6/7/23

 Wednesday, June 7, 2023

In bed at 10, awake for a while around 4 but fell back to sleep and up at 5:18 with K. D. Lang's Big bones Gal and Trail of Broken Dreams in my muddled head.  53℉ with expected high of 66℉ under sunny skies, wind NNE at 11 mph, 8 to 15 mph today, gusts up to 26 mph.  The sun rose at 5:12 and will set at 8:29, 15+16.  

Midsummer approaches and the sun at sunrise is ENE at 57 degrees, far enough north to make me pull my recliner back to avoid the sunlight hitting me directly in the eyes as I read the papers, watch the birds, or type some thoughts into my Daily Drivel.  From the 17th through the 29th, the sunrise will be northernmost at 56 degrees before heading south again to 122 degrees in mid-December.  

Wisconsin Wildfire Worries.  Will we be replacing California as a big natural disaster site?  According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, there was a “huge expansion” of abnormal dryness over the last week from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and into New England. Drought is expected to develop or worsen in these areas in June.  Some parts of the Midwest, such as Michigan, northeast Ohio and parts of Wisconsin, have had less than a quarter of their normal precipitation over the past 30 days, while nearly the entire region is under 75 percent of normal, according to Beth Hall, director of the Midwestern Regional Climate Center.  According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, there was a “huge expansion” of abnormal dryness over the last week from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and into New England. Drought is expected to develop or worsen in these areas in June.  The nation’s northern tier, rather than California, has the highest fire risk, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.  The Great Lakes states are the primary area of concern for fire danger in June.  

Mike Pence, the Great Uniter, has announced he is running for president.  The Great Uniter? Nobody likes him, except, he thinks, God. "My family has been blessed beyond measure . . . That's why today, befoe God and my family,  I am announcing I am running for president of the United States.”  Is it possible for me to dislike anyone more than I loathe Trump?  Maybe Mike Pence.  Vanitas vanitatem  dixit Ecclesiastes et omnia vanitas.

From this morning's WaPo, an article by Kevin B. Blackistone with this opening: "How the 48th vice president of the United States — or, the “oleaginous Mike Pence,” as George Will once called him, “with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness” — graduated from Hanover College with a bachelor’s degree in history, history, is difficult to imagine, given a complaint he drafted to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Friday. For it is rife with so much ahistoric fantasy that it probably would have earned a failing grade from whoever chaired Hanover’s history department when Pence was there.  Such as, for example, the claim that Major League Baseball has an “apolitical reputation” and “once stood for American greatness” that transcended “political, social, and cultural boundaries.”  Blackistone goes on to demonstrate that Pence is just another gasbag.

My Mildewed Boxes and The Things by Donald Hall.

When I walk in my house I see pictures,

bought long ago, framed and hanging

—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—

that I've cherished and stared at for years,

yet my eyes keep returning to the masters 

of the trivial—a white stone perfectly round, 

tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell, 

a broken great-grandmother's rocker,

a dead dog's toy—valueless, unforgettable 

detritus that my children will throw away

as I did my mother's souvenirs of trips 

with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens, 

and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.

Counting Backwards by Linda Pastan

How did I get so old,
I wonder,
contemplating
my 67th birthday.
Dyslexia smiles:
I’m 76 in fact.

There are places
where at 60 they start
counting backwards;
in Japan
they start again
from one.

But the numbers
hardly matter.
It’s the physics
of acceleration I mind,
the way time speeds up
as if it hasn’t guessed

the destination—
where look!
I see my mother
and father bearing a cake,
waiting for me
at the starting line. 

How I am blessed in old age by poetry including the poetry of old age.  I don't have the energy, concentration, or eyesight to read or reread novels and I struggle, usually unsuccessfully, to read heavy nonfiction tomes even on Kindle.  But good poems, the non-opaque ones that touch my heart or punch me in the stomach, stick with me, keep me company,   I'm thankful to the poets and to the college Lit professors who opened worlds to me, and to my parents whose Depression and War-schooled lives formed me, prepared me to be moved as Donald Hall was by 'a dead dog's toy - valueless' and Linda Pastan's perception of 'the physics of acceleration . . . the way time speeds up as if it hasn't guessed the destination.'  She must have known of Geri's and my references to 'our daily New Yorker'.   And I wonder whether Donald Hall, appreciator of his dead dog's toy, was familiar with John Updike's heartbreaking Dog's Death.  I think of our Lilly of course, so dear to us and now so aged, and of Blanche, who slept on my shoulder every night for years and kept me company for 17 years.  

