1/4/24

 Thursday, January 4, 2024

In bed at 9, awake at 4:30 and up at 4:50.  Let Lilly out at 4:56 and in at 4:58, again at 5:25 and in at   .  25° with high of 31°, wind NNW  at 9 mph, 3-10/14.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:29, 9+5.

Treadmill; pain.  Awoke w/ upper & midback pain.  Big scare in early afternoon with pain around right kidney area, like pain on 11/25, but not as intense.  Took 3 Advil and laid down on bed under beach towel.  It felt better lying  on right side rather than left.  3 false starts but pain/discomfort held me back. 00:00

I'm grateful to the Veterans Administration for all the medical care, medication, and other help it provides.  I thought of this while I was lying down, post Advil, and received a call to confirm two appointments next week, one with Jody for Healing Hands, the other with the VA hypnotherapist.  I have two Rollators from the VA, a 'low boy' ("Judy")and a 'high boy' ("Rachel"), neither of which I have used in more than a year, probably out of vanity and a silly sense of embarassment about 'rollating'  down the street where all my neighbors live.  The treadmill in the basement lets me get a half hour of walking in almost daily in the privacy of the home, but it's awfully boring, relieved only by YouTube, for which I am also grateful.  This morning I called in again for the weekly VA discussion group focused on Mindfulness Meditation, this week led by Mary.  I enjoy hearing each of the participants in this group and I chip in a comment myself when I think it might be useful or otherwise welcome.  It's only through the VA that I am able to take part in this activity with a group of other veterans, male and female and to address this practice of mindfulness and meditation with support.  I've read about M/M and tried it before but I've never stuck with it and felt it would be helpful to me until I became connected with this VA telephone group.  This is probably the least costly help the VA provides me, compared to the cost of all the doctors, nurses, therapists, medications, etc., but it's certainly one for which I am very grateful. 

"Rachel," my VA-provided rollator, serving as a coat rack and a stand for towels used to wipe off Lilly when it's raining or snowing out.  Foolish pride.😔

Picked up Andy at the Ogui Garage at 8 a.m.  Luxus is acting up again.  Uh oh.  Left at 7:30, back home at 8:25.

Callback from the vet re: Lilly.  He says it looks like she injured her knee, which could have happened when we struggled to help her into the back of the Honda to go to the groomer's shop yesterday.  But that doesn't address the distress I witnessed and recorded in this journal a few days ago.  Hmm. . . .

1/3/23

 January 3, 2023

Andrew Charles Clausen, 1972😊

Interstim installed, 2012😠

In bed by 10 and up at 4:30.  Let Lilly out at 4:49 and in at 4:55.  Out again at 6:45 and in at 6:48.  Early earworm of Linda Ronstadt singing "When You're Alone" on the Lush Life album with Nelson Riddle.  31°, cloudy day ahead with high of 35°, wind W at 8 mph, 5-13/18.  Sinrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:28, 9+5.     

Treadmill; pain.   30:16 & 0.70  

I'm grateful to Uncle Hardy and Aunt Eleanor, for welcoming me into Geri's families so long ago.  I have nothing but warm memories of each of them.  I remember having trears in my eyes in the car outside the church at Eleanor's funeral and how sad I was when Uncle Hardy died.  Cousin Michael paid a terrible price for our invasion of Vietnam, a price he still pays and Eleanor and Mac paid a high pricee as well, as they did when Cousin Dickie died in an accident.  Well I remember so many conversations with Uncle Hardy, including the one on his enclosed back porch in Edison Park about his mother's death and burial during the Spanish Flu pandemic, the one at Edith's funeral about the Church (" What do you think, Chuck," pointing to the priest leading prayers, . . . . "It's just a business."), and the one on Newton Avenue about trapping sparrows with his friend. in Blue Island.  Each of them was a blessing in my life.  And I shouldn't forget Cousin Joey who treated me so respectfully.  He also suffered a big loss in his life.  I got such a kick out his conversations with his brother-in-law Fe(lix). I'm grateful too to Robert and Jimmy, each so different in some ways but each a friend.   And for their children, two of whome became my students during my academic days.  They all enriched my life and I'm grateful to each of them.

Cannabis use by elderly users and heart disorders.  An article in this morning's WaPo: "Seniors are embracing marijuana, which offers relief — and risk" by Fenit Nirappil includes this:

A study presented at an American Heart Association conference in November found that adults older than 65 with “cannabis use disorder,” which is essentially addiction, and cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure are at higher risk for heart attacks and strokes while hospitalized. The data could be skewed by hospitals having different standards for cannabis use disorder.

Loren Wold, a cardiac specialist at Ohio State University’s College of Medicine, said the research should give pause to older adults who are prone to irregular heartbeats or have high blood pressure and want to use marijuana.

This makes me think of  -------- who was not addicted but was a regular user to help with insomnia.

There is also this from a November, 2023 reserarch report from the American Heart Association:

In one study, daily use of marijuana raised the risk of developing heart failure by about one-third, even after considering other factors, compared to people who reported never using marijuana.

