1108

 Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Election Day

In bed, exhausted, at 9, up at 5, unk. pss, no vino.  Katherine's 53rd birthday.  44 degrees outside,  a high of 51i is expected.  Sunrise at 6:35 in clear skies expected to turn cloudy later, how appropriate on this day.

Dies Irae

Denny the Downer expects a bad day today, enough Republican victories to gain control of both the House and the Senate, to return Ron Johnson to the Senate for another 6 years and to put Tim Michels in the governor's mansion in Madison.  If my fears turn out, the country will have made a hard right turn towards fascism heading into the 2024 presidential election and another Republican victory.  By that time, I may well be dead already, but Geri, our children and grandchildren, and millions of others will live under (an appropriate preposition) that government.  Trumpist Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House, and a solid majority of state governments.  With that kind of control, they will structure the apparatus of government so as to make regaining control via the election process by small 'd' democrats too difficult to accomplish.  The process will be aided throughout by the anti-democratic Constitution the revered Founding Fathers left us, as interpreted by the likes of Thomas, Alito, Coney Barrett, Gorsuch, Roberts, and Kavanaugh.  I know it's a dystopian and extreme vision and that such visions are usually way overblown, grossly distorted, and wrong, but 'timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes.'

Norah O'Donnell too?

This morning's WaPo: ‘Democracy is at stake’: TV news braces for election night chaos.  Ballot-box confrontations. Legal challenges. And what if a candidate claims premature victory? ‘Democracy is at stake,’ says one anchor.

"Viewers tuning in to live coverage of the midterm elections Tuesday night will probably find the usual busy graphics of updating vote tallies, the celebratory scenes from far-flung hotel ballrooms and the familiar studio panels of pundits holding forth on what it all means.  But for the first national election night since the cycle that culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol, broadcast networks will have to look far beyond the vote tallies.  There could be live reports on confrontations at local ballot boxes. Deep analysis of down-ballot races that never previously made the grade for the national news.And if a candidate in a close race takes the podium to declare victory? Don’t expect the cameras to turn that way in a hurry.  “I feel an incredible responsibility to get it right,” said CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, who has been covering elections since 1996. “I think democracy is at stake.”

A shopping trip with Barbara Chase-Riboud

I drove up to Saukville/Port Washington this morning to get some 'necessaries' at Walmart: CBH, Lilly's toppings, and birdseed.  I stayed on county roads and off the freeway to lengthen the drive as I continued listening to I Always Knew.  I had been wondering when her narrative and letters would get to the dissolution of her marriage which I sensed was coming just from the extraordinary amount of time they spent 'doing their own thing(s)'.  He was literally all over the world with his camera covering wars and other current events and she was pursuing her own interests with her sculpting and then her poetry and eventually her novels and her friendship/editing relationship with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the writing & publication of Sally Hemings.  They spent relatively little time with each other as a married couple, which, depending on many circumstances, can be a bad thing or a good thing.  In their case, it eventually led to the end of the marriage.  Even before the divorce, it seemed like they also spent a lot of time away from their two sons, who were off skiing in the Alps or enjoying themselves with cousins on the Riviera.  In any event, she spends precious little time discussing the late stage of their marriage either in the narrative portion of the book nor in her letters to her mother.  She also says precious little about writing poetry and getting it published.  She does discuss a bit the impetus to writing about Sally Hemings, but mostly in terms of the role of Jackie O as a friend and editor at Viking Press.  Disappointing.  I've now spent more than 18 hours with the readings with another 5 remaining to the end.  I suppose I will see (or hear) it through to the end now that I'm this far into it, especially since I listen to it only while doing something else, driving or cleaning up the kitchen.  Today's drive provided the opportunity for a "binge listen" and also an opportunity to drive by a favorite site, the elk farm in Grafton, reminding me of driving there with my Dad and with Jimmy.

Notes from the French documentary Far From Vietnam (1967)

US v. Vietnam Biggest industrial and military power of all time v. Vietnam, (mid-60s populations) 200,000,000 v. 17,000,000 "It is in Vietnam that the main question of our times arises: the right of the poor to establish societies based on something other than the interests of the rich."

