6/6/24

 Thursday, June 6, 2024

1944, D-Day

1958, Charles de Gaulle says Algeria will always be France's

1966, James Meredith was wounded by a White sniper

1977, WaPo reported the US had developed a neutron bomb

In bed by 10 p.m. and up and into the TV room at 1:15 a.m. I checked myhealthevet.gov and found a secure message from Jill Hansen re freestyle libre CGM and lab result from the blood draw on 6/2/24: C reactive protein count back to normal.  No result on Sed Rate yet.  Lilly showed up at 2:10 for a pit stop.  At 3:45, I lit my candle, turned off the lamp, and dozed till 5 a.m., as the mega-loaded dishwasher I had filled and started 2 hours and 20 minutes earlier had 22 more minutes to complete its cycle.  The sun rose at 5:12 with mostly clear skies and a windy day expected, with westerly winds up to 19  mph.

Prednisone, day 25., day 3 at 20  mg.  I took my 20 mg. pill with an apple sometime after 5.

Living in Hell.  There has been increasing attention on Trump's threats and promises of retaliation against his adversaries once he regains power in November.  Trump's threats are supplemented by those of many other Republicans, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, urging Republican district attorneys and attorneys general to start indicting, arresting, and prosecuting Democrats.

Prisoner abuse in Wisconsin and Israel, Waupun, and Sde Teiman.  In JSOnline, there is a story about the former warden of the maximum security prison in Waupun and 8 others charged in the deaths of 2 prisoners.  In both the WaPo and the NYTimes, we read reports of "unimaginable abuses" of Gazan prisoners at an Israeli detention center in the Negev Desert where Palestinians are kept, without charges, in "administrative detention."  Israel's Unlawful Combatants Act, with its post-October 7 wartime amendments authorizes detainees to be held incommunicado for months before a judge reviews their case or they are given access to a lawyer.  Literally, thousands of Palestinians have been incarcerated under this law.  At Sde Teiman and other detention sites:

Former Gazan detainees told The Washington Post in January that theywere beaten, denied medical care and made to kneel handcuffed and blindfolded for days on end at secret Israeli detention sites. Last month, a CNN investigation into Sde Teiman found the camp was divided into two parts: enclosed areas housing groups of shackled detainees — some of whom were handcuffed so tightly they had to have body parts surgically removed — and a field hospital, where patients in blindfolds and diapers were strapped to beds and force-fed through straws.

“Mounting testimonies have exposed the unimaginable abuses at Sde Teiman — surgeries without anesthesia, prolonged restraint in agonizing positions leading to amputation, blindfolding for days even during medical treatment and toilet use, detainees forced into diapers, severe beatings and torture,” ACRI said in its statement to the court. 

It is a scandal that there is so little reported by either the American government or by American news media about Israeli official persecution of Palestinians and the gross absence of due process rights for Palestinians in Israel's civilian and military courts.  A small part of this is due to the conditions of secrecy imposed by the Israeli authorities, who are very good at keeping reporters away from sights the Israelis don't wish to be publicly seen. But most of the blame lies with the American government and corporate news establishment who either don't want to call attention to Israel's long history of human rights abuses or are afraid to because of the Israel Lobby. ever vigilant and ever threatening, viewing every criticism of Israel as an existential threat to the Jewish State.  After October 7, we Americans, or at least our government and our media, are inextricably linked with the depredations and human rights abuses of Israel's right-wing government and military.  Most of the rest of the world sees clearly what we don't see, refuse to see, or don't care about - our hypocrisy.  I remember Abu Ghraib.

The Waupun story here in Wisconsin reminds us that prisoner abuse and neglect is a worldwide challenge.  I'm reminded of the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment in which student "guards" imposed increasingly brutal punishment on student "prisoners."  The increasing brutality was attributed to the de-individualization of all the participants, guards and prisoners alike, and the dehumanization brought on by the prison environment.  The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research because the Navy and the Marines wanted to investigate conflict between military prisoners and guards.  Marine Corps brigs have a particularly nasty history and reputation, probably not surprising considering the nasty history of its boot camps.  

Today's anniversaries remind me first of Europe's evil history as a collection of colonizing, imperial countries that, while purporting to be "civilized," "advanced," and "Christian," imposed unquantifiable suffering on weaker peoples.  France's war in Algeria is as good an example as any.  After France suffered an injury to its national ego at Dien Bien Phu and Geneva in 1954, the haughty Charles de Gaulle led the French effort to subdue and oppress the Algerians lest France cease to be an empire, a colonial power.  He was the French version of Winston Churchill, a racist imperialist.  I think of course of how the United States stepped right into France's place in Vietnam.  Africa has been called "the Dark Continent."  That title ought to belong to Western Europe, with its history of depredation and plunder.  I had just finished my junior year at Leo High School when DeGaulle told the world Algeria belonged to imperial France.  Little did I anticipate that Ho Chi Minh's defeat of the French 4 years earlier would end up with me in "French" Indochina in 1965.

The attempted assassination of civil rights leader James Meredith occurred 4 days before I flew from Okinawa back to the States.  It was a vivid reminder of the world I was returning to after 'fighting for freedom and democracy' in Vietnam - not!   White racism remained America's original and besetting sin.  It still is. When Meredith, an Air Force veteran, was the first African-American to attend Ole Miss' in 1962, it led to a deadly White riot and the deployment of more than 30,000 federalized troops by President Kennedy.

The news about the neutron bomb in 1977 reminds me of our species and our nation's never-ending quest for more powerful, more lethal weapons with which to kill people and destroy stuff.  The big selling point of the neutron bomb was its enhanced ability to kill human beings with radiation while minimizing damage to surrounding structures and objects.  Wikipedia points out that "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director Harold Brown and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev both described neutron bombs as a "capitalist bomb" because it was designed to destroy people while preserving property." H. L. Menchen: "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

I was 2 years, 9 months, and 13 days old on D-Day.  My mother was 6  and a half months pregnant with my sister Kitty.  My father had been drafted in February of 1944.  My Uncle Jim was in the Navy on the Pacific coast.  Uncle Bud was stationed at the Manhattan Project in New Mexico.  Uncle "Bim" was in the Army Air Corps in Europe.  D-Day brought hope to all that the war in Europe would come to an end with a victory for the Allies and so it did, though it required another 10 months of deatn and destruction.  The war in the Pacific, where my father was, would require another 4 months.  The D-Day invasion became the iconic symbol of the European war, the flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi the symbol of the war in the Pacific.  I wrote rather extensively of my father's PTSD after the war in my memoir, and also in some of my daily jourmals.  I think of the millions, indeed hundreds of millions of human beings who were affected by World War II, not only military but also civilian.  I think how my father's PTSD affected my sister and me throughout our lives and think of the millions of other people all over the world very much like us.  And I think of how, as a species, we are incapable of not warring on one another.  I think of Ukraine and Gaza.  I think of Randall Jarrell's Eighth Air Force

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,

A puppy laps the water from a can

Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving

Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man

Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;

Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one

Lies counting missions, lies there sweating

Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.

