6/8/2026

 Monday, June 8, 2026

1954 Joseph Welch asked Senator Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" during Senate-Army hearings

1978 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) struck down its 148-year policy of excluding black men from the priesthood

1980 Comedian Richard Pryor suffered severe burns from freebasing cocaine

2011 BU's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy agreed to examine the brains of 2 deceased San Francisco 49ers football players  for signs of injury 

2023 Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges including false statements, conspiracy to obstruct, and willful retention of national defense information 

2025 Peter Charles Clausen graduated from Nicolet High School

2025 At least 12 Palestinians were killed and 29 others were injured by Israeli fire near two aid distribution sites in the Gaza Strip. The IDF said they fired warning shots at people who had advanced toward its forces and ignored warnings to turn away but claimed they did not see any casualties.

2025 Donald Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard to quell anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles, California.

In bed at 9, awake at 3:53, half awake till 5:03 when I got up; 0530 138/83/58 113 201.8; 62/71/59, cloudy & beach hazards warnings, waves 3 to 5 feet and dangerous currents.

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m., and half dose of Bisoprolol at  5:55 a.m.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Trump's ordering National Guard troops onto the streets of Los Angeles.  Yesterday, Trump also appeared for an interview in Wisconsin by Kristen Welker of Meet The Press.  He claimed again, as he so often has, the the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that the current vote count in California elections is rigged.  When Welker asked for evidence of the rigging, he accused her and Meet The Press, ABC, CBS, and CNN of all being "crooked," terminated the interview and stormed off the set (in a Wisconsin barn.)  His behavior is a signal to us of what to prepare for (but how?) his behavior in the November medterm elections and the 2028 elections.  My journal/blog entry from last year on this date:

From the halls of Montezuma to the streets of Los Angeles.  In this morning's newspapers, I learned:

President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom and that:

Mr. Trump’s directive authorized the secretary of defense to “employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In Mr. Hegseth’s post on X, he said that active duty Marines were “on high alert” at Camp Pendleton, about 100 miles south of Los Angeles, and could also be mobilized.

A nightmare coming true.  Trump has taken a bad situation and made it worse.  He has unnecessarily created a situation of armed conflict between the armed forces of the United States and American citizens.  There will be bad reactions from bad people striving to foment trouble, anger, reactions and overreaction.  The arrival of National Guard troops in Los Angeles today is the arrival of more trouble for the people of LA. I think of my very-shirttail relative or ex-relative, Maggie Aquavia, in Sherman Oaks in the Valley.  I think of my old Marine Corps, MCAS Yuma,  and Danang RVN buddy Bob Hillary.  I think of the millions of Angelinos who don't deserve what is about to happen in their city.  Inflaming and escalating the tension in the city by sending in armed troops is asking for trouble, and we can be sure that there will be people in LA who will be only too happy to accommodate him.  We have to wonder whether Trump, Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, and/or Noem hope that there will be shooting, injuries, and/or deaths.  They all delight in showing strength and nothing demonstrates strength over an opponent like killing him does.

The photograph high above, by Jonathan Bachman, is of 35-year-old Iesha L. Evans, a nurse and the mother of a young boy, standing her ground in Baton Rouge, LA, during a protest of police brutality on July 11, 2016.  I was and still am moved by this image of Ms. Evans in her green flowing garment and flats being rushed by three burly, heavily armed National Guardsmen in combat boots, helmets, and body armor.  It took much effort and a bit of luck before I was able to obtain a large print of the photograph which I keep on the table behind my work desk next to the photograph immediately above by Marc Riboud of Jan Rose Kasmir, a 17 year old high school student offering a daisy to a heavily armed trooper outside the Pentagon during a peace protest on October 21, 1967, while the Vietnam War was being waged by other American troops.  Each photo vividly illustrates the great disparity in power and brute force between heavily armed and combat-equipped soldiers and ordinary American citizens, especially those exercising their 1st Amendment rights to peacably assemble and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.  We will probably see something like the scenarios in these photos played out in Los Angeles over the next few weeks.

I can't believe Trump will find occasion to send the Marines from Camp Pendleton but if he does, God help us. 

. . . . 

Of course, I was dead wrong and Trump and Hegseth did send in the Marines from Camp Pendleton.

Geri's distressing voice mail.  She opened her voice mail folder and listened to a call from Ascension asking if she would like to set up a visit with a primary care physician.  This seems like a very impersonal notice that her personal doctor for the last 31 years, Kathleen Baugrud, has finally retired.  Fingers crossed. . .  It was a false alarm.  It seems that it's been awhile since Geri had a "wellness" exam or visit, something for which Ascension gets paid by Medicare, of course, and they wanted to schedule one, to which she agreed.

I made a banana bread this afternoon. 