In a second study, older people with any combination of Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol who used marijuana, significantly increased their risk for a major acute heart or brain event while hospitalized, compared to those who reported not using marijuana.

One wonders.

 Interstim implant anniversary.  2012, a move I regret.  (1) It never worked to reduce uninary frequency, and (2), with my IC and Jadiance/empagliflozin, I need to void often to avoid painful bladder and flush kidneys.  Plus, it precludes MRIs because of the metal content.

Lilly distressed.  Geri returned from the groomer's with Lilly in rough shape, her rear legs very weak.  We had to lift ther out out the Honda.  Grim.  Heartbreaking.

 

1/2/24

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

In bed at 9 and up at 5:30.  26°, high of 34°, clear skies all morning and windy, cloudy afternoon, wind SW at 13 mph, 8-16/30, wind chills  14 ° to 24°.  Sunrise at 7:23 at 121°SE, sunset at 4:27 at 239°SW, 9+4. Lilly got Geri up at 6 to let her out - a change of routine.

Treadmill;pain. Woke with the usual PFM tightness, and high back pain.   Mild spasms during the morning & early afternoon, but by 2:30, on the treadmill and 30:38 & 0.65 while watching Robert Sapolsky again discussing biological determinants of human and primate behavior with Nate Hagens on YouTube.

I'm grateful for Lilly, especially after my two big scares with her scary behavior yesterday, suggesting a stroke or something terrible going on inside her brain or other part of her body.  I'm grateful for all the pets I have had over a long lifetime, from Blanche, through Ralph, Bear, Ruby, Moose, Barkis and Pegotty, back to Freckles, Cookie, Fuzzy the hamster and Petey the parakeet  They have all given me companionship and comfort in one way or another, even when I was sleeping and, in Blanche's case, especially when I was sleeping 

Homo hominis lupus.  The Soviet Union designed the S-300, a mobile, surface-to-air defense weapons system, during the Cold War to hit incoming U.S. bombers or ballistic missiles. An S-300 can fire a projectile with a 293-pound high-explosive warhead, capable of stopping targets moving at more than 2,600 miles per hour. On Friday,  12/30, Russia unleashed 14 of these deadly devices, not defensively against airplanes or missiles, but offensively at cities in Ukraine. They were part of a wave of missiles and drones that marked the largest one-day aerial attack on Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion 22 months ago.

The barrage ripped into 45 multistory buildings, including schools, churches, hospitals, maternity wards, shopping centers, and warehouses, as well as Ukrainian military installations and a defense factory. It killed 40 people in all: 17 in Kyiv, nine in Zaporizhzhia, six in Dnipro, four in Odessa, three in Kharkiv, and one in Lviv. The onslaught wounded 160.

Today,  Russia bombarded Ukrainian cities with an overnight assault of drones and missiles, extending a vicious wave of holiday-season strikes on population centers by Moscow and Kyiv that has left dozens of civilians dead and suggests a brutal new stage of the war that is being felt well beyond the stagnating front lines.

Proving yet again that the best place to look for savages, barbarians, and cruel, heartless beasts is not in Africa or Asia, but in 'civilized' Europe, the home of White Supremacy and world wars.

Israel: Judicial Supremacy?  With an 8 to 7 vote, Israel's Supreme Court has rejected the Netanyahu government's judicial reform that precludes the court from invalidating laws deemed "unreasonable."  The question becomes whether the far-right government will accept the court's split decision.  Which will be 'supreme' in Israel - the Court or the Legislature and Executive?  Once again, Israel seems to be America's doppelganger, our canary in the coal mine.  We assume that the U.S. Supreme Court has the last word on the constitutional validity of laws passed by Congress and approved by the president, and on actions taken by the other branches of government or by state government, but says who?  The Constitution doesn't say so.  So-called 'constitutional issues' arereally rareely 'legal.'  They are political. public policy questions.  In what sense was the Warren Court deciding a legal question rather than a public policy issue when it ordered the desegregation of public schools in 1954?  Ditto Harry Blackmun's decision in Roe v. Wade in 1974 and Samuel Alioto's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2023?  In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."  But why?  On these huge public policy issues, why are the few unelected members of a court, any court, better able to decide the issues than elected representatives?  The issue has been with us since the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 and the Judiciary Act of 1789 and its still with us.  This tension between the political branches of government and the judicial branch is even deeper in the case of Israel, which has no constitution.  

Susan Glasser's piece on Trumpschmerz in The New Yorker:

Four years ago, on the threshold of a critical election year that would decide whether Donald Trump won another term in the White House, I asked a German friend, Constanze Stelzenmüller, of the Brookings Institution, to come up with one of those long Teutonic words for the state of constant, gnawing anxiety that Trump’s disruptive tenure inspired. She came back with a true mouthful, a thirty-three-letter concoction that pretty much summed it up: Trumpregierungsschlamasselschmerz. Helpfully, she suggested that it would be fine to shorten this to Trumpschmerz. It means something like “Trump-worry,” but on steroids. At the time, I defined it as “the continuous pain or ache of the soul” that comes from the excessive contemplation of the slow-motion Trump car crash. Well, here we go again. Headed into 2024, America is stuck with another bad case of Trumpschmerz.

