9/14/24

 Saturday, September 14, 2024

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In bed at 8:45, awake around 3 and up by 3:20 to let Lilly out.   I let her out again at 5:00.  

Prednisone, day 123, 7.5 mg., day 2.   Prednisone at 5, morning meds at 9:10. 

Lilly is 3 weeks shy of her 15th birthday.  The life expectancy of a dog her size is about 12 years.  Her sister/litter-mate Olive died a couple of years ago from a seizure of some sort.  Lilly is 5/8ths chocolate lab and 3/8ths white standard poodle which produced her coat the breeder call 'cafe au lait.'.  Chocolate labs have a life span of 10.7 years, perhaps because their coloration is the result of a recessive gene in labrador retrievrrs.  Standard poodles have a life span of 12-15 years.  I mention this because it is clear that Lilly is failing and we are deallilng with the issue of euthanizing her.  It appears that she is nearly totally deaf and we suspect her vision is also failing.  I think this may account for her long hesitancy on the front stoop or sidewalk when we let her out into nighttime darkness.  Her major problem however is the inability of her hind legs to support her weight; they collapse under her when she stands still for any length of time.  We're recalling that our beloved cat Blanche lost the use of her hind legs when we had her euthanized years ago.  Geri is dealing with this issue more responsibly than I am.  I tend to go into denial over her increasing decrepitude; Geri deals with it directly, if painfully.  When Blanche was in her last days, it was Geri who cared for her every day, even transfusing her each day on our ironing board to keep her hydrated.  At the end, it was Geri who called me at the HOP to tell me, tearfully, that Blanche was struggling to drag herself across the floor with only her front legs, and now she is seeing a similar condition in Lilly.  We took Blanche to the Shorewood Animal Hospital to be euthanized.  I cried.  It's been some time now since Lilly has been able to get into the car on her own; she needs to be lifted in by the two of us.  We will have her euthanized at home and I suspect I will cry again.  I'm almost crying as I type this.     

Spring and Fall

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Tua Tagovailoa meets Damar Hamlin, the morality of football.  On Thursday night, the Miami Dolphins played a home game against the Buffalo Bills.  In the third quarter, Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa on a scramble lowered his head and crashed into Bills cornerback Damar Hamlin.  In doing so, he sustained his third professinally diagnosed brain concussion since 2022, his fourth since his college days.  Damar Hamlin is the player who suffered a life-threatening cardiac arrest in January 2023 on a routine tackle in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals.  Hamlin has chosen to continue to play in the NFL.  Tagovailoa was playing his second game since signing a $212 million contract with the Miami team and may or may not choose to continue to play once he clears the NFL's 'concussion protocol.'  At age 26, he is already at substantial risk od CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  [WARNING: shameless virtue signally ahead.]  I stopped watching footfall several years ago and I've been experiencing withdrawal symptoms ever since.  I stopped in disgust over the NFL owners' behavior in defending themselves against claims by former players for compensation for CTE.  I also stopped because I thought it was unacceptable to continue to contribute to the NFL's main source in income, i.e., television revenues, by watching Packers games on TV.  It also seemed to me, and still does, that watching men engage in an activity in which they inflict severe injuries on one another is wrong, a contemporary variation on gladiatorial contests in imperial Rome.  There was something iconic and sickening in the fact that it was 26 year old Tagovailoa and 26 year old Hamlin involved in the play that may end the former's football career.  Will Tua choose to return to playng NFL football?  My guess is 'yes.'  Will the NFL permit him to return?  My guess is 'yes.''  Tua's $212 million contract extension tells us what the NFL (and major college football) is all about: big money. So it goes.

9/13/24

 Friday, September 13, 2024

1224 Francis of Assisi is afflicted with stigmata after a vision while praying at La Verna

1993 Public unveiling of the Oslo Accords, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement signed by Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres and fPLO official Mahmoud Abbas

In bed at 8:45,  awake at 4, and up at 4:15. Put a big load into the washing machine.  Let Lilly out at 4:40.

Prednisone, day 122, 7.5 mg., day 1.    Prednisone at 5:05.  Morning meds later and Trulicity injection at 10:40 a.m.

London Review of Books and Harpers.  I received promotional offers from LRB and Harper's yesterday, about $1 per issue for a year.  I couldn't resist, especially the LRB.

Journal entries from 2019.  

March 28.  I seem to be very arthritic in the middle of the night: hips, knees, elbows.  Not a problem during the day, except maybe hips (entry-exit Volvo problem.)  Balance, usteady gait quite bad today, walking outside to get mail and walking on the turf in fornt yeard.  Serious problem.  Feet and ankles swollen.

March 29.  Call from PN&R clinic nurse Katie re 4/23 steroid injection in hip.  Balance problems with turns, have to catch myself to avoid falling.  Feet and ankles swollen

May 26.  Difficulty walking on grass.