[Alain Resnais, William Klein, Joris Ivens, Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard,]  Les guaves, cluster bombs, "mother bomb" sends out 300 smaller bombs in a radius of one kilometer. Each one releases 600 bomblets at the human level which have almost no effect on metal or concrete.  Their logical target is human flesh.  A4s, F4s, A10s, F8s [American bombardment of N. Vietnam reminds me of the Russian bombardment of Ukraine, Vietnamese found ways to defend, protect, resist, and endure, simple round concrete bomb shelters with concrete lids designed to hold 1 or 2 people, buried along streets in Hanoi] Films of women, children, elderly, dead, wounded. weeping April 1967, Humphrey visits Europe, and hundreds of demonstrators protest.  NYC April 29, 1967, War Veterans Day pro-war better dead than red  Wall Street, May 1, 1967, Anti-War demonstration capitalist 'suits' jeering the protestors, shouting 'Bomb Hanoi, bomb Hanoi'

"It''s the first war that everybody can see at the same time.  Nobody has seen a war that close- while it is actually happening. Nobody can say: "If I'd known . . ." Now they know, they see it.  This war is filthy. Not only the pope says it. Also others. . .  They see it.   The bombs really kill, the bullets really make holes.  Poor little orphans, lost in a world they don't understand. And what? Pity, fear, ... all happening in a piece of furniture.  Not in Vietnam, heads, streets, but in a piece of furniture.  Furniture isn't scary. We have the Vietnam War in our living room.  On the news. . . . . . . The Americans are the Vietnamese Germans. . . . Everybody's for Vietnam, it gives every a good conscience.  It's joy, rights, and freedom, because Vietnam is a victim of America, and Americans are horrible, different, ignorant, tyrants, and colonialists.  There are 40 million anti-colonialists in France.  It went unnoticed during the war in Algeria. . . .  The Americans in Vietnam.  They send out the negroes and the farmers.  So the students have the luxury of protesting.  And society has the luxury of having students who protest. . . . . . The Germans being Fascists was expected.  Almost because they were German.  But the Americans!  Proper people, democratic.  All the workers have cars.  And pacifists.  Violence is for the others, war is for the others.  They had to go to war to help the others.  But now it's over.

On July 20, 1954, a French general and a Viet Minh official signed the Geneva Agreements.  The French war in Indochina is over.  The Vietnam War, the American war has already started.  From the end of 1949, to include France in the Atlantic Alliance,  Washington helps France to maintain itself in Indochina.  In 1951, 3 years before Geneva, Ho Chi Minh designates the Americans as the revolution's opponents.  It is true that the war is now financed by Washington.  April 1954, Dien Bien Phu capitulates. . . elections, reunion within 2 years.  Washington won't agree, and only says they will not break the agreements by force.  At the end of July 1954, the Americans, without fighting or making promises, managed to get the victors at Dien Bien Phu to give up 1/3 of the territory that Giap had won by force.  By ignoring the Geneva Agreements, the negotiation becomes a fool's deal.  The Vietnamese will remember that in the future when negotiations are suggested to them.  The Viet Minh has signed agreements with the French, but the Americans recognize none of them.  Second American operation: the settling of the regime of the Catholic Mandarin.  The elections that were agreed to be held in 1956 are canceled.  Eisenhower writes in his memoirs that an election in wartime would have given 80% of the votes to the communists. . . . In February 1962, Washington announces the creation of an American command in Vietnam, thus making its military intervention in the civil war public. . . .  The Americans throw off their masks on February 8, 1965.  Incapable of winning the war on the ground, in the jungles and rice fields of South Vietnam, they move it over to the North, normalizing the bombings.

LYNDON JOHNSON TOLD THE NATION, Tom Paxton

I got a letter from L.B.J

It said, "This is your lucky day"

It's time to put your khaki trousers on

Though it may seem very queer

We've got no jobs to give you here

So we are sending you to Vietnam

Lyndon Johnson told the nation

Have no fear of escalation

I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn't really war

We're sending fifty thousand more

To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese

I jumped off the old troop ship

And sank in mud up to my hips

I cussed until the captain called me down

Never mind how hard it's raining

Think of all the ground we're gaining

Just don't take one step outside of town

Every night the local gentry

Slip out past the sleeping sentry

They go to join the old V C

In their nightly little dramas

They put on their black pajamas

And come lobbing mortar shells at me

We go round in helicopters

Like a bunch of big grasshoppers

Searching for the Viet Cong in vain

They left a note that they had gone

They had to get down to Saigon

Their government positions to maintain

Well, here I sit in this rice paddy

Wondering about Big Daddy

And I know that Lyndon loves me so

Yet how sadly I remember

Way back yonder in November

When he said I'd never have to go

I haven't finished watching this unusual film yet, but some of what I've watched pierced me as a Marine veteran who served as a small cog in the giant lethal wheel that delivered death and destruction to the people of Vietnam, North and South, 365 days a year, year after year.  More tomorrow.  