O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,

Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,

I did as these have done, but did not die--

I will content the people as I can

And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,

Many things; for this last saviour, man,

I have lied as I lie now.  But what is lying?

Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:

I find no fault in this just man.

The most powerful words in the poem, words describing himself and his comrades: O murderers!  Words that describe all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines engaged in the great killing competition.  Words describing me and my fellow Marines in the TACC in DaNang, casually keeping tranck of each missiion launched from the air field, and of the lethal ordnance carried by the aircraft.  O murderers!

Matthew 27:19.  While he was sitting on  the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him."Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him."

Gospel of John, ch. 19:   . . .   So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.  Pilate said to them, Behold the man! . . . I find no guilt in him. . .  WE HAVE NO KING BUT CAESAR!  So he deliverd him over to them to be crucified.

Matthew 27: 24-25.  Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere and a riot  was developing.  So he se t for a bowl of water and washed his hamds in front of the crowd.  "I am innocent of this man's bloo.  The responsibility is yours.  All the people answered:  His blood is on un and on our children."

What Did You Learn in School Today?   Pete Seeger,  Tom Paxton

What did you learn in school today,

Dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in school today,

Dear little boy of mine?

 . . . . 

I learned that war is not so bad

I learned of the great ones we have had

We fought in Germany and in France

And someday I may get my chance

That's what I learned in school today,

That's what I learned in school.

6/5/24

 Wednesday, June 5, 2024

1967, the start of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and  Syria

1968, Sirhan Sirhan kills Bobby Kennedy

2012, Scott Walker survives recall election in Wisconsin

In bed before 10, up at 2:45. with Maura O'Connell's Western Highway hanging on as an earworm, as it has for days.  I ate most of a self-inflicted Leonardo's pizza from Hell last night - sausage, anchovies, and jalapeños - which may account for this bout of sleeplessness, or is it the prednisone or simple insomnia, like Kitty's.  In any case, I light my Kitty candle in the middle of the night and think of her, and of Mom and Dad, my grandparents, uncles and aunts, TSJ, DSB, WBG, WSR, RHF, and 'all the faithful departed.'  It's raining out, again, another increment in our very wet Spring, another half inch expected today with warm temperatures - 75°.  My right thumb is still sore, for the 3rd or 4th day, with a devilish hangnail.  I have it protected in a finger cot, making typing these and other words difficult, awkward, and clumsy.  At 3;25, Geri and Lilly show up for Lilly's outing, Geri using her walker.  I watch her walk back to her bedroom with her walker and think what a good person she is, and strong. . . . At 5:36, I blew out the candle, turned off the lamp, and tried to nod off.  Woke up around 6:30 but stayed half-awake, and half-asleep until 7:15, before the expected arrival of the Wednesday lawn crew. . . No lawn crew this morning, probably because the ground is super-saturated.

Prednisone, day 24.  Dr. Ryzka called me at about 5:15 p.m. yesterday saying he had the results of one of the blood tests from Monday, one of the inflammation markers [ESR or CRP], and the number was greatly reduced from my April number.  As a result of that improvement and my clinical improvement, he cuts me down from 30 mg. of prednisone to 20 for the next two weeks, then to 15 mg. for another two weeks.  The weaning begins.  He also wrote a prescription for 5 mg. pills to be mailed to me and wants to see me again in 4 to 5 weeks.

Such historic anniversaries today.  The start of the Six Day War, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and Scott Walker's dodging the recall bullet (only to lose reelection to Tony Evers in 2019.)

I remember being pleased that Israel had so thoroughly trounced her contiguous Arab states.  Labor Party leader Levi Eshkol was prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin was the IDF chief of staff, and the dashing, eye-patched  Moshe Dayan was Defense Minister.  The existential threats to Israel had been removed, and its indefensible borders enlarged, but, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz pointed out, Israel had a choice whether the war would be a defensive one or a war of conquest, and Israel chose conquest.  It became an occupying power with a million and a half or more Palestinian Arabs under its heel.  On this 57th anniversary of the preemptive start of the war, we see the results of the conquest in Gaza and in the West Bank.  As Leibowitz predicted, Israel is now regarded as a racist nation practicing apartheid and now engaged in widespread war crimes and genocide against Palestinians, a pariah state.

Bobby Kennedy was my preferred candidate for the presidency in 1968.  I was a big fan, huge. On June 5th, I was only one year and 4 days out of the  Marine Corps, with still very raw feelings about Vietnam and about the civil rights struggle that was going on in the U.S., especially about the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4th, just 2 months before and indeed the assassination of John Kennedy less than 5 years before.  I was stunned, knocked for a loop, by the attack on RFK.  I remember sitting in a bar on Edison Street in downtown Milwaukee with Larry Anderson wondering what was happening to America, but now I'm wondering if that memory is mistaken: perhaps confused with the MLK murder in April.  In any event, the entire year of 1968 was stunning, discombobulating, disorienting, mind-blowing.  I think almost automatically of course of the Democratic Convention in Chicago and the police riot and of the later wild trial before Julius Hoffman,  but 1968 was a revolutionary year around the world, most notably in the U.S. and France, but also in Mexico City, Japan, Eastern bloc nations, even Australia.  The dozen years between JFK's assassination in 1963 and the Marine helicopters airlifting desperate Vietnamese off rooftops in Saigon in 1975 coincided with my young adulthood, ages 22 to 34.  They were years of disillusionment, transitioning from the "Camelot" era of JFK, Jackie, Caroline and John-John, through LBJ's foreshortened years of turbulence, to Nixon, Watergate, and disgrace.  They were the years I transitioned from being a young 2nd lieutenant to being an unlikely young law professor and always feeling a bit out of place, not belonging. never comfortable with the traditional values of the 1950s, never comfortable with the values of the late 60s and 70s, a mist\fit.

Scott Walker was a bit of a misfit too.  The son of a Baptist minister, attended but never graduated from Marquette University, he became Milwaukee County Executive when Tom Ament resigned after the huge county pension scandal.  Ament was temporarily replaced by our old friend Janine Geske who served until Walker was elected following a fiscal responsibility campaign.  He served from 2002 to 2010 when he was elected Governor.  It was a big year for Wisconsin Republicans, largely because of the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president.  Ron Johnson was elected as a Tea Party candidate beating Russ Feingold, and Republicans gained majorities in Wisconsin's U.S. House delegation, state assembly, and state senate.  Flexing his political muscles, Walker introduced and got passed Act 10 which removed collective bargaining rights from public employees other than police and firefighters.  His main target was my law firm's client WEAC, the state teachers union led by Morris Andrews.  The teachers supported Democrats and they were a reliable source not only of campaign contributions but also of organization and field workers throughout the state.  It was Act 10 that led to the recall campaign that he survived on this date in 2012, but he was defeated in the next general election by Tony Evers, who appropriately was a former teacher and Superintendent of Public Instruction.  His fortunes had started to fall in the 2016 presidential race in which he started out as a "top tier candidate" and ended up the first to drop out of the race that brought to America and the world Donald J. Trump.

