, a bluejay, goldfinches, and a red-bellied woodpecker.  I found myself grateful for the birds and all the greenery, of course, for the warm, sunny weather, for the patio and backyard, but also for depth perception, three dimensionality.  I noticed the sun illuminating plants in Debby and John's backyard, plants that I saw through a darkly shaded opening in the greenery along our common lot line.  I was peeping through a dark hole at a bright beyond and it was beautiful.  Then I made myself mindful of the depth of everything around me, all the branches on the pear tree, the depth of field between the pear tree and the pine tree, and the cedar trees to the south.  Glory be.  Not exactly on point, but I'm reminded of Hopkins' Pied Beauty:

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

I was also reminded that two-dimensional drawings, paintings, photos, etc., can't come near the beauty of the real thing. 

Two years ago today:

Yesterday's driveway news.  We need to get our culvert pipes replaced by the village before the driveway can be repaved.  Cost anywhere from $6500 to $10,000.  The joy of home ownership. Grumble, grumble.

We put it off for two years.  Now we're contracted with Pablocki Paving for the replacement of both driveways ($13,314), new culvert pipes ($4,510), and lawn restoration ($1,872). 

Facebook exchange with JJA:

Janice Jenkins Anderson 

Everyone understands this is a concentration camp, right? The cruelty is the point. Yet, I fully expect to see the Christian evangelical right wing cheering this on. And they wonder why people are leaving organized religion in droves…

Alt National Park Service

June 27 at 8:16 PM  · 

We’ve talked about “Alligator Alcatraz” before. Here are more details.

Starting the first week of July, when South Florida’s heat index regularly hits 100°F, they plan to detain up to 5,000 people in tents. No A/C. No real shelter. Just suffocating heat, choking humidity, and swarms of mosquitoes.

The location? A remote airstrip deep in the Everglades, surrounded by marshes, alligators, and invasive pythons.

Florida officials are calling it a “detainment camp.” They say it’s fine because “We are swamp creatures,” and even brag that nature will “do us some favors.”

This isn’t policy. It’s cruelty plain and simple. And it’s happening on U.S. soil.

Charles D. Clausen

Agreed: cruelty is the point. I've voted Democrat almost my entire adult life. I voted against Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. I disagreed with the overall policies of all those Republican presidents. I don't believe, however, that any of them, other than Trump, was intentionally cruel. The worst I could say of any of them, other than Trump, was that he was indifferent to some human need that Democrats sought to relieve, and I am not sure that even that was true of most of them. I don't forget, for example, that some great environmental and worker protection legislation was passed during Nixon's administration, or that it was in Reagan's administration that the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 was passed and signed, granting amnesty to millions of undocumented workers. Reagan also signed an Executive Order in 1987 protecting the children of undocumented workers who applied for amnesty, a precurson to Obama's DACA protection. Cruelty is a defining characteristic only of the Trump administration and it's this characteristic, more than any other, that reminds us of fascism.

Janice Jenkins Anderson

Charles D. Clausen I completely agree. I’ve always been a Democrat and disagreed often with the GOP on tax or trade policy and on social issues but never before have I believed that a Republican president didn’t have the country’s best interest at heart or was primarily seeking to personally profit from the office or would be intentionally cruel. I wholeheartedly believe those things about Trump and perhaps the most disturbing thing about his time in office has been that a third of the country actively supports the hate he spews towards the most vulnerable.

Charles D. Clausen

It's even more disturbing that so much of his most fervent support comes from people who identify as Christian, people of Faith, people of the Book, etc. Love your neighbor as yourself, love one another as I have loved you, the Good Samaritan, "neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus," Matthew 25:31-46, and all that. How does any of that fit in with the intentional cruelty and hatred that so clearly animate this government

Janice Jenkins Anderson

Charles D. Clausen 🎯

6/28/2025

 Saturday, June 28, 2025

D+213/145/1301

Day 15

1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and his wife Sophie by Bosnian-Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo

1934 Jimmy Aquavia was born

In bed at 8, up at 5:45.  61°, high of 76°, sunny.    

Kevzara, day 5/14; Trulicity, day 2/7; morning meds and Blink pill at  a.m.; Eye wipes at a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  Zyrtec at .

Earl Pickles, c'est moi!

Resisters who won in court: Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Susman Godfrey.  Capitulators:  Paul Weiss;  Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; A&O Shearman; Milbank; and Cadwalader.

Last year on this date, I was crying the blues about the debate between Trump and Biden, realizing that the game was over, or the game was up, or whatever the correct expression is.  I repeat again what I have often written in these pages, the apocryphal quote of Barak Obama: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."

Today I'm feeling pretty crappy again, head tight, throat congested, coughing, trying to clear my throat, slighty headachy, no energy.  I went out onto the patio around 1 p.m., sat and looked at the trees and bushes, and groundcover while listening to Richard Strauss' Tod und Verklärung, Death and Transfiguration.  I intended to listen to Four Last Songs inadvertently hit upon Tod.  As the title tells us, it is a composition about a dying man.  The other day, I was encountering The Death of Ivan Ilyich; today, it's Tod und Verklärung.  Strauss was 25 years old when he composed it.  Why in the world would someone at that age be thinking of death?  He was 84 when he composed Vier Letze Lieder.  Tolstoy was in his late 50s when  Ivan Ilyitch was published in 1886; he lived for another 24 years until his death at age 82 in 1910.  In the 1870s, he went through a wracking spiritual crisis - a midlife crisis? - that led to radicalizing changes in his lifestyle, religious, and political beliefs that lasted for the rest of his life.  I'm interested in him again in large measure because of his radical Christianity, his anarchism, and his reflection on his own life and grief about it as he grew ever nearer the end of it.

I wanted to reflect some more on old age, death, and on the process of reviewing one's life in old age, the long painful (for me at least) examination of conscience, living with intense feelings of guilt, shame, sin, weakness, failure, stanzas IV and V of Vacillation, but I've lacked the mental, physical, and emotional energy to engage in that kind of activity.  I don't know if it's because I'm entering the third week of feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, or if it's because I'm old and I've dropped down to a significantly lower plateau on the erratic descent to 'pencils down, imes up.', but in any event, I have run out of steam.