After early 2019, I started journaling only my blood glucose readings and meals.  Alas.   Reading these old notes from 2009 and 2019 makes me ponder again why it is I recorded them years ago, why I stopped, and why I started daily journaling again on July 30, 2022, with 154 entries in 2022, 365 in 2023, and so far 242 in 2023, for a total of 915 daily entries.  Egad!  I wish I had kept notes earlier in my life now that my memory is fading.

Cold turkey continues for broadcast network, local, and cable news, for two weeks today.

Video call with Michael McHale today. Geri's first cousin, it's his 78th birthday.  A fellow former Marine, Vietnam veteran, and Purple Heart 'winner.'  He suffered terribly after falling onto punji stakes in a 'tiger pit' in Vietnam.  He also suffered significant hearing loss.  A casualty of LBJ's and RMN's war of choice.  Knowing what Michael endured in Vietnam, and in his long recovery from his wounds in a Navy hospital and with PTSD afterward, I experience survivor's guilt and some sense of shame that I had it so easy stationed at the AirWing's headquarters, never being called on to kill personally or in danger of being killed.  

Gabor Maté.  I watched a YouTube talk by Maté about his new book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.  I've been grousing about our species homo sapiens for some time and Maté's words about "human nature" caught my attention.  "The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues.  The fact that they share the same errors does not make these errors to be truths.  And the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane." Eric Fromm, The Sane Society.     GM asks "Is there a  'human nature?"  If the Buddha and Jesus are human beings and Hitler and Stalin are human beings, what does that say about 'human nature'?  He argues that we can't talk about human nature in a fixed or rigid sense,  but what we can talk about is what creates a Buddha or Jesus, what creates a Hitler or Stalin.  "What conditions are necessary to create human beings who are self-aware and compassionate and what conditions support the development of human beings who are utterly and egomaniacally selfish and self-centered and utterly brutal? "    Of course when I heard the latter words I immediately thought of Donald Trump and all that we have heard of his sociopathic father, Fred Trump.  I thought of Donald's influence on his own children and of his influence on the  American public since he has moved out of mere celebrity status into prominent political status.          

Maté's talk and his book are not about Hitler, Stalin, or Donald Trump, but rather about the mind-body connection, the relationship between stress and trauma and physical and mental illnesses, and especially about the long-lasting effects of early childhood traumas on people's lives.  He defines trauma as a wound, not as what happens to people but rather as what happens inside people as a consequence of what happens to them.       As I listen to him I can't help but think of  Kitty and me growing up with our PTSD-suffering father after the end of WWII and after the notorious sexual crime against our mother in 1947.  I wrote not long ago about a column by David Brooks about   "core affects: and my suggestion to Kitty that both she and I had "core affects' of depression from our experiences in our basement apartment at 7303 S. Emerald, "an abiding sense of tragedy that sustained [us] through temporary periods of joy."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Anniversaries thoughts.  I am not inclined to believe in miraculously caused stigmata, either in Francis's case or in the case of, say, Padre Pio,  The wounds may exist but there is some cause of them other than divine intervention in the laws of nature, most likely resulting from some form of self-infliction.

Oslo, was probably as close as anyone ever got to a two-state solution, although they did by putting off all the hard issues till later: boundaries, Palestinian right of return, settlements, etc.  Maybe it was all a pipe dream.  In any event, it all went up in smoke when the law student put a bullet in Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 leading to Netanyahu's becoming PM in the next election.

 

    

9/12/24

 Thursday, September 12, 2024

1960 John F. Kennedy states he does not speak for the Roman Catholic Church, and neither does the Church speak for him.

2005 Israel completes its unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip after dismantling Israeli settlements and withdrawing its soldiers

2011 Closing on our house in Bayside

In bed around 9 and up around 2:45.    

Prednisone, day 121, 10 mg., day 28/28.    Prednisone at 5 a.m. Morning meds at 1 p.m. after filling the pill boxes.

The New Yorker, In the Dark, podcasts.  In The New Yorker online there is a site titled The War Crimes That the Military Buried, subtitled The largest known database of possible American war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that the military-justice system rarely punishes perpetrators.  It is apparently a 'newsletter'  authored by Parker Yesko and dated September 10, 2024, though it appeared online before then.  It includes this:

What we’re publishing is not a complete record of the atrocities committed by the military since 9/11; it would be impossible to know them all. This is a repository of the seven hundred and eighty-one possible war crimes investigated by the U.S. military that we were able to identify. You can explore an index of information about the incidents, investigative findings, adjudicative outcomes, and our source materials.

Below, we’ve displayed detailed accounts of the hundred and fifty-one cases that investigators determined to be criminal. Each has its own story, but many start and end the same way: with a horrific act perpetrated by members of the military which was then punished lightly or not at all.

What follows is a compendium of atrocities committed by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq over the 20 years between our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and our notoriously messy-executed withdrawal in 2021.  It is shocking reading, but as far as I can tell, it is receiving no attention in the mainstream media.  MSM pays significant attention to atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians and by Russians against Ukrainians, e.g., the Bucha massacre, but little attention to hundreds of war crimes committed by Americans and covered up by the American military, including the Marine Corps.  Of course, I may be wrong about all this since I've been making a point of not watching broadcast television and cable news for the last two weeks and the New Yorker report is recent, but I doubt that much attention will be paid to this damning report, either by the MSM or by the public. I wonder whether Rachel Maddow will cover the story on her weekly program next Monday.

