7/16/2026

 Thursday, July 16, 2026

1945 The first test detonation of an atomic bomb occurred at Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico,

1964 Republican convention selected Barry Goldwater as the presidential candidate

1973 During the Watergate hearings, Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of tapes

2018 Helsinki Summit; Trump credited Putin's word over the US intelligence community

In bed at 9, up at 5;  0515 202.6 116/70/65 105, 0525 123/74/64

Morning meds at 8:10 a.m., and last day of Eliquis blood thinner at 7 a.m. and 8 p.m.   

A bouquet graciously sent by Steven Aquavia to his Aunt Geri.

I write this note on July 15, the day before the date of this journal entry.  I do it because yesterday's journal, on the anniversary of my mother's death, I devoted the journal to her, and because today is the day Geri came into my bedroom and told me that Jimmy Aquavia died around 5 this morning.   I was on my La-Z-Boy reading Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything, and she had just gotten off the phone with her niece Katherine, who conveyed the expected news.  It seems we are all kind of numb about Jimmy's death, not because we didn't all have a love for him, because each of us did, but rather because in his last years, and especially his last months, his life was so diminished by dementia.  

The Oven Bird

By Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Jimmy was, like my other good friends who have died, a man of great vitality, great abilities, and great values.  Ed Felsenthal, Tom St. John, David Branch - all gone.  My best friend and sister, Kitty, gone.  Today is mostly a day of reverie, thinking of all of them, and of my parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and cousins.  All gone, with me next.  Geri and I are now the sole survivors of our birth families, feeling doubly orphaned by the loss of parents and of all siblings.  It's a day of remembering and anticipating. 

Spring and Fall

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

 

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Hazardous Air Quality Alert:  The Air Quality Index hit a record 644!

  A Health warning og Emergency Conditions is in effect.  EVERYONE is even more likely to experience serious health effects.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

The Mystery Money Powering Trump’s Second Term:  The president and his allies have built a network of groups financed by wealthy donors and businesses that is advancing his priorities with little public disclosure, by Marianne LeVine and  Maggie Severns

 Donald Trump has turned his second term into an unprecedented fundraising blitz, raising well over half a billion dollars from wealthy donors and stashing it in a sprawling network of nonprofits, cultural institutions and committees that he and his allies control. 

Companies seeking lucrative contracts or favorable policies from the administration have poured millions of dollars into these funds, which have become a key tool for Trump to pursue his political and personal priorities. . . .

In many cases, details about where the cash is coming from or how it is being spent are shrouded in secrecy, . . Some Trump-linked funds remake Washington, others repurpose institutions and others have supercharged fundraising for Trump’s political agenda.

 The Wall Street Journal documented more than $781,948,878 in donations and other payments to Trump-linked groups since the 2024 election. . . .  

As always, the best government money can buy.