2/28/2026

 Saturday, February 28, 2026

1933 On Adolf Hitler's advice, German President Paul von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree after the building was destroyed by fire in Berlin; this eliminated many civil liberties in Germany

1953 Crick and Watson discovered the chemical structure of the DNA molecule

2013 The brains of two rats were successfully connected so they could share information

The 2022 UN Landmark climate change report warned that climate change is outpacing human efforts to adapt, with a best-case scenario rise of 1.5C, and 14% of species face a "very high risk of extinction." 

2025  A 24-hour consumer spending boycott takes place across the United States, in protest of wealth and income inequality, high prices of essential goods, and the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives by the Trump administration. 

2025  The Social Security Administration announces it will lay off over 7,000 jobs to align with President Donald Trump's executive order, despite its workforce already being at a 50-year low. 

2025   Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended their talks early after their Oval Office meeting turned into a "heated" exchange. Trump rejectsed any discussion of security guarantees for Ukraine, expressing interest only in a Mineral Resources Agreement.   Their lunch was cancelled and Zelenskyy was escorted from the White House, hungry.

In bed at 9, up at 0615.  28/15/40/22  122/77/57   205.4  111   

Morning meds and half-dose of heart med at  a.m.

US and Israel Start War with Iran

Who is he talking about, the Iranian government or ours?  Or both?

Who runs America, Netanyahu and AIPAC, or Putin?  And, BTW, what's with that stupid baseball cap?

My thoughts on America two years ago today.

(Actually, from this journal, February 29, 2024, Leap Day!)

The State of the Union.  I'm trying to remember a time when America was more riven by factionalism, Left v. Right, Democrat v. Republican, Red State v. Blue State, neighbor v. neighbor, family member v. family member. Evangelicals v. seculars, etc.  The only times that come close to our current era were the late 40s and 50s with the big Communist Scare (McCarthyism, John Birch Society, HUAC, black lists, bomb shelters and air raid drills in schools) and the mid and late 60s and early 70s with the Vietnam invasion, and the draft, civil rights demonstrations, the pill and the Sexual Revolution, and Watergate.  These were the times of Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), ghost-written by L. Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley's brother-in-law, and None Dare Call It Treason (1964), written by the evangelical minister John A. Stormer.  Those were the days of my adolescence and young adulthood.  I feel shame in admitting that for a while I fell for all the right-wing propaganda that was all about.  I voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. It was the era of the Warren Court from 1953 to 1969 including revolutionary cases like Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and Miranda v. Arizona in 1966.  It was the era of the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965 with its seemingly revolutionary changes in liturgy, doctrines and practices, ecumenism and relations with Jews, and religious freedom.  They were heady times to be a working-class young guy born during FDR's New Deal and raised 'in the bosom of' the Church' during the turbulent, triumphalist days between the end of World War II and the debacle of Vietnam.  I went from naïvely voting for Goldwater in 1964 to returning from Vietnam less than 2 years later in a state of culture shock, feeling morally depressed, isolated, disillusioned, and at best skeptical or cynical about most political, social, and religious "isms."

Are the days we are living in worse than the 50s, 60s, and early 70s?  I think so.  I would be the last guy to refer to those earlier days as "the good old days."  They weren't good.  Americans were deeply polarized then over civil rights, racism, military adventurism, sexual mores, religion, and certainly politics.  But I never felt the country was "coming apart at the seams" as I do now.  I never felt that Richard Nixon Gerry Ford, Ronald Reagan, or either of the Bushes was a fascist, intent on fundamentally changing the nature or structure of the American government toward one-party rule or dictatorship.  I never thought that my conservative Republican colleagues on the law faculty at Marquette were fascists.  Even during the days of the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Sterling Hall Math Center bombing in Madison, I never felt we were on the verge of widespread violent attacks on agents, organs, and instrumentalities of democratic government.  I never thought that the leaders of the Republican Party, or their supporters, were mentally deranged and evil.  Although I thought that the values and policies of the Republicans were mistaken, selfish, or even dangerous, I didn't think that Republicans were actually delusional, unable to distinguish reality from imaginings, and unable to surrender false beliefs despite overwhelming evidence disproving those beliefs.  Donald Trump is deranged, mentally unbalanced and unhinged.  There is every reason to believe he is a sociopath with a narcissistic personality disorder.  He is a bad man, wicked, amoral and immoral, depraved and contemptible.  His millions of followers are delusional, insisting that Trump was cheated out of winning the 2020 election despite all the evidence to the contrary.  Many of his followers are disposed to believe whacko conspiracy theories spread by QAnon and others.  And they are well-armed, some of them organized into quasi-military militias.  They believe the apocalyptic rhetoric spouted by Trump and others about Americans being at risk of 'losing your country' to "the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."  With the country awash in lethal weapons, including assault weapons, most of them probably owned by 2nd Amendment gun nuts, we are all in trouble worse than we ever were during the turbulent days of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.  Or am I the delusional one, the paranoid one?

I confess these thoughts were triggered by the Supreme Court's decision to review the D.C. Circuit's rejection of Trump's immunity claim.  As a practical matter, the Court's action almost certainly means Trump's trial in Judge Tanya Chutkan's court for the attempted coup will not occur before the November presidential election.  The public will not learn of all the evidence the Special Counsel has amassed.  Was that the Republican Court's purpose in taking the case and in delaying the argument until sometime in the week of April 22?  Can there be any doubt?  In tort law, an individual is considered to intend the natural consequences of an act—whether or not she or he actually intends those consequences. 

 

2/27/2026

 Friday, February 27, 026

1933 Nazi Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, was destroyed by fire, possibly set by the Nazis, who blamed and executed Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe

1962 South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm's palace was bombed by dissident air pilots in a failed assassination attempt

1968 Walter Cronkite delivered a scathing editorial on America's chances of winning in Vietnam 

1973 American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee in South Dakota

2014 Unmarked Russia special forces invaded neighboring Crimea, Ukraine to assist pro-Russian nationalists, occupying government buildings in preparation for annexation

2025  The Trump administration banned NASA scientists and US government officials from attending the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conference that started this week in Hangzhou, China, which are focused on the seventh IPCC Assessment Report on climate change. 

