7/7/2025

 Monday, July 7, 2025

D+241/169/1292

In bed at 9, awake around 5:15 and up at 5:40.  58°, high of 71°, sunny.    

I like books.  I can no longer read them, but I like them.  I used to enjoy reading them, and even if I didn't care to read a particular book, I appreciated that it was a book.  I appreciated that an author went to the considerable trouble to write it and that someone thought enough of it to publish and distribute it.  I like new books and I like used books.  I have mixed feelings about marking up books - underlining, highlighting, marginalia, etc, but I even like used books that a prior owner has marked up.  A book that has been marked up is a book the reader thought about as she read it, a book she probably intended to keep and not to resell.  It is a book the reader thought she would or might return to with her markups as guideposts to passages of some significance.   I even like it when a prior owner has inscribed her name on the book, and sometimes the year of acquisition.  It suggests the importance of ownership: "This is MY book."  I generally prefer hardbound books to paperbacks, which seem too disposable.  I especially prefer leatherbound books and books in slipcases.  Their bindings and protective cases proclaim, "This is an important book."  Leatherbound books also have heft, which I appreciate - not too much heft, like my leatherbound War and Peace, but enough to signify permanence and importance.  I am also a sucker for collections of books, even ones that were traditional inducements to join the Book-of-the-Month Club.  like Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization.  I managed to hold off on acquiring that magnum opus but did acquire from other sources the works of Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, Elie Wiesel, and Saul Bellow.

I have a good number of leatherbound and slipcased books that I have acquired over many decades.  Many of them I have read; many I have not read.  Some I have gone into more than once, mostly collections of poetry, but also The Great Gatsby, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Crime and Punishment, and even The Iliad ("rosey-fingered dawn"). 

I think about books this morning because I opened my laptop to a page on Ebay with THE COLLECTED TALES OF A. E. COPPARD, offered for $19.95 plus $4.95 shipping.    

I sometimes wonder what will become of my books (paintings journal, memoir)  once I am dead, or worse. 

.  . . . . . . . . . . 

I stopped writing this, intending to return to it, when I left the house the VA Urology Clinic and Mental Health Clinic ("subdued mood").  I'm told I need surgery on my penis.  If I wasn't depressed when I left, I am now.   

nhnn

7/6/2025

 Sunday, July 6, 2025

D+240/168/1293

1942 Anne Frank's family went into hiding in After House, Amsterdam

1947 Spain voted for Francisco Franco as Head of State for life until death

In bed at 9, awake at 2:30, up at 2:55, unable to sleep, worrying about water softener salt and broader concerns, dependency, burden.  Rainy day today, high of 73°    

Meds., etc.  Morning meds at 10.      BP = 140/81  Foot edema is much better.

Dozens of girls at a Texas Christian summer camp for girls drowned.  How do those who believe that God 'has a plan' for each of us, that 'his eye is on the sparrow,' deal with this - what, tragedy?  Is it a tragedy if it truly is 'an act of God'?  Deus vult.  It's the unending problem of theodicy, or the (impossible) challenge of reconciling an All-Good, All-Powerful, All-Loving God with all the evil and suffering in His world.  I recall sitting at Tom and Sue Clark's kitchen table in Arlington Heights years ago and suggesting that it is easier to believe that God is 'a mean prick' than to believe God loves us.  All the evidence, or surely most of it, supports the 'mean prick' theory, and refutes the All-Loving theory.  I am reminded of King George's song in Hamilton:

You'll be back

Like before

I'll fight the fight and win the war

For your love

For your grace

And I'll love you til my dying days

When you're gone, I'll go mad

So don't throw away this thing we had

Cause when push comes to shove

I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love

Da da da da da da da di ya da Da da da da di ya da

C. S. Lewis wrote a number of essays defending Christianity that were collected in a 1970 volume titled "God in the Dock," the British term for God on trial. I read it half a century ago, during my Lewis phase of struggling with theism and Christianity,  but I can't be sure.  I do remember, however, eventually coming to the conclusion that the way to relieve God of the responsibility for all the evil and suffering in His creation was to stop believing in Him, or at least in Him as an All-Loving Father Creator  If He doesn't exist, or if He didn't create the world, we can't blame Him for all the terrible evil and suffering in it.  Not guilty, end of conundrum.   The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.  

The Poor Man by A. E. Coppard (1923). Yesterday and today, for the first time in years I read an entire work of literature that wasn't a poem, Copard's The Poor Man.  It is barely 12 pages long, which was one of the reasons I picked it from a collection of short stories I bought many years ago.  Coppard was a respected British author of short stories.  He lived from 1878 until 1957, time enough to see Britain topple from the world's largest empire under Queen Victoria to a pretend empire under Queen Elizatbeth II.  He was born and raised a poor man, but made hiself into quite a respected author of serious English literature.  The Poor Man is a tale of a poor newspaper deliveryman in rural England (Dan Pavey), his clergyman (the Rev. Faudel Scroope), his son (Martin Pavey), and the gamekeeper on an estate of a local landowner,  It's a tragedy.  Dan is a simple, good, earthy, unmarried man who lives with his shopkeeper mother, delivers newspapers by bicycle to local hamlets, lives it up at the local pub on Saturday nights, and is a star of his church choir on Sunday morning's.  One day Dan shows up at home with a 5 year old Martin, confessing that Martin is his illegitimate son, upon learning of which the Rev. Scroope ousts him from a choir, a big loss for Dan, who nonethless lives pleasantly thereafter with his mother, his son, and his faithful dog, all of whom he dearly loves.   Dan has two strikes against him in his rural Victorian community (in additiionto his poverty):  First, he was caught and convicted of serving as a runner for a local horse-racing bookmaker, and secondly and much worse, he was caught poaching rabbits on the landlord's estate, got into a fight with the landowner's gamekeeper, and was convicted of assault.  While Dan was serving his sentence, his son Martin drowned while on a boating outing in a local park.  When Dan learned of this loss, he was struck dumb, unable to speak other than to perseverate In a park there was a lake,  / On the lake there was a boat,  /  In the boat there was a boy . . .