Geri and her shadow

 

Each night Blanche would crawl under my blankets to sleep just like this

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.  Tom Friedman's comun in the NYT this morning is terrific.  I'll be thinking about it for a while, especially re the similarities and dissimilarites between Israel and the U.S., the roles of evangelicalism and orthodoxy, the power struggle between modern secularists and True Believers, the on-the-streets activism of both groups in Israel and comparative lack of it here (not to be overstated.)

6/6/23

 Tuesday, June 6, 2023

In bed at 9, awake at 3:56 and up at 4:10, unable to sleep, feeling unrested. Train whistle blowing on tracks to our east.  60℉, high of 68℉, cloudy, the air still polluted with small particulates from Canadian wildfires, wind N at 8 mph, 2 to 14 mph during the day, gusts up to 24 mph.  Sunrise at 5:13, sunset at 8:27, 15+14.

timeanddate.com provides more precise data re surrise, sunset, twilights, angles of the sun at sunrise and sunset from day to day, length of daylight each day down to hundreths of a second, etc.

D-Day anniversary.  Very few remember, perhaps fewer care.  I was 2 years, 9 months, and 12 days old.  My mother was 6 months pregnant with dear sister Kitty.  My father was in Marine Corps combat training, probably at Camp Pendleton, CA, little knowing but fearing what awaited him on Iwo Jima 8 months later.

VA waiting room thought yesterday.  A trip to the Zablocki VA Medical Center is always someting of an event for me.  It's not like going to an appointment at CSMO or St. Luke's.  It seems to me to be a busier place than those civilian hospitals and medical buildings and that's because it's clientele is exclusively military veterans, mostly old guys (about 90% male, 10% female).  I know that it's projection and mostly in my mind but there seems to be a usually unspoken sense of comradeship in the place based, I suppose, on the old adage that 'all gave some, some gave all.'  I suppose also that the sense of commonality, to the extent that it exists, is supported by the location 'next door' of the Old Soldiers Home and Wood National Cemetery.  Not all but most of these old vets wear some item of clothing, most often a baseball cap, identifying their branch of service and unit and perhaps where and when they served, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.  For me it's my baseball cap with 1st Marine Air Wing and Vietnam on it.  The visible identifiers often open the door to conversations with other vets in the many waiting rooms in the hospital and elsewhere, as when I stopped in front of Sendik's the other day and had a good conversation with a former Army medic and Vietnam vet accepting donatins for the DAV, Disabled American Veterans charity. . . .  This morning as I waddled into Sendik's as its doors opened, a man of about 50 coming out of the store noticed the pretty subtle gray EGA insignia on my black T shirt and quietly said 'thank you for your service' and I replied, as usual, 'thank you, sir.'   I don't wear the shirt to elicit thanks and I'm hardly a militarist or a supporter of the nation's capitalistic militarism, but more like others wear Brewers or Packers paraphernalia.  Nonetheless, I am touched when strangers are thoughtful enough to offer those thank you's.

    In any case sitting in the waiting room I got to wondering whether a VA hospital physical therapy clinic would make a viable setting for a  dramatic TV series or even a dromedy.  There is such a variety of human beings here, mostly old but also young and middle aged, with all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of conditions needing therapies. Many walk in unassisted but most rely on at least a cane, many use a walker, a low or high rollator, and some are in wheelchairs.  And the therapists are an interesting group, probably more women than men (though I'm not sure), all seemingly healthy and vigorous, all much younger than their patients, and all in my experience at least caring and supportive of their patients.  To my old eyes, the young women are beautiful and the young men handsome, 'ready for prime time.'  It wouldn't seem to be hard for professional writers (the ones now on strike) to craft an interesting set of stories around such professionals and their patients.   

The awkward robin on the suet feeder.  The most common guests on our suet feeders are woodpeckers, mostly downys and red-bellies but also chickadees and nuthatches and finches.  Lately our suet feeder has been visited by one or more robins, who are unlike the other suet visitors in that they are not acrobatic in landing and moving about the little cage at will.  The robins have to land on top of the cage lean over the cage to nab some seedy suet.  The process seems to be very uncomfortable for them and with the current suet cake half-consumed, it's a real stretch for the robin(s) to reach it.  Their awkwardness and discomfort makes me uncomfortable so this morning around sun-up I placed an empty toilet paper roll on the bottom of the feeder, raising the suet cake to the 'upper chamber' of the suet cage, hopefully making it easier for the robins to reach.  We'll see. . . . At 5:47 a robin arrived on top of the suet feeder and appeared to have an easier time nabbing a piece of suet.  The red-belly also seems to be having an easier time of it.  The house finches are filling up on the oranges. . . Rain-wettened TP tube softened & collapsed.😡

    As I worked on the suet cage, I listened to the morning serenade in front of the house and turned on Merlin when I returned to the house.  The dominating calls were those of the cardinals, robins, and doves but Merlin also identified an oriole, a cowbird, a house wren and Carolina wren (?) and of course our Barkis and Peggottys, the house finches.

