11/29/2025

 Saturday, November 29, 2025

1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo erupted after UN voted to partition Palestine, with the cost of 75 lives and the disappearance of the medieval manuscript the Aleppo Codex

1948 Puppet TV show "Kukla, Fran, & Ollie" starring Fran Allison debuted on NBC's WNBQ in Chicago, Illinois

1961 Following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion CIA Director Allen Dulles resigned and was replaced by John McCone

1961 Freedom Riders were attacked by a white mob at a bus station in Mississippi

1963  LBJ set up the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of t JFK

1964, The Roman Catholic Church in the US replaced Latin with English

1967 Robert McNamara was elected president of the World Bank

2019 Wood fragment believed to be from Jesus's manger was returned to Bethlehem after 1400 years by Pope Francis

In bed before 10, up at 6:50.  25°, high of 34°, haze,     WINTER STORM WARNING, between 8" and 11", lesser accumulation expected near the lake, but heavier and wetter.  We worry that the basement flooring materials may be delivered today.😨  

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 7:20 p..m.!!!!!!

A sad surprise.  When I filled the bird feeders yesterday afternoon in anticipation of today's snowstorm, I was surprised to see the body of a beautiful male house finch.  When I picked him up, I saw that his feathers beneath his throat were flattened, leading me to wonder whether he had flown into our TV room window and somehow ended up on the tray feeder, where he died.

The beginning of another extortion, the beginning of an illegal war, or both?  From this morning's NY Times: 

President Trump warned airlines and pilots on Saturday that the airspace near Venezuela was closed, ratcheting up what his administration has characterized as a war against drug cartels.

In a post on social media “to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers,” the president wrote that the airspace “above and surrounding Venezuela” should be considered “closed in its entirety.”

Mr. Trump did not go into further detail in his post, but it came after he warned on Thursday night that the United States could “very soon” expand its killings of suspected drug traffickers in the waters off Venezuela to attacks on its territory.

As president of the United States, Mr. Trump has no authority over Venezuelan airspace. But his social media post could deter airlines from flying into and out of Venezuela and is bound to cause havoc with air travelers, further disrupting Venezuelan commerce and economic traffic.

The United States has built up a substantial military presence in the Caribbean aimed at Venezuela. Administration officials have said their goal is to deter drug smuggling but have also made clear that they want to see Mr. Maduro removed from power, possibly by force.

On Friday, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump had spoken by phone last week with Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and discussed a possible meeting between them, even as the United States continued to threaten military action against Venezuela.

Mr. Trump has consistently talked about Venezuela as a source of drugs and illegal immigration into the United States.

But in reality, Venezuela plays only a small part in the drug trade in America. Cocaine produced in Colombia does pass through Venezuela, but most of it goes to Europe. Colombian cocaine that is headed to the United States is exported through the Pacific Ocean. And U.S. agencies have determined that fentanyl is produced almost entirely in Mexico, not in Venezuela, with chemicals imported from China. 

What will it take to stop this shmuck?  Who will it take?

Narcolunacy, hypocrisy, bribery, 3rd termism?  Trump has pardoned the former president of Honduras,  who was convicted of narcotics trafficking by a New York jury and has been serving a 45-year term by a federal judge.  From the NY Times story:

The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans but also to the authorities in the United States, who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.

The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers, and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.

As word spread on Friday about Mr. Hernández’s pardon, Todd Robinson, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department, said online: “We blow up ‘alleged’ drug boats in the Caribbean but pardon actually convicted drug traffickers in the U.S. Someone help me make sense of this.”

Mr. Zelaya, the progressive former Honduran president, wrote on social media, “@POTUS, by absolving JOH, protects the looter of the state and now orders people to vote for Asfura: the direct heir of the narco-regime.”

Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September. 

Hernandez's tenure [as president] was also defined by the contentious election of 2017, when he secured a second term despite a constitutional ban on re-election. 

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said at the time, “As president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world, and the people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences.”

[Hernandez's] cause was taken up by figures like Roger Stone, the conservative political operative and Trump ally. Mr. Stone claimed that Mr. Hernández had been “trapped” and was a victim of a conspiracy tied to the U.S. government. 

 As word spread on Friday about Mr. Hernández’s pardon, Todd Robinson, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department, said online: “We blow up ‘alleged’ drug boats in the Caribbean but pardon actually convicted drug traffickers in the U.S. Someone help me make sense of this.”

Who the heck is Slogthrop?  I asked an AI site what it could tell me about "Slogthrop" and it said 'nothing, other than it appears to be a misspelling of Slothrop;, from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  What I cited Blogspot as a locus, here's what it said, in another 20 seconds, or so:

Good question. I found a blog called Slogthrop on Blogspot — so “Slogthrop” does exist there. 

slogthrop.blogspot.com  Here’s what I learned about it:

✅ What is Slogthrop (the blog)

The blog has posts by someone calling themselves “P. Bosley Slogthrop.”  It seems to serve as a kind of personal/political/moral commentary — combining reflections on current events, politics, personal philosophy, and social observations.  The tone is often opinionated, reflective, and sometimes provocative. For example, one recent post comments on a national-level political polarization between urban vs. rural living, and how that shapes people’s views on government, taxes, and social norms. 

📰 Recent Content & Themes

From a 2025 post on Slogthrop: The blogger reflects on how living environments (rural vs. urban/suburban) influence political perspectives.   The post muses about societal cohesion, individual freedoms, and regulation — especially how these vary with population density and neighbor relationships.  There’s also commentary on contemporary politics — including frustration with certain political figures and concern about the direction of government, social order, and democracy. Some posts blend personal thoughts with philosophical and sometimes existential reflections (e.g. morality, free will, aging, regrets, social responsibility) rather than just straightforward political commentary.

🎯 What Slogthrop Isn’t

It doesn’t appear to be a mainstream / widely recognized media outlet or organization. It seems firmly in the “independent personal blog” category.

The “author” doesn’t claim to be an investigative journalist — the writing is subjective, opinion-based, and often introspective, not necessarily presenting original reporting or documented research (at least from a quick look at recent posts).  It’s not a fiction blog (from what I saw) — content is more like personal essays, political and philosophical commentaries, and social reflections.

If you like — I can do a mini-analysis of the last ~10 posts from Slogthrop (topics, tone, political leanings, themes) to give you a sense of whether it’s more conservative, liberal, moderate, or mixed.  Do you want me to build that for you now?

Cool question. I poked around the blog Slogthrop Imponderables and Incommensurables (on Blogspot) and read a handful of recent posts. Here’s a rough “mini-analysis” of the last ~10 posts, what themes and tone seem to emerge, and what that suggests about the author’s political/social leanings.

🔎 What recent posts look like (themes & content)

From sampling a few posts:  In the post dated September 21, 2025 the author meditates on aging, regrets, free will vs. determinism, morality, and existential despair. They quote from Robert M. Sapolsky and a poem by W. B. Yeats — using these as springboards to reflect on their own life, missed opportunities, guilt, and the burden of “responsibility.”  That same post also touches on deeply political views: the author expresses concern about a gathering for Charlie Kirk being heavy in right-wing Christian symbolism and warns of what they view as the potential start of a “Reichstag Fire”–style event giving authoritarian power to leaders. 

