Tuesday, March 17, 2026
St. Patrick's Day
1932 German police raided Adolf Hitler's Nazi headquarters
1945 Marine Charles E. Clausen departed Iwo Jima after 27 days
1966 US submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb on the Mediterranean sea floor
In bed at 9:30, awake and on to the LZBB at 2:15. Rested till 3:30 till weigh-in and out to TV room at 3:45. 10/-7/21/7 120/69/61 111 207.2
Morning meds at a.m.
Congestive heart failure. This cardiac condition seems to be becoming more of a problem, not in terms of fluid retention (as manifested in unexpected weight gain), but in terms of 'the woozes," all four types of which I have been experiencing the last several days, mainly the sensation of being about to fall down. I write these words at 4:15 a.m.; let's see how I do today. I usually experience the sensation when I am on my feet, walking or doing some kitchen or other chore.
Recent pithy comments that say so much: (1) This is not our war. Words spoken by the German Defense Minister in rejecting Donald Trump's pathetic call for assistance from other nations in forcing open the Strait of Hormuz. (2) I think I can do whatever I want with it, referring to the sovereign nation of Cuba, about which Donald Trump said yesterday, I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do whatever I want with it. For the past three months, the United States has choked off Cuba’s access to foreign oil, blocking shipments from Venezuela and elsewhere. Frequent blackouts have followed — including the broad power outage on Monday — and hospitals have had to postpone some procedures, deepening a humanitarian crisis that has also involved food shortages and has led to rare protests on the island.
I still feel this. How can we not be blown away, mystified, by the merest fact of anything existing? A grain of sand, a boulder, a goldfinch, the Taj Mahal, ourselves? I've often written over the last few years, in these journal pages, that I don't believe in God, at least not the God that was fed to me with my pablum as a child, that was fed to me in my religion classes by the Sisters of Providence and the Irish Christian Brothers, and in my theology classes by the Jesuits and in my philosophy classes by the lay Thomists and Scholastics hired by the Jesuits to continue the indocrination process started centuries ago to preserve and transmit "the Deposit of Faith," entrusted to the Magisterium, or the exclusive teaching authority of the Church, i.e., the Pope and bishops. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, and His eye is on the sparrow, and The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate. But I lit a candle this morning as I sat alone in the predawn darkness, and I looked at it and thought of my sister Kitty, of my mother and my father, of Tom St. John, Ed Felsenthal, David Branch, and even of my Uncle Jim, who taught me how to play catch, to ride my first bicycle and to drive his panel truck. Am I just remembering them, or mysteriously praying to them and for them? What's that all about? Whazupwidat? It's all a Mystery, isn't it?
Thoughts from my journal on this date in 2023:
Science, religion, poetry, and mystery. I have long thought that religion, theology, God, and scripture can only be apprehended, if at all, in the same way we apprehend poetry, with a sense of Mystery underlying all of it, not Fantasy, but Mystery. I am reminded of this thought in reading Marilynne Robinson's essay in the 12/22/22 issue of NYRB "A Theology of the Present Moment." She addresses the ultimate question - why is there something rather than nothing. And she acknowledges "Space, time, light, gravity—all of these elude understanding, radically and profoundly." I joked about the Mystery of 'creation ex nihilo' when I created this Slogthrop Imponderables and Incommensurables blog 15 years ago as a repository of the then-many comments I posted to WaPo news stories during the George W. Bush administration using the pseudonym P. Bosley Slogthrop:
"Boz has been a permanent resident of Bosky Dells Home for Broken-Down Old Lawyers since he became deranged pondering what he calls the “Slogthopian Conundrum,” i.e., that nothing must be something. Boz began losing sleep after hearing Billy Preston sing “Nuthin’ from nuthin’ leaves nuthin’ . . . You gotta have somethin’ to be with me . . .” He started perseverating ‘nuthin’ from nuthin, nuthin’ from nuthin’’. His fevered brain reasoned “You can’t take away nothing, for there would be nothing to take away! Ergo, nothing must really be SOMETHING! But if nothing = something, must it not follow that SOMETHING = NOTHING???” Night after night, day after day, for weeks on end, old Boz pondered the paradox – nothing is something, something is nothing – until at last he was led bleary-eyed and blathering from his local Taco Bell to be committed to Bosky Dells where he spends his bleary days and restless nights posting comments to stories in the Washington Post and wherever else he can squeeze a comment. The old duffer's schizophrenia is sometimes under control but rarely so when he writes."
Boz's name was created as a corruption of "[Tyrone] Slothrop," from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. 'Sloth' was changed to 'Slog' in reference to a controversial memo written by SecDef Donald Rumsfeld in which he wrote: 'It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.'' 'P. Bosley' started out as 'Percy Bysshe' after you-know-who and I changed 'Bysshe' to 'Bosley' after Tom Bosley who played Richie's father in the Happy Days sitcom of yore, ending up with the ridiculously pompous P. Bosley Slogthrop.