War entails unspeakable violence, much of it entirely legal. And yet some violence is so abhorrent that it falls outside the bounds of law. When the perpetrators are U.S. service members, the American military is supposed to hold them to account. It is also supposed to keep records of wrongdoing in a systematic manner. But the military has failed to do so, leaving the public unable to determine whether the military brings its members to justice for the atrocities they have committed. To remedy this failing, the reporting team of the In the Dark podcast has assembled the largest known collection of investigations of possible war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—nearly eight hundred incidents in all. Much of the time, the reporting concluded, the military delivers neither transparency nor justice.

The database makes it possible, for the first time, to see hundreds of allegations of war crimes—the kinds that stain a nation—in one place, along with the findings of investigations and the results of prosecutions. The picture that emerges is disheartening. The majority of allegations listed in the database were simply dismissed by investigators. Those which weren’t were usually dealt with later, by commanders, in a justice system that can be deferential to defendants and disbelieving of victims.

 , , , , 

With the assistance of an experienced foia litigation team, we repeatedly sued the military. Over four years, the agencies released enough documentation to us that, assisted by other source materials, we were able to put together a collection of seven hundred and eighty-one possible war crimes, perpetrated against more than eighteen hundred alleged victims, that the U.S. military took seriously enough to investigate. 

Of the seven hundred and eighty-one cases we found, at least sixty-five per cent had been dismissed by investigators who didn’t believe that a crime had even taken place. Soldiers would return to the United States and confess—to women, health-care workers, job interviewers—that they’d murdered civilians or prisoners, but military investigators would find that the allegations couldn’t be substantiated.  . . .

In a hundred and fifty-one cases, however, investigators did find probable cause to believe that a crime had occurred, that the rules of engagement had been violated, or that a use of force hadn’t been justified.  

We identified five hundred and seventy-two alleged perpetrators associated with these hundred and fifty-one criminal cases. Only a hundred and thirty of them were convicted. The records show that they rarely received lengthy prison terms. Much more often, their cases were dealt with by commanders, who have broad discretion to punish their troops with extra duty, demotions, or reprimands, circumventing formal prosecution altogether. (The commanders themselves almost never seemed to face consequences for the misdeeds of their subordinates.) Fewer than one in five alleged perpetrators appear to have been sentenced to any type of confinement, and the median sentence was just eight months. “The conviction rates and the rate of sentencing for these kinds of very serious person crimes is just far below what you would see in the civilian system,” Roman [an expert consultant] said. 

Just thinkin' . . . I have been living for 83 years and 19 days.  When I was born in 1941, my life expectancy was 63.1 years, 20 years less than my current age.  According to the most recent data from the Social Security Administration, the life expectancy for an 83-year-old American male is an additional 6.31 years, for a total life expectancy of 89.31 years.  In the ancient advanced Minoan civilization on Crete, the average life expectancy was about 30 years.  In 1770 in Europe, it was about 34.  Old age is at best a mixed blessing.  Ezekiel Emanuel may be a bit weird for saying that he wishes to die at age 75, but he has a point about diminishing returns once one passes 65 or 70.

I would never say it to their surviving spouses and children, but I have often thought that there are some advantages to dying young.  Bob Friebert at age 75, heart attack.  Tom St. John at age 78, heart attack, Bill Guis at age 74, cancer (not good), David Branch, much younger, amyloidosis (not good), Bill Roush, younger yet, loneliness, dissipation?, (not good.)  There have been many days when I have wished to be dead, not from depression or mental illness, but because of physical pain.  It started more than 15 years ago with chronic pelvic pain and ulcers in my bladder.  For quite some time, I thought of suicide every day, every night.  Eventually the pain went away after the third fulguration and it stayed away for 9 or 19 years before reappearing and requiring another fulguration in March of this year.  Before that chronic pain problem was resolved however, I started on another, with my bout of polymyalgia rheumatica and severe pain in my shoulders, wrists, and hands, which again had me thinking it would be better to be dead than to live with that pain and loss of the use of my arms.  When that problem was resolved with prednisone, I developed a new chronic pain and inability to stand for longer than a minute or two.  Am I pleased that I didn't die during those periods of "suicidal ideation"?  Yes, but I wonder what the next challenge of old age and decrepitude will be.  May I hope for a quick death from a cardiac event or stroke or does a more challenging ending await me?

QUERIES TO MY SEVENTIETH YEAR.  Walt Whitman

Approaching, nearing, curious,

Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?

Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?

Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?

Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,

Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching?

. . . . 