Signing off to watch election returns, see how inaccurate my dire predictions are.😳🙏😳

1107

 Monday, November 7, 2022

In bed a bit after 10, up and on the recliner a bit after 2, unable to sleep.

And they call the wind Pariah

Can't tell what the maximum force winds were after the blackout on Saturday because we had no television and we weren't listening in to radio reports but the predicted winds were gusts of 60-65 mph.  Whatever they were, they caused us to lose electrical power for 26 hours, from 5 p.m. Saturday till 7:18 p.m. Sunday.  During the dark hours, we had Ikea candles, votive lights, and an oil-burning hurricane lamp providing enough illumination to avoid bumping into or tripping over things.  Geri had a muffin tray of tea lights on the dining room table so we could see the chicken she roasted at David's house and the green beans I cooked on the stovetop here.  I had thought Sarah might have preferred to stay at her mother's home even with the howling cat problem, but she came back here and coped with the darkness.  On Sunday, she watched the hard-to-believe Packers-Lions game with her Mom and again opted to come back here after the game though the power was still out and sunset was at 4:35 p.m.  She grabbed a chicken sandwich and fries at McDonald's on the way here and we did a combo McDoanld's/Culver's dinner.  When Geri and I returned from our dinner run, there were 4 big trucks with cherry pickers on County Line Road, giving us hope the power would be restored soon, and it was, at 7:18 p.m.

Digital Illiteracy

When power was restored, Sarah went to work on figuring out why our HP printer wasn't connecting to our LAN and why we couldn't print in color.  She fixed both problems quickly leaving me (a) grateful and (b) more persuaded than ever of my declining computer/digital literacy.

Ave, Caesar, Morituri Te Salutamus

JSOnline:  Packers suffer numerous serious injuries ahead of busy stretch of games

"The Packers went into the game without inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell (knee) and they left with four starters and two backups facing an uphill climb to play next week.  Cornerback Eric Stokes (knee, ankle), receiver Romeo Doubs (ankle), outside linebacker Rashan Gary (ankle), receiver Christian Watson (concussion) and linebacker Krys Barnes (concussion) were the worst. . . Stokes, Doubs, and Gary were all taken to the locker room in carts.  After the game, Stokes wasn’t in the locker room, but he was tended to for quite a while on the field and limped off the field with the assistance of trainers. Doubs and Gary were both on crutches. . .

After a 15-9 loss to the previously 1-6 Detroit Lions, players trudged out of the locker room a few at a time.  Receiver Romeo Doubs and outside linebacker Rashan Gary were on crutches.  Doubs and running back Aaron Jones had support boots on their feet (Doubs, the right; Jones the left).  Receiver Christian Watson and linebacker Krys Barnes were off limits to the media because they were both in the concussion protocol.  Offensive lineman Jon Runyan was walking gingerly because of a knee injury he played through after some time on the sideline."

The National Pastime, watching men injure one another t earn money and provide entertainment for millions of Americans.

Poor Joe, he can't help it.  He was born with a foot in his mouth.

“Folks, I spent a lot of time — more time with Xi Jinping than any other head of state. … I’ve traveled 17,000 miles with him.” Nov. 3

“Today, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39 — down from over $5 when I took office.” Oct. 27

“On my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”  Nov. 1

“You are probably aware that I just signed a law that is being challenged by my Republican colleagues. … What we’ve provided for is, if you went to school, if you qualified for a Pell Grant … you qualify for $20,000 in debt forgiveness. Secondly, if you don’t have one of those loans, you just get $10,000 written off. It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two.”  Oct. 23

Is he really not-too-bright or just another lying pol?  Both?

Rollover transfer

Drove to Stifel in West Bend to get Geri's rollover documents faxed to TIAA.  43 to 94 to 45 to 33 out, 33 to 43 back.

I Always Knew

Listened to more of Barbara Chase-Riboud's memoir to and from West Bend, finding myself disliking her because of the fabulous lifestyle she lived, throwing away money on designer clothes, private schools and dressage lessons for her older son, multiple houses, travel all over Europe and much of Asia and Africa and the U.S.  I rethought my judgmentalism about her when I got home and cleaned up the dishes, silverware, pots and pans piled up over our blackout weekend.  Thought about how, compared to most of the world, I live a life of wasteful luxury.  I leave the hot water running in the sink as I gather and rinse off plates and bowls,  wasting both water and the energy to heat it.  I waste precious gasoline driving out to West Bend and back to get the rollover documents faxed rather than sticking them in the mail or mastering the technique for faxing on our own all-in-one printer.  I waste money on all sorts of stuff, including printing these jottings in a journal, wasting the ink in the inkjet cartridges and the paper the jottings are printed on.  If I had the artistic talent and work ethic of BC-R, and if I were married to Geri with all the journalistic, photographic, and artistic talent as BC-R's spouse, would I be living frugally or expanding my profligacy to match my available resources?  I'm sure it would be the latter cuz that's how I live now.  Judge not lest ye be judged, Carlo.