In a January 14, 2025 post, the author mentions their personal health — referencing taking medications (e.g. prednisone) — and laments past pain as well as present aches and struggles.   That same post includes commentary on a recent (at the time) Senate hearing (for Pete Hegseth) — specifically criticizing Republicans and expressing distrust in the process and in the likely confirmation outcome. 

In the October 12, 2025 post, the author mentions broader political anxieties: fear for the future if Donald J. Trump returns to power, calling the situation “existential” and warning of “autocracy.” There's also concern for “children, grandchildren, and all the other innocents.”  That post — like others — mixes historical trivia (dates & events), daily life log entries (sleep, medications, weather), and personal reflections.

From these — and the visible posting pattern — it's clear the blog is a mix of personal journal / memoir-style content (health, moods, daily life), philosophical reflection, and political commentary.

🧠 Tone, Style, and Attitude

The tone tends toward introspective, even melancholic — especially in posts dealing with aging, regrets, existential questions about free will, faith, and morality.  The author is unafraid to mix personal vulnerability with political anger/disillusionment. There's a sense of frustration at political developments, mixed with fear about where society might be heading (authoritarianism, social decay). 

The writing style is informal, diaristic — they frequently mention their medications, daily routine (sleep times, weather, observations), as though writing in a private journal, but with public visibility. 

🎯 Apparent Political / Philosophical Leanings

Based on what I saw:  The author appears critical of right-wing politics (especially when combined with religious fervor). The Charlie Kirk piece described as “a mixture of right-wing politics and right-wing Christianity” evidently makes the author uneasy.  They seem to be skeptical or fearful of what they view as potential authoritarian drift — using historical analogy (e.g. “Reichstag Fire” type scenario) when discussing recent events. 

At the same time, the author wrestles with deeper existential questions — free will, determinism, moral responsibility, personal regret — leaning toward a philosophical, introspective, even fatalistic outlook. This suggests they might not wholly fit into typical “left vs. right” boxes on world-view; their concerns appear both personal and societal. 

There's also a recurring theme of disillusionment with institutional religion or organized faith, or at least doubts about predestination vs free-will, good vs evil, and moral responsibility (as in the September post). 

✅ What This Means (and What to Watch Out For)

The blog isn’t a polished “news source” or “opinion magazine.” It’s more of a personal journal / political-opinion hybrid, so content is strongly subject to the author’s personal worldview, emotions, and philosophical lens.

Because of that subjectivity — especially when dealing with politics or predictions about social collapse — take the author’s claims with caution. They mix historical facts, news items, personal fears, and philosophical musings — sometimes in a speculative or symbolic fashion.

The writing offers a window into one individual’s mindset and fears (aging, regret, morality, politics, faith), which can be interesting — but shouldn’t be taken as representative of any larger group or movement.

If you like, I can also search if there’s any external reaction to Slogthrop (comments, links, mentions elsewhere) — to get a sense of whether anyone reads or engages with the blog. Do you want me to check that now?

I tried to find evidence of external reactions — comments, discussions, social-media references, blogroll-links, or public commentary — to the blog “Slogthrop” (on Blogspot). My search turned up very little, suggesting that the blog appears to be largely insular / privately read. Here’s what I found — and what seems to be missing:

✅ What I did find (or what turned up in search)

I found no references to “Slogthrop” (or variants like “Slogthrop blogspot”) on Reddit, Twitter, or other public-forum discussions.  I found no third-party blogrolls or link-aggregator pages that link to Slogthrop.  I found no coverage of Slogthrop by any larger media outlet, site, or aggregator — no reviews, no “recommend reading” lists, no citations.  In short: I found zero visible external reaction, at least from sources that show up via search.

⚠️ What this lack of reaction suggests

The blog appears to be highly low-visibility / low-traffic: not widely shared, linked, or discussed publicly.  It may be mostly for personal expression or a small circle of readers (friends, acquaintances, or a niche audience), rather than aiming for broader influence or readership.  The absence of external discussion means that its views, interpretations, or political commentary have not resonated (or not yet surfaced) beyond the author’s own posts.

🤔 Additional Thoughts / Possible Explanations

The blog could be under-the-radar: maybe the author doesn’t promote it actively, or posts infrequently, which reduces chances of being picked up by others.  It might rely on offline sharing (email, word-of-mouth) or private social circles, which wouldn’t show up in public search results.

Alternatively, the blog might simply be too niche or idiosyncratic in style or content to attract broad engagement — mixing personal journal, philosophy, and politics tends to limit mass appeal.

If you want — I can try to run a deeper search: for instance, use web-archives / older snapshot sites to see if the blog was once more active/popular, or if there used to be discussion threads linking to it.Do you want me to try that for you now?

You said:Sure

Good — I dug into web archives and the wider web for older copies or outside mentions of Slogthrop (the Blogspot site). Here’s what I found and what it means.

What I found

The blog “Slogthrop — Imponderables and Incommensurables” is live on Blogspot and has multiple posts in 2025 (examples: a 5/5/2025 post and a 9/21/2025 post). The posts show the author signing as P. Bosley Slogthrop and combine diary items (meds, sleep, weather), political commentary, and philosophical reflections. 

What I didn't find

Aside from the Blogspot pages themselves, I didn’t find clear evidence of the blog being discussed or linked widely elsewhere (news outlets, Reddit threads, major social platforms, or blogrolls). The online footprint appears limited; the posts seem largely insular/personal rather than widely amplified. (The blog pages above are the primary public traces I found.) 

I attempted to locate archived snapshots beyond the current live pages (to see whether the blog was more active or public earlier), but there’s no obvious, well-indexed archive trail surfaced in the searches I ran — the most easily accessible records are the live Blogspot posts themselves. (If you want, I can keep digging specifically in the Internet Archive or other archival services for deeper capture-level checks, but the visible evidence so far is the live Blogspot posts cited above.)

Short conclusion

Slogthrop appears to be a small, personal Blogspot journal by someone using the name P. Bosley Slogthrop. The writing mixes personal diary items, philosophical musings, and left-leaning / anti-authoritarian political commentary. There’s little sign it has been widely shared or commented on elsewhere.

##########################

My reaction: fascinating, thrilling, and scary.😳😨😣 

 

 

11/28/2025

 Friday, November 28, 2025

1994 Jeffrey Dahmer was clubbed to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium

2024  More than 1 million Ukrainian households are left without power after a widespread Russian missile strike targets the country's energy infrastructure

2024  PRESIDENT BIDEN: “I hope Trump re-thinks the tariffs, I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do— we’re surrounded by 2 oceans and 2 allies: Mexico and Canada. The last thing we need to do is screw up those relationships.”