St. Augustine has nothing on me!

Everything that follows is some of what I wrote on his date two years ago, and seems pretty pertinent to my thoughts above.  I was two years younger then and clearly had a lot more energy that I do today.  I do a 'copy and paste' to ensure that I read these thoughts again.

What then must we do? and Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.  I'm reminded of these New Testament lines by an essay I've been reading by Christopher Hitchens on the time he spent interviewing Saul Bellow in Chicago in 1983.  The essay is the concluding one in a collection of his essays titled The Moronic Inferno.  At one point during the interview, Hitchens wrote that he asked Bellow "What then must we do?" undoubtedly referring, without saying so, to either the line in Luke 3:10-14 or to Leo Tolstoy's nonfiction book of that title (or something like it, depending on the translation.)  The other line - Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner - is also from Luke, but in ch. 18:13.  The first line was uttered by people seeking baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus' first cousin (who today we would call a lunatic) as he was scaring the shit out of them about the coming doom and damnation - 'the axe lies ready at the root of the tree . . .'.  They were asking how to avoid the terror to come.  The second line was uttered by a despised tax collector on the margin of a crowd of Pharisees who were bragging about how observant/holy they were with Jesus saying saying the tax collector "went home justified, for he who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."  I think of both of these lines in connection with Reinhold Niebuhr's An Interpretation of Christian Ethics and its chapter entitled 'The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal."  In Luke 3:10-14, John answered his questioners that they should share all that they have with the poor, anticipating Jesus' teaching in Matthew 25: 31-46 and elsewhere.  Niebuhr points out that this Christian ethical ideal of subordinating one's own interest to benefit others runs counter to human nature, i.e., that it is impossible to follow. 

I think about those followers of John the Baptist asking 'what then must we do?'  These people had to be a little nuts to begin with.  Why else would they be down at the River Jordan seeking answers about the meaning of life from John in his camel hair tunic and diet of locusts and honey?  Who are their counterparts today?  I think too of that loathed tax collector, who he was, why he was so conscious of his sins, why Jesus said he was 'justified,' and who are his counterparts today.  I suspect today's Jordanaires (not the backup singers for Elvis and Patsy Cline, but John's groupies) are the whacko followers of whacko evangelical prophets of all sorts, but mostly of the fraudster/grifter sort, the likes of Jimmy Swaggert, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen and on and on.  They believe that we are doomed, that Armageddon is on the way, and that they need salvation and that if they do what is required they will be 'saved' while those who aren't in the know and who don't do "what then must be done" are doomed to perdition.   

On the other hand, the penitent tax collector is Modern [Hu]Man and his  progeny are the many people who are troubled by their own inadequacy to live a 'clean' life in the society and culture in which they live, conscious of their own moral and ethical frailness, their own complicity in what they see as life's depravity, those who are kicked in the stomach by the lines in Yeat's Vacillation:  

 Things said or done long years ago, / Or things I did not do or say / 

But thought that I might say or do, / Weigh me down, and not a day 

But something is recalled, /My conscience or my vanity appalled.

. . . . 

But for Jesus' tax collector and today's progeny, it's not just the acts and omissions 'long years ago' that beset their consciences, it's everyday wrongs, everyday compromises, all the moral and ethical problems that Niebuhr recognizes as permanently grounded in human nature.  They never feel innocent because they know they are not innocent.  They are not sure of how to assess individual guiltiness because they know they have been born to live in a guilty world, a guilty society, a guilty culture.  While they would like to feel like victims of this wicked, nasty, world, this society, this culture, they know full well that they are also sustainers of those systems, beneficiaries of them, "limousine liberals" and NIMBYs.

And speaking of Niebuhr, there is a very interesting op-ed piece in this morning's NYT by Thomas Edsall titled "This Is Why Trump Lies Like There’s No Tomorrow."  Excerpts:

-- "In 2008, Kang Lee, a developmental psychologist at the University of Toronto, published “Lying in the Name of the Collective Good” along with three colleagues:  Lying in the name of the collective good occurs commonly. Such lies are frequently told in business, politics, sports, and many other areas of human life. These lies are so common that they have acquired a specific name, the “blue lie” — purportedly originating from cases where police officers made false statements to protect the police force or to ensure the success of the government’s legal case against an accused.

-- "In a 2017, a Scientific American article building on Lee’s research, “How the Science of ‘Blue Lies’ May Explain Trump’s Support,” by Jeremy Adam Smith, argues that Lee’s work highlights a difficult truth about our species: we are intensely social creatures, but we are prone to divide ourselves into competitive groups, largely for the purpose of allocating resources. People can be prosocial — compassionate, empathetic, generous, honest — in their group and aggressively antisocial toward out-groups. When we divide people into groups, we open the door to competition, dehumanization, violence — and socially sanctioned deceit."

This 'modern, scientific' insight seems to come directly from Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society which was published in 1932.

Niebuhr and God.  I've wondered for some time about Niebuhr's faith, i.e., his belief in God.  What "God" means to him.  How he understands "God" to be.  How he feels, e.g., about Thomas Aquinas' notion of the "All"s: all-good, all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-this and all-that.  While looking for something else in my LOA edition of Niebuhr's major writings, I found his "Notebook of a Tamed Cynic" and this entry from some unstated day in 1026:

"I had a letter from a young preacher today who told me how he was suffering for truth's sake.  He had merely been telling his congregation that Jesus was a great spiritual teacher, as was Confucius and Laotse, and that the Christ idea was the product of Greek legend and ancient mythology.  His good people were so ignorant, he thought, that they failed to show proper appreciation for his learning and resented his iconoclasm."

. . . . 