Insomnia (or not)

After a delicious spaghetti dinner, I didn't have enough energy to watch television.  Haven't had a good night's sleep for the last few nights.  I wonder every now and then if I have my dear sister's malady of insomnia, but realize my sleeplessness is irregular, hers was nightly.  In any case, as it approaches 8 p.m., I wonder if I could get away with going to bed around 8 instead of around 9, or even trying to stay awake until 10 - fat chance.

1105, 1106

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Sunday, November 6, 2022

In bed around midnight, Sarah arrived around 10:40, up at 6:30.  Sarah came laden with gifts: two jars of the German mustard that I enjoyed so much at and after my 80th birthday brunch at Andy's and a bottle of gewürztraminer grappa direct from Train, Italy.  I'm eager to try it.

Body Parts

I remember my father calmly telling me years ago that "my parts are failing."  I knew generally what he was saying and he didn't get into specifics.  I started my day with my internal parts failing, distressingly.  No need to get into specifics.  Under the weather today, unwell, weak.

Scary Fedspeak  

“Today’s environment of rapid synchronous global monetary policy tightening, elevated inflation and high uncertainty associated with the pandemic and the war raises the risk that a shock could lead to the amplification of vulnerabilities,” Lael Brainard, the Fed’s vice chair, said in a statement released with the report.

Recycling Run

Went to the Salvation Army downtown to drop off a collection of old electronic stuff for free recycling.  Old TV, stereo, CD changer, etc.

Donald Hall: Essays After Eighty

Death: "It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days.  I will not pass away.  Every day millions of people pass away -in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation,-mails to the corpse's friends -but people don't die.  Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath . . . . At some point in my seventies, death stopped being interesting. . . In my eighties, my days have narrowed as they must. . . I try not to break my neck, I write letters, I take naps, I write essays. . . My goal in life is to make it to the bathroom.

Windstorm

Lights Out!!!!

1104

 Friday, November 4, 2022

In bed at 10:10, up at 1:10, unable to sleep.  Went into the tv room to use the computer, Lilly was awake, lying on the rug in front of my recliner and moved to her living room mattress.  Thinking about the wireless printer problem and inability to connect with WiFi LAN.  Hoping to be back in bed in the not-too-distant future. . . .  Approaching 4 a.m., still awake, having read MSOnline and WaPo, holding off on NYT, Atlantic, and New Yorker.  Went downstairs to see if pushing the 'reset' button on the new router might magically connect our printer: but no such luck.  Started browsing Donald Hall's Essays After Eighty, starting with -

Donald Hall, Out the Window

"Today it is January mid-month, midday android-New Hampshire.  I sit in my blue armchair looking out the winder.  I teeter when I walk, I no longer drive, I look out the window.  Snow started before I woke . . . .I watch birds come to my feeder, hanging from a clapboard in my line of sight.  All winter, juncos and chickadees take nourishment here. When snow is as thick as today, the feeder bends under the weight of a dozen birds at once.  They swerve from their tree perches, peck, and fly back to bare branches.  Prettily they light, snap beaks into seed, and burst away: nuthatches, evening grosbeaks, American goldfinches, sparrows. . . . After a life of loving the old, by natural law I turned old myself. . . . then came my cancers, Jane's death, and over the years I traveled to another universe.  However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy.  It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life.  They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennas.  They can be pleasant, they can be annoying - in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way - but most important they are permanently other.  When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial.  If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances."

. . . .