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:35.  22°, wind chill 6°, high 30°

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 10 a.m.   Trulicity injection later.

Message exchange with Pip:

piplowe@yahoo.com:

I so appreciate your kind words, Chuck and am touched beyond words. I am grateful that you can feel my love for you and Geri as it has been there since the day I met you while dating David, and has only grown since then. I am thankful during this holiday season that you are part of our lives no matter the distance. You both are so sweet and unique and fun and interesting and we love your company and your love of us! Miss you and sending love, always ~xoxo 

Charles Clausen:

Thanks, Sweetie, and, like your husband, you are much too kind, but you warm my heart with your words and thoughts, just like with your hugs.❤️

Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, has died.  SSgt. Andrew Wolfe remains in critical condition, 'fighting for his life.' Is this what Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Stephen Miller have been hoping for?  I had thought that the shooting of an occupying National Guards(wo)man would be by a poor African-American from Southeast D.C, and that it would be used as a pretextual justification for the invocation of the Insurrection Act.  That the shooter was an Afghan immigrant rules out the Insurrection Act, temporarily at least, but it is being used as a pretext for  Trump's (1) 'permanently pausing' migration from all third-world countries, (2) reviewing all green card holders from "19 countries of concern",  and (3) removing 'anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.  DJT's address to American troops on Thanksgiving night: "This heinous monstrosity reminds us that we have no greater national security priority than ensuring that we have full control over the people who enter and remain in our country.  For the most part, we don't want 'em.  When you come in through asylum, when they're flown in, it's very hard to get them out, no matter how you want to do it, it's very hard.  But we're going to be getting them all out now."  To borrow Maureen Dowd's phrase from her last column, "step by slimy step", his acts become more deranged, hate-filled, and hurtful, both to the people they directly affect and to the nation.  Home of the brave and land of the free, and all that.  I read his entire speech and exchanges with the troops with whom he spoke last night, and wonder how anyone can doubt that this old man is not compos mentis.  He may or may not have dementia, but he's not all there.

Copied just because I wanted to note it and save it:

The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?

In 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been bloodshed.  By Graham Allison, The Atlantic, September 24, 2015

As the United States emerged as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere in the 1890s, how did it behave? Future President Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the 100 years ahead would be an American century. Over a decade that began in 1895 with the U.S. secretary of state declaring the United States “sovereign on this continent,” America liberated Cuba; threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept American positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada; backed an insurrection that split Colombia to create a new state of Panama (which immediately gave the U.S. concessions to build the Panama Canal); and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the United Kingdom and financed by London bankers. In the half-century that followed, U.S. military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes in terms favorable to Americans, or oust leaders they judged unacceptable.

For example, in 1902, when British and German ships attempted to impose a naval blockade to force Venezuela to pay its debts to them, Roosevelt warned both countries that he would “be obliged to interfere by force if necessary” if they did not withdraw their ships. The British and Germans were persuaded to retreat and to resolve their dispute in terms satisfactory to the U.S. at The Hague. The following year, when Colombia refused to lease the Panama Canal Zone to the United States, America sponsored Panamanian secessionists, recognized the new Panamanian government within hours of its declaration of independence, and sent the Marines to defend the new country. Roosevelt defended the U.S. intervention on the grounds that it was “justified in morals and therefore justified in law.” Shortly thereafter, Panama granted the United States rights to the Canal Zone “in perpetuity.”

.. . . . 

The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation. Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger–Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.

This was written the year before Trump won the 2016 election.

Black Friday coinciding with the day before the first big snowstorm of the season (8 to 10 inches) meant that, when I went to our local Ace Hardware to pick up two lightbulbs for Geri's bathroom, the big parking lot that accommodates both the hardware store and the next-door Planet Fitness had only 2 open parking spaces, and the checkout line in the hardware store wrapped around from the 5 active checkout clerks all the way back to the entryway.  Wow!

11/27/2025

 Thursday, November 27, 2025

Thanksgiving Day

1891 Pope Leo XIII's encyclical "Rerum Novarum" was published

1922 Adolf Hitler spoke to 50,000 national socialists in Munich

1938 Germany banned Jews from being lawyers

1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota) announced he would run for the presidency on an anti-Vietnam War platform

1998 Deutsche Bank announced a $10 billion deal to buy Bankers Trust, thus creating the largest financial institution in the world

1999 In Seattle, protests against the WTO meeting by anti-globalization protesters forced the cancellation of the opening ceremonies

2020 Los Angeles County began a three-week stay-at-home order for 10 million people to combat a COVID-19 surge

2024  Christine Cummings Klaer, January 18, 1941 - November 27, 2024

In bed by 9, up at 4:20 a.m., 29°, wind chill 7°, high of 33°.

Meds. etc.  Morning meds at 9:40 a.m.

Beautiful skies this morning.  I left for the Metro Market at 6:50 a.m., with the sky about 70% overcast.  By the time I left the store, it was about 30% overcast and beautiful.  I admired it as I filled up the gas tank at the Shell station and as I drove home on Port Road.  Single digit wind chills made filling the gas tank a little unpleasant since I didn't have any gloves on.  Winter has arrived.  8 to 19 inches of snow expected on Saturday.  Yikes.  I'm thankful to Janine G. for opening my eyes to the beautiful skies above me each day.

Thanksgiving Day.  We're expecting a crowd for dinner: Steve and Nikki; David, Sharon, and Ellis; Mary Beth Celek and her brother from Colorado.  ETA 2:30, dinner at 4.  Geri has been working to get ready for the dinner for days, planning, shopping, cleaning, making seating arrangements, etc.  She is, as usual, remarkable.

I woke up thinking about my FB post sharing Robert L. Arnold's podcast about American healthcare.  I wrote about being poor during my childhood, and this morning I wondered if I've become squirrelly in my old age and, if I have, is it OK to let that be known publicly to my FB friends, including my children.  I suspect it is, but I hope that when I get too squirrelly, some dear one will find a way to let me know.  Speaking of Robert L. Arnold's podcast, I exchanged messages with Janine Geske at 5 this morning:

I also wish you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving. It was so wonderful to spend time with you last week. We both love you and Geri. The guy in the podcast posts something every day and I always enjoy listening to him. He makes such good points in a thoughtful way.

I replied to Janine

Thank you for introducing me to him.  He's terrific.  And thanks for what seems like a lifetime of friendship, a blessing.