Sale of lethal weapons!  I see in this morning's JSOnline our local Sportsmans Warehouse has a sale on Ruger 9mm handguns, pistols, a mere $299, $200 off the regular price.  They aren't quite as lethal as AR-15 long guns, but a lot easier to carry concealed to a bar, a party, a church, or a school.  Valid June 1 to June 13, come and getem.

Organized religion, democracy,  lethality.  While waiting for a haircut and beard trim, I read Sunday's newletter by Heather Cox Richardson about our holy friend Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church.  He has awarded the First Degree of the Order of Glory and Honor from the Russian Orthodox Church to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán under whose rule democracy has been in large measure subverted in Hungary.  His Grand Holiness Kirll and much of his Church and its True Believers have also been great supporters of Vladimir Putin's war of naked aggression against the people of Ukraine, which seems to become continually more barbaricl and less Christian, to the extent that any war of agression can be said to be 'Christian,'  Yesterday the Russians blew up the dam on the Dneiper River at Kherson forcing the evacuation of thousands of Ukrainians, flooding hundreds of small communities, threatening the drinking waters of thousands of civilians, and potentially threatening the ability to provide vital cooling to the huge nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia.  "Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told.  Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right." — H.L. Mencken

Text from an old Pearls Before Swine cartoon strip:

Rat to Pig:  Do you think humanity is destined to destroy itself?

Pig to Rat: Oh, no.  I believe in Butterboy.

 Rat to Pig:  Who the heck is Butterboy.

Pig to Rat:  A giant stick of butter who will arrive one sunny day and save the planet and rescue humanity.

Rat to Pig: A giant stick of butter would melt after about 5 minutes in the sun.

Pig to Rat: I am so bad at picking religions.  

Demonstrations by White Frenchmen vs. Demonstrations by Black Americans.  For weeks now, les Francais by the thousands have been in the streets demonstrating against PM Macron's raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.  The demonstations have occasionally been violent, burning vehicles, fighting les gendarmes, etc.  In the United States, demonstrations by Blacks (and their increasingly many non-Black supporters) have been occasioned usually by the killing of unarmed Black men and even Black children.  An interesting comparison, a modest increase in retirement age vs. homicidal behavior by government agents against non-threatening citizens based largely on race.

Progress (of sorts) on THE BOXES.  I went down to the basement to start sorting out, saving, and discarding the boxes I opened days ago.  I thought perhaps I could start by moving the stuff from either my painting table or office desk onto a clean table in .the old workroom.  That plan evaporated as soon as I  sat down at the butcher block desk and made the mistake of picking up pieces of paper and actually reading them.  So much stuff!  A history of St. Leo Parish and the grade school and high school I attended.  My grandfather Dewey Clausen's death certificate from Sarasota County, FL.  Correspondence from the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis to my father re: his DD214 from 1945.  My father's 1997 POA naming me his agent.  Several of the Dove Notes I composed and sent to donors of the House of Peace and an unsuccessful grant proposal I wrrote only to be undermined by Br. Bob Smith, stirring a very nasty memory.  Notes I made in research done while writing my memoir.  Photocopies of microfiche pages from the 1947  Chicago newspaper reports on the assault on my mother, including a large photograph of the 15 year old rapist, looking very much like a child.  I managed to put a handful of papers into a discard box.  It's a start. but I feel like an inadequate Hercules looking at the Augean stables.

PGA to merge with Saudi LIV.  Shameless.  Scandalous. Disgraceful.  Mohammed bin Salman.  Jamal Khashoggi. Murder. Dismemberment.

Money, Money  Liza Minelli

Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Money makes the world go around
It makes the world go 'round

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
Is all that makes the world go around
That clinking, clanking sound
Can make the world go 'round

Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Money makes the world go 'round
The clinking, clanking sound of
Money, money, money, money
Money, money, money, money
Get a little, get a little
Money, money, money, money
Mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
That clinking, clanking, clunking sound
Is all that makes the world go 'round
It makes the world go 'round!

6/5/23

 Monday, June 5, 2023

In bed at 10:35, awake at 4:56, up at 5:16 unable to sleep, let Lilly in.  54℉, expected high of 76℉, cloudy morning & sunny afternoon, N wind at 4 mph, gusts up to 11 mph, sunrose at 5:13, sunset at 8:27, 15+14.