I'm struck as I write this with my tangential connections with Walker - Tom Ament, Janine Geske, and Morris Andrews.  My first lawsuit on behalf of County Executive Bill O'Donnell was against Tom Ament as the chairman of the County Board:  O'Donnell v. Ament, over the power of appointment to the head of the County Transit Board.  It led to the later representation of the county exec of Fond du Lac County in her fights with her county corporation counsel.  Janine worked with Walker in his transition into his new county exec's job.  As head of WEAC,  Morris Andrews and our firm under Bob Friebert's lead contended with Walker throughout his term of office. but not so successfully after Act 10.

A rough day.  I had a bad morning, mostly because of bad back pain.  I had trouble walking, standing erect, and maintaining balance.  Around 11 a.m. I climbed into bed, with great difficulty, and slept for about an hour and a half.  My bed is too high for my decrepit old body; I wonder whether I should have the mattress and box spring directly on the floor, without the additional height the bed supplies.  The bed is a grand old treasure, a heavy, walnut-stained, oak antique that was once Geri's parents' bed.  I wonder why contemporary mattresses, like my 2-year-old Stearns and Foster, are so high.  Mr. Google tells me that traditional beds are, on average, about 25 inches tall, whereas antique beds average 36 inches.  Some mattresses are taller than others because of additional base and comfort layers providing more support and/or more comfort.  I have both the additional height of the antique bed and the additional height of the expensive mattress, too much for my antique carcass with its bad back to deal with.😡

LTMW this afternoon, I watch a male and female goldfinch, probably a nesting couple, filling their beaks with cotton from the cotton ball, while a house finch, or maybe a purple finch, works on one of the orange halves.  Drinking or eating?  On the street, I see two very limber women nattily dressed in white shorts and bright tops walking along briskly.  I noticed them earlier, perhaps even 45 minutes earlier, walking along County Line Road.  They are enjoying a very long walk.  I confess to some envy seeing people younger and healthier than me walking or running or cycling with almost no apparent effort, no pain, no need for a cane or walker.or  supporting partner.  I also confess to enjoying the many pretty women out and about, on the street and in the stores, in their skimpy summer garb.  Even in my dotage, I admire pretty women.  It's why I have painted so many of them and so very few men.  I wonder how many of the other old men shopping at Sendik's notice all the attractive women around us.  Am I  just an old perv, or is it the painter in me.  I think all painters, at least those who do figure studies and portraits, are sensualists, always prone to studying faces and figures.  The same is true of serious photographers.  We all notice the shapes of eyebrows, lips, noses, chins, cheeks, hairlines, necks, and so on.   The skimpier the clothing worn in the warm months, the more there is to take note of.  Maybe it's another form of bird watching.😇

I forced myself to take a late afternoon walk with Rachel and got just past the Madjalani house at 9515.  74°, sunny, with a little breeze.  I listened to some favorite tunes on a country playlist: It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels by Kitty Wells, Feeling Lucky by Mary  Chapin Carpenter, Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That, by Dolly  Last Stop Texaco by Rickie Lee Jones, Walkin' In and Out of Your Arms by K.D. Laing.  Was I out walking for my health, to reduce my lymphedema, ease my lower back,and increase my heart rate, or was I hoping to run into the two pretty ladies in their white shorts?😁😂😇

6/4/24

Tuesday, June 4, 2024

In bed near 10 and awake at 1:07, unable to sleep, up at 1:27 to take a fasting glucose reading after eating nothing after dinner last night: 309, down a tad from yesterday's 317 but worrying.  I moved to the TV room, lit a candle, and finished typing the passage in Leibowitz's 40 Years After, the paragraph describing some of what the Israeli government and IDF had descended to since occupying Arab lands and its effects on the Israeli Jewish people.  . . . At 2:45, Lilly got Geri up to let her outside.  I retrieved the walker from the kitchen where Geri had left it last night & Geri returned to bed while I waited for Lilly to do her business. . . Breakfast #1 at 4 a.m., Raisin Nut Bran with blueberries, raspberries, banana, and prednisone. . . Sun-up at 5:13,  blew out Kitty candle at 5:30, turned off the lamp, and tried to sleep.  Dozed off and back up at 6:35.

Prednisone, day 23.  Sleeplessness?  Perhaps euphoria, or am I simply so happy to be free of crippling pain and disability?  As Shirley Wiegand, our faculty friend and confidante of Anitas Hill used to say when she was very tired, I'm dragging major butt today.  Earrands run to the hardware store for 7.5W light bulbs, Walgreens for Geri's gauze wrap, Wild Birds Unlimited for suet and safflower seeds, and Sendik's for more ice for Geri's knee, and I'm exhausted because of half-night's sleep.  Later I emptied the dishwasher and refilled it with the same result: crippling backache and exhaustion.

I'm grateful to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, for his clear thinking and writing about what happened in and to Israel with the military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem in 1967.  He writes beautifully and indicts Israel's treatment of their Palestinian victims ruthlessly and relentlessly, ever since 1967.  I'm also grateful to Ariah  Neir for the following:

Is Israel Committing Genocide? by Aryeh Neier in the June 6, 2024 edition of the New York Review of Books.  Excerpts follow:

 . . .  Hamas operatives do not wear uniforms, and they have novisible military bases.  Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population of Gaza, and its extensive  network of tunnels provides its combatants the ability to move around quickly.  Even if Israel's bombers were intent o n minimizing harm to civilians, they would have had difficulty doing so in their effort to destroy Hamas.

And yet, even believing this, I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.  What has changed  my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of hmanitarian assistance into the territory.

As early as October 9 top Israeli officials declared that they intended to block the delivery of food, water, and electricity, wihich is essential for purifying water and cooking.  Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's words have become infamous: "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.  There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.  We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."  The statement conveyed the view that has seemed to guide Israel's approach throughout this conflict: that Gazans are collectively complicit for Hamas' crimes on October 7. . .

The cumulative effect of these measures [obstruction of humanitarian aid] is that many Palestinians - especially young children - are starving . . .  The obstruction of humanitarian assistance is unlikely to effect Hamas combatants directly.  Even in conditions of famine, men with guns find a way to get food.  It is those who bear no responsibility for Hamas's crimes who are suffering  most.

I have been engaged in efforts to protect human rights for more than six decades . . . I cannot recall any dispute over rights that aroused greater passion and more debate than that involving the war in Gaza since October 7. . . Whatever else emerges from this war and whatever judgment comes from the ICJ, it is evident that Israel has done itself as well as its Palestinian victims long-tern harm.

Both Neier and Leibowitz are Jews.  Neier is a Holocaust survivor and former CEO of the ACLU and of Human Rights Watch, of which he is also a co-founder.

Getting angry at God in Spoon River.

Wendell P. Bloyd

They first charged me with disorderly conduct, / There being no statute on blasphemy.