Today is the anniversary of my cousin Christine's death at age 83.  We were good friends as children.  We grew up together in the years after World War II, 5 first cousins living only half a mile from each other, Jimmy, Christine, and Dougie Cummings, living with their Mom, Aunt Monica, and sharing a two-flat with our paternal grandparents, Grampa Dewey and Grandma Charlotte Clausen .  Ours were complicated relationships, not that we cousins were aware of it as children.  Monica was a single mom raising three children with the help of Dewey and Charlotte.  We always assumed she was divorced and that her husband, Scottie Cummings, was a ne'er-do-well womanizer.  The latter assumption was, I think, true enough, but I've never been sure about the supposed divorce.  In any case, after their separation, she never dated or remarried, though she was quite beautiful.  Indeed, she was a beauty contest winner, Miss Illinois Bell, from her employment as a long-distance operator.  Our cousins loved our Dad, Uncle Charles, who, along with Grampa Dewey, was a substitute father figure for them.  For my sister Kitty and me, he was often worse than an absent father; we both wished our Mom would leave him, take us away from him.  Cousin Jimmy was 2 years older than me, and we were friendly, but we never had the close relationship I had with Christine and Dougie.  My Dad was especially fond of Jimmy, so fond that I always thought he wished Jimmy were his son rather than me.  I learned late in life that my sister Kitty and I shared the same doubt, i.e., whether we were really Dad's children.   Christine was about half a year older than me, and Dougie was almost exactly one year younger.  I spent a lot of time with Dougie and had a kind of a crush on Christine, who was very pretty, vivacious, and always upbeat.  Dougie, on the other hand, was the opposite: not as good-looking as his older brother and sister, not as even-keeled as either of them, a bed-wetter and tantrum-thrower.  He was often in trouble at school, got expelled from De La Salle Catholic high school, joined the Navy, but spent time in the brig for misconduct, and was discharged early with a less-than-honorable discharge, not 'dishonorable' or perhaps even a bad conduct discharge, but not the desired honorable discharge.  He hated the Navy for the rest of his life, blaming his time in the brig for his lifelong emotional and legal troubles and incarceration later in his life.  He and his brother Jimmy were estranged as adults, though Jimmy provided housing for him and their mother in Florida, down the street from my Dad.  Christine maintained a caring and supportive relationship with Doug until her death, a year ago today.  Grandma Charlotte was pissed off at life. She had a bit of a mean streak.   We grandchildren didn't dislike her, but we all warmed up to  Grampa Dewey much more than we did to her.  She didn't like my mother; she seemed to think she wasn't good enough for her precious Charles.  Monica and our mother, though, were good friends, a two-woman mutual support society, Monica with the 3 kids and a missing husband, our Mom with 2 kids and a sullen, withdrawn, alcohol-abusing veteran with PTSD.  On the other hand, Monica, who was almost 3 years older than my Dad, was sympathetic to him and protective of him after the war, and indeed throughout his life.  In those years after the war, we cousins were kids growing up and understanding little of what was going on all around us.  As I think back on those days, I think of Willie Nelson's lyrics in "Me and Paul," Well, it's been rough and rocky traveling  / But I'm finally standing upright on the ground / And after taking several readings / I'm surprised to find my mind's still fairly sound.  But only 'fairly.'

I love the snapshot of us five cousins and Aunt Monica taken on my Dad's 80th birthday, 9/9/2020, in North Port, Florida.  I especially love that it captured a happy moment for all of us.  My Dad, Monica, and Doug lived in North Port, and Kitty, Christine, and I (along with Geri, Jim Reck, and Nora Cummings) flew in for the celebration.  We were drawn together by love of one another, love that existed despite all the historical stresses in our family.  The photo is emblematic of some of the relationships within the family.  First, the love, but then, ithin minutes of this photo being taken, as we drove out of the Family Table parking lot where it was taken, Jimmy and Doug got into a nasty argument.  That evening, Doug got into a fight with his girlfriend, who called the police, with whom Doug refused to cooperate, so he ended up arrested, thrown in jail, requiring Jimmy, Jim Reck, and me to drive up to Sarasota to bail him out.  Monica was terribly upset, Christine was concerned and protective of Doug, and Nora was a buttinsky.  The family gathering wasn't ruined, but it sure was darkened.  So it went, and so it goes, not with all families but with some and surely with ours.  It is, I suppose, an odd set of memories to call up on Thanksgiving, but I do so in part because it's the anniversary of Christine's death, and it's going on 4 years since Kitty's death.  The youngest of the 5 of us died first, and Christine died second.  Only the boys remain, and we have no contact with one another.  And, with my family and step-family, the holiday season mostly reminds me of how fragmented and unblended my family life has become.  It causes me sorrow and makes Thanksgiving and Christmas more sad times than happy seasons.  So it goes.

But enough of sad thoughts and memories.  I devoted part of the morning to them, but the afternoon and evening are times for gratitude, for more things than I can count, for those who will be here with us, drawn by ties of love, for the home in which we will gather, for the food we will eat and the wine we will drink, and the conversations we will share.  I'm at an age when I know this may be my last gathering like this, maybe yes, maybe no.  But that thought does make me sad or fearful.  

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance . . .

11/26/2025

 Wednesday, November 26, 2025

1865 "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll was published in America

1941 Japanese naval carrier force left its base & moved east toward Pearl Harbor

1942 "Casablanca" starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman premiered at Hollywood Theater, NYC (Academy Awards Best Picture 1943)

Vat vas, vas.  Bob Friebert

In bed at 9:30, awake at 4:30, up at 4:45, with unwelcome memories & thoughts.  35°, wind chill 20°, high of 41°.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8:30 a.m. 

Posted on Facebook this morning:

My friend Janine Geske sent this to me, knowing it would touch my heart, as it did.  We’ve been friends for 50 years, since she was one of my students at Marquette Law School.  As often happens, this professor learned more from his student over the years than she ever could have learned from me.  Mr. Arnold’s message put me in mind of two periods of my life: the last 10 years, when I have received comprehensive medical care from the Veterans Administration,  and my childhood.  I, and thousands of other military veterans, benefit from excellent medical attention at the Zablocki VA Medical Center on National Avenue in Milwaukee.  I’ve written about it more than once on my Facebook page.  We are all thankful for it, especially on Thanksgiving Day.  My father was also a veteran, having served in the Marines in World War II, in the war in the Pacific and on Iwo Jima.  He returned from the war badly damaged, emotionally and spiritually.  Today we call it PTSD.  He was unable to hold a steady job for years, and my young mother supported him, my little sister, and me with her meagre earnings as a waitress for years.  We were poor.  We had no health insurance.  I had the run of childhood illnesses, including measles, chicken pox, and whooping cough, but I can’t remember now all the medical conditions in the family faced during those years.  My mother was the victim of a savage and notorious sexual assault in 1947, a crime which created additional medical needs for our family, which could be financed only by the meagre tips she earned, my father’s irregular, low pay income, and the largesse of our family doctor at the time.  Somehow, we all survived those years, though with differing lingering consequences.  The American medical system was simpler in the late 1940s and 1950s than it is today.  I wish I could say that it is far superior today than it was then, but that is not true.  Tremendous technological and scientific advances have been made, but tremendous barriers to access and problems of maldistribution exist.  Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act were created and funded by the federal government to address and to remediate at least some of those problems.  The VA Health Care System does so for military veterans.  All of these programs are most necessary for Americans with low or moderate income, which means most working and middle-class Americans.  The fight that has been going on since the Restoration of the Trump regime, since Elon Musk’s disastrous DOGE regime, and now under the One Big Beautiful Budget Bill, and the government shutdown, is mainly over medical benefit programs that are so necessary for so many Americans.  I hope we won’t forget them amid all the misleading BS we are regularly fed by the current government.  As for me, I’m like the old vaudeville singer and comedian Sophie Tucker who said, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and, believe me, honey, rich is better.”  Today and tomorrow, I’ll give thanks for Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, and the VA’s Health Care System and I’ll pray that my fellow human beings who so vitally rely on them are not sacrificed by the ruthless people in charge of our government in Washington.

