7/17/2025

 Thursday, July 17, 2025

D+251/179/1282

1917 Royal Proclamation by King George V changed the name of British Royal family from German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

1959 Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey discovered the partial skull of a new species of early human ancestor now called Paranthropus boisei, which lived in Africa almost 2 million years ago

1962 The Senate rejected medicare for aged Americans

In bed at 9:15, up at 5:20.  Both shoulders and hands very sore/painful.  I'm thinking this is PMR but who knows.  If it is, and I have this much pain after 2 Kevzara injections within 8 days, I think I'm in trouble and may be back on prednisone, but again, who knows.  I didn't even try to put on a bathrobe this morning, too much shoulder pain.  Everything is complicated by this g-d surgery coming up which I'm comng to believe is probably necessary because of the pain/discomfort I'm experiencing urinating. F.  I've been miserable and blue for some time now, fearing continued life of pain and discomfort, incapacity, immobility, dependency, and loneliness.  It's been more than a month since Dr. Chatt referred me to the clinic psych on 6/12 for "subdued mood" and she sent me the OD medication even though I told her I didn't want it.  I thought of my Aunt Mary waiting to die and praying "What's the problem, God?  I'm ready."  I almost teared up yesterday listening to Jane Oliver singing  (wailing?) 'You Wanna Be Loved' on a  playlist, while I drove home from the library.  Unexpected and uninvited emotional respone.  I'll probably feel better today; it's actually hard work to be blue for a long time, takes a lot out of you.  I hear Kitty and Loretta Castorini: SNAP OUT OF IT! 

Kevzara; Trulicity.  No Kevzara, no Trulicity.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.

I stumbled upon Kiss Me Again, Stranger by Daphne du Maurier and had to refresh my memory about its plot.  I read it a few years ago and of course forgot entirely what it was about, which was, in brief, a female serial killer.  Her home had been destroyed and her parents killed during the Battle of Britain.  On an impromptu date with the narrtor of the story, she asked him "You weren't ever in the Air Force, were you?" and said "Good," when he replied "No."  He asked what she had against the RAF and she replied "They smashed my home."  He said "That was the Germans, not our fellows" and she replied "It's all the same, they're killers, aren't they?"  The denouement of the story is that she killed English men who were or had been in the Royal Air Force and that she encountered andl killed another one after she sent the narrator on his way the night before.  It made me think of Eighth Air Force by Randall Jarrell.

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die--
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now.  But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.

and of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Years.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

It makes me think too of Danang and the TACC and the thousands of bombing missions we kept track of over my 8 months there.  "It's all the same, they're killers, aren't they?"  

And I can't think of Randall Jarrell without recalling The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.