Later they locked me up as insane / Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.

My offense was this: / I said God lied to Adam, and destined him / To lead the life of a fool, / Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.

And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple / And saw through the lie, / God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking / The fruit of immortal life.

For Christ’s sake, you sensible people, / Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:

“And the Lord God said, behold the man / Is become as one of us” (a little envy, you see), / “To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed):

“And now lest he put forth his hand and take / Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:

Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden.” (The reason I believe God crucified His Own Son / To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. )

I read Wendell Bloyd's epitaph and I think back to a conversation I had at the breakfast table in Tom and Sue Clark's kitchen in which I suggested that nobody really succeeds at the challenge of theodicy,  understanding why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits so much evil and suffering in the world he created. The term literally means “justifying God.”  I suggested that it is a lot easier making the case that God is a mean prick than making the case that He is all-loving Father figure,  etc.  I found and still find relief from the problem only by stepping back from believing in the traditional God of St. Thomas Aquinas, et al.  If a personal, human-like God is not responsible for creating or authorizing all the evil and suffering on Earth, then there is no reason to be always mad at him for putting us into and through what Bloyd calls "the wretched tangle."  I love the simple, colloquial, concluding kvetch: "It sounds just like him."😂

6/3/24

 Monday, June 3, 2024

In bed at 9 and up at 3, out to the TV room and reading Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking when Lilly arrived to be let her out at 3:30, just as the Village police patrol car passed by.  I remembered to take my glucose reading before eating the overnight oatmeal: 317!  a record high.  Prednisone and reckless diet.  I sent a message to Jill Hansen, my 'personal pharmacist' at the VA.

Prednisone, day 22.  I see Dr. Ryzka this afternoon. . .  It was a good appointment; I like the guy a lot.  I had a blood draw after an appointment with Deena in the OPT clinic regarding my lymphedema.  The blood draw is to check the level of inflammation markers in my blood, E-sed rate and C reactive protein, and also my level of vitamin D.  When Dr. Ryzka gets the results, he'll schedule another appointment and decide about reducing the prednisone.    

I had a terrific serendipitous chat with an old (78) vet in a motorized wheelchair while waiting to see Dr. Ryzka.  He had been a Special Forces advisor to Montagnard forces in Vietnam in 1963 and 1964.  We schmoozed for a good 10 or more minutes and clearly enjoyed each other's company.  It was another one of many warm experiences I have had with other old vets and with staff at the VA hospital.  I dropped the ball, however.  I learned that he lives a pretty isolated life because of his health and mobility problems, etc., as I do. I also learned he's seeing a VA psychiatrist.  I liked the guy a lot and the schmoozing came easily for both of us.   I should have asked his name and got his phone number to be able to give him a call and chat every now and then, or even visit or go out for a cup of coffee.  I wasn't thinking clearly.  Rats.

There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those who will swerve to avoid running over a turtle crossing the road, and those who will swerve to hit it.  I thought of this as I read the story of Donald Trump attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Newark, N.J., Saturday night. The crowd cheered as he entered and watched the fight, both "Fuck Biden" and "We Love Trump."  Very hypermasculine stuff, lots of testosterone at work.  From the NYTimes story this morning:

It is a violent spectacle, blood-spattered, brutish and brawny. A fighter from California named Kevin Holland and a fighter from Poland named Michal Oleksiejczuk beat each other to a pulp inches from Mr. Trump’s face. The former president watched with interest as the American got the Pole onto the ground, secured his right arm and appeared to yank it out of its socket. (Mr. White described it as an “absolutely beautiful” moment in his post-match commentary: “The arm clearly, at the very least, dislocated and possibly snapped,” he said.  Victorious, Holland emerged from the octagonal ring, walked over to Mr. Trump, bent down and shook hands, leaned in to hear the former president tell him something and clapped his left hand on Mr. Trump’s right shoulder.

Further your affiant saith not. 

Sarah and Hagar, Ismael and Isaac, Israelis and Palestinians.  In the first book of the Torah, Moses is said to have written of beginnings "When Hashem began to create Heaven and Earth, the Earth being unformed and void, and darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from Hashem sweeping over the water . . .",  including the tale of the the beginning of enmity between Jews and Arabs.  He told the story of patriarch Avram and his wife Sarai, who was barren.  Sarai told Avram to sleep with her Egyptian slavewoman, Hagar, who bore Avram a son, Ishmail.  Sarai came to regret her decision and treated Hagar harshly, eventually driving her away, twice.  The second time was at a great feast celebrating the weaning of the son she bore Avraham (his new name), Yitschak.  In Genesis 21:9-10: "Sara (her new name) saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Avraham playing.  She said to Avraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Yitzchak.”  Hashem told Avraham to do as Sara asked, and so he did.  Before this event, Hashem had already destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah but more significantly, promised the land of the Canaanites to Avraham's descendants.  Gen. 12:6-7; "Avram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land.  Hashem appeared to Avram and said, “I will assign this land to your offspring.” And he built a mizbayach there to Hashem who had appeared to him."  Ishmael is thought to be the progenitor of the Arabs, and Isaac of the Jews. Again, in Genesis 15:18, Hashem confirms his gift:  "On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants, I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates."

 Thus we see the biblical roots of the conflicts between Jews and Arabs, between Palestinians and Israeli Jews, especially between the Settlers and the Palestinians.

I was prompted to reread Genesis today by a story in the NYTimes, In the West Bank, Guns and a Locked Gate Signal a Town’s New Residents: Since the war in Gaza began, armed Israeli settlers, often accompanied by the army, have stepped up seizures of land long used by Palestinians.  The story is accompanied by a photo of a locked gate with Hebrew graffiti, a citation to Genesis 21:10, Sarai casting out  Hagar. demanding that there be no sharing of Avram's inheritance by the heirs of Ishmael and Yitschak.

Genesis is believed by scholars to have been composed by multiple authors between the 10th and the 5th century, B.C., 2500 to 3000 years ago, and is mythological rather than historical.  How strange it is that there are so many people who believe it is the inspired Word of God, historically true, inerrant.  What heavy prices we have paid as a species on account of screwball religions, myths, and fantasies.  On the other hand, it's impressive how the ancient mythmakers reveal to us how little has changed in human nature over the last three millennia.  Man made in the image and likeness of God, God made in the image and likeness of man.

The NYTimes story only reinforces my belief in the profound injustice of what the Israeli government, supported by most Israeli Jews, has done for years in terms of persecuting and stealing from Palestinians.  In my lifetime, Israel has moved from the plucky little nation housing persecuted Jewish refugees from all over the world, a socialist experiment in kibbutzes, a state with a strong democratic Labor government under constant threat from Arab monarchies and dictatorships to the land of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Menachem Begin, Likud, the Occupied Territories, settlements and outposts, usurpations and annexations.