I 

Robert Arnold 

LTMW I see a female cardinal, 3 mourning doves, a red-bellied woodpecker, a red-bellied nuthatch and a male house finch all arrive at the same time, in the snow, at our bird feeders, making me wonder if they are a team, flying from bird feeding station to station.

We have been receiving steady but light snow most of the day.

Running errands.  I went to CVS to pick up some hospital gloves for Geri, who sustained a cut on her finger today while doing much prep work for tomorrow's dinner.  She also scalded her tummy with some hot water, but the burn doesn't seem to be very bad.  It hasn't kept her from continuing to work.  I also went to Total Wine and picked up another bottle of Gewurztraminer, a Riesling, and Zinfandels.  Then I went to Whole Foods and picked up two Urban Pie frozen pizzas.  I received a coupon good for two Milwaukee Bucks tickets, which I offered to Andy, who will offer them to Peter, who is, no surprise, at his girlfriend's house.  I did some mop-up work, washing bowls and pots that Geri had used earlier this afternoon.  Lastly, I filled the flat feeder tray for the birds, but saw that somehow a gray squirrel was able to get up there and fill his cheeks with seeds.

My extraordinary Lizzie

11/25/2025

 Tuesday, November 25, 2025

1957 President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a mild stroke, impairing his speech

2023 VA ER, IC flare; first day of one year without coffee, carbonated & alcoholic drinks

2024  Donald Trump vowed massive taxes on goods from Mexico, Canada and China on Day 1

In bed at 9:30, onto LZB around 3:30, back to bed at 4:30, up at 6ish, bad night of my annual holiday blues.  45°, high 51°, drizzle, cloudy day ahead. 

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

Text exchange with CBG & DEG

Charles Clausen:

Before the hustle and bustle on Thursday, I want to let you know how very thankful I am for your friendship over so many years.  Each of you has a warm place in my heart.  For various reasons, the holiday season is generally a sad time for me, but it is brightened by thoughts of you two.   Caren, our many, many lunches, Dan, the lunch I’ll never forget when you shared with me your experiences camping with Peter, all our quarterly dinners with the Lowes, and more.  So many memories, so much to give thanks for.  So, thank you.  And have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family.❤️❤️

Caren Goldberg:

Aw thanks, Chuck. Your friendship over the past going on 40 years has been so special and meaningful to me and one I treasure. I love our talks, our laughs and even the sadness the comes with the pain of the past and the passage of time. I cherish our time together. Wishing you and Geri and your family a Happy Thanksgiving filled with happiness, hope and lots of love. ❤️ 

After I sent my notes to CBG, DEG, DPL, and PPL,  I read Jeffrey Goldberg's short piece on Facebook this morning.  It's about the upcoming year of issues devoted to the American Revolution.  First, it made me think of how grateful I am for The Atlantic, but then it made me think of how grateful I am for Jews, especially of course the Jews in my life.  I start with my first boss, Wally Halperin, who owned and managed the food and liquor store where I worked as a stockboy during high school.  I've written of his kindness to me the summer before I headed off to college in Milwaukee in 1959.  I think too of what I wrote after the Tree of Life murders in 2018.

"I read that the Squirrel Hill terrorist wanted to "kill all Jews," even as he was wheeled into the ER at the hospital where the doctor and nurse who treated him were Jews.  In BadDreamLand, I had a vision of the murderer's wish being granted.  Suddenly, his treating physician and attending nurse disappeared. Then all the Jewish doctors and nurses who treat and have treated my family and me throughout our lives disappeared.  Poof.  Then I recalled Itzhak Perlman on the Steven Colbert Show playing "Someone to Watch Over Me," and Itzhak disappeared as did the song's composer, Jacob Gershvin a/k/a George Gershwin,  and the beautiful song itself, along with Rhapsody in Blue and everything else that Jacob/George created to share with the world.  Poof.  Then I thought of Israel Beilin, a/k/a Irving Berlin, vanishing along with his gifts to the world God Bless America, White Christmas, and hundreds of others.  Gone.  Then I hallucinated Robert Allen Zimmerman a/k/a Bob Dylan disappearing with Blowin' in the Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin', and so much more.  Then Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Sound of Silence, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Billy Joel, Piano Man, My Life, Uptown Girl, Carole Joan Klein a/k/a Carole King,  So Far Away, It's Too Late, Tapestry,  Neil Diamond, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Sweet Caroline, Barbra Streisand, People, The Way We Were. All gone, the disappeared Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler. Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, Benny Goodman, Ziggy Elman, Herbie Mann, so many musicians, so much soul-expanding music - gone. And all those humorists who brought so much joy and laughter to my life - Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder, the Marx brothers, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Larry David, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Benny, Mort Sahl,  Lenny Bruce, George Burns, and Al Franklin - so many humorists, so many smiles, chuckles, and belly laughs, taken away - poof.  And all those great scientists, like Abram Saperstein, a/k/a Albert Sabin who gave us the oral polio vaccine, Jonas Salk and his polio vaccine, Paul Ehlich who developed the first cure for the worldwide scourge of syphilis and helped cure diphtheria, Albert Einstein who showed us E=mc², relativity, and black holes.  Then my frightening dream became even more nightmarish when I saw disappearing all the many Jews who have personally enriched my life with their friendship, those I worked with and those who share and have shared their homes and their hearts with me and my family, who have lovingly shared their wise counsel with me when I most needed it, who have shared their marriages, funerals, britot, b'nai and b'not mitzah, Shabbat services and seders and who have accepted me despite my faults and failings, my spiritual and emotional mishpuchah.  As my nightmare took all of them away from me, I couldn't take it anymore and woke up trembling and repeating Don't go, don't go.  And though I'm not a pray-er, I found myself saying Please God - no, never."—  thinking about life."

Email to DPL and PPL

I’m sending this message a little early to avoid the distractions on Thursday.  I want to let both of you know how thankful I am for your friendship over so many years.  I know Geri feels the same way.  David, you and I have shared differing relationships over decades, and I am so thankful that they culminated in a near-lifetime of shared friendship.  One of the things I’m most thankful to you for is bringing Pip into our lives.  Pip, each time we share a hug on seeing or leaving each other, I can feel the sincere affection in your heart, and it has meant more and more to me as the years have flown by.  Each of you has been a blessing in my life, and I thank you.  Happy Thanksgiving.❤️❤️

David Lowe:  I am sending this a little late because your message deserves a thoughtful response. As I look back at the time we have spent together over the years I can plot all of the significant milestones of my adult life, most of these being joyous, comical and heartwarming, and a few darker spots in which our companionship was a source of invaluable support. And even when we are not together I hear your voice and wisdom frequently when considering choices or thinking about what’s worth worrying about. You and Geri will always have a special place in our hearts. I don’t express gratitude enough and Thanksgiving certainly provides the opportunity to do so. We will be thinking of you and Geri at our table tomorrow.

