Saturday, May 2, 2026
1929 Billie Holiday (14) and her mother were arrested for prostitution following a raid on a brothel in Harlem, New York City
1938 Thornton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize "Our Town
1949 Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman"
1978 Sharon Celek Kevil was born
2025 A Gaza-bound activist humanitarian aid ship catches fire and issues an SOS after what its organizers alleged was an Israeli drone attack off the coast of Malta in international waters.
2025 Donald Trump signs an executive order calling for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop directly funding NPR and PBS, and for government agencies to stop indirectly funding them.
In bed at 7with bad back pain again, right side, up at 6. 0625 145/78/51 117 205.4; 35/51/32, mostly sunny.
Morning meds at 7:30 a.m., and half dose of Bisoprolol at 6:43 a.m.
My day started with a text from Sarah: "The boys would like to say 'good morning!'
Anne Clausen:
Good morning, Max and Freddy! What big boys you are now. Very handsome as well.
Now for something REALLY handsome: that bread. To die for! (I wish Maria were here to see it. She always lived your baking adventures!)
Chuck, I wish you well with your catheter ablation. I hope it is successful and that there are no problems. I also hope your overnight stay is warm and comfy. Take care.
“Liked” not “lived” in the sentence about Maria.
Charles Clausen:
Thanks, Anne. I very much appreciate your good wishes. It’ll be my third hospital stay this year, plus two day surgeries and a few ER visits. As they say, not for wimps. I hope you are doing well.
Unintended consequences. This morning's New York Times includes a feature story on Japanese bathhouses, or sento, Not Even Japanese Bathhouses Are Immune From Shocks of Iran War, by River Akira Davis and Kiuko Notoya. It relates that public bathhouses, an already diminishing institution in Japan in our era of private bathtubs and showers in private homes, are in danger of going out of business because of the high cost of oil due to Netanyahu's and Trump's war on Iran. Reading the article and seeing its photos brings back memories of my too-short stays in Japan and then on Okinawa in 1965 and 1966. Most of my time in Japan was spent in the town of Iwakuni, about 25 miles south of Hiroshima, where there is a Marine Corps Air Station, a former Japanese Imperial Air Force base. The orders overseas that I received at MCAS Yuma, AZ, designated the Marine Air Control Squadron at Iwakuni as my destination, but by the time I arrived there, the unit had already been deployed to the huge air base outside Danang, South Vietnam. There was a tiny rear echelon still at Iwakuni under the charge of my buddy from Yuma, Warrant Officer Ron Kendall, and Ron appointed me the investigating officer for an accidental death of an enlisted man in our unit. His head had been crushed as he tried to repair his car. That investigation, and the scarcity of air transport equipment, kept me in Iwakuni and away from Vietnam for about 3 weeks. I returned a few months later to deal with the dress uniforms and other stuff I had shipped from the States for my 13 month tour of duty, unaccompanied by family. That visit was supposed to be for only 2 or 3 days, but ended up taking a week because of "space unavailable" for the return trip to RVN. Still later, probably in 1966, I was sent on temporary duty for a week to the huge American naval bases at Yokosuka, 35 miles south of Yokohama. Yokosuka was and is the largest US naval installation in the world, and I was sent there to attend "Crypto school," i.e, to learn all I could about crytography in a week. It was part of my duties as the Top Secret Control Officer for Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 1 in Danang. I wish I could say I learned much about Japanese life and culture during my 4 or 5 weeks in Japan, but alas, I didn't. I Yokosuka I spent all of my time working inside the moutain innards where the Crypto School was located, or resting in the BOQ, and in Iwakuni, when we weren't working or sleeping, we were usually in the Officers' Club on base or in the officers' bar in town, and the shadow of Vietnam hung over everything and everywhere. I did, however, get to more than one bathhouse and more than one massage parlor, usually as part of recovering from hangovers from the night before. So I learned that the Japanese are pretty fastidious about cleanliness and that they think the American practice of getting into a tub to clean up is ass-backwards. They clean up by washing and showering before they get into a tub. The tub is for soaking and socializing. I was reminded of this, and so much more, by the article in this morning's Times. I was reminded, too, to telling my Dad, once, that I enjoyed my time in Japan and the little time I got to spend with Japanese people, and his reaction. After Iwo Jima, and all his experiences in the Marine during World War II, he had no use for Japan or its people. Wars do that to people, though in the case of Vietnam, there was often an unavoidable ambivalence because, after all, we were there to help the Vietnamese, right? Kind of like George III was helping the colonists, some of whom were rebelling against him because "when push comes to shove, I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love." But I deviate from the point: Japan's bathhouses are in danger of finally disappearing because of Bibi Netanyahu's and Donald Trump's war against Iran. Such a small world we live in where such unintended consequences occur. Or will they disappear because only the very old still use them, people my age and will they ultimately disappear with those very people, who still enjoyed soaking in a tub of 104° water while schmoozing with the neighbors rather than peering into a smartphone or a computer screeen?
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I've started rereading this early book of James Joyce. I'm not sure why, but I think it's to re-exerience his description of growing up Irish Catholic, as I did. I'm just about through with the first chapter and I'm getting my fill of it, at least in the parts where he describes school masters inflicting corporal punishment on school boys , sometimes for misbehavior but also for failing to accurately conjugate Latin verbs or to decline Latin nouns, pronouns, adjectives, or adverbs. Oh, those good old days of Brother Hennessey telling us to "face the birdies" as he whacked us on the ass with his drumstick, or Brother O'Keefe smacking us across our hands with his thick ruler-thing, or Brother Charles Borromeo Irwin hitting the back of our heads for any reason whatsoever. Or poor young Brother Comack who almost broke his hand punching the blackboard in anger because he some poor bastard wasn't able to answer his question in class. And no surprise when I read many years later that Charles Borromeo Irwin was credibly accused of sexually exploiting some some guy. Our teachers were denominated the ICBs or Irish Christian Brothers, but we knew them as the International Child Beaters and James Joyce reminds me of those days.
Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Our with your hand this moment!
Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears were driven into his eye.
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