11/4/24

 Monday, November 4, 2024

1958 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was crowned as Pope John XXIII

1979 500 Iranian students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini seized the US Embassy in Tehran

1980  Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States

1989 Alexanderplatz demonstrations for political reforms drew over half a million people in East Berlin, a significant event that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall

2008 Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President of the United States, defeating John McCain

In bed around 8:oo, awake around 3:15, and up at 3:30.  Let Lilly out at 3:45.  Very painful upper back, both sides.   

Prednisone, day 174, 5 mg., day 25/28.  Prednisone at 4:50.  Morning meds later. . .  I took another 15 mg.s of prednisone when I returned from the visit with Dr. Ryzka.  

Dr. Ryzka at 11:30.  It looks like it is a recurrence of the PMR.  He increased my prednisone dosage to 20 mg. today, then 15 mg. for 5 days, then 10 mg. for another 5 days, then back to 7.5 mg. until our next visit.  He also had me undergo another blood draw to ascertain that I'm eligible for an alternate treatment which he may order at our next meeting.  I write this note at 3:15 p.m. I'm semi-exhausted after being more thoroughly exhausted all morning and napping for the last hour.  How much of this fatigue condition is prednisone, how much is the change from daylight savings time, and how much is it from old age?

Will tomorrow's election help or hurt the country?  Odds are we will be more polarized, divided, at one another's throats, after the election than we are today.  In one sense, it's hard to believe we could be more divided, but it seems almost certain that we will be.  If, as I think is more likely, Trump prevails, by hook or by crook, anti-Trumpers will be devastated, aghast, disgusted, and angry at those who enabled his accession to Power.  If he wins while losing the popular vote again, the anger and disgust will be deeper.  If he wins by shenanigans, it will be deeper still.  We already know how Trump supporters will react if Harris wins: claims of voter fraud.  God only knows how some of them will behave but my money is on violence of some sort, more destructive and more lethal than January 6, 2021.  As I often said to my dear sister after one of my Cassandra prophecies, I hope I'm wrong.  I'm pretty good at being wrong as my predictions of the outcomes of the 2022 midterm elections show.  From my journal a year ago:

Denny the Downer

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

Wisconsin: Barnes loses, Evers loses

Pennsylvania: Fetterman loses to Charlatan, Mastriano loses

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

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

Florida: Val Demings loses to Rubio, DeSantis beats Crist

Texas: Greg Abbott wins over Beto O'Rourke

Ohio: J. D. Vance wins over Tim Ryan

New Hampshire: Hassan over Bolduc

North Carolina: Budd over Beasley

Nevada: Laxalt beats Cortez Masto

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

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

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

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

Anniversaries.  Anelo Roncalli, my favorite pope.  Vatican II, a good try.

 The seizure of the embassy and the American hostages meant Jimmy Carter never had a chance in the 1980 election, especially after the rescue attempt blew up.

Reagan over Carter, what can one say?

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the blow-up of the Soviet Union gives one hope that that would be a tomorrow after a second Trump term in the White House but the political future looks bleak, even if Harris wins.  America's coming apart.

Obama's election gave us hope.  It also led directly to the formation of the Tea Party and the White backlash that gave us President Trump.  Be careful what we wish for.

 

11/3/24

 Sunday, November 3, 2024

End of Daylight Savings Time

1964 Lyndon B. Johnson was elected President in a landslide, defeating Republican candidate Barry Goldwater

1970 Marxist Salvador Allende was inaugurated as President of Chile

1970 US President Richard Nixon promised a gradual troop removal of Vietnam

1992 Democrat Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States, defeating incumbent President George H. W. Bush

In bed at 9 CDT, up at 3L30 CST.  My upper/mid back pain is a strained muscle.  I have no idea how I did it.   

Prednisone, day 173, 5 mg., day 24/28   Prednisone aat 4:30 followed by 3 slices of Dave's Bread w/ preserves.  Morning meds at 10:00.

The state of the union, according to Maureen Dowd today:

Donald Trump’s private life is marked by a cascade of sordid episodes. But so is his public life. Trump simply has no character.

When I asked a scholar what Shakespearean figure Trump most resembles, he replied that Trump is not complex enough to be one. You have to have a character to have a tragic flaw that mars your character.

And that raises the question: How did the America of George Washington never telling a lie, the America of Honest Abe, the America of the Greatest Generation, the America of Gary Cooper facing down a murderous gang alone in “High Noon” — how did this America, our America, become a place where a man with no character has an even chance of being re-elected president? . . .