As is so often the case, I am not sure what the point of the story is.  Dan had been warned by the dour Rev. Scroppe that gambling, poaching, and fathering a child out of wedlock were serious offenses, indeed "a mockeery of God," and that earthly punishment could be expected.  Is that the moral of the story; Dan sinned and he paid a terrible price?

Or is the moral that the lower classes are punished for trying to rise above their alloted places in society.  Early in the story, Dan argues with his mother about his drinking and says

 "Name of God, do you think I booze just for the sake o' the booze, because I like booze?  No man does that. . . Not that one would mind to be poor if it warn't preached to him that he must be contented.  How can the poor be contented a long as there's the rich to serve?  The rich we have always with us, that's our responsibility, we are the grass under their feet.  Why should we be proud of that?  When a man's poor the only thing left him is hope    -- for something better; and that's called envy. If you don't like your riches you can always give it up, but poverty you can't desert, nor it won't desert you."

At the conclusion of the story, Dan is returning to prison, having been temporarily released to attend his son's funeral.  The final lines of the story are

He sees the summer is coming on, he is going back to prison.  "Courage is vain," he thinks, "we are like the grass underfoot, a blade that excels is quickly shorn.  In this part of the world the poor have no call to be proud, they had only need be penitent."

In the park there was a lake,

On the lake . . . . . . . . .  . .  boat,

In the boat . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Is the story one of class oppression?  And religious teaching social and political quietism¹?  I think of the original third verse of the Anglican hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful written by Cecil Frances Alexander:

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly

And ordered their estate.

The verse is now omitted from printed versions of the hymn, probably because of its suggestion of Divine determinism and specifically the divine origin of social classes and economic inequality.  Isn't this what Dan Pavey drinks to forget, that it is "preached to him that he must be contented" while he can't be contented "as long as there's the rich to serve."

The story is a good character study.  Dan Pavey is a likeable man.  He is basically an honorable man.  He works hard to support himself and contribute to the support of his mother and his son.  He likes his ale and conviviality, but apparently only on Saturday nights, and he never misses church services on Sunday morning when he lends his superior vocal talents to the choir.  We are told the circumstances that caused him not to have custody of his son until the son was 5 years old, but he never tried to hide his paternity and had a loving and supportive relationship with the boy.  His crimes were extremely petty, i.e., running numbers so to speak for a bookie and poaching rabbits, probably for the family dinner table.  He did defame Rev. Scroope, but apparently only once, and that was a sin of anger after being booted from the choir.  His assault on the game warden was also a crime of passion brought on by the game warden's killing of Pavey's beloved dog.  For these relatively minor crimes, he was imprisoned for six months and suffered the death of his son.  If, as Rev. Scroope suggested early in the narrative, this was divine retribution for his sins, the imbalance between the crimes/sins and the punishment would seem to support the "mean prick theory" of God that I wrote about above.  Was that Coppard's point in writing the story?  Or was he just saying that Life/Fate/the World has it in for poor folk?

 ¹ Romans 13:  1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

2  Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

3  For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.

4  For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

5  Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

6  This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.

7  Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. 

 

 

 

     

7/5/2025

 Saturday, July 5, 2025

D+239/167/1294

1948 The National Health Service was established in the UK

1950 The Law of Return was passed, guaranteeing all Jews the right to live in Israel

2017 101 people reported shot, 15 killed in Chicago, Illinois over the 4th of July weekend

2024  President Joe Biden gave an interview to quell fears about his stamina and cognitive abilities with ABC's George Stephanopoulos

In bed at 9, up at 5:40, after a night of almost hourly pit stops.  71°, high of 86°, sunny again.

Meds., etc.     

Epitaph on a Tyrant

W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Independence from television day.  I managed to go the entire day yesterday without turning on the television, or the radio for that matter.  I did not want to see or hear the celebration at the White House over the passage of Trump's OBBBill, nor was I interested in celebrations of Independence Day.  I especially did not want to see the flyover of military aircraft in celebration of the passage of the budget bill.  I didn't know what kind of aircraft would be ordered to do the flyover, but I could guess it wouldn't be noisy, utilitarian helicopters or huge C-5 cargo planes.  No, it turned out to be the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, escorted by F-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightning fighters, the aircraft that participated in the bombing of Iran on June 22.  The B-2s are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, 900 miles west of the White House.  They cost $130,000 per hour to fly.  The F-35s cost about half that amount, only $67,500 per hour, and the F-22s a bargain at a mere $58,000 per hour.  What was the real cost of that White House flyover yesterday?  We'll probably never know, but we can be sure that it exceeded a million dollars and that it was spent primarily to gratify Donald Trump's ego.  It was his grown-up version of a little boy's playing with model airplanes.  He claimed the flyover was intended to honor the pilots and crews who conducted 'Operation Midnight Hammer,' but we know better.  We know that DJT ultimately honors only himself, the King of the Mountain, the Big Cheese, the Big Kahuna, Mr. "I run the country and the world.'  For on this particular Fourth of July, the Donald was showing that, in very large measure, he does indeed run the country and the world.  He had, in less than two weeks, done what he could to hand Ukraine to his friend Vladimir Putin, gratuitously and unilaterally bombed his foe, the Ayatollah, and bent the Republican Party and the Congress to his will by forcing the passage of perhaps the worst and least humane budget bill in American history.  So yesterday was Donald's day to gloat and my day to wish there was something for America to celebrate instead of so much to regret and fear.

