Wednesday, September 16,, 2026
1920 The "Wall Street bombing" occurred at 12:01 when a horse-drawn wagon exploded on Wall Street, New York, killing 38 and injuring 143
1974 US President Gerald Ford announced conditional amnesty for US Vietnam War deserters
1976 American Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women as priests and bishops
2014 Ellis Kevil was born
2018 US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault in the 1980s in "The Washington Post"
2025 An independent United Nations commission of inquiry publishes a report that "finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza," listing four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people during the war.
In bed at 9, up at 4:45; 0455 201.6 122/75/65 90; 58/69/58, cloudy, BEACH HAZARDS WARNING, waves 3-5', currents.
Morning meds at 8 a.m. Entresto at 5:30 a.m. and p.m.
CBG: My daughter sent me this podcast to listen to. It’s interesting and I think the bottom line is love is what combats loneliness. Loving and being loved.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aspire-with-emma-grede/id1811878340?i=1000787131240
CDC: Thanks for forwarding the podcast shared with you by Rachel. I listened to all of it tonight and will share some thoughts about it tomorrow. It’s dangerous to share books and other stuff with me; it often triggers a longish reply because whatever is shared triggers so many thoughts in me. You know I’m an old blabbermouth.
CBG: And you know I love hearing all you have to say!
CDC: Good morning, dear friend. My overall impressions of the podcast was that Emma Cline and Arthur Brooks kind of ‘buried the lead.’ Brooks’ main point I think was that our primary purpose in life, that which gives our lives meaning, is loving and helping others, and accepting love from others. I agree with that, but I thought the point wasn’t made forcefully and clearly until there was a little more than 5 minutes left in the program. Most of the discussion was devoted with subordinate points, lists of do’s and don’ts. I wished they had spent more time on the main point. I had a conversation about that main point with the med tech who administered the echocardiogram on me last week at the VA. It’s got deep religious roots, of course, going back to Leviticus's teaching about loving the stranger and one’s neighbor as ons’s self, and the Buddha’s teachings about loving kindness, all carried forward by Rabbi Hillel and by Jesus. Brooks makes the point that the wisdom of this core teaching is backed up by data, by ‘happiness studies’ by psychologists and even neurologists, and it’s also supported by our own experiences in life. We feel better when we help others. When Howard Eisenberg was dean at MULS, he told those of us engaged in pro bono work that we “were doing God’s work.” He said the same to me when I retired from the faculty and headed to the House of Peace. In any event, I wished Emma and Arthur would have spent more time on the main point and less on the ‘how to’ subordinate stuff, but I may be too picky or fussy in second guessing them.
Years ago I read a book titled “Happiness is a Serious Problem” by Dennis Prager. Prager is an observant Jew, raised in a modern Orthodox family, but no longer Orthodox. I used to listen to his radio show when we lived outside Saukville. He’s conservative, but a thoughtful one, not a whacko. I don’t remember much of the book because of the passage of time, but my big takeaway from it was his argument that we have a DUTY to be happy. He argued that our happiness and unhappiness affects those around us, especially those closest to us, that when we allow ourselves to be unhappy, we increase the unhappiness of those around us. I thought, not surprisingly, of my poor fathers’s profound unhappiness after his experiences on Iwo Jima in WWII, and how it affected my mother, my sister, and me. I thought too of my mother’s relative ebullience, despite the terrible experiences in her life, and the redemptive (for want of a better word) force it had in my father’s, sister’s, and my life. So I agreed with Prager’s argument, just based on my own experiences in life, and I keep it in mind now when I tend so strongly to pessimism, cynicism, and depression. I do try to fight it off by awareness of all I have to be grateful for, as Arthur Brooks, and many others, recommend.
I was struck by his admission that his wife is a much happier person than he is, giving himself a 4.5/10 rating and his wife an 8.5/10. It’s the same in my marriage; Geri is a much happier person than I am, and I put her highest on my list of what I am grateful for. (You know you are high on my list, too.)