In bed at 10, awake at 2:30, up at 3:00.   32/22/53/31.  03"10  207.2  124/68/59  94.

Morning meds and 6th half-dose of Bisoprolol at 7 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 10 a.m.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.

Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency, an article in this morning's Washington Post by Isaac Arnsdorf.  Excerpts:

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s plans.

“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

“But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” Ticktin went on. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”

The emergency would empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference, Ticktin argued.

The idea of claiming emergency executive powers based on allegations of foreign interference attaches new significance to the administration’s actions to reinvestigate the 2020 election. Trump has never accepted defeat, while never finding evidence of widespread fraud. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is leading a review of election security that officials said focuses on foreign influence.

A 2021 intelligence review concluded that China considered efforts to influence the election but did not go through with them.

. . .

“I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future,” Trump said on social media Feb. 13. “I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order,” he added the same day. 

Sarah arrived this morning for a weekend visit, a first visit in months.  She returns in June. 

 

 

2/26/2026

Thursday, February 26, 2026

D+111

1935 RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) is first demonstrated in Daventry, England

1973 Triple Crown horse Secretariat was bought for a record $5.7m

2023 One of the most violent incidents of revenge by mobs of Israeli settlers, who burned 200 buildings in Palestinian villages and killed at least one person after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis in the northern West Bank

2025 First death from measles in the US occurred in Texas in a decade, and the first child to die in 22 years amid an outbreak affecting 124 people 

e4r

In bed at 9, awake at 2:30, moved to LZB till up at 3:30.  18/39/16.

Morning meds and 5th half-dose of heart med at  10:30 a.m.  

Whatever happened to the accusations of Trump's BJ and the assault on the teenagers who bit his schwantz?  Have non-governmental investigators now surfaced 'the smoking gun'?  Not of the truth of the charges of Trump's participation in a sexual assault on one of Jeffrey Epstein's underage harem, but of the FBI and DOJ illlegal coverup of the fact of the accusation?  And of Attorney General Pam Bondi's perjury when she testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the government files contain no "evidence" of criminal behavior by Trump.  I am reminded of the tension I and the rest of the nation felt back in the Spring and Summer of 1974 as the noose tightened around Nixon's presidency.   It took more than two years from the time of the first Woodward and Bernstein article about the Watergate burglars' connection to the Nixon White House and the Committee to RE-Elect the President before Nixon resigned in August, 1974.  We can't expect Trump to resign of course, but God only knows where this evidence of a criminal blowjob may lead.  Hold on to your seat.  Meanwhile we can enjoy the thought of a brave young teenager biting the Big Prick's prick.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

My journal/blog entries last year on this date:

Browsing Facebook this morning, I see JPG's regular sunrise photo taken with her trusty iPhone.  Sarah Smarsh, a crush bunny for years, announced that she is leaving social media for a year to concentrate on writing a book she has committed to writing.  Her post referred to her writing as "an act of resistance against political and corporate forces that seek to siphon our lifeblood for their profit."  She attached an article on the significance of the U. S Postal Service to rural Americans and adds"As with public schools and every other struggling component of our government system, the main issue behind its struggles is intentional underfunding and onerous burdens devised by those who profit from privatization."  In another post, Heather Cox Richardson quotes Pete Buttigieg: "A defining policy battle is about to come to a head in this country. The Republican budget will force everyone—especially Congress and the White House—to make plain whether they are prepared to harm the rest of us in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest.”  He was referring to the upcoming Budget Bill and the basic differences between Democrats and Republicans over (1) how to raise money to support government programs and (2) what to spend the money on.  Richardson notes that "Since the 1990s, when the government ran surpluses under Democratic president Bill Clinton, tax cuts under Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, along with unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have produced massive budget deficits that, in turn, have added trillions to the national debt."  Richardson went on to explain, as she does so well, what exactly is going on in Congress over the Budget Bill, and how the Republicans proposed to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy by cuts to (1) Medicare and Medicaid, and (2) food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  It is hard for me to believe what is going on in America now, but it shouldn't be.  For years, we have been unwilling to tax ourselves at sufficiently high rates to pay the nation's bills with only a sustainable level of annual deficits and national debt. Joe Scarborough in one of his morning rants accurately points out that from the founding of the American Republic until 2001, over those 220 years, the United States accumulated $5 trillion in debt.  In the last 20+ years, we have accumulated up to $36 trillion.  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells us that if the Republicans pass what they are proposing to pass, the debt is going to increase another $23 trillion over the next decade.  Scarborough says, accurately, "We are in meltdown mode."  He points out that we spend more money on interest on our national debt than we do on the defense budget, which is the highest war budget in the world.  THIS IS MADNESS.  What kind of world are we leaving our children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren?  If Congress and Trump follow through on this budget, America will be less great, less secure, less wealthy, and less healthy - all the "MAGAs" upside down.  More rural hospitals will shut down.  More elderly people will be tossed out of nursing homes while Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Trump will be wealthier and probably living on their massive yachts in offshore Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or perhaps in penthouses in Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

Russian asset or Russian agent?  I've asked this question before about Donald Trump.  In Thomas Friedman's column today, we find this: 

The drama going on between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raises one of the most disturbing questions I’ve ever had to ask about my own country: Are we being led by a dupe for Vladimir Putin — by someone ready to swallow whole the Russian president’s warped view of who started the war in Ukraine and how it must end? Or are we being led by a Mafia godfather, looking to carve up territory with Russia the way the heads of crime families operate? “I’ll take Greenland, and you can take Crimea. I’ll take Panama, and you can have the oil in the Arctic. And we’ll split the rare earths of Ukraine. It’s only fair.”

Either way, my fellow Americans and our friends abroad, for the next four years at least, the America you knew is over. The bedrock values, allies and truths America could always be counted upon to defend are now all in doubt — or for sale. Trump is not just thinking out of the box. He is thinking without a box, without any fidelity to truth or norms that animated America in the past.