Why did I do it?!?  What was I thinking when I decided to look inside the several sealed storage boxes in the basement?  The contents of those boxes hold the records of my life, from birth on.  Even before birth - actual wedding photos from August 3, 1940, when my Mom and Dad got married at St. Bernard's Church in Englewood on Chicago's South Side.  Their marriage certificate attested to by Father Thomas Kelly. The 'baby book' given to my mother at Englewood Hospital at 60th and Green Streets in Englewood, signed and notated by the nurses who attended her and me during the 10 days she and I spent in the hospital during and after my birth, typical in those days.  Baby pictures of my sister Kitty and me, First Holy Communion photos, Confirmation photos of cousin Christine and me, junior prom photo with my first big crush and first chaste kiss, the pretty Irish colleen Maureen Boyle from Mercy High School, senior prom photos with the first Love of my Life Charlene Wegge.  

Maureen Boyle, Leo junior prom

 Photo of Anne and me, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the Navy Ball in 1963, Sarah's 1987 Shorewood High School graduation brochure and my 1959 Leo High School graduation brochure. 

Navy Ball, Wisconsin Club, 1963

 Andy's MVP certificate from his Little League days on the Pirates.  All the notes and research materials I gathered during the many months I worked on the memoir.  My father's military records including his DD214 and Honorable Discharges. Photos of him and friends  His medical and Medicare records from when he lived with Geri and me.  

My Dad, upper right, probably at or near Camp Pendleton, CA 1944

Professional photographs and snapshots - hundreds and hundreds of them.  So many memories, some happy, some not, so many pangs.  Some of these treasures are mildewed but most are not.  What do I do with all this stuff?  Put it back in fresh boxes that aren't mildewed and waterlogged?  Approaching my mid-80s, I'm on my last legs.  This stuff will mean little to nothing to anyone other than me.  What's the point of saving it for Geri or one or more of the kids to throw away?  What should I just throw away?  How much of it am I emotionally able to just toss in a garbage bag?  Every time I sit down and look at the stuff spread out on my big butcherblock office desk or my painting work table I start remembering this, that, or the other thing from my life, feel some emotions, and get semi-paralyzed.  I suppose I'll re-box the stuff, sorted somehow, and let the kids trash it or not.

Elegy was our first movie of the night.  Ben Kingsley = slimy old professor of literature who seeks out beautiful young female students to sleep with.  Penelope Cruz = target student.  Patricia Clarkson = Kingsley longterm mistress.  Dennis Hopper = Kingley's longterm buddy.  Kingsley is a selfish, cheating cad who diligently pursues no-strings-attached sex with pretty co-eds.  Cruz (unbelievably) falls in love with him but he disappoints her in enough ways that she dumps him causing him to realize, post-dump, that he loved her too.  Two years after the dump, she (unbelievably) has to tell him that she has breast cancer and will be losing her incredibly beautiful breast(s) to a surgeon's knife so Kingsley should take an artistic photograph of them pre-surgery.  After decades of thinging only of himself, he visits Cruz in the hospital post-mastectomy and tells her he'll be there for her, beatiful breasts or no beautiful breasts.  My thoughts on watching the movie: (1) thoughts of Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am A Rock", and (2) a variation on the theme of Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich."   The movie is an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel "The Dying Animal" which I will try to pick up at the Whitefish Bay library today.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was our second movie of the night.  I can't help it - I like Woody Allen movies (except for Manhattan and its creepy plot of a 42 year old weirdo dating a 17 year old weirdo, and even there, despite the dirty old man sex abuse theme, I love the background music. and New York scenery shots).  Just about everybody in this movie is frustrated and unhappy, 'looking for love in all the wrong places.'  Their misbegotten quests for love and reinforcement of their own senses of worthiness end badly except for Gemma Jones' mother character, Helena, who believes her fortune teller who tells her of her former lives as Cleopatra or Joan of Arc perhaps and predicts that she will meet her true love (the tall dark stranger) who turns out to be Jonathan, a half-bald, portly, Dickensian frump who owns an occult bookstore.  Jonathan and Helena, who believe in fantasies, find happiness in life.  The realists (Helena's daughter and son-in-law and former husband) find only failure and disappointment.  Was Woody Allen reflecting on his own life and the lives of religious and perhaps other True Believers?  Is he opining that we need myth, fantasy, wishful-thinking, make-believe to live without bitterness, like Karl Marx's: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."  Or Freud's notions about religion and projection, wish-fulfullment, childish fantasy of a cosmic Father who relieves us of guilt and comforts us.