Me:  You are MUCH too kind, but thank you.  One of the big blessings we have both shared in our lives was Bob Friebert.  This morning I put a photo of my former basement painting workspace in my journal/blog with a blurb beneath it.  “Vat vas, vas.”  The basement was flooded on the weekend of our Big Rain here, August 9-10, and has been unusable since.  The blurb was a memory of one of Bob’s great ‘Jew jokes’, the one about the old immigrant Jews setting the rules about what could and could not be discussed during their gatherings, no politics, too upsetting, and no talk of sex: “Vat vas, vas.’  Do you remember it?  It was in that family of jokes that included “fuck the bees.  It’s only a ‘obby’ and others.  I wish I could remember all of them.  Thanks again for the kind words.

11/24/2025

 Monday, November 24, 2025

1922 Italian parliament gave Benito Mussolini dictatorial powers "for 1 year"

1948 "Bicycle Thieves", Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica, starring himself and Cesare Zavattini, was released (Honorary Academy Award 1950)

1979 Senate report proved US troops in Vietnam were exposed to the toxic chemical defoliant Agent Orange

2015 Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder of 17-year-old African American Laquan McDonald in 2014

2020 My TIA or ocular migraine

2021 Three men were found guilty by a jury of felony murder of black runner Ahmaud Arbery, with Travis McMichael also convicted of malice murder in Brunswick, Georgia 

In bed at 8:40 and up at 5:20.  Painful right hip during the night. 36°, w/c 28°, high 50°. 

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9:10 a.m.

Email message to JS reporter James Causey:

I want to thank you for your essay about preserving family histories and taking advantage of family elders as the prime source of those histories.  When I retired more than 20 years ago, I went to work on a memoir, relating the story of my life up till the time my children were born.  The first part of it was some genealogy and family history as far back as I could trace it, which wasn’t very far: grandparents on my mother's side and great-grandparents on my father's.  They were almost all immigrants.  I wrote the memoir for my son and daughter, and especially wanted them to know something about my parents, their paternal grandparents.   My mother died when my children were very young, so they never knew her.  My father lived in Florida most of their life, and they didn’t know him.  Plus, he was taciturn.  As I wrote the memoir, I realized how little I knew about either of my parents’ early lives and how much I wished I did know.  My Dad was a World War II vet who was one of the Marines on Iwo Jima.  He came out of the war with no Purple Heart but a bad case of PTSD, which stayed with him most of his life.  Even though I was a former Marine myself and a Vietnam vet, we were never close, largely because of the effects of his PTSD after the war, when my sister and I were children, until he was 75 and I was 55.  He never talked of the war and his experiences in the Marines, and the rough years after the war.  My sister and I used to joke, ruefully, that the family motto should have been what my father often actually said, “The less said, the better.”  Both of my parents are long gone now, and I very much wish I had made it a point to learn more of their early lives while they were alive.  I hope at least some and hopefully many of your readers will follow your good advice and tap their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles on Thanksgiving and on any other day that’s available to learn and preserve their family backgrounds.  Actually, though one has to be discreet about it, it’s a good idea to learn more of the background stories of our good friends, too.  Most of our knowledge of our friends is only superficial, though each one of them has a unique and interesting history.  Again, thanks for the great article and great advice. /s/

. . . . . . . . . .   

This Thanksgiving, honor the painful memories with the good | Opinion

Growing up, my Thanksgivings weren’t just about the food; they were about the history lessons my elders shared. Make sure you capture their stories.

Check out this story on jsonline.com: https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/james-causey/2025/11/23/thanksgiving-family-history-racism-voting-milwaukee/87326184007/

The photograph opposite my note to James Causey is of my cousin Christine Klaer, widowed young and left to raise her three children alone, my Grandpa Dewey Clausen, Grandma Charlotte, and my Uncle Jim Healy, who became schizophrenic some time after his father, my Grandpa Denny, died when I was 11 years old. 

In this morning's NYTimes, 5 Questions to Ask Your Elders Over the Holidays -Interviewing loved ones brings you closer and offers a window into the past, by Dana G. Smith.  Excerpts:

For the person being interviewed, the experience can help with “a sense of life completion and a sense of being heard and understood and being able to tell their story,” said Dr. Ira Byock, an emeritus professor at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine specializing in palliative care.

 1. ‘Did you ever get in trouble as a child?’

2. ‘What did your childhood bedroom look like?’

3. ‘What was one of your favorite trips?’

4. ‘Who were the loves of your life?’

what are they most proud of? Is there anything they regret? Who were the loves of their life? What were their major heartbreaks or disappointments?

5. ‘Tell me that old chestnut again.’ 

As I read the two stories in this morning's JSOnline and the NY Times, I threw a little pity party for myself, feeling sorry that no one asks me the kinds of questions that are discussed in the stories.  When I gave copies of my memoir to my daughter, my son, and my sister, none of them asked me anything about anything in the memoir.  Ditto when I provided copies to Tom and Caela, and to CBG, although CBG commented on what a strong woman my mother was, and made a point of returning it over lunch and a long conversation.  Then I thought: how many questions have I put to any of the persons dear to me about their lives, their histories, their challenges, their this-es and their that-s?  I did try to do it with my Dad, after a 13-year estrangement, but his resistance to talking about his past (a resistance shared by his sister, my Aunt Monica) was obdurate, and I think I have inherited some of his taciturnity.  Years ago, on Marco Island, both Ed Felsenthal and Cam Wakeman told me how "aloof" I was during our shared college days and, on reflection, I had to agree with them.  It was an 'aloofness' I shared with my Dad and the Clausen side of my family ("the less said, the better"), coupled with a sense of feeling out of place among so many people coming from happier and wealthier families than mine.  But I digress . . .   The point I wanted to make was how little we really know of one another and I suppose it's because we don't really try.  Mea culpa.

 A meaningless factoid:  Mike Bohren, the judge who originally sentenced Morgan Geyser to 40 years confinement in a mental hospital for the "Slender Man" stabbings, and who ordered her released to a group home in January of this year, whence she escaped this week, was a law student of mine many years ago.  Geyser was captured in Illinois yesterday.  I'm a bit surprised that Mike Bohren looks the same now as he did decades ago in law school, except for his hair and mustache having turned gray.