From Yeshayahu Leibowitz's JUDAISM, HUMAN VALUES, AND THE JEWISH STATE, chapter 23: "A Jewish State or an Unpartitioned Eretz Israel:

Shortly after the Six Day War, when when most of the Israeli public (and a good part of Jewry in the Diaspora) were overcome by the intoxication of national pride, military arrogance, and fantasies of the glory of messianic deliverance, I expressed . . . my concern lest the great victory that led to the conquest (or "liberation") of the entire territory of the historical Eretz Israel . . . prove in the course of history to have been the event initiating a process of decline and fall of the State of Israel. . .

If chances came up - prior to the Six Day War and afer - for a genuine peace with the Arab world on the basis of agreed compromise, we passed them all by.  Moreover, already in the Sinai campaign 1956, we led the Arab world to feel that Israel was not merely concerned with the security of the Jewish people inhabiting it but with the expansion of its borders by conquest - a scheme that was foiled by the intervention of the superpowers.  When in 1967 we launched a preventive war, we turned it into a war of conquest, whose "achievement" inevitably brought about the Yom Kippur war. . .

But in addition to endangering our security and foreign relations, "unpartitioned Eretz-Israel is internally unstable.  Even if the Arabs do not become the majority, the state will no longer be a Jewish state.  It's problems, needs, and functions will no longer be those of the Jewish people in Israel and abroad, but those arising from the specific tasks of government and administration of this strange system  of political domination.  They would be the problems of ruling over two peoples that do not cohere as a single nation..  To the intense national antagonism between them will be added the passionate hatred evoked by the rule of one people by the other.  There would also be the deep social rift . . .  Our society is such that the normalcy of the life of Jews is dependent on the work of Arabs, tens of thousands of whom are driven every morning from their villages to work in the Jewish cities, and are returned there every evening.  Jews no longer perform any of the more menial labor chores.

 The State of Israel, within the borders that were determined as result of our War of Liberation in 1948, was recognized de jure by all the states of the West aw well as by the Eastern bloc, and by most of the "third world" countries.  For 20 years, Israel had staunch friends among them.  Not one state in the world today recognizes the 1967 boundaries, and the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are generally considered illegal. . . 

After all that has been said about the "religious" and pseudo-religious and even halakhic reasons for maintaining Jewish rule over the territorities and their Arab inhabitants, and for the annexation of the territories to the state of Israel, I have nothing to add to what already appeared in the Scriptures, the same Scriptures to which the national religous fools appeal for support of their lust for conquest.  Two thousand six hundred years ago the prophet Ezekiel foresaw Gush Emunim and the arguments of its rabbis and leaders . . .  Those words were not meant for Ezekiel's own generation onl.  He said them to all generations, and especially to the generation of the "liberators of the Holy Land" in our time.  The Jewish people have legitimate claims to this country.  But these claims have no "religious cover,"  To speak of the divine promise to Abraham and his issue as a gratuitoous gift, to ignore the conditions of the promise, and to disregard the obligations it confers on the receivers is a degradation and desecration of the religious faith. 

Excerpts from an essay Leibowitz wrote in 1988, Forty Years After:

Two nations inhabit this country.  In consequence of centuries of history, members of each feel passionately that thhis is thier land.  Such attachment goes well beyond any ideology, theory, or fiath.  Recognition of it must serve as a point of departure for any feasible political program.  This deeply rooted feeling is the crux of the matter; not the empty talk about the 'right" of one of these people as against the "right" or "lack of right" of the other..l  In this context, talk of rights is pure nonsence.  No nation has a "right" to any land.  A country is an objective datum.  "Right" and "nation" are constructs of human consciousness..  "Right" is a legal term that designates a concept which is inapplicable apart from  an institutionnal framework defined in terms of a legal system established by men.  It's application to natlural reality is invalid, as is its application to any reality determined solely by history and without reference to some given normative context.

  . . . 

The state of Israel was projected as a framework of national-politial independence for the Jewish people. . . . The same resolution left the Palestinian the option of achieving similar independence.  Only by partition of the country could both these objectives be achieved.  We accepted this proposal.  The Palestinians and the Arab states rejected it.  The state of Israel emerged from the resulting war.  Responsibility for that war rests with the Arab side.

. . . .

The situation changed radically following the Six Day war of 1967.  On the seventh day we had to decide   -- and we were free to decide -- whether that war was one of defense or one of conquest.  Our decision turned it into a war of conquest, with all that this implied.  Not only was the character of the state altered: the very foundation of if its existence assumed a new aspect.  The change was not simply of quantity but of substance.  Its siignificance cnsists not in the increase in the number of Arabs subject to Israeli rule from half a million to two million, but in denial of the right to independence  to the Palestinian people.  Israel  ceased to be the state of the Jewish people and became the apparatus of coercive rule of Jews over another people.  What many call the "undivided Land of Israel" is not, and never can be, the state of the Jewish people, but only a Jewish regime of force.  The state of Isreal  today is neither a democracy nor a state abiding by the rule of law, nince it rules over a million and a half people deprived of civil and political rights. . . . 

We are creating --and have already created -- a political atmosphere affecting the public as well as its individual members, in which a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court legitimates the use of torture in the interrogation of Palestinian prisoners.  The Israeli Defense Force, armed with up-to-date weaponry, kills within a span of weeks a hundred people who did not carry firearms, amongst them women and children; breaks the bones of men, women, and children by order of the Minister of Defense; forces its way into homes and humiliates their residents.  In this same atmosphere, one hears of cases of soldiers attempting to bury Arab boys alive; the Attorney General distinquishes between torture and "reasonable torture; those in charge of the army distinquish "burial alive" from the burying alive of bodies without interring the heads.  Similar tendencies characterize our foreign and defense policies.  The vicious folly of the Lebanese war was an outcome of the intention to maintain and assure  the continued rule over the occupied territories and their people.  That war, initiated by the Begin government, was undertaken with the consent of the Alignment of workers' parties, which continues to this day to oppose negotiation with the PLO, the representative of the Palestinian people, over the repartitioning of the land.

Only by putting an end to our rule over the other people can we be saved from the dire consequences of persisting in the present policy.

If the present situation continues (and here the emphasis must be on "if"), the growing savagery of Israeli society will be as inevitable as the severence of the state from the Jews of the world.  The policy of a Begin, Raful, and Druckman (or their counterparts) which in such circumstances also seems inevitable, will begin with suppression of reliable information, elimination of free speech, the setting up of concentration camps for "traitors" (like myself and perhaps like you), and end in mass expulsion and slaughter of the Arab population. . . Already today. the state of Israel, to which most of the world's nations were once sympathetic, has earned contempt and hatred throughout the world.  Its very existence has come to depend on a thin lief-line stretching out to it from the White House.  Above all, the state, which was to have been the pride and glory of the Jewish people, is rapidly becoming an embarassment to it. 

 

6/2/24

 Sunday, June 2, 2024

Ed Felsenthat's 83rd birthday

1963,  our MU graduation and commissioning

1967,  Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band released in the U.S. on my first uneasy day as a civilian again after 4 years as a Marine and 4 years prepping

1992,  Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the Oklahoma City bombing deaths of 168, including 19 children, the wounding of 680 people, the destruction or damage of 324 other buildings, and $652,000,000 of damage.