Patio time.  I spent 30 to 40 minutes on the patio this morning, starting around 8 a.m.  It was near 80° and balmy.  Two new flowers had bloomed in the marginal garden, yellow buttercups along the lawn line, and white daisy-like flowers in the rear.  There are still no new flowers on Geri's tomato plant, and only the two green fruits are already growing.  No chipmunks scurried about while I was out there, but I saw a full-grown cottontail rabbit hopping into and then out of the far ferns.  I activated the Merlin app on my phone and it told me that within earshot were cardinals, robins, house sparrows, house finches, goldfinches, morning doves, blue jays, chickadees, a brown-headed cowbird, cedar waxwings, and (could it be?) a rare scarlet tanager!  I saw none of them, but Merlin heard them, and I've come to trust Merlin.  Today, I bite the bullet and load the backyard tray feeder with seeds, establishing a competing food site to draw birds away from my front window feeders.  Will I regret this, or will it cause me to spend more time off my rocker (yuck yuck) and on the patio, in the sun and fresh air?

I spent a little time staring at a single leaf on the pear tree, and wondering how many leaves the tree was supporting, or are the leaves supporting the tree?  It's a silly question, as if we could have the pear tree without leaves or pear tree leaves without the tree. I remember reading Annie Dillard's wonderful book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek many years ago and these lines, which I found online when I came back indoors:

Nature is, above all, profligate.  Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty Nature is, whose leaves return to the soil.  Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place?  This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital.  Extravagnce!

and 

After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Neither of these is the exact text I recall, but I can't find it online.  It was sort of a Carl Sagan quote, "billions and billions of" whatevers.  I sent my copy of Pilgrim to Steve some years ago, hoping he might enjoy it.  He didn't, but I wasn't disappointed. Perhaps one day he will pick it up again and find it magical, or not.   I did find related quotes:

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish's tail.

Annie Dillard wrote so much interesting, engaging, pithy stuff and so much of it is available online that I could spend all day looking for the exact lines I have in mind.  In between, I clean my suflower/safflower tube and tray table with very hot water and bleach.  Now I look out the window and see a pair of house finches perched on top of a shepherd's crook looking for their afternoon snack.  I better get back to business, but here are some other unrelated but  thoughts of Ms. Dillard worth thinking about"

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? 

You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting.

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

 

7/4/2025

 Friday, July 4, 2025

D+ 238/166/1295 corrected

1776 Congress proclaimed independence from Great Britain

1826  Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

1855 In Brooklyn, the first edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is published

1944 1st Japanese kamikaze attack on the US fleet near Iwo Jima

1966 LBJ signed the Freedom of Information Act

2012 Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson, the so-called 'God particle

In bed at 10, awake at 5 after bladder pain and hourly pit stops, up at 5:30.  67°, high of 84°, 0.15" of rain last night, more expected for the next 2 hours.

Meds, etc.  I was in bad shape yesterday, regretting life, enduring.  I forgot to take any meds until near 10 p.m. when I went to bed.  I spent most of this morning sleeping, coming out of the bedroom at noon.  I'm in a very blue mood again and unable to write anything.  Rather than leave today's journal empty, I note a story in today's NY Times, "Vietnam Aches for Its M.I.A.s. Will America Stop Funding Science to Identify Them? -- New breakthroughs in DNA analysis offer a chance to identify more of the lost from wars and disasters stretching back decades — if the U.S. helps."  Of course, it looks like the U.S. is not going to continue to help, another blow against Vietnam, along with the huge tariffs Trump is imposing.  The effect of all this will be to drive Vietnam closer to China, its traditional enemy.  This, of course, is exactly what we fought the Vietnam/American War to prevent.  In any event, reading the story reminded me of "Moon Mullen," a friend in Danang, shot down over Laos after I had left Vietnam for Okinawa, and it gives me a sorry excuse to copy and paste "Moon's" story here rather than leave the pages blank.  From my memoir:

At the beginning of May, the war became more personal to those of us who had come to Camp Schwab from the wing headquarters in DaNang.  We received news that our friend Bill “Moon” Mullen had been shot down over Laos.  The American government refused to admit that we were conducting operations in Laos but we all knew it.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through Laos and our aircraft regularly bombed it.  On April 29th, Moon flew an A4E to a bombing mission in the most heavily defended area of the trail, the area around the Mia Gia Pass.  His plane was the last in the formation.  It was hit by anti-aircraft fire as he pulled away from the target.  The plane went down, but the other pilots picked up radio beeper signals from the ground where his plane went down.  The circling pilots radioed instruction to him, which he complied with, indicating he had ejected safely.  Soon, the radio on the ground was still active, but instructions from the air were not being followed.  It appeared Moon had been captured or killed.  He was never found.  It was never learned whether he had been captured or killed or died from injuries from the anti-aircraft fire or the ejection.  The 1973 Paris treaty provided for return of POWs held by the VC and by North Vietnam, but not those held by Laotian communists.    In 1994, I ran my fingers over his name on the Vietnam Wall in Washington.  He is still listed as among the ‘missing.’