New readings.  While waiting for the North Shore Library to open at 10 a.m., so I could pick up the copy of Elizabeth Strout's Oh, William that I had placed a hold on over the weekend, I opened my Kindle copy of Sholom Aleichem's Jewish Children and read the first offering, titled "A Page from "The Song of Songs."  I didn't quite understand the underlying relationship between the young male narrator and the girl who came to live with his family after her father died and her mother remarried and  apparently pawned her off on the narrator's family, but all the references to the specialness around the Passover festival, of going to the synagogue with his father, and to the "Song of Songs" and its naturalistic metahors for female beauty were very entertaining.

I started Oh, William, and I'm fewer than 40 pages into it but I'm enjoying it already.  Perhaps "enjoying" isn't the right word in light of what I'm about to say, which is that Strout has a way of getting me close to tears.  This morning it was in reading about Lucy Barton's trip to her college with her high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Nash.  Lucy had left home with her clothes for college stuffed into two grocery bags and a box from her father's truck.  On the way to the unnamed college just outside Chicago, Mrs. Nash had pulled off the highway and driven to a shopping center where she bought new clothes for Lucy, and a suitcase to carry them in.  She told Lucy she could pay her back in 10 years, but she, Mrs. Nash, died before those 10 years had passed.  It reminded me of my mother taking me, on a CTA streetcar or bus as I recall, in August of 1959, to the big clothing store on Roosevelt Road, 12th Street in Chicago, to get me clothes to take with me to Marquette,  We were at that partiular store because Dave Fein had an account at that store and my mother purchased the clothes on Dave's account, i.e., Dave's credit.  From my memoir chapter, "Living on the cuff":

We bought clothing through a ‘factor’ named Dave Fein.  A factor was like an ambulatory bank or living credit card.  Dave had credit accounts with clothing merchants on Roosevelt Road, just north of Maxwell Street. We bought clothes on Dave’s account because we couldn’t pay cash.  Dave went from door to door servicing his accounts.  Every week or so, he would show up at the door to collect a payment on the account, sometimes 25¢ or 50¢, sometimes one dollar, rarely more.  Dave carried his account book with him so he could enter his customers’ payments and inform them of their balances.  If we had no money for him, we would ‘lay low’ in the apartment, not answering the door, keeping quiet and staying away from the kitchen and the bedroom.  Dave (or anyone else) could see into the kitchen from the passageway next to our door and into the bedroom from the steps from the passageway up to the sidewalk outside.  A few minutes after Dave stopped knocking, ‘the coast was clear’ and we could resume normal activity.  The new clothes my parents bought me to go away to Marquette in 1959 were purchased at a store on Roosevelt Road on Dave Fein’s account.

One of the items of clothing I acquired that day was a dark green pinwale corduroy sport coat, which I liked very much and which I wore through college, my years in the Marine Corps, and through law school.  Those were my skinny, healthy days when I weighed less than 150 pounds.  By the time I grew too fat to wear it any longer, it was already almost threadbare and my wife grimaced whenever I put it on.  I remember it now, 67 years after we purchased it on Dave Fein's credit, because it reminds me so painfully of all the love that went in to raising me and preparing me to go out into the world.  I believe my mother was still waiting on tables at The Old Barn supper club in Burbank, IL, at the time, working only for tips, and my father worked on the maintenance crew at the Continental Can factory at 76th and Racine in Chicago.  They lived in a nice second floor flat at 7926 S. Morgan, never having owned their own home at that time, though they had been married for almost 20 years.  Much of Lucy Barton's life reminds me of my own, and some of those reminders almost bring tears to my eye, both of gratitude and of regret. 

Another aspect of Lucy's life that resonated with me was the fact that her mother never told her that she loved her.  In My Name is Lucy Barton, she describes at some length her telling her mother that she loved her and unsuccessfully trying to get her mother to reciprocate.  Again in Oh, William she made the point that her mother never told her that she loved her.  Elsewhere she made the point that her parents didn't do hugging.  All this reminded me inevitably of my father, who also wasn't into hugging or professions of love.  At the reception following Andy and Anh's wedding. my Dad was sitting at a table with Geri and Kitty was seated with our cousins.  Geri and my Dad went to Kitty's table to chat and my Dad held Geri's hand.  Later, Kitty remarked on this and added that he had never done that with her.  In our old age, we learned that each of us had independently the same impossible thought when we were kids, that he wasn't really our father, that we weren't really his kids, that he not only didn't love us, but he didn't like us or want us.  Kitty's theory was that he considered us competition for our mother's affection and attention.  If ever there was a man not cut out to be a parent, it was our father.  Hence my tendency to identify with Elizabeth Strout's Lucy Barton.  He changed late in life, especially with me, but it took almost a lifetime for both of us to arrive at that change.

Text to Andy and Anh this afternoon:

I went to the North Shore Library this morning to pick up a novel I had placed on “hold” over the weekend.  On the way in, I noticed for the first time the large block of memorial bricks showing contributors to the new library, and I particularly noted the one showing “Charles and Geri Clausen” which made me proud, of course, but also warmed my heart toward the contributors who made that brick possible, you guys.  I can’t recall now the occasion on which you gave us this gift, whether a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas,  or whatever, but I want to thank you again for it.  It means a lot to me and to us.  Thank you.❤️❤️