1/11/2026

  Sunday, January 11, 2026

2018 President Trump caused worldwide controversy when it is reported he called African countries "shitholes" during an immigration meeting

2021 House Democrats introduce one article of impeachment against President Donald Trump for "incitement of insurrection" at the Capitol

2024 South Africa begins its ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza

In bed at 9, up at 4:45.  24/6/31/19.  Cloudy, windy, 

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

I woke up this morning feeling old and dying, thinking of Zeke Emanuel's article about dying at 75, thinking my mother and her mother died too young, my father's mother and Aunt Mary Healy died too old.  David Branch and Bill Raush died too young.  Bob Friebert and Tom St. John died on time.  I don't opine on Kitty's death because I wanted her never to die, and certainly not before me, yet she is where she is, and I am here, thinking about her, missing her.  Ed Felsenthal lived long enough to care for his wife Lynn, who lived too long.  We are like the three bears in the Goldilocks fable.  It seems that I think about longevity and death every day, about comfort and discomfort, pain and relief, strength and weakness, ability and disability. usefulness and uselessness.  I thought the other day of how I still had some functionality and usefulness when I retired 20 years ago.  I was able to help the youngsters (and others) in hippotherapy programs in Darien, WI and up on Jay Road.  I helped raise sturgeon at Riveredge, carefully nurturing the tiny fish until they were fit to be released into the Milwaukee River.  I assisted with classroom activities and helped remove invasive plants from the fields.  I could climb a ladder when necessary and get up from the floor or ground after completing a task.  I could get up from a chair,  walk upright and without pain, and climb and descend stairs.  I could care for my Dad when he lived with us, take him to his medical appointments, and for rides in the country.  I researched and wrote the memoir, almost 300 pages.  With each passing year, I become less able, more useless, more isolated,  more beset with pains and inabilities.  When will I, when should I,follow Dr. Zeke's advice?   Is all of this just pity party stuff, Micky the Mope, Wimp City?  Like so much else in life, the answer is yes and no.

Ecclesiastes 12: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them’…”

Psalm 71: “Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent.”

Luke 2:29–32: “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to thy word.”

Cicero – De Senectute (On Old Age): “When nature has exhausted the material, it is time to retire from the feast.”

Seneca:  “The wise man lives as long as he ought, not as long as he can.”

In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift wrote of the Struldbrugs, who lived forever but continued aging:

“I never heard a more joyful News in my Life…I cried out, as in a Rapture, Happy Nation, where every Child hath a Chance for being immortal!” but “At Ninety they lose their Teeth and Hair; they have at that Age no Distinction of Taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without Relish or Appetite.  The Diseases of the Old are more violent in them;  and their Memory will serve them no longer than the History of their own Lives.” . . . They were the most miserable Creatures in the World; and as soon as they see a Friend buried, they lament their own Fate. . . . “I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing Visions I had formed… and confess I never talked with any of the Race, but with a Mixture of Pity and Horror.”

And there is T. S. Eliot in Prufrock: "I grow old.  I grow old.  /  I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."  And in Gerontion: “Here I am, an old man in a dry month, / Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.”

Pissing on our shoes and telling us it's raining out.  Chief Justice John Roberts has assured us "“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”  He tells the nation that the politics of the president who appointed a federal judge has nothing to do with how that judge interprets and applies federal law.  That this is pure "happy horsehsit" is recognized by everyone, not just by lawyers and journalists.  The lead story in this morning's Sunday New York Times drives the point home.

Thoughts on Renee Nicole Good and Jonathan Ross.  Officials in the Trump administration and their supporters are suggesting that Renee Good was purposefully trying to run down ICE  agent Jonathan Ross, thereby severely injuring or killing him.  Many defenders of Renee Good are calling Jonathan Ross a cold-blooded murderer.  I suspect all these folks are wrong, that Good was not trying to run down or injure Ross, and that Ross may have acted instinctively. that his pulling his weapon and pulling the trigger, even three times, may have been conditioned by his experience of being dragged by a moving car and severely injured.  It looks to me that Renee Good was simply trying to pull away from the situation in which another ICE officer was attempting to open the door of her car and to get her out of it.  I am imagining how this case would be tried in a civil or criminal courtroom, not how it is being handled in the media, especially television.  For both Officer Ross and Ms. Good, the issue is one of intent or purpose, and in each case, intent will have to be assessed by a trier of fact based on circumstantial evidence.  Ross may testify to his own intent, of course, but his testimony won't conclude the trier of fact, who may believe that his direct testimony is overborne by competing circumstantial evidence.  I don't believe the case would be an 'open and shut' case with a foregone conclusion.  Intent is quintessentially a question of fact to be determined by a trier of fact.

Savagable or paintover?  Not looking good.

Three of the five tom turkeys happily gobbling at my feet as I filled the tray feeder and threw a handful of mostly safflower seeds to these guys, who clearly have no fear of humans, or at least of humans scattering good vittles.  By 'gobble,' I refer both to the big birds taking their fill of the safflower seeds, and to the gentle 'gobble, gobble' sounds they make while they are at it.  They were followed to our feeding grounds by a whitetail doe, and later by a pair of mourning doves, though I doubt there was anything edible still on the ground when the doves arrived.