. . .

[There's] a benign interpretation of Trump — that he is just besotted with Putin, Russia’s Christian nationalist, anti-woke crusader, and not applying the common sense that he promised. But then there is also another explanation: Trump does not see American power as the cavalry coming to rescue the weak seeking freedom from those out to quash them; he sees America as coming to shake down the weak. He’s running a protection racket.  

The American and world common weal gets only worse with each day Trump and his gang of mobsters remain in office.

2/25/2026

 Wednesday, February 25, 2026

1932 Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler obtained German citizenship

1994 Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein massacred at least 55 Palestinians at Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque, with an assault  rifle

2024 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died fighting in the two years since Russia invaded

2025  Ukrainian Justice Minister Olha Stefanishyna announces that Ukraine has reached a deal with the United States on mineral resources. (Kyiv Independent)

2025  Federal judge  temporarily blocked Trump's executive order suspending the Refugee Admissions Program, ruling that President Trump cannot nullify the law passed by Congress

In be at 9 during Trump's SOTU rant, up at 6,  22/4/29/19  Sunny, windy again.  Sick of freezing temperatures and wind.  Lebanese neighbor Ghasson out, as always, walking his bull mastiff Athena, at 6:45, Ghasson all bundled up, Athena with no protection.  How do they do it?

Morning meds and 4th half-dose of Bisoprolol fumarate at  10:30 a.m.

Out of sorts much of today, innards and back.

2/24/2026

 Monday, February 24, 2026

1208 Francis of Assisi, 26, is said to have received his vocation in the Portiuncula

1803 US Supreme Court 1st ruled a law unconstitutional (Marbury v Madison)

1977 President Jimmy Carter announced US foreign aid would consider human rights

2022  Russia invaded Ukraine

2025  The United Nations General Assembly votes 93–18, with 65 abstentions, to pass a resolution condemning Russia's war against Ukraine. The 18 countries that voted against include the United States, Russia, Israel, Belarus, and North Korea. 

2025  Texas placed several major cities in the state on high alert due to a measles outbreak that spread to 99 people in Texas and New Mexico, the third-largest outbreak since it was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.

In bed at 8:45, awake at 4:35, up at at 4:50.  22/8/36/17.  SSW 192° wind at 11 mph, gusts to 25 mph.  Sunny, windy, cold.

Morning meds and 3rd half-dose of Bisopolol at 9 a.m.

Much to write about today, but side-tracked by news of Trump cover-up.

Visit with Dr. Patel.  I saw Dr. Patel, a VA psychiatrist, for the third time this morning while Geri was representing the two of us at Richard Goldberg's burial service.

The artist at the VA yesterday.    

Finished The Last Sweet Mile.

NPR disclosure re DOJ non-disclosure: Cover up.

From 2 years ago today:

"I'm grateful that I was able to write a memoir about my first 30 or so years of life and that I had and have access to so many other memoirs and other histories of various experiences in my life.  I'm grateful that at some time somehow I came to derive some pleasure or satisfaction from writing, (or is it a need to write?).  When did this occur?  Not in high school or college, for I don't recall ever taking pleasure in writing an academically-required essay or report.  I suspect it started during my last year in the Marines at NAS Willow Grove when I had among my ancillary duties the job of Public Information Officer and I became familiar with Fowler's Modern English Usage, Follett's Modern American Usage, the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, and a NYT newsletter that collected misusages from the newspaper that got past the copy editors.  After that, I found out in law school that I was pretty good at writing those 3-hour essay exams that were then de rigueur.  On top of that, I was Lead Article Editor and then Editor-in-Chief of the law review and had a job as the editorial assistant for two faculty-edited (really edited by me) commercial law publications.  In the following year, as a new faculty member, I was the Legal Writing professor for about 120 1L law students, a cruel and exploitative assignment but one that made me an expert on how poorly many, perhaps most, college graduates write.  In any case, over those 5 years, from 1966 to 1971, I became a frequent and usually careful writer.  And of course, as a faculty member and later as a practicing lawyer, I did a lot of writing.  I relied on my good friend and law office colleague, David Branch, to edit some of my work and found out from him that I was (and still am) wordy.  I use too many words to say things that can be said more concisely.  His edits were always correct and useful, and I usually accepted them but often opted to stick with my wordy excesses simply because it was the way I expressed myself then and still do, with lots of surplusage.  Plus, in writing these daily journal entries that I know will be read by no one but me, I easily fall into run-on sentences, inappropriate hyphenation and capitalization, misplaced modifiers, and awkward constructions.  David Branch's red pencils would need frequent sharpening for editing of my daily musings.

    What prompted these reflections was reading Hillary Kelly's review of the several memoirs of Diana Athill  in the 2/21/2024 New Yorker titled "A Memoirist Who Told Everything and Repented Nothing."  I especially enjoyed this quote about old age from one of Athill's late-life memoirs:

We tend to become convinced that everything is getting worse simply because within our own boundaries things are doing so.  We are becoming less able to do things we would like to do, can hear less, see less, eat less, hurt more, our friends die, we know that we ourselves will soon be dead. . . . It’s not surprising, perhaps, that we easily slide into a general pessimism about life, but it is very boring and it makes dreary last years even drearier.

It made me wonder, only momentarily, whether my "general pessimism about life" is just attributable to my old age rather than to real conditions in the U.S. and in the world.  I don't think so since there appear to be so many much younger people who share my pessimism."

2/23/2026

Monday, February 23, 2026

1945 US Marines raised the flag of the United States on top of Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Joe Rosenthal later becomes iconic, inspiring the Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture

1954 First mass inoculation against polio with the Jonas Salk vaccine took place at Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1967 Noam Chomsky's anti-Vietnam war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" was published by the New York Review of Books

1971 US Army officer William Calley confessed & implicated Captain Medina during his trial for the My Lai Massacre

2025  The Israel Defense Forces deploy tanks into the West Bank for the first time since 2002, declaring that the 40,000 Palestinians who fled refugee camps in the region cannot return

In bed at 9, awake at 4:15, and up at 4:35.  19/-1/25/18.  The wind blows at 18 mph from 345° NNW, with gusts up to 31 mph.