"It is not easy to define the God idea.  Scientifically I suppose God is "the element of spirituality which is integral to reality," but for all practical and religious purposes I find it both helpful and justified to define him by saying that "God is like Jesus."  The ultimate nature of reality cannot be grasped by science alone; poetic imagination is as necessary as scientific precision.  Some of the supposedly ignorant peasants against whom my youthful friend is drawing his heroic sword may have more truth on their side than any fresh young theologue could possibly realize."

I don't dare compare myself in any way with Reinhold Niebuhr, but I have shared at least one thought with him, i.e., the poetic imagination is necessary to even begin to address 'the God idea' just as it may be to address any significant idea of 'Reality.'  I wonder what Einstein meant by "God" when he said (supposedly) 'God doesn't play dice with the universe.'  He has written that he didn't believe in a personal God, and he was almost certainly using the term (or idea of) 'God' metaphorically.  What did Niebuhr mean by "God"?  What does the term refer to?  If not the Thomistic "all-this all-that guy", what are we left with?  Was it the best he could do to "define him by saying that 'God is like Jesus."?  There are times I think I could spend much of the rest of my limited days on earth exploring this question if only I had better vision, more energy, more this, and more that.  Excuses, excuses, pity parties . . .

6/27/2025

 Friday, June 27, 2025

D+212/144/1302

Day 14? Allergies?  Hay Fever? Hex? Punishment for sin?

 1905 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was established at "The Continental Congress of the Working Class" in Chicago, Illinois;

1950 The US sent 35 military advisers to South Vietnam

1977 A 5-4 Supreme Court decision allowed lawyers to advertise

2018 Joseph Crowley was defeated in New York by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

2019 US Supreme Court ruled the Constitution doesn't prohibit partisan gerrymandering, allowing a ruling party to redraw electoral boundaries

In bed at 9:40, up around 5.  69°, high of 80°, cloudy

Kevzara, day 4/14; Trulicity, day 1/7 st 9:15; morning meds and Blink pill at 9:15 a.m.; Eye wipes at 9:30 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  Zyrtec at 8:30.

Da miz'ries.  It was two weeks ago tonight that I woke in the middle of the night with a raw throat and went through the following day, and the next two weeks, blowing my nose, coughing, and trying to clear my throat.  This seems a bit long for a head cold, but who knows?  Do I need to be tested for allergies at my age?  COSMIC INJUSTICE, UNFAIR, INTOLERABLE!!!  I blame Agent Orange and demand disability pay!

Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Ilyich.  Yesterday was a day of blur for me: the 13th day of going through one Kleenex after another, wondering how my nose could produce so much nasty fluid, wishing that my throat would stop wheezing and clacking, wishing that bothersome pain would stop roaming around my body looking for a place to settle, and generally feeling crappy and very sorry for myself.  Poor me!  Why me, Lord? and all that.  Wimp.  Crybaby. Micky the Mope.

I had been intending for some time to get a copy of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich from the library, but yesterday I found the full text online, read some of it, and copied some of it into this journal rather than engaging in any original thought (assuming I'm capable of any original thought.)  I had read the novella many years ago, along with Tolstoy's Confession, perhaps as a substitute for attempting War and Peace, or perhaps because I was going through some spiritual or emotional struggle of my own at the time, as Ivan Ilyich was as he lay dying.  In any case, I cut and pasted the sections that dealt (1) with Ilyich's days in law school, becoming socialized or conditioned to professional life in imperial Russia, and (2) with his final illness and deathbed redemption (conversion?  salvation?  what's the right word?)

In the law school segment, I noted especially:

In lawschool he was already what he would later be during his entire life: a capable, cheerful, good-natured,and sociable man, but one who strictly did what he considered his duty , and he considered his duty to be everything that it was considered to be by his superior.

and

At law school he had done things that previously had seemed to him quite vile and had filled him with self-disgust while he did them; but later, seeing these things were done by people in high positions and were not thought by them to be bad, he didn’t quite think of them as good but completely forgot them and wasn’t at all troubled by memories of them. 

 

 In the deathbed scene, the images that stand out are (1) his son kissing Ilyich's hand that had unintentionally hit him, (2) his wife weeping, (3) Ilyich feeling sorry for them and wishing to spare them suffering, and so (4) accepting or welcoming death.

The law school description reminds me of O. W. Holmes, Sr.'s "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribes . . ." and of Roger Cramton's "The Ordinary Religion of the Law School Classroom," a 1978 article in the Cornell Law Review in which, after analysis, he concluded:

Modern dogmas entangle legal education - a moral relativism that tends toward nihilism, a pragmatism tending toward instrumentalism, a realism tending towards cynicism, an individualism tending towards atomism, and a faith in reason and democractic processes tending towards credulity and idolatry. . . Our indifference to values confines legal education to the "what is" and neglects the promise of "what might be."  It confirms a bias deeply engrained in many law students - that law school is a training ground for technicians who want to function efficiently  within the status quo. 

I don't for a moment think that Ivan Ilyich's law school education (?) or training (?) was similar to late 20th-century American legal education (?) or training (?),  but I fully suspect that it served much the same socialization function of American legal education and thus had much the same risks of nihilism, instrumentalism, and cynicism.  The sentences I quoted above clearly suggest this.  Ilyich consider his professional duty to be what his superiors said his professional duty was.  Follow the leader.  To get along, go along.  Don't buck the establishment.  I read this sentence with the other that I quoted about 'things that  previously had seemed to him quite vile and had filled him with self-disgust' becoming untroubling because they "were done by people in high positions and were not thought by them to be bad."  Those of us raised in a religious tradition may have had a rather simple, or primitive, sense of right and wrong and of the teachings, for example, of Jesus Christ, as children.  As we grow older, questions of right and wrong, and of what Christianity requires, become less simple or primitive.  As I used to tell our law clerks at the law firm, 'nothing's simple, nothing's cheap.'  Everything is complicated (and expensive) is contested legal matters, including what lay people may think are simple questions or right and wrong.  Witness the decison released today by the U. S. Supreme Court in the so-called Birthright Citizenship case.  The opinion of the Court, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is 26 printed pages long.  Justice Thomas filed a 5 page concurring opinion.  Justice Alito filed a 4-page concurrence, in which J. Thomas concurred.  Justice Kavanaugh filed a 12-page concurrence, Justice Sotomayor filed a 44-page dissenting opinion, joined in by Justices Kagan and Jackson, who filed her own 22-page separate dissenting opinion.  Quaere whether Ilyich in his legal education and in his professional service as a lawyer and as a judge lost some of his simpler, more primitive, purer sense of right and wrong, and of the requirement of Christianity, and became more nihilistic, instrumentalist, and cynical.