Biden’s miscalculation was not about Trump—the President has always been dead serious about the threat posed by his predecessor and by the party that embraces him—but about himself. Having aspired, for the better part of four decades, to the office he improbably won on his third try, Biden has been reluctant to relinquish it in favor of a younger Democrat. His theory of the case seems to be rooted in his belief that he, and he alone, can insure Trump’s defeat. But that rationale has become harder to sustain as his polling has grown worse and worse. As of the end of the year, Biden is, at best, tied with Trump; the Real Clear Politics average has him down 2.3 points.

Trump’s victory is by no means assured. It may well be that predictions of him winning in 2024 will turn out to be just as wrong as the forecasts of a recession were at the start of 2023. But the past few years of Trump, Trump, Trump have taught me, if nothing else, that hoping for the best is not necessarily a winning strategy. With American democracy on the line, I’m taking the only defensible position toward the New Year: full-scale dread. I plan to pull up the covers and hide under my pillow as long as possible come January. It’s going to be a long 12 months.

Hear, hear!  Me, too. 

Robert Sapolsky's arguments on free will and determinism has me thinking about a lot of stuff, and of course, mostly solipsistically.  Ordinarily I would be writing here about some of those thoughts but I'm driven - deterministically? - to try to get some organization in my iPhotos library.

1/1/24

 January 1, 2024

In bed at 8:40 and up at 5.  Let Lilly out.  26°, high of 31°, clear morning, partly cloudy afternnon.  Wind NNW at 11 mph, 7-13/24, wind chill at 15°.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:27, 9+3.

Treadmill; pain. Woke up with upper back pain and having some PF spasms this morning.  On the treadmill around noon, 30:17 & 0.60, listening to Robert Sapolsky argue that "Free Will" is non-existent on the University of Chicago "Big Brain" podcast on YouTube.  It was a good program that left me wanting to hear more on the subject of determinism.  Not surprisingly, it had me thinking solipsistically of my own life and my sister's, considering our childhood with all the PTSD in our lives, and about my 3 cousins, each so different.

I'm grateful that 2023 is finished.  It was in some ways a rough year, starting with TSJ's death and the long ordeal of the eulogy.  Considerable pain challenges, IC, CPP, RP, Meijer's parking lot, the 11/25 visit to VA ER and Dr. Uilein, visits to Dr. Chatt, Dr. Cheng in PM&R, Dr. Shankar in the Pain Clinic, visits to the Urology Clinic, PT Jennifer Garrison in Physical Therapy, OT Melinda Matusewic in Whole Health Clinic. LPN Jody Kressin with Healing Touch, Lou and Mary with the Mindfulness Meditation group, etc.  This month alone starts the year with Jody on 1/8, hypnotherapy on 1/9, Eye Clinic on 1/11, Urology on 1/25, acupuncture on 1/29, PM&R on 1/31, plus 5  separate 'video connects', some with Melinda, some with I'm not sure whom.  I'm grateful to the VA for the comprehensive medical care they provide and for Ed Felsenthal's help in enrolling me.  I look at a list like this and wonder if I'm a hypochondriac, a Munchausen misfit, but I don't imagine the pain and discomfort, the failing eyesight, diabetes, etc.  As my Dad used to say, "My parts are failing."  If we were cars, the parts could be replaced.  As it is, they can realistically only be treated, but nonetheless, I'm grateful.

Lilly distressed?  6:20 a.m.  Something is wrong with Lilly.  She noisily clomped or stomped into the TV room from the living room, stood by my chair, walked backward a couple of steps and a couple of times, and then plopped heavily onto his mattress, not in her customary location, but rather on the very edge, leaning against the book cabinet, with her left front leg off the mattress.  Something is not right.  She lays her head down for a minute or two but then raises it again, unable to rest.  After some time, she fell asleep.  At 7:15, she got up and stretched and lay down in her favorite spot, on the carpet but abutting her mattress.  Crisis over?

    No.  At about 3:15 this afternoon, she had a similar distressing experience.  I let her out and she lay on the cold ground for 11 or 12 minutes before I lured her back inside with treats.  Something is definitely not right with her.  Back to the vet?  (Geri is out visiting Ellis and her new puppy, Peaches.  I texted her but it seems she didn't get the text.)

Real existential threats presented by right-wing, Republican thinking.  Climate change: Republicans deny it and oppose governmental restrictions required to stall or minimize its effect.   Guns: Republicans deny they are a cause of injury (people kill, guns don't), and oppose legislation banning assault weapons, and virtually any restrictions on possession/ownership.   Epidemics/pandemics: Republicans oppose public health mandates, like masking, limitations on the size of gatherings, required vaccinations, etc.

