Tuesday, April 14, 2026
1536 King Henry VIII expropriated minor monasteries
1865 Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre
1973 Acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray resigned after admitting that he destroyed evidence in the Watergate scandal
1983 President Ronald Reagan signed $165 billion Social Security rescue
1986 Desmond Tutu was elected Anglican Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa
1989 In the Iran-Contra trial, Oliver North's case went to the jury
2020, Donald Trump froze funding for the World Health Organization pending a review for mistakes in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and for being "China-centric."
2021 President Biden said, "It's time to end America's longest war," confirming his decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by Sept 11
2025 Donald Trump suggested deporting United States citizens to the controversial Terrorism Confinement Center prison in El Salvador, despite the unconstitutionality of the proposal.
In bed 9:20, awakended at 1:39 by my phone with the Tornado Warning below, back in by 3ish, up again at 8, 0300 129/68/62/112 204.2;61/5670/51 with more thunderstorms expected around 5 p.m.
Morning meds at ? a.m. Ranolazine at 8:10 a.m. and p.m.
Critical 1:39 AM IMMINENT THREAT ALERT. National Weather Service TORNADO WARNING in this area until 2:00 AM CDT. Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest level of a sturdy building. If you are outdoors, in a mobile home, or in a vehicle, move to the closest substantial shelter and lprotect yourself from flying debris. Check media.
Geri and I each received the THREAT ALERT on our phones and were out of bed by 1:40. I seriously considered ignoring it, staying in bed, but thought of Geri in the next room, so I got out of bed and checked on her only to see her up and reading her phone message. I suggested staying in the hallway, away from all windows, but she wanted to head to the basement, which we did, and where we stayed until 2:05. It reminded me of a similar situation we experienced in our home outside Saukville, when my Dad had first lived with us. I remember thinking how ironic (wrong word) it was that he had left Florida, the land of severe weather, to come to peaceful Wisconsin only to be gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to seek shelter from a tornado, which never occurred. The photo is a muffed shot of Geri in the basement in her pajamas wrapped under a blanket awaiting the 'all clear.'
Even with the very welcome second round of sleep after the interruption, I'm feeling a bit out of it and loopy/spacey, and probably wont be writing much today, because I'm not thinking very much or very clearly today. Here is something I posted a year ago today that is worth considering again:
How to Be a Happy 85-Year-Old (Like Me) by Roger Rosenblatt in this morning's New York Times:
It took me 85 years to learn these things, but I believe they’re applicable at any age.
1. Nobody’s thinking about you. It was true 25 years ago, and it’s true today. Nobody is thinking about you. Nobody ever will. Not your teacher, not your minister, not your colleagues, not your shrink, not a soul. It can be a bummer of a thought. But it’s also liberating. That time you fell on your butt in public? That dumb comment you made at dinner last week? That brilliant book you wrote? No one is thinking about it. Others are thinking about themselves. Just like you.
2. Make young friends
3. Try to see fewer than five doctors. . . . It’s not the doctors I dislike; rather, it’s the debilitating feeling of moving from one to another to another like an automobile on an assembly line. If the end product were a Lamborghini, I’d be fine. But I’m a Studebaker. I know all these doctor visits are prudent and inevitable. But when one’s social life consists of Marie, who takes my blood, and an M.R.I. technician named Lou, it’s hardly a good sign.
4. Get a dog.
5. Don’t hear the cheers.
6. Everyone’s in pain. If you didn’t know that before, you know it now. People you meet casually, those you’ve known all your life, the ones you’ll never see — everyone’s in pain. If you need an excuse for being kind, start with that.
7. Listen for Bob Marley.
8. Join a gang. This advice is meant for men more than women, because women are always part of one group or another. The value of socializing comes to women naturally, which is why the world would be better if women ran it. They know how to get along in groups. Men, on the other hand, are solitary, static things. Generals without wars, astride iron horses. They don’t band together naturally, but they ought to, especially when too much solitude leads to self-conscious gloom. Join a gang — that’s what I say. I do not mean a motorcycle gang, simply a group of guys who share an interest. Joining a gang also serves society at large. It keeps us off the streets.
9. On regrets. They’re part of life. Learn to live with them.
10. Start and end every day by listening to Louis Armstrong.
My thoughts: #1 is great advice. We tend to forget that we are all self-centered. How could it be otherwise. We need it to survive, plus we usually can't help it. I' m thinking of a fearsome poem by Christina Rossetti, Who Shall Deliver Me?
God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.All others are outside myself,
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run! Death runs apace.If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease, and rest, and joys:Myself, arch-traitor to myself;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me,
Break off the yoke and set me free.
#2 is great advice also but also, easier said than done. Ditto # 3. I have my primary care doc, my rheumatology doc, my infectious disease doc, my heart rhythm doc, my physical medicine doc, my mental health doc (worries about geriatric depression and suicide, big VA concerns), my eye doc, my urologist, and various other on-call specialists. I'm always living with the question of whether to follow Zeke Emanuel;s advice.
#4. I'd like to, but Geri's dead against it and she does almost all the 'heavy lifting' concerning caring for a dog, as she did with Lilly. I sorely miss our Lilly.
#5. He's referring to Bill Russell's response to his daughter's question about how he copes with all the boos he used to receive. He said he didn't hear them. She asked how he could do that and he said it was because he didn't hear the cheers. He didn't pay any attention to either, just to getting his work done well.
#6. Terribly important. It reminds me of the T shirt of the guy at Sendik's: Everyone you encounter is fighting a battle you know nothing about. How easily we forget, or just don't care.
#7, The author lived in NYC, in an apartment building with a doorman. The author walked his dog every morning around 4 a.m. One morning in the buildings lobby, he hearded a disembodied beautiful voice singing Bob Marley's One Love. He asked the doorman if he had heard it and the doorman answered, "That was me." Thereafter, he never saw the doorman without thinking of his wonderful hidden talent and encouraged his readers to wonder about all the hidden talents in all the people we meet in our lives.
#8. I wish I could 'join a gang.' Most of my best friends are dead or live in other states. The author points out how bad we men are at socializing compared to women. Geri is on the phone with family orl friends every day, enjoying and sharing their company, their advice, their support. For me, it's only rarely.
#9. The advice that may be the most difficult for me to follow. I tend to wallow in my regrets, sometimes to be overpowered by them. It's why I so often think of W. B. Yeats' Vaccillation, the fifth stanza:
Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
#10. Louie's certainly not a bad choice, or even better, the great duets by Louie and Ella Fitzgerald. I guess it's a signifier of my psyche I that gravitate towards the blues, soft jazz, torch songs, and requiem mass music . . . May choirs of angels lead you . . . See #9.😞
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