Sunday, November 2, 2025
1917 British government proclaimed support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration
1960 The obscenity case over Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence, ended in the acquittal of Penguin Books.
1963 Ngô Đình Diệm, the President of South Vietnam, was assassinated in a coup by the South Vietnamese Army
1976 Jimmy Carter was elected President, defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford
2004 George W. Bush was re-elected as President of the United States, defeating the Democrat candidate John Kerry
2023 Russia carries out its most extensive artillery attack of the year in Ukraine as Ukraine’s commander in chief admits the war has reached a deadlock
In bed at 9 DST, up at 6:30, CST, 10 and 1/2 hours. Day 37 of cellulitis: the area above my left ankle is still a bit painful when pressed, still reddened, still with very rough skin, but it seems better than the last few days. 34°, high of 51°, partly cloudy, frost on the ground, many guests at our bird feeders.: cardinals, doves, finches, chickadees, woodpeckers. Three gray squirrels filling up on the abundant seeds I spread on the ground late yesterday, sharing the largesse with doves and snowbirds.
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 9 a.m.
There's no accounting for what we remember and what we don't. Today is the birthday of Mrs. Daley, the mother of my freshman year undergraduate roommate, Joe Daley, and it's Groundhog Day. If I can find it streaming, I'll try to re-enjoy Groundhog Day,with my favorite lines, spoken by Andie MacDowell's Rita as Bill Murray's Phil stuffs gobs of pastry into his maw:
Rita: I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind. It's inspiring in a way.
Phil: My years are not advancing as fast as you might think.
. . . .
Phil: I wake up every day, right here, right here in Punxuwtawney, and it's always February 2nd, and there's nothing I can do about it.
The lines trigger memories of sitting at the bar of a downtown hotel with Tom St. John, decades ago, having a drink before attending a Milwaukee Rep's performance of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and discussing whether living forever would be a blessing or a curse. Micaela was ill, and I was Tom's substitute 'date.' Tom said he would love to live forever, so long as he was young, robust, unimpaired, and hearty. I said endless life would be a curse. I suppose that was long-ago evidence of what the VA calls my "persistent depressive disorder." In any event, I was emulating Peter Cook's Satan in the original 1967 version of Bedazzled, complaining about how boring the eternal Beatific Vision was, all day, every day praising the Almighty: You're so great, God, you're so good. You're so great, God, you're so good, for all eternity. He grew so sick of it, he rebelled à la Milton's Paradise Lost, and the rest is history, so to speak. Tom's vision of a desirable eternal life was more Mormon, I thought, with notions of a glorious, resurrected bodies enjoying "eternal increase" ( great sex?) between "sealed" husbands and wives, etc., a great place and a great way to live. I'm simplifying the LDS position on heaven, of course, which strikes me as ridiculous but clearly attractive to millions of followers of Joseph Smith. In any case, how odd it seems that all these thoughts came to mind as I typed "November 2" above and thought of Groundhog Day.
Another thought comes to mind as I think of that diagnosis of "persistent depressive disorder" in my VA case notes. It is the quote probably wrongly attributed to William Butler Yeats: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." Is that the same thing as "persistent depressive disorder"? Both my sister and I shared the Yeatsian condition as a consequence of growing up as we did, impacted by Iwo Jima, 'Jimmy' Hartmann, and the combined PTSDs in the household air we breathed. My VA record also shows "PTSD (chronic)." Nobody knows where that entry came from. Is it a reflection of those childhood traumas at 7303 S. Emerald? When and by whom was that diagnosed? No idea.
Text exchange with Caela:
Charles Clausen: (Yesterday)
Hi, Sweetie. If you still have my painting of James Joyce, would you take a digital photo of it and text it to me? Or let me take a photo of it? I gave it to Tom years ago, before I got into the habit of photographing my ‘masterpieces’, and now I’ve taken to incorporating photos of many of my paintings and drawings into my daily digital journal. Today I wrote about Joyce’s “The Sisters” in his “Dubliners” short story collection, and would like to include a photo of that painting. The journal entry is one of my many rants about the Catholic Church, one of Joyce’s favorite targets. I hope all is well with you. The cellulitis in my leg hasn’t cleared up yet, after 36 days and 3 rounds of antibiotics. I see an Infectious Disease specialist next Friday. Geri’s son Steve is coming up from Chicago today to help us with stuff around the house that we (especially me) can’t handle anymore. Old age sucks. I may be repeating myself.❤️
Micaela St. John:
Hi. I'm on my way to Florida. Saul is staying at the house. Do you want me to get home to photograph it or can it wait until I get back?
Charles Clausen:
It can wait unless it’s accessible, and Saul wants to take a photo of it. Otherwise, it can wait. Have a safe trip and enjoy.
Micaela St. John: (Today)
Let's wait until I get back.
Charles Clausen:
OK. Enjoy your trip. Stay safe.❤️
And, btw, if you don’t want it anymore, or have a place for it, I’m happy to take it back. I was surprised and honored when Tom asked me for it many years ago but I realize that his enthusiasm for the painting was almost certainly colored more by our friendship than by any merits the painting may have so don’t feel obligated to hold onto it. I won’t feel rejected. Just sayin’.
Two year ago today, I wrote this letter to Peter for his Confirmation Retreat:
Dear Peter,
Long ago, before your Dad had even met your Mom, I wondered whether I might go through life without a grandchild, and whether the Clausen family name would die out once your Aunt Sarah and your Dad went to their rewards. Those concerns all stopped when your Mom and Dad met, loved each other, married, and then blessed the world with your birth. I have warm memories of visiting you and them in the maternity ward of the hospital, all of us marveling at your seeming perfection and all the promise and potential that you represented, even in your infancy. But, as we know, though all babies are beautiful, not all turn out so beautifully. Happily you are wonderfully fulfilling all the “promise and potential” that we saw in you as a newborn and then as a toddler, a child, and now as a young man.