LTMW at a female hairy woodpecker perched atop the far shepherd's crook patiently waiting her turn while a red-bellied woodpecker goes to work on the suet cake I just moved there from the near crook. Meanwhile, the house finches, chickadees, a song sparrow or pine siskin, and red-bellied nuthatch,  fill up on the near crook and a downy woodpecker arrives to work on the diminishing suet cake.  Down below, two squirrels and some snowbirds feast on the little suet nugget and larger seeds I dropped there when I filled the sunflower/safflower tube this morning.  In a while, I'll fill both suet cake baskets with fresh suet to start the New Year.  Yesterday's treat was many visits by our handsome local tufted titmouse(s).

The increasing threat of climate change.  From this morning's WaPo:

Even if its extremes are ultimately eclipsed, as seems inevitable, 2023 will mark a point when humanity crossed into a new climate era — an age of “global boiling,” as United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called it. The year included the hottest single day on record (July 6) and the hottest ever month (July), not to mention the hottest June, the hottest August, the hottest September, the hottest October, the hottest November, and probably the hottest December. It included a day, Nov. 17, when global temperatures, for the first time ever, reached 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial levels.

Discomfort, destruction, and death are the legacy of those records.

And we can't say we weren't warned. 

Facetime call from Sarah and Christian this morning and a Happy New Year email from Gerhard and Olga.

4, 282 weeks.  I believe that is how long I have lived.  I've read that the average American lifespan is about 4,000 weeks so I'm 'living on borrowed time' as they say, or 'playing with the house's money.'  My long-term friend TSJ lived about 4,134 weeks and other dear friend DSB much less.  My father lived about 4,500 weeks, my mother fewer than 3,000 weeks and my sister about 4, 030.  I'm thinking of these numbers because of Isabel Fattal's article in The Atlantic "How to Make Better New Year's Resolution" in which she cites Oliver Burkeman's book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals."  Four thousand weeks is just about 77 years which is pretty close to the average American life expectancy.  Breaking down a life span to weeks instead of years and fractions of years gives us, or at least me, a different perspective on a lifetime.   I think of this on this date relative to the idea of "resolutions," and goals, how we hope to live a better life, to be a better person, not simply self-improvement but in accomplishing something worthwhile in terms of others, not wasting the discrete number of weeks in our lives.  OTOH, Emily Dickinson: "In this short life that only lasts an hour, how much - how little - is within our power."  I look back on my life with a lot of regrets. Yeats' Vacillation.  Is this the Last Judgment mirror?  Do I make old age more or less bearable by looking into it?  Should I call it quits with this journal and all the remembering and reflecting it prompts?  Or is it a way of recognizing the regrets and trying to come to terms with them?  

On this date in 1660, Samuel Pepys recorded the first entry in his famous diary: "This morning (we lying lately in the garret), I rose, put on my suit with great skirts, having not lately worn any other clothes but them."  

Is this who we are? is the title of Karen Tumulty's op-ed in this morning's WaPo.  Excerpts:

In 1964, when the radical right John Birch Society was near the peak of its influence, renowned journalist Martha Gellhorn, who had launched her career covering the Spanish civil war three decades earlier, wrote a friend: “Unless there’s a Johnson landslide, the country and world will know how many incipient and energetic home-grown Fascists we have. I never for a moment feared Communism in the US but have always feared Fascism; it’s a real American trait.”

. . . .

If, knowing everything Americans now know about [Trump], they reelect him — or even come close to doing so — it will be time for all of us to quit lying to ourselves.

This is who we are. 

Forget the "if", Ms. Tumulty.  We know the truth already and you pointed it out in this very op-ed, as you wrote:

Yet with Trump himself back on the ballot [in 2020], the outcome was far closer [than in 2016]. Though Trump lost the popular vote both times he ran, in 2020 he increased his totals, both in the number and the share he received. Were it not for about 45,000 voters in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, he would still be president. 

Mene, Mene, tekel upharsin. 

Geri's walking partner Shirley and her friend dropped off a gift for Geri at 3:45.  Very thoughtful.

 

12/31/23

°°°Sunday, December 31, 2023

In bed by 10 and up at 6:30.  Let Lilly out.  Winter Weather Advisory until noon: mixed precipitation with snow and ice glaze, slippery roads.  29°, high of 34°, wind WNW at 7 mph, 3-19/30, wind chills today 17° to 31℉, 30% chance of some snow.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:26, 9+2.    

Treadmill; pain.   17:35 & 0.36, a welcome early end when Andy texted that he and Peter were about to come over to look at Geri's mixer situation on the bathtub.  While I was 'on board,' I watched an interview of Bradley Cooper by Steven Spielberg about Maestro.  RP & PP developed while Andy and Peter were here moving A&A's stuff out.

I'm grateful  for last night's lovely dinner and visiting with Andy, Anh, Peter, Lizzie, and Drew; for the delicious pasta dish that Andy cooked and we all enjoyed; for watching the kids and Geri playing with a virtual reality game thing; for learning about all the activities and competitions that the kids will be involved in come March; for listening to Andy describe, as only he can, his exploits in replacing plumbing stuff in their old house and for volunteering to come over today to look at our plumbing challenge with the bathtub for learning that Anh is now handling not only her 4 original parishes but also the Cathedral parish, work she's done for the last 10 or 11 years; and for alerting us to the wonders of air frying,; and for the massage gun they gave us along with thoughtful gift cards (even for Lilly.)  Blessings upon blessings.