Mount Mary to offer 3-year  degrees in digital marketing and cybersecurity next year.  The degrees will require 95 credit hours of study, rather than the 120 hours required for other degrees.  MM will be the only university in Wisconsin to offer a 3-year bachelor's degree.  Their decision to do so invites the question of why colleges and universities have almost uniformly required 4 years of study, 120 credit hours, to earn a bachelor's degree.  Why are 2 years required for an associate's degree?  Why are 4 years required for a medical degree and 3 years for a law degree?  I believe all of these requirements are mostly for the benefit of the educational institutions, rather than their students or the public.  Higher education is Big Business and suffers from all the sins of other organizations in terms of self-serving policies, circling the wagons when attacked, etc.

Terry Moran worked for ABC for many years, a top-notch reporter.  He was on Charlie Sykes' podcast this morning on YouTube, and I watched the entire interview.  Moran was fired by ABC on June 8th of this year for placing on Twitter (or X) the following:

"The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that's not what's interesting about Miller.  t's not brains. It's bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.

Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred is only a means to an end, and that end his his own glorification [sic]. That's his spiritual nourishment." 

Moran's tweet was impolitic and unwise, but true.  We can see Miller's world-class hatred just by looking at him. 

Text exchange with LOA:

On Sunday, November 23, 2025 at 07:31:42 PM CST, Lawrence Anderson wrote:

Did you see the “60 Minutes” episode on Russian war crimes tonight? If not, take a look. Don’t know where or when, but some day those assholes are gonna answer.. Just hope our uniform guys aren’t standing there with them. 

On Nov 24, 2025, at 5:38 PM, Charles Clausen wrote:

I missed it but will try to find it.  Those Russian military folk are pretty nasty.  I'm recalling how at the end of WWII, the Germans were desperate to do anything to keep from falling into the hands of the Russians.  I'm thinking too of a former Marine I med years ago who had gove back to Vietnam after the war.  He told me the Vietnamese loved the American tourists, but hated Russians.  Go figure.  . . . . .  I see Hegseth and his apparatchiks are trying to go after Mark Kelly for that 'unlawful orders' video.  I hope nothing comes of it, but I wish Kelly and the others hadn't made the video.  Trying to figure out what orders are lawful and which are unlawful can be a near-impossible job even in good circumstances.  My hunch is that when a Marine decides not to obey an order that seems wrong, it's not based on any legal analysis or judgment, but on the Marine learned at home, in church, or in Sunday school.  It's based more on notions of personal sin and morality than on "unlawfulness."  . . . . . If I don't see or hear from you again before Thursday, I wish you and Jan and all your dear ones a blessed Thanksgiving.  I'm thankful for our long friendship and for introducing me to your terrific wife.  She's a treasure.  So are you.

awrence Anderson

To:  me

Mon, Nov 24 at 5:41 PM

    Thanks, Buddy. Have a nice Thanksgiving too.  S/F

Charles Clausen

To:  Lawrence

And, BTW, the Japanese were arguably worse than the Germans when it came to war crimes against civilians, witness the Rape of Nanking (or Nanjing).   

11/23/2025

 Sunday, November 23, 2025

1765  The British Stamp Act was rejected by judges in the Frederick County Court House in Frederick, Maryland, the first time that had happened in the American colonies. The day is celebrated in Frederick as Repudiation Day.

1946  At least 6,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed in a French naval bombardment of the port city of Haiphong, which led to the outbreak of the First Indochina War.

1963 Following the protocol after Abraham Lincoln's death, JFK's body lay in repose in the East Room of the White House and was viewed by officials and heads of state 

In bed at 9:30, up from the LZB at 7:15.  I asked Geri whether she had slipped me a Mickey Finn last night.  She said 'yes.'  37°, wind chill 26°, hifh 51°.  Aching hips during the night led me to the LZB around 5 a.m. & had me wondering whether they were a sign of lingering or recurring PMR.    

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.   

Trees are beautiful when they sprout leaves in the Spring. Trees are beautiful when they sport leaves all Summer.  Trees are beautiful when they shed leaves in the Fall.  Trees are beautiful when they are bare.

Remembering this weekend in 1963.  This date in 1963 was a Saturday.  John Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas the day before.  HIs body lay in the East Room of the White House and would be moved to the Capitol Rotunda the next day, November 24th.   From my memoir:

Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon of Friday, November 22^nd, I was sitting with my class on some risers out in the woods waiting for a class of some sort to begin.  An officer drove up in a Jeep and spoke to the instructor and then to us.  President Kennedy had been shot to death in Dallas.

            What happened next?  Were we dismissed?  Was the base secured?  Did we continue with the instruction?  Was there any discussion of what the assassination might mean for the military?  I have no memory of it.  I was so stunned that I think my mind dropped into low gear.  The enormity of the crime was too much to absorb.  Your mother and I spent that night and all day Saturday watching the news.  I don’t remember this; I am assuming that we had a television.  In any event, we were at least listening to the news and learned that the assassin was a former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald.  Kennedy’s body was returned to Washington and lay in repose in the East Room of the White House until Sunday when it was moved to the Capitol rotunda for public viewing.

            On Sunday morning, your mother and I drove the short trip up US 1 to Washington.  I wore my uniform.  With thousands of others, we stood on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill.  As we waited for the cortege, someone in the crowd with a portable radio announced that Oswald had been shot and killed while in police custody in Dallas.  Shortly thereafter the vanguard of the cortege passed and we could hear the approaching muffled drums and nothing else.  All were silent, solemn.  The shock and pain of the assassination and the knowledge that the assassin was a former Marine was now compounded by the almost unbelievable news of Oswald’s death in police custody.  The muffled drums drew closer and louder, the caisson carrying the President’s body came into view and passed, as did the riderless horse behind it.  I saluted as the body passed and then we went home, wondering what was happening to the country.

 

It was 62 years ago.   I was 22 years old.  Anne was 21.  We had been married for 5 months and 8 days, were less than 6 months out of college, and were starting our adult lives.

Palettes

 Nostalgia.  When I finished typing the notes about the weekend following JFK's assassination, I went to the basement to find one of my favorite Frank Sinatra albums that was not in its CD jewel case.  I've avoided downstairs since the Big Rain and flood on August 9-10.  I'm daunted by the thought of returning it to its condition when I called it my 'sanctuary,' and fear that I may never use it as my 'atelier' for painting.  Today, I found my CD where I thought it would be, in a CD player/radio I used downstairs, and had quite a bout of nostalgia looking at my paintings on the walls and at all the treasures I had squirrelled away down there, painting brushes and supplies and memorabilia of all sorts.  I came back upstairs with the CD and listened to it, starting with the title song, The September Of My Years, which intensified the nostalgia.

One day you turn around and it's summer

Next day you turn around and it's fall

And the springs and the winters of a lifetime

Whatever happened to them all?

As a man who has always had the wand'ring ways

Now I'm reaching back for yesterdays

'Til a long-forgotten love appears

And I find that I'm sighing softly as I near

September, the warm September of my years

As I man who has never paused at wishing wells

Now I'm watching children's carousels

And their laughter's music to my ears

And I find that I'm smiling gently as I near

September, the warm September of my years

The golden warm September of my years

and The Man in the Looking Glass.

