5/9/2026

 Saturday, May 9, 2026

39!

1987 Geraldine Aquavia wed Charles Clausen under the crab apple tree on the front lawn of Tom and Micaela St. John in Shorewood, Wisconsin

In bed at 10 after Bill Maher, up just before 8.  First pit stop at 3?!? PainQuilPM?!?  0810 135/66/58 202.6; 56/48/63/46. Partly cloudy.

Morning meds at 10 a.m., and half dose of Bisoprolol at  8:40 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 8 p.m.

Who's  the dipshit with that gorgeous woman? Looks like he can't believe it either!

I finished The Correspondent yesterday afternoon.  A few comments.  (1) I was a bit surprised that in the entire novel, there is only one brief comment about Donald Trump, though the novel  takes place entirely in the Trump Era.  In a footnote to one letter, Sybil said she was becoming a Democrat because of Donald Trump.  The fact that she switched her political allegiance because of Trump wasn't at all surprising, but that she made no further reference to him or to what was happening within the country,during his first regime/reign and his interregnum, is although it's clear the author did not want The Correspondent to become a political novel.  (2)  I'm a little bit surprised that more wasn't developed about Theodore Lubeck's parents' 'Sophie's Choice' in 1941 Germany.  (3) I was wondering whether there would be a happy ending to the story in term's of Sybil's death and blindness because of the letter she wrote to Larry McMurtry in which she praised his courage in ending Lonesome Dove tragically, unhappily.  It seemed like a forewarning of what was to come in The Correspondent, but no.. (4) Her relationship with her daughter Fiona inevitably reminded me of my relationship with my Dad as indeed her attitude about pessimism, never expecting so she wouldn't be disappointed, or devastated as she was by Gilbert's death, and never getting very close to other people, perhaps even 'the birds."  (5) I was pleased that she came to a better understanding of herself in her last years, which was made abundantly clear in her letters to Rosalie and Fiona acknowledging her deep-seated faults grounded in her guilt and defensiveness, and in her opening herself and her dependency to Theodore toward the end of her life.  She reminded me of Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich.  (6) Lastly, I thought the closing letter to Daan, never completed and never sent, was brilliant, not on Sybil's part, but on the author's.  She never completed it because she couldn't.  She couldn't adequately understand herself what she was trying to have Daan understand.  She would try, and fail, and put the draft adie for another try, then try again, fail again, and again put the draft aside for another try and another failure, and eventually of course Daan died and then she died with things unsaid on both sides.  I was reminded of a message I sent to Anne on her last birthday in which, after appropriate and sincer birthday wishes and something about moving into the mid-80s, I told her that I was very sorry for every hurt I ever caused in her life and that I wanted her to know that.  It took quite a while before she responded, simply, 'Thank you,' but I'm sure many thoughts ran through her head, as they had through mine before I sent the apology.   I pause as I write these words now, on the 39th anniversary of my marriage with Geri, thinking Love and Marriage are not simple experiences, nor easy to understand, how it happens in the first place, nor how it unravels in the winds that blow into lives.  Sybil's draft letter to Daan, with all its uncompleted thoughts and sentences, and its cross-outs illustrates (and I use the term intentionally) how difficult, and maybe impossible, it may be to understand how and why we have lived our lives just the way we did.  I thought it was a brilliant and perfect ending to the story.

Spring is my favorite time of year for bird watching from my recliner, especially watching the birds who are grateful for the big cotton ball I hang to help them build their nests.  They always surprise me with the amount of cotton they stuff into their tiny beaks before flying away to stuff pieces of it into their nests.  The whole phenomonon of nest-building amazes me.  How do they do it, especially from the beginning starting with what, one twig?  A chunk of moss?  Whatever.  How do they get that initial structural component, or components, to stay in place while they go foraging for the next pieces?  How do they get the structures to be as sturdy as they are?  How do they find their way back to their nests with those huge wads of cotton seemingly blocking their vision?  How can anyone not be gobsmacked by the existence of birds and by what they can do, their resourcefulness? Alas, that we are killing them off by the millions, rendering whole species extinct.

Life moving on in my 80s.  One year ago today, I was recovering from cataract surgery the day before, wearing a patch on my right eye, and having trouble writing and typing.  Two years ago, I was out of commission with polymyalgia rheumatica pain.  Three years ago, I was daydreaming:

