Sunday, August 24, 2025
D+ 289/217/-1245
1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Protestants by Roman Catholics began in Paris with the murder by defenestration of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and later spreads to the French provinces
1857 The Panic of 1857 began, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history
1941 I was born in Englewood Hospital
1968 France became the world's fifth thermonuclear power with a detonation at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific
In bed at 9 and up at 4:20, aware that it is my 84th birthday, the start of my 85th year, which I approach with some fear and trembling, pace Kierkegaard. It's 57° now with an expected high of only 69°
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 9:30 a.m.
Janice Jenkins Anderson
First it was LA, then DC … next Chicago. Trump is threatening to send the “regular military” — Army and Marines — into US cities, with Chicago “probably next.” This was always the plan - to send armed troops into cities for purely manufactured crises.
Make no mistake: This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.
Charles D. Clausen
It's also an auxiliary or supplemental ICE force, just as it has been in Washington. I was born and grew up in Chicago, in a neighborhood that Time magazine once described as "the city's seamy South Side," and that subsequently became notorious as a murder capital, Englewood. If I could believe that soldiers and Marines were really the way to combat violent urban crime, I might support what Trump is about to do in Chicago. But I don't believe that, and even if I did, I'd probably oppose it because of what it will do to our soldiers and Marines, as well as to the residents of Chicago. The only soldiers and Marines trained as police are MPs, and even they aren't trained for urban policing. What I most fear is an act of violence against some soldier or Marine deployed in one of our cities, God forbid, a homicide, and what such an act will trigger out of Trump. It could be his and our equivalent of the Reichstag fire in 1933, and what that led to. We need to recognize that not only is Trump subjecting city residents to risks from the military, but he is also subjecting the military to risks from criminals in the cities. There may be blood spilled, and one wonders whether that is what he is hoping for —an excuse to trigger much harsher measures.
Janice Jenkins Anderson
Charles D. Clausen the inevitability of your last sentence…
The Brutalist. We watched this 3 and 1/2 hour-long film last night. I didn't like it from the get-go to the surprising wrap-up. Other than me, the film seems to be universally admired. It's nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. I was annoyed by the opening credits and the opening scene. I was disturbed by the crucial, critical crime that occurs late in the film. I sensed some sort of awkwardness about the story throughout its long duration, though I can't say why. My negative reaction to a film and a story that is so widely admired makes me wonder if the film actually was touching me in ways I didn't want to be touched. It is very critical of the postwar America in which I grew up, of its hubris, racism, materialism, consumerism, and capitalism, the world that C. Wright Mills wrote about and that the beatniks rejected. It is critical of the power of Big Money over High Art, but mah nishtanah. The movie reminds me of Godard, although it seems darker than Godard's movies. It's a story of alienation, of not 'fitting in,' and of victimization, of life in a cruel, cruel world in which rich corporate capitalists live in luxury and ride roughshod over not only artists, but all others, including workers. There is much else that this movie/story is 'about,' especially the Holocaust and the difficulties facing all immigrants. I suspect I would get more out of the film if I watched it again and perhaps I would come to appreciate it as most others have, but at 3 and 1/2 hours, . . .
Famine. Much of Gaza is now officially in famine, meaning its people are starving to death. No surprise. Netanyahu and his government say it ain't so. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? America is complicit in this; we are guilty. Joe Biden is guilty and Donald Trump is guilty; we are all guilty. I am guilty for not sitting on my rollator in front of the federal courthouse with a sign saying "Feed them." I have never been without abundant food in my life. There were times in my childhood when we had no money and had to rely on Mr. Kelly in his tiny neighborhood grocery store to sell us lunch meat, bread, or canned goods on credit, but I never missed a meal. There was a time when I had whooping cough and couldn't eat, when I lost so much weight that one could count my ribs just looking at my back, but I didn't starve. Israel did this to the Gazans, but we helped finance and assist it. Shame on us. Shame on me.
LTMW at 6:15 a.m., I see what appears to me to be a white-tail doe and her nearly grown fawn, or is it two unrelated does? They slowly cross our lawn and head into Mequon. A gray squirrel forages under the bird feeders. The sun rose over Lake Michigan at 6:07 and has yet to peep over my horizon formed by the trees across the street. The goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, and other birds are showing up in numbers at the feeders, and it promises to be a beautiful summer morning. . . . The big tom turkeys have become regular visitors at our feeders, foraging for seeds on the ground.
From this date 2 years ago: "Moishe Pipek is a fictional Yiddish name with many connotations, but literally Moses Bellybutton. I've come to think of one Milwaukee attorney, a former student of mine, whose face I see whenever the television is turned on and even in internet ads. He is ubiquitous, impossible to ignore, and impossible for me to avoid thinking of him as Narcissus, the mythological boy who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool. He reminds me of Woody Allen's mother, Sadie Milstein, whose huge visage looms in the sky above her son Sheldon, impossible to escape, in his film Oedipus Wrecks. "
From this date 3 years ago: "I picked up a copy of Niebuhr's Moral Man in Immoral Society at the library, hoping to pick up some art books I had ordered as well, but not to be. They arrived this afternoon. It's not likely that I will read the book. My eyesight is growing increasingly worse, in large part because of dry eyes for which eye drops provide only partial and temporary relief. I found myself wondering as I drove to the library whether the dry eye problem would be what eventually leads me to stop driving - shudder. It was that problem that led me to accept the fact that it would be impossible for me to drive out to visit Kitty, even if I allowed myself many days to make the trip. In addition to the eye problem, it has become almost impossible to me to read for any extended period of time. Loss of focus, both of my vision and of my attention. Going downhill. In any event, I'm reading the introduction to the book in small batches, which is interesting in its own right.
1. No group will ever be dislodged from power solely by persuasion, by arguments, however academically or legally elegant those arguments are.
2. There's a notable difference between the moral behavior of individuals, where there is some possibility of self-sacrifice for others, rare as that may be, and the behavior of groups - families, clans, classes, races, genders, states, or nations. With communities, the self-interest of the group is inevitably the predominant factor. . . . There can be, without contradiction, the pious slave-owner, the respectable member of a ruling class or aggressive nation, the "moral" member of an oppressive race. In all these cases, while these persons may appear to be moral as individuals, nonetheless they join with others of their group and act with exceeding self-concern, with oppressive ruthlessness, and with devastating destruction.
My birthday treat: a ride in the country. I took a ride for about two hours this afternoon and enjoyed the beautiful Ozaukee and Washington Counties countryside. First to Fredonia and then east on Ozaukee County A to Fillmore via a detour because the bridge over the Milwaukee River was out, just east of Washington County M. then through Newburg onto County Y and through Riveredge Nature Center where I did a lot of volunteer work before mobility became a big problem, for a pit stop at the St. Finbar Cemetery on St. Finbar Road, through the Town of Saukville and past our former home on Deerfield Road, then through the Town and Village of Saukville and back home. I discovered a spectacular vista of lush green rolling hills at the junction of River Road and County M, looking southeast toward County A and the village of Newburg. Spectacularly beautiful trees and lush foliage everywhere, prompting me to think again, as I so often do, that I could never live in Phoenix or a desert land. In my old age, I have become so much more appreciative of the beauty in Wisconsin and in Milwaukee, a blessing of old age. Most of the farm fields are still green with crops, though I saw a couple that had been harvested and not replanted. Lots of corn, alfalfa, and soybeans. The cloud cover this afternoon was also pretty spectacular, with huge, rolling cumulus clouds, one large cluster to the northeast dropping what looked like pretty significant rainfall at what I thought was around the Sheboygan County Line.
Geri's still positive for COVID. I'm still symptom-free.
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