Reading printed pages is a challenge for me at any time because of the nasty combination of presbyopia and dry eyes, but I learn that reading between 4 a.m. and 4:15 a.m., on 3 hours of sleep, is not in the cards.  Typing these jottings is easy enough because of my fingers' muscle memory of where each key on the keyboard is AND my laptop's ability to increase font size AND its ability to increase and decrease screen brightness.  But the printed page, no such luck.  It's 4:30 and I'm thinking the morning talking head shows will come on at 5, "Morning Joe" with the incredibly rude know-it-all Joe Scarborough and wife, the tsk-tsking Mika Brzezinski, and the CNN show with the new line-up of Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow, and Kaitlan Collins replacing John German and my long favorite Brianna Keiller, who I now see on Jake Tapper's afternoon show, permanent partner or temporary fill-in, who knows.  In any event, I don't want to turn on the television because . .  well, because.  I still hope to nod off into LaLa Land. . .  . Back to bed at 6 a.m. and slept until 8:30 when I was awakened by my phone with a fundraising appeal supposedly from the campaign of Republican Joe O'Dea running for the Senate in Colorado against Michael Bennett.   Gonna be a long day.

Barbara Chase-Riboud

Yesterday driving about on my errands, I listened to more of I Always Knew.  It is still almost hard to believe that she led the life that she did as a young American Black woman, some of its wonderfulness attributable to her already high status as a sculptor, perhaps more attributable to her marriage to Marc Riboud, his high status as a photojournalist and artist, and his membership in the tres haute bourgeois Riboud family.  His most famous photo is probably the young woman with a flower in her hand facing a line of rifle-bearing soldiers at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon in 1967.  

 The letters I listened to yesterday were written from France during the year I spent outside Philadelphia, Barbara's hometown where her family still lived.  It was my first year back from Vietnam and the Far East, the year of my every-six-day dread and anxiety as a CACO.  It was the year the U. S. Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia, declaring unconstitutional laws forbidding interracial marriage (miscegenation to some, mongrelization to others) such as Barbara Chase's marriage to Marc Riboud.  Virginia and 15 other states had such laws on the books in 1967.  On April 15, 1967, huge demonstrations in New York and San Francisco and elsewhere drew hundreds of thousands of protestors demonstrating against the Vietnam War, including Martin Luther King,  It was a turbulent time to be an American, probably more turbulent for me because I was still a Marine, raised Catholic and compliant, called upon occasionally to give luncheon addresses about the war to local Rotary and other clubs, all the time believing, as I did in Vietnam, 'this is not going to end well.'  After I was discharged, there were 'race riots' in Milwaukee, in Newark with 27 dead, and in Detroit with 46 killed.  With my personal situation during those years, late 66 and early 67, so different from Barbara's in Paris, it is hard to relate to her ebullience in the letters to her mother.  But I appreciate that she was young, life was good for her, and she was an almost incredibly gifted, accomplished, and celebrated artist.  She wrote 6 novels, 6 books of poetry, and created many, many sculptures and drawings.  A truly extraordinary, accomplished human being.

Denny the Downer

    For years I burdened my dear sister with predictions that America is turning hard right.  I still feel that way though I recognize that as much as anything my fears are rooted in a deep-seated pessimism in me.  I'll see how rational a prognosticator I am next week.

Wisconsin: Barnes loses, Evers loses

Pennsylvania: Fetterman loses to Charlatan, Mastriano loses

Arizona: Keri Lake beats Hobbs, Mark Kelly loses to Blake Nimrod

Georgia: Stacey Abrams loses to Kemp, ?? Herschel Walker, Warnock

Florida: Val Demings loses to Rubio, DeSantis beats Crist

Texas: Greg Abbott wins over Beto O'Rourke

Ohio: J. D. Vance wins over Tim Ryan

New Hampshire: Hassan over Bolduc

North Carolina: Budd over Beasley

Nevada: Laxalt beats Cortez Masto

NBC News is reporting that Trump intends to announce his candidacy for a second term soon after the midterm next week, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his corrupt right-wing buddy, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel is always facing the issue of National Identity, whether it can exist as a Jewish state and a democracy with its demographics. We have been going through an Identify Crisis since at least the political campaigns leading up to the 2016 selection of Trump's the Republican standard bearer and the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote.  Ditto the 2020 campaign when compromise candidate and perennial Joe Biden was selected and won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, but occasioned a widespread rejection of election votes by Republicans.   Joe Biden gave a big speech the other night warning that 'democracy is on the ballot' next Tuesday, seemingly thinking that everyone considers 'democracy' and specifically American-style 'democracy' is a universal value.  Niebuhr asserts, correctly I think, that no one wants democracy for its own sake, but rather one accepts democracy as a compromise out of the realization that we can't always get our way.  If we could count on always getting our way, we would scrap democracy in favor of Power.  

