8/5/2026

 Wednesday, August 5, 2026

1964 US began bombing North Vietnam in response to the attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin

1966 Protesters threw rocks and bottles at Martin Luther King Jr. during a fair housing protest march at Marquette Park in Chicago 

1966 The Beatles released the single "Eleanor Rigby

2025 My meatotomy, cystoscopy, and bladder fulguration, 6.5 hours in the VA hospital

In bed at 9:20, up at 5:35; 0550 202.8 108/108/65/68 121;68/73/66, cloudy, rainy.

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  Eliquis at 6:20 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Last year's schwantz and bladder surgery.  For some reason, it is surprising to me that it's only been a year since the surgery on my penis and bladder.  Perhaps it's because I've believed for some time now that I need the surgery again, both the meatotomy and the fulguration.   This anniversary reminds me that I should call the urology department today to set up another visit with whoever my new urologist will be.  My former doc has moved on.  I'm at the point of wondering whether the bladder discomfort I regularly experience before pit stops is early pain from another (or recurring) lesion/ulcer on my bladder lining.  I may need my 6th fulguration.  Also, the stenosis of the opening of my schwantz seemed inadequate to the doc who doc who did the meatotomy and was disappointed with the result.  I can't say I'm looking forward to another procedure, but so it goes.  In the last 15 months, I've had 3 outpatient surgeries at the VA (penis & bladder, cataract, heart ablation) plus 10 days of inpatient care for cellulitis in my leg and bradycardia.  I'm grateful and not complaining, but sheesh . . . Old age.  I need to remember what Kate Bowler, who thought she was dying of stage 4 cancer in her mid-30s, said to her friends who were complaining about the indignities of old age: "Old age is a fucking privilege!" Agreed (but, sheesh . . .)

Ezra Klein's AI interviewee confirms what I've thought for years:  He interviewed Jasmine Sun, who has been conducting research on popular opposition to data centers.  She had just returned from a reporting journey to Wisconsin and Michigan and said:

I think one of the most important things about rural Wisconsin and rural Michigan is how beautiful it is.  I felt like I was in Eden.  I felt like I was in Paradise.  It's incredibly lush and incrdibly green.

She went on to describe what one sees as you approach and arrive at a data center, not only all the power lines, but what appears as a huge windowless industrial park, huge warehouses.  "Data centers are very ugly."  I've only seen one, the one northwest of Port Washington off I-43, but I agree with her: it's ugly, huge, somehow intimidating and somehow a bit fearsome, if not terrifying. 

East of Eden.  I've started John Steinbeck's favorite novel, about 150 pages into it.  It's interesting - the story of the Hamilton and Trask families.  I'm especially enjoying the story of the Trask brothers, Adam and Charles, based on the Cain and Abel characters in Genesis.  Neither one of these guys seems particularly admirable to me, but they're sure not dull.  Ditto the psychopath Cathy Ames, a real piece of work. It's a long book, over 800 pages, so this is going to keep me occupied and 'off the streets' for quite a few days.

Anniversary thoughts:   (1) The Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Less than a year later, I was landing in Chu Lai en route to Danang.

(2)  MLK's open housing march in the Marquette Park neighborhood that my parents and Kitty lived in after they fled the blockbusting, overnight racial changes in their Englewood and Auburn-Gresham neighborhoods on the South Side.  None of them would have participated in the hostilities toward Dr. King and his fellow demonstrators, but I'm sure they weren't surprised by the violence.  I was in Vietnam at the time, as part of the phony effort to "win the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese peasants with high explosive bombs, napalm and white phosphorus, bullets and artillery rounds, strategic hamlets and free fire zones.  What a sick joke it all was.

(3) What are the saddest songs I know?  Elvis's Old Shep?  Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady?  The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby?  What else?

Ah, look at all the lonely people / Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been / Lives in a dream

Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for?

All the lonely people Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people / Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear / No one comes near.

Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there / What does he care?

All the lonely people / Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people /. Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people / Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name / Nobody came.

Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave / No one was saved.

All the lonely people / (Ah, look at all the lonely people) / Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people / (Ah, look at all the lonely people) / Where do they all belong?

My journal entry 4 years ago today:

Friday, August 5, 2022

Russian invasions and American invasions

 I suspect there may be some American veterans experiencing disquieting thoughts from Russia's invasion and massive bombing of a smaller, weaker nation whose political/economic system is displeasing to the more powerful Russian government.  Some will recall that we dropped more than twice the tonnage of bombs on Vietnam than we did in both the European and Asian theaters of operation in World War II.  Some will remember our "Shock and Awe" boasting that preceded our invasion of Iraq to destroy non-existent "weapons of mass destruction."  I find myself remembering that on the very day I left the US to participate in our lethal intervention in Vietnam's civil war, President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke to our Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and said:   “. . . it’s going to be difficult for us to prosecute effectively a war that far away from home with the [political] divisions we have here and particularly the potential divisions.  And it’s really had me concerned for a month and I’m very depressed about it because I see no program from either Defense or State that gives me much hope of doing anything except just praying and grasping to hold on during [the] monsoon [season] and hope they’ll quit.  And I don’t believe they’re ever goin’ to quit.  And I don’t see that we have any plan for victory militarily or diplomatically.”  That was on June 21, 1965, ajust days after I had received my PCS orders oversease, and of course Johnson was correct: they were never going to quit, but that didn't keep Johnson and the next American president from continuing the carnage of Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and American lives for years until Marine helicopters were called in to pluck desperate people off the roof of our embassy 10 years later.  What the Russians are doing is hideous, evil, and criminal, but it also ought to prompt a national examination of conscience here.  As Donald Trump infamously told Bill O'Reilly when Reilly 

 out that Vladimir Putin "is a killer":  “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”