Thursday, May 14, 2026
1948 David Ben-Gurion declared Israel independent from British administration, Golda Meir one of the signatories, and the US granted Israel de facto recognition
1955 Warsaw Pact was signed by the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania
1975 "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles," written and directed by Chantal Ackerman and starring Delphine Seyrig, premiered at Cannes
1995 Dalai Lama proclaimed 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima the 11th reincarnation of Panchen Lama, Tibet's 2nd most senior spiritual leader
2025 Pakistan said that more than 1 million Afghans have been deported back to Afghanistan since November 2023 as Pakistan intensified a crackdown on illegal immigration.
2025 Argentine president Javier Milei ordered restrictions on immigration to Argentina, saying that immigrants were bringing "chaos and abuse" to Argentina.
In bed by 9, not up until 6:20! 0630 128/67/58. 107 203.6; 42/59/38 and mostly sunny.
Morning meds at 9:10 a.m., and (roughly) half-dose of Bisoprolol at 6:45.
Fredrik Backman catches us up short, gobsmacks, surprises, shocks, amazzes, thrills, or distresses us. For example, this short passage which I read while resting before turning on the BP machine:
"Have many people you've loved died?" she asks out of nowhere.
"Yes."
""I've been lucky, really," she says.
"How do you mean?"
"I haven't loved many people."
That exchange made me pause and think. And then, Ted said to Louisa:
"What I hate most isn't that people die. What I hate most is that they're dead. That I'm alive without them."
Which made me pause again. Again think again. It seems like I'm pausing and thinking on every page or every other page. I mentioned to CBG in my text that I have the feeling that I should be taking notes as I read since there are so many notable passages as I move through the novel, but then I googled 'notable quotes Fredrik Backman' and found Goodreads lists 6,243 quotes😮!
Here's just a couple of other quick-hitters that gave me pause:
“Adults often think that self-confidence is something a child learns, but little kids are by t
ans
“Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that’s pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.”
He also slips into the casual conversations of his teenagers, questions that philosophers have pondered for ages, like this throwaway piece of a conversation between Louisa and Fish:\
"Isn't it like, totally unbelievable that we even exist? So it won't be a tragdy when we don't exist anymore! It's just cool, really cool, that we happened at all."
As much as I enjoy Backman's writing, I have at least some sympathy for the reviewer I read who found that he was annoyed that Backman is 'constantly trying to score. . . . every metaphor has to be grand, every point sharp, every pun as witty as possible.' I'm half-way through the book now and notice this tendency especially with the 17/18 year old Louisa and the 14 year old Joar, both of whom are incredibly gifted masters of metaphor and aphorisms. That quibble aside, I love this guy's writing and the characters he creates. It is interesting that in My Friends he is so focused on abused and neglected children, reminding me of my now-deceased brother-in-law Jim Reck and, in a very different way, of my cousin Doug, about whom I write below.
My old pal LOA called this morning and we chatted about some health and other matters for almost 20 minutes. It's a treat schmoozing with him. I wish we weren't separated by so many hundreds of miles, but grateful that we can stay in touch by telephone, text, and email.
The white-crowned sparrows and red-breasted grosbeaks have become regular visitors, making me wonder if they'll be here for the summer or if this is just a stopover. I'm advised by the fellow at Wild Birds Unlimited that they are only stopping over here, on their way to Canada. 😥
The atmosphere this week at Riveredge Nature Center in Saukville is akin to a hospital maternity ward. Excited. Determined. A little worried and sleep deprived, too. "We've got babies," Mary Holleback, Riveredge's citizen science manager, said May 13. "A fresh, new start. We're crossing our fingers from here." These young ones are not swaddled in blankets but the fisheries equivalent: swimming in temperature-controlled tanks and raceways. They are lake sturgeon, the most recent hatchlings of one of Wisconsin's most ancient and revered species, and the focus of "Return the Sturgeon," an effort to restore the species in the Milwaukee River.
The work is a partnership between Riveredge, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At its core, it involves the DNR obtaining sturgeon eggs from spawning fish on the Wolf River in central Wisconsin and transferring them to a hatchery trailer at Riveredge. Holleback then leads a crew of more than 30 volunteers over the coming months as they clean tanks, feed and monitor the developing sturgeon. If all goes well, in late September about 1,000 sturgeon will be ready for release into the Milwaukee harbor.
The sturgeon trailer at Riveredge and the outdoor filters and other equipment used to keep their tanks clean and properly aerated. The water in the tank was pumped up from the nearby Milwaukee River. The protocol for nurturing the young sturgeon and keeping their tanks clean was detailed and rigorously followed.
In those early days of retirement, I also did regular volunteering in "hippotherapy" venues. From Wikipedia: "Hippotherapy is a physical, occupational, and speech therapy that utilizes the natural gait and movement of a horse to provide motor, and sensory input. It is based on improvement of neurologic functions, and sensory processes, and used for patients with physical, and mental disorders." I worked exclusively with kids, ssome of whom had quite severe disabilities. I enjoyed both the kids and therapists I worked with, and working with the horses. It took me back to my early teenage years when my cousin Doug and I would take CTA buses as far as we could out to the rural area outside southside Chicago to where there was a horse stable where we would rent horses to ride, or work in the stables cleaning stalls, etc., to earn riding time. I never lost I love of horses that I developed then, 70-some years ago. Those were the years before Doug attended De La Salle Catholic high school in Chicago, got into trouble, dropped out of school, joined the Navy, where he also got into trouble including brig time, got out of the Navy and got into trouble in civilian life, including time in incarceration in a California prison and an unknown number of jails.. Doug and I were each other's best friend for years before our high school years when he went his way with a lot of bad fortune, and I went mine, with a lot of good fortune. He had an absent father but a good mother, my Aunt Monica, and his maternal grandparents living right upstairs, yet he was troubled from the time he was a very little kid. He was a bed wetter and used to throw tantrums, lying on the floor, screaming. His brother and sister were 'well adjusted,' neither one of them troubled, at least in any way that was visible to my sister and me, or our parents. Each of them made a good adult life for themselves, their spouses, and their children, yet Doug's life was a train wreck from the beginning. "Every morn and every night/ Some are born to sweet delieght./ Every night and every morn / Some to misery are born./. Some are born to sweet delight / and some are born to endless night." William Blake. I pause as I think back on those days and all the days that followed for us five first cousins: Jim, Chris, me, Doug, and Kitty. Now Kitty and then Christine have died, we three 'boys' hang on in our mid-80s. We grew up together, but are no longer close. A lot to think about.
Kitty, Doug, Aunt Monica, me, Christine, and Jim on my Dad's 80th birthday, September 2000, at The Family Table restaurant in North Port, Florida, at a happy moment. Just a few minutes after my Dad took this snapshot, Doug and Jim were at each other's throats (not literally) over some comment that Doug made, and their mother distraught. Later that evening, Doug ended up in the Sarasota County jail, and Jim and I bailed him out the next day. He had gotten obstreperous at his girfriend's house, she called the police, and Doug refused to cooperate with the responding police, who arrested him. The story of his life.
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