Niebuhr: " . . . . when collective power, whether in the form of imperialism or class domination, exploits weakness, it can never be dislodged unless power is raised against it. . . . Conflict is inevitable and in this conflict power must be met with power. . . . Contending factions in a social struggle require morale that is created by the right dogmas, symbols, and emotionally potent oversimplification. . . . The world of history, particularly in man's collective behavior, will never be conquered by reason, unless reason uses tools, and is itself driven by forces that are not rational.

Reminded of Oriana Fallaci: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it is always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."

It's similar to the situation with the touted "Rule of Law."  No one really believes that Law is always a Good to be valued.  Sometimes Law is good, often it is not.  Law in one way or another reflects the will of the Powerful, not the will of the Good.  Witness the American tax code.  Witness our 'sacred' Constitution and its minoritarian bias.  Republicans today simply act out their self-interest. If Democracy disfavors their interests, the hell with Democracy.  Limit the franchise by restrictive laws and gerrymanders and acquire control of the apparatus of vote-counting.  Truth be told, Democrats would operate the same way if they could.  The Republicans are just much much better at instrumental politics than the Democrats are: stronger, most cruel, least generous.  Look at Mitch McConnell's handling of the nominations of  Merrick Garland and Amy Coney Barrett.

1103

 Thursday, November 3, 2022

In bed at 9:30, grouchy, up at 6:05, 3 or 4 pss, no vino.  Cool outside but a high of 72 expected.   A little neuropathy in toes on right foot again. Thoughts of Yeats' Vacillation.

Things said or done long years ago,

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do,

Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled,

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

My haunting poem.  Judgment Day a mirror.  Vicki Conte's dad, daily mass & communion, guilt, fear.

Posted on FB this morning

for marilyn m.

By: Charles Bukowski

slipping keenly into bright ashes,

target of vanilla tears

your sure body lit candles for men

on dark nights,

and now your night is darker

than the candle’s reach

and we will forget you, somewhat,

and it is not kind

but real bodies are nearer

and as the worms pant for your bones,

I would so like to tell you

that this happens to bears and elephants

to tyrants and heroes and ants

and frogs,

still, you brought us something,

some type of small victory,

and for this I say: good

and let us grieve no more; 

like a flower dried and thrown away,

we forget, we remember,

we wait.  child, child, child,

I raise my drink a full minute

and smile.

This is a poem that Bukowski wrote shortly after Marilyn Monroe's death. You can find it one of his best books of poetry called Burning in Water Drowning in Flame, Selected Poems 1955-1973

Thoughts of Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin, Sylvia Plath, Karen Carpenter

Our Town

Milwaukee Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer's car stolen in Walker's Point

According to crime statistics provided by MPD, a record 10,480 vehicle thefts occurred in the city in 2021. As of Tuesday, there have been 7,017 vehicle thefts in 2022, which is down 21% year-to-date from 2021.

Pelosi Attacker an Illegal Immigrant - a Canadian!!!

Too good to be true - a Canadian illegal!  More proof, if any we needed, about the inherent criminality of Canadians coming to the United States.  Time to get serious about banning Canadians from our purple mountains and fruited plains.  And no surprise, he's from that hotbed of criminality British Columbia, home of crime-ridden Vancouver and sin city Victoria.  Time to close our borders to Canadians, and yes, that includes all those dangerous snowbirds down in Florida and Arizona.  Enough is enough!  Let them know we mean business!!!

Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty

Physical Malfitness:  Exercise hurts, as well it might, since by choice and for my pleasure, I didn't do it for eighty years. (Once in my 50s I walked four miles.)  . . . Exercise is boring.  Everything is boring that does not happen in a chair or bed.  Sculptors and painters and musicians live longer than writers, who exercise only their fingers with a pen or on a keyboard.   Sculptors chisel or weld or mold clay.  Painters work standing up.  They drink tons of cognac every night but return to physical activity the next morning.  A tuba player holds a weighty object and breaths deeply.  Even a harmonica requires more fitness than writing.

    People have tried to encourage my mobility. . . . I sit on my ass all day writing in longhand, which my helper types up.  Sometimes in a car I would pass Pancake Road, two miles away, and see a man walking his collie,  the dog stepping out on his forepaws, two wheels harnessed to his backside.  These days I no longer drive past Pancake Road or anywhere.  I push two wheels ahead of me instead of pulling two wheels behind me like the dog.  With my forepaws holding the handles of my four-wheeled roller, my 

buckling hindquarters slowly shove my carcass forward.  I drool as I walk, and now and then I sniff a tree.