It is harder for me to know what to think of Ilyich's deathbed conversion, redemption, salvation, epiphany - what is the correct term? Until he had seen and felt his son kissing his hand and his wife weeping at his suffering and piteous state, he was full of anger and of often conflicting thoughts. He was angry at those who were not dying, who were living and healthy, not beset with pain and disability.  Except for his peasant manservant Gerasim, whom he loved, he was separate from and separated from, distant from everyone.  When he experienced his son kissing his hand and his wife weeping, he experienced empathy.  He felt sorry for their suffering and wanted to ease it, though it could come only with his death, which he finally accepted.

America's right turn.  Today's  Supreme Court's decision in the so-called Birthright Citizenship case is another shocking development in the country's lurch toward dictatorship and fascism.  The Court didn't address the underlying issue of the constitutionality of Trump's Executive Order purporting to limit birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.  Rather, it limited the authority of lower courts to issue "universal injunctions", i.e., injunctions against the Executive Branch of government that enjoin not only unlawful or unconstitutional action against plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but also against all other similarly situated persons or entities.   Under the ruling, a District Court's injunction would be the law only within the District Court's geographical jurisdiction.  The Executive Branch actor would be obliged to respect the court's injunction only within the court's jurisdiction and not beyond.  As Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson put it in her dissenting opinion

Make no mistake: today's ruling allows the Executive to deny people rights that the Founders plainly wrote into our Constitution, so long as those people have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected. . .  As a result, the Judiciary - the one institution that is solely responsible for ensuring or Republic endures as a nation of laws - has put both our legal system, and our system of gevernment, in grave jeopardy.

Consider this decision together with the United States v. Trump, the presidential immunity case, and consider how far we have moved toward an all-powerful Dictator.

 

 

 

6/26/2025

Thursday, June 26, 2025

D+211/143/130 3

1968 Iwo Jima was returned to Japan by the US

2003 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

2015 US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 same-sex marriage is a legal right across all US states

2015 US President Barack Obama sang "Amazing Grace" as part of his eulogy for the 9 victims at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston

In bed at 10 after LO'D, up at 5:50.  68°, high of 73°, thunderstorm this afternoon.   

Kevzara, day 3/14; Trulicity, day 7/7; morning meds and Blink pill at 8:50 a.m.; Eye wipes at 9 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at 5 p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  

I am incapable of generating two coherent thoughts today.  Preoccupied, in a state of torpor.

Did the bombing of Iran reduce the likelihood of nuclear proliferation or increase it?  Nuclear armed countries now include the United States with 3,700 warheads +1,477 retired, Russia with 4,309 + 1,150 retired, China with 600, France with 290, the UK with 225, India with 180, Pakistan with 170, Israel with 90, and North Korea with 50.  The countries that are technologically capable of building nuclear weapons include Germany, Poland, and Turkey in the West and Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the East.

From The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, ch. 2:

He had been educated with his younger brother in the law school. The younger one didn’t finish and was expelled from the fifth class. Ivan Ilyich completed the course with good marks. In lawschool he was already what he would later be during his entire life: a capable, cheerful, good-natured,and sociable man, but one who strictly did what he considered his duty , and he considered his duty to be everything that it was considered to be by his superiors. Neither as a boy nor afterward as a grown man did he seek to ingratiate himself, but there was in him from a young age the characteristic of being drawn to people of high station like a fly toward the light; he adopted their habits and their views on life and established friendly relations with them. All the passions of childhood and youth went by without leaving much of a trace in him; he gave in both to sensuality and to vanity , and—toward the end, in the senior classes—to liberalism, but always within the defined limits that his sense accurately indicated to him as correct.

At law school he had done things that previously had seemed to him quite vile and had filled him with self-disgust while he did them; but later, seeing these things were done by people in high positions and were not thought by them to be bad, he didn’t quite think of them as good but completely forgot them and wasn’t at all troubled by memories of them.

Having left law school in the tenth class and received money from his father for fitting himself out, Ivan Ilyich ordered clothes at Sharmer’s, hung on his watch chain a medallion with the inscription respice finem, took his leave of the princely patron of the school and his tutor, dined with his schoolmates at Donon’s, and, equipped with a new and fashionable trunk, linen, clothes, shaving and toilet things, and traveling rug ordered and bought from the very best shops, he went off to a provincial city to the post of assistant to the governor for special projects, which his father had procured for him.   

In the provincial city Ivan Ilyich at once established for himself the kind of easy and pleasant position he had had at law school. He worked, made his career, and at the same time amused himself in a pleasant and seemly way; from time to time he went around the district towns on a mission from his chief. He behaved to both superiors and inferiors with dignity and he carried out the responsibilities he had been given, mainly for the affairs of religious dissenters, with an exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he could not but be proud.

ch. 12

Suddenly some kind of force struck him in the chest and on the side; his breath was constricted evenmore; he collapsed into the hole and there at the bottom of the hole some light was showing. There happened to him what he used to experience in a railway carriage when you think you are going forward but are going backward and suddenly realize your true direction. “Y es, everything was wrong, ” he said to himself, “but it doesn’t matter. I can, I can do what is right. But what is right?” he asked himself, and at once fell silent.

