6/8/2025

 Sunday, June 8, 2025

D+193/137/1322

1954 Joseph Welch asked Senator Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" during Senate-Army hearings

1978 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) struck down its 148-year policy of excluding black men from the priesthood

1980 Comedian Richard Pryor suffered severe burns from freebasing cocaine

2011 BU's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy agreed to examine the brains of 2 deceased San Francisco 49ers football players  for signs of injury 

2023 Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges including false statements, conspiracy to obstruct, and willful retention of national defense information 

2025 Peter Charles Clausen graduated from Nicolet High School

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 3:45.  56°, high of 71°, rainy later.  

Morning meds at 7:40 a.m.  Lid wipes at 7 a.m.    Blink pill at 7 a.m. .  Eye pads at 6:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.  

From the halls of Montezuma to the streets of Los Angeles.  In this morning's newspapers, I learned:

President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

and that:

Mr. Trump’s directive authorized the secretary of defense to “employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In Mr. Hegseth’s post on X, he said that active duty Marines were “on high alert” at Camp Pendleton, about 100 miles south of Los Angeles, and could also be mobilized.

A nightmare coming true.  Trump has taken a bad situation and made it worse.  He has unnecessarily created a situation of armed conflict between the armed forces of the United States and American citizens.  There will be bad reactions from bad people striving to foment trouble, anger, reactions and overreaction.  The arrival of National Guard troops in Los Angeles today is the arrival of more trouble for the people of LA. I think of my very-shirttail relative or ex-relative, Maggie Aquavia, in Sherman Oaks in the Valley.  I think of my old Marine Corps, MCAS Yuma,  and Danang RVN buddy Bob Hillary.  I think of the millions of Angelinos who don't deserve what is about to happen in their city.  Inflaming and escalating the tension in the city by sending in armed troops is asking for trouble, and we can be sure that there will be people in LA who will be only too happy to accommodate him.  We have to wonder whether Trump, Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, and/or Noem hope that there will be shooting, injuries, and/or deaths.  They all delight in showing strength and nothing demonstrates strength over an opponent like killing him does.

The photograph above, by Jonathan Bachman, is of 35-year-old Iesha L. Evans, a nurse and the mother of a young boy, standing her ground in Baton Rouge, LA, during a protest of police brutality on July 11, 2016..  I was and still am moved by this image of Ms. Evans in her green flowing garment and flats being rushed by two burly, heavily armed National Guardsmen in combat boots, helmets, and body armor.  It took much effort and a bit of luck before I was able to obtain a large print of the photograph which I keep on the table behind my work desk next to the photograph below by Marc Riboud of Jan Rose Kasmir, a 17 year old high school student offering a daisy to a heavily armed trooper outside the Pentagon during a peace protest on October 21, 1967, while the Vietnam War was being waged by other American troops.  Each photo vividly illustrates the great disparity in power and brute force between heavily armed and combat-equipped soldiers and ordinary American citizens, especially those exercising their 1st Amendment rights to peacably assemble and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.  We will probably see something like the scenarios in these photos played out in Los Angeles over the next few weeks.

I can't believe Trump will find occasion to send the Marines from Camp Pendleton but if he does, God help us. 

 

References in Judith Viorst's Necessary Losses chapter I grow old . . . I grow old . . 

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .  / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.    T. S.  Eliot

An aged man is but a paltry thing,  / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless  / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress.    W. B. Yeats

How hard and painful are the last days of an aged man!  He grows weaker every day; his eyes become dim, his ears deaf; his strength fades, his heart knows peace no longer; his mouth falls silent and he speaks no word.  The power of his mind lessens, and today he cannot remember what yesterday was like..  All his bones hurt.  The things which not long ago were done with pleasure are painful now, and taste vanishes.  Old age is the worst of misfortunes that can afflict a man.  Ptah-hotep, 2500 /B.C.

Time, O great destroyer, and envious old age, together you bring all things to ruin.    Ovid

Never a soul is to be seen, or very few, who in growing old does not take on a sour and mouldy smell.    Montaigne

Old age is like a shipwreck.    Chateaubriand

It is a long time now since I ceased to exist.  I merely fill the place of someone they take for me.   Gide

Old age is life's parody.   de Beauvoir

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

I would add the words of the great Walt Whitman.  These words are not direct quotations from a single poem or letter or piece of prose, but are taken from Whitman's vast writings and combined into one piece as if from a poem of his.  I found them while looking for a poem of his that I am familiar with, about the challenges of approaching seventy.  The editor who compiled and compounded these words took parts of that poem, and changed it, with the following:

Not my least burden is that dullness of the years, querilities, ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, may filter in my daily songs. My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and being chain’d to a chair—as never before. 

His total compilation is too long to copy and paste here, but here is a worthy sample: 

Having gone a year or two past sixty, / I shall range upon the high plateau of my life and capacity for a few years, / Then reach a viaduct called, The Turn in Life, / Which, if crossed in safety, leads to the valley of old age— / And then swiftly descend.

In youth and maturity poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp of day. But as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous still included,) the dusk becomes the poet’s atmosphere.

I too have sought, and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according, / But as I grow old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat, / The half-lights of evening are far more to me, /And now, after surmounting three-score and ten, / With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, / I chant old age.

Writing here in sickness, poverty, and old age, alarm’d, uncertain, / Batter’d, wreck’d, sore, sicken’d, stiff with many toils, / Fearfully weak, toppling, full of defections, / The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, / I have substantially gone out of business.

I sit here and wait. What else can I do? I do not suffer any pain. But I have been growing feebler quite rapidly for a year, failing more and more each successive season. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; now can’t walk around hardly from one room to the next, the paralysis never lifting entirely.  I am not getting prizes for agility—foot-races—any longer!

My lassitude is one of the worst points in my condition. It seems to me as though a great numbness, an inertia, had come over me. It’s funny how unambitious my body is; I am like a wet rag, possessed of an incredible inclination to flop.

 

Peter's graduation was accessible on YouTube, so Geri and I were able to see the whole ceremony.  I  especially enjoyed the address by the Nicolet principal.   I sent a note to Peter afterwards.

Hi, Peter, and congratulations again.  I watched the ceremony from home on YouTube, regretting that I couldn’t be there but grateful that I didn’t have to deal with getting into and out of the Arena and dealing with those steps and Arena seats.  I attended many a Marquette basketball game there in years gone by and may have graduated from there myself either from undergraduate school or law school, but I can’t remember; it may have been the Auditorium.  In any case, I suspect you may have very mixed feelings on the day that marks such a major inflection point in your life, some joy at having achieved all that you have but some sadness in realizing that what has been such a large part of your life for the past 4 years is now entirely behind you as you prepare for engineering school and the rest of your adult life.  Moving from childhood and adolescence into adulthood is quite a transition, not many like it in life.   I’m very proud of you and wish you all the best as you move on.❤️

He replied:  Thank you so much! I really appreciate it, I hope I see you soon! 

Dinner tonight with Caela and Saul,  celebrating 40 years in the house on Wood Place and 38 years since Geri and I wed there.