For a short time in 2009 when I was experiencing chronic and serious pelvic pain, I kept a journal which I have held onto.. Excerpts:

3/26/2009  Up at 8 @ 10 hours sleep.  Intermittent pain during the night, moderate pain on awakening till @ 10:30 a.m.  I received a call from Dr. Silbar's office to schedule "a look inside your bladder" on 4/1 at Rawson Avenue office.  I informed the caller of my bad eperience at Froedtert with the urodynamics test..  I don't know whether the nurse-trainee was especially ham-handed or whether the intense pain  was a result of my bladder-urethra-prostate-penis anatomy but I hope never to have a similar experience. . . .  By 2:30, the pain has increased to 5 or 6, L.T. and perineal.  Walking becoming painful . . . Still having a hard time keeping all the medications straight, especially the new ones: cytotec 4 times a day with food, amitriptyline, omeprazole, 1/2 hour before morning and evening meals. 

3/31/09 Very intense pain woke me up at 1:30 a.m..  Kept me awake for about an hour.  Still painful when I arose at 10:30 a.m.  Got better after about an hour.  More pain late afternoon into the evening. . .

4/1/09  Made it through the night w/o significant pain.  If my (?_ permits, I'll drive to OHareAirport to pick up Sarah who is returning from Abu Dhadbi this afternoon. . . . Just as I arrived at the international Terminal parking lot, sarah called to report that the plane was taxiing  l l 

4/7/09  Made it through the night without significant pain, 2 nights in a row.  Today is the catheter procedure. . . . The catheter procedure was painful but less painful that the one I suffered through  at Froedtert a year ago.  I wondered if Dr Silber really believed I could follow his instructions to "relax" as he worked to thrust the catheter past my wrethral sphincter which very decidedly did not want to open the door to my bladder.  The neck of my bladder was also inhospitable.  Ouch and ouch.

4/10/09 Good Friday.  8"15 pm blood in urine.

The next notes start on March 26, 2019.  10 years with no notes.  Alas. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

9/11/24

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

1959 Composer and jazz orchestra leader Duke Ellington won NAACP's Springarn Medal for his musical achievements

1973 Chilean President Salvador Allende, the 1st elected Marxist president of a South America country, wadeposed in a military coup led by general Augusto Pinochet

1998 Independent counsel Ken Starr sent a report to the U.S. Congress accusing President Bill Clinton of 11 possible impeachable offenses.

2001 Two passenger planes were hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists and crashed into New York's World Trade Center towers, causing the collapse of both and the deaths of 2,977 people

In bed by 10:30, awake at 5:59, up at 6:19, let Lilly out at 6:40 and again at about 8.     

Prednisone, day 120, 10 mg., day 27/28.   Prednisone at 6:38. Two slices of Dave's Bread and morning meds later. 

The Debate.  The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.  

She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television. . . .

From then on, he continued to produce rally stories full of wild exaggerations and attack Harris with lies in what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “a staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former president Trump.” "No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency,” Dale said. “A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true. This wasn't little exaggerations, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality." As Harris spoke directly to the American people, growing stronger and stronger, Trump got wilder and angrier and told more and more crazy stories. 

And then, about ten minutes into the debate, Harris baited him. She invited the American people to go to one of his rallies, where “he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer.’ And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” 

Trump lost it. He defended his rallies, said Harris couldn’t get anyone to attend hers and has to bus in attendees (in reality, her rallies are packed and he is the one who reportedly hires attendees), and then, in his fury, repeated the lie about immigrants eating pets. When a moderator fact-checked that story, he fought back, saying he heard it on television.

. . .

Then things got even worse for Trump. 

Music phenomenon Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, telling her 283 million Instagram followers that she felt she had to because of Trump’s earlier reposting of an AI image of her seeming to endorse him. That, she said, “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.” 

After explaining why she was supporting Harris and Walz and urging her fans to do their own research, Swift signed off: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.” 

Agreed.  David Muir and Linsey Davis did a terrific job moderating the program. 

Eugene Robinson on Morning Joe: "It was just the most comprehensive beat-down I have ever seen on a debate stage, including the Trump/Biden debate where  Biden beat himself."

PT exercises.  I did the first set of all three between 12:15 and 12:45.  Again around 2 p.m.  and again at 4:30.

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, my all-time favorite song, Ellignton's Sophisticated Lady.  They say into your early life romance came / And in this heart of yours burned a flame / A flame that flickered one day and died away / Then, with disillusion deep in your eyes / You learned that fools in love soon grow wise / The years have changed you, somehow / I see you now. / Smoking, drinking, never thinking of tomorrow, nonchalant / Diamonds shining, dancing, dining with some man in a restaurant / Is that all you really want? / No, sophisticated lady / I know, you miss the love you lost long ago / And when nobody is nigh you cry.

Second, the military coup against Chile's democratically elected government was supported by Nixon and Kissinger.  So much for American respect for democracy and the Rule of Law.  So much for our moral superiority over Putin and the Russians.  We are so hypocritical.  Rules apply to others, not to us.

Third, Starr's report was a best seller because of its salacious content.  Reading it left me with little respect for either Clinton or Starr, who later became dean of Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, CA.

