June 14, 2026

 Sunday, June 14, 2026

D-1

1919 John Alcock and Arthur Brown left Newfoundland in the first non-stop air crossing of the Atlantic

1942 Anne Frank began writing her diary two days after her 13th birthday 

°1946 Donald John Trump was born, and the world became a worse place

1949 French-allied State of Vietnam was officially formed during the First Indochina War; Bảo Đại was installed as Emperor

1954 Eisenhower signed an order adding the words "under God" to the Pledge

1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg was introduced by Bill Clinton as his nominee to the United States Supreme Court in a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House

2025 A series of anti-Trump protests occured across the United States in all 50 states

2025 Minnesota state legislators and their spouses were shot in two targeted spree shootings at their homes.  Hortman and her husband were killed, while the condition of the Hoffmans was "grave".

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:05; 0520 138/80/57, 0530 126/72/60 101. 202.6; 59/53/68/55 sunny, windy.

Morning meds at 8 a.m.

Breakfast with Sarah at Maxfield's at 9.  We avoided talking about tomorrow's surgery until the end of our visit back at the house.  

I started reading Stoner by John Williams yesterday and got almost a quarter of the way through it.  The narrative starts with young William Stoner, an only child, growing up on his poor and taciturn parents' farm in Missouri, early-laden with many farm chores, and going off to college at the University of Missouri as an awkward farm boy, intending to major in agricultural studies and to return to the family farm upon graduation, but becoming entranced by English literature and switching to an English major.  He earned his bachelor's degree and then a master's degree, and was hired on to the faculty as an instructor to teach freshman English courses.  The story reminds me, though only a bit, of my trepidatious beginnings as a college student at MU in 1959 and as an assistant professor at the law school in 1970.  What most snagged my attention, however, in the early pages, was the description of Stoner's engagement to Edith Bostwick, the pampered daughter of wealthy parents in St. Louis, who consented to their marriage, but only with reservations about Stoner's straitened beginnings and limited financial "prospects."    I paused when I read his reaction to getting the go-ahead for the marriage:

In the guest room that night, William Stoner could not sleep.  He stared up into the dark and wondered at the strangeness that had come over his life, and for the first time questioned the wisdom of what he was about to do.  He thought of Edith and felt some reassurance. He supposed that all men were as uncertain as he suddenly had become, and had the same doubts.

The passage reminded me of my getting engaged and married at age 21.  I've thought about it many times over the years, especially since the marriage ended badly.  I've wondered often whether I got engaged and married out of fear, fear of leaving my familiar college life, my familiar roommates, and fear of moving into a great unknown, life as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Marines.  I've wondered whether getting married to my college sweetheart was a way of holding on to something of the life we were both leaving, a way of diminishing, by one person at least, 'those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.'  Both Anne and I were facing an unknown future, and marriage was a way of facing it together, with a partner from our soon-to-be-past life.  All my roommates and best friends got married right out of college.  We had all been raised Catholic, and attended Catholic schools and college in the 1950s and early 60s.  Vatican II was still occurring, the 'sexual revolution' and women's liberation had not begun yet, the Beatles had yet to appear on the Ed Sullivan show, we were still culturally in the 50s when young Catholic lovers were expected to get married.  Long engagements were suspect, and living together was "shacking up," sinful, and scandalous, especially for the woman.  Tom Devitt graduated a semester early, in December 1962, and married his girlfriend Ronnie Colby, one week later.  Ed Felsenthal and I graduated on June 2, 1963.  Ed married his high school sweetheart Lynn on June 8th, and I married Anne on June 15th.  Bill Hendricks graduated a semester later and promptly married Paula Bocchichio.  Jerry Nugent married his high school sweetheart Phyllis, but not immediately after graduation.  O, tempora! O, mores!    Can we imagine 5 college roommates in 2026, almost all choosing to get married immediately upon graduation?  Andy, Steve, and David were all in their 30s when they married, and Sarah in her 40s.   Was marriage a way of rectifying and ratifying our past sins of the flesh?  Those sins were unlawful and sinful when committed, indeed mortally sinful for us Catholics, but subsequent marriage, in 1950s thinking, was something of a curative.  Who knows why we do what we do?  How much is the exercise of free will, and how much determined?  I'm mindful of Lucy Barton's concluding lines in Oh, William!

But when I think Oh William!, don't I mean Oh Lucy! too?  Don't I mean Oh Everyone, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves!

Except a little tiny, tiny bit we do.

 But we are all mythologies, mysterious.  We are all mysteries, is what I mean.

This may be the only think in the world I know to be true. 

 

I'm having thoughts about tomorrow's "procedure" or "surgery."  I've been thinking of tomorrow's catheter ablation as "some heart surgery," but I sometimes see the process referred to  as a "procedure" rather than "heart surgery."   Maybe I should be referring to it as "groin surgery" since my groin is where the incisions will be made to permit access to the vein or artery through which  Dr. Singh, or some other person, will "thread" a catheter all the way through my torso and into the chambers of my heart.  Whatever, right?  I've been a mental wimp about this whatever since I was first informed of its desirability to relieve or improve my copious heartbeat irregularities.  It is a scary ordeal to go through, and I am duly scared, not wimpering, cowering, chickening-out scared, but preoccupied scared.  It's not that I expect something to go wrong tomorrow, . . .  or is it?  Honestly, I suppose I do expect something to go wrong.   I don't have a good feeling about this surgery/procedure.  With any surgery/procedure, there are always risks, and this one is no exception.  Lots of things could go wrong, in my groin, in the veins or arteries, inside my heart, in my brain or lungs, or in the recovery.  It's very serious business, and I wish I weren't going through it, though I'm not about to withdraw my "informed consent."  Nonetheless, I realize that tomorrow morning I will be asked whether I want to be resuscitated in the 'unlikely event' that my heart stops beating during the process, and that, with my heart failure and my arrhythmias and my age and the assault on my body, the supposed "unlikely" event is not entirely unlikely.  Plus, it's only one of several real risks.  

I know, of course, that I should count my blessings, and I do.  First, it's a blessing that I'm having this surgery.  Most people in the world who could derive some great benefit from such an operation can't obtain it, for one reason or another.  I can.  Hosanna!  I don't have to pay a penny for it.  Hosanna!  My surgeon/electophysiologist is tremendously skilled, with skills acquired only from many, many years of intensive training.  Hosanna!  Hallelujah!  An entire team of highly-skilled medical professionals will work together to apply their years of intensive training to effect an improvement in my quality of life!  Hallelujah!  Hosanna!  How fortunate, how lucky, how blessed can a guy get?  I really know that.  Nonetheless, I confess to feeling like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof: “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”  At moments like this, I'm thankful for the support of my loving wife, who will see me through the whole megillah, but I could probably use her being reinforced by my dear sister, telling me to SNAP OUT OF IT!!!  SHAPE UP, BUSTER!  . . .  Now I feel like the young guy in the Mennen Skin Bracer commercial almost 50 years ago, slapping his face and saying, "Thanks, I needed that!"

The Wakefield Court annual block party was today, at the cul-de-sac from 4 to 6 p.m.   We arrived at about 4:15, and I left at 5:30 with a sore butt from sitting on the hard plastic seat of my rollator, "Judy."  Geri stayed until about 7:15.  She knows many more neighbors than I do, from many years of walking Lilly and from years of taking walks, most recently with neighbor Shirley Mara and friend Barbara, and from being outside gardening so often, permitting some schmoozing with strolling neighbors.  It's our American form of passeggiata.