Prednisone, day 21.    In an unwelcome reprise of nights past, I was unable to sleep in the bed and moved onto the LZB at 1:30, and then at 1:20 out to the recliner in the TV room.  It was a dry cough and throat tickle that kept me from sleeping.  I've been having recurrent difficulty swallowing lately, dry mouth with food hanging up at the top of my throat, requiring sips of water to aid its descent through the esophagus into my stomach.  Should I be reporting this to Dr/ Chatt?  Is it a side effect of prednisone, a temporary abnormality, or something else?  My shoulders and other joints (other than my lower back) seem to be in good condition,  I took my 20 mg. pill with my oatmeal at 4 a.m., waiting for first light around 4:40 and sunrise at 5:14.  Or will I nod off with a belly full of oatmeal?

The frightening nexus between Timothy McVeigh and Donald Trump.  It was 29 years ago, on April 19, 1995, that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  It was the worst case of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, perpetrated by two radicalized former Army soldiers exacting revenge for the federal government's law enforcement actions in Waco, Texas (David Koresh and the Branch Davidian cult) and Ruby Ridge, Idaho (the Randy Weaver family, the White militia movement).  It's important to remember that the bombing was revenge, i.e., retribution, for perceived wrongful actions by federal law enforcement activities, e.g., the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshall's office, and others.  Of the hundreds of casualties, McVeigh said "I didn't define the rules of engagement in this conflict. The rules, if not written down, are defined by the aggressor. It was brutal, no holds barred. Women and kids were killed at Waco and Ruby Ridge. You put back in [the government's] faces exactly what they're giving out." He later stated, "I wanted the government to hurt like the people of Waco and Ruby Ridge had."

Let us never forget what Donald Trump has stated, to us and the world, ipsis verbis, both before and since his recent felonies conviction:

March 4, 2023:  "“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,  Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” CPAC

Consider how Trump has characterized his opposition: Communists, Marxists, Socialists, fascists, human scum, vermin, thugs, animals, radicals, lunatics who want to destroy our country, an enemy of the people, . . . "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within” . . .  Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America. … Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations” — Mar. 2, 2024.  Re Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley: " “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war… could have been the result of this treasonous act.” — Sept. 22, 2023.  Re political opponents: "Glenn Beck: “Do you regret not ‘locking her up.’ And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?”Donald Trump: “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.” — Aug. 29, 2023.

Consider what he promotes:  if he wins -"a unified Reich," if he loses -"a bloodbath." 

Consider what he says of the Supreme Law of the Land: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude [referring to the 2020 election] allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” — Dec. 3, 2022

Consider what he says about law enforcement agencies and the judiciary: RE the FBI - ""BREAKING FROM TRUMP: BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!" read an all-caps subject line on an email from Trump’s campaign.  "It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable…Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger."  RE NY judge Juan Merchan in the 'hush money case': "crooked," "corrupt," "deeply conflicted," "a devil," and "a Trump hater."  Judge Gonzalo Curiel in the Trump University case: "biased" and "a hater" because, though he was an American citizen born and raised in Indiana, he was "Mexican" and "Hispanic."  RE Judge Tanya Chutkan in 'the January 6th case': ""Deranged Jack Smith is going before his number one draft pick, the Judge of his 'dreams' (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!), in an attempt to take away my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS . . ."   U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan "obviously wants me behind bars. VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!" Trump said in a Truth Social post on August 14, 2023.  RE NY judge Arthur Engoron in the NY civil fraud case:  "The N.Y. State Wacko Judge who fined me almost 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG, used a Statute that has never been used before, gave me NO JURY."  RE federal judge Lewis Kaplan in the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault case: "a "seething and hostile Clinton-appointed Judge" . . . "He is abusive, rude, and obviously not impartial but, that’s the way this crooked system works!" "Kaplan "should be sanctioned for his abuse of power — No wonder our Country is going to Hell!" He told reporters after court: "That's a nasty man. He's a nasty judge. He's a Trump-hating guy."  RE Judge Scott McAfee in Atlanta Trump has taken it rather easy, but he did complain about him when he denied Trump's motions to dismiss and his effort to oust DA Fani Willis and his supporters posted on social media and otherwise delivered mulitiple threats against McAfee.  The only judge who escapes Trump's rancor, contempt, and libels is his appointee in Florida in the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, who is widely thought to be in his pocket.

Lists like this could go on forever, loaded with verbatim epithets and outrageous, provocative, incendiary threats and menaces by Trump (and by many of his supporters, in and out of the government) against his political opponents and especially against government officials seeking to enforce criminal and civil laws against him.  By now, his many targeted victims have received probably thousands of threats to their safety, security, and lives.

Now reconsider the history of Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and the Oklahoma City bombing and ask yourself what we may expect now that Trump has been convicted and faces punishment for multiple felonies in what is generally considered the weakest case against him, faces 3 other much stronger cases against him, and may (please God) lose the November election and incur more convictions.  America has become a more dangerous place under the ascendency of Donald Trump and grows only more dangerous each time he opens his mouth and incites the next McVeigh or Nichols.

LTMW I watch a female downy woodpecker working away at what remains of a suet cake while a chickadee uncharacteristically takes his time selecting a seed from the tube feeder before flying away to eat the kernel and a chipmunk climbs up the staff of the shepherd's crook before he is blocked by the squirrel baffle.  G is unhappy about the reappearance of the chipmunks after she had the exterminator get rid of their predecessors. . . . By 8 o'clock, the family of house finches with the hungry fledgling have shown up again, with the youngun' flipping his tail feathers up and down and ruffling his wings waiting to be fed. . . At 1 p.m., I finally cut a big naval orange in half and mounted the half-globes on the crooks.

Esther Smith & Rafe Spall, stars of Trying, a heartwarming sitcom of love

In today's The Atlantic online, there is a review from 1882 of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  The anonymous reviewer praised the originality, vivacity, strength, and captured emotion in much of Whitman's work and panned other parts as offensive, coarse, gross, indecent, tedious, inane, repetitious, absurd, and mere prose.  I enjoy Whitman, though it took me a long time.  I enjoy his unbounded enthusiasm.  I enjoy his love affair and appreciation of Life and Nature and People and Stuff.  I enjoy sharing his suffering and sorrow in poems like Come Up From the Fields, Father and When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Bloom'd.  I appreciate his empathy with the shorebirds in the second section of Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.  

Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,

And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,

And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,

And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,

And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,

Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

But perhaps what I enjoyed most about the anonymous review of Whitman's poetry was the acknowledgment that even with truly great art, some parts may be a lot less great than others, perhaps even coarse, gross, absurd, and tedious.  It makes me feel better about my own efforts at painting which are decidedly not great or even amateurly good.  As Winston Churchill wrote in Painting as a Pastime:  

But if, on the contrary, you are inclined - late in life though it be - to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless extent, then be persuaded that the first quality that is needed is Audacity.  We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.