I was also struck by his belief that we cannot be happy without loving someone, that the person who loves no one cannot be happy. I think that’s true, and I think of Donald Trump. He constantly has his wished and whims gratified by the ‘loyalty’ that his wealth buys, but he must deep down be an always unhappy person. I think of his niece's aptly titled book about him, “Too Much And Never Enough.” Never enough is the story of his life, even now at age 80. And now he threatens to bring down the temple around us all in his vain pursuit of a happiness that will always elude him because of the profound emptiness of his heart and soul.
One last thought: I liked his description of the early morning hours of each day as “holy hours,” to something like that. The early hours are when I used to connect with my sister every day. Then, after she was gone, they became the hours when I started writing reflections in my daily journal. I thought of them as my ‘morning musings.’ They are the hours I can focus on not only what troubles me, but on all I have to be thankful for, including your friendship.❤️
American Scoundrel. I've made it through 30% of the book, just finishing the chapters dealing with Roy Cohn's time serving as Joe McCarthy's chief counsel on McCarthy's subcommittee investigating communist subversion in the federal government, focusing on the (in)famous Army-McCarthy hearings in which McCarthy and Cohn were finally undone, and Cohn was forced to resign in large part by Attorney Joseph Welch and his famous question: "You've done enough. . . Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last, have you left no sense of decency at long last?" Before reading this book, I hadn't known the full story of how that famous confrontation developed. Welch was examining Cohn when McCarthy broke into his questioning by bringing up the fact that a young lawyer in Welch's firm had belonged to the National Lawyers Guild while at Harvard Law School, and that the Guild had been accused of being a communist front, or at least sympathetic to communism. Welch, McCarthy, and Cohn had agreed beforehand that no mention would be made of that young lawyer's past membership and, in return, Welch would not ask Cohn any questions pertaining to his efforts to avoid being drafted at the end of the Korean War. McCarthy's comments violated that express agreement, and that was one reason Welch was so outraged. The exchange between McCarthy and Welch occurred on June 9, 1954, a couple of months before my 13th birthday. By that time, my family had acquired its first television set, and I remember those Army-McCarthy hearings and that exchange. It received huge public and media attention, even more than the other damning evidence against Cohn's and McCarthy's behavior presented during the hearings.
I am struck by how much those hearings and those times remind me of what we are going through now in the US, with Trumpism replacing McCarthyism. It's no secret that Cohn mentored Trump. Their behaviors are almost identical in many ways. Never admit you were wrong. Never apologize. When you've made a bad bet, double down. Etc. He got rid of Jeff Sessions as his first AG because he appointed a special counsel to investigate the Russian connections to the 2016 elections. "Where's my Roy Cohn?" Trump had two main teachers, both psychopaths: his father, Fred Trump, and Roy Cohn. No wonder we're living in shit city today. All these guys are or were cruel, selfish, unprincipled, and destructive.
McCarthy graduated from Marquette University Law School in 1935. The school was located in Sensenbrenner Hall then, as it was when I attended 30-some years later. He attended classes in the same classrooms I attended, and probably used the same lockers and men's room in the basement that I used. I wouldn't be surprised if he sat in the same ancient wooden desk-seats that we sat in. In those days, the law school was a bare-bones operation, used as a cash cow by the university to prop up less profitable departments, like the Theology department, and even the cash-draining medical school, which became independent in 1967, when I started law school. Our dean used to hold up the image of "the Marquette Lawyer" as a paragon of professional skill, competence, and virtue, but we noticed that he never used our alumnus who was the circuit court judge in Outagamie County and a United States senator as a model for our behavior, which is not to say that Joe McCarthy wasn't admired by some of our Republican faculty members.
I met next-door neighbor Debbie while getting the mail this afternoon and had a good chat. She will be spending much of the winter in other countries: Switzerland for a visit with her son and his family, El Salvador for some church work, Tuscany for R&R, and Mexico for some other reasons(s). I offered to do whatever might be helpful while she's gone.
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