0919

September 19, 2022

In bed at 9, up at 3, 2(?)pss, no vino.

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Last few days of astrological summer, fall beginning at 8:04 p.m. on Thursday, 9/22.  As it happens, the weather changes then also, noticeably cooler.

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I'm scheduled for my 3rd covid booster shot at 11 a.m. at the VA, the 'bivalent' booster designed to provide more protection against the prevalent omega variant.  Joe Biden was interviewed on "60 Minutes" last night and said 'the pandemic is over.'  Hundreds of Americans are dying every day of covid, mostly elderly, mostly unvaccinated, mostly with underlying morbidities.  More federal funding is needed to reduce the number of unvaccinated and increase the protection of the elderly with underlying morbidities, so Biden's statement the 'the pandemic is over' will be surpassingly unhelpful to the public health folks trying to get that funding.  Current CDC figures show 329 covid deaths per day and 4,100 daily  new hospital admissions.  Joe opens his mouth and another gaffe falls out.  Reminds me of the statement allegedly uttered by Obama about his VP: 'Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.' . . . . .Very very few people getting the new booster at the VA.  3 or 4, one in a wheelchair.  3 more in the waiting area.

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After watching Breathless yesterday, I watch the first 2/3rds of Godard's Tout Va Bien or 'Everything's OK' with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.  Made 4 years after the May 1968 strike led by French students and joined by much of French society.  1968, was perhaps the most cataclysmic in my life, at least until 2016.  Stunning tracking footage along the checkout counters of a supermarket toward the end of the film.  I fear I will never again look at a checkout lane at Sendik's again without thinking of Tout Va Bien.  The film targets consumer capitalism, the 'establishment', cops, unions, corporate 'news' outlets, marriage, communist hucksterism, and everything about modern life 4 years after the Great Upheaval of 1968.  Godard was long a Maoist, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-Vietnam War, pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist and accused anti-semite.  He didn't seem to enjoy much of modern society or modern life.

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Yesterday's NYTimes carried an article titled "Student Loan Subsidies Could Have Dangerous, Unintended Side Effects." The writer argues that the federal subsidies created in Biden's student debt-relief program could create a perverse incentive for both schools and students to pay less attention to the real cost of the education they provide or seek.    This year, the tuition cost of an entering 1st-year law student at Marquette University Law School, where I spent almost a third of my life studying and teaching is $49,710.  When I matriculated there in 1967, the tuition was $575 per semester, $1,150 per year.  The consumer price index in 1967 was 33.40; the current CPI is somewhat less than 300, a multiple of almost 9 from 1967.  The tuition cost has increased by a multiple of more than 43, i.e., approaching 5 times more than the rate of inflation.   The administration of the school in 1967 consisted of a dean, a then recently-created assistant deanship, a law librarian, and a part-time assistant librarian.   The "leadership team" at the law school now consists of the dean, 4 associate deans, 4 assistant deans, and 11 directors of various programs.  My entering class had 119 students; the 2022 class has 177 full-time and a handful of part-time, about 1/3 again as large.  The full-time faculty in 1967 numbered 8; in 2022, it's 31 according to the school's website although a few of those are deans or emeritus professors.  Thus, while the school's enrollment has increased by barely 1/3, the faculty has at least tripled, the administration has approximately sextupled, and the tuition has increased 43-fold, all while the CPI has increased by only a factor of 9.  I do not mean to suggest that Marquette adequately staffed or funded its law school back in 1967; it most assuredly did not.  Nonetheless, the legal education provided was most assuredly sufficient to prepare a great many of us for the practice of law.  In any event, as the numbers show (at least in part), one need not long wonder how it came to pass that tuition has risen so exorbitantly over the years.  What has been true at Marquette and its law school has been true generally in higher education.  The higher education industry has regularly opted to increase the cost of its product/service, fueled inevitably by the ready availability of student loans, i.e., student indebtedness.  Student debt forgiveness is a complicated issue about which it's hard not to have mixed feelings.  But as to where much of the blame lies, I am reminded of Fitzgerald's piercing description in The Great Gatsby:  “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

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Ran some errands this afternoon (Costco gas, Michael's acrylics, Ace furnace filter, Sendiks veggies), then Geri and I dropped the Honda off at David Hobbs again, picked up by Andy in the Volvo.  Will be picked up by him again @ 8 tomorrow morning, hopefully to pick up repaired Honda and Lexus and get back to normal.

