Thursday, July 9, 2026
1956 Dick Clark's first appearance as host of American Bandstand
1978, the American Nazi Party held a rally at Marquette Park, Chicago
1980 Seven people died in a stampede to see Pope John Paul II in Brazil
1987 Colonel Oliver North, USMC, admitted to shredding Iran-Contra evidence
2021 June 2021 was declared the hottest June ever recorded in the US in 127 years, with an average temperature of 72.6 degrees F (4.2 degrees above average
6:30 a.m. Bambi, a regular visitor recently in our backyard. We never see his mother, only him. He's resting, chewing his cud, and vulnerable, waiting for his mother, I suspect.
In bed at 10, up at 5:40; 0555 202.0 133/78/60 126; 67/79/66 cloudy
Morning meds at a.m., and Eliquis at 6:40 a.m. and 7 p.m. Trulicity injection at 7:30 p.m.
Three years ago today, I wondered: Cur scribo? I often wonder. Is this just some form of narcissism? Is it just to have something to do while idling on my recliner? Am I just using this exercise as a daily check on cognitive decline, a clue for creeping dementia? Is it because I have so few interactions with other human beings, and so few friends that I have regular contact with? Just a silent way of blowing off steam over the sorry state of the world and the U.S.'s deep polarization? Am I trying to leave a record of having been alive the last days of my life, expecting that I could kick the bucket anytime now? Is it, as I have long thought, just a very inadequate substitute for my daily morning chats with my beloved sister with whom I shared a relationship like no other? Or is it what I suggested in an earlier journal entry, just the need to write, as in 'fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, a writer gotta write'? There was a fairly long period after my grandmother died in 1995 when I reestablished (or first established) communication with my father and I sent him a handwritten letter every day. Trying to make up for lost time? Or just trying to give him something to look forward to, because I knew he enjoyed receiving those letters? And I enjoyed writing them, just as I enjoyed sending long, thoughtful text messages to Kitty all those mornings, for 5 or 6 years. I kept sending her those morning messages well after she was no longer able to write back when she was in her last days, and even for a week or more after she died. I didn't want to stop even though I knew she was not with me anymore. A form of denial perhaps, but I knew she was gone and had been pre-grieving her loss long before she finally died. Fish gotta swim.
Mousicide. We have had two mouse sightings in our house this summer, both by me, one in the basement workroom and one in my bedroom. Geri called our professional rodent-fighter to the house, and he did whatever it is he does, checking for access points, etc. Still, Geri opened the door to the basement yesterday and uttered a little shriek when she saw the mouse brazenly perched on a basement stair, looking at her. When I heard that outcry, I knew I couldn't avoid it: I had to set mousetraps to kill the little guy. Except for insects and rats, I hate killing animals, including house and field mice and chipmunks. I know it's necessary for health and property protection reasons, or to protect the plants in Geri's garden that she works so diligently to nurture; I just hate to do it.
To a Mouse
By Robert Burns
On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss ’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
Sixty years ago today, I boarded a C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft to fly from the Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni, Japan, outside Hiroshima, to the huge Marine and Air Force base at Danang in the then Republic of Vietnam. I was 23 years old. 2 years out of college, 60 years younger and 60 pounds lighter than I am now. I had just started my third full year of active duty as a Marine, and most of it would be spent in Vietnam, with some of it in cushier billets in Iwakuni and on Okinawa, then still legally an American-occupied territory following World War II. My fourth and last year of active duty would be spent at a Naval Air Station north of Philadelphia, where, among my duties, would be notifying the next of kin of other Marines who would be wounded or killed in Vietnam after I left the country.
Today I am thinking back to July 9, 1965, to who I was then and to what I was thinking during the long, lumbering flight over the East and South China Seas. I remember hours sitting on the passenger straps along the fuselage of the aircraft, staring at the tons of military equipment and supplies loaded into its belly, the principal reason for the flight; I was just a hitchhiker. I don't remember much of what I thought that day, other than having a sense of the Great Unknown. What was Vietnam like? What were the security conditions at the big airbase? What would my new duties be at the Air Wing's headquarters, where I was headed? How would I perform in a war zone after years of training in peace? Why exactly were LBJ and the Pentagon sending tens of thousands of Marines and soldiers to this exotic country? How long would this Vietnam thing go on, and how would it end? I knew that a "communist insurgency" had been going on for many years, but I don't recall thinking of it as a civil war in which we were intervening for one side against the other. For us, the government in Saigon and its army were the good guys, and the commies were the bad guys, though we didn't understand much, if anything, of the country's long history of colonization, foreign exploitation, and oppression that the communists fought.
What I am remembering mostly today is the opinion shared by many of us by the end of the year that 'this is not going to end well.' We had no confidence in the Saigon military government and no confidence in the ability of its army to outlast the other side. Of course, as it turned out, our pessimism was spot on, though it took many years, many lives, and immeasurable suffering, mostly by the Vietnamese but also by our guys, to see what was clear to many early on. (We now know that among those 'many' were LBJ himself and Robert McNamara.)
After 8 months in-country, I left Vietnam for a remote infantry staging and training base on northern Okinawa. My air control unit managed the base, since there was little air to control with all combat squadrons deployed in Vietnam. We watched the young Marine infantrymen engage in their last training exercises before deploying to Vietnam. We watched as they got drunk and got into fights in the local "ville" the last night before deployment. We knew that some of them would be killed, some wounded, and none would escape unchanged. I feel sadder today thinking back on those few months on Okinawa with those young "grunts," than thinking back on my time 'in-country.' I feel sadder still remembering my return from Okinawa and Vietnam to the U.S., where Americans were at each other's throats over the war while I hoped beyond hope every six days not to receive a next-of-kin casualty call.
I think these thoughts today, on this personal anniversary, as I think of where we have come over the last 60 years. When I flew off to Vietnam, our government told me (and you) that I was on a mission to protect a brave young democracy from a Godless dictatorship operating out of Hanoi, but with the strings pulled in China and Russia. That wasn't true, or at least not entirely true, but it served the purposes of the government to say it was true. We weren't there to protect the corrupt government in Saigon (never a democracy), but only to fight a perceived Chinese and Russian proxy in Hanoi, to protect our markets and sources of raw materials in SE Asia, and the international sea lanes in the South China Sea. Most Americans believed most of what the government told us, at least until it became clear that we were being duped.
Today, the struggle for democracy is occurring within our own borders, and to my old eyes, it looks like a battle we are losing. Vietnam happened on the way to today, as did Iraq and Afghanistan. In all our military adventures and misadventures, we claimed to be fighting for democracy, freedom, and to protect America's core values. Looking back over these past 60 years, since I stepped onto that C-130 in Iwakuni and stepped off in Vietnam, and looking at where we are today, I wonder what I am to think of democracy, freedom, and core American values.
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