Milwaukee's warmest year on record.  Climate change + El Niño.

Last New Year Resolutions.  " I don't know that I have ever made New Year's resolutions.  Perhaps I have but, as with so many things, I have no memory of any.  This year I should try. 1. Try not to be a jerk, selfish, self-centered, judgmental, supercilious, intellectually vain,  pity partyer.   2. Try to be kinder, more understanding, more open, and more accepting of differences (except for MAGA types and dangerous Republicans.) 3. Try to paint more, be more communicative,  draw more, and walk more.  OTOH: Emily Dickinson "In this short life that only lasts an hour  / How much - how little - is within our power.""

It's hard to judge on Resolution #1.  I am still subject to each of those vices.  On Resolution #2, I have to be all of those things, though I am far from perfect on any of them.  I think I have made progress on being more understanding of differences in our polarized society, though probably not more accepting.  I can't be accepting of the differences with the Religious Right, crypto-fascists, ruthless capitalists, and the like, though I did exclude such folks from this resolution.  I think I have probably succeeded in Resolution #3.  I've probably done more painting than I did last year, perhaps mostly because of binging on Camille Claudel's portraits.  OTOH, I think I've done no drawing.  I've been doing well on the treadmill, which I started almost 3 months ago.  In the last three weeks, I've been on it every day but 2.  It's terribly boring but thank God for YouTube!  Whether I've been more communicative is questionable.  I've always been guilty of too much introversion and aloofness and it may still be the case.

All in all, last year's resolutions seem pretty reasonable and worth another run, so I'll keep on trying.

New Resolutions:  Stay more in touch with Ed Felsenthal and Larry Anderson.  Try to maintain some semblance of the Clausen/Lowe/Goldberg dinners.  Those resolutions (or goals) came to mind quickly but I got to thinking more about the passing year and the upcoming one on the way to Costco with Geri.  The past year saw two good, very long-term friends leave us - TSJ by his unexpected death and DPL by moving far away.  It had me move one year closer to my own death, and all of us marching along the same route.  I'm thinking about my life this past year and my reflections on some of it as reflected in this journal.  How much of this year have I wasted with negativity?  How many opportunities to do some good, both for others and for myself, have I squandered?  How much, by sins of commission and more by sins of omission, have I lived out the words 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.  Today and tomorrow are days for some self-reflection.

1.  I should live next year as if it is my last year, as well it may be.  Live next month, week, day, and hour as if it is my last, and accept that it may well be the last with no more warning than Tom had on January 18th of this year.

2.  I need to appreciate being alive and appreciate all the beauty around me - beauty in Nature, beauty in people old, young, and in between, and beauty in art through vocal and instrumental music, painted and written images, and fine writing. 

3.   I should write a letter each week to Sarah and Andy, to leave them some record of their father's thoughts and values as an old man.  I needn't concern myself with whether they read them or think much about them, especially now.  I wish my father had been more open with me during his last years.  On secnd thought, I suspect this is a delusional pipe dream.

4.  I need to be more mindful: (a) of the gift of Geri's presence in my life; (2) of the clouds above and the earth below, the birds all around, the squirrels, white-tail deer, wild turkeys, chipmunks, and all sorts of critters; (3) of the food I eat,  the water and tea I drink, and the air I breathe.

. . . . 

I started on my resolutions: I called Ed Felsenthal who told me that I beat him to the punch - that I was on the top of his list of people to call today and tomorrow.  He appreciated the call and I appreciated talking with him and telling him, as I have before, that his friendship has been a blessing in my life.  I sent Larry Anderson a New Year's greeting by email and told him he's a good man.

Holiday dinner of Costco lamb chops, buttered white potatoes, Caesar salad, Geri's great tapioca pudding.  Then watched season 1, episode 1 of Fisk on Netflix and went to bed at 8:40.  Happy New Year's Eve.

 

12/30/23

 Saturday, December 30, 2023

In bed before 10, awake and up at 11 with Lilly in the bedroom with me, terribly agitated, pacing, heavy breathing, lying down and immediately getting up, moving to another spot, repeating the behavior.  I let her out but the behavior continued when she came in.  I stayed in the TV room until 2, mainly listening to her pacing which sounded clumsy.  Up around 8 wondering whether she may have been suffering a stroke and was dead, but she was like her old self, took a long walk around the property, came in for her treat and a long drink of water, and laid down.  Was it all the vaccines she received yesterday?   28°, mostly sunny, high of 38°, wind WSW at 7 mph, 3-8/13.  Sunrise was at 7:23, sunset at 4:25, 9+1.  

Treadmill; pain.   Not too bad today.  30:25 & 0.65 while watching a documentary on OVID about Antonio Negri, famous/notorious philosopher, anti-capitalist, anti-globalist, and political activist in Italy during the 1970s and 80s, during the era of the Red Brigades and the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro.  It was also the era of the ouster of the Shah of Iran and the capture of personnel of the U.S. embassy in Tehran that led to the election of Ronald Reagan in the U.S.