Fourth, the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA. chickens coming home to roost.  I was in North Port visiting my Dad.  My flight home was cancelled and ended up taking an almost empty 'redeye' flight a few days later, maybe 6 regualr passengers plus a number of pilots and flight crews moving around to match up with aircraft that had been grounded.    9/11 lead to a period of widespread fear islamophobia in the country, the Patriot Act and increased surveillance activities in the country, renditions, the use of torture by the CIA, 'black hole' detention facilties in complicitous foreign countries, and Guantanamo.  It also led to the invasion and 20 year war in Afghanistan and to the invasion and disastrous war in Iraq.

 Tuesday, September 10, 2024

1943 German troops occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City

1984 First episode of the daily TV game show "Jeopardy!" with Alex Trebek as host

1991 US Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on Clarence Thomas' nomination to the US Supreme Court

In bed at 9:15, awake at 3:30, 3 sets of 10 suprine bridge reps at 4:00, up and out at 4:10 to let Lilly out.  At 5:45, I did 3 sets of 10 knee extensions with resistance and 1 set of 10 sit-to-stand,  I did another 10 reps of sit-to-stand in the bedroom at 9 a.m. and a supine bridge and knee extension at 3 p.m., holding off on the sit-to-stand, which is very difficult for me.

Prednisone, day 26, 10 mg., day 26/28.  Prednisone at 5 a.m.  Will this be my last 10 mg. dose?  I should get a call from Dr. Ryzka this afternoon with the results of yesterday's blood draw, i.e., the level of inflammation 'markers', and hopefully instructions to reduce my daily dose to 7.5 mg.  Morning meds at 6:00.  Two slices of buttered Dave's Bread at 6:30.  . .  I got the call from Dr. Ryzka at 4 p.m., the inflammation markers were both good, sed rate and c-reactive protein.

"Uncle Bob"  Every so often, including yesterday, I receive a notification from Academia.com that someone has read my 1997 introductory speech to the initial Robert F. Boden Lecture at the law school, or a law review 'recent decision' I wrote as a law student in 1969, or one of my articles on Wisconsin's adoption of the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the proposed political and election campaign ethics rules for judges. (The faculty photo above is how I looked in my 'salad days.') Often the names of the readers suggest that they may reside in another country and I sometimes wonder why they are reading these articles now in the 2020s, especially the "Uncle Bob" memorial which was so personal and non-legal.  Boden died at age 55 in 1984, 40 years ago.  He spent almost his entire life in Milwaukee and Waukesha, Wisconsin, and never left the U.S.  He was a train-lover and never flew in an aircraft.  The entire basement of his ranch house in Waukesha, except for one corner where there was a washing machine and a dryer, was filled with his model train sets laid out on replicas of the Wisconsin cities and towns through which the various trains ran, the Milwaukee Road, the Chicago, Northwestern, the Soo Line, etc.  I wonder why anyone is still referring to this old speech of mine.

Holy Week.  I listened to episode 4 while tidying up the kitchen and doing my PT exercises.  Informative interviews of participants in the sanitation workers strike in Memphis and of the financial and public acceptance challenges the SCLC was going through at the time of MLK's murder.  Part of episode 5 of the podcast addresses the Kerner Commission Report that "White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II . . . What white Americans have never fully understood--but what the Black can never forget, is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."  The Report was published only 5 weeks before the assassination of MLK and warned: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."  One wonders how much progress we have made as a nation in the 57 years since the issuance of that warning.

Each of the episodes of the Holy Week podcasts reminds me of what a violent period of American history the mid and late 1960s was, from the assassinations of Medgar Evers and JFK in 1963, and of MLK, and RFK in 1968, up to the Kent State and Jackson State shootings and Sterling Hall bombing in 1970, with literally hundreds of 'race riots' or 'uprisings' (pick your term) throughout the decade and throughout the country, it was a violent era, with the Vietnam War and incidents of police violence always in the background.  It was a period of intense polarization, children against parents, co-workers against co-workers, spouses against spouses, and friends against friends.  The period invites comparisons with our current era, but for me, the comparison is invidious in that the current era appears to be less hopeful, and less honest, than the 60s.  On the other hand, I know that comparisons are always iffy or subject to error.  Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken" and Reinhold Niebuhr: "We must see the error in our own truth, and the truth in our opponent's error." From a Leftist's point of view, the Johnson and even Nixon eras brought much progress despite the Vietnam and civil rights challenges.  Furthermore, despite their failings, neither LBJ nor RMN was as dangerous as Donald Trump; their followers were not as delusional as the diehard MAGA crowd.  'Social media' in those days was radio, network television, newspapers and magazines. 'Silo-ing' occurred, but not as it does today on X/Twitter, Facebook, etc., with the aid of algorithms.  We are 8 weeks away from the national elections and virtually all the polls show a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump.  This is to say, knowing all that is known of character and political propensities, half of the American electorate still wants to put him in charge of the federal government and to make him commander-in-chief of the largest armed forces in the world.  What does this say about us as a nation, a culture and society, a people?  Let's not forget that we put George W. Bush back in the White House in 2004 fully knowing how he tragically misled us into Iraq in 2003, chasing nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.  As Moses is supposed to have said to God "What shall I do with this people?" (Ex. 17:4)  God had Moses perform a miracle, drawing water from a rock, to get him out of a jam with his people.  How likely is it that we will see another miracle on November 4th?  Is it more likely that Oriana Fallaci will prove correct: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."