You have warmed by heart more times than I can count, and I am grateful for each time. It happens every time I see you interacting with Lizzie and with Drew, being the loving Big Brother to them, caring for them and helping to nurture them as they follow in your footsteps toward responsible adulthood. It happens every time I see you respecting and helping your Mom and Dad. It happened especially when I watched you work in partnership with your Dad in helping Geri and me with work we couldn’t do ourselves (like moving the heavy buffet from the house across our street into our living room), as well as other ‘corporal works of mercy’ for us. It happens when I saw you volunteer for sports in school, including football at Nicolet and when I saw you volunteer and take a leadership role in Nicolet FEAR. It happened every time you took on part-time employment, at Culver’s, at WAC, and at MCC, each job presenting different challenges and requiring different skills. This list is far from complete but I hope it evidences that I have followed your growth from your beginning to now and that I have taken great pride in your transition from boyhood to manhood. I add an even more personal comment, i.e., that I have always taken special pride in your carrying my name. I confess that I often refer to you as “my grandson, Peter Charles.”
I don’t want you to think that my love and admiration of you is based primarily on your many accomplishments, in the family, in school, or in your work. It is based rather on what those accomplishments reveal about your character, your heart and soul. There is love and generosity of spirit in you. I see it in your relations with all of us in the family. There is courage and intellectual curiosity and a sense of adventure in you, as is shown by your taking on new challenges in your life, challenges that some, perhaps many, others shirk. And there is responsibility in you,, demonstrated again and again as you regularly fulfill the requirements of the roles you fill: son , big brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend, student, team member and team leader, and employee.
Long ago, you and your Mom and Dad lived with Geri and me for a year or so. I was privileged to see to grow from an infant to a toddler to a youngster. In the mornings, you would sit on my lap and experiment with the keyboard to my computer. You were very special to me then and you are very special to me now. You’re a good man growing into a better man and I am very proud of you.
The letter was handwritten but I hoped it was legible. I never heard back from him.
Three years ago I wrote:
Pernicious Politics: Americans have become so tied to party identity that race and class polarize us less than politics. I've been trying to come to some understanding of this, trying to figure out why so many Americans are so hostile, so distrusting of government, especially the federal government, so willing indeed desirous of seeing it fail in its central functions. But I suppose the central issue is what are its 'central functions?' To right-wingers, it used to be 'to defend our shores' and to deliver the mail, and I suppose delivering the mail is no longer on that short list, nor is public health if it involves doing anything we don't want to do or not doing something we do want to do. Government is bad so the less government the better or as Reagan put it "In this present crisis, government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem. Anyone caught up in government bureaucracy can understand this attitude. Anyone caught up in government (over)regulation can understand it. Anyone understanding the inherent corruption of 'the best government money can buy' can understand it. Every year as I spend hours screwing around with our tax returns realizing that the work I do assembling documents and calculating numbers is totally unnecessary because the government already has the W2s, the 1099s, etc., in its IRS computers and can compute our probable tax, using the standard deduction, I can understand it. Once you add in feelings of unfairness and favoritism towards some groups and not others, especially when it comes to racial preferences and skewed benefit programs, real resentment sets in. Resentment can turn to hatred, and for many Americans, it has. Witness January 6th, 2021.
It's only gotten worse in three years, with worse yet to come.
At 1 p.m., Geri is outside in the 41° wind chill, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, gardening boots and workman's gloves, uprooting plants from the front of the house and transplanting them in the back. She is 81 years old and she labors like a lumberjack, outside for hours with her shovel, rake, gardener's cart, and other equipment, preparing for the winter and for next spring. I wonder how much of her time outside she devotes to the kind of thoughts I think while working on this journal, or is hard-gardening her time to escape such thoughts, like painting was for me, or golfers on a golf course? As I type these words, I see snowflakes falling in the front yard and wonder whether they will drive her to put her equipment away and return to the house. The photo is of an earlier time of hard labor, gathering fallen leaves for her path in the backyard marginal garden. Regardless of the time of year, she is a prodigious worker. Even while "watching" TV, she knits hats and scarves to the beneficiaries of Temple Sinai's warm clothing project, always working.
Some anniversary thoughts: First, let us never think that Minister Balfour and Her Majesty's government gave a tinker's dam for the Jewish people or the aspirations of Zionists. They were concerned only with the UK's interests in the Great War and thereafter. Plus, they doubledealt the Zionists and the Arabs, who also had nationalist aspirations that directly conflicted with Zionism.
Second, I read Lady Chatterley years ago and enjoyed it. It is obviously a serious work of literary art and commentary on the dehumanizing effects of life in industrial England. We could transpose it to life today but with the context being our computerized, digital, connected and disconnected lives. An easy transfer.
Third, the assassination of Diem was a beginning and an end. It was the end of any believable pretense that South Vietnam was a democracy grounded on the will of the people. Happy horsesht ab initiio and throughout. It was the beginning of a succession of military cabals, leading one American ambassador to describe South Vietnam as a country with an army but no government.
Fourth, in the long history of American presidents, was Jimmy Carter sui generis?
Fifth, when the American electorate chose George W. Bush over John Kerry after he led the nation into a tragic, unnecessary war in Iraq on false pretenses of WMD, I learned never to trust the judgment of the American people. "You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know—morons.” – Jim in Blazing Saddles.
Lastly, Ukraine: a stalemate last year, a stalemate still? Could Trump really put the screws to aggressor Russia and his buddy Putin if he wanted to? Is the Pope American?
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