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Watching Channel 12 5 o'clock news to learn that since Friday night, 20 people have been shot by firearms in Milwaukee, 19 in the 'inner city,' 1 on the South Side.  Three have died from their wounds.

    National news devoted almost exclusively to the pomp and circumstance surrounding the funeral of QEII.  Maybe 5 minutes devoid to typhoon damage in Alaska, hurricane damage in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.  I'm sure millions of viewers lap it up.  Enough already.😒

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0918

September 18, 2022

In bed around 10, up distressed with GERD at midnight, not choking, gasping, run-through-a-box-of-Kleenex, trying to sleep on the recliner but enough to keep me awake for some time.  Put another 2 pillows on the bed to build a wedge, which worked pretty well.  Up at 7:45.  Tired, pack pain.b. . . . . . . .

Sunday morning talk shows focussing on the latest high visibility skirmish in our never-ended Civil War: Texas' Dr. Strangelove a/k/a Greg Abbot and Florida's Benito De Santis sending loads of refugees to NYC, Martha's Vineyard, and D.C.'s Naval Observatory home of VP Kamela Harris.  One of the persons sent to Harris' home is one month old.  All of the refugees were apparently misled in boarding the buses and aircraft that took them away from El Paso and San Antonio, TX.  Reminds me of the condemned practice within the military of transferring problem troops or officers, undesirable for one reason or another, to other units; 'let someone else handle it.'  The problem of our tsunami of immigrants from Central and South America wasn't created by NYC or Martha's Vineyard or the city of Washington, D.C. Europe is moving hard right in large measure because of immigration by Blacks and Browns, so is the United States.  

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“America controls the world and will continue to do so until Russia is prosperous and Europe united. The future of mankind depends upon the action of America during the next half-century. If America advances smoothly upon the path of capitalistic imperialism which is indicated by present tendencies and opportunities, there will be a gradually increasing oppression of the rest of the world, a widening gulf between the wealth of the New World and the poverty of the Old, a growing hatred of America among the exploited nations, and at last, under socialist guidance, a world-wide revolt involving repudiation of all debts to America. 

Whether, in such a struggle, England would be on the side of America or on that of Europe and Asia, it is impossible to guess; it would depend upon whether the Americans had thought our friendship or our trade the better worth securing. In either event, the war would probably be so long and so destructive that nothing would be left of European civilization at the end, while America itself would be reduced to poverty and might experience at home the socialism which had been crushed elsewhere. 

Thus a not improbable outcome would be a class war in America, leading to the destruction of industrialism, the death by starvation and disease of about half the population of the globe, and ultimately the return to a simpler manner of life. After reverting for centuries to the life of Red Indians, the Americans might be re-discovered by a second Columbus, hunting wild beasts with bows and arrows on Manhattan Island. Then the process would no doubt begin anew, reaching a similar futile culmination and a similar tragic collapse.”

— Bertrand Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923), Part I, Ch. VII: Socialism in Advanced Countries, p. 219 

Wow - Russell was even more pessimistic than I am!  Not sure exactly what he meant by 'industrialism' but it seems clear it's directly related to capitalism, imperialism, and globalization.  I'm thinking we would probably go through some kind of color war (brown and black v. white) before we would get to a class war.  Who knows?

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I glazed my egg painting and added text a la Rene Magritte and current Catholic and right-wing abortion doctrine.

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I watched Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  It is commonly rated as a great film in cinema history and this was the second time I have watched it.  I didn't get it the first time, and I didn't get it the second.  Belmondo's character could hardly be less relatable unless it is by Seberg's.  Each appears to be sociopathic or near it.  He kills and steals without a second thought.  She turns him in to the police with no regret, no compunction.  Visually, Belmondo is rarely seen without a cigarette, looking like a 'blunt,' hanging out of his mouth.  A viewer wonders how he can breathe with all the smoke engulfing his face.  The dialogue, at least the English subtitles used on the Criterion Edition, seems at times ludicrous.  Maybe it was intended to be this way to show Belmondo's character's 'make believe' persona as a Humphrey Bogart gangster-type tough guy, but the effect is to make it hard for this viewer to get much out of the movie.  Jean-Luc Godard went on to be hailed as an auteur and founder of the French New Wave.  He died this month by assisted suicide at age 91. Jean-Paul Belmondo became an international star after Breathless, spent most of the rest of his life acting in films, and died last year at age 88.   Jean Seberg, a supporter of liberal 'left wing' causes,  was surveilled, hounded, and maligned by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover and committed suicide in 1979, at age 40.

