9/19/2026

 Saturday, September 19, 2026

1994 3,000 US Marines land on Haiti

2019 North America has lost 3 billion birds (29%) since 1970, according to an analysis published in "Science"

2020  Trump vowed to swear in a new Supreme Court judge, despite the election being only 45 days away

2025  Around 10,000 people are ordered to evacuate after authorities discover two pieces of World War II-era unexploded ordnance in Berlin, Germany, one in the Spree River near Mitte and another in Spandau.   

In bed at 9, awake at 2:45, fitful half-sleep till 4:30; 0445 113/72/63 114 203.0; 62/54/68/61, FLOOD WATCH, BEACH HAZARDS 

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Entresto at 5:30 a.m. and p.m.

Today has not bee a day for writing.  I spent quite a bit of time conversing with Google's Gemini AI about how to do a word or topic search of my journal/blog.   The blog is located on Blogger.com, a blogging platform owned by Google.  Germini first had me backing up and downloading the 4 yoars of blog posts, preparatory to feeding the backed up data into Gemini, where Geminia could do the searching for me.  With a lot of instructional help from Gemini, I was able to back up and download onto my lapbook all of the daily blogs, but I wasn't able to transfer th efiles to Gemini.  The system froze up on me.  I was using Apple's Safari browser.  I took a break from the effort, and later asccessed Geminii on my Chrome browser, which repeated some of the ineffectual instructions, and then inormed me that I didn't have to screw around backing up and downloading all my Blogger files, and that I could install a Search gadget in my Blogger account with a simple 3 step process, which I did, successfully.  I'm more than a little frustrated by all the time I wasting following the earlier, ineffectual process  that  Gemini recommended.  I don't think it was a devious way to get me to do my searches on Gemini, rather than in Blogger, but who knows?

Angels in America.  The HBO series was too over-the-top for my tastes.  It's billed as a fantasia or fantasy so I don't know what I was expecting, but it was too fantastic for this old guy.  Ghosts, angels, a lead character climbing Jacob's Ladder up to what? the afterlife?  a heaven of sorts?  I don't know if it's possible to be too heavy-handed in portraying Roy Cohn, but it seemed to me that Al Pacino was.  I wondered how I would feel about the play if I were a Jew.  A Haredi Jew, a modern Orthodox Jew, a practicing or observant Reform Jew, or even a secular, atheistic Jew.  Or a Mormon.  Jewish traditions and culture infuse the play: Prior's wrestling with the angel, the core emphasis on choosing life, the idea of exile, Lou and Ethel Rosenberg reciting Kaddish when Roy Cohn died, etc.  I didn't know what to make of the point that God abandoned his angels when he created humans, the whole idea of God abandoning his own creation, his creatures.  I suspect that if I watched the whole series again some things would be clearer to me than they were on this viewing, but the whoe series is about 6 hours long, and it's not easy viewing, at least for me, so I think I'll be satisfied with whatever I got from watching it once.

Decrepitude.  I went out this afternoon intending to get some groceries at MetroMarket, a cyclamen plant at Stein's Garden Store, and a new water bottle at the Ace Hardware Store.  I stopped at Stein's first, where I struck out: no cyclamens.  At Ace Hardware, I found a water bottle, but my lumbar spine was killing me, so I kissed off the trip to MetroMarket.

The Nerd Reich.  I started this book this afternoon, but I'm not enjoying it.  I'll try again tonight.