11/11/2026

 Wednesday, November 11, 2026

1918, The Allied nations and Germany signed the armistice ending the fighting in the Great War, which had killed more than 15 million people

1939 Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America"

1961 "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller was published

2018 On the centenary of WWI Armistice Day, French President Macron urged the world to reject Nationalism in a speech under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris

2025 Israeli settlers set fire to dozens of vehicles and other property in Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf in the West Bank and attacked Israeli soldiers who were dispatched to the area, injuring four Palestinians, while four Israelis were arrested.

2025 Colombian president Gustavo Petro ordered public forces to halt intelligence sharing with the U.S. Intelligence Community until the U.S. ceases its military strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea

In bed at 9:30, up at 3, trouble falling asleep & staying asleep; 0350, 115/69/66 204.4; 41/51/51, cloudy, rain in the afternoon. 

Morning meds at 6:40 a.m.  Entresto at 6 a.m. and p.m.

The grotesque travesty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I shouldn't have, but I watched it again this morning.  Donald John Trump, "the Foot Soldier,: the Vietnam draft dodger, the felon from the Oval Office, with his signature pompadour hairdo, placing a wreath at the Tomb.  It was only a month ago that I was there as a passenger on an Honor Flight for a ceremonial changing of the guard, thinking such mixed thoughts, experiencing such mixed emotions.  I think of standing on the other side of the Memorial Amphitheater last month, and a day later, writing this:

Yesterday, I noticed an inscription high above the western entrance to the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, leading toward the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is a line from the Roman poet Horace (Odes, 3.2.13): Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori — "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

The inscription dates from the First World War era, before Wilfred Owen's magnificent poem Dulce et Decorum Est had become known. Owen wrote his poem during the war, and it was published posthumously in 1920. In it, he savagely condemned the romantic glorification of death in battle, famously denouncing Horace's maxim as "the old Lie."

There is a powerful retrospective irony in the juxtaposition. At Arlington, Horace's words proclaim the nobility of dying for one's country. Owen, having witnessed the horrors of the trenches, took those very same words and turned them into one of the most searing indictments of the glorification of war ever written.  Sitting there in my wheelchair as an old Marine who had long since come to regret his participation in another war, I found myself much closer to Owen than to Horace.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

My heart is with Wilfred Owen and with those of whom he wrote, and not with Horace or with the militaristic nationalists who decided to put Horace's words at the entry to the Memorial Amphitheater.  That fact colored my whole experience of yesterday's Honor Flight. 

Today I think too of Randall Jarrell's World War II poem, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner:

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Anyone who has attempted to write a poem knows the struggle presented by each word in the poem.  I wonder whether Jarrell struggled between the word "washed" and the word "flushed" when he wrote that poem, each having such different connotations: washing suggesting cleanliness, refreshing, and renewal, and flushing suggesting disposable waste, worthlessness, cannon fodder, "next man up."   

I'll probably continue a tradition and drive through Wood National Cemetery today on my way home from dropping Geri off at the airport, but this old veteran on Veterans Day will not feel like Fozzie Bear in The Muppet Movie after singing America the Beautiful, saying "Patriotism swells in the heart of the American bear."

I watched a documentary on forgotten Milwaukee restaurants last night, and it triggered a ton of memories.  Some of the 'biggies' were Sally's Steakhouse at the Knickerbocker Hotel, which closed in 1994.  I loved their tenderloin and deep-fried shredded onions.  It had a well-deserved reputation for mob connections from Sally Papia's relationships with the Balistrieri's and others.  Sally herself spent time in prison for extortion, if I remember correctly.  Snug's at the Shorecrest Hotel, where I had lunch with a student who was trying to have an affair with me, where the table at which we sat was bugged and recorded by the FBI, and audited by good buddy LOA in the USA's office.  Pieces of Eight on the lakefront, where I stopped for a drink after work with TSJ, or with DSB and CSM, but never together.  Frenchy's on E. North Ave., which closed in1975, where I had dinner only once, but which made life miserable for me in my senior year at MU when I drove a Milwaukee Sentinel truck and stuffed paper boxes at bus stops in the middle of the night.  The Sentinel broke a story about what was a scandal in those days: Frenchy's provided free sandwiches to Milwaukee cops.  After the story was published, Frenchy's stopped the practice, and Milwaukee cops started handing out traffic tickets left and right to Sentinel drivers like me.  It was chickenshit, and it affected my attitude towards cops for the rest of my life.  John Ernst Cafe on Ogden Avenue, Top of the Marine, atop the Marine Bank on Wisconsin Avenue and the river,  and the English Room in the Pfister, all of which shut down in 2001.  I had many lunches and dinners at the Ernst Cafe, which advertised itself as Milwaukee's oldest restaurant, and I remember watching Mayor Henry Maier lead the crowd in song at night.  I worked for a few weeks as the "interior glass man" on the maintenance crew at the Marine Bank building between my discharge from the Marines and starting law school in 1967.  Grenadier's downtown, a great restaurant, where I ate only once, maybe twice.  And the greatest: Karl Ratzsch's on Mason Street, which finally closed in 2017.  Oh, that liver dumpling soup!  Oh, that string quarter in the little alcove.  Oh, what a loss.  But then there's Mader's Restaurant on 3rd Street, now MLK Drive, which thankfully is still open.  I took Sarah there for dinner to mark the occasion of her first period, more than 40 years ago.  Now she's 57.  Time flies.

I'm a little surprised that the documentary didn't include another fine German restaurant, Kalt's, on the east side of Oakland Avenue just south of Locust Street, where I would order Weissbrau.  Ditto the Broadway Bar & Grill at 221 N. Broadway in the old Third Ward, where I enjoyed so many lunches.  It was another great one that shut down in 2001, along with John Ernst, the Top of the Marine, and the English Room.  Such a bad year for Milwaukee eateries.  The photo is of the Kalt's building, now an English pub rather than a Kalt's German Gastshaus.

I also remember the great Albanese's Restaurant on the corner of Keefe Avenue and Pierce Street, famous for its homemade pasta.  It bit the dust in 2009, a victim of the Great Recession.  And Pitch's Lounge and Restaurant at 1801 N. Humboldt, famous for its barbecued ribs, and Three Brothers Serbian Restaurant at 2414 W. St. Clair on the south side, both of which, thankfully, are still in business and still owned by the same families that started the businesses.  I'm thankful that some of these Milwaukee institutions are still surviving, though in my old age, I never get to them anymore.  More's the pity.

I drove through Wood National Cemetery on the way home from the airport, not a single person or vehicle among the tens of thousands of headstones on this dark, cold, rainy, dreary day.  Almost spooky.  I thought there might be flags placed at each headstone because of Veterans Day, but none were. (Unless they had all been removed, but not likely.). The weather today matches my subdued mood.