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0917

September 17, 2022

 In bed at 9, awake at 2:30, bait bucket/squirrel cage brain, up at 3:13, pas de vin.  Thoughts of Rothko, technique, thoughts of his painting as he was painting, strict secrecy, bourgeois appearance, father a pharmacist, born in Dvinsk, Dvinsk ghetto, the headline "10 Jews left in Drinks, 31,000 Dead". Thoughts of 7303 S. Emerald, father yelling at me, sitting on the floor leaning against the wall in the living room near kitchen doorway, people in the kitchen, Hartman.  Saturday is the day to charge the med-alert device.  Zap half-cup of yesterday's coffee. . . .  Back to bed @ 5:15, up and down till 6:45, little sleep.  Beautiful dawn sky to the east,  clouds a mixture of blue-grays and bright shining whites.  Many chickadees congregate on the feeders.

Distorted 'fun house' photo, bursting brain.

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I'm trying to cut down on posting to FaceBook.  My views are so often jaundiced that I have every reason to believe many of my FB friends have stopped reading them.  No wonder.  I have turned into (or have always been?) a crabby (started to type 'crappy') old man.  Can't exchange views with Kitty anymore; this blog serves as a journal, an outlet for my so -often-jaundiced thoughts.

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I haven't worked on painting for a few days, since I satisfied myself with the salvage job on "Woman in a Black Hat."  I decided I ought to work on something so I decided to try to paint an egg, a brown egg on a white background.  It turns out that that is not such an easy project (color, shape, texture), but I started at least.

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Geri at the rock-climbing facility on Commerce Street south of North Avenue for Ellis's birthday party for her friends.  I'm at home reading Adam Gopnik's New Yorker essay "Can't We Come Up With Something Better Than Liberal Democracy?"  He reminds us that neither now nor perhaps ever has broad-based democracy been considered by everyone to be a desirable form of government.  Also read David Leonhardt's "'A Crisis Coming': The Twin Threats to American Democracy" in this morning's NYT.  AirPods in my ears, listening to Faure's Requiem, soothing settling music for troubling, unsettling readings.  . . . . .  Then, as it happened, I finally watched a CSPAN book program I had been saving for some time, on Robert Parkinson's Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence.  In it, the following quote by John Adams in 1818 at age 83 appeared: "The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits [my addition: climate and economy] had so little resemblance, and their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory, and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise.  The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind.  Thirteen clocks were made to strike together - a perfection of mechanism which no artist had ever before effected."  Parkinson summarized his book at the beginning of his talk: "The argumentation for how to make the cause, the cause of fighting the Revolution, was by turning to and employing all sorts of stories, language, images about slave insurrections and violence in the backcountry, especially about Indigenous People."  No surprise there!  "Patriots" like Adams and Jefferson seized on the one non-controversial thing that all the colonists had in common (unlike religion, views on slavery, etc.) and that was FEAR of slave insurrection against their white enslavers and massacres of colonists by 'Indians', domestic insurrectionists and Indian savages working with the King.'

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0916

September 16, 2022

In bed at 10:30, up at 6:30, 4 pss,  2 &1/2 glasses of red.

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U. S. District Judge Aileen Cannon denied DOJ's motion to stay her earlier order respecting the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. The case caption seems so appropriate: Donald J. Trump v. United States of America, Trump against the country, Trump against the national government.  I confess to never having a serious doubt that Trump harbors a treasonous heart, that he feels no loyalty to anything or anyone other than himself, a true sociopath, psychopath.  The Trump-appointed federal judge refused even to accept the federal Department of Justice's representation that certain documents were "classified" and that delaying the investigation around those documents posed a risk to national security and 'irreparable harm', reflecting the deep antipathy and total distrust of the Republican Party, the Federalist Society, and Trump supporters of federal authority to investigate crime and protect national security.  As remarkable as Cannon's ruling is, one can't be assured that it will be overturned by the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, where 6 or the 11 judges were appointed by Trump.   "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

