6/10/2026

 Wednesday, June 10, 2026

1898 US Marines landed in Cuba during the Spanish–American War

1942 Nazis killed all the inhabitants of Lidice, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Czech Republic) which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi controller of Bohemia and Moravia, to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility”; more than 170 adult men were executed by firing squad on site, women and children were sent to concentration camp gas chambers, and the village was burned down and plowed under

2025 The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway imposed sanctions on Israeli far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, including asset freezes and travel bans, due to their conduct during the Gaza war.

In bed around 9:30, up at 5:15; 0535 135/48/31 xxx 202.0, 0545 115/58/31; 64/85/63, Dense Fog Advisory this morning, thunderstorm this afternoon.   

Morning meds at a.m., and half-dose of Bisoprolol at 6:35 a.m.

Reading.  I finished Oh, William! last night and read "Elijah the Prophet" in Sholem Aleichem's Jewish Children while resting before 'vitals' this morning.  Aleichem's tale is about a boy who falls asleep during the Passover seder, and who fears Elijah coming to carry him away in a bag.

"No big deal."  Yesterday's news that an American Apache helicopter had been downed in the Strait of Hormuz by an Iranian drone triggered a number of thoughts and memories.  I thought of the (in)famous incidents involving the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, attacked (or not) in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 and leading to the (in)famous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, that started America's major involvmenat in the Vietnam War and my deployment there less than a year later.  A second thought was "paper tiger," the term often used by Mao Zedong and the Chinese government to describe the U.S.  This thought was triggered by news of Donald Trump's initial reaction to this provocaton as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

Trump hadn’t been convinced of the need to retaliate against Iran earlier in the day, U.S. officials said. In a phone call Tuesday morning with The Wall Street Journal, he played down the incident—repeatedly saying that it “wasn’t a big deal”—and stressed that the pilots weren’t seriously injured.

He changed his mind after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine recommended military action during a briefing at the White House, the officials said. . .

Trump has been reluctant to return to a broad bombing campaign, though he previously told aides he would consider restarting the full-scale war with Iran if American servicemembers are killed by Iran, the Journal has reported. 

The downing of the helicopter late Monday set off a race to find two American crew members who had escaped the Apache, a small attack helicopter that doesn’t have ejection seats. They were rescued by a U.S. drone boat in a first-of-its-kind operation at sea.

The Apache crew spent two hours in the water as darkness fell, according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, spokesman for Central Command. One senior U.S. official described the crew’s escape from the downed aircraft as a “hand of God” moment 

I'm wondering how the sailors, Marines, and airmen in this wide theater of operations are reacting to Trump's TACO act.  I'm wondering how the moms, dads, children, and spouses of those service men and women are reacting.  I don't have to wonder how the rest of the world is viewing Trump and the United States.  He and we are seen as feckless, a paper tiger, and Iran as Trump's Vietnam, another American quagmire, quicksand, a quandary from which we cannot escape, Trump's tar baby.   Trump is a fool and we put him in power - twice.  Fool us once, shame on you.  Fool us twice, shame on us.  

One minute we're in a war, the next minute we're told the war is over.  There is a ceasefire in place, but both sides are still firing on one another.  We are hours or days away from a 'deal' that will end the (non)war, and ensure Iran will never have nuclear arms, or according to J. D. Vance, it may take months.  Or, as we reasonably suspect, there will never be such a deal.  "Lord, what fools these mortals be."  Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Oh, William!  Elizabeth Strout's closing line in the novel state the basic message of her novels.

At one point, I sat on the bed and said out loud, "Oh, Catherine."

And then I thought, "Oh, William!"

But when I think Oh William!, don't I mean "Oh, Lucy! too? - Don't I mean Oh, Everyone.  Oh, dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves!

Except a little tiny, tiny bit we do.

But we are all mythologies, mysterious.  We are all mysteries, is what I mean.

This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.

There is a lot packed into those simply expressed thoughts.  Zadie Smith (whose writings I've never read) is quoted on the dust jacket of the book:

Strout managed to make me love this stronge woman I had never met, who I knew nothing about.  What a terrific writer she is.

I'll second that.

This morning I picked up Lucy By The Sea to complete my reading of the whole Lucy Barton series,  and as I approached the library, a young boy who had just exited the library with (apparently) his mother and his sister, made a point of staying at the door, holding it open until I shuffled my way through it.  He warmed my old, failing and misfiring heart.  As I left the library with my book, I held the door open for a middle-aged guy who was approaching.  He thanked me, and then thanked me my service, because I was wearing my 1st MAW baseball cap.  I thanked him back.  What Lucy Barton calls "moments of grace."

Lucy By The Sea.  I'm only 40 pages into the story, but I notice how often Lucy writes of missing people, especially her second husband, David Abramson, who died about a year before the story starts.  But also her children, especially Becka, her younger daughter, who stayed in Brooklyn during the Covid pandemic, and who I suspect will die of it.  It makes me think of how, when I walked out of the library this morning with this book, I missed my sister Kitty, out of the blue.  I think of her now, as I write this, and I wonder whether it may be true that I miss her every day, or are there days when I never think of her or miss her. It seems more likely to me that I miss her every day than that there are days when I never think of her, but I can't be sure.  I still miss my Dad, who died 19 years ago, not nearly as often as I miss  Kitty, but frequently.  I must admit, however, that I have stopped missing my mother, who died more than half a century ago.  It was her death that had the greatest impact on my Dad, Kitty, and me, and of course I still think of her, but I don't miss her the way I miss Kitty, with whom I chatted every morning for several years before she died, and my Dad, who lived with us for a few years before he died.