FN:   In 1986, St. Martin’s Press published Every Effort, a book written by Bill’s wife, Barbara Mullen Keenan, about her ordeal trying to obtain information about Bill and about living without knowing whether he was dead or alive.  Bill and Barbara had two sons, Sean and Terry who were four and two years old, respectively, when Bill was shipped to Vietnam.  Barbara was a leader in the POW/MIA movement for years.  In April 1976, after the 1973 Paris ‘peace with honor’ agreement worked out by Nixon and Kissinger, and a year after Saigon fell in 1975, Barbara had Bill declared dead.  It had been 10 years since he was shot down.  She eventually remarried.  The story she told in Every Effort was hard to read, not because it wasn’t well written, but because it brought home to me, again, and vividly, how dreadful the Vietnam experience was for so many people, especially the families of the dead, the wounded, the imprisoned and the missing.  The story of what she went through also reminded me how very bitter was the divide between the pro-war Americans and the anti-war Americans, including the wives and families of POWs and MIAs.

Moon Mullen was well liked and highly respected by all of us in the headquarters squadron in DaNang.  He regularly flew missions with his old A4 squadron based in Chu Lai though he was assigned to the Intelligence section of Wing headquarters.  Unlike some others, he never looked down his nose on those of us who were not aviators.  He was a captain and a few years older than most of us.  He had just turned 31 when he was shot down; most of us were first lieutenants in our mid 20s.  When we could talk him into it, ‘by popular demand,’ Moon would stand up next to the bar or his table at the officers’ club and sing, always the same song – 

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

    From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.

The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,

    It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,

    Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,

It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—

    Oh, Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so! 

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,

    If I am dead, as dead I well may be,

Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,

    And kneel and say an Avè there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,

     And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,

For you will bend and tell me that you love me,

     And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me! 

When Moon sang Danny Boy, we all shut up.  The juke box would be turned down or unplugged and the Righteous Brothers, Simon and Garfunkle and the Mamas and Papas would give way to Moon Mullen, a capella.

I suspect most, perhaps all of us thought Moon was probably dead; I did.  We may have even hoped that he was dead rather than living as a captive in a cave in a mountain in Laos or sick and abused in a jungle prison.  I don’t know what we thought because we did not talk about it.  We didn’t talk about it, but we all thought about it, about him.  We thought of him as we drank each night at the officers’ club.  We thought of him as we watched the gung ho grunts go through their training before heading south, some to die, some to lose limbs, some perhaps to be among the missing, most to return alive but messed up in their heads and hearts to one degree or another.  I think of Moon every time I hear Danny Boy.  For many years, I hated to hear the song.  My eyes would start burning when I head it.  It would take me a while to ‘come back’ after hearing it and I never sang it, though it had been one of my favorites before May, 1966.

I think Moon Mullen was for us emblematic of the ambiguous character of the war itself.  He was neither alive nor dead, just ‘missing.’  He went down in a country (of sorts) where our government wouldn’t even admit we were fighting, though every Tom, Dick and Harry knew we were.⁰   The terrain he was bombing was not land that we would ever in any sense ‘take’ or ‘capture’ or ‘seize’ or ‘hold.’  It would be used for years as a principal line of communication and logistics between North Vietnam and forces in the south and for years pilots would fly missions trying to slow the flow of men and materials southward and for years pilots would be shot down over that land.  Indeed, when Nixon’s so-called ‘peace with honor’ was negotiated in Paris in 1973, there was no written agreement for the identification and repatriation or return of the bodies of pilots shot down over Laos.  The treaty only bound “the parties hereof and the signatories hereto,” which did not include the government of Laos which was not ‘officially’ involved in the war.  What happened to Moon Mullen and his family,  the long, inconclusive waiting, the deceptions, the ultimate loss, was a microcosm of what was happening to American, and to Vietnam.  I believe we knew that as we poisoned ourselves at the club each night and as we looked on those infantry Marines so intensely preparing for what awaited them in Vietnam.  More Danny Boys, more Moons.

 ⁰   Here’s the telegram Barbara received (after the personal visit and notification by a Marine officer): 

MRS. WILLIAM F. MULLEN.  DELIVER.  DON’T PHONE.

452 SILVER CREEK ROAD, MARQUETTE, MICH.

I DEEPLY REGRET TO CONFIRM THAT YOUR HUSBAND CAPTAIN WILLIAM F. MULLEN USMC ON 29 APRIL 1966 BECAME MISSING WHILE ON A FLIGHT MISSION IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.  EXTENSIVE SEARCH OPERATIONS ARE IN PROGRESS AND EVERY EFFORT IS BEING MADE TO LOCATE HIM.  IT IS SUGGESTED THAT YOU REFRAIN FROM FURNISHING ANY PERSONS OUSIDE OF YOUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY WITH ANY BACKGROUND DATA REGARDING YOUR HUSBAND’S PERSONAL HISTORY AND MILITARY SERVICE.  RELEASE OF SUCH DATA COULD ADVERSELY AFFECT HIS WELFARE SINCE IT MAY BE USED BY HOSTILE FORCES FOR COERCION AND PROGAGANDA PURPOSES.  YOU ARE ASSURED THAT ANY SIGNIFICANT INFORMATION DEVELOPED CONCERNING YOUR HUSBAND WILL BE SENT YOU PROMPTLY.  I EXTEND TO YOU ON BEHALF OF THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS OUR SINCERE SYMPATHY DURING THIS PERIOD OF GREAT ANXIETY.

WALLACE M. GREENE, JR.

GENERAL, USMC, COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS.

Barbara was told that Moon went down “in the Republic of Vietnam,” a knowing falsehood.  At the end of the war, there were still 2,338 men listed as ‘missing.’