Morning meds and 2nd half-dose of Bisoprolol heart med at 7:15 a.m.

Jesus of Nazareth, Francis of Assisi, Theo of Golden, and the Levi Boys of Hamilton, GA.  There is a story in this morning's New York Times about the supposed bones of Francis of Assisi, now on public display at the large basilica erected in his name in the hilltop town of Assisi in Umbria, which Geri and I visited more than 20 years ago.  Francis has long been my favorite Catholic saint, though I've never quite been sure why.  He was certainly a wierdo by today's standards, and probably by any standards.  He had a great and deep belief in God, the God of the Catholic Church, the church of Jesus.  He also had a great and deep love of the natural world as God's creation, the world he depicted in his Canticle of the Sun.  Like Jesus, he also lived a life of austerity, indeed seemingly more austere than Jesus, who attended weddings and ate with sinners.  But as I read Allen Levi's memoir The Last Sweet Mile, I was mindful that both the author and his brother, Gary, a model we are told for Theo of Golden, were lifelong bachelors, like Francis and (supposedly) Jesus.  Also, all 4 of them were great and deep believers in God.  It's not clear, to me at least, what kind of God Jesus himself believed in, but his followers, Francis, Allen, and Gary, believed in a Christian God.  What, if anything, are we to make of the fact that none of these guys ever married?  Personally, I have also harbored a suspicion that Jesus was married before he started his 'public life' around age 30, and that his wife died, perhaps in childbirth.  All Jewish men of his era were expected to marry, to go forth and multiply.  Just as a matter of social probabilities, it is surely more probable than not that Jesus was married long before his 30th year.  If so, why did he never remarry?  Why did Francis, the son of a wealthy textile merchant, never marry?  Why did both Allen and Gary  Levi never marry, while their sisters did?  It seems to me to be a fair question, one worthy of some thought, and some stabs at possible answers.  No only did none of them ever marry; neither did any of them seem to have a girlfriend or a lover, at least none that is referred to in writings about them.  (Unless we consider a lot of speculation, unsupported by evidence, of Jesus's relationship with Mary Magdalene or 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.'[John 13:23, 19:26, and 20:1]).  If I recall correctly, in one of the chapters in Theo of Golden, Theo refers to a saying: "A man who loves all women, loves no woman.  A man who loves one woman, loves all women," or something like that.  Why is it that men who are held up as holiness incarnate and God-filled, like Jesus and Francis and Gary Levi have no room in their lives for a partnering woman?  Gay?  Incels?  So God-obsessed they leave no room for a partner?  Repelled or disgusted by sex?  Whazupwidat?  What are we to think of the Catholic Church's adherence to priestly celibacy???

2/22/2026

Sunday, February 22, 2026

D+107 

1300 Pope Boniface VIII issued a papal bull (decree) instating a Jubilee Year, granting forgiveness of sins and debts for those who fulfill various conditions

2014 Viktor Yanukovych was ousted as President of Ukraine by the parliament following the Euromaidan revolution

2021 US death toll from COVID-19 passed 500,000, higher than US deaths in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. 

In bed at 8:45, up at 5:50.  22/4/26/19.

Morning meds and  First day of half-dose Bisoprolol heart med at 10 a.m.

Last year on this date, I wrote:

The Habit of Writing.  While reading an old (2.26.2017) New Yorker article about Elizabeth Bishop's life, actually a then-new biography by Megan Marshall, “Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast,” I thought about how long I've been in the habit of writing.  For years after I reconciled with my father in 1995, I wrote him a letter every day.  I suppose I was trying to make up for lost time, but in any case, I didn't call him every day, or even frequently, but rather I wrote to him.  That practice stopped at some point before he came to live with us outside of Saukville in 2003 (?), but it continued for a long time.  Perhaps it was part of what made it possible for him to accept our invitation to live with us; the letters gave him a pretty good idea of our lives, what we did and didn't do, who our friends were, etc.  I don't remember when Kitty and I started having our daily early morning conversations by text messages (2013? 2014?) but those exchanges also involved daily writing down my experiences, thoughts, fears, concerns, etc,, ofter at some length, and we never missed starting each day with those written conversations every morning.  I even continued texting her after she died on March 3, 2022, knowing she was gone but being so habituated to starting each day by writing her that I continued.  I suppose it was that experience of starting each day tapping on the keyboard of my laptop that led me on July 29th or 30th of that year to pull up my old Blogspot blog and type "Am I still here?" and to discover that my blog still existed and provided a place write some thoughts each morning.  Two and a half years later, I'm still writing every morning, sometimes sensibly, sometimes not.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop  1911 –1979

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

I concluded the thoughts about my writing habit by copying Elizabeth Bishop's great poem, which reminded me of how bereft I was after Kitty's death.  On reflection, I also felt some of that when my Dad died.  The two of them were my connection with my origin, my connection with my mother, with our lives on Emerald Avenue, our lives after the Big War, where I came from and who I became, who I was and am.  I needed connection with each of them , with both of them, and was graced to have it with my Dad for the last 11 years of his life,  and with Kitty until she died three years ago, on March 3, 2026.  We were each other's best friend and  daily communicant, not in the Catholic sacramental sense, but perhaps in that sense too, sharing deep and abiding love and imparting Grace of that love to each other.  Deo gratias. 

Bits and snatches of The Last Sweet Mile:

Gathering: . . .  everyone seemed conscious of the gift it was to be with those people in that place at that moment. 

Song:  Somewhere he learned a saying that he often quoted:  "One does not learn of Christ or read the Bible for information but for transformation.

The latter bit reminded me of the lunch I had with my dear and saintly friend Vicki Conti, when she was working at the Medical College of Wisconsin.  In the course of the lunch, I got to grousing about the irrationality of some bit of Christianity, which Vicki listened to patiently, wisely, and to which she responded: "It's not a head thing, Chuck, it's a heart thing." 