I'm grateful that I heard back from my niece Chrissie this morning.  She was very busy with work (not unusual for her, who's a dynamo) and the holiday and forgot to answer my Christmas text.  She, her brother Mike, her Dad, and I all have a hole in our hearts that used to be filled with her mother, requiescat in pace.  We will probably never see one another again, but Chrissie, Mike, and Barb Tunney are my remaining links to Kitty.   

"Ken" was sent another text this morning from some Republican MAGA source asking whether he had ordered his "I Stand With Israel" coffee mug.  For the last time, I clicked the "Delete and Report Junk" button.  I've done it many times for all the Republican texts I receive but it never works.  The torrent continues and will only get worse in 2024.  One of the things to hate about modern life and the availability of cheap messaging technology - text messages and email, are cluttered with crap.😡

Child Homicides in Milwaukee in 2023.  Prosecutors have charged a 13-year-old Milwaukee boy with homicide in the shooting death earlier this month of 10-year-old Trinity Johnson at 39th and Hampton.  The death is likely Milwaukee’s 21st child homicide of 2023, according to police data as of Nov. 30. Of those, 19 were committed with firearms.  In Milwaukee, child gun victimization has doubled in the years since the pandemic. From 2016 through 2019, about nine children died by homicide every year and 49 were injured in shootings, according to data from the Medical College of Wisconsin.

A memory of Herb Kohl.  In 1994 (I think) Geri and I flew to Washington where I was to testify at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee in support of Herb Kohl's "Sunshine in Litigation" bill, a bill designed to limit the use of protective orders in federal product liability and toxic tort cases.  We stayed at a hotel across the street from the building that had been intended to be the Russian Embassy until all the American 'bugs' were discovered in it.  The day before I testified, we went to Kohl's office to meet him and the staff member shepherding the bill.  Kohl gave us tickets to the Senate gallery, the Senate dining room, the White House, etc., and in the course of schmoozing asked me where we lived.  I told him, out of Geri's earshot, that we lived in Shorewood, on Newton Avenue.  The next day, after the hearing was completed, Kohl schmoozed with us again and this time, he said to Geri something like "You look familiar.  I think I've seen you before.  Do you live in Shorewood, perhaps on Newton Avenue?"  Geri was flabbergasted that the senator recognized her and knew where she lived.  On the way to the Senate dining room, I burst her bubble by telling her that I had given that information to Kohl earlier when we first met.  Herb was a smooth politician.  Herb had run the family food store business before his political career and was highly respected both by the public and by his employees.  His brother Sydney Kohl ran the family shopping center businesses, Northridge and Southridge, and I met and did business with him when our firm represented Southridge when its roofing system failed.

Another memory from that trip was attending Mass at the Episcopal National Cathedral, a favorite stop of mine in Washington.  The homilist was a priest who was a woman and she gave a terrific homily.  I remember saying to Geri after mass 'That's why the Catholic Church doesn't allow women to be priests.  They can't stand the competition.  Not that I believe in any priestly state anymore, but if I did, my preference would be for women as priests, just as I prefer women doctors.  I believe women are better healers, or, as I used to say to my dearly departed pal David Branch, I believe that women are just generally better human beings than men.  He would take great exception to my gross generalization and our friend Cordelia Monroe would laugh as we fought it out.  Now David is gone and I don't know what has happened to Cordelia.  So it goes.

I turned off the water to the outside faucets this afternoon.  Finally!  I don't want to risk frozen water pipes and flooding in the basement, my sanctuary.

Geri took Lilly out for a walk today, the first in all these past weeks when Geri's been so sick.  Lilly seems to be in great shape after her terrible night last night.  Her hind legs that have been so knock-kneed seem to have recovered their old form.  Can this be an overnight result of the $100 arthritis injection she received yesterday???  She also jumped up onto the sofa to lie down next to Geri without the difficulty she usually experiences.

Dinner with Andy and Anh and the grandkids tonight.

Gaza destruction.  According to the Wall Street Journal:

The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.  By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair. 

Most of the strip’s 36 hospitals are shut down, and only eight are accepting patients. Citrus trees, olive groves and greenhouses have been obliterated. More than two-thirds of its schools are damaged.

12/29/23

 Friday, December 29, 2023

In bed at 10, up R 6.  Let Lilly out. 36°, cloudy, high of 39°,  Wind N at 14 mph, 7-15/24.  0.25" inches of rain in the last 24 hours.  Sunrise at 7:23, sunset at 4:24, 9+1.     

Treadmill; pain.   There's tightness in the PFM this morning, but no spasms as of 10:30.  30:31 & 0.60 while watching James Carville on YouTube announcing his annual Starr-Hastert PAHA, or Perverts and Hypocrites Awards.  The big prize is a toss-up between the Sarasota Florida Republican leaders famous for their threesomes and Jerry Falwell, Jr. and his wife and their relationship with a pool boy at the Fontainbleu Hotel.