It was the end of the third day , an hour before his death. At that very moment the gymnasium schoolboy quietly slipped into his father’s room and approached his bed. The dying man was still crying out despairingly and waving his arms about. One of his hands hit the schoolboy’s head. The schoolboy took it, pressed it to his lips, and wept. 

At that very moment Ivan Ilyich fell through and saw a light, and it was revealed to him that his life had been wrong but that it was still possible to mend things. He asked himself,  “What is right?” and fell silent, listening. Now he felt someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes and looked at his son. He felt sorry for him. His wife came to him. He looked at her. She looked at him, mouth open and tears on her nose and cheeks that she hadn’t wiped away . He felt sorry for her.

“Y es, I make them unhappy , ”he thought. “They are sorry for me, but it’ll be better for them when I die.” He wanted to say that but didn’t have the strength to utter it. “However, why say things? One must act, ” he thought. With a look to his wife he pointed to his son and said: “Take him away . . . sorry for him . . . and for you . . . ” He wanted to add “forgive” but said “give, ”and not having the strength to correct himself, waved his hand, knowing that He who needed to understand would understand.  And suddenly it became clear to him that what had been oppressing him and not coming to an end— now everything was coming to an end at once, on two sides, on ten sides, on every side. He was sorry for  them, he must make it so they had no pain. Free them and free himself from these sufferings.

. . . . . 

“So that’s it!” he suddenly said aloud. “Such joy!”  For him all this took place in a moment, and the significance of this moment didn’t change. For those there his death agony lasted two hours more. Something bubbled in his chest; his emaciated body shivered. Then the gurgling and wheezing became less and less frequent.

“It is finished!” someone said above him.  He heard these words and repeated them in his heart.  “Death is finished, ” he said to himself.“It is no more."

He breathed in, stopped halfway, stretched himself, and died.

Erich Fromm came up with the notion of "malignant narcissim" to include the psychology of Hitler and others, including narcissim, paranoia, psychopathy, and sadism

6/25/2025

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

D+210/142/1304

Day 12

1867 1st barbed wire patented by Lucien B. Smith of Ohio

1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn

1950 North Korea invades South Korea, starting the Korean War

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:30.  62°, high of 70°, rainy.  

Kevzara, day 2/14; Trulicity, day 6/7; morning meds and Blink pill at 9:50 a.m.; Eye wipes at 5:50 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at  p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at 11:30 a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.   Zyrtec at 9 a.m

Kitty.  I think I had 5 'pit stops' during the night; perhaps it was 4, but more likely 5.  On the last one, I found myself thinking of Kitty, how we were each other's connections with our Mom and our Dad, how only the two of us shared the knowledge of what life was like growing up as children with our deeply unhappy and unloving father and with our loving and protective mother, how important each of us was to the other, and how for the last several years of Kitty's life, we started every single day talking with each other in the early morning, while our mates and much of the rest of the world were sleeping.  When I went back to bed and fell asleep, I had a dream in which we were together, discussing some medical problem I was having with the VA.  I remember next to nothing of the dream (as usual) other than the fact that I was with Kitty again, discussing in the early morning a problem I was having.  I make note of it here to record that she is still with me, in my thoughts and in my dreams. Of all the losses I have suffered over the past few years, her's was and is the hardest.  I lit a 'Kitty candle' when I came out to the TV room to start the day, remembering the votive candles I sent her to light when she was awake in the middle of the night as she often was, as a reminder that I was with her in spirit, in love, just as she is with me now in spirit, in love, in memory.  She died on March 3, 2022, 3 years, 3 months, and 22 days ago.  Almost five months later, I started talking to myself in this journal, a sorry substitute for my morning talks with Kitty.  On her birthday last year, I posted the tribute - is that the right word? - I wrote about her while she was in hospice care,  and included a good selection of photos of her.

The Volvo and news of John M.  I called Goodyear and learned that my left rear tire had been punctured by two screws and that one of them was very close to the sidewall, making repair problematical.  Later, I got a call saying the repair couldn't be done safely and that a replacement tire would have to be installed.  One was ordered and will be installed on Friday.  I'm carless this week!  Geri drove me over to Andy's to pick up their mail while they are vacationing in Canada.  On the way, she told me that Debbie M.  told her that John M. had given up driving.  He's suffering from leukemia and was recently diagnosed with some level of some kind of dementia.  He and I are the same age, both of us born in 1941.

Ed Felsenthal.  It was yesterday that I received the call from Mary Fran, his firstborn, that Ed had died.  We were good friends for 65 years, college roommates who remained close friends for 65 years.  Kitty three years ago, Ed last year, Tom St. John two and 1/2 years ago, David Branch long ago.

Out of it all day.  So it goes, though I did have one of those magical moments on the drive over to Andy's house to pick up his mail:  I saw each individual tree and the aggregate of trees on the route and saw how beautiful they were.  It was as if Bayside had been paid out by Frederick Law Olmstead between laying out Central Park in New York and Lake Park in Milwaukee.  I saw the village as a large, magnificent arboretum and wished Kitty were with me to enjoy how gorgeous it is.

 

6/24/2025

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

D+209/141/1306

Still boosting Kleenex stock, day #11

1901 First exhibition by Pablo Picasso, aged 19, opened in Paris

1967 Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Sacerdotalis coelibatus

1982 Supreme Court ruled the president can't be sued for actions in office

2022 Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a 6-3 vote

In bed at 9:15, up at 5:20.  67°, high of 79°, cloudy, rain later?  

Kevzara, day 14/14, at 10:15 a.m.; Trulicity, day 5/7; morning meds and Blink pill at 9 a.m.; Eye wipes at 5 :45 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at  4 p.m. and   p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at  a.m. and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  

First stop, Iran.  Second stop, Stockholm!  If Obama got one for nothing, I should get one for bombing Iran!

Pity party.  I confess.  I'm at least semi-miserable after 11 days of going through boxes of Kleenex, coughing, and trying to clear my throat.  I woke up thinking I was cured, but soon realized I was wrong.  Might this be "just" allergies???  I'll pick up some Zyrtec (sp?) or Claritin today just in case.  Meanwhile, I'll try to SNAP OUT OF IT!

