6/20/2026

 Saturday, June 20, 2026

1919, The Treaty of Versailles was signed.

1945, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. approved the transfer of the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his specialists to the US

1967, Mohammed Ali was sentenced to 5 years for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces during the Vietnam War

1977 Menachem Begin formed a new Israeli government

1979 Jimmy Carter unveiled 32 solar panels installed on the roof of the White House; his immediate successor had them removed

2018 US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order ending family separation at the border for illegal immigrants

2025.  The United Nations relisted Israel on its blacklist of countries committing abuses against children in armed conflict in its annual Children in Armed Conflict report.

In bed at 9;??. Up at 5:20; 0540 139/73/56  11 205.4, 0552 122/74/57; 57/71/56, mostly sunny.    

Morning meds at 7:25 a.m.,  and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Thoughtoids

(1) J. D. Vance.  Why is it that I have such antipathy for this guy?  First, I've formed no final judgment on the matter, but I have long wondered about his love for his mother and grandmother in light of the book he wrote and the movie he authorized, which portrays them in such a bad light.  Just sayin'.  Secondly, though, I think I'm having a nasty reaction to watching this prime product of elite legal education.  My former partner John D. Finerty used to have an expression that I never thought was particularly apt, but which I nonetheless understood: "smooth as greased owl shit."  Or perhaps it was "slick" rather than "smooth," but his point was always clear.  Just as "Slick Willy" was a pejorative nickname of young Bill Clinton, JDF used the simile to describe lawyers (and politicians)  who could sell anything to anyone.  Moot court competitions in law school require the competitors to argue both sides of a case, mindful that a lawyer's duty is to be "a zealous advocate" for his client's cause, even if you don't believe in it.  Moreover, though a lawyer is forbidden to lie, he is not only free to mislead and deceive; he may be duty-bound to do so, so long as he can do it without lying or otherwise acting illegally.  Over the course of three years in law school, lawyers are molded to become moral relativists, utilitarian pragmatists, and value-skeptics.  To the extent they are good at it, they/we become wordsmiths, trained to choose our precise language carefully in pursuit of our holy grail, "the client's interest."  This professional obligation coincides nicely with a lawyer's own financial interest in attracting and pleasing clients, literally 'serving' clients.  J. D. Vance has had a number of client types in his life, arguably including Amy Chua, Peter Thiel, and now Donald Trump.  He's done his best to please all of them, and now he's trying to pitch the infamous "Iran Deal" to Congress, the world, and especially American voters, as a good deal.  Smooth as greased owl shit.

(2) From Mrs. Dalloway, a description of the thinking of Septimus Warren Smith, PTSD sufferer from WWI, triggered by his wife Rezia's wanting them to have a child:

One cannot bring children into a world like this.  One cannot perpeturate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.

For the truth is (let her ignore it) that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.  They hunt in packs.  Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness.  They desert the fallen.  They are plastered over with grimaces.

Smith is a main character in the novel, to be compared with both Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Hugh Whitbread, plus with the minor characters.  Septimus went into the war, a volunteer, as a poet and a lover of literature, and left it only to become schizophrenic and eventually commit suicide.  I started reading this novel principally because of this character because he reminded me, of course, in part, of my father after the Second World War.  But he reminds me a bit of myself in my old age, semi-despondent about the state of the nation and of the world, pessimistic and cynical, watching every day the depredations of Trump and his henchmen, thinking of climate change and what it portends, and of the unsustainable national debt and what it portends, of the endless rivalry between the U.S. and Russia and China and what it portends, wondering, like Septimus, why anyone would choose to bring children into this world today.  I wonder how I would feel if I were younger, in childbearing age, and childless in this era.  

Woolf's writing about Septimus's medical treatment is powerful and condemning.  His GP is Dr. Holmes, who continually assures him and his wife Rezia that "there is nothing the matter with him", that he needs to get a hobby, and get out more.  His psychiatrist is Dr. Sir William Bradshaw, a high society type who who runs a number of "rest homes" for his patients, all of whom need, according to him, just rest to regain a proper sense of "proportion." - "rest in bed, rest in solitude, silence and rest, rest without friends, without books, without messages, six months' rest, until a man who went in weighing seven stone six came out weighing twelve."  A reader can't miss the bitter sarcasm in Woolf's writing about 1920s psychiatry, nor forget that she herself, like her fictional creation Septimus, killed herself.

Sir William not only propered himelf, but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics,forbade childbirth, penalized despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they too shared his sense of proportion . . . 

(3) I wasted an injection of Trulicity this morning, forgetting to remove the bottom cap before I depressed the top button to effect the injection.  I've injected myself so many times, over so many years, that I failed to pay attention to what I was doing, and by the time I realized what I had done, the problem was irremediable.  It was my last injection pen, so I'll go without this week as well as last week, when I stopped injecting the week before the ablation procedure.  This is just the latest instance of absent-mindedness (boneheadedness) over the past year.  Going downhill. . . Later this afternoon, while looking for a particular subdivision in Mequon, I pulled in front of an oncoming car and almost caused a collision. Since the ablation procedure, I've felt at times like I'm in a brain fog.  Am I fooling myself that this may be a hangover from the operation, rather than the continuing toll of old age?  Am I a hazard on the road?  I was today.