4/22/2026

 Wednesday, April 22, 2026

1954 Senate Army-McCarthy televised hearings began

2021 President Joe Biden pledged to cut US carbon emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030 at a virtual climate summit

2025  Marco Rubio said that the State Department would cut 15% of its staff and that the office of the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights will be abolished.

In bed at 9:35, awake and up at 1:43, read a little of The Idiot until 3 when I moved to the tv room, ate two pieces of bread with preserves, hoping to fall asleep on the recliner.   I fell back to sleep around 4 (?) and woke up at 7:15.  

Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.  including 1/2 dose of Bisoprolol.

Middle of night insomnia from thinking about the catheter ablation.

The Idiot.  I'm 80% through the novel with mixed feelings about it.  A good deal of it seems contrived, partly the result of its initial serialization for magazine publication, but much of it reminds me of a soap opera, the way the characters interact and the pivotal roles of two women, Natasia Phillipovna and and Aglaya Ivanovna.  One of the themes in the book is the heightened awareness of and appreciation of life when one knows death is at hand or near.  It's found early on when Dostoevski relates a tale of a prisoner condemend to death at a date and time certain who receives a reprieve shortly before his scheduled execution.  It appears again later in the character of Ippolyte (or Hippolyte) who is slowly dying of consumption, or TB.  It's reflected also in the character of Prine Myshkin himself, the hero or protagonist, who is an epileptic.  Ippolyte and Myshkins are opposites; Myshkin seeing all around him the beauty in life. its splendor and glory, Ippolyte seeing only meaninglessness, futility all around him.

Myshkin sees the robin and ever-renewing life; Ippolyte sees the tombstone atop a rotting corpse

Afternoon errands had me at the Saukville WalMart for oranges, grapes, scallions, cantaloupe, seed cakes for the birds, Blink dry eye supplement, 3-way light bulbs, waterproof outdoor tape, and outdoor silicone caulk.

Depleted US stockpiles.  Center for Strategic and International Studies:  45% of precision strike missiles, 50% of THAAD missiles, and 50% of Patriot Air Defense Interceptor missiles.   This is a major problem.  Hegseth and Trump have been lying about the US having no problem in terms of running out of weapons, especially high-tech, high-cost weapons that take years to produce.  These leader have seriously diminished our national security in pursuit of a bellicose pipe dream.

From the current issue of Harper's Magazine, The Old Guard, by Samuel Moyn:

In Greek myth, Eos falls in love with Tithonus. She is the goddess of the dawn. He is a Trojan prince, yet still a mere mortal. Eos asks Zeus to give her mate the gift of eternal life—­but, foolishly, she forgets to ask for eternal youth too.

Tithonus never dies; he just grows older and older. “Ruthless age,” goes the Homeric hymn recounting his story, is “dreaded even by the gods.” Tithonus becomes more decrepit and wizened with each passing year. Eventually, when he can no longer move, Eos has to shut him away, in a place where “he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all.” Eternal life amid the decline of one’s faculties is not a blessing but a curse. “Me only cruel immortality / Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,” Tithonus complains in Alfred Tennyson’s rendition of the myth (published in these pages in 1860), in a rare moment of lucidity that emerges from his everlasting gibberish.

The story of Tithonus no longer feels so outlandish, because our society postpones death to an unprecedented degree. Unlike immortals, we still pass. But the great majority of us, and not only the bad, now die old. In whatever nursing home he was parked in, Tithonus must have looked much like we increasingly do, as doctors continuously defer our mortality. We are approaching a time when a legion of Tithonuses will live in our midst.

From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “As I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
“I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “And your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”