The driver's side rear tire is almost flat.  Geri followed me to Goodyear to drop off the Volvo, brought me home, and then picked up Ellis for a trip to Costco.  I'm at home alone and without a car, giving me a hint of what life would/will be like when/if I can no longer drive.😱😰😭

Stop the presses!  Trump caught in another lie!  In this afternoon's New York Times:

Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says -Classified findings indicate that the attack sealed off the entrances to two facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.

A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The early findings conclude that the strikes over the weekend set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, the officials said.

Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program was delayed less than six months.

The findings suggest that President Trump’s statement that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated was overstated, at least based on the initial damage assessment. Congress had been set to be briefed on the strike on Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to ask about the findings of the assessment, but the session was postponed. Senators are now set be briefed on Thursday.

The report also said much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Some of that may have been moved to secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.

Some Israeli officials said they also believe that Iran has maintained small covert enrichment facilities that were built so the Iranian government could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities.  Initial Israeli damage assessments have also raised questions of the effectiveness of the strikes. Israeli defense officials said they have also collected evidence that the underground facilities at Fordo were not destroyed.

 

6/23/2025

 Monday, June 23, 2025

D+208/140/1307

Sick Day #10, but better (I think)

1960, the first contraceptive pill was made available for purchase in the United States

1996. Archbishop Tutu retired as head of the Anglican Church in South Africa

In bed at 9:30, up at 4:30.   72°, high of 90°, partly cloudy.

Kevzara, day 13/14; Trulicity, day 4/7; morning meds at 8:50 a.m.; Blink pill at 8:50 a.m.; Eye wipes at 5 a.m. and 8 p.m.; Eye mask at 8:40 a.m. and 8:30  p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.  

Early morning epiphanies.  I sat on the patio for half an hour this morning enjoying life, my own and that of the cardinals and robins I could hear, and that of the trees, shrubs, ground cover and other plants I could see.  The air was 72℉ with a very gentle breeze, hardly enough to call a wind.  The sky was blue and cloudless.  The Callery Pear tree in front of me was loaded with little black berries where flowers had been a few weeks ago, and with dead twigs and small branches that should be removed, but not by me or Geri.  The Merlin app on my phone excited me by signaling that there are Cedar Waxwings in the neighborhood, but I can't see or hear them, only the cardinals and robins.  I can't see (thankfully) but always hear the dull sound of the traffic on the freeway a quarter mile away.  The mostly white hum of the cars and trucks remind me that as I sit motionless taking in the soft ambiance of our backyard, thousands of other nearby persons are driving at 65 miles per hour to get from someplace to someplace, most of them to an office or other workplace, I suppose, others perhaps to home, and still others to make a delivery of something to someone somewhere.  I am happy that I am going nowhere, doing nothing but sitting, looking, listening, apprehending and appreciating, blessed.  At 6:48, the central air conditioner comes on, reminding me that we're at the tail end of days of 90° days, and that, in Alexandria, where Katherine, Jordan, and Jimmy are living, the temperature will be 97° today and in the 90s all week.  I am reminded for a moment of the two hot, humid, miserable summers I spent down US 1 at Marine Corps Base, Quantico, but a chipmunk scurrying across the yard brings my thoughts back to here and now, and to the Buddha's reminder that all things are transient, impermanent, and to Heraclitus's truth that we cannot step into the same river twice.  All is flux, but this morning I enjoyed the here and the now, this moment, these moments, with these birds, squirrels, chipmunks, trees, ferns, soft breezes and warm air, and am thankful.

Two years ago on this date,  I wrote.

Will the morning be half-over before I finish reading the papers (and magazines)?  Am I in for hours of being reminded by my watch to STAND and BREATHE?😲Maybe I need to head to the patio to be with the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and if I'm lucky, a white-tail.

Patio time, 9 to 9:30, 4 hours post-dawn, watching the leaves on the ornamental pear tree waft in the very gentle breeze, ditto the ferns.  listening to the birds, mainly a cardinal, blue jay, and robin, but also the loud drum of a red-bellied woodpecker (?), wondering whether the chipmunks that scurry within inches of me in my chair will climb on my Haflinger slipper to inspect it, hearing the dull sounds of the heavy construction equipment down the road working on the County Line bridge and close-by projects, a blue jay flies into and then out of the pear tree, a male cardinal lands on the nearly empty platform feeder and I resolve to fill it this morning.  Two smallish squirrels scurry across the yard in tandem, with me wondering whether it's a male chasing a female or perhaps two sibling young ones.  How beautiful the annuals Geri planted and potted on the little table next to my favorite chair.

One and done?  J. D. Vance: "This is not a war against Iran.CDC: Attacking another sovereign nation with 125 hostile aircraft and submarine-launched missiles = WAR.  Gen. James Mattis, USMC, DJT's Defense Secretary in his first term:  “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”  CDC, broken down old coot: Wars are never 'over.'

One year ago yesterday, Sarah acquired German citizenship, a significant event.  Time will tell how significant.

Test message from KAT:

Katherine Aquavia Thomas:

Hi UC!  Sorry not to reply sooner.  Much going on here in D.C. despite us being housebound because of the heat.  I am so glad that you both are feeling better and that AG is back out in the garden between heat spells.  In addition to my birthday, Gretl’s is tomorrow (3), Dad’s is Saturday (91), and Hamish’s is on July 4th (10).  Dad is doing well!  That supra-pubic catheter was a Godsend and I wish we had known about it as an option years ago.  For the last few weeks he has been remembering me and repeatedly asks if I’m married.  😀  I think he worries about passing away and my being left alone.  It’s nice not to be working as I am able to check in on him every other day.  On the job front things are picking up.  I am in the middle of interviews with Jenner & Block out of Chicago for a Practice Manager Position.  I have a Chief of Staff to the General Counsel interview with Anduril next week (big drone company).  And last week the managing partners at two D.C. AmLaw 100 firms reached out to me (!) to apply for a Senior Healthcare Practice Manager (Sheppard Mullin) and the Director of Administration (K&L Gates).  All pay more than government work and I was happy with my government salary but I’m sensitive to the fact I got a late career start being a military spouse and so hope to make up for lost time.  Our kitchen remodel is just a matter of time - the cabinets are being made.  Otherwise all of the products have been purchased and are in the basement including the beautiful tile I had shipped from the Netherlands.  Remember all of the tile in your house in Shorewood?  Speaking of which, I just regrouted our bathroom floor last week and it now looks brand new.  If these legal jobs don’t pan out I may go into the grouting business.  Much love to you! 