Barkis and Peggotty are the names of two minor characters in Dickens' David Copperfield, Barkis being a stagecoach driver and seeker of the hand in marriage of Clara Peggotty, David's loving childhood housekeeper/nanny.  Barkis was known for his catchphrase "Barkis is willin'" which was how he famously proposed marriage to Peggotty who accepted. In the 1980's I bought a pair of tropical green finches (who didn't survive long) and named them Barkis and Peggotty.  When Geri and I lived in the Knickerbocker, we had a pair of house finches who visited us and who we took to feeding on the windowsill of our kitchen window; I thought of them as another Barkis and Peggotty.  It has now become clear to me that we have at least one other Barkis and Peggotty couple visiting our birdfeeders and oranges.  They arrive together, feed together, and leave together and  very clearly are 'in a relationship.'  Often they perch on the same orange hemisphere and share the riches; sometimes one will work on one orange while the other works on the other, but always leaving together when the first one finishes.

VA pelvic floor therapy this morning.  The last?. . . . Yes.

 . . . .

6/4/23

 Sunday, June 4, 2023

In bed by 10, up at 6:05, waking from a dream re walking to Bean's Lake, stopping at Tom & Caela's house with Tom still living though past his death.  Sunny 59℉, expected high of 72℉, NE wind at 8 mph,  1 to 8 mph during the day, and gusts up to 14 mph, no rain expected until maybe next Saturday.  The sun rose at 5:13 & will set at 8:27, 15+13.

Starting the day seeing and hearing.  I sat on the patio again this morning, sipping a cup of coffee and looking on the luxuriant sea of green all around (trees, shrubs, bushes, leaves, plants, flowers), listening to the occasional deep resonating of the wind chimes, and hearing the neighboring birds singing, calling, marking their proprietary nesting spaces.  The cardinals, doves, and crows I can identify by ear, and Merlin tells me it is hearing what my old ears can't: robins, house finches, goldfinches, and a blue jay.  The squirrel-proof birdfeeder I hung from the patio tree the other day shows no sign of having been plundered by squirrels, birds, or white-tail deer.  Has it not been discovered yet or is my placement inopportune?

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minn. by James Wright

Over my head I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year's horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on,

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

Leisure by W. H. Davies

What is this life, if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Depression in Winter by Jane Kenyon

There comes a little space between the south side of a boulder

And the snow that fills the woods around it.

Sun heats the stone, reveals

A crescent of bare ground: brown ferns, 

And tufts of needles like red hair,

Acorns, a patch of moss, bright green . . . 

I sank with every step up to my knees,

Throwing myself forward with a violence

Of effort, greedy for unhappiness --

Until by accident I found the stone

With its secret porch of heat and light,

Where something small could luxuriate, then

Turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

 Dystopia; the morning news.  JSOnline: "A 1-year-old child was fatally shot on the city's north side Saturday night, Milwaukee police said.  According to police, the girl was shot in a vehicle by a known suspect during an argument between adults.  The incident took place around 8:11 p.m. in the 1900 block of West Atkinson Avenue, near the Milwaukee Public Library Atkinson Branch.  The child was transported to Children's Hospital, where she died from her injuries. Anyone with additional information regarding this incident is asked to contact Milwaukee Police at (414) 935-7360, or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at (414) 224-Tips or by using the P3 Tips app."

Is a one-year-old an infant or a toddler, or a bit of each?  Is her shooting death an unspeakable tragedy or just a familiar day in the city?  Does it matter whether she 'comes from money' or is poor?  Does it matter whether she is Black or Brown or White?  What would it take to make her killing make us gasp or lose a breath,  grieve, or silently weep on reading or hearing the news?  What does it say about our society, our culture, our community, and ourselves that learning of another innocent Black child shot to death in the inner city is just another day at the office, barely worth a mention without even giving her name on an inside page of the local fish wrap?  What does it say about the news media and more significantly what does it say about the readers/listeners/watchers of that media?  Is it just virtue-signaling on my part to ask such questions or is it a recognition that we are inured to the violent deaths of Blacks, men and women, lawbreakers and innocents, grown-ups and kids, victims of police violence or domestic violence or gang violence, whatever, whoever, wherever, however.  'Another one bites the dust.' 10th homicide of a minor in Milwaukee so far this year.

Another one bites the dust / Another one bites the dust / Another one gone and another one gone / Another one bites the dust, yeah / There are plenty of ways you can hurt a man / And bring him to the ground / You can beat him you can cheat him you can treat him bad / And leave him when he's down, yeah / But I'm ready yes I'm ready for you / I'm standing on my own two feet / Out of the doorway the bullets rip / Repeating the sound of the beat, oh yeah. [Queen, 1980]

Woman, why are you weeping?

The morning after the Crucifixion, 

Mary Magdalene came to see the body 

of Christ. She found the stone 

rolled away from the empty tomb. Two 

figures dressed in white asked her, 

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

“Because,” she replied, “they have 

taken away my Lord, and I do not know 

where they have laid him.”

