8/11/2025

Monday, August 11, 2025

D+276/204/1257

1919 Green Bay Packers football club was founded by George Calhoun and Curly Lambeau - named after  their sponsor, the Indian Packing Company

1954 Formal peace treaty ended over 7 years of fighting in Indochina between the French and the Communist Viet Minh

1984 During a radio voice test, US President Reagan joked that he "signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever.  We begin bombing in 5 minutes."

1988 Al-Qaeda was formed at a meeting between Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Dr Fadl in Peshawar, Pakistan

2020 Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate. 

2022 Attorney General Merrick Garland said he personally approved the FBI search of Trump's property on the same day a Washington Post source said the FBI search was for missing documents on nuclear weapons

In bed at 10:10, up at 6:50.  72°, high of 83°, mostly cloudy, flood warning until 10 a.m.    

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 10:45 a.m.

My Facebook post this morning:

A few years back, I started keeping a list on my iPhone of 'what I love about Geri.'  It started with her laugh.  I was listening to her chatting on her phone with one of her friends and she was really enjoying whatever it was they were talking about.  She was laughing, a wonderful, deep, exuberant laughter that was a pleasure to listen to, infectious inasmuch as just hearing it made me smile.

For her 80th birthday dinner, I read a tribute to her, one I composed from that list.  It concluded with this:

"She is courageous.  She has faced some difficult challenges in her life and addressed all of them head-on.  Where many, including me, would have faltered, backed off from a difficult challenge, she has put her shoulder to the wheel and addressed them.  She has guts, tough-mindedness, patience, and an admirable sense of self-respect and determination that lets her succeed at challenges that would defeat many of us.

My iPhone list is a lot longer and includes stuff like leading the way when there is tough, unpleasant, nasty work to be done.  She is the first to pick up the mop or shovel, not waiting for others, including me, to get at it. But my list is inevitably incomplete.  She is who she is in all her uniqueness.  She is special in large part because she doesn't treat herself as special, as better than or not as good as anyone around her.  But she is very special to me, and she's very special to her family and to her many friends who count themselves privileged to have her in our lives."

Our basement flooded with the Big Rain, creating quite an extraordinary mess.  For any task requiring strength, balance, and/or agility, I have become useless, as I was in dealing with our flooded basement.  My contribution to the challenge was to push the button silencing the beeping alarm signaling the failure of our sump pump.  As usual, Geri jumped right in, with her broom, her mop, a wet vac, and a Buck knife for cutting apart saturated rugs and carpeting.  It was she who carried soaked rugs and carpeting, and much wet cardboard, up the basement stairs and out of the house.  Not a  word of complaint about her partner's uselessness.  David and Sharon came over and helped in the afternoon, though they had their own flooding to deal with, and Steve came up from Chicago, worked into the night, and again today.  This morning, with his truck, he will haul all the wet throwaways to the village dumpsters.  I am grateful to all of them but mostly I am in awe of and grateful to and for my extraordinary wife, always "the first to pick up the mop or shovel."  A treasure more precious than jewels, a mensch.

LTMW The sun has peeped through the clouds and beams its healing rays on the normal-looking view from my window.  The grass is very green, one gray squirrel and another red one are feeding on the seeds I spread on the ground yesterday.  The gray squirrel is a bit aggressive about defending his feeding territory from his red cousin.  I rarely see red squirrels down here, whereas in Saukville, they were all we saw, no grays.  I wonder how our neighborhood wildlife did during the Big Rainfall, which was accompanied by high winds.  I'm sure they know where and how to protect themselves, mostly in dense evergreens, I suppose.  Do the birds and squirrels seem a little hungrier than usual, or am I imagining that? . . . While dealing with all the wet carpeting, etc., on the lawn this morning, Steve saw a 5-inch long crawfish on the grass!

Geri and Steve on the way to the dump, with a rug on the driveway and my plaid trousers reflected on his truck's shiny door.

Text exchange with CBG:

Caren Goldberg:

    I’m so sorry you had so much water and damage in your basement. We had water too but no real damage just cleanup. Did any of your paintings or writings or collections get ruined? I hope they were all out of reach. 

Charles Clausen:

Thanks.  I had a couple of paintings on the floor so they soaked up some water on the edges that rested on the floor.  I can’t tell yet whether I’ll have to trash them.  I did trash a couple of nudes I painted  years ago on canvas board, or canvas mounted on cardboard.  They weren’t salvageable.  In my daily journal musings, I have more than once reflected on the fact that when I kick the bucket, all my paintings and drawings will end up in a landfill, just as I’ll end up in the green burial section at Forest Lawn.  Ditto the looseleaf binders holding the hard copies of my journal and the couple of copies of my memoir.  ‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ and all that.  Our main concern now is whether we develop any mold under the wooden flooring in the main section of the basement.  Fingers crossed.  Geri and I have both been pretty sad today in large part because this flooding drives home that it’s just a matter of time before we have to sell the house and move into some residence where someone else is responsible for maintenance.  Not something either of us is looking forward to.  Indeed, I think we both dread it.  I know I do.❤️

Caren Goldberg:

So much work to clean up and loss of special things. Hard and sad. Did you contact your insurance company? Can they deal with any of it?

Charles Clausen:

No I haven’t yet.  Maybe tomorrow.  So far we’ve had no real financial loss.  That will change if we have to go through mold abatement, ripping out the flooring, etc.  My law school classmate and longterm buddy Larry Anderson and his wife are coming to visit tomorrow.  They were supposed to come on Sunday for lunch but of course that got postponed.

I’m nodding off so I’ll wish you good night and pleasant dreams with a closing photo of Geri and Steve in his pickup on the way to the Bayside dump.❤️

Caren Goldberg:

Sleep well!