 Americans have felt let down again and again since the ’60s, with wars we shouldn’t have been in, occupations we shouldn’t have had, the bank scandals that were allowed to happen, trade agreements that hollowed out manufacturing hubs. Then there was the devouring pandemic. Many Americans felt left behind, fooled by Republicans and disdained by Democrats.

All the dislocation was exacerbated by social media algorithms igniting anger, outrage, resentment, conspiracies and fake stories.

Donald Trump is a human algorithm, always ratcheting up antagonism. He’s a personification and exploiter of all the things creating anxiety in people’s lives.

 

Epitaph on a Tyrant

by W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Good Bones

BY MAGGIE SMITH

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

 

The Second Coming

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

11/2/24

 Saturday, November 2, 2024

1917 British government proclaimed support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration

1963 Ngô Đình Diệm, the President of South Vietnam, was assassinated in a coup by the South Vietnamese Army

1976 Jimmy Carter was elected President defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford

1993 Rudy Giuliani won the New York mayoral election, becoming 1st Republican mayor since 1965

2004 George W. Bush was re-elected as President of the United States, defeating Democrat candidate John Kerry

In bed at 9:15, and up at 5:15 to let Lilly out.  No hesitation this morning.  A year ago today there were 3 inches of fresh snow on the ground.  This morning the County Line berry trees are buzzing with robins jumping from branch to branch, berry to berry. 

Prednisone, day 172, 5 mg., day 23/28.   Prednisone at 5:30, taken with some saltiness.  I awoke with badly aching shoulders, low and mid-back.  Morning meds around 8:30 and breakfast of All Bran w/ berries and prunes at 9.

Moby Dick, Loomings     

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight. / The tide is full, the moon lies fair  Upon the straits; on the French coast the light / Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,  Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! /Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, / Listen! you hear the grating roar / Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, / At their return, up the high strand, / Begin, and cease, and then again begin, / With tremulous cadence slow, and bring / The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago / Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought / Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we / Find also in the sound a thought, / Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith / Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore / Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. / But now I only hear / Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, / Retreating, to the breath / Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true / To one another! for the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, /Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain /  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The State of the Nation.  Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State has placed the state's National Guard on alert from Nov. 4th to Nov 7th.  The office of Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) said this week it will put 60 National Guard members on standby on Election Day.  In the District of Columbia, Police Chief Pamela A. Smith has said that the entire D.C. police department will deploy through at least the Nov. 5 election. This means all eligible 3,300 officers will work 12-hour shifts, with most leave time and vacations canceled.  

Anniversaries.  First, let us never think that Minister Balfour and Her Majesty's government gave a tinker's dam for the Jewish people or the aspirations of Zionists.  They were concerned only with the UK's interests in the Great War and thereafter.  Plus, they doubledealt the Zionists and the Arabs, who also had nationalist aspirations that directly conflicted with Zionism.

Seoond, the assassination of Diem was a beginning and an end.  It was the end of any believable pretense that South Vietnam was a democracy grounded on the will of the people.  Happy horsesht ab initiio and thoughout.  It was the beginning of a succession of military cabals leading one American ambassador to describe South Vietnam as a country with an army but no government.

Third, in the long history of American presidencts, was Jimmy Carter sui generis?

Fourth, Rudy Giuliani, altar boy, good Catholic, philanderer, rabble rouser, bum from the beginning.

Fifter, when the American electoate chose George W. Bush over John Kerry after he led the nation into a tragic unnecessary war in Iraq on falso pretenses of WMD, I learned never to trust the judgment of the American people.  "You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know—morons.” – Jim in Blazing Saddles.

11/1/24

 Friday, November 1, 2024

1952 "Ivy Mike", the first thermonuclear weapon to utilize the H-bomb design of Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, was detonated in the Marshall Islands, Pacific Ocean

   1954 The US Senate admonished Joseph McCarthy because of his slander campaigns

In bed at 11, awake around 4:45, and up at 5:00 with aching shoulders.  I let Lilly out at 5:30.  She went out into the dark without hesitation.

Prednisone, day 171, 5 mg., day 22/28.   Prednisone at 5 a.m.  Three slices of toasted buttered Dave's Bread with preserves.  Trulicity injection at 6:05.  Morning meds at 11:35.

Catholicism and Magic; Jubilee Year.  When I was in undergraduate school, some of my companions would speak blasphemously of  "going to the magic show" on Sundays and 'holidays of obligation.' I can't recall whether I ever used that expression but I may not have because it referred to the dogma of transubstantiation or "the Real Presence" of Jesus's body and blood in communion wafers and altar wine.  I was never comfortable moving Jesus or even 'taking his name in vain' as an expression of anger, exasperation, or disappointment.  I can speak disparagingly of the idea of "God" generally, as in 'God has a plan for each of us,' but it seemed to me as a young man and even now that Jesus the man, the prophet, the teacher, deserves more respect than to have his name used as a cuss word.  

But back to that "magic show" idea.  I was reminded of it by reading a story in yesterday's NYTimes about the Church's upcoming "Jubilee Year 2025."  A Jubilee Year is a "Holy Year" signified by the ceremonial opening of the "Holy Doors" in the four Roman major basilicas: St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul Outside the Walls.  The Vatican issued a decree on May 13th outlining  ways that Catholics can obtain a "plenary indulgence" during the 2025 Jubilee Year, including by  making pilgrimages, prayerful visits to specific churches.  A plenary indulgence is a grace granted by the Catholic Church through the merits of Jesus Christ to remove the temporal punishment due to sin, i.e., time burning in Purgatory for "venial sins."  We recall that one of the complaints of Martin Juther against the Church was the sellling of indulgences to raise money, but first I note that I have visited a number of the churches in Rome whose prayful visits may trigger an indulgence.  St. Peter's, Sta. Maria Maggiore, St. John in Laterano, Sta. Maria Sopra Minerva, Sta. Maria della Vittoria, and Sta. Cecilia in Trastevere.  I've also visited the catacombs beneath St. Peter's, where Peter's final resting place is reputed to be and which is also a spot that can trigger a plenary indulgence.  I've also been privileged to visit two venues outside of Rome which may occasion an indulgence: the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi and the Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels in Assisi.  I have good memories of all my visits to all these places but I know I didn't receive any indulgence, plenary or temporal, because I know I didn't satisfy the conditions, the most basic of which is believing in indulgences and in the Church's divine prerogative to award them.  I remember standing next to Geri's beloved Uncle Hardy at her mother's wake as a priest arrived to lead prayers.  Uncle Hardy nodded toward the priest said to me "What do you think, Chuck?" and I responded , "I don't know, Uncle Hardy, what do you think?"   He waved his hand and said "It's all a business., just a business."  From the NYTimes article that prompted this note:

Rome is undergoing a huge modernization plan that its mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, said began in earnest to prepare for an estimated 35 million Catholic pilgrims who will visit throughout 2025. The city has budgeted around $4.6 billion on 322 construction projects for the Jubilee visitors, including building a dazzling plaza near St. Peter’s Basilica for pilgrims.

Statues are being cleaned, roads repaired and trash cans installed on corners across downtown. A citywide 5G network and an A.I.-generated app to help make attractions more accessible for visitors will be rolled out in phases throughout next year. And more than one million trees will be planted in Rome, while a new shelter for women and children is being built — two of the kinds of projects that are especially close to the pope’s heart.

It was a business in 1517 when Luther posted his theses.  It was a business when Uncle Hardy said so.  It's still a business. 

Email from Jane Casper:

Oral History Initiative Interview Link

Dear Chuck,

Ryan Rau and Patrick Vang, the Law School's IT pros, have finished editing your Monday interview.  The link is here:

https://youtu.be/WNFxmUb8HEE

Chuck, your interview is so much more than "capturing what it was like to be at Marquette University Law School as a student and a professor." It is a history lesson that spans six decades of our country seen through the lens of a young Marine who later entered law school amid the tension of anti-war and civil rights unrest and who then became a law professor and so much more.  The interview can almost be divided into three periods:  your Vietnam years, your law student years, and your faculty/attorney years.  From what you shared,  there were several layers of tension within the law school from about the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s:  faculty to faculty; faculty to students; students to faculty.  It's as if Marquette Law School was a microcosm of all the turmoil that existed in the country at large.  It's quite an interview.

Christine Wilczynski-Vogel will follow up with an approval form.  She has forwarded the link to Dean Kearney for his approval as well.  At this point the link is not available to the general public; however, you are welcome to share it with family and friends as you see fit.  Please let me know if you have any problem opening the link.

One more time, Chuck, thank you for your participation in Marquette University Law School's Oral History Initiative.

Sincerely,

Jane Casper, Special Projects Assistant