Returned from long travel, I sit

in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting

for the bread and wine of holy Communion.

The old comfort does not rise in me, only

apathy and bafflement.

                                    India, with her ceaseless

bells and fire, her crows calling stridently

all night; India with her sandalwood

smoke, and graceful gods, many headed and many-

armed, has taken away the one who blessed

and kept me.

                        The thing is done, as surely

as if my luggage has been stolen from the train.

Men and women with faces as calm as lakes at dusk

have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know

where to find him.

. . . . . 

Rajiv did not weep. He did not cover

his face with his hands when we rowed past

the dead body of a newborn nudging the grassy

banks at Benares – close by a snake

rearing up, and a cast-off garland of flowers.

 

He explained. When the family are too poor

to cremate their dead, they bring the body

here, and slip it into the waters of the Ganges

and Yamuna rivers.

                        Perhaps the child was dead

at birth; perhaps it had the misfortune

to be born a girl. The mother may have walked

two days with her baby’s body to this place

where Gandhi’s ashes once struck the waves

with a sound like gravel being scuffed

over the edge of a bridge.

 

“What shall we do about this?” I asked

my God, who even then was leaving me. The reply

was scorching wind, lapping of water, pull

of the black oarsmen on the oars . . . 

 

~ Jane Kenyon

6/3/23

 Saturday, June 3, 2023

In bed around 10, up at 3:10 with GERD, slept in the bedroom recliner for much of the night, up at 7:15, very tired.  Sunny 62℉, expected high of 75℉, NNE wind at 5 mph, gusts up to 21 mph.  Again no rain expected for the next 10 days, drought?  The sun rose at 5:13 and will set at 8:26, 15+12.

The day after GERD is usually a drag, the middle of the night coughing and gasping and swallowing water and antacid and using one Kleenex after another and moving from bed to recliner with the long and wide bath towel as a blanket and waiting for the acid burn in the throat to cool off enough to try to fall back to sleep takes a lot out of an old guy, more than the uninitiated might expect, so the following day is kind of a washout.

Inside the Meltdown at CNN: CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong? by TIM ALBERT.  The Atlantic, June 2, 2023.  With talents like Jake Tapper, Jim Acosta, John Hargrove, Christiane Amanpour, Bianna Golodryga, Brianna Keiler, Kaitlan Collins, and Audie Cornish it would seem to be hard to wreck an established news outlet.  Chris Licht and his boss at Warner Bros. Discovery David Zaslav have managed to do it, the coup de grace being the CNN Trump Town Hall.

CDC Handyman!?!  I removed the old one-way light bulb socket on a pretty porcelain lamp that has been gathering dust in the basement for years and replaced it with a 3-way socket.  The lamp is very old, including the electrical wire which I probably should have replaced along with the socket.  The lamp itself consists of 3 separate porcelain pieces, a metal footing on which they rest, plus a long metal tube through which the electrical wire runs up to the socket.  Getting all together took some time for my un-dexterous fingers.

Only one of so many favorite Dolly Parton songs.  I can't listen to her singing it without smiling and wondering how anyone could not be a Dolly Parton fan.  I listened to it during my drive up to the countryside in south Sheboygan County last week, on my Country Women playlist.

Why'd You Come In Here Lookin' Like That

Why'd you come in here lookin' like that
In your cowboy boots and your painted-on jeans?
All decked out like a cowgirl's dream
Why'd you come in here looking like that?

Here comes my baby, draggin' my heart behind
He's drivin' me crazy, who says love is blind?

He's got a wanderin' eye and a travelin' mind
Big ideas and a little behind
Out with a different woman every night
But I remember when he was mine

Why'd you come in here lookin' like that
In your high-heeled boots and your painted-on jeans?
All decked out like a cowgirl's dream
Waltzing right in here lookin' like that

Why'd you come in here lookin' like that
When you could stop traffic in a gunny sack?
Why you're almost givin' me a heart attack
When you waltz right in here lookin' like that?

I just can't stand it

To see him on the town

He's out slow dancing

With every girl around

I'm a softhearted woman he's a hardheaded man

And he's gonna make me feel just as bad as he can

He's got himself a mean streak half a mile wide

But now he's dancing on this heart of mine

Pizza from Leonardo's tonight.  First in a long time.  No cooking, almost no cleanup.😀

6/2/23

 Friday, June 2, 2023

In bed     Woke from a sound sleep on tv room recliner at 10:40 from a dream of Race to the Outhouse by Willy Makit in hour 30 of the colonoscopy cleansing, a distressing age-related side effect?!?!  Up again at 5:25.  Let Lilly out into summery 58℉ weather expecting a high of 74℉, low wind expected again.  Sunrise was at 5:14, sunset at 8:25, 15+11.