 The last I learned of Moon's situation was this posting by Barbara on pownetwork.org:

September 10, 2008

The following information should be included in his file and his personal

website under William F. Mullen:

About six years ago intelligence from former North Vietnam military officers

confirmed to our Defense Department that my husband's parachute had carried

him straight down into a North Vietnam Headquarters on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

in Laos. Since then the Defense Department has located a grave where

eventually the North Vietnamese buried him.

My husband and an estimated 400 plus aviators were shot down, many captured

and later buried by the North Vietnamese along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and

elsewhere in Laos -  so many, in fact, that although my husband's grave was

found more than five years ago, the list for returning the remains of these

POWs is so long they will not excavate my husband's grave for at least three

more years.

I will appreciate your making these changes as soon as possible.

With appreciation,

Barbara Mullen, 535 Pierce Street  Unit 5313, Albany, CA  94706 ,510 528 6831

POSTED ON 9.1.2018 POSTED ON THE WALL OF FACES OF THE VIETNAM VETERANS  MEMORIAL FUND BY: CHARLES D. CLAUSEN 

STILL REMEMBERED

"Moon" and I served in MWHG-1 at Danang in 1965-66, I at the TACC, he at Wing G2. My warmest memory of those days was the din of the small Officers Club growing quiet every time "Moon" stood up and sang "Danny Boy" a cappella. I learned of his A4 going down over Laos after I had been transferred to Camp Schwab, Okinawa. I still feel heartache over his loss.

The photo of "Moon" on The Wall of Faces, a photo I would never recognize as him.  He was warm and gregarious, very unlike this stern, tough Marine photo.

The Vietnam Wall Panel 07E Line 011

 

Notes from The Virtual Wall

Accounts of Captain William "Moon" Mullen's loss vary somewhat. The POW Network has the simple statement that.

"On April 29, 1966, Capt. Mullen was sent on a combat mission near the Ban Karai Pass in Laos. When the time arrived that he should have returned, and he had not, the Marines began to try to find him. Bill Mullen was never found."

while the Task Force Omega (TFO) site says that

"At 1235 hours, during a series of attacks by US Marine Corps and US Air Force aircraft on an important communist installation that was known to be protected by a large number of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) sites, ten aircraft were hit and two shot down. The Air Force crew of the other downed aircraft was later rescued. Capt. Mullen, the last man in his flight, was pulling up and away from the target after completing his bomb run. ... [and] was believed to be unharmed until he failed to initiate a normal radio check."

Hobson, in "Vietnam Air Losses" gives a third version:

"Captain Mullen was taking part in a strike against gun emplacements near the Ban Karai Pass in Laos, near the DMZ, when he was shot down on his first low level pass. His aircraft was last seen on fire entering cloud and heading towards the north."

The implication in the POW Network statement is that Captain Mullen was flying a single-aircraft strike. He was not. The TFO statement implies a massed USMC/USAF effort which resulted in two losses; that too is demonstrably incorrect. The United States lost six aircraft on 29 April 1966, and none of the other five aircraft was anywhere near the Ban Karai area:

USMC A-4E BuNo 151057, CAPT W F Mullen, MIA, vicinity Ban Karai, Laos

USN F-8E BuNo 150867, LTJG T E Brown, KIA, vicinity Haiphong, NVN

USN A-1H BuNo 137576, LCDR W P Egan, KIA, vicinity Ban Senphan, Laos

USAF F-105D 62-4304, 1LT D W Bruch, MIA, vicinity Thai Nguyen, NVN

USAF F-101C 56-0218, MAJ A E Runyan, POW, vicinity Yen Bai, NVN

USAF A-1E 52-132680, CAPT L S Boston, MIA, vicinity Na San, NVN

Although assigned to the 1st Marine Air Wing Headquarters Squadron (MWH&S-1, MWHG-1) at the time of his loss, Captain Mullen had deployed to Chu Lai as a member of Marine Attack Squadron 211 and was doing his flying with Marine Attack Squadron 223, also at Chu Lai. The MWHG-1 Command Chronology for April 1966 contains the following entry: "5. CASUALTIES. (U) Captain William F. MULLEN, Group S-2 [Intelligence] Officer, was reported as missing in action while on a strike mission while flying with a local A4E squadron."

Regardless of the exact details of the loss, Captain Mullen was not recovered and was placed in MIA status. On 05 May 1976, the Secretary of the Navy approved a Presumptive Finding of Death for William Mullen, who was promoted to Major while in MIA status. As of 10 Jan 2003, his remains have not been repatriated.

7/3/2025

 Thursday, July 3, 2025

D+

1849 French forces enter Rome to restore Pope Pius IX to power, providing a major obstacle to Italian unification

1863 Battle of Gettysburg, the largest battle ever fought on the American continent, ended in a major victory for the Union during the Civil War

1890 King Leopold II gave Congo, previously a private possession, to Belgium 

1930 US Veterans Administration was created

1942 Adolf Hitler visited Field Marshal Von Bock's headquarters in Ukraine

1988 US Vincennes in Strait of Hormoez shot an Iran Airbus A300, killing 290

In bed at 9:45, up at 5:40, from a dream in Japan, shopping and looking for a condo.  65 °, high of 78°, sunny.

Health, physical condition.  I'm thinking this morning of the question I put to Dr. Chatt before my PMR was diagnosed: "Can I expect to live like this for the rest of my life?" only getting ever worse, never better?  More everyday pain, more instabiltiy, more immobility, more incapacity? I probably know the answer to this question.  BP = 160/88

This is my knockoff drawing of a self(?) portrain by Picasso.  I did most of it with watercolor pencils, some with colored pencils, and a bit with a graphite pencil.  I'm pleased with it.