I wrote back: 

Hi, Sweetie.  It seems that things are going well for all of you, for which I am very glad.  We’re just recovering from nasty head/chest colds for which I’m also very glad.  I wish we could be in Alexandria for the big birthday season, especially for your Dad’s.  I’m hoping that AG is able to get out to visit you folks one of these days.  I mentioned you guys in my journal this morning which I copy below to show you the very active life I live in Wisconsin:  (sending my entry about this morning's time on the patio)”❤️ 

 The VA visit with Dr. Ryzka went as expected.  Wait and see.  I wasn't put back on prednisone, thankfully.  No explanation for my painful shoulder and hips, or stiff hands and fingers.  So it goes.

Iran has fired missiles at a US airbase in Qatar.  No surprise, no casualties.

My comment on a Facebook posting by JJA.

There was a brilliant Israeli Orthodox Jewish polymath at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who wrote extensively and warned , though he wa a Zionist, that for many the State of Israel had become more important than traditional Jewish values. After the Six Day WAr in 1967, he argued strenously that Israel should not occupy the West Bank and Gaza, and that if it did, it would inevitably turn the occupied territories into a police state. In the 58 years since the war ended, successive Israeli governments have rejected his advice. Quaere whether Leibowitz was a cranky contrarian or a prophet.

FB exchange with JJA:  Charles D. Clausen

I am not a member of our quixotic president's cultish fan club, but I have been struggling with what to think of his attack on the Iranian uranium enrichment sites. Not on the constitutional issue, which I think is clear. As Senator Murphy points out, absent an imminent threat, the decision to send an aerial armada to drop bombs on another country requires at least congressional consultation and concurrence, under Art. I, sec. 8 of the Constitution. Scholars and politicians may argue about how much consultation and what kind of concurrence is sufficient, but what is beyond argument is that, absent an imminent threat (another subject for arguments), the president is not authorized by the Constitution to do unilaterally what Donald Trump has done unilaterally. But this is a procedural issue: where within the divided structure of the federal government lies the ultimate and preclusive decision to wage war on another sovereign nation. It is on the substantive question of whether there are good and sufficient grounds to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities that I have doubts. I'm inclined to answer that question affirmatively based on Iran's entire history since 1979. Maybe our intelligence community knows just how close Iran is (or was) to having nuclear weapons, and maybe it doesn't. Let's remember how the IC failed to foresee the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the attacks on 9/11 , and the financial disaster in 2008 for that matter. How about the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center? Or the 1993 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon? Have we forgotten CIA Director George Tenet's telling George W. Bush that the case for Saddam Hussein's having weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk"? If the IC was wrong in its judgments about Iran's progress in producing nuclear weapons, and we found out too late that Iran already had such a weapon, the strategic situation in the Middle East and in the world would be irretrievably changed. Trump wasn't willing to take that chance and I'm inclined to agree with him, though not without a good amount of dubeity. My greater concern is with Trump's taking this action completely independently of Congress. That is the action of a dictator.

Janice Jenkins Anderson:  Charles D. Clausen I certainly think he once again disregarded the Constitution by doing an end run around Congress. As to whether it was prudent, without knowing what intelligence was provided, we can’t know. There’s no question that it’s an evil regime - Iran has been the mastermind of terrorism around the world for decades and especially hates the US. Trump telegraphed his plans on X for days so I will be shocked if Iran hasn’t moved much of their materials and uranium. Again, we won’t know that for some time. Just like we don’t really know how much damage was done by our strikes. It will certainly increase the danger to our troops in the area. Netanyahu will of course be thrilled that we have entered the conflict. Based on history, we certainly haven’t heard the last of it from Iran.

I definitely don’t trust Trump’s motives or any info he provides since he has zero regard for truth or facts. I suspect that he has determined that it polls well- and it distracts from the myriad of other issues that were tanking his approval polls.

Trump never acts unless it personally benefits him. We can only hope that, in this instance, the country’s interests align with his.

Charles D. Clausen: Concur on all counts.

6/22/2025

 Sunday, June 22, 2025

D+207/139/1308

Sick day #9 but feeling better👃

1941 Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union during World War II, the largest military operation in history

1944 US President Franklin Roosevelt signed the"GI Bill of Rights"

1970 President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required the voting age at 18 in all federal, state, and local elections

1977 Former US Attorney General John Mitchell started 19 months in federal prison for perjury regarding his involvement in the Watergate Scandal

1978 Neo-Nazis called off plans to march in Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois

2025 US joined the Israeli offensive against Iranian nuclear facilities, bombing three sites

In bed at 9:30 after watching DJT's my-dick-is-bigger-than-your-dick announcement of war with Iran, awake and up at 5:40.  75°, high of 90°, mostly sunny day ahead - meteorologically, that is.

Kevzara, day 12/14; Trulicity, day 3/7; morning meds at 8:55 a.m.; Blink pill at 8:55   a.m.; Eye wipes at 6 a.m. and  4:30 p.m.; Eye mask at 12 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Ketoconazole wash and cream at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.    