 Painting is a companion with whom one may walk a great part of life's journey.  When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting. 

and my favorite comment

 . . .  painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and hold her course as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude. 

 

Major accomplishments: (1) I called Ed, wished him a happy birthday, and had a nice chat.  Mary Fran is with him. (2) I strolled with Rachel down to and around the cul-de-sac, returning pretty exhausted. 

 

6/1/24

 Saturday, June 1, 2024

1967, I was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps

In bed around 10, awake at 4:40 after many PSs, up at 4:57.  Let Lilly out into the warm predawn morning, hearing the lovely calls of the cardinals, house finches, and robins.  As I filled my water bottle at the sink, I found myself thinking of "the State of the Union 2024, Trump's venom, malice, and lust for power, Biden's age, undisguiseable limitations,  and unquenched lust for power and ascendency.  Better to listen to the birds than to think of these two incurably needy old men.

I'm grateful for much and to many today: especially for Geri and all her goodness and strength, for David and Sharon who came over yesterday, with a gorgeous bouquet, to lift the Lillycouch onto risers to ease Geri's getting on and off it, for the birds and bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels, turkeys and whitetails who share the space we live in. for the oatmeal and berries awaiting me first thing in the morning.

Prednisone, day 20.  Despite the many PS interruptions, I had an extraordinarily good sleep in bed last night almost 7 hours.  No significant pain this morning, keeping my fingers crossed for my lower back today.  It's already hurting.

State of the Union  Dan Balz's piece in this morning's WaPo reminds us that the big issue in this year's presidential election is not abortion, inflation, immigration, Ukraine, or Gaza, but rather which of the only two electable candidates for our highest office is the greater danger to the US, to us,  and to the world: the vicious, vindictive, hate-crazed Trump or the often mumbling, bumbling, great-grampa Biden, wanting to hold onto office till age 86. These are the options left to us by America's constitutional democracy, our calcified political culture, and the rule of law.  Both the Reds and the Blues claim, and mostly believe, that the other side threatens "Democracy,"  The Reds believe, without the need or availability of a lot of evidence, that our electoral system is "rigged" and "corrupt", as are our judicial and law enforcement institutions.  The Blues believe, with the support of lots of anecdotal and other evidence, that the Reds have turned into an anti-democracy "cult" of one-man, one-party rule, with little or no respect for legal institutions, Law itself, one-man, one-vote, or majority-rule.  We are faced with the near certainty that our next president will be a man already convicted of felonies in one court and awaiting trials on a multitude of other felonies in 3 other courts, or a man statistically likely to suffer from serious illness or death during another term of office, a man who even during his current term has steered clear of press conferences and probing interviews, a man whose death or incapacity would leave us with President Harris, whom virtually no one wants as president.  I suspect that many on the Left and on the Right are ready to throw in the towel on American democracy just as others are calling on us to throw in our hats to fight to protect it.  Would we be better off with some system other than our Constitutional system, drafted and implemented by slavers and oligarchs?  A parliamentary system?  A purer democracy without the minority-favoring features of our own?  The answer is probably 'yes' but changing from our current system seems almost impossible because of the constitutional dominance of our sparsely-populated, rural, Red states and the states of the old Confederacy, the still 'Solid South.'  James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and their slave-holding plutocrats did a great job of protecting the interests of their wealthy minority against the interests of 'the mobs' of their fellow citizens who threatened them.  I draw some solace from Winston Churchill's observation after WWII:  ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Reflecting on a grudge.  There is a feature piece by Julie Fraga in this morning's WaPo, 4 ways to let go of grudges that can harm our health.  She writes that " . . .  harboring resentment could reinforce upsetting thoughts, lower self-esteem and make negative feelings fester. Another study linked bearing a grudge with an increased risk of heart disease and chronic pain."  She suggests that the way to fight the negative effects of grudges is (1) assessing truthfully how the grudge is helping us and how it is hurting us, (2) doing aerobic exercises, (3) calling to mind "glimmers", or emotionally positive, rewarding experiences in our lives, and (4) practicing forgiveness.  Her writing reminded me of a terrible experience I endured many years ago.

I won't spend the time it would take to relate the complicated details of my grudge. Still, I state that I had cause to hold a grudge against two faculty colleagues who had been my very good friends and partners in a small continuing legal education business enterprise.  An issue arose about the circumstances of my service on the faculty, a promotion and tenure matter, and I learned that my friends had worked against my wishes and my interests, all behind my back and without ever discussing the matter with me.  I was angry and resentful beyond description.  Not only did the friendships and our partnership end, but also I was emotionally consumed by my anger and resentment.  I'm embarrassed to this day by how overwhelmed I was and how I carried those emotions deep inside me, letting them prevent me from doing work I should have been doing and indeed from enjoying life.  As I said, I am embarrassed at how vulnerable I was to the hurt I felt from the betrayal of my friendship.  Fortunately, I came to realize over time how much my self-defeating grudge was smothering my life.  I finally became free of it through forgiveness.  I recall stopping in the downstairs chapel at Gesu church and praying the Our Father and focusing on the words 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.'  It sounds a bit hokey, corny, or made up, but it's true.  I realized that holding on to my grudge was killing only me and doing nothing to those who had wronged me.  Later I heard a story that Buddy Hackett told on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.  Carson asked him whether he held a grudge over some wrong that was done to him and Hackett replied: "No,  The trouble with a grudge is while you're miserable carrying that grudge around, the other guy is out dancing."  It's the opposite of William Blake's poem, A Poison Tree:

I was angry with my friend;  / I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:  / I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I watered it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles, /And with soft deceitful wiles. 

And it grew both day and night.  /Till it bore an apple bright. 

And my foe beheld it shine, /And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole,  / When the night had veiled the pole; 

In the morning glad I see;  /My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Except it's not usually the offender who is killed by the resentment sustaining a grudge, but the resenter.

In Spoon River Anthology, we meet the wiser Dorcas Gustine who tells us:

I was not beloved of the villagers, / But all because I spoke my mind,

And met those who transgressed against me / With plain remonstrance, hiding nor nurturing / Nor secret griefs nor grudges.

That act of the Spartan boy is greatly praised, /Who hid the wolf under his cloak, / Letting it devour him, uncomplainingly.

It is braver, I think, to snatch the wolf forth / And fight him openly, even in the street, / Amid dust and howls of pain.

The tongue may be an unruly member — / But silence poisons the soul. /Berate me who will — I am content.

In Greek legend, the Spartan boy Dorcas refers to steals and hides under his cloak a fox cub rather than a wolf and the hidden fox keeps nibbling away around his heart, consuming and ultimately killing him.  So it is with a grudge.  And so I learned about forgiveness, that the ultimate benefit of forgiveness is not to the forgiven, but to the forgiver, who is relieved of a spiritual and emotional burden.  It is one of the most important learnings in my lifetime.  I also learned to appreciate how hard it can be to forgive a transgressor, and perhaps even impossible when the transgression is not against you, but rather against a loved one, e.g., a spouse or child.   I also came to appreciate the deep wisdom of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 18:22:  "Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy times seven times!" There's a lot of wisdom packed into those words from a guy about 30 years old.