I'm grateful for good neighbors and for having had many in my life.  In my childhood, we had Carl and Ann Semrau, our next-door neighbors who let us move out of the basement at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue and up to their spacious 2nd-floor flat at 7307 S. Emerald.  'Movin' on up' like the Jeffersons, and what a life-altering change, made possible I'm sure only by their friendship.  It's hard for me to believe that my parents would have passed a 1950s version of a landlord's credit check with my father's PTSD, alcohol abuse, and employment history and our finances so dependent on my mother's income as a waitress, but Carl and Ann were our friends during those terrible days and the notorious rape of my mother in 1947.  I remember both of them being kind to us and their daughters, Cathy and Rosemary, being good friends of Kitty and me.  They moved away from the neighborhood, as we did, later in the 1950s, participants in the Great White Flight during the blockbusting era of whole Chicago neighborhoods changing, seemingly overnight, from all-White to all-Black.  The Semraus' new neighbors at 80th and Campbell included my First True Love, mentioned below in the note about Nikki Haley, introduced to me by Cathy Semrau.  (The faded photo above is from my memoir.)  We've had many good neighbors since the Semraus, including Lance and Marianne Herrick on Newberry Boulevard, and Don Jones, my landlord and downstairs neighbor on Murray Street in Shorewood, and Paula Simon and Howard Schoenfeld on Newton Avenue, our neighbors in Saukville whose names, alas, I cannot remember, and the McGregors, Cheri Bubrick, and Reuben and Patti Peterson in Bayside.   Life with a nasty neighbor can be a nightmare; life with good neighbors is a great blessing, for which I am most grateful.

    As I write this I am mindful of my experience at the Sports Clips barbershop a couple of hours ago.  I was experiencing some mobility issues that made it awkward to get out of the barber's chair and I had some difficulty getting my fleece vest on as I was leaving.  As I turned around from the cashier's counter to the door, I saw that the next customer, a middle-aged man whom I had never seen before,  was standing at the door waiting to open the door for me.  I was touched by his kindness, his thoughtfulness.  I said 'Thank you, sir' and he replied 'You're welcome, and Happy New Year.'  He was a momentary good neighbor and I was once again blessed - and grateful.

UW-Lacrosse chancellor, porn shows & free 'speech',   Joe Gow. 63, and his wife Carmen Wilson, 56. like to f--- & s--- while being filmed.  They also like to have the films shown on porn sites under the search term "Happy Sexy Couple."  For 17 years, Joe Gow was the chancellor of UW-LaCrosse.   He is also a tenured professor in the school's  Communications Department.  Carmen Wilson has a Ph.D. from Iowa State University in Counseling Psychology.  In 2006, she chaired the search committee that recommended Gow for the chancellorship at LaCrosse and served as his chief of staff from 2008 until 2011 when she was appointed to head UW-Rock County where she served until 2016.  She and Gow married in 2014.  She was Provost and VP for Academic Affairs at Dickinson State in North Dakota from 2016 to 2019 and was a finalist for the presidency of Southwest Minnesota State in 2019.  She served as an unpaid "Associate to the Chancellor" at Uw-W-LaCrosse.  In 2018, she and Gow published a book, available on Amazon, entitled "Married With Benefits; Our Real Life Adult Industry Adventures," in which they described their experiences in the porn industry, including making films with other porn actors.

On being fired, Gow told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "I am perfectly fine if the regents want to criticize what we've done but to say that I'm going to lose my position, that is a clear violation of First Amendment,  It is a clear violation of the regents' commitment to academic freedom. ... It's a clear violation of Wisconsin's constitution and statutes."  Are f-----g and s-----g on porn sites "speech" within the meaning of the First Amendment?  Is it an exercise of "academic freedom"  when it is done pseudonymously and is apparently unrelated to any teaching or research activities?  Does the Wisconsin constitution cover this kind of activity?  Has anybody ever read the Wisconsin constitution?  We'll find out if and when Joe and Carmen go to court unless there is some kind of settlement that quiets the scandal around their activities and the academic honors that have attended their careers.  With my undergraduate major in Psychology, my one course in Abnormal Psychology, and no professional experience in the field, it seems to me that Joe and Carmen are afflicted with a bad case of the mental disorder called exhibitionism so I am wondering whether Joe's next move will be to claim a defense under the Americans With Disabilities Act.  And their rock duo act styled "The FurLows" perhaps should adopt the name of an earlier group - The Kinks.

Nikki Haley is smoother, and more attractive, but just another Trumpie.  Q & A at a campaign stop in Berlin, N.H. on December 27:

Q: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

A: Well, don’t come with an easy question or any — I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was?  . . . .  I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government, and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t have to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties — so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.

Q:  Thank you. And in the year 2023, it is astonishing to me that you answered that question without mentioning the word “slavery.”

A:  What do you want me to say about slavery?

Q:  No, um, you’ve answered my question. Thank you.

A:  Next question.