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Jamelle Bouie in this morning's NYT:

The short story behind the now-averted railroad strike is this: The largest freight railroad carriers in the country were willing to cripple the transportation infrastructure of the United States rather than allow their workers to take the occasional day off to see a doctor or attend to their families. . . . . .Today, even with the surge of union activity in fast food and other service-related industries, private-sector unionization is still at its lowest point since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. And yet, as we’ve seen, where unions are strong — or at least, where they have strength — they are still able to challenge the rapacious and exploitative behavior of business owners and employers.

I am reminded of a different labor dispute ('dispute' much too anodyne a word) and Pete Seeger's Which Side Are You On

Come all of you good workers

Good news to you I'll tell

Of how the good ol' union

Has come in here to dwell

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

My daddy was a miner

And I'm a miner's son

And I'll stick with the union

'Til every battle's won

They say in Harlan County

There are no neutrals there

You'll either be a union man

Or a thug for J. H. Blair

[Chorus]

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Oh workers can you stand it?

Oh tell me how you can

Will you be a lousy scab

Or will you be a man?

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on?

Don't scab for the bosses

Don't listen to their lies

Us poor folks haven't got a chance

Unless we organize

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Geri is off to visit her friend Elise.  My hero, my Matthew 25:31 saint.

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Saw part of the pomp and circumstance in Westminster Hall while catching up on the news, the traditional Vigil of the Princes.  The queen's children - Charles, Anne, Edward, and Andrew - standing vigil around the queen's remains, all wearing what appear to be naval officers' uniforms, including Princess Anne in bicorne, white trousers, and jackboots.  The sleeves of Prince Charles' tunic sported the rank insignia of the highest admiral of the Royal Navy.  The disgraced Prince Andrew, like the others, sports a row of what appear to be military/naval medals and other insignia of Orders of Chivalry, as if he and his siblings actually served and endured the rigors of qualifying for and fulfilling the duties of military/naval service.  Andrew apparently did serve in the nasty Falklands War with Argentina, another example of Britain's imperialism and militarism.  Pass the basin, please.  It can't help but remind us that the great wealth and privileges of the royal family, and of other 'peers,' was obtained by force, by violence, out of the muzzles of rifles, artillery, and naval guns.  Not 'rule, Britannia, but Cruel, Britannia. ( The downgraded Prince Harry, who did serve two tours of duty in Afghanistan, we recall was not permitted to wear his uniform.)

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Ellis' 8th birthday is today, Katherine and Jordan's anniversary (1995).  I stayed home from pizza at David and Sharon's.  Down to one car, with Lexus laid up at Andrew Toyota until at least Tuesday.  With one car, I would be antsy to be getting home while Geri having a great time.  Stayed home instead.

0915

September 15, 2022

In bed at 10:30, up at 6, 3 or 4 pss, 1 and 1/2 glasses of red.  Woke up from a sad dream of resigning from the old firm only to find out I was being fired by the firm, new management, getting out 'old wood,' empty out desk,' hand over keys and parking pass, 'perp walk' to door.  Reminiscent of how the executive director of  WEAIT was fired years ago by his board of directors, when I was tasked with supervising his cleaning out of the desk, walking to the door, etc.  Dream based on how non-entrepreneurial I was as a lawyer, hating to charge large fees, realizing that in my work at my firm, my own family and old friends couldn't afford to hire me. Never cut out for building a private practice of wealthy people.  Never cut out for 'fee for service, hourly billing' either.  Inherently conflictual.

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I haven't tested my blood glucose since August 7th.  Went back to the bedroom to do a finger-stick but found Lilly lying down between my bed and the desk where I do the sticking.  Decided not to disturb her.  Part of her behavioral changes in her old age is spending more time in my bedroom and spending more time staring at me in the TV room, following me, and waiting during pit stops.  

    Blood sugar at 9 a.m., fasting, 142.

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Geri left the house at 7 for a 7:45 appointment with her ophthalmologist about cataract removal.  Called at 7:40, GPS malfunctioned, heading east on College Avenue, instead of toward Greenfield destination.  Pulled up Google Maps to help.  Called the Greenfield office who said they give patients a 15-minute leeway on appointments.  Doesn't sound good, keeping my fingers crossed.

