7/14/2025

 Monday, July 14, 2025

D+248/176/1285

1570 Pope Pius V introduced a standardized Roman Missal.  It remained unchanged for 400 years.

1789 The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille Prison in Paris.

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:30, and onto the recliner until almost 7.   Sunny day ahead with a high of 82°.   

Meds, etc.  Very much shoulder pain during the night and this morning.  This morning, the pain predominates on the left shoulder and seems to be muscle pain rather than joint pain.  I was able to handle dishwasher unload/reload and kitchen cleanup between 7 and 7:30, but it was difficult.  Miserable.  BP=141/87

Knockoff of a Munch, yesterday

Exchange of emails with LOA yesterday.

Lawrence Anderson

    C.D.: Assuming our RV gets out of the repair shop soon, we will be leaving for our long sojourn to Minnesota and Wisconsin on Wednesday. Our plans are currently to be camping in Racine Co. between 8 to 14 August. Let’s get together for lunch sometime then. I’m going to rent a car so we will be somewhat flexible as to where or when.

    Take a look at your busy calendar and let me know what’s good for you. I'd ride the bike to your place but my wife is opposed to that idea. She wants to meet a fellow ‘deranged liberal.”Let me know what works for you (and Geri if she wants to come too.). S/F.  loa

Charles Clausen

This may be a little complicated.  I'm having surgery on August 5, involving my bladder and my schwantz. Did you know that the opening on the tip of our schwantzes has a name?  It's medical Latin: "meatus" or specifically, the urinary meatus.  I've had problems with my bladder over the last 15 years or so, including recently.  When I saw the urologist at the VA a week ago, he told me that my meatus is too small and should be widened by surgery, which is one of the purposes of the surgery on the 5th.  As Damon Runyon would say, the thought of someone taking a scalpel to the tip of my schwantz has been bothering me more than somewhat, indeed, considerably more than somewhat.  The surgery is called a "meatotomy" or "meatoplasy" and is most commonly performed on infants, not on a nearly 84-year-old former Marine.  I confess that I am also disturbed more than somewhat by the fact that this surgery's name starts with "meat," which is not how I like to think of my schwantz, though I recognize that some people childishly refer to such organs as "wieners" or, more generically, as "pork."  I have been praying to LOA (the Lord of All) that I might have a nice heart attack or stroke seasonably before 8/5 so I could avoid this next crushing indignity of old age and have already discussed with Geri that, when they ask me pre-surgery whether, disregarding the DNR iinstruction on file with the VA,  I wish to be resusciated during surgery if my heart stops, I will say "no."  On 8/24, if I'm still kicking, I'll go over the hump: closer to my 90th birthday than to my 80th.  This "meatotomy" is the coup de grâce.  When the VA urologist told me it's a very simple procedure, I punched him in the face.  No, no, I just wanted to.  But in any event, that's my social calendar around the time of your visit.  Of course, I hope to see you and to meet Jan face to face.  It's rare that I have ever encountered on Facebook anyone as politically astute as she is, or as fine a travel writer.  So, assuming my DNR instruction is not carried out on 8/5, and that I'm not bedridden or institutionalised thereafter, I look forward to your arrival and hope to be available for visitation.

Exchange of email with Tom Hammer today:

Hi Chuck,

I thought you would want to know that our friend and former colleague Jack Kircher passed away recently.  I just received the obituary included below from the Law School.  I heard that the family plans some kind of memorial service around Christmas time.   A while back we also received notice that Carolyn Edwards had died.  We never received any further details about her passing.

I hope that all is well with you and Geri. 

Tom  

From: Wilczynski-Vogel, Christine <christine.wv@marquette.edu>

Greetings & Good Afternoon.  Please see below – Father Zagone sent to me today.  CWV

John Joseph Kircher Obituary (2025) - Brookfield, WI - Schramka Funeral Home - Brookfield

. . . . . 

Hi, Tom.  I am again in your debt for alerting me to news of our former colleagues.  I tried to find an obituary or death notice for Carolyn online but wasn't successful.  I'm at an age when contemporaries and near-contemporaries are all going the way of all flesh, and my reactions to each passing differ depending on my relationship with each.  Jack and I were never very close because our backgrounds, politics, and worldviews were so different and because he was so tightly tied to Jim Ghiardi, who always viewed me with some suspicion, again because of very different politics and worldviews.  Nonetheless, I mourn his passing and feel for Marsha and his children and grandchildren, and hope he is happy in Heaven with Jim, each trying to outperform the other in playing Professor Kingsfield.  Geri is doing well, although she had three separate knee surgeries in the past year, each with difficult recoveries.  I'm keeping every clinic at the VA Medical Center busy with many body parts wanting to call it quits, but a heart that just won't play ball.  We hope you and Patti and the family are all well.  I'll say again that working with you at the law school was one of the most gratifying experiences I had over my many years there.  You're a mensch (and I miss our lunches at the stockyards.)

Brooklyn with Saoirse Ronan.  We watched this film tonight - a terrific drama.  Ronan's acting was, as usual, superb.  The story itself is realistic, adult, and moving.  Irish immigrant young woman and her eventual Italian American husband, death of a sister, return to Ireland, new love interest, return to Brooklyn and husband.  The movie treats the Irish immigrants lovingly, unlike the way immigrants are treated by this country's current government.  Eilis, the protagonist, sailed out of Cobh in County Cork, formerly Queenstown, whence my grandfather Dennis Healy departed Ireland on May 19,1904, arriving at Ellis Island on May 26th, with $6 in his pocket and a ticket to Chicago where he would meet his sister.  

    The night before we watched a Woody Allen comedy, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger.  I thought it was terrifically entertaining, especially after having watched I Saw the Light, a biopic of Hank Williams two nights ago.  I thought the movie was pretty all-around awful.