12/1/2025

Monday, December 1, 2025

1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama

1958 Our Lady of Angels School fire killed 92 students & 3 nuns in Chicago, Illinois

1994 Jim Bakker, American televangelist and convicted fraud was released from jail

2024  Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, despite his earlier pledge not to do so

In bed at 10, very bad GERD at midnight, vomited, moved onto the  LZB till 3:30,  up at 7:30.  Combination of spaghetti with marinara sauce and 1 glass of Zinfandel?  13°, wind chill of 6°, high of 28°.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 11:15 a.m.  Rough night, subdued day.

Of mourning doves, decrepitude, and places of abode.  We received 10 inches of heavy, wet snow on Saturday and Saturday night.  The tube feeders and the suet cakes at our feeding station were covered with frozen snow on their windward sides,  The tray feeder was buried under about 5 inches of the snow.  During the day, three mourning doves perched on the tray feeder and its supporting shepherd's crook. As the day progressed, I felt increasingly guilty about their inability to reach the seeds under the snow.  The snow on the ground was 9 or 10 inches deep. I have no boots, and I didn't want to try to get from the front door to the feeders in my slippers or sandals, so I went looking for some more substantial footwear, which I found in a far corner of my closet.  Geri saw me futilely struggling to negotiate the deep snow with my Bean's Lake walking stick in one hand and the fully-loaded birdseed scoop in the other, put on her boots, got a shovel, cleared a path to the feeding station, emptied the tray feeder of the snow and buried seeds, and refilled it.  She is solicitous of my well-being and especially of my tendency to fall.  I am grateful for her help, though it makes me ever more aware of my increasing feebleness, frailty, fragility, decrepitude, debility, helplessness, etc.  I contribute next to nothing to the ordinary, daily requirements of living in a house, as in truly "independent living."  But for Geri, I would be in an Assisted Living facility, perhaps with the VA.  She has decided she wants to stay in the house as long as possible, and I have agreed, but I wonder whether we have our heads stuck in the sand snow and ice.  She moved the trash cart out to County Line Road for pickup today, but reported some glare ice on the driveway.  Will one of us be able to return the cart to the garage without falling and maybe breaking a leg, hip, arm, or shoulder?  We have all of December, January, February, March, and April, during which the weather can effectively keep us housebound at times, during which there can be ice or snow or both on the ground.  Each day, each week, we are a day older, a week older, a week weaker.

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

– Those dying generations – at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Sailing to Byzantium, one of Yeats' most famous poems, and one of his goofiest.  He seems to denigrate life, vitality, and vivacity in favor of art: gold mosaics, hammered gold, and gold enameling.  He almost sounds like an early Trump with with gold Oval Office.  Give my 'the young in one another's arms, the birds in the trees.'  But I do react to 'That is no country for old men"  and to "An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick".

It ought to be lovely to be old

to be full of the peace that comes of experience

and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.

The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life

lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies

they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins

in their old age.

Soothing, old people should be, like apples

when one is tired of love.

Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft

stillness and satisfaction of autumn.

And a girl should say:

It must be wonderful to live and grow old.

Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -

And a young man should think: By Jove

my father has faced all weathers, but it's been a life!

Beautiful Old Age, by D. H. Lawrence.  We must wonder what Lawrence had in mind when he wrote this poem and titled it as he did, but predicated all that followed on the first four words: "It ought to be . . ."  Is this poem, seeming to praise and take delight in old age, just a bit of snidery or sarcasm?  A recognition that old age is usually anything but what he suggests it ought to be?  'A girl should say . . .' and 'a young man should think . . .'  He wrote in the subjunctive mood, expressing a condition contrary to fact.  A curious poem.

The snow is so beautiful, but so dangerous for old timers, both human and vegetative.  The pine tree in front of the tall spruce was badly damaged last year by a snowstorm and had to be severely cut back.  My fear is that this first and early winter storm may result in its being hewn next Spring, or before.  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted . . . 

Basement flooring was delivered this afternoon.

An interesting blurb from a journal entry last year on this date: 

“I’m most worried that this country is not what I thought it was, but someplace much more cruel and nasty and selfish,” wrote Ruth Marcus, one of The Post opinion section’s lead political commentators, after Trump’s reelection. She echoed a sentiment expressed by other pundits, and many ordinary Americans.