What I'm learning from congestive heart failure:  how much salt adds to the taste of so many foods, and what the word "bland" means.

m 

 

 

 

  

2/21/2026

Saturday, February 21, 2026

1864 1st US Catholic parish church for black worshippers was dedicated in Baltimore

1965  Malcolm X was shot dead by Nation of Islam followers in New York

1975 Watergate figures John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman & John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2½-8 years for conspiracy and obstruction of justice

2014 President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama

2020  Lilly arrived and became a part of our lives until December 3, 2024

2023  Joe Biden vowed unwavering support for Ukraine in a speech from Warsaw Castle

2025  The Associated Press filed a lawsuit against three Trump administration officials after they banned the news agency from attending presidential press events after the agency refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America". 

In bed at 9:35, awake at 2:55 but unable to sleep, up at 3:45.  27/12/32/25.

Morning meds at 11 a.m.    

Note to CBG:

I finished Theo of Golden last night.  After waking up this morning at 3 a.m., I lay in bed thinking about the ending  Theo of Golden, and more specifically, wondering about the identity of the young woman who showed up at Mr. Ponder's office, asking for his help in finding a missing person.  It came to me after my required daily weigh-in and BP check for CHF.  "Willa" was Ellen's daughter, the one she described to Theo much earlier in the narrative, in answering his question about the happiest day in her life.  The author didn't tell us what happened to her and Ellen later, a bit of a disappointment, but I suppose we are to assume that Mr. Ponder effected a meeting between Olivia/Willa and her mother, and that we'll learn more about it in the planned sequel to Theo of Golden, now planned as Ellen of Golden.

I liked the book very much.  It reminded a bit of both Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, though neither of those favorites featured a protagonist like Theo.  Neither of those classics, however, which I still return to, triggers the personal reflections that this novel does.  I was stunned by the ending, the attack on Ellen and Simone, and Theo's accidental death.  I was a bit disappointed in the posthumous revelation that Theo was Asher's father and Minette's grandfather.  It seemed a bit contrived and fantastical to me, but novels are all contrived, as is fiction generally.  It's all made up.  And, on the other hand, it is consistent with the truth that most of us have secrets in our lives, sometimes bitter and even disabling disappointments, or just sins and guilts, or, like the T-shirt I mentioned in an earlier text, 'battles others know nothing about.' 

I was also a little surprised that he paid so little attention to race, he and his characters all being residents of the Deep South and having lived through Jim Crow America and the civil rights movements of the 50s and 60s into the present.  The closest he seemed to come was when Kendrick confronted Derrick the DA for never looking him in the face, of really seeing him, as Kendrick, unrepresented by counsel, pled guilty to a crime he didn't commit, though he spent a year in jail for it.  On the other hand, however, Kendrick did see the humanity in the 'little' Hispanic man who caused the accident that killed his wife and terribly injured his daughter, Lemisha and apparently led Derrick to see it also.

The character that struck me the most, though, was Tony, the bookseller and Vietnam vet.  He returned from the war emotionally jaded, wounded in his soul.  Though he attended church services with Ellen (and her bike) after Theo's death, I suspect he never really became a believer in a loving God 'whose eye is on the sparrow' and 'who has the whole world in his hands,' the God he was taught about as a child and before he went off to fight a senseless, wicked war.  On the other hand, he was clearly affected by Theo's saintliness, which reminds me of Francis of Assisi's advice to his followers: "Preach always.  If necessary, use words."  Theo lived his belief in the great commandments, loving God and neighbor as himself.

Thanks again for recommending the book.  I'm glad I read it and was even inspired to try to be a better human being.💖

2/20/2026

 Friday, February 20, 2026

1938 UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigned, stating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had appeased Nazi Germany

1939 The American pro-Nazi organization German American Bund held a rally at Madison Square Garden and 20,000 attend

1971 National Emergency Center erroneously ordered US radio & TV stations to go off the air. The mistake wasn't resolved for 30 minutes

2023 President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine

In bed at 9:30, up at 6.  37/29/38/28. WIND ADVISORY: NW winds 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 45 mph expected.  Snowy conditions expected around 11 a.m.

Morning meds at 3 p.m.  Trulicity injection at 10 a.m.

Exchange of email with Leslie Behroozi:

Name * Charles Clausen

Email * charlesclausen2003@yahoo.com

What best describes your status? *

Retired faculty

What question do you have? *

In one of the classes I used to teach at MULS, I used a 1990 VHS BO film titled "Criminal Justice" starring Forrest Whitaker from the library. I wonder if it is still in the collection or where I might be able to access or buy a copy? I can't find it anywhere. Thank you.

. . . . . . . .  

Hello!  

I hope you are doing well!  I searched our catalog for that film and was not able to find it in our collection.  To make sure, I scanned our film collection on reserve and did not see it on the shelves either.  

I also did a WorldCat search to see whether I could identify any other libraries that have it within their collections.  There are none noted near Milwaukee, but I'm not sure whether you are still in the Milwaukee area anyway.  I have attached the list of libraries that have it according to WorldCat.  I would try to contact these libraries to confirm it is within their collection before heading to a library, however; when I clicked on the link to see the University of Chicago's record, I could no longer find it in their catalog.  

If you are interested, we could try to obtain it through interlibrary loan, but I doubt that will be successful.  We do not loan out our own videos through ILL, and when we've tried to ILL videos from other libraries in the past, we have not been successful.  Given the age of the item and the format, I doubt any of the listed libraries would let it leave their facilities. 

When I did a basic Google search for the film, there were a few hits on eBay, but I did not see any other obvious purchase options.  If Google's AI overview is to be believed, it is available to watch through the Roku streaming platform, so could possibly be viewed on a Roku device.  

I hope the above is helpful.

Best regards,  Leslie 

 . . . . . . . 