Hats.  The White House has released photos of the people in the White House Situation Room during the B-2 bombings in Iraq.  Trump is shown sitting at the head of the conference table wearing his business suit, a bright red tie, and a bright red MAGA hat.  Whazupwidat?  When he got off Air Force One in Canada for last week's G7 meeting, he was wearing a business suit befitting a head of state and a bright white MAGA hat.  Whazupwidat?  In photos of the guy who assassinated a Minnesota legislator and her husband, the guy is wearing a cowboy hat.  In Minnesota?  Whazupwidat?  Whenever political commentator Mark McKinnon is interviewed or is otherwise on television, he's wearing something like a wimpy cowboy hat.  Whazupwid these guys who think it's OK to wear an outdoor hat indoors?  Some of the cowboy hat bunch also wear cowboy boots, even though they are in a TV studio or at a political fundraiser rather than on a cattle range or on the lone prairie.  These guys remind me of "B.D." in Doonesbury, who was never seen without a helmet on.  The weirdest guys, I think, are the guys with the cowboy hats who insist on wearing them indoors and especially when they are on TV.  The hats suggest to me that these guys are like Daisy Buchanan's husband, Tom, in The Great Gatsby, he with the gruff, husky voice and crushing handshake. "Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are."  The cowboy hats seem to be intended as a sartorial signal that 'my whachamacallit is bigger than yours.'  I wonder whether Donald Trump thinks those MAGA hats send the same signal to the world.  If so, I think he's badly mistaken, but who knows?  I've never had a cowboy hat or a MAGA  hat.  

WAR.   I am not a member of our quixotic president's cultish fan club, but I have been struggling with what to think of his attack on the Iranian uranium enrichment sites.  Not on the constitutional issue, which I think is clear.  Absent an imminent threat, the decision to send an aerial armada to drop bombs on another country requires at least congressional consultation and concurrence, under Art. I, sec. 8 of the Constitution.  Scholars and politicians may argue about how much consultation and what kind of concurrence is sufficient, but what is beyond argument is that, absent an imminent threat (another subject for arguments), the president is not authorized by the Constitution to do unilaterally what Donald Trump has done unilaterally in Iran.  But this is a procedural issue: where within the divided structure of the federal government lies the ultimate and preclusive decision to wage war on another sovereign nation.  It is on the substantive question of whether there are good and sufficient grounds to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities that I have doubts.  I'm inclined to answer that question affirmatively based on Iran's entire history since 1979.  Maybe our intelligence community knows just how close Iran is (or was) to having nuclear weapons, and maybe it doesn't.  Let's remember how the IC failed to foresee the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union and the attacks on 9/11 (and the financial disaster in 2008 for that matter).  How about the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center?  Or the 1993 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon?  Have we forgotten CIA Director George Tenet's telling George W. Bush that the case for Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction was  "a slam dunk"?  If the IC was wrong in its judgments about Iran's progress in producing nuclear weapons, and we found out too late that Iran already had such a weapon, the strategic situation in the Middle East and in the world would be irretrievably changed.  Trump wasn't willing to take that chance and I'm inclined to agree with him, though not without a good amount of dubeity.  My greater concern is with Trump's taking this action completely independently of Congress.  That is the action of a dictator.

6/21/2025

 Saturday, June 21, 2025

D+206/139/1309

Sick day #8

1963 Cardinal Montini was elected Pope Paul VI, the 262nd head of the Roman Catholic Church, succeeding John XXIII

In bed at 9:30, up at 5.   High of 91°, very windy today.

Kevzara, day 11/14; Trulicity, day 2/7; morning meds at 10 a.m.; Blink pill at 10  a.m.; Eye wipes at 7 a.m.  and   p.m.; Eye mask at 8 a.m. and  p.m.; Ketoconazole cream at 11 a.m.  and  p.m.  Eye ointment at bedtime.    

Not what I was hoping for, but I'm glad I darkened his face and got rid of its blandness.  In the process, I saw what I hadn't seen before, the blues and reds Gauguin put in his hair, which I'll do later.  Also, the whole work is done in primary colors: red, blue, and yellow.  I did those two hills behind the crucifix in green, but Gauguin did them in blue.  I learned something from this coloring book exercise.

"Subdued mood,"   I'm feeling pretty 'subdued' this morning over my long-lasting cold or whatever it is.  I knew when I woke up that I was in for at least another day of 'the miz'ries'. . . Today is the first of three straight days of high heat and humidity, with the heat index over 100° each day.   I had a pretty decent night's sleep despite several pit stops and some nasty pain in my right hip.  Nonetheless, I sat on the edge of my bed for about 5 minutes, wondering whether I could get some more sleep if I lay down again.  I decided it was not in the cards, and so I got up.  I read only the headlines in the NY Times and WaPo, so much of the 'news' is samo samo.  I managed to complete the NYT mini-crossword puzzle with some difficulty and the Connections puzzle with a lot of difficulty and some luck.  I've worked on more than 300 of the Connections puzzles and have a success rate of 59%.  I hit 60% earlier this week, but only for one day.  Those puzzles are very challenging for me, and I often have to be aided by luck in solving them.  Each morning, I ask myself why I keep doing them.  I ask myself the same question about doing this journal.   I'm wondering whether they have become a big part of my raison d'être, i.e., whether without them I'd have less reason to get out of bed each morning.  I get out of bed, make a cup of tea or coffee, turn on my laptop, and record my daily data (in bed, awake, up, weather, pharmaceutical schedules, and later, the anniversaries. Debate whether to check Morning Joe or the New York Times first, check out the NYT articles (or now ostly just the headlines), do the mini-crossword and Connections, clean up the kitchen if I hadn't done it the night before, check out Facebook,  wonder what I should write about in this journal, regard the birds, . . .  Then what?  If I stop reading the news (or headlines), stop doing the puzzles, stop keeping a journal, what is left?  Coloring book exercises with watercolor or gouache?  Face the challenge of the basement stairs to try my luck with acrylics on canvas?  It's a fair question: what is my raison d'être?  Am I just imagining my Dad in his old age talking about waiting around to die, or did he really say that?  When you're nearly useless, is it selfish to live, or is it selfish to die?  The Ballad of Narayama, Plan 75, Eskimo.

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.