Heaven on Earth.  I've written before of my experiences of Heaven on Earth, i.e. when I have the realization that I am profoundly blessed to be who I am where I am as I am RIGHT NOW and that it doesn't get better than this somewhere else in 'better' circumstances.  An afterlife with the cherubim and seraphim won't be better than my life with Geri and Lilly.  This is it; rejoice and embrace it, thankfully.  I had another one of those epiphanies this afternoon as I sat at my painting bench mixing paints and medium, selecting brushes, and trying to do something with my current painting experiment.  

LTMW around 4 this afternoon I see my neighbor Ghassan Madjalani walking his bull mastiff Athena in the steady cold rain.  It was a week ago today, while out for a walk with Judy, that I formally met him (and her) on County Line Road and had a good conversation with him about our families, etc.

It's 9:30 p.m., I'm fading but still awake, watching Series 3, episode 1 of the British dramady Trying on AppleTV, which we have been watching and thoroughly enjoying for the last few nights,  I have a load of compression socks in the dryer on "air fluff" and am about to retire to my bedroom after insisting that Lilly come in and abandon her stare-down with a local whitetail deer.  Geri's recovery from her knee surgery is "recovering apace" as she sits on the sofa knitting another scarf and hat combo for the program at Temple Emanuel.  It's been a good day.

5/31/24

 Friday, May 31, 2024

In bed around 10 and up at 4 after many PSs. took my pill and ate my oatmeal at 4:30, realizing how fortunate I am to have the oatmeal, the blueberries and raspberries, and vanilla yogurt, with what riches I live and of which I take advantage,and take for granted, how often I am disturbed by this and wonder about the real economic, social, and political costs of our consumer society.  I think of the stunning, 10-minute-long, tracking shot in the checkout lanes in Godard's movie Tout Va Bien, his anti-capitlist, Anri-consumerist screed released 4 years after the t1968 turbulence in France (and much of the Western world).  My thoughts move from Paris, Chicago, and Mexico City, in 1968 to America in 2024,  yesterday's convictions of Trump, the upcoming political conventions in Milwaukee, and in Chicago, wondering what turbulence we can expect this year.

I'm grateful that Geri appears to have weathered the knee surgery well although she experienced quite a bit of discomfort afterwards.  She is such a trooper., strong in so many ways.  I'm hoping that she is getting a good night's rest as I write this.  I'm concerned that she may have more pain and/or discomfort today than yesterday, with all of yesterday's anesthetic effects worn off.  She was still sitting up on the sofa with her leg outstretched, elevated, and iced when I crashed and went to bed last night.  She gets around well with her walker, and standing and walking doesn't seem to increase the pain.   We had to enter the house through the front door becaue the stoop provided support for her walker that wasn't available at the backdoor or garage door.  I walked right behind her as she walked from the driveway to the stoop, thinking about how she walked behind me and pushed my wheelchair on our visits to the VA Geriatric Clinic and to the Rheumatology Clinic.  How much we rely on each other, especially me on her!  How much I love and admire her.   I was semi-crippled by the arthritis in my lower back by the time I returned from getting a bag of ice at Sendik's and her second prescription (aspirin?!?) from Walgreens.  I have to start using the Lidocaine patches to make myself more useful.

Trump's convictions and the media coverage.  I was a bit surprised that the jury came back with a verdict yesterday.  I had thought the deliberations would be longer, after 5 weeks of evidence and lengthy instructions.  The prosecution's closing argument, which lasted almost 5 hours and that I thought was surely too long, must have been terrific, as was the presentation of their entire case.  I think of what Trump must have paid his lawyers - millions to Todd Blanche, Emile Bove, and Susan Necheles - and what the assistant D.A.s  - Matthew Colangelo, Susan Hoffinger, and Joshua Steinglass -  are paid by their municipal employer.

The media coverage was predictable.  MSNBC and CNN had all hands on deck analyzing the case, mindreading the jury, and generally engaging in robust schadenfreude.  FOX and the other fascist outlets engaged in denial and magical thinking.  I instantly grew weary of the liberal talking heads repeating endlessly that DJT was found guilty of 34 felonies as if there were 34 different sets of behavior involved instead of one scheme, i.e., as if he were guilty of not only murder, but also larceny, and also burglary, and also arson and sedition! Dayenu!   34 different felonies!!!   Willie Geist on Morning Joe: "I think the prosecution hoped for but didn't expect a clean 34 for 34 sweep on every count, to get convictions on those." Tedious.  On the other hand, I watched the nasties on Fox and Friends - Ainsley Earhardt, Steve Doocey, Brian Kilmeade, and new and predictably Black guy Lawrence Jones - all outraged over the gross miscarriage of justice and weaponization of the justice system represented by Trump's trial and conviction.  They had Speaker of the House and Christian Fascist Mike Johnson as a guest touting how much money Trump and the Republicans are raising as a result of the convictions and suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court should "step in" and "set this straight."  Amazing.  Tedious.

On this date in 1669, Samuel Pepys recorded the last entry in his famous diary.  He had chronicled the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire.  He wrote voluminously from 1660 to 1669 and, equally importantly, of his times and mores.  O tempora, O mores!  I think of him today and wonder why he did it, what at the end of a full day's work and other activities, he sat at his table and took up a pen or quill and wrote about it.  I wonder about his habit because I wonder about my habit.  Compulsive writing? Hypergraphia? Juvenal's "incurable writing disease"? Bipolar disease? I think of two little poems about writing.  The first is a haiku  by Katsushika Hokusai, A Poppy Blooms:

I write, erase, rewrite

Erase again, and then

A poppy blooms.

The second is The Three Oddest Words by Wislawa Szymborska:

When I pronounce the word Future, / the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence, / I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing, / I make something no non-being can hold.

Keeping a diary or a journal is an exercise in trying to preserve something of the Present as it becomes part of the Past in the Future.  Without some record of each day, the day will become Silence, Nothing in the Future.  What was I doing or thinking about on March 13, 1983?  or on July 20, 1968?  On my birthday in 2020?  No idea, not a clue, gone with the wind.  What was I doing and/or thinking about on this date a year ago?  My journal reminds me I was nervous thinking about my upcoming "double dip" at the VA.  I was also reflecting on the 3,000 sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic Church in California, including the Santa Rosa Diocese where in 2023 I had explored employment as its Communications Director.  I reflected on why I withdrew from the competition.  Journaling provides an opportunity to self-reflect, to think seriously about how we have lived our life, to make judgments about "things said or done long years ago, or things I did not do or say," to examine our conscience and confess our sins, to compare what we claim as our values with our actions.  Another poem is just a couplet, by Henry David Thoreau:

My life has been the poem I would have writ 

But I could not both live and utter it.