6/12/2026

 Friday, June 12, 2026

D-3

1942 Anne Frank received her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam

1963 American civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in Jackson, Mississippi

1965 South Vietnam Gen Nguyen Cao Ky succeeded Phan Huy Quat as premier

1967 In Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws against interracial marriages

1980 Ronald Reagan said he would submit to periodic medical tests

2017 Forbes released the Top 100 highest-paid entertainers list - Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs at No.1 with earnings of $130 million

2025 Senator Alex Padilla of California is forcibly removed, pushed face-down to the ground, and handcuffed after attempting to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a question at a press conference in Los Angeles. 

In bed at 9:20, up at 4:30; 112/74/59 123 202.6, 0505 129/73/58; 57/ 76/57, mostly sunny day ahead.   

Morning meds at 8 a.m., last half-dose of Bisorolol at 6:20 a.m.    

I'm thinking about Monday's surgery, but as I write this, I have just put down, temporarily, Lucy By The Sea, page 223, where Lucy and William have just left their get-together with their daughters Chrissy and Becka, and where Lucy writes:

If I had known what it would be like the next time that I saw them -- Well, I did not know then.

It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us. 

It is a gift, I suppose, but it makes me wonder, theoretically that is, if one would accept the gift of life if we had complete foresight, if we could see 'the whole package,'  including the fact that it's temporary, that we live for some time and then we decompose and exist only as elements, atoms and molecules.  I think of the famous quote of Flannery O'Connor who, when told that the Eucharist was only symbolically the presence of Christ, said  “If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it.”  

None of us chooses to exist.  Perhaps our parents chose us to exist, but even that is iffy.  Who knows the circumstances of our own conception, whether it happened as part of an intentional act to fertilize an ovum, or just as part of a pleasure seeking act of lust, as the result of too much alcohol, "beer goggles," an accident or even violence.  But we know that we're going to end by dying, and may or may not know the circumstances.  If we did know all that, the beginning and the end and all that happens in-between, how many of us would choose life and how many would say "to hell with it"?  'Every day and every night, some are born to sweet delight.  Every night and every morn, some to misery are born.  Would Lucy Barton choose life?  Would her brother Pete?  Her sister Vicki?  Her mother?  There is a famous line in Deuteronomy 30;19:

. . . I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live . . . /

Traditional religion treats all life as a blessing, but we know that for some, for many, it is a curse.  For none of us was it a choice, to be or not to be, and, given a choice, I think it's fair to conclude that many would say "Thanks, but no thanks." 

Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire today, demonstrating a point Bob Friebert often made: Money doesn't care who it belongs to.  There is no much I can say about it, because I don't know enough about anything, but I know it is not good that there is such concentrated wealth in this world, such concentrated power in people with unimaginable, literally, amounts of money and power.   And widewspread diffuse poverty and powerlessness on the other hand.  I don't know that there is any way to address or remediate this.  Probably not, until there is a systemic collapse, until the whole system explodes.  Marx supposedly wrote that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  Again, I don't know enough about this stuff to know whether that idea is true or not, but I know enough not to fall for the political clichés and illusions I've heard all my life about all men are created equal, popular democracy, representiative government, equal justice under law, government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people,' and all that happy horseshit.  

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, once wrote that the top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of U.S. wealth. "Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office,"  The Federal Reserve Bank estimates that the top 1% controls "only" 30-32% of the nation's wealth, but that percentage has been steadily climbing since the late 1970s when the percentage was 20-25%.  In 2017, Jimmy Carter said that the U.S. functions "more like an oligarchy" than a democracy, and most of us, at least most of those who care enough to regularly pay attention to the news, know that this is true.  "The best government money can buy," and "The Golden Rule - he who has the gold makes the rules."  Anyone who wants proof should just look at the Internal Revenue Code.

I finished Lucy By The Sea this afternoon.  It's a powerful novel and I'm glad I read all 4 of the Lucy Barton novels and that I read them in their order of publication.  

Sarah texted me that she was stuck in Austin for another day "because of mechanical difficulties." We'll get together for breakfast Sunday morning.