    Geri got home at 10:45 and reported that she arrived at her destination around 8:20 for the 7:45 appointment.  Said my directions weren't good.  A very disappointing start to her day, upsetting.

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White House has announced 'tentative settlement' of freight rail labor dispute, avoidance of strike.  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stated in 1896 the truth of capitalism: "One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return."  Vegelahn v. Guntner, 167 Mass. 92, 44 N.E. 1077, 1081.

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Today's papers reveal a right-wing coalition has defeated the center-left government in Sweden.  Yesterday's paper revealed that Italy's next leader may be ultra-rightist Georgia Meloni.   Sweden, Italy, Poland, and Hungary.  Democracy, mene mene tekel upharsin.  Immigration, immigration, immigration: Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, et al.  Muslims and "Non-Nordics", memories of 'non-Aryans.'

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"We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

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I watched another YouTube lecture on Mark Rothko this morning, "Exploring Mark Rothko with Annie Cohen-Solal, in conversation with Peter Selz."  Very interesting.  In Q&A at the end of the program, Peter Selz noted that Rothko had been very depressed and sick before his 1970 suicide (slit both wrists), couldn't paint from the effects of medications, bad arthritis, and failing eyesight.

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Took Andy's Lexus to Andrew Toyota to get the power steering fixed.  Hoping it will be done tomorrow and we'll get the Volvo back.

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I finished reading Eva Hoffman's Shtetl, wondering why Caela thought she detected some elements of excuse-making or whitewash in it.  Watched an hour interview with her on YouTube.

0914

September 14, 2022

In bed at @10:30, up at 5:30, 3 or 4 pss, 3 glasses of red.  Some high back pain again on awakening.  Stayed up later than normal watching the first part of an interesting lecture on YouTube by Christopher Rothko on his father's color field (and earlier) paintings  -"Mark Rothko and the Inner World."  One of Mark Rothko's quotes reminded me of Niebuhr: ". . .  the fear of death and pain and frustration seems the most constant binder between human beings and we know that a common enemy is a much better coalescer of energies . . . than is a common positive end."

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    I took a photo of the salvage job on Woman in a Black Hat.  I'm not nuts about the painting but I like the photo of it

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    Ed Yong has an article in the current atlantic.com titled "What Makes Brain Fog So Unforgiving." "And despite its nebulous name, brain fog is not an umbrella term for every possible mental problem. At its core, Hellmuth said, it is almost always a disorder of “executive function”—the set of mental abilities that includes focusing attention, holding information in mind, and blocking out distractions. These skills are so foundational that when they crumble, much of a person’s cognitive edifice collapses. Anything involving concentration, multitasking, and planning—that is, almost everything important—becomes absurdly arduous. “It raises what are unconscious processes for healthy people to the level of conscious decision making,” Fiona Robertson, a writer based in Aberdeen, Scotland, told me."  Hmm . . . seems like premature aging, some form of dementia.  [I had to read this sentence in the article 3 times: "For example, Hellmuth noted that in her field of cognitive neurology, “virtually all the infrastructure and teaching” centers on degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, in which rogue proteins afflict elderly brains."  Reason: first 2 times I read the word 'centers' as a noun, rather than as a verb.]  Frightening article.

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    I see in the New Yorker that Jean-Luc Godard died in an assisted suicide in Switzerland.  His lawyer told the NYT that Godard had "multiple disabling pathologies" at age 91.  At about the same time, Lindsey Graham was announcing plans to introduce legislation to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.  I wonder what Graham would say about Godard's decision that he had lived long enough (or probably too long.)  "Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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    Also read a book review in yesterday's NYT of CATHOLICISM: A Global History From the French Revolution to Pope Francis, by John T. McGreevy.  According to the reviewer, McGreevy explains "how the epic struggle between reformists and traditionalists has led us to the present moment in the Roman Catholic Church."  I suspect I would very much like to read the book but at 528 pages, probably not in the cards, requiring focused 'attention, holding information in mind, and blocking out distractions.'