Call from Debbie M. re John having a possible stroke.

Blue Blue Day by Don Gibson, Aug., 1957

It's been a blue blue day I feel like runnin' away I feel like runnin' away from it all

My love has been untrue she's found somebody new it's been a blue blue day for me

Well I feel like crying dying what can I do

I feel like praying saying I'm glad we're through

It's been a blue blue day I feel like runnin' away I feel like runnin' away from the blues

Yes how can I make believe that I don't sit and grieve it's been a blue blue day for me

I can't pretend and say that I don't love her anyway it's been a blue blue day for me

Well I feel like crying...

I feel like runnin' away from the blues  

Hakkim Jeffries marathon minute and Matthew 25.   In his 8 hour and 32 minute "fuck you" speech to the Republicans before they voted on Trump's One Big Beautiful Budget Bill, he liberally cited Matthew 25:

“Matthew, the 25th chapter, verses 35 and 40,” he began. “I think it’s important that at this time, in this moment in this debate, before I leave the floor of the House of Representatives, that this scripture be entered into the Congressional Record.”

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in — a stranger, and you invited me in — E pluribus unum. Out of many, one,” he continued with a bit of an ad lib and then some paraphrasing.

“I needed clothes, and you clothed me. I was sick. I had medical problems. Maybe I needed Medicare or Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act or the Children’s Health Insurance Program or Planned Parenthood,” he said. Notably, Planned Parenthood, specifically, is known for aborting children made in the image of God.

When did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison, and go to visit you? And of course, the reply from Jesus, truly, I tell you, whatever you did, whatever you did, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. That’s what we should be doing here in the United States House of Representatives.

“Our job is to stand up for the poor, the sick and the afflicted, the least, the lost and the left behind, everyday Americans,” he said, the irony completely lost on him that his party continually places their own needs — and the needs of criminal illegal aliens —  ahead of the American people who need help.

“That’s what Matthew teaches us, and that’s not what’s happening in this one big, ugly bill,” he claimed. “That’s not consistent with what my faith teaches me.” 

It's not just the New Testament that teaches us to care for others, especially those in need.  The teaching is thoroughly Jewish in origin.

 “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

 “Do not harden your heart or shut your hand against your needy brother” (Deuteronomy 15:7). 

  “You shall not reap the corner of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger” (Exodus 23:22

“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.”  Deuteronomy 15:7

“If your brother becomes poor, and his hand loses strength with you, you shall support him."   Leviticus 25:35

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  I am the Lord.”  (Leviticus 19:18). 

 

 

7/2/2025

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

D+ 217/149/1298

1949 The State of Vietnam was internationally recognised, governing the southern half of Vietnam, with Bảo Đại as chief of state

1962 Sam Walton opened his first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas

1964  Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law

1976 Formal reunification of North and South Vietnam

2014 Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was criminally charged with corruption by French prosecutors

In bed by 9, up before 5, lots of pain and other physical problems.  66°, high of 83°, sunny.

Medications, etc.  I'm not sure what to do about keeping track of all the meds.  Not sure what to do about anything, hoping for 'the big one, Elizabeth.'  There are 14 or 15 pills or capsules in my palm, my daily dosages, to which I add a prescription cream for a rash on my leg, another 'shampoo' and cream for a possible fungal infection in my groin which may prefigure a possibly fatal side effect of Jardiance (one of those pills in my hand), a prescription ointment for my eye, plus Bausch and Lomb artificial tears and eye scrubs for dry eyes.

I spent half an hour on the patio this morning, sitting, listening, and staring.  It was a warm, soft morning, with hardly a breeze.  Such breezes as there were were anecdotal, showing up here and there, some high, some low, all seemingly independent, unconnected with the movement of adjacent air, though that doesn't seem possible.  I seem to be getting better at hearing, though not identifying, barely audible bird calls, though this morning it was easy enough to hear and identify the cardinals, robins, and mourning doves.  The Merlin app told me there were also one or more gold finches, house finches, house sparrows, song sparrows, black-capped chickadees, Baltimore orioles, and red-bellied woodpeckers.  There were probably also catbirds, crows, and downy and hairy woodpeckers nearby, but keeping silent.  As I type this in the afternoon, I see a male and female house finch making whoopee atop one of the shepherd's crooks while a red-bellied woodpecker works on the suet cake, a catbird looks on, flicking its tail feathers, and a female goldfinch plucks nesting material from the big cotton ball.

JJA posted a FB reflection by another attorney about Mt. 25: 31-46.  My comment was

Those words from Matthew strike me as being the heart and soul of Christianity, the religion I was raised in and have struggled with all my life. The basic teachings seem so clear: love, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, empathy, humility. If America is a Christian nation, what does that say about Christianity? If we are made in the image of God, what does that say about God?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

I posted a FB reflection:

 I remember when I was a child

     -my father returned from World War II with PTSD, though it wasn't called that then.  He drank too much beer and he lived with for years with nightmares, terrible memories, and a troubled soul.  We lived for years with his suffering, much of which stayed with him for the rest of his life.

    -my mother went to work waiting on tables at a local coffee shop (though we didn't call them that then)  so we would have enough cash from her tips (nickels, dimes, and quarters) to pay the rent on tiny 3 room basement apartment, buy food, and pay the $1.50 per month tuition at St. Leo the Great Grammar School.  She later moved up in the food service business and eventually graduated to a factory job with steady pay and benefits, but for years, the family survived on her tips.

