8/28/2025

Thursday, August 28, 2025

D+292/221/-1241 

1939 Chaim Weizmann informed England that Palestine Jews would fight in WW II

1944  Douglas MacGregor Cummings was born.

1945 General MacArthur was named Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan

????  Anh Hoang Clausen was born, the first member of her family with birthright citizenship

2024 My 5th fall since moving to Bayside.

In bed around 9:30, up at 4:45.  60°, high of 70°, partly cloudy, wind gusts up to 24 mph today, chilly, beach hazard alert, waves 3 to 7 ft

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  9:30 a.m. 

We "artistes" can be fussy about our paraphernalia.  My smock is an old, Franciscan-brown, heavy cotton apron that I used at the House of Peace and bought at Fein Brothers on 3rd Street.  I've made a point of  duly covering it with smudges of different paints lest anyone not recognize it as the apron of an "artiste."😊

Text exchange with Peter as he moves into his dorm at MSOE today:

Charles Clausen:

I’m thinking of you today, Peter, and wishing for all good things to come your way as you embark on the great journey ahead of you.  Congratulations on all you have achieved so far and good  luck as you push ahead.♥️

Peter Clausen:

Thank you grandpa I really appreciate it, hope to see you soon!

USA!  USA!  USA! A sick society, a sordid culture.  Children in the United States have been going through regular "active shooter drills" in their schools for the last 25 years.  When I was a child, I recall, very dimly, atom bomb drills at St. Leo Grammar School, and air raid shelter signs in many places, with the John Birch Society warning us of communists hiding behind every tree and Russians lusting for our blood.  Today's children grow up with rational fears of being shot and killed in their classrooms or in church or anyplace where people gather by some random homicidal lunatic who may live down the street.  They know God will not protect them, even in church.  They know that their parents can't protect them.  They know the government cannot protect them, and will not even outlaw the crowd-killing weapons the mass murderers prefer.  An entire generation of Americans has grown up participating in active shooter drills and lockdown drills. What does this do to the mind of a child?  to the mind of a parent?  What does this do to their souls or spirits?  What does it do to their faith in the God whose 'eye is on the sparrow'?  What does it do to their faith in an effective and protective government?  

What does it do to all of us to know that America is beyond a cure for this problem?   It has become common knowledge that there are more firearms in the United States than there are people, i.e., more the 330,000,000.  The best estimates are from about 390 million to 510 million.  How many AR-15-type assault rifles are owned by civilians in America? Based on the most recent data available as of early 2025, the total is likely in the range of 30 to 44 million.  How can anyone truly believe that a nation that is awash in firearms, with perhaps half a billion of them, can solve the gun crime problem with "gun control" laws?  If there are indeed probably at least 30 million assault weapons stored in closets, bedrooms, basements, and attics around America, what kind of "gun control" law would be necessary, enforceable, and effective to keep them from the hands of criminals, short of banning and confiscation?  The Right Wing correctly understands that confiscation is the only effective way of dealing with the ubiquity of guns and assault weapons.  Their anti-gun control, 2nd Amendment propaganda reflects that understanding, all that "You can get my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" stuff.  With all the gun-rights legislation and judicial decisions on the books, no law-abiding government can be expected to fix our gun curse.  Even a right-wing, fascist dictatorship that wanted to disarm America would have a daunting challenge, although it could hit the ground running just from public gun registration records.  Here is the best that the Wall Street Journal's editorial board could come up with this morning after the latest school/church killlings and shooting in Minneapolis:

The question, as ever, is how a civilized society can protect itself from such people. Arming teachers or assigning armed guards to schools can’t be ruled out, though it is all but impossible to protect every church at 8:30 in the morning on a busy workday.

One subject that deserves debate is a more aggressive identification and forced treatment, if need be, of the mentally ill. Most school shooters have been disturbed young men who also shouldn’t have access to firearms. The mental-health lobby and gun-rights advocates may protest, but a society serious about protecting its most vulnerable needs to have this debate.

In other words, our "civilized society" cannot protect itself.  It's hopeless.   We wait for the predictable next school or church shooting, the one after that, and the one after that, and hope that they don't come too close to home.  N.B.  The Minneapolis shooting of Annunciation parish schoolchildren was the 44th American school shooting this year.

Aging from the Inside Out.  I attended this group discussion session at the VA this morning.  I volunteered for it a few weeks ago.  It's a 5-week program run by a psychologist from the VA's geropsychiatry department, i.e.,  mental health specialists for old vets.  I was pretty clearly the oldest vet there, but only by 3 years.  There were 6 of us participating: A.J., Jay, George, Kenyatta, Marvin, and me.  All are veterans, 5 of us Vietnam vets.  There are three Blacks, two Whites, and one Puerto Rican, a very compatible group.  I think I was the only Marine.  A.J. was in the Air Force, and I suppose the other guys were soldiers.  It's a guided, but only loosely guided, discussion group, and today's discussion focused a bit on the roles played in our lives by our mothers and sisters.  It was an enjoyable hour, and I'm glad I signed up for it.  I like talking with other old vets.   In the parking garage, I stopped to take a photo of the precarious spot in the garage's ceiling where a bird had chosen to build a nest and raise two little ones.  Another vet, this one from the Navy, saw me and stopped and chatted with me about an adventure he had on a construction job in Florida years ago, saving the nest of a pair of mourning doves.  Two strangers, but both military veterans enrolled in the VA's health program, and connected by a sense of kinship or fellowship from our time in service.  These kinds of friendly, brief encounters are possible anywhere, but they happen frequently and easily at the VA Medical Center because of that common bond linking all the patients, past service in the military.  There is a spirit there that you don't find in any other hospital or medical setting.

Poblocki Paving tore up the driveways this morning.  It looks like the job won't be complete until Tuesday.😫

So funny.  A neighborhood crow is too big to access easily the suet cakes I have hanging on the shepherd crooks, but he's resourceful.  He lands on top of the crook, picks up the suet cake basket with his stron beak, and then pins it under on of his feet.  This afternoon, the suet cake basket fell to the ground which frightened the crow.  He flew down and warily approached the suet.  Each time he got close, he got scared and backed away, until he finally concluded the suet wasn't going to jump up at him so he could grab a big chunk of suet and eat it.  He was like the dog that chased the car and didn't know what to do when he caught it.  When the crow finished nibbling on the suet, 4 tom turkeys showed up to clean up whatever seeds they could find on the ground.  They ignored the grounded suet.

I finished this copycat of a Roualt yesterday or the day before.  I am a bit disappointed in it, but not enough to trash it.  I learned to be more careful wetting the black watercolor pencil marks.  One problem I am having trying to copy the Rouaults is that he worked in oils and I'm using watercolor pencils, some gouache, and maybe graphite or colored pencils or even a Sharpie.  I have a lot of oil paints downstairs but I haven't painted with any of them in years and wonder if the paints have all dried up in their tubes.  I'd like to try working with oils again but can't get by the problem of a need for decent ventilation because of the solvents.