    As I entered my mid-seventies, my legs weakened and it became treacherous to walk on uneven ground. [I hired a trainer.]  Twice a week we walked together around a wooden track for cardio.  We talked.  Then for another 15 minutes I attempted fitness and balance.  Balance was a major problem.  [The trainer] showed me how to get up when I fall down. 

Cable Confusion and Printer Woes

After some persisting problems with our internet service and with our cable service, both provided by Spectrum, formerly Time Warner, we switched to YouTubeTV.  When I called Spretrum to cancel the cable service and mentioned the problems with internet outages, the Spectrum rep named 'Asia', during a 38 minute conversation, informed me that she could get my combined Spectrum bill of $305 per month down to $235.32, and then down to $157.96,  along with the new, improved faster internet service and new modem and router to replace my current ones rented under our 'grandfather agreement,' whatever the means.  I agreed to try the new arrangement, able to cancel at any time and stick with YouTubeTV.  I installed the new modem and router yesterday, successfully, insofar as our computers and iPhones and iPads are connected with the internet and the televisions and landline telephone all work fine.  Plus I can access Spectrum cable tv via streaming on Samsun and Roku.  Ditto YouTubeTV.  The problem is I still can connect with our 'wireless' HP printer. We went through a log of trouble in my work area in the basement to move the modem and router away from the corner next to the cinder block foundation wall, and tried to connect with the new location.  No luck.  Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett.  And tomorrow Sarah flies into O'Hare and drives to Milwaukee, perhaps to save our day, one way or the other.  And, BTW, we were still billed the $305 on November 1, and Spectrum's email to me after I returned 3 cable boxes and the old modem/router says my new monthly rate is $191.18.  More calls necessary and may end up going with YouTubeTV, Spectrum internet (ATT fiber not available here), and Spectrum phone service.  Life didn't used to be this complicated (and costly.)

The Great George Booth Has Died.  Alas.

1102

 Wednesday, November 2, 2022

In bed at 11, up at 6, 4 pss, 2 and 1/2 glasses of red, awoke with dull throbbing pain in right foot, toes, probably diabetic peripheral neuropathy.  All Souls Day and I think of my mother, my father, and my sister, all 'the faithful departed.'  My heroic wonderful mother remained faithful till her too-early death.  My sainted sister also,  but not to Holy Mother Church after she came to accept the character of its clergy and hierarchs.  My poor father strove late in life to regain whatever faith he left on the black sands of Iwo Jima and after James Hartman's crime,  but it didn't work.  He had even become a Knight of Columbus in North Port, but couldn't cope with the anti-abortion militancy.  May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen

Movie Night

After a few nights of success, we didn't do so well last night.  Started watching "Labor Day" with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin but stopped when Geri correctly foresaw it was going to be a Stockholm Syndrome  plot and I didn't want to watch a film about kidnapping, etc., before bedtime.   Then we switched to "The Hundred Foot Journey" with Helen Mirren but realized 18 minutes into it that it was about 2 and 1/2 hours long and would last way past our bedtime so we turned it off and thought we would try again earlier some evening.  Watched some Alex Wagner and some Lawrence O'Donnell, scary enough in their own ways.

Pernicious Politics

Americans have become so tied to party identity that race and class polarize us less than politics. I've been trying to come to some understanding of this, trying to figure out why so many Americans are so hostile, so distrusting of government, especially the federal government, so willing indeed desirous of seeing it fail in its central functions.  But I suppose the central issue is what are its 'central functions?'  To right-wingers, it used to be 'to defend our shores' and to deliver the mail, and I suppose delivering the mail is no longer on that short list, nor is public health if it involves doing anything we don't want to do or not doing something we do want to do.  Government is bad so the less government the better or as Reagan put it "In this present crisis, government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem.  Anyone caught up in government bureaucracy can understand this attitude.  Anyone caught up in government (over)regulation can understand it.  Anyone understanding the inherent corruption of 'the best government money can buy' can understand it.  Every year as I spend hours screwing around with our tax returns realizing that the work I do assembling documents and calculating numbers is totally unnecessary because the government already has the W2s, the 1099s, etc., in its IRS computers and can compute our probable tax, using the standard deduction, I can understand it.  Once you add in feelings of unfairness and favoritism towards some groups and not others, especially when it comes to racial preferences and skewed benefit programs, real resentment sets in.  Resentment can turn to hatred and for many Americans, it has.  Witness January 6th, 2021.

My Secret Life as "Ken"

Today's text: 'You were one of our top supporters, Ken, so where have you been?  We're surprised that YOU wouldn't be the first name on our list of patriots who answered the call to action.  Will you confirm you're not caving to the Dems by chipping in $15 before Trump's rally weekend is over? gored22.com/4uXhHH ' Time: 1:58 p.m.