Some thoughts come to mind: (1) We should never forget in our post-Reagan, post-Bush(es), post-Trump era that all politicians who choose to embrace the Republican label are Republicans through and through, which is to say, not to be trusted.  (2)  Berlin, New Hampshire, where Haley gave her ham-handed answer to the simple question was a dream town for me and my First True Love, Charlene Wegge, pictured above. While browsing an atlas one night, we decided we wanted to live in Berlin, between the White Mountains and the Green Mountains.  After she dumped me in 1960, Ed Felsenthal and I drove through Berlin in 1961 on our way home from a summer of active duty in the Navy.  I discovered that Berlin was an old, beat-up pulp and paper mill town and decidedly not an idyllic destination for young lovers.  I suspect it's in better shape now than it was 62 years ago.

What Netanyahu and his ilk ignore and I and many Israelis and other Jews cannot.  In the December 21 issue of the New York Review of Books, there is an essay titled "A Bitter Season in the West Bank' by David Shulman, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Excerpts:

As war rages in Gaza and the Middle East as a whole is skittering on the brink of a wider conflagration, the fate of thousands of Palestinian shepherds and farmers on the West Bank looks grim. Neither the government nor the army has done anything to stop rampaging Israeli settlers who are hell-bent on driving these people—some of whom are my friends—off their lands. By now the situation has been reported widely in at least some of the Israeli media as well as in the international press. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have both warned that this settler violence has to be curbed. On November 8 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an empty public gesture: “There is a tiny handful of people,” he said, “who take the law into their own hands…. We are not prepared to tolerate this.” So far he seems able to tolerate it quite easily. The same day he reassured his supporters, including the hundreds of thousands of settlers in the territories: “I told President Biden that the accusations against the settlement movement are baseless.”

If you happen to be a Palestinian shepherd in the South Hebron Hills or the Jordan Valley, that “tiny handful” are terrifying thugs who can invade villages and hamlets at any moment (with a certain preference for late at night). They are heavily armed with M16 rifles, pistols, butcher knives, and often all three, and they take obvious pleasure in causing pain: beating people; breaking anything breakable; stealing; torching cars and homes; destroying food, water tanks, and solar panels; and shooting in the air—and sometimes not in the air. They have a standard formula that has been repeated in village after village: “You have twenty-four hours to leave. If you don’t, we’ll be back to kill all of you.”

Who are these violent settlers? Many of them are young men, even adolescents, who shouldn’t be carrying guns in the first place; they have had no military training, though they often wear uniforms. They have been armed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s shameless minister of national security, a follower of the racist Meir Kahane and a pyromaniac who loves nothing more than fomenting havoc in mixed Jewish-Arab cities such as Lod, Ramleh, Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. Ben-Gvir has been handing out rifles—some eight thousand in the last few weeks—to whoever wants one (provided the recipient is Jewish, of course). They may come in handy in the civil war that Ben-Gvir is conniving to bring about. Some of these settlers are now organized in paramilitary units supposedly under the aegis of the Israeli army. In reality there is no longer any clear distinction between the settler militias and the army units, mostly manned by settlers from the area, that are stationed in South Hebron and only too eager to join the hunt.  . . . . . 

Who are these violent settlers? Many of them are young men, even adolescents, who shouldn’t be carrying guns in the first place; they have had no military training, though they often wear uniforms. They have been armed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s shameless minister of national security, a follower of the racist Meir Kahane and a pyromaniac who loves nothing more than fomenting havoc in mixed Jewish-Arab cities such as Lod, Ramleh, Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. Ben-Gvir has been handing out rifles—some eight thousand in the last few weeks—to whoever wants one (provided the recipient is Jewish, of course). They may come in handy in the civil war that Ben-Gvir is conniving to bring about. Some of these settlers are now organized in paramilitary units supposedly under the aegis of the Israeli army. In reality there is no longer any clear distinction between the settler militias and the army units, mostly manned by settlers from the area, that are stationed in South Hebron and only too eager to join the hunt.

For years the settlers in the illegal outposts now littering all of Area C in the West Bank (the 62 percent under full Israeli control) have been terrorizing their Palestinian neighbors. I’ve met not a few—actually too many—of them. They often seem to be troubled, confused, even lost, though they have found refuge in the outposts and undergone an ideological brainwashing by the older settlers. By now the average age of the marauding settlers has gone up; adolescents have turned into adults in their twenties or thirties. Their guiding idea is that the Land of Israel belongs uniquely to the Jews; all others have to be expelled or worse. If that plan materializes, the Messiah will come—possibly, or even preferably, in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war—and install a theocratic state in place of the present corrupt and dangerously democratic one. These settlers are now in a state of messianic ecstasy, with the Gaza war providing them the opportunity they have long been preparing for. They are stealing with impunity more and more Palestinian land while perpetrating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, with considerable success. We are seeing the beginning of a second Nakba, accelerating day by day.

It is not only what is happening in Gaza that horrifies much of the world (and yes, of course, what happened on October 7th), but also what is happening and has happened for decades in the West Bank.

We took Lilly to the vet for her shots and a check-up.  Everything looked AOK, waiting for the blood test results on Tuedsay.