    - my parents didn't have any credit cards.  They bought clothes through a "factor" named Dave  Fein, who had an account at a big clothing store on Roosevelt Road in Chicago.  They bought on Dave's account.  He was their living, breathing credit card.  Dave came around door to door to collect small amounts on his customers' accounts, keeping his records in the thick account book he always carried. In weeks when we had no money to pay him, we stayed quiet and out of sight until he moved on to his next customer's home.  It was embarrassing, even then.

    -my parents didn't have a checking account.  They paid their utility and other bills with money orders from a neighborhood "currency exchange."  I remember when they finally had enough income to open their first checking account, and I wasn't sent on trips to the currency exchange.

    -my parents sometimes didn't have enough cash to buy food at the local National Food Store so we bought what we could (lunchmeat, canned goods, bread, milk) from our neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Kelly, who owned a little Mom & Pop grocery store where we had credit.  They were able to send their daughter to college on their earnings from that small Mom & Pop store.

   - my parents told me that they had voted in 1948 for Harry Truman for president because Tom Dewey and the Republicans were for rich people and businessmen, not for 'the little guy,' or people like us.

    -my parents', my little sister's, and my living in the all-White Englewood neighborhood in Chicago, until, despite our Catholic pastor's urging everyone to "keep the undesirables out," a Black family moved in and (was it really overnight?), the neighborhood became all Black.

    -my nuns at St. Leo Grammar School conducting atom bomb drills with us schoolchildren and worrying about the godless communists wanting to turn us into atheists and to kill us, and Irish Catholic Senator Joe McCarthy, a graduate of Jesuit Marquette University and its law school, warning us about communist infiltrators everywhere.

Later on, as I moved from childhood into adulthood, I remember the passionate conflict over civil rights, racial segregation and integration, and over the war in Vietnam, in which I would end up a participant.  I lived through the heartache of John Kennedy's assassination and the passions of Watergate.  America and I have lived through much since I was born on the eve of America's entry into World War II, and much of it was troubling, disheartening, and bad.  That said, I believe I can truthfully say that I have never been so troubled, disheartened, or less hopeful over what is happening in America as I am today under Donald J. Trump and the electorate who voted for him, knowing his character.

Howard Schoenfeld

I think many of us who lived through the ’60s and the aftermath share your trepidation about the state of the world today

Charles D. Clausen

Howard Schoenfeld It's hard to forget the rancor and real hatred of those years, the riots, the demonstrations, the bombings, divided families, flights to Canada, Chicago 68, etc., but, for all that, the country was moving generally in a more humane direction: greater protection of long-abused minorities, hostility to war, greater worker and environmental protection, even under Nixon (Clean Water, Clean Air, OSHA, etc.) We're moving in opposite directions now, other than arguably re war, and who can be sure of that?

 It must be something about this date: here's my entry from a year ago:

 America's long downward spiral.  It seems to me America has been going downhill ever since my childhood and the euphoric years after WWII and the victories over Germany and Japan.  We were the only superpower after the war.  All the other formerly powerful nations were spent by the war: the Axis powers, England, and France.  China was undergoing its communist revolution.  Russia was bled dry by the war, with millions of its citizens killed.  We were the king of the world in the late 40s.

Then, in the 1950s, we moved into the Cold War and fear of the communists, mainly in Russia but also in China.  We got the John Birch Society, HUAC, and Joe McCarthy, a communist under every rock, behind every tree, black lists.

In the 1960s, we had assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, so-called race riots, and most significantly, our ill-advised invasion of Vietnam that would tear the country apart, and tear families apart, and rightly bring the U.S. down in the estimation of the world.  It was when, as LBJ predicted, the South abandoned the Democrats and became Deep Red Republican.

The 60s brought us Nixon and Kissinger and the 1970s with our invasion of Cambodia, Kent State, the coup against the democratically elected Salvador Allende in Chili, CIA interventions in Central America, Watergate and Nixon's resignation, Attorney General John Mitchell and other going to prison, the Iran Hostage Crisis, the rejection of Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan.

The 80s started the electorate and the nation's turn to the Right under Reagan, a trend that would ultimately take us to where we are now with the Trump cult.  It was the era of the Iran-Contra scandal, Ollie North and Fawn Hall shredding so many documents that kept jamming the shredders so Fawn Hall secreted documents in her boots and clothing to keep them from investigators.  It was the era when the Right-Left divide became deeper and more bitter.

The 90s brought us Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinski, the blue dress, and impeachment and, perhaps most destructively, Newt Gingrich, the great nastiness he introduced into domestic politics, and the further deepening of the Right-Left, Red-Blue polarization.  The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting brought us Rush Limbaugh and AM talk radio

The 00s brought us "W," Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, 9/11, the start of the 20 year war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses (WMD, yellow cake uranium), renditions, black prisons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" and of course the Financial Collapse of 2008 and the Gread Recession bailouts for the Wall Street and foreclosures for the rest of us.

The teens brought us the backlash to the election of Obama, our first Black president, with the election of Donald Trump and all that has led to since his 2015 ride down the escalator behind Dragon Lady.  Two impeachments, Covid-19, the 2020 election of Biden, the "Big Lie, and January 6th and all that has ensued.

Meanwhile, as a seemingly constant background to all the above, we have had mass shootings in schools, churches, and other places, ever-growing income and wealth inequalities, police shootings of unarmed Black men, and persistent problems attributable to class, caste, and racism.  And we end up where we are today, faced with a choice between a corrupt and sociopathic Donald Trump and an aged and addled Joe Biden, the best our two major parties have to offer America as 'leader of the Free World.'