Pipe Dream.  Renting a cottage on the Eagle River chain of lakes, on a lake where loons and coots and eagles and ospreys live and living without the news: no online newspapers or magazines, no television, no cable, having my Lund Mr. Pike 16-foot fishing boat again.  Or spending time on Clam Lake or one of the nearby lakes like Ghost Lake where Sarah and I put in her kayak and my Mr. Pike years ago, middle of Chequamegon National Forest.  Ditto Cable Lake.  In my current condition, I wouldn't be able safely to get into or out of a fishing boat, and probably wouldn't do any fishing from a pier or bridge or the shore and I have to wonder if I would get sick of my own company.  In the pipe dream, I would do a lot of reading - novels, poetry, non-fiction, graphics - and watching DVDs.  I looked at rentals available in the Clam Lake area, Uppper and Lower Clam Lake, and got a little wistful remembering fishing with the Anzivinos for walleye on the lakes and in the Chippewa River at sundown, navigating the Chippewa with Andy on the bow of the boat with a flashlight, directing us away from boulders.  More fuzzy memories of fishing in a canoe with Ara Cherchian and capsizing in the river.  Many of the rental properties that appear on the internet are a far cry from the kind of places I used to stay in with the kids or the muskie crowd from Racine or the Anzivinos.  They are more like luxurious chalets with large windows and modern facilities, like John Price's family 'cottage' on Lake Huron.  It would simply require an exercise of will for me to go on a 'news fast and abstinence' right here at home but I doubt that I have the willpower to pull it off.   Habits developed over decades are pretty hard to jettison even for a day or two much less a week or two, but one can dream.  I'm reminded of an Andrews Sisters song I heard on the radio in my childhood.

I Can Dream, Can't I

I can see no matter how near you'll be / you'll never belong to me / but I can dream, can't I? . . .  I'm aware my heart is a sad affair / there's much disillusion there / but I can dream, can't I?

And Johnny Mercer's 1945 hit Dream, 

Dream / When you're feelin' blue / Dream / That's the thing to do / Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air / You'll find your share / Of memories there / So dream / When the day is through / Dream / And they might come true / Things never are as bad as they seem / So dream, dream, dream.

These were the kinds of popular songs we listened to in the 1940s and 50s, and that I danced to with my inamorata Charlene at the Melody Mill Ballroom in the North Riverside suburb west of Chicago, but I'm wandering a long way from Clam Lake. . .

Four years ago, May 9th, 2022, I had not yet started this journal/blog. I was still recovering (if that's the correct word) or adjusting to Kitty's death 2 months before, with the journal/blog commencement at the end of July to become a poor substitute for the long chats that Kitty and I shared every morning, until we didn't.

I have started and will soon finish the very short 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.  Geri got it at the library yesterday and read it in one day, probably in one sitting.  I asked her to let me read it before returning it to the library, which I now doing.  I love the exchanges involving trans-Atlantic purchases of fine used books for $1.85, $2, or $6.  It reminds me of my youth when one of my favorite activities in addition to listening to Elvis, Little Richard, or Jimmy Rodgers records, was to hop on a Halstead Street bus or streetcar to  64th Street where I caught the Englewood "El" to the Wabash Avenue, multi-storied,  used bookstores in downtown Chicago where I would spend hours browsing and making a few purchases of treasures to bring home on the "El."  I believe I often brought home a bag of books, grateful for the riches so inexpensively available in those stores.  How musty and dusty they were, and I felt like I had discovered El Dorado just a short distance from 73rd and Emerald Avenue.  A friend of the author who had visited the London bookshop wrote her: "It's dim inside.  you smell the shop before you see it, it's a lovely smell.  I can't articulate it easily, but it's a combination of must and dust age, and walls of wood and floors of wood." To which I say 'Yes."  The references to food rationing n the UK reminded me of finding my parents' WWII ration book on top of a cabinet in our tiny basement kitchen when I was a boy.  Most food rationing here ended by the end of the war in 1945, but sugar rationing continued until 1947, when I was in the first grade at St. Leo Grade School.  I finished the book this afternoon.

I followed Geri's encouragement to sit out on our patio this afternoon.  I dearly love sitting out there and simply looking at space in front of me, Geri's marginal garden, the many tall trees hehind it along the border between our property and our neilghbor's, the Callery pear tree next to the patio with its two sets of wind chimes and plants around its trunk, all the Virginia Bluebells in bloom at this time of year, the sky and clouds above me, and the occasional squirrel, chipmunk, or bird movint through.  The temperature was in the mid-60s and I was sitting in the partial sun with only a slight breeze but I had to go back inside and put on a sweatshirt to stay warm.  Meanwhile, Geri was out weeding weaaring only her jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt and was perfectly comfortable.  After sitting outside for only a short time and reading the last pages of 84, Charing Cross Road, my continuous glucose monitor alerted me that I was experiencing low glucose, in the 60s, and I  repaired to the house to stuff myself with some dark chocolate treats and get my glucose out of the danger range.  The photo illustrates how Geri stays warm in just her T-shirt while I'm cold in my sweatshirt: She works, I sit.

Anniversary dinner was lamb chops, a baked potato, and beets.  I tried but failed to persuade Geri to go out for an anniversary dinner and some expensive steak.

Low glucose alarm.  I'm experiencing several.many low glucose warnings from my CGM, despite eating Dove's Dark Chocolate Mints and many grapes.  I've learned that chocolate is not the thing to take in these circumstances because its high fat cotent slows down the digestion of its glucose, so lesson learned, but I'm still surprised by my body's wanting to return to low a low glucose state.