Tuesday, June 2, 2026
1941 Edward George Felsenthal III was born in Chicago, IL
1963 I graduated from Marquette University and was commissioned in the USMC
1989 10,000 Chinese soldiers were blocked by 100,000 citizens in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, protecting students demonstrating for democracy
1997 Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168
2022 Queen Elizabeth II marked her Platinum Jubilee with four days of celebrations, starting with a military parade at Buckingham Palace
2025 United States Midwest aluminum premiums rose by 164% after demand for aluminum in the physical market increased due to Donald Trump's plan to increase tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%.
2025 Donald Trump announced that the recent U.S. proposal for a deal on Iran's nuclear program does not allow any uranium enrichment by Iran, despite previous media reports to the contrary.
In bed around 9:15, awakened at 1:15 by low glucose alarm, and again at 3:20, half-slept until 5:05; 0525 131/68/32 120 201.8; 53/67/50, sunny.
Morning meds at 8:30 a.m., and half-dose of Bisoprolol at 6:10 a.m..
I ended yesterday and started today reading The Things We Never Say, which has become a painful read, stirring and recrudescing too many memories, too many thoughts, too many questions. By the time I went to bed yesterday, I had read 80% of the novel, a quick but painful read.
Today would have been Ed Felsenthal's 85th birthday, had he not died on June 23, 2024. Bill Wiseman, my former student and research assistant, and husband of another former student and research assistnt Christine Giamo, died around the same date. It's also the 63rd anniversary of my graduation from Marquette's liberal arts college and my commissioning in the Marine Corps, and the scattering of the Notch House gang: Bill Hendricks, Paula Bochicchio, Jerry Nugent, Camilla Wakeman, Anne Smith and I, and Ed Felsenthal. Tom Devitt started the scattering by graduating early, in December 1962 and promptly marrying Veronica Colby, just as in the following June, Ed married Lynn the week following our graduation and I married Anne one week later. For a short time, Tom and Ronnie were our next door neighbors as he finished up and I started Basic School at Quantico. Anne and I did not have a telephone there. We shared Tom and Ronnie's phone. It was on their phone that I received the call from my mother informing me of the circumstances of her rape by James Hartmann. Tom went on to become an artillery officer and I went on to become an air defense control officer. He, Ed, Jerry, and I all went on to serve in Vietnam, but at different times and places so our paths never crossed there. The photo is of Anne and me on graduation day with our first car, the Chinese red Buick pimpmobile, that got us from Milwaukee to Quantico, Quantico to Brunswick, and Brunswick to Yuma, the first legs of our long odyssey.
Text to CBG:
I finished The Things We Never Say, appropriately enough, in the waiting room of the outpatent mental health clinic at the VA medical center this morning. (If you’re interested, I will explain how I got there some other time. It’s neither very interesting nor dramatic.) I enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s writing and am a little surprised that she’s a law school graduate and married to a lawyer. I’m not sure how I feel about the story. Since it’s set in present-day America, it cuts pretty close to the bone. She doesn’t paint a pretty picture of where we are in Trump Era America, nor does she give us much hope that things will get markedly better post-Trump. In that respect, she mirrors my own thoughts, my own pessimism. Down at the interpersonal level, she doesn’t paint a pretty picture of our own ability to communicate with and understand one another, and again she mirrors my own judgments. “So blind we humans are—so blind. To each other and to ourselves” and “mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own. Thinking all the while that we can see.” On the other hand, she believes in our ability to love others, despite the inability to really know and understand “the vast, unknowable universe” inside every other human, including those who are closest to us.
I liked Artie Dam and really felt his loneliness. He stuck me as a likeable, even lovable, guy, and a kind one. As I said yesterday, I tend to identify so closely with him because of parallels in his life as imagined by Strout and my real life that reading of his woes and struggles was painful. I was struck by how bleakly Strout painted his world. He long contemplated suicide, his first principal (another kind, likeable guy) did commit suicide, and his next -door neighbor’s first wife tried to commit suicide. I was struck too by how sad Artie’s final days were. The scene with him going semi-catatonic in his classroom reminded me of the ending of “The Sisters,” the first story in Joyce’s THE DUBLINERS, in which the priest was found laughing all by himself inside a confessional. In any case, what made the story not completely grim and tragic seemed to me to be the fact that real love existed between the characters, Artie and his son, Artie and Evie, Artie and Ken, the Trump supporter who saved Artie from drowning, and between Artie and his students, especially Danny and Rhonda. I’m interested in your thoughts.
