10/27/2025

 Monday, October 27, 2025

312  Emperor Constantine the Great was said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross

1941 Chicago Daily Tribune editorialized that there would not be a war with Japan

2017 Catalan parliament met and unilaterally declared independence from Spain

2022 Elon Musk took ownership and control of Twitter, immediately firing 4 executives 

In bed around 9 (?), and up before 8.  46°, wind chill is 38°, as Katherine leaves for 'a brisk walk' in her winter coat, high today of 54°.  Katherine's last day with us, a 'work from (AG's) home for her, then an Amtrak ride to Chicago this evening.

Meds, etc.  I took the doxycycline at 8 a.m. and morning meds at 9 a.m.  The redness and warmth, i.e., inflammation, is down around my left ankle, and the pain when standing was less than yesterday, but still present.  The outer layer of skin is a mess, with lots of dead skin cells from all the swelling.  I worry about small openings in the skin providing vectors for another bacterial infection.  I have an intuition that this leg with its long-term lymphedema is going to play a role in my eventual death, through another bout of cellulitis, sepsis, pericarditis, or whatever.  Time will tell.  Who knows, maybe I'll expire from being hit by a falling piece of Elon Musk's space debris or by being beaten to death by a masked ICE agent thinking I'm an illegal immigrant from Ireland or Denmark,

Church and State: some anniversary thoughts.  When was it that the teachings of a rabbi from Nazareth in Galilee became corrupted?  Was it when the hallucinatory religious zealot Saul/Paul, who never knew him, began preaching, converting, and writing letters to his followers all around the Mediterranean Sea?  Was it when the mythical Four Evangelists put together their Gospel narratives, long after his death?  Or was it when the ambitious Roman army commander, Constantine the Great, born in what is now Serbia, supposedly influenced by his mother Helena, a Greek born in what is now Turkey, decided that it was politically advisable to stop the official persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire?  In my Catholic childhood, I remember being taught about the miracle of a cross appearing in the sky and of Jesus's appearance to Constantine in a dream before his epic Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D., explaining the apparition to him, telling him "In hoc signo vinces," or "In this sign [of the cross], you will be victorious," i.e.,  that he would win the battle and become the most important and powerful person in the world, sort of an early Donald Trump.  His legionaries drew crosses on their shields, won the battle, and Constantine eventually became the sole emperor of the Roman Empire and  (allegedly) converted to Christianity.  He issued the Edict of Milan in 313, legalizing Christianity and forbidding its persecution.  In 380, his descendant Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire by the Edict of Thessalonica.  Thus, Constantine became sort of a saintly figure in Catholic lore, along with his mother, St. Helena.  So it goes.

    I believe that all of these persons and events corrupted the teachings of Rebbe Y'shua.  Paul is said to have invented what we call Christianity after Jesus was dead and before any of the gospels were written, between 48 and the mid to late 50s A.D.  We don't know when, where, or by whom the canonical gospels were written, but they were probably a conglomerate project mostly completed after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.  Jesus or Y'shua himself left no written record of his life or his teachings, nor did any eyewitnesses to his life, so we are left with the letters of a religious zealot who was convinced that the world was coming to an end soon and the collective writings of a group of unknown size and identity writing hearsay reports from others, passed on, bandied about, and altered for dramatic and narrative effect over decades, and all of whom were subject to the weaknesses of memory, language, stress, personal biases and emotional needs, group dynamics, and time lapse.  Thus, it is no surprise that we find different and often contradictory descriptions of the same events in the gospels.  Thus too,  we find preposterous events described in some accounts but not in others, like all the corpses that rose from their graves and walked all around Jerusalem when Jesus died, Mt. 27: 50-54.  None of the other gospels mentions this mind-blowing event, nor do any historians of the era.  

    I suspect the most corrupting influence on the teachings of Y'shua, however, was the marriage between the religion that purported to follow his teachings and the Roman Empire.  Despite the "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," and "My kingdom is not of this world," ever since bloody Constantine's political cottoning to Christians and Theodosius's making it the state religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity has been far removed from the teachings of Y'shua.  The Western world has never recovered from it.  We suffer under its oppression today, with the marriage of convenience between Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Evangelical Christians, and Conservative Catholics.  As I often write, God help us, but we know he won't (and can't.)

My comment to JJA's FB post this morning:

My comment below: Well said, as usual.  I feel like a resident of the East Coast watching a tropical storm developing in the far Atlantic and heading my way, wondering and worrying about where and when it will hit the U.S. and whether it will be a Category 1 or Category 5 hurricane.  Trump has set in motion many components of what I fear will become a "perfect storm" when they ripen and combine.  They have neither ripened nor combined yet, so people like us appear to many others as Chicken Littles, or Cassandra in Troy, and I suppose we have to hope that they are right, and that, as Trump keeps telling us, everything is going to work out fine, that indeed America is becoming great again.  As for me, I feel like the guy John Fogerty sang about: "I see the bad moon a-rising, I see trouble on the way, I see earthquakes and lightning, I see bad times today."

Janice Jenkins Anderson

I truly think many people just don’t understand exactly how badly the Big Beautiful Bill is going to screw those on the Affordable Care Act marketplace - and remember that the GOP has nothing to replace it. Folks will either have to pay 10s of thousands of dollars (!!) more annually or drop their health insurance entirely. And if you think that doesn’t affect you because you don’t use the ACA, understand that as a result, rural hospitals and providers will begin to see a huge increase in “emergency” cases and many will simply close because they are not getting reimbursed for such care and cannot financially survive. Also, guess who will pick up the tab for uninsured emergencies?

Share this video widely so people understand what is about to happen in this country  

The Rachel Maddow Show 

October 24 at 3:47 PM

The real numbers on the impact of Republican changes to health insurance subsidies are being made public, and they are extreme, to say the least. Suddenly, the abstract fight over the federal government shutdown and Democrats refusing to compromise on health care costs makes a whole new world of sense. And Republicans are realizing that not only have they shut down the government, but they are about to do catastrophic financial damage to their own constituents. 

The VA OT, Jamie, was here today to check out the house for safety hazards, accessibility aids, etc.  She was very helpful and introduced us to Bild, a local leading home accessibility outfit. 

Trip to the Bayshore Apple Store this afternoon, to AGAIN try to get my laptop fixed.  It keeps kicking me off our WiFi.

A favorite drawing, from a photo I took of Nikki