And of course, it only got worse on Election Day.

Knock off of Munch's Madonna

7/1/2025

 Tuesday, July 1, 2025

D+216/148 /-1298 

1937 Rev Martin Niemöller was arrested in Nazi Germany for activities against the State

1968 The CIA's Phoenix Program was officially established.

1971 Twenty-sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, was ratified

1974 General Augusto Pinochet became the president and dictator of Chile

1987 President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork for a seat on the Supreme Court, rejected by US Senate in October

2002 The International Criminal Court was established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression

2019 Japan resumed commercial whaling after a break of more than 30 years

2024  Supreme Court ruled that presidents have criminal  immunity for all official acts,

In bed at 9:10, up at 5:45.  63°, high of 80°, sunny day ahead.    

Medication tracking.  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 .     Keeping track of all the stuff I'm supposed to ingest or do with or to my body is driving me a little nuts.  From the time I get up in the morning until I go to bed each night, I have medical instructions to attend to.  I take a dozen or more pills and capsules each morning.  I apply creams or ointments to various parts of my body.  I've long been advised to engage in one physical therapy exercise or another. BP + 153/88

A wren sighting.  The Merling app has been telling me since I installed and started using it that we have wrens in the neighborhood. Around 7 last night, I spotted one on the tray feeder.  It was a good sighting, small, plump body and upright tail feathers.  Tah dah.

Starting to think about the Semiquicentennial.   Or is it the Bisequicentennial or the Sestercentennial?  Whatever we call it, 2026 will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  I am thinking back on 1976 and the big-deal Bicentennial.  Jerry Ford was president on July 4, but was voted out of office on November 2nd.   Fourteen months before the big anniversary, North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon, renamed it as Ho Chi Minh City, and occasioned the iconic images of Marine helicopters lifting fleeing Vietnamese off of Saigon rooftops.  Less than 2 years earlier, Richard Nixon became the only US president to resign from office.  In March of that year, Patty Hearst had been found guilty of bank robbery in California. And in New Jersey, the Supreme Court allowed Karen Ann Quinlan, in a persistent vegetative state, to be disconnected from her ventilator.  She remained comatose but alive until 1985.  Reagan took on Ford in the Republican primaries.  On July 2, North and South Vietnam were officially united into one country.  On July, the first class of women was inducted into the U. S. Naval Academy. Later that month, the Son of Sam killings started in New York City.  On August 19, Gerald Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination for the presidency.  November 2 election results: Carter 50.1, Reagan 48%

Carter became the first non-incumbent president representing a Southern state to be elected since Zachary Taylor in 1848. As of 2024, this is the last election in which the Democratic ticket won the majority of states in the South or the states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas (mainly due to Carter's southern roots), as well as the most recent election in which the losing candidate carried more states than the winning candidate.

January 27 – The United States vetoes a United Nations resolution that calls for an independent Palestinian state.   I need to think some more about 1976.  What I remember best is Richard Pryor's Bicentennial Pastor moaning about "200 years of White folk kickin' ass and wondering how long, Lord, must this bullshit go on?"

Facebook exchange with JJA:

Janice Jenkins Anderson 

The “Big Beautiful Bill” is an immoral disgusting piece of legislation. It proposes the largest transfer of wealth to the rich, the largest cut to Medicaid (17 million people) and the largest cut to food assistance in American history. Rural hospitals and nursing homes will be shut down, electricity costs could go up by 30% and millions of jobs could disappear. A staggering $4 trillion will be added to the national debt. The most vulnerable will suffer, some will die. All in order to give more money to the rich. Are we winning, now???

 Charles D. Clausen

I read an essay a million years ago by one of those famous 19th century English essayists whose name I can't remember. I also can't remember exactly what the essay was about, but in it the writer described a purported work of art as "the most perfectly ill-done thing" he had ever seen. That phrase has stuck with me and I think of it now, wondering if Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" is the most perfectly ill-done piece of legislation we have ever seen. Raises the debt by trillions while cutting taxes for those who have more money than they can keep track of while cutting health care coverage and food stamps for the nation's neediest. It takes a deeply perverse and malevolent soul to come up with that combo. Make that souls, plural: Trump, a pagan, and Russell Vought, a hardline Chrisian Nationalist. Throw in Stephen Miller, a Jew, and J. D. Vance, a Catholic. Is this what Judeo-Christian culture has come to mean in terms of political policy? I keep thinking that things can't get much worse and these guys keep proving me wrong.

 

 My Facebook posting yesterday:   

I was watching the news this afternoon when I was impinged by this commercial:

Keytruda  . . . known to treat cancer

(Subscript crawl)  Keytruda is not right for everyone.  If you have advanced urothelial cancer, KEYTRUDA may be used with the medicine enfortumab vedoten  in adults when your bladder or urinary tract cancer has spread or cannot be removed by surgery.  KEYTRUDA can cause your immune system to attack healthy parts of your body during or after treatment.  This may be severe and lead to death.  See your doctor right away if you have a cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, nausea, or vomiting, headsache, light sensitivity, eye problems, irregualr heartbeat, extreme tiredness, consipation, dizziness, or fainting, changes in appetite, thirst, or urine, confusion, memory problems, persistent or severe muscle pain or weakness, muscle cramps, fever, rash, itching, or flushing.  There may be other side effects.

Can anyone tell me what I am to think of this?  Why do MERCK and other pharmaceutical giants spend lots of money putting out ads like this?  The EU forbids direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising; why do we permit it?  [I know; it's America's Golden Rule.  He who has the gold makes the rules.]