Dear Ms. Behroozi,  I am so indebted to you.  I have looked for this film for years.  I joined the faculty 55 years ago when I graduated from MULS in 1970.  If you're interested in who submitted this strange inquiry to you, I am one of the interviewees in the law school's oral history project.  I can no longer recall the name of the course I taught in which I had my class view this powerful Forret Whitaker film, but I recall very vividly the film's treatment of some of the human costs of our criminal justice system, and especially plea bargaining.  It is indeed available on the ROKU Channel, and I intend to watch it again tonight.  You may wish to watch it yourself if you have a ROKU device.  It also features powerful portrayals by Jennifer Grey as a prosecutor, Rosie Perez as the crime victim, and Anthony LaPaglia as the defense counsel, all superb in their roles.  I was moved to try to find it again by a novel I'm reading, which I also highly recommend, Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi, a part of which involves a legal situation like that in the HBO.  The author was a practicing lawyer and judge before leaving to become a singer-songwriter and writer, believe it or not.    Thank you so much for finding this film for me.  I'm going to recommend it to my friend who turned me on to Theo of Golden.  Thanks again.    

. . . .  . .

 I later sent her an email informing her that, though ROKU lists the Criminal Justice as available, when a viewer tries to see it, he gets a Spanish-language Western film, titled Sin Justicia.  The search continues.

 

2/19/2026

 Thursday, February 19, 2026

1942 FDR ordered the detention and internment of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast

1945  The invasion of Iwo Jima

2025  Amid deteriorating relations between both countries, President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator" and said he has done a "terrible job" while warning "he is not going to have a country left" soon.

In bed at 9, awake at 5:45, up at 6.  34/44/33.

Morning meds at 11 a.m. 

Text to CBG:

I have to beg your forgiveness for making you my interlocutor for a running commentary on THEO OF GOLDEN, but it’s become clear to me that I’m kind of a lonely old man who has outlived the rest of his family and most of his friends, like the old man John Prine wrote and sang about in “Hello In There.”  You turned me on to Levi’s great novel and the novel has turned me into a Grand Rememberer, needing someone to share some thoughts with, and you’re “It.”  Forgive me.  I just finished chapter 31 in which Tony the bookkeeper shared thoughts and memories over a bottle of brandy and Tony shared his memories of Vietnam.  His were particularly gruesome and certainly worse than mine, but I was struck by some of his judgments, like the thought that, in a sense he never left Vietnam, or Vietnam never left him.  On a handful of the cars I see at the VA Medical Center on my many visits, I see a bumper sticker that reads: “Lest We Forget...Not Everyone Who Lost His Life In Vietnam Died There... Not Everyone Who Came Home From Vietnam Ever Left There."  To this day I experience guilt and shame over participating in that evil American enterprise.  I still wear my dog tags that I wore over there, but mostly like the  albatross in  the Ancient Mariner.  Another thought he voiced was about common guilt for our world in which so much evil and suffering is tolerated.  He didn’t quote Solzhenitsyn,  but could have: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that 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. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.”  And of Hannah Arendt who, more than once, professed shame at being human, a member of a species capable of doing what our species has done and keeps doing.  Thoughts like these still haunt me as a ferkrimpter old man, and this novel seems to trigger all of them, but I’ll keep reading, and learning from them.   Thanks again. 

Caren Goldberg:

I love hearing your thoughts about it. And while you may feel lonely I think your strong ability to relate to many of the characters in the book means that you are not alone in your feelings. Although the characters may be fictional the feelings are real.

Charles Clausen:

You’re right , of course, and i do find myself wondering how Allen Levi acquired such insight in human beings, into human nature.  I think he’s lived in Georgia all his life, except for a couple years studying literature in Scotland.  He’s never married, nor raised a family, which he had in common with his younger brother and whom he venerated much as I venerate Kitty.  I believe he never served in the military, especially not in a war zone.  I have to wonder where he acquired such insight and wisdom, but wherever it came from, I am glad he shared it in this novel (which I was surprised to learn was self-published!) 

Facebook entry:

Charles D. Clausen shared a memory.

It has now been 81 years since my father and about 70,000 other Marines and Navy hospitalcorpsmen landed on Iwo Jima.  I've written about it often, especially in my old age.  I think about it today as two aircraft carrier task forces approach Iran, and as the threats of military action against Greenland/Denmark, Panama, Mexico, and of course Venezuela linger in everyone's memory, threateningly.  And I can never forget that the man who makes and has made the threats never served in uniform or experienced anything like what the men on Iwo Jima experienced, nor those who served in America's too many other wars.  He plays with the lives of our fighting forces as if they were all toy soldiers which he moves around a world map, while the world wonders how Americans could have bestowed such power on such a man.

1 Year Ago

See your memories

Charles D. Clausen is  thinking about Iwo Jima

Shared with Your friends

Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day in the Battle of Iwo Jima.  I think about it every year because my father was one of the 70,000 Marines who climbed down cargo nets to ride in landing craft to the island where  5,931 of them were killed in action, died of wounds or were missing in action and presumed dead.  An additional 209 deaths occurred among the Navy corpsmen and surgeons assigned to the Marines.   I was 3 years old.  I chose this photograph, rather than Joe Rosenthal's 'iconic' photo of the flag raising on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi  because it gives a much truer picture of the slaughterhouse that Iwo became over the next 36 days.  I think of my father's days on Iwo Jima and my 234 days in South Vietnam when I hear our current commander-in-chief, whose  alleged 'bone spurs' kept him out of SVN, talk of using our military to seize control of the Panama Canal Zone and Greenland.  He also originally claimed that he might us our military in clearing the Gaza Strip of Palestinians so the US could "own" it and turn it into "the Riviera of the Middle East."  How low we have sunk in my lifetime.

 

 

2/18/2026

 Wednesday, February 18, 2026

1970 Chicago 7 defendants were found not guilty of inciting to riot

2001 FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died

2014 Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 began as protesters, riot police and unknown shooters took part in violent events in the capital, Kiev, culminating after five days in the 

2025  Senate confirmed businessman Howard Lutnick as the Secretary of Commerce in a 51–45 vote.

In bed at 9, up at 6 with a bloody nose, right nostril.  46/37/54/37.  