    The reviewer cites another NYT article "Deep in Vatican Archives, Scholar Discovers Flabbergasting Secrets" about David Kertzer's research on Pious XII.  More Niebuhr stuff: 

"Mr. Kertzer makes the case that Pius XII’s overriding dread of Communism, his belief that the Axis powers would win the war, and his desire to protect the church’s interests all motivated him to avoid offending Hitler and Mussolini, whose ambassadors had worked to put him on the throne. The pope was also worried, the book shows, that opposing the Führer would alienate millions of German Catholics."

And a reminder of my first visit to Rome, with Mike Hogan,in 1995:

"On Oct. 16, 1943, Nazis rounded up more than a thousand of them throughout the city, including hundreds in the Jewish ghetto . . . .For two days the Germans held the Jews in a military college near the Vatican, checking to see who was baptized or had Catholic spouses.“They didn’t want to offend the pope,” Mr. Kertzer said. His book shows that Pius XII’s top aides only interceded with the German ambassador to free “non-Aryan Catholics.” About 250 were released. More than a thousand were murdered in Auschwitz.  In a nearby street, Mr. Kertzer bent down by one of the brass cobblestones memorializing the victims. Above him loomed the Tempio Maggiore, the Great Synagogue of Rome."

I remember standing on the lungotevere across the Tiber from the Great Synagogue reading a plaque on a wall commemorating the assembly of the Jews there in 1943 for shipment to Auschwitz.  Looking over my left shoulder I saw the Great Synagogue and the Ghetto; over my right shoulder, I saw one of the portals into Vatican City.  A striking experience, the gathering of the Jews for murder within eyesight, a stone's throw from the Vatican.  It hit me then, it hits me to remember it now,  27 years later.

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0913

 

September 23, 2022

In bed @ 10, up @ 6, but 6, perhaps 7 pss, and back pain in morning.

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    Tried to salvage the knockoff van Dongen and made some progress but errors corrected, new mistakes made.  Love the original, and so many van Dongen paintings, but just another reminder of why I'm not much of a painter.  I need to remember: anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.😞

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    QE II's body was flown from Scotland to London this afternoon (US time).  Watching the coffin being carried by RAF enlisted men, moving like mechanical men ('step, step, ready, halt') reminded me of how much I dislike that aspect of military life, turning men (and women) into robots.  Left, face.  Right, face.  About, face.  Of course, that is the purpose of military training, to turn men into obedient creatures, doing what they are told, how they are told, when they are told, so that when the time comes 'into the valley of death rode the 600.'  Or Marines storm the beach on Iwo Jima.  How well I remember the process.  Watching her motorcade arrive at Buckingham Palace, with the thousands of people lining the approach streets reminds me of putting on my Marine Corp second lieutenant uniform on Sunday morning, November 24, 1963, in our little apartment in Stafford, Virginia, to drive up US 1 to Washington to watch and salute as John F. Kennedy's body was transported from the White House to the Capitol to lie in state.  Can't remember where we parked or how we got to the motorcade route but I remember vividly the horse drawn caisson, the chill temperature in the 40s, the 'deafening silence' except for the sounds of muffled drums and the clacking of horse hoofs, including those of the riderless horse with empty boots reversed in the stirrups.  And I remember the word spreading through the crowd on the sidewalk that Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot and killed in Dallas by Jack Ruby.  And I remember the feeling I felt during that day - empty.  Almost 60 years ago - - - how much has changed.

    Also saw some coverage of King Charles III in Northern Ireland, with many citizens gushing over him.  I presume they are all Unionists, all Protestants.  Let's see what Liz Truss, the new PM, does with respect to the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Brexit treaty.  Northern Ireland is like Israel and the United States: unable to get past its Original Sin.

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    On the phone for just short of 45 minutes with an old high school classmate, college roommate for 3 years, and fellow NROTC midshipman Ed Felsenthal.  Returned his phone call which I missed on Sunday.  He had spoken for about half an hour with another of our roomies, Tom Devitt, a fellow Marine and like Ed, Vietnam vet, over the weekend, who appeared to be doing well, despite major hospitalizations over the last few years.  Tried to contact roommate Jerry Nugent, also USMC and Viet vet, but couldn't find his number.  Fifth roomie, Bill Hendricks and his wonderful wife Paula Bochiccio Hendricks, whom he talks to every few months, also apparently doing OK.  All of us are 81 or 82 now, keeping our fingers crossed.

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