Resolved: to get outside the comfortable confines of the house and enjoy the comfortable and lush space outside the house.  The first step was this morning when I spent time on the patio, sitting on the comfortable green patio chair Geri bought in Lake Mills, reading nothing, typing nothing, listening to nothing but the cardinal(s), goldfinch(es), robin(s) and chickadee(s) identified on my Merlin bird identifying app.  Merlin also thought it heard a brown-headed cowbird and a great-crested flycatcher but who knows.  I shot a video of the backyard at 6:50 a.m. and thought how very fortunate I am living here, how green and lush the grounds are, full of ferns and groundcover, how rich with flowers - bleedings hearts, bluebells of some sort, columbines.  I can't seem to enjoy these feelings of appreciation and gratitude without thinking back to 7303 S. Emerald Avenue, 1702 W. Walnut, other venues, other thoughts.  How many turns in life have brought me here in old age, how many turns could have led me elsewhere.  Should I thank Charlene Wegge for influencing me to choose Marquette in Milwaukee among the many choices offered by the Navy ROTC  scholarship program?  Anne Smith and WITI-TV for steering us back to Milwaukee after the Marines?  Bob Boden and others for offering me an appointment to the law school faculty upon graduation? Frank DeGuire for occasioning or causing me to resign my tenured spot on the faculty? TSJ for F&F and the profit-sharing retirement savings?  Bob Smith and Al Veik for leaving the HOP?Bishop Zieman and his scandals deflecting me from Santa Rosa?   So many influencers, so many choices.  How many were truly 'free,' how many foreordained or at least utterly predictable?  Too philosophical a query for early on a balmy morning.  Time to look and listen and be, to calm the minnows in the bait bucket, the caged squirrels.

On This Day in History  In 1941, Edward George Felsenthal III was born,  destined to become my classmate at Leo High School between 1955 and 1959, my roommate at Marquette University between 1960 and 1963, and my friend for life.  In 1960 he introduced me to his Journalism School classmate and my future and then former spouse, Anne Elizabeth Smith,  In 1963, he and I graduated from the university and were commissioned as officers, he as an ensign in the U.S. Navy,  I as a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.  One week later, he would marry his high school sweetheart Helen (Lyn) with me as a groomsman.  Two weeks later, I would marry Anne with him as my best man.  Then he was off to NAS Pensacola for flight training and I was off to MCB Quantico for Basic School, with MLK's marchers on Washington marching past my door in Stafford Courthouse VA in August, and ASC and I trooping to Washington in November for the transfer of JFK's remains from the White House to the Capitol in November.  Within a couple of years, we would both be in Vietnam.   I called Ed this afternoon to wish him a happy birthday and schmoozed with him for 20 minutes or so, also chatting with old college friend and former Marquette roommate of Anne Smith Camilla Wakeman.

Let’s Smash the College Admissions Process is an op-ed essay by David Brooks in this morning's NYT (though dated 6/1/23).  As Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action loom, he argues "maybe we can all take this moment to reimagine the college admissions process itself, which has morphed into one of the truly destructive institutions in American society. . .  Today, you don’t need bloodlines stretching back to the Mayflower to have a decent shot at getting into an elite school, but you do need to be born into a family with the resources to make lavish investments in your early education. . .  So the hierarchies built by the admissions committees get replicated across society. America has become a nation in which the elite educated few marry each other, send their kids to the same exclusive schools, move to the same wealthy neighborhoods and pass down disproportionate economic and cultural power from generation to generation — the meritocratic Brahmin class."

The essay prompts lots of thoughts.  First is the relevance of Isabel Wilkerson's great work in Caste.  Second is the continuing relevance of William Blake's 300-year-old poetic insight: Every morn and every night  / Some are born to sweet delight.  / Every night and every morn / some to misery are born. / Some are born to sweet delight / Some are born to endless night.   The lottery of birth.  Third, the evidence we see all around us of class-based inequalities, the advantages that accrue to children of the well-to-do and the disadvantages to children of the poor.  Gus Kahn was agreeing with William Blake when he composed Ain't We Got Fun in 1920, writing "The rich get richer and the poor get children," changed later to 'The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.'   When I watch MSNBC and CNN, I'm reminded of the leg-up in life that children of the well-positioned have: Mika Brzezinski daughter of national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alicia Menendez daughter of Sen. Richard Menendez,  Laura Jarrett daughter of Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt.  Jake Tapper's father was a prominentl Philadelphia pediatrician and a graduate of Harvard Medical School, his mother a psychiatric nurse.  Jake attended expensive private day schools.   Erin Burnett is the daughter of a corporate attorney.  She attended exlusive private elementary and middle schools before attending St. Andrew's, a private co-ed college prep boarding school, and then Williams College.  She began her career as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs working on mergers and acquisitions.  It's not that all the accompllished and privileged were 'born to the purple' nor is it that those who are are guaranteed great success without talent and hard work, but but only that for those who are fortuante enough to be born on 2nd or 3rd base, it's a lot easier to reach home plate.  