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Kevzara injection at 10:30 a.m.  One more to go, on March 18th.  That will, hopefully, end the more-than-a-year on Prednisone starting on May 14, 2024, and more than a year on Kevzara injections, which I started bi-weekly on January 25, 2025.  Kevzara lists a retail price of $2,238 per injection pen, with various special deals offered.  I have no idea what this bi-weekly medication would have cost me if I had not received it through the VA.  Ditto Trulicity, which I inject every week and which retails at about $500 per injection, or $26,000 per year.  How fortunate Geri and I have been that my significant medical expenses over the last almost 10 have been covered by the VA, for which I thank Abraham Lincoln ('to care for him who shall have borne the battle') and Ed Felsenthal, my lifelong good friend, now gone since June, 2024.

Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi.  Bits and snatches:

Chapter 21:  "But I guess if a work of art makes us see something familiar in a new way or makes us feel something we to have felt all along or shows us our place in the world more clearly, maybe then it qualifies as 'good [art]'.  If it makes us better somehow, maybe that's what gives it value." 

Text to CBG:

I’m on chapter 26 of the book and am enjoying it quite a bit.  I don’t know whether “enjoying” is the right word.  It’s accurate enough, but the various passages are stirring up so many thoughts and muted emotions that “enjoying” doesn’t capture all the feelings I experience reading it.  I closed the last message to you with the concluding line from “The Great Gatsby,’” and sure enough, as the plot continues I find myself beset with self-referential thoughts, remembrances, reminded of myself in Tony the bookseller, a Vietnam vet, and Asher the artist, with his interest mainly in faces, in people rather than places, and in Theo himself, with his recognition that every individual we encounter in life has a history, a story, including losses, sorrows, and regrets.  yet we pass by one another like ships in the night.  I’m reminded of the man I saw at Sendik’s a few months ago, with a T shirt that read “Everyone you encounter is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”  We try to protect ourselves by keeping those battles secret, our own and others.  I used to joke with my sister, though with a little bitterness, that our family motto should have been “The less said, the better,” one of my Dad’s frequent sayings.  I was surprised to read that Allen Levi was a lawyer before he turned to writing, and song writing.  Surprised too that he never married and apparently has no children, and that he lives with his father “family acreage” not far from Fort Benning, GA.  Three years of legal education and years of practicing law appear not to have wrung the humanity, sensitivity, and insight out of him.  I’m so thankful that you led me his novel.  When I’m done, I want to read his memoir about his brother.

2/17/2026

 Tuesday, February 17, 2026

1964 US Supreme Court ruled- 1 man 1 vote (Westberry v Sanders)

1972 British Parliament voted to join the European Economic Community

2025   Demonstrations took place at state capitols around the United States, including at Union Square in Washington, D.C., as part of the 50501 movement to protest against the second administration of President Donald Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, and Project 2025.

In bed at 9, up at 5.  34/28/42/34.

Morning meds at 7:15 a.m.

Text exchange with CBG:

I saw him this morning.  He put to rest one concern, my slow heart rate.  He said the readings were false because of my other problem, an extra heart beat every 3 or 4 beats, for which he prescribed bisoprolol daily for 4 weeks followed by another EKG.  It seems not too serious to me, but thank you for your kindness in asking about it.♥️ 

Caren Goldberg:

I’m happy to hear it’s not too serious and sounds like it can be controlled with medication. Good news.

We listened to Theo of Golden on the way to Cleveland. We’re halfway through and we really like it. I think you should give it a try! I think it’s right up your alley.

Charles Clausen:

Thanks, I just bought it on Kinkdle w/Audible.  I guess I need an uplifting something.  I confess I was kind of disappointed in the cardiologist’s visit this morning.   I’m at an age and a physical condition where what I fear most is not dying, but not dying, living as long as your Mom, Enid Powell, Geri’s brother Jimmy (91), or my grandmother (95).  A nice quick heart attack orcardiac arrest seems much preferable to me.  I find myself having some envy for TSJ and even for RHF whose heart attack relieved him at least of longer suffering with the cancer.  I feel some guilt over the grimness, but it doesn’t make it go away.  Perhaps Alan Levi’s book will.  Thanks, again.❤️

 Charles Clausen:

I'm writing to thank you again.  I listened carefully and without distractions or interruptions to the first seven chapters of the book, the ones about "St. Minnette" Prentice.  It reminded me of so much, including my sister, whom I often referred to as "St. Kitty of Englewood" or "St. Kitty of Emerald Avenue.  Minnette's description of her father reminded me a bit of my troubled relationship with my own, of course, but also of how my father differed from hers, how there was a deep-down sadness and despair in him, but also goodness and friendliness that he, for some reason, had trouble showing to Kitty and me.  And Theo's lost love of his youth brought back memories of Charlene Wegge, my first love, who dumped me when I returned from a summer of active duty in the Navy the summer of 1960.  Sometimes I say it took me a lifetime to get over it, but deep down I wonder whether I ever got over it.  All those memories, all those emotions welled up from just the first chapters of the book, the first portrait purchased by Theo.  And of course, Asher Glisson reminded me a little of myself and my pencil drawings and paintings, though I never pretend to be the kind of artist he was.  So much in life now sends my thoughts traveling back to years past.  "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  ❤️

 

2/16/2026

Monday, February 16, 2026

e4r

r5t

In bed at 9, awake at 4:10, up at 4:30.  35/27/56/33.

Morning meds at 10 a.m.    