8 minutes earlier: 'Six days until victory, Ken!  We're counting on you + 18 other top patriots to send $5 or more and help Trump's allies beat the Dems and send Pelosi packing.  Can we count on you? us-here,com/5MM8cT'

13 minutes earlier: 'A clean sweep in south Texas would humiliate Pelosi and the Dems.  I'm asking you to step up & chip in just $1 to help.  Just $1! notlib.com/digm - Ted Cruz'

42 minutes earlier: 'Ken, did you catch Tiffany Smiley on Fox News? She specifically asked for your support to help save American: 22-rep.com/3QyQUZ'

Latest as I stop looking, at 2:43 p.m.: Trump's ally Don Bolduc is surging in the polls but doesn't have the resources to finish this battle.  Give $20 and help Don cross the finish line victorious.ushere.com/53CKAN

It has been like this every day since August 10th.  Most of the texts addressed to my alter ego, "Ken" who has never responded to any of the texts, with a $1, $5, $20 or any other donation but still the messages flow daily to my phone and will up to and beyond election day, 3 months worth.  Re the references to Nancy Pelosi jar days after the assault on her husband, I'm reminded of Joseph Welch's1954 remonstrance to Wisconsin's first notorious and nefarious U.S. senator:  "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" 

Geri's  Yellow Brick Road

1101

 Tuesday, November 1, 2022

In bed at  9:30, up at 4:30, ? pss, 2 glasses of red.  40 degrees out, a warm sunny day expected, high of 67.   All Saints Day, the day as children at St. Leo's Grammar School we attended mass, a holy day of obligation, which we could never quite get into as a real 'holy day,' like Christmas and Easter  Ditto All Souls Day tomorrow.  All Souls Day made sense within the cosmology of Holy Mother Church because we prayed for 'the poor souls,' the souls suffering and languishing in Purgatory, waiting to be burned pure, punished for their sins, and eligible for entry through the Pearly Gates.  Of course, we wanted our loved ones, our ancestors, to be freed from the fires of Purgatory and prayers were presumably a ticket out, along with temporal and plenary indulgences.  So attending mass and praying for them, something pleasing to God, made a lot of sense.  But on All Saints Day, we just celebrated those who had already made it into the Celestial Kingdom, all the saints, known and unknown.  It seemed almost cruel that All Saints Day was and is a Holy Day of Obligation and All Souls Day was not.  But there you have it.  Thoughts on awakening on November 1st.  You can take the boy out of the Church, but you never take the Church out of the boy. 

Cataract Day

Today is Geri's cataract surgery, to which she has been looking forward for some time.  Get to St. Luke's by 7:30, surgery at 9:30, pickup a couple of hours later.👀🙏 . . . . Dropoff at 7:15, drove home through southside neighborhoods, Oklahoma to 6th Street, north to Kilbourn entrance to 43, admiring old architecture, sensing history, listening to BCR enjoying life in Paris and Lyon, dinners with James Baldwin, dress ball chez Cardin, 'etc., etc.' . . . Geri home at 11:45, and thankfully all is well.

Our Town

A 13-year-old girl was shot on Milwaukee's north side Monday afternoon.  The shooting happened in the 5000 Block of North Sherman Boulevard.The girl suffered a non-fatal injury after being shot in the knee around 2:30 p.m., police said. She was at a hospital late Monday.  More than 100 people younger than 18 have been shot in Milwaukee this year. More than 80 people survived, while more than 20 people died.

Politicos

Daily text messages seeking political campaign contributions:

Today            2

Yesterday      7

Day before    4

Day before    7

Repetitive television ads insulting to viewers' intelligence; 9,123,876.453,123, 482,741 and counting.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. ~ Anne Frank

Spectrum

Today the new modem and router arrived from Spectrum.  "Easy self-instllation."   Spent more than an hour screwing around with it.  Cable television working the whole time, cell phone and landline working the whole time but unable to connect the computer or cell phone to the internet.  Finally, connection occurred, through what instrumentality I'm not sure.  Then talked to 2 representatives at Spectrum Customer Service to find out how I can continue to get cable tv if I disconnect the cable boxes and learned about the Spectrum app available on Samsung tvs and Roku.  Then the question was how do I set recordings on this app, for which I turned to Google.  After reading the instructions online, I decided I needed to move away from this project for a while.  Still not sure whether to keep Spectrum or move to YouTubeTV.  Big pain in the butt.