The other thought that comes to me while reading Brooks' op-ed is how very fortunate I have been in life in light of my unpromising economic start in our 3 room  basement apartment after WW II, Dad with PTSD bouncing from unskilled job to job, often unemployed, alchoholc, both parents without a high school diploma, relying on Mom's earnings as a waitress to support our family of four.  The circumstances were hardly auspiious by any means but my mother insisted from my earliest memories on the importance of schooling.  I suppose being taught by the Sisters of Providence at St. Leo Grammar School, with 42 children in our classes, girls on one side, boys on the other, was not top flight education.  There was no gym and physical education consisted of being let out onto Emerald Avenue with traffic blocked off between 77th and 78th streets.  But the sisters must have imparted the basic learning skills (along with the every present religous indocrination) because I was prepared for the rigorous education I received at Leo High School which prepared me to win the NROTC scholarship and attend college out of town.  My mother's insistence on attending strict Catholic schools, on studying and doing my homework and earning good grades, the sisters' insistnece on attendance and respectful behavior, the brothers' imposition of academic and personal discipline and respectful behavior, all put me in a position that when the Navy opportunity was made known to me (by the good brothers), I was able to take advantage of it.  As Robert Frost said "and that has made all the difference."

Moved squirrel-proof feeder to back yard; listened to Nina Simone.  I hung the feeder from an S-hook on the damaged tree off the patio hoping it is too high for the deer to feast on.  Then I sat at the patio table and listened to my 'Female vocalists' playlist including Nina Simone's incredibly powerful "Strange Fruit."

Southern trees

Bearing strange fruit

Blood on the leaves

And blood at the roots

Black bodies

Swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hangin'

From the poplar trees

Pastoral scene

Of the gallant south

Them big, bulging eyes

And the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia

Clean and fresh

Then, the sudden smell

Of burnin' flesh

Here is a fruit

For the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather

For the wind to suck

For the sun to rot

For the leaves to drop

Here is

Strange and bitter crop

6/1/23

 Thursday, June 1, 2023

Double Dip Day

Up and down all night with the colonoscopy prep, and slept when I could in the bedroom recliner.  59℉, high of 74℉, sunny, wind SE at 2 mph, gusts to 14 mph.  Sun rose at 5:14 and will set at 8:24, 15+10.

A propos of nothing in today's journal entry is this acrylic mural I did from a Time Magazine cover on the wall of my workroom/studio in our house on Newton Avenue in Shorewood of a fighter pilot shot down and captured during the Balkan Wars.  I liked it and would have had the plaster wall removed and saved if I could have done so reasonably, which I could not.  I painted over it to return the space to one of four bedrooms in the house we sold to a friend, former student, and fellow Milwaukee Bar Association board of directors member Kathy Nusslock.

Exhausting prep; No polyps.   The cleansing started out not so bad and I was foolishly optimistic, not expecting the process to continue all night, seemingly hourly.  . .  I felt plumbing equipment discomfort going to and at the GI Clinic.  Post-procedure word: everything looked OK. Scaredy cat, wimp, worrywart, catastrophizer.  . .  Again I was impressed by the professionalism and caring attitudes of the medical staff, especially the GI nurses.   With the semi-official age cutoff for this procedure at 85, this morning's was my last colonoscopy and I can't say I'll miss them, at least the preps.  Not sure about the upper GI endoscopy. As always, the sedative mix of Versed and fentanyl not only put me out during the procedures but led me to LaLaLand during much of the rest of the day, very relaxing, almost too relaxing to be writing this.  On the other hand, the cleansing effect of the prep solution has continued through the day.  Not expected and not good.😳

Hospital

BY MARIANNE BORUCH

It seems so—         

I don’t know.  It seems   

as if the end of the world   

has never happened in here.   

No smoke, no   

dizzy flaring except   

those candles you can light   

in the chapel for a quarter.   

They last maybe an hour   

before burning out.   

                            And in this room   

where we wait, I see   

them pass, the surgical folk—     

nurses, doctors, the guy who hangs up   

the blood drop—ready for lunch,   

their scrubs still starched into wrinkles,   

a cheerful green or pale blue,   

and the end of a joke, something   

about a man who thought he could be—   

what?  I lose it   

in their brief laughter.

Poem copyright ©2006 by Marianne Boruch,