On this day

4 years ago

Facebook

Shared with friends

Each time one of the networks shows videos from the Russian ‘Defense’ Ministry I sense my stomach churning and my spirit sinking.  The videos are propaganda, like similar videos produced by the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department.  They remind viewers of the mission of all military forces, i.e., killing people and destroying stuff.  The soldiers with their rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, mortars, and flame throwers, the tanks, artillery pieces, ships, and aircraft loaded with high explosive weapons – all are intended to kill people and destroy stuff.  The plain message is ‘cross me and risk death and destruction.’  This is true of the Russian military.  This is true of the American military.  We’re all in the Death and Destruction business.  For smaller nations, their military forces may accurately be said to be defensive, at least in terms of perceived external threats.  For imperial nations, i.e., Russia, China, and the U.S., their military forces are ‘defense forces’ only in the sense that they are maintained to ‘defend’ whatever the national leaders want to accomplish with them, which may include aggression against weaker adversaries.  Nothing has changed since Thucydides observed the “the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”  In all of this, we wonder how much it matters what any of us thinks about the pendency of yet another European war that one way or another inevitably involves the U.S.  

 On May 9, 1939, a few months before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, H. L. Mencken wrote a piece in the Baltimore Sun, that seems a bit prescient:

    "The fact that all the polls run heavily against American participation in the threatening European war is not to be taken seriously.  A secret poll taken in any of the counties principally concerned would show the same result precisely.  The overwhelming majority of Englishmen don’t want war, and hope that it will never come again, and the same thing is true of the majority of Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Poles, Russians, Romanians and Serbs.  It was true of the same people down to August 2, 1914 and of Americans down to April 6, 1917.

    But wars are not made by common folk, scratching for livings in the heat of the day; they are made by demagogues infesting palaces. . .

    A few weeks of razzle-dazzle will suffice to convert most people to the war and to intimidate and silence the stray recalcitrants who hold out . . . Thus the job of demagogy is completed and a brave and united people confronts a craven and ignominious foe.  It is not until long afterward that anyone ventures to inquire into the matter more particularly, and it is then too late to do anything about it.  The dead are still dead, the fellows who lost legs still lack them, war widows go on suffering the orneriness of their second husbands, and taxpayers continue to pay, pay, pay.  In the schools children are taught that the war was fought for freedom, the home, and God."

    Right now Vladimir Putin is the demogogue in the driver’s seat and there is no telling whether the coalition of opponents threatening sanctions will deter him from crossing the Ukrainian border meting out Death and Destruction.  What we can be sure of is the ubiquity of his government’s razzle-dazzle justifying the Death and Destruction, the innocent suffering what they must, and the whole sordid exercise being justified on all sides as a defense of “freedom, the home, and God.”

      

2/15/2026

Sunday, February 15, 2026

1936 Adolf Hitler announced the construction of the Volkswagen Beetle 

1968 John Lennon and George Harrison, plus their wives Cynthia and Pattie, and Pattie’s sister Jenny, traveled to India to study Transcendental Meditation for two months with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram; Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr joined them a few days later, Ringo only stays for 2 weeks

1975 Linda Ronstadt topped the US singles chart with 'You're No Good', and the US album chart with Heart Like A Wheel

1989 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ended as the last Soviet troops crossed the Soviet-Afghan border

1992 Jeffrey Dahmer was found sane and guilty of killing 15 boys

2025  French President Emmanuel Macron announces an emergency summit in Paris, France, between European leaders following a controversial speech given by U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in which he criticized European leadership as the worst threat to Europe, particularly for imposing too much censorship and too little control over migration. 

In bed at 9:10, awake at 4:10, up at 4:50.  34/27/50/32.

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  

The last paragraph of James Joyce's "The Dead"

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

2/14/2026

 Saturday, February 14, 2026

w3e

e4r

In be at 9:15, up at 5:45.  30/42/29, mostly clear skies.

Morning meds at 10 a.m.  

Two years ago today, I wrote:        

Rules for the Ruling Class is a long essay in the January 29 print edition of The New Yorker by staff writer Even Osnos.  He discusses social class in America, elitism, status, and wealth inequality.  It reminds me of so many things, but primarily the lottery of birth and my favorite little poem of William Blake: ' Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night. . . . 

Excerpts from the essay:

The class divide was widening once more, and the greatest gap was the one separating Americans who could protect themselves with money from those who could not. Fussell quoted the working-class father of a man killed in Vietnam: “You bet your goddam dollar I’m bitter. It’s people like us who give up our sons for the country."

The crux of [Peter Turchin's] findings: a nation that funnels too much money and opportunity upward gets so top-heavy that it can tip over. In the dispassionate tone of a scientist assessing an ant colony, Turchin writes, “In one-sixth of the cases, elite groups were targeted for extermination. The probability of ruler assassination was 40 percent.” 

Under Franklin D. Roosevelt (Groton, Harvard), the U.S. raised taxes, took steps to protect unions, and established a minimum wage. The costs, Turchin writes, “were borne by the American ruling class.” Between 1925 and 1950, the number of American millionaires fell—from sixteen hundred to fewer than nine hundred. Between the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-seventies, a period that scholars call the Great Compression, economic inequality narrowed, except among Black Americans, who were largely excluded from those gains. 

But by the nineteen-eighties the Great Compression was over. As the rich grew richer than ever, they sought to turn their money into political power; spending on politics soared. The 2016 Republican Presidential primary involved seventeen contestants, the largest field in modern history.

Turchin ends his book [“End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration.”] with a sobering vision. Using data to model scenarios for the future, he concludes, “At some point during the 2020s, the model predicts, instability becomes so high that it starts cutting down the elite numbers.” He likens the present time to the run-up to the Civil War. America could still relearn the lessons of the Great Compression—“one of the exceptional, hopeful cases”—and act to prevent a top-heavy society from toppling. When that has happened in history, “elites eventually became alarmed by incessant violence and disorder,” he writes. “And we are not there—yet.” 

Left undisturbed, the most powerful among us will take steps to stay in place, a pattern that sociologists call the “iron law of oligarchy.”  . . . Democracy is meant to insure that the élite continue to circulate. But no democracy can function well if people are unwilling to lose power—if a generation of leaders, on both the right and the left, becomes so entrenched that it ages into gerontocracy; if one of two major parties denies the arithmetic of elections; if a cohort of the ruling class loses status that it once enjoyed and sets out to salvage it.