Cold Turkey.  Today is the 11th day of watching no network or cable news programming.  I intend to watch the Harris/Trump debate tonight, not with any notion that my vote may be affected by it, but because of historical interest and to see whether the debate may have an effect on the votes of the few undecided voters who are said to exist in America, hard as that is to understand.

Anniversaries thoughts.  On October 18, 1943, the German occupiers of Italy deported 1,035 Jews from Rome. The sweep was part of their drive to exterminate the Jews of Italy too, after the Fascist regime headed by Benito Mussolini "failed" to do the job for them.  The Italians were never as anti-semitic as the Germans and Eastern Europeans; they resisted Nazi demand to exterminate the Jews.  I remember standing on a sidewalk on the road abutting the Tiber River, looking at a plaque commemorating the spot where the Jews who had been rounded up were kept until they were transported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.  I looked over my left shoulder, across the river, and saw the Synagogue of Rome.  I looked over my right shoulder and saw one of the portals into Vatican City.  Each was within sight of the other, a chilling closeness.

Anne was a contestant on Jeopardy during my last year in the Marine Corps when we lived in Doylestown, PA.  She had to pass a qualifying exam of some sort, I can't remember the particulars. and once she did so, she was given a date to show for the taping.  We took a train from Philadelphia to New York City and she came in second, winning $500, which we thought would cover my first semester's tuition at the law school, where I was headed.  In those early years of Jeopardy, Art Fleming was the host and Don Pardo the announcer.  I sat in the audience and remember Don Pardo telling the audience to keep saying "spaghetti, spaghetti" at the beginning of the taping of the show as if we were all talking.  It was an exciting experience and I was (and am) very proud of Anne for qualifying for the show and almost winning.  My best recollection is that she could have won if she had bet more on the "Final Jeopardy" question, but she didn't want to risk her winnings since we were living on Marine Corps compensation in those days.  The Final Jeopardy answer was "cave canem" and the correct question was what is 'beware of the dog', which Anne answered (or questioned) correctly.  My memory of that day so many years ago is fuzzy at best.

Ah, the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings.  For the last 33 years,  I've held a grudge against Joe Biden for the way he chaired those hearings.  It was more important for him to keep the peace with his Republican buddies on the committee, Arlen Spector and Orrin Hatch among others, than to do right my Anita Hill, whom he threw under their bus.  Shame on him.

Q: What is the worst pharmacy in Milwaukee? A  The Walgreen;s on Port Road south of Brown Deer.

We watched the Big Debate tonight.   My thought is that Trump didn't help himself with the crucial undecided voters and probably Harris did, but who knows.  I need to sleep on this.

9/9/24

 Monday, September 9, 2024

 1920 Charles Edward Clausen was born in Fort Dodge, IA

1963 Alabama Governor George Wallace served a federal injunction to stop orders of state police to bar black students from enrolling in white schools

1985 President Reagan orders sanctions against South Africa, targeting apartheid

In bed at 8:45, up at 3:45, last hour or so half-sleeping, dreaming of DPL retiring and moving to Santa Ana, CA.    

Prednisone, day 119, 10 mg., day 25.  Prednisone at 5, 2 buttered slices of Dave's Bread w/ blueberry preserves at 5:15.  Morning meds at 5:35.

Dad's 104th birthday, if only.  I miss him, as I miss my mother and my sister and Uncle Jim, and as I miss Ed Felsenthal, DSB, TSJ, RHF, WSR, WBG, and the other 'dearly departed' of my family and friends.  I'm following in my Dad's footsteps of outliving so many of his family and friends, especially my mother.  I'm remembering the terrible telephone call from Kitty's house to his sister, our Aunt Monica, and her scream when she heard the bad news.  I also remember my telephone call to her when I was writing my memoir, asking her about Dad's condition when he returned from the war, and her resistance to talking about 'those terrible days.'    How grateful I am that after a lifetime of estrangement, we became as close as we were in the last years of his life, especially when he came to live with Geri and me when Geri became his best friend on earth. 

From my memoir:

In March of this year, I drove to Florida to visit my Aunt Monica and my Dad who was visiting her.  On the way, I listened to a ‘book on tape’ by Farley Mowat entitled “And No Birds Sang.”   The book describes the author’s service in the Canadian Army in the Italian campaign of World War II.  In it, he quoted a letter he received during the war from his father, himself a World War I veteran:

Keep it in mind during the days ahead that war does inexplicable things to people and no man can guess how it is going to affect him until he has had a really stiff dose of it.  The most unfortunate ones after any war are not those with missing limbs.   They’re the ones who have had their spiritual feet knocked out from under them.  The beer halls and gutters are still full of such poor bastards from my war and nobody understands or cares what happened to them.  I remember two striking examples of two men from my old company in the 4th Battalion, both damn fine fellows yet both committed suicide in the lines.  They did not shoot themselves.  They let the Germans do it because they had reached the end of the tether.  They never knew what was the matter with them.  They had become empty husks, were spiritually depleted, were burned out.

In another book, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins discusses Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, or more accurately, Remarque’s psychological and spiritual condition after the War to End All Wars.  He describes Remarque as

. . . a deeply disconsolate man, searching for an explanation for his dissatisfaction.  And in his search, Remarque eventually hit upon the Kriegserleben, the war experience. . .  “All of us were”, he said of himself and his friends in an interview in 1929, “and still are, restless, aimless, sometimes excited, sometimes indifferent, and essentially unhappy.”

  . . .

Remarque himself stated the purpose of All Quiet in a brief and forceful prefatory comment:

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure . . . It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.

Your grandfather was one of Mowat’s “most unfortunate ones,” of Remarque’s “restless, aimless, . . . essentially unhappy” men who, “though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.”  I am confident that had it not been for the support of my mother and of my grandparents and Aunt Monica, he would have been one of the army of lost souls in the “beer halls and gutters.”  He would not have survived on his own.  In the same conversation in which he told me that it took him 25 years to ‘get over’ Iwo Jima, he also told me that the Marines did not want to ‘let him out’ or discharge him after the war because of his ‘condition’ and how hard it was for my mother to live with him.  I don’t know whether he has any idea how hard those years were for Kitty and me. He has never acknowledged it to either of us.  Kitty and I rarely talk of it and never at length, but in a serious conversation about 25 years ago she remarked that we had been ‘emotionally crippled from growing up with Dad.’  She was pretty accurate.

. . .

As I look back on my life in the process of writing these letters, I realize what little contact I had with my father after I left home at 18.  He wrote me two letters, one during my freshman year at college and another when I wrote home after my sophomore year that I had decided to take my commission in the Marine Corps rather than the Navy.  He was taciturn at home and even more so on the telephone (“Well, let’s not run up this phone bill” marked the quick end of every long distance call.)  He fled to Florida after my mother’s death in 1972 and for a period of 13 years, from 1982 till 1995, we never spoke or wrote to each other, a long silence that wasn’t broken until my grandmother’s death, when I wrote him.  I mention all this simply as a preface to the (obvious) statement that I don’t know my father well.  Most of my memories are from the end of World War II until 1959 when I left home, a period spanning his life from age 25 to age 39.  Those were, I believe, his worst years, years that, but for the war and the Iwo Jima trauma, should have been his best years, years of establishing himself in some work, growing into maturity, enjoying his family, and building a future.  Instead, they were in large measure lost and wasted years.  The frequent bouts of anxiety and depression, the relentless terrorizing dreams and the out-of-control alcoholism drained him of vitality.  I cannot remember him having any hobbies or recreational interests.  If he had any educational or vocational interests, it didn’t show.  As far as I knw, he had no enthusiasm for anything.  I have no memory of him ever building anything, or fixing anything, or caring very much for anything other than perhaps his car.  It was my Uncle Jim who took us cousins to Comiskey Park to watch the Sox, who took us to the Brookfield Zoo, who took us to Riverview Amusement Park, who started to teach me how to drive, who played ‘catch’ with me.  I don’t remember my father taking part in any of these activities or indeed in much of anything that could properly be characterized as an “activity.”  By the time I left home in 1959, he reminded me of the farm worker in Robert Frost’s The Death of the Hired Hand:

Poor Silas, . . .

. . .  nothing to look backward to with pride,

And nothing to look forward to with hope,

So now and never any different.

He was pretty much a lost soul, trapped with his own thoughts and memories and debilitating dreams, cut off from the rest of the world, including his children.  I attribute his condition mostly to the war, to the Marines, and especially to the searing experiences on Iwo Jima.   

I could not be more grateful for the time we had together in Florida and especially in Wisconsin during his last years.   There have been times in my life when I have thought that belief in God may spring from the occasional need to thank Someone or Something for the Beauty in the world, for Life, like the 4th stanza of Yeat's poem Vacillation: 

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less 

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.  

I need to remember these lines and not to concentrate so often on the following stanza:

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.

Holy Week.  I listened to Part 2 of this The Atlantic podcast about the assassination of MLK and the aftermath, The Inferno, and Part 3, Black Messiah.   

Busy morning at the VA.  First a pedicure at podiatry. Then, a visit with Dr. Ryzka in Rheumatology Clinic.  Then a visit with Steve in Outpatient Physical Therapy for leg and knee weakness.  Then a stop at the Blood Draw Clinic, where I started a good conversation with the Army vet sitting next to me in the waiting room.  He got called in before me, saying he hoped we could continue our conversation when he was finished, but then I got called in and he still wasn't back so we weren't able to continue, a disappointment.

I did one set of all three PT exercises when I got home, the Supine Bridge and Sit to Stand and the Quad lifts., 3 sets of 10 reps each and now my legs are so weak it's a struggle to stand and walk.  This will be a long process.  Steve said not to expect much progress for 6 weeks or so.  Disipline, discipline.

Geri's visit with Dr. Graf.  The continuing pain in the knee is a result of two assaults on the same joint in a short period.  She needs to rest it until it gets better.  She's frustrated and disappointed, a hard pill to swallow for a person as naturally active as she is.

 

9/8/24

 Sunday, September 8, 2024

1951 Pope Pius XII publishes the encyclical Sempiternus Rex

1974 US President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon of all federal crimes

2015 Pope Francis announced moves to streamline the annulment process within the Catholic Church

2022 Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral Castle after ruling for 70 years, as the UK's longest-serving monarch. Her eldest son inherited the throne as King Charles III

In bed at 9:30, half-awake around 3, misty dreaming of Bruce Springsteen, earworm of 'You Can't Start a Fire without a Spark, up at 3:50.  I let Lilly out at 5:05.  Geri got up at about 8:30, so our circadian rhythms are about 4 or 5 hours out of synch.

Prednisone, day118, 10 mg., day 24/28.   Prednisone at 5:05.   AllBran and berries at 7:00.  Morning meds at 8:30.

Holy Week.  I started the day listening to episode 1 of The Atlantic's podcast about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, TN, and the riots or uprisings that followed.

Simone Weil  I read The New Yorker article "The Supreme Contradictions of Simone Weil: It’s a conundrum of the philosopher’s biography that most basic human needs were alien to her,". by Judith Thurman, September 2, 2024.  I can't pretend to understand Weil's thinking or mysticism, but I'm surprised that we have at least two points of connection: first, she is said to have had a profound religious or spiritual experience or ecstasy and to have prayed for the first time, in the Portiuncola in Santa Maria degli Angeli below Assisi, and second, another such experience at the Benedictine Abby in Solemnes listening to the monks engaging in Gregorian chant while suffering from terrible migraine headaches.  She said she felt the "possibility of living divine love in the midst of affliction".  She was an ascetic, especially toward the end of her life and most people would call her mentally ill.  She died, in part at least of starvation, at age 34 and the coroner all her death a suicide though others disagree.  How many 'saintly' persons are what most of us would call 'mental cases'?

 Unlike her, I did not enjoy any profound spiritual experience while visiting either Assisi or Solemnes but it appears we had at least similar drives to go to those places. Though not as profoundly as she was, I was touched by the visits to both places.  I remember the Portiuncola more than the great basilica at the top of the Assisi hill, especially the spot outside the little chapel where Francis is said to have died, naked, on the ground.  Of our trip to Solemnes, what I remember most vividly was Geri's incredible tolerance of my desire to hear the monks chanting, though it meant walking in a cold, December, northern France, rain for a couple of miles along the river Sarthe.  She never complained or called me out for putting her through what turned out to be an ordeal leaving both of us soaking wet, very cold, and stiff as boards by the time we reached the Abby.  Once there, we couldn't find the entrance to the chapel and I was ready to give up the effort, but she persisted and got us into the building in time for me to hear the chants during the Terce canonical mass.  After lunch at the hotel restaurant across the road, I returned to the chapel to hear more chants at the Sext hour, while Geri enjoyed staying warm and dry at the hotel.   It was after that experience that I was certain that I had married a truly extraordinary woman. (Rembert Weakland had been the abbot at Solemnes before being appointed archbishop of Milwaukee.)

Lethargy seems the best description of my condition today, a state of decreased consciousness, or maybe it's just lasssitude, a state of mental weariness,  lack of energy; listlessness; languor.  Or as I sometimes put it, brain dead, not depressed or anxious, but hardly alive.  A lost day.

Thanks to David who came over for his annual gift of cleaning out our gutters, a messy job requiring a lot of ladder climbing and scooping out mucky dead tiny Locust and other leaves,  Friday when he and Sharon picked up Ellis he also went down to the basement and loaded a 40-pound bag of salt into our water softener.  I had tried to do it myself a few days before but couldn't manage to lift the bag to the top of the salt vat.  These experiences, for which I am most grateful, make me wonder how long we (or Geri) will be able to stay in this house, with all its maintenance requirements.  Geri has missed this year's entire gardening season because of her knee pains and two surgeries.  

Anniversaries thoughts.  Re Pius's encyclical and Francis's simplification of the Church'ss marriage annulment procedures, I say Bah, humbug.  Re QEII's long reign as queen and empress of the British Empire, I say I admire her tenacity, respect for traditiol, and sense of duty, but as British royalty generally I say, Bah humbug.  Cruel Brittania, and all that . . 

RE Ford's pardon of Nixon, it wouldn't have been necessary if the Roberts/Trump Supreme Court had been sitting in those days since now we know that Nixon was right when he told David Frost "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition."  So much for, in America, no one is above the law.