6/4/2025

 Wednesday, June 4, 2025

D+189/134

1919 US Marines invaded Costa Rica

1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre: unofficial figures placing the death toll near 1,000

1990 Dr Jack Kevorkian assisted an Oregon woman to commit suicide, beginning a national debate over the right to die

1991 Pope John Paul II compared abortion with Nazi murders

2024 President Joe Biden introduces immediate restrictions on the southern border, limiting illegal migrant crossings to 2,500 a day  (Too little, too late)

In bed at 10:10, awake and up at 5:15. 56°, drizzle, high of 64°.  Officially,  we've had 0.6" of rain in the last 24 hours, 0.4" expected in the next 24 hours, but our rain gauge on the patio has fully 2 inches of rain in it, though I don't know when I last emptied it.  It's been a wet season.  Correction: JSOnline reports Whitefish Bay received 1.86" of rain in the last 24 hours.  Our rain gauge is accurate, about 2 inches. 

Eye drops at 6 a.m. and 5:15  p.m.

LTMW I see a brown-headed cowbird on the tray feeder.  Not sure how I feel about this visitor.

Donald Trump is America's Brexit.   The British electorate acted stupidly in voting to leave the European Union on June 23, 2016.  The official withdrawal did not occur until January 31, 2020, but the die was cast by the 2016 referendum, in which the Brits, in a huge turnout of more than 72% of eligible voters, voted for withdrawal, 52% to 48%.  How do the Brits feel now about Brexit?  As of last month, 55% of them feel that it was a mistake to leave the European Union, and only 32% believe it was the right decision.  Two-thirds of the British public are unwilling to opine that Brexit was a wise, prudent vote beneficial to the UK, but 52% of them voted for it, urged on by scoundrels like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.  Even the government's official forecast is that leaving the EU will reduce the UK's exports and imports of goods and services by 15%.  There are other impacts of Brexit on immigration, travel, laws, and money, with varying effects, but the bottom line is that fewer than 1/3rd of the Brits can say that the vote to leave the EU was beneficial to the UK.  They know they shot themselves in the foot.

The 2023 vote that placed Donald Trump back in the Oval Office will be America's Brexit, our break with the rest of the world, or at least with our former friends and allies, and realignment with Russia and Middle Eastern oil potentates.  Trump admires and emulates autocrats, and the 2024 election gave him 4 years in which to weaken the federal government and shred American democracy and whatever claim we had to our status as a promoter of democracy, human rights, and decency in the world.  He is causing a brain drain with his outrageous attacks on scientific research and the universities where it occurs.  He has halted the efforts to minimize the effects of climate change.  He has coarsened political discourse and public dialogue.  As his former defense secretary, James Mattis, has asserted, he is the only president who has striven not to unite Americans, but to divide them.  He has staged a frontal assault on the Rule of Law, on which not only personal and civic liberties depend but also trade and commerce.  He has reintroduced intentional cruelty into presidential policymaking.   The election of Donald John Trump has been our American tragedy, much worse than the UK's Brexit.  He has reversed the course of American and world history, and always for the worse.

Letter to Peter this morning, sent with a card and gift, put in the mail at the Central PO for the 1:30 p.m. pickup, hoping for delivery by Saturday.

June 4, 2025

Dear Peter,

Congratulations on graduating from Nicolet.  I hope you are proud of this achievement.   You, more than anyone else, know the effort, the thousands of hours of classroom work, homework, and extracurricular work over four years that your diploma represents.  There is nothing ordinary about it.  These past four years have been pivotal ones in your life, foundational to the years ahead, and you have made the most of them.  I’m happy for you and I hope you are feeling a well-deserved sense of serious accomplishment.

I graduated from my high school 66 years ago, in 1959.  They were also pivotal and formative years for me, leading on to Marquette University, marriage to your Grandma Anne, the birth of your Dad and Aunt Sarah, and ultimately to your birth in 2007 as my long hoped-for and first grandchild and namesake.  The world you are entering as a new adult is so vastly different, and more challenging, than the one I entered in 1959.  I confess that it daunts me.  I have thought about it more times than I can count, wondering how I would acquit myself as a young man in today’s world.  I don’t know whether you too are finding the world today to be daunting or whether you are brimming with self-confidence, or whether you are somewhere in between, perhaps moving from one pole to the other from one day to the next.  Life has never been easy, not in 1959 nor in 2025.  It takes some courage, which I know you have.  It also takes an ability to live with and learn from mistakes which we all make.  I have made more than I can remember (thankfully) and you will make some too.  Some you may regret; some will help you grow.   If I can help you as you make your way, please call on me.  Your are off to a good start with your solid educational background and, most importantly, with your great family who have loved you all along the way.

As you move on to MSOE, I think of Neil Armstrong’s famous "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  I know you won’t be making a moon landing, but your moving from high school and adolescence to college and adulthood is indeed  a ‘giant leap.’    It’s a very big deal.  I’m happy that you are making the leap and confident that you have what it takes for a successful landing.  If I can help along the way, you have my number and know where we live.  God bless you and congratulations.

Love,  /s/  Grandlpa