But back to Marilynne Robinson's essay in which she bravely works to relate God and quantum physics. I have struggled to do what she does, i.e., to have some minimal comprehension of God and of subatomic physics. She undoubtedly succeeds more than I have. I struggle with her essay ex necessitate, as when she writes: "I will mention one more thing that is known and proven, just another observable phenomenon from the point of view of younger physicists, already put to work in industry: quantum entanglement. If a photon is split in two, a change in either half will occur simultaneously in the other half at any distance—across the universe, in theory. I know that other particles can be entangled. I have no idea what this means. Basically, however, in its nonlocal expression, change can occur in physical objects, the entangled halves of a photon, unmediated by space or time—that is, as if there were no space or time. What are we to make of that? Dr. Johnson’s rationalist boot struck the irrefragable stone, which flew a distance proportionate to the angle of the blow, the weight of the stone, and the force expended. Textbook causality. It has worked so well. But it seems that reality has other options. Space and time are now being thought about as the effects of entanglement. This is all too complex and counterintuitive for me to attempt to enlarge on, heaven knows." She goes on, but my mind is boggled by all of this. What exactly is a photon? What is matter? What is mass? What is energy? What is spacetime? What is space? What is time? What is God? I can only repeat what I wrote to start this piece: "I have long thought that religion, theology, God, and scripture can only be apprehended, if at all, in the same way we apprehend poetry, with a sense of Mystery underlying all of it, not Fantasy, but Mystery."
I still feel this. How can we not be blown away, mystified, by the merest fact of anything existing? A grain of sand, a boulder, a goldfinch, the Taj Mahal, ourselves? I've often written over the last few years, in these journal pages, that I don't believe in God, at least not the God that was fed to me with my pablum as a child, that was fed to me in my religion classes by the Sisters of Providence and the Irish Christian Brothers, and in my theology classes by the Jesuits and in my philosophy classes by the lay Thomists and Scholastics hired by the Jesuits to continue the indocrination process started centuries ago to preserve and transmit "the Deposit of Faith," entrusted to the Magisterium, or the exclusive teaching authority of the Church, i.e., the Pope and bishops. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, and His eye is on the sparrow, and The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate. But I lit a candle this morning as I sat alone in the predawn darkness, and I looked at it and thought of my sister Kitty, of my mother and my father, of Tom St. John, Ed Felsenthal, David Branch, and even of my Uncle Jim, who taught me how to play catch, to ride my first bicycle and to drive his panel truck. Am I just remembering them, or mysteriously praying to them and for them? What's that all about? Whazupwidat? It's all a Mystery, isn't it?
Fateful Anniversary. Twenty years ago tonight, Geri and I were in Santa Rosa, California, in beautiful Sonoma County wine country. We were there for my long interview for the position of communications director for the Diocese of Santa Rosa. The diocese was scandal-plagued and for a number of reasons, I withdrew my application for the job. What I am remembering today however, is not the long interviewing, but rather sitting in an eatery with Geri watching George W. Bush deliver his fateful address to the nation about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, "WMD", and giving Saddam Hussein and his two sons 48 hours to leave Iraq. "Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing." We all know what followed: our hubristic "shock and awe" bombardment and invasion, discovery of no 'weapons of mass destruction,' our long and controversial occupation, and the Middle East in seemingly permanent turmoil, with Muslim refugees flooding Europe and elsewhere. A catastrophic tragedy, brought to the world by the 3 amigos, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. I remember listening to the speech and thinking we learned nothing in Vietnam. Now it's 20 years later and the Middle East is still a mess, with American influence diminishing and Chinese influence growing. The Taliban utterly defeated us in Afghanistan, Bashar al-Assad and the Russians prevailed over our interests in Syria. The Iranians are ever closer to developing their own 'WMD.' And even Israel is involved in an existential struggle internally with what passes for democracy on the line. Obama was largely quiescent when Russia seized and annexed Crimea, remembering the backlash to the Iraq fiasco (which played a significant role in getting him elected) and Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into a predominantly anti-internationalist, anti-globalist party of near-isolationists who have more affection for Vladimir Putin than for Joe Biden. I believe that much of what has happened in the U.S. and in the world over the last 20 years was set in motion by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policies underlying that stupid "you've got 48 hours to get out of town" speech 20 years ago tonight. How stupid and feckless we can be. Alas.
Trip to the Apple Store. I finally bit the bullet and bought a new MacBook Air. My most recent one has been booting me off our wifi network at home relentlessly, driving me nuts when I'm surfing the internet, doing research, or writing in this journal. Two previous trips to the Genius Bar didn't fix the problem. Today I was helped by an Irish colleen named Margaret Rose, who ran a more throrough diagnostics test and learned that my battery was shot and needed to be replaced, and the screen also needed to be replaced because of the right-side 20% of it going blewie. The cost for those two items would be more than $700 and that. along with whatever she did today, might not fix the problem of the computer disconnecting me from the wifi. So I bought a new one with one terabyte of storage and 512 gigabytes of RAM for more than $1300. I didn't trade in the old one for fear of losing photos, text messages with Kitty, etc. I can bring the old one in within a few days to trade it in for a $300 credit.
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