Tuesday, March 321, 2026
1889 The Eiffel Tower officially opened, designed by Gustave Eiffel
1968 President Johnson authorized a troop surge in Vietnam, bringing the total number of US military to a peak of 549,500, and announced that he would not seek re-election
1971 William Calley was sentenced to life for the My Lai Massacre
1989 Donald Trump purchased Eastern Airline's Northeast Shuttle
2020 British pensioner Robert Weighton became the world's oldest man at 112 years
2021 New York state legalized the recreational use of marijuana
2025 Newly elected Prime Minister of Greenland Jens-Frederik Nielsen rules out Greenland joining the United States while he is in office.
In bed at 8:45, up at 4:20. 0435 144/69/67 116 205.6 46/51/39 SEVERE WEATHER ALERT: SW winds on the northern edge of rain will gust to 40 to 50 mph early this morning. these gusts should last only 30 to 60 minutes.
Morning meds at 5:30 a.m. Ranolazine at 5:15 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Symptoms. It's hard to believe how tired I am every day, how often I stretch out on a recliner to rest or nap. On the other hand, the intense lightheadness has significantly improved, making me think it was a temporary side effect of the Ranolazine. fingers crossed.
A pencil drawing I did several years ago of a Vietnames mother fleeing with her children
Yesterday, I wrote about war crimes, and this morning I read this from my journal/blog three years ago today:
I finished the article/book. It is a short but devastating read. In the end, each of the 4 defendants had his sentence for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 19-year-old Phan Thi Mao either reduced or dismissed. It reminds me of course of Lt. William Calley and the slaughter at My Lai. We forget the role that racism played in the war, how little we valued the lives of the Vietnamese, how unable to tell friend from foe among them, how free we felt to force them to leave their homes and rice fields to move to 'strategic hamlets,' how entitled we felt to drop high explosive and incendiary bombs on them, to spray toxic defoliants over their land, to shoot artillery shells and M16/A-15 bullets into their bodies. Part of Phan Thi Mao's skull was blown off by the M16 rounds shot into her 19-year-old body. Her body moldered for three weeks on Hill 192 before the Army forensics team picked up the parts of her body as evidence and carried her away in a body bag. All of this happened in 1966, the year I left Vietnam. I remember hearing rumors of Marines throwing captured VCs out of helicopters and of other Marines collecting severed ears of Vietnamese KIAs. How cavalier we were about what we were doing to the Vietnamese, to ourselves. How indifferent.
A pencil drawing I did from a photograph ofa terrified young Vietnamese woman and her infant
This morning, I can't remember anything of the article or book (Casualties of War) that prompted the longer reflection of which the above was the conclusion.
Playing with fewer marbles. I went to the library this morning to pick up some state tax forms. I got there at (:30 to learn that it opened at 10. I stopped at the BP station on the corner of Port Road and Brown Deer to fill my half-full tank, figuring gas prices were more likely to rise than to fall. I pulled into southern bank of pumps and realized I had pulled in with my gas tank on the side of the car away from the pumps. I backed out and moved to the northern bank of pumps and realized I had parked so far away from the pump, the hose could barely reached it. After filling up at $3.90 a gallon, I drove onto Port Road to go home, when I realized I hadn't screwed my gas cap back on. The older I grow, the fewer marbles in my sack.
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