Tuesday, June 30, 2026
2022 Ketanji Brown Jackson (51) was sworn in as the 104th justice of the US Supreme Court, replacing Stephen Breyer (83)
2022 Supreme Court landmark ruling limited the US Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate power plant pollution
2025 Israeli forces killed at least 74 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, including 23 who were attempting to get humanitarian aid
2025. At least 39 people were killed and dozens of others injured by an airstrike on the al-Baqa internet café in Gaza City, including multiple sportspeople and journalists
In bed at 9:10, half-wake at 4:10 til up at 5; 0520 203.0 123/73/64 110; 77/90/74, mostly cloudy day ahead, EXTREME HEAT WARNING
Morning meds at 8 a.m., and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Lonesome Dove. I finished it at 11:30 this morning, all 862 pages of it. I started it on the 22nd or 23rd, taking more than a week to get through it. If the storyline and characters weren't so engaging, I doubt that I would have had the tenacity to stick with it, but both the plot and the character studies that accompany it are very engaging. I'm glad I started it and glad I stuck with it. I need to do some thinking and reading before I try to sort out my thoughts about it. Before I do that, I'm going to first watch the Lonesome Dove miniseries on Amazon Prime. . . .
It's hard to know what to say about this novel, because there is so much packed into it. Stephen King, according to many, the king of modern novelists, says Lonesome Dove is his favorite novel. What should I pick out to mention in a list of favorite aspects of the novel without unfairly or inaccurately denigrating other notable features. Here's a partial list:
1. The relationship between Gus and Call is a central feature of the novel, but so is the relationship between Call and his son Newt, between Call and the men he led/bossed, between Gus and Lorena, and Gus and Clara, Jake and Lorena, July and Elmira, Big Zwey and Elmira, Dish and Lorena, Clara and Bob, Deets and everybody, Po Campo and the crew.
2. The character studies of many of the characters are also interesting. No one is close to perfect. Some are very bad characters, like Blue Duck at the top of the list, as well as the men on the 'whiskey barge,' the cavalry officer who tried to requisition the crew's horses, and others. Some are not terribly wicked, but terribly weak, like July Johnson and Roscoe Brown, and Jake Spoon. Maybe that's the standout feature of the men in the story, that they are all weak in one way or another. What's with Woodrow Call's inability to deal with women and with his own drive to mate, his inability to accept his paternity of Newt, and his love for Maggie? Why does he hold himself so aloof from the men he lives with and works with, separating himself both physically and psychologically from all others, even Gus? Why was Gus so relieved when Clara picked Bob over him as her husband? The characters who seem to be most comfortable in their own skins are Deets, a Black, and Po Campo, a Mexican cook.
3. I read somewhere that, especially after the TV miniseries based on his novel was released and became a big hit, McMurtry was disappointed that his book was thought of as a celebration of sorts of 'the Old West,' whereas he had intended it to be taken as an indictment of it -- of its lawlessness and widespread violence and injustice, of the abuse of women, of the harshness of life that led to suicides and mental and emotional breakdowns, etc. The story is in many ways a Hellscape, an Inferno, rather than a glorification of that period of American history.
4. It's hard to read this story without wondering what makes the characters have the characteristics that they have and behave as they do. It raises the free will vs. determinism issue again. With Lorena Woods' history, is it surprising at all that she behaved as she did, that she had the attitude towards men and sex that she had, the aversions and fears that she had? McMurtry provided us with her background, making her attitudes and behaviors understandable. Is that different from predictable? from determined? He didn't provide us with Elmira Johnson's background, and Elmira comes across as a very unlikeable person, unlike Lorena. What was it about Woodrow Call's background that made him so emotionally distant from everyone around him? When I wrote "made him," is that any different from saying "determined him"? What "made" Blue Duck into the cruel savage that he was? I used to suggest to my dear sister, my only sibling, that we had very similar personalities, like the quote apochryphally attributed to William Butler Yeats: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy that sustained him through temporary periods of joy." Kitty's and my personalities were formed in those years after World War II, growing up in close quarters with our damaged father and long-suffering mother. We both ended up with a combination of his deep-seated morosity and her uplifting strengths and joy in living. Were we not pro tanto "determined"? Or, at least, as Emily Dickinson wrote:
In this short life, which only lasts an hour,
How much, how little, is within our power.
The 'lonesome dove' in the story is Newt, Call's unclaimed son. His mother Maggie, a whore, died young, and his father refused to acknowledge him as his son. Thus, for most of his young life, he considered himself an orphan, even though he was living with and working with his father.
Gus: Ain't nothing better than riding a fine horse into a new country. That exactly what me and Woodrow was meant for, though don't tell your Pa I said that. I'd like to keep him thinking he caused a peck of trouble, so he don't get too sassy.
Newt: He ain't mentioned it.
Newt: That he's my Pa.
Gus: Well, that wouldn't be his way to mention it. See, Woodrow, ain't much of a mentioner when he can avoid it.
Newt: Gus, is it that he don't like me?
Gus: No, no. He just -- he don't want to admit that he's human like the rest of us, Newt, that's all.
Newt: Well, he ain't human like the rest of us.
Gus: Well, he had a chance to be that way back with your mama. but he turned his back on it though, and he ain't about to admit he make the wrong choice.
5. Woodrow Call's inability to admit to himself his desire to bond with a woman, physically and emotionally, and his related inability to acknowledge his paternity to his son Newt, reminded me of Richard Dalloway's struggle, and ultimate inability, to tell Clarissa that he loved her. More directly, it reminded me of my father's inability to show affection to his children, to say "I love you," and wholeheartedly give and accept hugs. I've written about it extensively in earlier pages of this journal. It makes me wonder, of course, about how he was raised, especially by his mother, Charlotte.
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