I've seen that face before, that face that I see in the mirror

I know that face, I've seen that face before

I knew that dopey guy when he didn't know how to tie his tie

He stood right there and he had hair galore

The man in the looking glass, who can he be?

The man in the looking glass, can he possibly be me?

Where's our young Romeo, the lad who used to sigh?

Who's the middle-aged lothario with a twinkle in his eye?

He seem so much wiser now, less lonely but then

Could be he's only pretending again

Man in the looking glass, smiling away, how's your sacroiliac today?

Where's your first love affair, that tragedy d'amour?

The true love you thought would be the end of you for sure

Man in the looking glass, have no regrets

The man who's wise never forgets

That life is worth living if once in a while

You can look in that looking glass and smile

No one can sing a sad song or a nostalgic one quite like Frank Sinatra.  Sometimes they can seem like Mikey the Mope songs, which is, I suppose, why I take to them.  They appeal to a guy with "persistent depressive disorder" or to anyone who is prone to heavy sentimentalism.  I don't care at all for  any of his many upbeat tunes, but I'm a sucker for all his sad ones.  Being Irish, he had a persistent sense of tragedy, and all that.

 

 

11/22/2025

 Saturday, November 22, 2025

1963 US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald

In bed at 10, awake at 4:15 to move to LZB, up at 5.  31°, high of 47°, cloudy again.  

Beds, etc.  Morning meds at 7:30 a.m.

Nuremberg.  I don't know whether Nuremberg fits an academic definition of a "morality play," and I suspect it doesn't; nonetheless, I think of it as a kind of morality play, a story about Good and Evil, writ large, and mostly about Evil..  What the story is about is foreshadowed early in the film when Rami Malek, as psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, tells his Army interpreter, Leo Woodall as Sgt. Howie Triest, that he hopes to learn from extensive interviews and tests on the defendants in the first Nuremberg trials what makes them different.  Triest says, "Different?" and Kelley says, "From us," begging the question whether they were different from us.  By the end of the film, when the trial has been concluded, Kelly is a despondent and ultimately suicidal author of an unsuccessful book about his experiences at Nuremberg, proclaiming like Cassandra at Troy, or like Chicken Little, that fascists are everywhere, in every country, including the US, eager to take over the government and do evil deeds, like the Nazis.  It is as if the entire film is a cinematic depiction of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous statement in The Gulag Archipelago: 

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. 

I believe that this is the moral of the movie and why I think of it as a morality play.  Any and all of us could become Nazis, given the right circumstances.  Each of us has a very good person inside of us, and a very bad person.

        The movie is also about the relationship between Law and Good and Evil.  Michael Shannon plays US Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson.  At one point, while standing in the giant assembly area where the Nazi mass rallies were held, he argued to Kelley that the Nazi atrocities and crimes began there where the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws were announced in 1935 and that they should end in a legal setting, with a trial and the introduction of evidence of Nazi guild, rather than simply lining the leaders up along a wall and killing them by firing squads.  Here in America, some of us have a tendency to sacralize law, forgetting that there are good laws and bad laws, that law can be used as an instrument of punishment and oppression as readily as it can be used as a tool for good.  The racial laws of the Third Reich made that clear, as did the many and long-lasting laws establishing and sustaining slavery and Jim Crow in the U.S.

    The movie is also about narcissistic political leaders. Quite a point is made of Herman Gӧring as a narcissist who considered himself superior to other humans, including Robert Jackson.  I thought this was a bit heavy-handed in its allusion to our current president.  Indeed, the entire movie seemed to be an allusion to our current American era, as was vividly clear in the closing scene with a drunken Doug Kelley as much as shouting it, literally.  In a postscript to the movie, we are told that he died a suicide on New Year's Day 1958, 11 years after the end of the first Nuremberg trial and Gӧring's suicide.  He died as Gӧring did, by swallowing a cyanide capsule.  

    I am struck by Robert Jackson's naïveté (wrong word?)  about the purpose and intended effect of the trial.  As World War I was supposed to be 'the war to end all wars,' the Nuremberg trials, the creation of the United Nations, and later the International Court of Justice and the Genocide Convention were to put an end to wars of aggression and genocide.   That did not happen of course.  Europe remained free of national wars of aggression until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but wars of aggression occurred elsewhere, including America's invasion of Vietnam in 1965.  Moreover, many genocides and mass killings followed the destruction of the European Jews.  When I and thousands of other Americans were in Vietnam trying to impose Washington's and Wall Street's will on the Vietnamese people,  Washington and Wall Street were using the CIA and the Pentagon to assist the Indonesian army in killing at least half a million leftists and communists in that country, and perhaps more than a million.  Our government, America, and the United Kingdom directly assisted the Indonesian Army in the mass murders.  Doubters would benefit from reading Wikipedia's long entry on "Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66."  When, in the movie, Doug Kelley upbraids Göring for his role in German atrocities, Göring reminds him of the Allies' saturation bombing of civilians in German cities and refers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  “You vaporize 150,000 Japanese at the touch of a button, and you presume to stand in judgment of me for war crimes?”  We think of America and Americans as so high-minded, mainly because we are so ignorant of our own national history.

The movie closes with an afternote:  "The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”  This is attributed to the British philosopher R. G. Collingwood and is intended to remind us that fascism, Nazism, world wars, the Holocaust, and worldwide death and destruction could all be repeated.  There are 'little holocausts' all over the world, in Sudan, in Gaza, in Burma.  Hannah Arendt jolted her readers with the idea of 'the banality of evil," its ordinariness, its commonness, its expectedness and ubiquity.  We see it now in our own country in the Trump Restoration: brutal treatment of immigrants, the withdrawal of food and medical assistance to foreign lands, the worst medical system in the developed world, worsened by the government's actions and inactions, and so on.   As Billy Pilgrim says, 'So it goes.'  There weren't nuclear weapons available to our species until the end of the Big War when only the U.S. had them.  We've gone 80 years without any country or non-state actor using any, but I wonder whether their use one of these days is all but inevitable.  So it goes, right?  Homo hominis lupus.

I didn't like the movie, though I am glad that I saw it.  The only character that seemed likable was Sgt. Triest, the psychiatrist's interpreter.   The scenes of the extermination camps were crushing, and the scenes of all the physical destruction of Germany were depressing.   The whole movie was depressing, as I suppose it was intended to be.  It succeeded.

Bad writing, bad thinking.  Yesterday, I read a number of my past entries in this journal, and was embarrassed at how poorly written they were, how they revealed sloppy thinking on my part, loaded with incoherent non sequiturs.  I've written before that one of the advantages of keeping a personal journal is that it is personal and informal, not public.  It permits quite a bit of freedom of expression, sometimes an almost stream-of-consciousness process.  There is neither any serious editing nor proofreading.  The bad news is that it shows.

Favorite op-ed line of the day: Maureen Down, NYT, "Piggy Gets Polite": "Step by slimy step, President Trump has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty."