6/6/2026

 Saturday, June 6, 2026

1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, 1st US victory of WW I

1939 The ship MS St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Europe, began sailing back to the continent after it was refused entry into America.  Approximately a quarter of those on board would perish in the Holocaust.

1944 Operation Overlord: D-Day began  as the 156,000-strong Allied Expeditionary Force landed in Normandy, France, during World War II

1958 French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle said Algeria would always be French

1967 Israeli troops occupied Gaza during second day of the Six-Day War

1968 Senator Robert F. Kennedy died from his wounds after he was shot the previous night

1972 US bombed Haiphong, North-Vietnam; 1000s killed

1977 The "Washington Post" reported the US has developed a neutron bomb

2001 During a trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II became the first pope to enter a mosque

2002 A near-Earth asteroid estimated at 10 meters in diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya, with the resulting explosion estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb

2018 Convicted drug trafficker, Alice Johnson, was granted clemency by US President Donald Trump after Kim Kardashian highlighted the case

In bed at 9:15, up at 4:10.;   0425, 128/77/58 113 202.8; 61/75/59, sunny day ahead.

Morning meds at a.m., with half-dose of Bisoprolol at 5:45 a.m.

Yesterday, I lost total control over the Blogger app.  It’s become useless as a journaling tool.  I must have hit a button that changed the presentation on the screen.  The bad news is that I don’t know what or where that button is, so I can’t undo it.  I now see a bunch of digital instructions plus text instead of the graphics and print I expect to see on a printed page.  I’ll have to see what I can do with MS Word.

In Anything is Possible yesterday, I read the story of “Mississippi Mary,” a 78 year old lady from Amgash, IL, or thereabouts who left her husband and family and moved to a coastal village in northern Italy to live with her 62 year old beloved, Paolo.  She was visited by her youngest (of 5) daughter, Angelina, who hadn’t seen her in the four years since Mary left for Italy.  Angelina was deeply affected by her mother’s leaving her husband and family and was still angry with her.  Indeed, the story made it clear that she would retain some of that anger at least for the rest of her mother’s life.  Angelina’s husband left her and their children, claiming it was because Angelina was “in love with her mother,” i.e., so consumed by thoughts and anger toward her mother that she ignored him.  The story is a classic example of one of Elizabeth Strout’s major theme in writing, i.e., that we human beings are unable to understand or meaningfully communicate with one another, even in loving, deeply intertwined, intimate relationships.  There was another aspect of the story that moved me, too.

Angelina said, “Mom.  I don’t want you to die.  That’s the whole thing.  You took from me the ability to care for you in your old age, and I wanted to be with you when you died . . .

 . . .  And now Mary had to be careful.  She had to be careful because this girl-woman was her daughter.  She could not tell her – this child she loved as much as she had loved anything – that she did not dread her death, that she was almost ready for it, not really but getting there, and it was horrifying to realize that – that life had worn her out, worn her down, she was almost ready to die, and she would die, probably not too long from now.  Always, there was that grasping for a few more years, Mary had seen this with many people, and she did not feel it – or she did but she did not.  No.  She felt tired out, she felt almost ready, and she could not tell her child this. . .

It's that idea that life can wear us out, wear us down, that life can so tire us that there comes a time when death is, if not exactly desired, at least  accepted as relief from, as we Catholics used to say, "this vale of tears."  In my youth, as a student at St. Leo Grammar School, we were taught to sing the Salve Regina, which if we didn't know it already, instructed us that life is a series of sorrows and disappointments.

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry,
Poor banished children of Eve;
To thee do we send up our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

Elizabeth Strout's writing constantly reminds us of this. Strout has a New England Puritan background.  Her father was a deacon in a Congregationalist church, the descendents of the Puritans, and, although it's not clear whether she is affiliated with any church, her writings all appear to be decidedly religious in theme and tone.  She doesn't focus on God (thank God!), but she does focus on our fallen creatureness: our sinfulness, our vincible and invincible ignorances, our sins and guilt, the importance of kindness, forgiveness, and attempts at understanding and communication.  She is heavy reading.  I felt this especially in reading Charlie Macauley's story (The Hit-Thumb Theory) and Lucy Barton's story (Sister) in Anything is Possible.   Lucy Barton's story in "Sister" is especially grueling.  It wasn't clear to me in reading My Name is Lucy Barton just how awful her upbringing in her parents' home had been.  It became clearer in "Sister," especially through Lucy's panic attack, thr the character of her sister, Vicki, but also though seeing the constricted life of her poor brother, Pete.  It almost brings tears to my eyes.  I wish it had.  Emmylou Harris:

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count her many tears
While we all share in the sorrow with the poor
It's a song that will linger forever in our ears
Oh, hard times, come again no more

It's the song, the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered too long around my door
Oh, hard times, come again no more

Though we seek love and beauty and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door
Though their voices are silent, their pleading faces say
Oh, hard times, come again no more

It's the song, the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered too long around my door
Oh, hard times, come again no more

There's a pale young maiden who toils her life away
With a worn heart whose better days are over
Though her voice would be singing, it's sighing all the day
Oh, hard times, come again no more

It's the song, the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered too long around my door
Oh, hard times, come again no more

Oh, hard times, come again no more

Everything I read of Elizabeth Strout's writing seems to raise the question of free will vs. determinism, the question that vexed Artie Dam in The Things We Never Say.  Robert Sapolsky says that free will is a myth, useful for some purposes, misused for others.  John Calvin said we are all predestined.  In her long interview by Katie Couric, Strout didn't pick a side, but said said that she did think that we all have much less free will than we think.  Why was it that Vicki Barton became the person she became, that Pete became the very different person that he became, and that Lucy turned out as she did?  Why was it that my sister Kitty was the saintly person she was, and I ended up so different?  Why did my cousins Jimmy and Christine thrive coming out of the same challenging background as their younger brother Dougie, who fought with the world throughout his life?  How much of who and what we are is due to "nature" and how much to "nurture"?  How much to "free will" choices we supposedly make every day of our life?  How much of that "free will" stuff is just an excuse that lets us lock up people who turn out badly, the losers in Life's Lottery.

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,

Some are born to endless night.

How are you? I'm blessed.  I used to hear that a lot in the 2 and 1/2 years I worked at the House of Peace.  Sometimes I hear it at the VA Medical Center, but only from Black folk, not from White people.  I thought it odd when I first encountered the expression.  Most of the folks who came to the House of Peace were seeking help of some sort, food from the free food pantry, clothing from our "Capuchin Closet, medical help of some sort from the UWM Nursing Clinic, or advice from the MULS Legal Clinic, sometimes for money to keep their utilities on, or to pay for a methadone treatment.  But the men and women, usually women, who used the expression generally meant it: they were aware of great blessings in their lives, despite their met or unmet needs.  I never, or perhaps only rarely, heard the expression used by White folks, only by Blacks.  Just sayin'.

I thought of it this morning when, around 9 o'clock, I sat on our patio for 20 minutes of so.  I've written about sitting on the patio before in these journal pages, about what pleasure (joy?) it gives me, just quietly sitting on a sturdy plastic outdoor chair, one that Geri bought when she worked in Jefferson County during the week and lived in an apartment in Lake Mills.  I set on that chair and . . .  live? sense?  look and listen?  contemplate?  medicate?  what?  This morning the sun shone on me.  The temperature was about 70° and at first I thought there was no breeze, but then I became aware that there were different breezes in different parts of our yard, mostly down low to the ground, but some a little higher.  There were eddies moving some ferns while others nearby were still.  At first, I thought the morning was quiet, but then I realized that the air was filled with bird calls, most of them barely audible.  Some were of such high frequency that I wondered if the sounds came from birds or perhaps from my tinnitus.  Several minutes after I had taken my seat and sat quietly, a chipmunk dashed from around our sunroon to within a few inches from my feet, on his way to Geri's patio garden.  Ten or fifteen minutes later, two chipmunks, one chasing the other, like Chip and Dale, dashed behind my chair back to the area in front of our sunroom from which the earlier chipmunk came.  I wondered whether therse are the chipmunks I see feeding on the ground under our birdfeeders.  I wondered too whether the chasing was friendly or one asserting territorial dominance over the other, or wanting to mate.  I had a fleeting thought of my childhood in Chicago when the closest we got to wildlife was the thrill of getting a gray squirrel to take a shelled peanut from our hands, or getting close to the horses that drew the milk wagons and ice wagons on our streets, or the "rags and iron" and fresh vegetable wagons down our alleys after the war, before civilian delivery trucks became commonplace again.  How readily the thought came to me:  How are you?  I'm blessed.  

Email to LOA

Charles Clausen

To:  Larry

Sat, Jun 6 at 10:30 AM

Good Morning, Colonel.  We're at or around the anniversary dates for the Battle of Belleau Wood, or as the French renamed it, " "Le Bois de la Brigade de Marine" where the 5th and 6th Marines heaped glory on themselves.  It's become more meaningful for me ever since our asshole C-in-C called the guys still buried at the cemetery there "losers" and "suckers," and declined to visit the cemetery lest his precious hair get mussed up by the rain,  according to his own chief of staff, former Marine, and Gold Star father, John Kelly.  s/f, buddy.