7/24/2026

 Friday, July 24, 2026

1943, the RAF began bombing Hamburg, creating a firestorm and killing 42,600 people

1952 "High Noon", starring Gary Cooper and Thomas Mitchell, was released

1967 The first modern hospice was founded in London, beginning modern palliative care.

2019  Robert Mueller reported that President Trump was not exonerated of obstruction of justice and that Russia interfered in the US election to benefit Trump

2024 Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant address to a joint session of US Congress re Gaza 

In bed at.9"30, up at 5:55; 0605 115/64/64 166 203.8;62/77/61, cloudy   

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 10 a.m.

Approaching the end of A Confederacy of Dunces, and I don't know quite what I think of it.  Much of it is funny, but mostly it's the clever name-calling that Ignatius engages in in his frequent engagements with other human beings, all of whom he considers his intellectual inferiors.  He is like a combination of Don Rickles, Don Quixote, and Oliver Hardy.   The problem I'm having getting through the whole book is that there's not much of a plot, mostly just Ignatius in various settings acting ridiculously and berating those around him.  I love Laurel and Hardy movies, but not hour after hour of them.  

The more I learn of John Kennedy Toole, the clearer it becomes that Ignatius J. Reilly is based largely on him.  Each was an only child with a very pushy mother, and each was a medievalist.  Toole even struggled with his weight and with overeating.  

I found a January 5, 2021, review of the novel in The New Yorker by Tom Bissell that includes this:

I suddenly recalled why I found the novel so repellent the first time I read it. It’s not that I “don’t like” or “can’t relate” to Ignatius; no serious reader should care about such things. It’s more that, at every turn, Ignatius is exactly the character you expect him to be. Late in the novel, one character asks him, “Don’t you ever shut up?” He doesn’t. That’s the problem.

That is indeed the problem.  So much of the novel consists of the same scenes played over and over again, variations on a repeated theme.

An anniversary thought.  The Hamburg bombing and its firestorm killing thousands reminded me of a memo written by Winston Churchill on March 28, 1945, shortly before the end of the European war.  He wrote: 

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed.  Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land.  We shall not, for instance, be able to get housing materials out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans themselves.  The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.  The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive."  I included a photocopy of the memo in my memoir in the chapter in which I described my visit to Hiroshima and its War Memorial.  I wrote:

I found this letter from Winston Churchill while doing some research on strategic bombing.  It is notable for its bald acknowledgment that a prime purpose of strategic bombing of cities was “increasing the terror, though under other pretexts” and for its reluctant abjuring of “mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.”  The German military, of course, were past masters of Schrecklichkeit or terrorism at least from the inception of World War I and its invasion of Belgium, the bombardment of historic Louvain and torching of its priceless university library.  However, it did not take long for the British and Americans to get into their own brand of in terrorem tactics on civilians, especially the firebombing of cities in Europe and Japan, including the precious medieval city of Dresden, which Churchill mentions as a “query against the conduct of Allied bombing.”  The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented the pinnacle of terror bombing.  

Have we made much moral progress since then, either as a species or as a nation?  We're more than 80 years past the firebombing of most Japanese cities, bombings for which Curtis LeMay accurately said of himself that he would be prosecuted for war crimes if the US had lost, rather than won, the war.  We see what Russia is doing in Ukraine, what Israel has been doing for decades against Palestinians, and now what Trump and his henchmen are threatening against Iran and what Iran is doing against US allies in the region, and we wonder.  "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."  Homo hominis lupus.